Candy Crush . . . Clash of Clans . . . Halo . . . Hungry Shark? What’s your game? Even if you aren’t a gamer, you can create business wins with these three lessons from video games. Ready to play?
Create early wins for your clients
Recently one of my business friends, Racheal Cook, was interviewed on the Get Paid Podcast. She shared a story about an article she had read in Wired magazine about how video games developers build their games to give the players “early wins.”
Early wins make them feel successful and get them excited to play the game more, even as the game gets harder.
We can apply these same concepts in our businesses with our clients. By helping them have wins early on, they feel more successful and excited about continuing the work with you. Simple wins create a sense of accomplishment and build momentum.
Teaching simple strategies and easy to implement ideas help your clients have those early wins so they trust you (and will be excited about) pursuing a harder goal with you.
Learn to make the most of your time from Tetris
If you are like me, or most Mama CEOs, you have many different tasks and project that need to get done to keep your business and home running. The key to winning the time game is to know what tasks need to be done—and, this is key, exactly how long you expect each task to take. Think of the time of each task as the shape of a Tetris block in. Once you know what shape your task is, you can line it up with a space in your schedule that is the same size.
It gets tricky though. You’ll be waiting for a good spot for that project that needs a big chunk of time, but sometimes you need to take a hit and drop that big project where ever you can—and then fit in your other pieces around it to catch up.
Those days when you rock your schedule and just keep crossing off the to do items? That’s like filling and clearing row after row in Tetris. Feels good, doesn’t it?
You get to start over (and not all the way to the beginning)
When you are playing a video game and you don’t complete the level successfully? You get to hit the restart button and try again. No big deal!
You get to go back and try to get past the dragon or make the burgers faster or fit the blocks in better. You get another chance. AND each time you play a level, you learn what to do to be successful. Maybe you figure out there is a gold coin hidden somewhere, or that the if you go through the door on the left, there is a dragon. So you do it better the next time.
The same thing applies in our business. After hosting your first webinar, you know what worked and what didn’t, and your next webinar will be that much better. You also get to level up after a successful round. If you host a very successful Instagram challenge, you get to use that knowledge to repeat the success on the “next level.” Maybe it’s a little harder or faster (or your audience is bigger), but you know what to do and how to do it.
Once you complete a few levels successfully, you don’t have to go all the way back to the beginning to start over. With time and practice, your baseline becomes higher. Each time you start the game (or your next business idea) you start from a more advanced place. Even if that level is completely new to you, you get to bring your experience from the early levels to help you succeed again!
When you’re learning a video game, you can jump in and try to play. At some point if you want to advance more quickly or understand the game better, you check out guide books and get involved in forums and online communities. With your business, you can do the same thing—read the business books and join groups like Mama CEO to learn from others. Maybe the most fun (and direct) way to learn is to sit down and play with somebody who knows how to win—whether it’s a video game fanatic or a business coach. It’s time to up your game!
