Business a Building Progressively is a Chess Game
December 16, 2006 – 7:48 am
Most people who first start in business fail at least once. After that some experiment to find businesses that they are truly good at (which is what I’ve been doing) while other people simply progress taking the things that they liked from working in the last venture to the next on.
David Askaripour of MindPetals, CashCampus and Flush the Toilet recently wrote an interesting article about Freud, Business and using the example of a porn site to illustrate his point about business as a continuation of the last business you create. As a business owner I think this is an important rule to learn. You do not want to keep starting businesses where you are on the bottom every time… you need to learn how to play “chess” in business.
Some of the best poker players are the best for but one reason “they take calculated risks to raise their position in the game”, in this case the game is called “business”. Read a little more about what David is getting at in the following quote from his article…
As a young entrepreneur, you have to understand that you’re not playing a simple game of checkers every time you start a venture. Wake up, you better be playing a well thought-out game of chess, my friends.
When you start a business your next move should increase the position of the move prior. This isn’t a game of checkers where you can jump all over the board.
… see what I am talking about. Regardless of whether you’ve been in business for decades or you just started yesterday sooner or later you must realize that we all have our own way of playing the hand we are dealt but its up to us as business owners and human beings to figure that out.
Now I am sure that this could offend a few people simply based on the subject matter but David illustrates the point perfectly in the following statement…
I believe that the same concept can be applied to our businesses. When you start a company, your subsequent ventures should have some sort of relation to the previous one as opposed to creating something that can’t directly empower the “original” concept in some way.
So for instance say that you started a business around pornography. People came to your site to see naked pics of beautiful women and they even paid for a monthly subscription to see premium images. Now what would make more sense as your next move: creating a magazine focused around the women on your site or starting a vegan recipe website?
The truth is simply that once you’ve found your calling you should be looking for ways to improve your position in that given industry. You may not start out on top but keep playing your “chess game” and you are bound to succeed sooner then people who simply go into business without some sort of direction.
Luc
Chess Player in Training