To make it in the world of online business and commerce it takes a multitude of special skills and capabilities, not to mention a super strong content marketing strategy.
There are, of course, endless educational courses, online seminars, and mentors who can help accelerate a budding online businessperson’s entrepreneurial skills.
However, sometimes it can prove useful to think outside the box and to try an approach that others may not have thought of before.
Classic games such as chess, poker, and Scrabble are often packed with ingenious new ways to solve problems and to outflank the competition.
With that in mind, we take a look at exactly the sort of online business skills that an open-minded entrepreneur can absorb from playing such games, taking advantage of the fact that all of them are now easier and cheaper to play online than they are offline.
Play them enough, and entrepreneurs may just see their business take off and head for the stratosphere!
Classic games like chess have reinvented themselves online and are now more popular than ever before
Thinking Strategically
In gaming, as in business, it can often be tempting to go full steam ahead, making decisions and moves that while beneficial in the short term could be disastrous in the long term.
This is perhaps the most important aspect of online business that classic games like chess, online poker, and Scrabble can help people with, because all of them require in-depth strategic thinking and forward planning in order for a player to come out on top.
This is particularly evidenced in longer-form versions of such games, which can be found in huge tournaments with deep fields of players at providers like Chess24, Global Poker, and Scrabble GO. The lengthier a particular tournament or match is, the more that experienced players can bide their time and lay in wait for the perfect moment to pounce on a rival’s mistake.
Mastering such games drills this mindset into players, meaning they are less likely to be quite so gung-ho when signing binding contracts or agreeing to new bumper deals.
In some countries online Scrabble is becoming one of the most common ways to socialize on the internet
Patience
They say that patience is a virtue, and for good reason, because all the most successful online businesspeople in the world know exactly when to push for what they want and when to hold off and play a patient game.
Such a balanced approach can easily be honed in online classics such as backgammon and dominoes, where players are bound by the rules to move in turn, meaning that patience is a stonewall necessity rather than something a player can just pick or choose.
Killer Instinct
On the flipside of patience is, of course, killer instinct, something which all gamers and online businesspeople should have in common.
After all, there really is no point in doing all the hard legwork to get a company or start-up running, only to then cut its legs from under it by not being decisive enough at key moments.
Classic games like poker are just the job for sharpening your edges in this regard, especially when a table is whittled down to just two players. This is what is known as a heads-up match, and means there is no escape from vital decisions, each with the potential to have a player deemed the winner or loser.
Put yourself in such gaming situations enough times, and they will become second nature in high pressure business Zoom calls or boardroom meetings.
Taking Defeat on the Chin
Ask any successful businessperson what their success is based upon and a surprising amount will tell you that sheer bloody mindedness and a willingness to learn from mistakes were the building blocks their enterprises were built on.
Above all else, classic games teach their disciples that losing is just a necessary part of the journey towards success, with the best players learning from mishaps as lesser players go about blaming everything and everyone but themselves.
