What Chess Can Teach Us About Entrepreneurship
Peter Burns, Forbes Councils Member Forbes Business Council
Peter J. Burns, III, serial entrepreneur and mentor. Two of my most significant businesses are Burns Funding and Millennial Queenmaker.
As a successful serial entrepreneur, I get asked a lot of questions. But one question I don’t get asked enough is, “How can I teach my son or daughter to be a successful entrepreneur?”
My answer would be simple: Buy them a chessboard.
I taught myself how to play chess when I was 8 years old. No one in my family played at the time. But I took to it like a duck to water. I loved the strategy. As I began starting businesses, I learned that my ability to craft strategies on the chess board carried over to entrepreneurship.
Here are some lessons I’ve learned from being successful at chess that have helped me become a successful entrepreneur.
What I like about chess is that it is extremely important that you not only plan several moves ahead but also observe and plot based on your opponent and their moves. In business, this means you plan your strategy, but you remain willing to adjust based on the competitive marketplace.
If you want to be good, work at it.
People who are good at chess worship the game and devote their entire lives to it. I was that way. I structured my life around chess, joined clubs, joined the YMCA and joined every organization that I could possibly think of. I started playing adults right away because they were more challenging.
Long story short, I was more than just a passing participant. I was a very serious chess player and it got to the point where I was able to actually play multiple players at the same time on different boards. The game appealed to me because of my ability to process information very quickly. Chess became a way for me to think clearly about what would happen if I did this and then did that. That approach became ingrained in me at a very early age.
In business, embrace a business that you are passionate about. And then do whatever it takes to make the business a success. That may mean getting up at 4 a.m. or working late into the night. Bring passion to your work, and your work will bring passion to your life.
Learn to read your opponent.
Chess is about how you read your opponent. They can react badly if you have taken a piece in a move that they didn’t see coming. This might be an opportunity to make a bold move that will lead to a checkmate.
What I also do is learn to prod their defenses, to find out where their weak point is. If their ego suffered, I would hit it 10 times harder and that would cause them to lose their concentration. In chess, the one that capitalizes on their opponent’s mistakes is the one that wins.
In a business meeting, for example, I have developed the ability to read the room, and then use assets. I might use my sense of humor, for example, to distract them from my intelligence. They underestimate me, which helps me achieve my business objectives.
Understand your assets and what you are willing to sacrifice.
The chess board itself is really like your business career. You have your queen and king, which you really have to protect. They are your assets. At the same time, you should be willing to sacrifice your pawns for a greater objective.
In business, do you know what you need to protect and what you are willing to sacrifice? Maybe there are certain products and services that you are willing to give away in exchange for selling others, which will exponentially grow your business. Take inventory of your assets, and know what you are willing to sacrifice.
Be observant and learn from others.
It’s important to learn from your mistakes when playing chess. But it’s even more important to learn what your opponent is successfully doing so you can incorporate their moves in future games. You may not play them again, but it will certainly help you against other opponents.
This happens in business all the time when we see strategies being successfully deployed in our industry, as well as other industries. But we may be too focused on our own business. Be observant, just like you would be in a chess match.
Don’t let them read your emotions.
In chess, you don’t get to talk. It is pure strategy. You checkmate your opponent as quickly as possible. You learn by doing it. It’s almost like you are an artificial intelligence being, learning and improving every time you play an opponent. We become akin to a computer because there’s no emotion in chess. Once the emotion comes in chess, you might lose the game because whoever messes up first loses. If you are a good chess player, you will win by attrition because they made a mistake, and you capitalize on it. It’s the same in business.
In sum, I recommend looking at the game of chess and embracing the strategies that you can matriculate into your business environment. I found it’s worked really well for me over the years. It taught me to think logically, and it also taught me to apply emotional intelligence to my business acumen.
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By Peter J. Burns, III, serial entrepreneur and mentor. Two of my most significant businesses are Burns Funding and Millennial Queenmaker. Read Peter Burns’ full executive profile here.
