What We Can Learn From Up’n'Coming Pro Poker Players
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Did you know that a large amount of pro poker players are ex poker dealers?
Can you guess why that is?
I’ll tell you why: it’s because as a poker dealer, they get PAID TO LEARN to be great at poker. Getting paid to learn a skill is the easiest way to master that skill.
Imagine trying to learn all the nuances, tells, and plays that a pro poker player has to master… if… you had to sit at a table risking hundreds of dollars… day after day. If you make a mistake, you lose big time. If you misread the strength of someone’s hand… you lose big time… again!
Now, imagine sitting on the other side of the table, dealing the cards. You observe all the same nuances, tells, and plays that the players are making. But instead of risking a ton of money, you sit there making a comfortable $20 an hour. It’s not huge money, but it’s a wage… and the best part is you’re getting PAID TO LEARN.
At the end of several weeks the would-be-poker-pro risking all his money has LOST all his money… and… after defeat after defeat, swears that it’s impossible to learn how to be good enough to ever turn pro and goes on to his next “big idea”…
Meanwhile the dealer keeps dealing… and… learning. At the end of the month he’s made $3,000 in wages alone and is well on his way to understanding which players in the casino are bad enough to lose a lot of money quickly, and which are the sharks that should be avoided. Heck he’s probably even become friends with a few regular “sharks” simply because they sit at his table. They may even give him some lessons if he buys them a few beers.
Three years later the dealer is on TV. He’s just won a World Poker Tour event for $1.3 million. And never has to work again if he doesn’t want to.
Ok, Now For The Nitty Gritty Reality Of Making Some Money
It’s important to remember that the internet is not a pseudo business. A market on the internet is as tangible as a market place in a plaza. It follows the same principles and rules as any other market place. At the end of the day, it’s all about managing PEOPLE. Both customers and competitors.
Just because we’re using the internet MEDIUM doesn’t mean we’re slipping through some “reality black hole” and we’ll be able to get people to give us money if we can figure out how to subliminally affect them. Or we’ll be able to get a bunch of people to visit our website if we can “crack the code”. You’ve probably heard of a 15 year old kid making $5 million in three weeks on the internet. Those stories are false. I guarantee it; it’s just the stuff of fantasy.
There’s always a millionaire father or uncle who helped them. Or some other contact with a lot of power or knowledge that you’re never told about.
If you believe this stuff is intangible magic, you’re thinking like the cowboy poker player and not like the dealer. It’s tangible and it can be learned. Internet businesses are real and follow real (and predictable) principles.
“Until you understand the science, the art doesn’t matter”
At the highest level of performance in any field… INCLUDING science… the leaders are operating at instinctual levels. Or “gut instinct”. Hunches even.
And so often when we watch these masters performing their craft, deftly making decisions in the blink of an eye that turn out to be the right decisions… it becomes easy for us to think that THAT is how winners behave.
That instinct, hunches, intuition etc. are the things that makes a champion a champion. Whether it be a businessman, sportsman, artist, scientist, or whatever. The truth is, it works for them because they have internalized the SCIENCE of what they do.
Would-be entrepreneurs are EXTREMELY guilty of attempting to be business artists… BEFORE… they do their time grinding it out as a business scientist.
They think their idea’s of what would make a great business somehow have merit. When more often than not, they are the ramblings of an uneducated person with a dream of a better life.
They aren’t stupid. Far from it.
But they are UNEDUCATED.
A person’s critical mind can only assess KNOWN principles. If there are principles that you don’t know about, then you can’t take that into account. And you’re bound to make mistakes in your assessment of business opportunities.
And if you happen to compound that mistake by putting a lot of time and MONEY into the idea, then you are heading for a train wreck.
At the end of the day, business is a game of finding your way through an invisible maze. The walls of the maze are made of titanium reinforced concrete… but… they’re invisible. If you run into them hard enough and fast enough, they’ll knock you on your business ass just like a real wall would.
And if you hit it hard enough, it’ll take a while to get up again.
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