5 Things Business and Poker Have in Common

First I have to tell you that I want to learn something from everything I do, even if I do it for fun, and poker is one of those things. I have been playing poker on a daily basis for about one year and I have been learning a lot about it, though I still have a lot more to learn. While playing and learning, I found a few things that Poker and Marketing have in common. What I like at Poker is that luck doesn’t count very much and some experts say luck is only 10% of a Poker game.

1. Act fast. In Poker tournaments, blinds are raising every few minutes, so if you don’t act fast, you might need to invest more in your hands to be able to see the Flop, Turn and River, which will hurt your stacks. And it’s the same in the business world, if you have a business opportunity and you don’t take action and invest in it, someone else might do it before you. Being the first offers you a lot of advantages and more competition means higher costs.
2. Be patient. You might say I’m in a contradiction with my upper argument, though I’m not. While you have to act fast, you also need to be patient and wait for a powerful hand and crush your opponents. In the business world you need to act fast and always be before your competition, but you have to be very careful where you invest your money, because a few wrong investments can get you bankrupt.
3. Control your bankroll. In poker you don’t have to play all your money at one table and go for low blinds to be sure you are not going to lose them all at once. If you go for the low blinds, you still have another chance if you don’t lose them all. When doing business, you don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket, but try to invest in more businesses and niches, so if one goes down you still have other income sources.
4. Don’t tilt. If your moral goes down, it’s time to take a pause and wait until you are psychically able to get playing again. Just like in Poker, a business might not go the way you wanted and it can take your moral to the dust and this doesn’t mean you have to start investing blindly or doing something desperate in order to recover financially.
5. Learn to bluff. Poker is not only about cards, but how you play them and quite often a poor hand wins the pot. And in business is the same, because you can do more with less, if you know how to play your cards. You don’t need to invest the same or a greater amount to grab more clients than them. It’s more important how and where you invest.