943: This ONE strategy changed my LIFE and BUSINESS! (and I stole it from chess grandmasters!)

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and in today's episode I'm gonna share with you the one lesson that I learned from chess that has most impacted not only my chess game but my life, my businesses.

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Literally.

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It has changed the way that I see the world.

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I'm so excited about this one.

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Let's dive in First things first.

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If I sound a little less energetic today, it is because I am.

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I have been a bit under the weather over the past week and obviously we got hit by the hurricane here in Tampa, Florida, this past week, so all is well here.

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I'm also recovering, so feeling much better heading into a new week and really, actually, now that I think about it, I didn't mean to tie this in to today's episode, but just the act of resetting and taking a step back and resting and recovering also fits in with today's topic, because this topic is both strategic from a strategy perspective, from your business, as well as mindset wise.

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I promise you that you're immediately going to see the connections across your business, as well as your life and your habits and how you spend your time, in today's episode.

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So let's just dive straight in.

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And really I want to tell you the backstory as to how I learned this lesson in chess, because, remember, I'm relatively new at chess.

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Still, I never played growing up.

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I just learned a few years ago, actually in my car, during a road trip.

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I was just poking around and I said what games are available in my car, and chess was one of them.

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And so Elon Musk's software programmers taught me how to play chess.

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And so when I first started playing chess, I did what most new chess players do, and I see this all the time when I see people playing chess in coffee shops or when I play online or when I teach one of my friends some basic things that I've learned in chess so far.

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What your typical player will do is, from the get go, they'll just start moving pieces and then, when pieces are available to take, they will take them, and a lot of times, what that looks like on a chess board is that people will just be trading pieces.

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You know your pawn is there for the taking, I'll take it with my pawn, you'll take my pawn right back, and we think that that's chess.

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And so what I've learned, the deeper I go down the chess rabbit hole.

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Is that really?

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The opening is all about getting all of your pieces into play.

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If you and I are going to war, if we're going to battle, if we are going to a business meeting, we want as many of our weapons or our assets at our disposal, and so the opening is all about getting all of our pieces out there.

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And instead of trading, like most beginner chess players do, we have to remember the fact that, in order for us to win the game, the battle, the meeting, whatever it may be in life, well, we want to keep our weapons at our disposal.

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We don't just want to be trading them and getting rid of them, and so that's one of the earliest things that you learn in your chess progression is not to just trade all the time.

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There has to be a reason while you're trading, which led me down the rabbit hole of asking well, what is the reason?

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Why would I want to be trading?

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When do I trade?

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How do I know when I should be trading?

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And here's the principle that I came across.

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It is called simplification and what the chess strategy of simplification means, and you can Google this, because a lot of great chess grandmasters have written very long exposes about the power of simplification and how to use it and when to use it.

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And I promise you, this episode is not about chess, it's about life and it's about business.

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And so what the strategy of simplification guides you on is it says when you are in a winning position.

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When you're in a winning position, then you can start to simplify.

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And simplification, or simplifying, means getting as many pieces off the board as possible, With the notion being that the more pieces that are on the table, the more likelihood for chaos, the more likelihood for something outside of your control or something for your opponent's benefit happening that takes away your winning advantage.

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And so for me, and what that has done for my chess game, is that I look early on to get into a winning position.

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And that's, of course, what the entire opening is about is you want to control the center.

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There's so many different chess principles.

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You want to develop your pieces.

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There's a lot of things that you want to do at the beginning, and that's your goal.

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Your goal is not to get rid of all of your assets and your weapons.

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That's your goal.

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Your goal is not to get rid of all of your assets and your weapons.

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Instead, your goal is to get into a winning position.

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And then, and only then, do you start saying you know what?

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I'm already in a winning position.

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If all things stay equal right now, I will win this game.

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I will beat my opponent.

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And when you know that you're in that position, your goal then becomes to simplify, to get as many pieces off the board as possible, to literally.

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If there are trades on the table, you take them because you know that your position is better than your opponent's.

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And so, with fewer pieces on the table, that's where your winning advantage, your winning position, really can shine.

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And so when I think about this, in both life and business, let's strictly talk business right now, of course, we're here on the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast, on this beautiful solo Sunday episode and when I think about business getting yourself into a winning position that's the first step.

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I'm not sitting here saying, as I remember hearing on so many different business podcasts when I was 19 years old and I had just started my first business, I remember so many people saying you know, do one or two things and do them extraordinarily well.

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Okay, sounds good, definitely sounds good to really focus on those things.

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But every time I tried, those things weren't working for me.

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And so the question then becomes well, what do I do now?

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And then I would try something else, and I was constantly just jumping from one thing to the other, just kind of like trading pieces.

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I had no assets, I was willing to give everything away, I wasn't married to anything, I didn't even have a position.

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I was literally just doing whatever.

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And so when I think about business that first step of getting into a winning position you're allowed to just put pieces on the board, get them out, get them out of your pocket and onto the board and in different positions, and try to identify that winning position.

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What does that actually look like in really tangible terms for us as entrepreneurs?

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Try all the things.

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Sure, try Facebook, try Instagram, try emailing people, try cold calling, try showing up to businesses.

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These are all things that I have done, I promise you.

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Try social media, try advertising, try all of the things.

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Try SEO, try content creation, try all of the things.

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But when you have found your winning position, it is so important in both life and business to simplify, because all of the other things and now I'm going to talk a little bit about life right now I see too many people that think, okay, I'm working on growing my business, but I also have this awesome circle of friends and I also have these 8 million hobbies and I also really enjoy doing this and I really love traveling and I love all of these things.

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Well, you're really just complicating your life.

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Something is going to break somewhere because there's just so many different things happening and all of the most successful entrepreneurs that I know I love reaching out to them.

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I obviously, you know, I know a lot of incredible entrepreneurs, just given the nature of what I do, and then also in my personal life, I'm always surrounded by amazing entrepreneurs and I love when I reach out to them and I say, hey, what are you working on?

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And they say same thing.

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They're just doing the same thing.

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The most successful entrepreneurs that I know.

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They are not bouncing from one thing to 30 other things.

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They have found their winning position and they have simplified.

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It becomes the only things that they focus on.

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There's nothing that derails them.

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There's nothing that throws them off or creates potential chaos.

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I see this most often in social terms with entrepreneurs, and especially newer entrepreneurs, and especially entrepreneurs is that their lives are so complicated because there's so much noise.

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There's way too many pieces on the board.

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They are getting the opinions of 50 other people, most of which are not fellow entrepreneurs, and I think that in and of itself is quite dangerous.

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They are listening to 50 different podcasts and YouTube channels and business books, and they're getting so many different sources of information that at this point, their life is full of noise.

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They're telling anybody and everybody what they're up to and just getting distracted in all of the ways.

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When the truth is the most successful people understand.

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Get yourself into a winning position and then simplify, simplify.

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Maybe this is the nature of me getting older, now that I'm in my mid-30s and when I just look at life, ah gosh, I value simplification, I value a simple life, I value things being straightforward, I value having the time and space and clarity to see things for what they are and quickly identify what matters and what doesn't.

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But all of that stuff comes through simplification Again.

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If there's too many pieces on the board, you increase your chances of chaos.

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You increase your chances of something happening and knocking your winning position or your winning advantage off the table.

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So I'm not going to hammer this point home too much today, because I know that for all of us, simplification looks differently.

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It looks differently mindset-wise, it looks differently strategically in all of our different businesses and our marketing mixes and in our product mixes.

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You can apply this strategy to any single variable in your life or business.

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But simplification is such a powerful thing and in a world where we glamorize doing all the things and always being busy and always showing up on 50 different platforms, truthfully, when you get in that winning position, just simplify.

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And if you're thinking to yourself well, look at Gary Vee, he's everywhere.

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Well, yeah, he got into a winning position.

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He hired a team that could double down and then he personally simplified.

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I'm sure that Gary Vee, to create as much content as he does Well, we already know he's just followed around by a camera.

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That's what he's always doing.

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It's very simple for him at this point.

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And then he has a team to support all the post-production and publication of it.

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So he first and foremost, identified that winning position and then simplified.

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So hopefully this episode hits you where you need it this week, because I know that you are going to be all sorts of inspired by this week's guests.

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We've just got three incredible guests.

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Tomorrow we're kicking things off with the amazing.

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By the way.

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It's October this week.

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That's crazy.

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It's my favorite month of the year.

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It's my birthday month.

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Our team is heading up to Boston for our in-person quarterly retreat for the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast, because we have got some cool things going on behind the scenes for all of you.

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You're going to see that we've been a podcast for eight years now and almost a thousand episodes.

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We don't just want to be a podcast for you.

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We want to give you everything you need to be successful with your business.

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So you're gonna see a lot of changes from our end.

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So the amazing Darren Tapp this is someone who's absolutely brilliant.

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Tomorrow, him and I sit down and talk about how to unleash math to make better decisions in our businesses.

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Today, we talked about really understanding simplification.

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Tomorrow, darren's just gonna help us really hone in on what's the stuff that matters.

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How do we make those right decisions?

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On Wednesday's episode, you're going to hear from Rod Casilli.

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This is someone who I had an absolute blast interviewing because he's very brilliant, very successful as a trader, not an investor.

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You're going to hear him talk about the difference between trading and investing and how we, as entrepreneurs, can and should focus on that to actually grow our net worths.

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We are so revenue focused as entrepreneurs can and should focus on that to actually grow our net worths.

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We are so revenue focused as entrepreneurs that I'm really excited for Wednesday's episode 945 with Rod Casilli to hit the airwaves.

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And then Friday, you want to talk about an entrepreneur that dreams big, that sees big and then makes it all happen.

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We are joined by the very brilliant and talented Katie Zimmerman.

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She is going to absolutely rock this week's featured Friday episode.

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She talks about client obsession, activating all the senses for our customers and clients, no matter what your business is, and intentionality rooted in envisioning your success and then actually making it happen.

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She really brings the heat on Friday's episode.

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So all that is to say, make sure you pound that subscribe button because we'll see you, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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Hey, it's Brian here and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

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Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewantrepreneurshowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

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There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

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These are not sponsored episodes.

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These are not infomercials.

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Our guests help us cover the costs of our productions.

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They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible.

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So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website because you can send us a voicemail there.

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We also have live chat.

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If you want to interact directly with me, go to thewantrepreneurshowcom.

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Initiate a live chat.

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It's for real me and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.