Business is Just a Game

Business is an simple game

Too often the primary constraint for business startup is our opinion that we do not have enough native talent to become entrepreneurs. This opinion appears about everything else that we want to do. Perhaps this is one of the biggest constraints to start a business and to achieve personal or professional goals.

Business and Talent

I believe that talent cannot be placed in a category of “native” characteristics of an individual. Talent can have a certain characteristics or native predisposition but in the same time talent is something that is constantly building through our learning, trying, experiencing … So we cannot say that all persons which are talented are talented because they are born with that talent. For example, a football player can have talent through some predisposition as a kind of passion for playing football. However, to achieve what was achieved from each successful football player during his career is every day practicing, learning from different coaches (teachers, consultants …), active playing in more matches better and better (experience).

But, the fear because of lack of talent is one big constraint for entrepreneurs on their path to business startup. As entrepreneurs from us will be required to start and run a business, to develop that business, to create and implement strategies, to plan, to take different actions, to make a profit … But, these activities are something that can be performed from everyone.

Because of that constraint, too many good business ideas didn’t become real businesses.

The Game and Business

As a child, I remember that when I get some money from home, I find myself running to go into the game stores where I buy chips to play a video games. The process was something like this:

• First, I stay near someone who already plays one of the games and look in what he was doing. In such a way, I’ve been studied the rules of the game because I want to learn how to play the same game.
• When I finally start with playing, I was trying to apply the rules that I learned in the previous step. The start was followed by many mistakes and certainly losing a lot of chips at the first level of the game.
• After my first playing, again I follow someone more experienced in playing the game. In such a way, I was learned additional rules, tips, tricks…
• After additional learning, it comes again to play and applying new rules, tips and tricks learned. Certainly, the first level is already history, I’ve passed it.
• Then I was starting with a combination of monitoring the experienced players and discussion about different achievements of my friends in order to obtain more information about the new rules, tricks and tips in the same game that I needed to learn.
• After all of that I was repeated all these exercises, trials and tests until I didn’t reach the end of the game when I was losing interest about it.

Here is the analogy with a business:

• Monitor the market and learn the rules of the game in the market. Who are the major players? What they are doing? How they are playing the market game?
• Entrepreneurs start a business by applying what is learned about the rules of the market game.
• Entrepreneurs continue with analyzing the previous business activities and still learning the rules that can be implemented.
• They participate in seminars, talk with more experienced, continue with further learning and applying everything that will come up.

So business is nothing more than the process of playing a game. It requires perseverance, creativity and patience.