Founders need more than a little perseverance. Their primary role is to solve problems and put out fires right and left, take a break, and then start all over again, despite ego wounds and mental and emotional fatigue.
Poker looks like great at that too.
Most people don't have the stomach or the patience for that kind of perseverance. When you play poker, you are playing the long game. Success doesn't happen overnight; you have to make decisions based on incomplete information. If you don't stick to winning strategies that give you an edge, you're sunk. Yet, it can be difficult to stick to your late-game strategies when they produce short-term losses.
What I've learned in my years playing professional poker has given me distinct advantages in business that college courses simply couldn't. Making decisions behind a handful of playing cards, I developed tenacity and motivation. I also discovered how difficult it is to stay calm with the chaos swirling around you.
Related: 7 Ways to Persist When Everything in You Wants to Give Up
A Poker Mindset
Overcoming small setbacks on the road to “the big win” is part of the journey of professional and competitive poker. Here are four lessons I learned as a professional poker player and founder/CEO. Apply them generously to your own entrepreneurial spirit.
1. Stick to your principles.
Even when you feel like you have to give them up. Be resilient and dig your heels in to challenge opponents who don't share your vision.
I used to play mostly cash games, for example, but one year I decided to try my hand at big tournaments, including the infamous World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas. After playing in several of these events, I lost $2,000 and was psychologically and emotionally crippled by tens of thousands of dollars in potential winnings. Analyzing my game, however, I realized that these “near misses” indicated that my overall strategy was working. So I tried my hand again, won, and won two of the three satellite events I entered, which I cashed in.
Similarly, the creation of the platform technology in my organization initially killed our service margins, reduced our profits and losses, and ate up my time and focus. When early versions of our technology (which uses data to develop effective marketing strategies across all channels and funnel stages to drive our clients' growth) weren't suitable for strategists, which resulted in more work for everyone, I asked the same questions I had after my poker losses:Why risk more, especially when the emotional toll hasn't even peaked?
Because I aimed to execute a solid strategy and achieve a bigger vision.
Holding firmly to this long-term vision of what we wanted the future to look like, we reached the other side stronger, bolder and more focused.
Although Ladder is successful today, it won't surprise you to hear that a lot of people have told me to stop developing our technology early. Looking at the short-term snapshot, their arguments were based on sound principles:We were bleeding everywhere. However, by staying true to this long-term vision of what we wanted the future to look like, we reached the other side that was stronger, bolder and more focused.
2. Be open to pivoting on these principles.
But only when you have new information that contradicts previously held assumptions.
Poker is a game of data analysis. You're constantly presented with new information as you play, whether it's the cards on the table, those in your hand, or the opponents sitting in front of you. Every second brings something new. The dealer draws two aces on the flop. An opponent raises and doubles the pot. Another shows his testimony – a nose scratch or a hat adjustment.
Related: Do you have adaptability?
Each of these actions, and every bit of data you collect along the way, requires a quick reassessment of your strategy. What has worked so far may not work on your end. The best poker players pivot their approaches based on this information to meet the challenge with a new strategy – a strategy that learns not only from the actions of opponents or cards on the table, but also from the successes of their previous strategies.
Sometimes it's good to pivot, but you have to know when. Listen to trusted colleagues with an open mind to increase your listening skills and decrease instinctive decision-making. It's hard to hear candid suggestions, but see them as opportunities to improve your business. Ladder, for example, began operating on a weekly sprint cycle – each week building, testing, learning from three new growth experiments, and evolving our strategy. It was a well-oiled machine for a while, but all machines eventually need a little TLC. When we moved to a service delivery model in 2016, our team realized that weekly sprints were no longer viable.
The overly intense pace had become a sore point. After some serious soul-searching, I decided we needed to move to a monthly sprint. Since then, we have seen better customer relationships and reduced stress. It was a good time to pivot; If I hadn't wanted to change, we could never have come to a better place.
3. Accept defeats and keep going.
In business, you'll get a lot. Play enough poker, and you'll find that winning growth curves aren't linear — they're rough and jagged. Sometimes you lose. If you recover from those losses with new knowledge of why things happened, it makes you stronger and better positioned to win the long game.
When I placed second in my first event satellite, for example, I had made no mistake; I lost in a heads or tails situation with a 50/50 chance. At the age of 23, I felt like an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas and an opportunity to compete for millions of dollars had been snatched away from me. Despite these setbacks, I played three more tournaments and lost each time.
Instinctively, I wanted to quit. Then the objectivity shook me – hard. As I said earlier, my overall strategy clearly gave me an advantage. I just had to stay focused. When I tried my hand many times, I won, again and again and again.
Related: 8 daily habits to build resilience
What if I had given up before I had my post-merger epiphany? Cynicism has no place in battles or in business.
What if I had given up before I had my post-merger epiphany? Cynicism has no place in battles or in business; unfortunate events can and will happen. It's what you do next that counts.
In the last quarter of 2016, for example, we had a sales slump in our European monthly recurring revenue that took it to virtually zero dollars, uprooting our model forecast. Then, in the first quarter of 2017, a full third of our monthly recurring revenue plunged into the cliffs due to contract renewals. It was the equivalent of that meteor that wiped out T. rex and his buddies.
Despite that painful pill, we carried on. And guess what? Our growth chart looks pretty mild as I write, with a 100% increase over the past six months, proving that the outcome cannot always be predicted by what appear to be individual catastrophic events.
4. Don't let chance fool you.
An incredible winning streak makes you believe you're infallible. This trick the mind plays on you makes you vulnerable to adopting losing strategies.
You are rarely the sole cause when things go wrong, but it's even more important to remember:you don't. you're not the only cause when things go well , That is. Without analyzing potential areas of improvement, you open yourself up to possible losses.
Simultaneously attack your worries. Your job needs to be one step ahead of your competition, and the only way to do that is to conquer anxiety. Admit it exists, then put it in a cage. Don't use it as an excuse to be a jerk. Worry has no place in the startup world; this can only degrade partnerships.
For a long time, our company could not be financed, without the classic model or product sought by most investors. Not being taken seriously by the investment community really hurt. I never wanted to pivot as much as before, but that would have meant changing our roadmap and completely abandoning our technology. Instead, I went back to working in the trenches, and the pain and worry subsided. I stopped focusing on what we weren't and focused on doing what we were good at.
When I resumed our sales after a hiatus, we immediately saw streak incredible victories. I could puff out my chest and say my sales prowess was the reason, but the truth is more complicated. My sales have also been driven by my marketing team's ability to get good leads, thanks to the continuous improvement of our sales processes and materials at all levels. I'm not one to bask in the sun of perceived success. My years of professional poker have made me wary of the allure of the “obvious” answer.
Do you need to compete in national and international poker tournaments to succeed in the corporate world? Of course not. You just have to listen to the people who have been there and done it, then launch their hard-earned lessons to achieve your own goals.
Still, I have to be honest:it never hurts to d 'have a good poker face.
Related: 5 Traits of Naturally Resistant People
