What games are you playing?

I recently had an enlightening conversation with a long-time friend.

He is currently in the process of selling his second company.

He told me he is unhappy. He told me he feels emotionally stressed out by internal politics and the constant pressure from investors to put growth before everything.

"I'm tired, but that's the name of the game", he said.

But I remember, that's precisely what he said when he sold his first company.

And now? Now he is already well under way to launch the next one. Here we go again..

Hold on. What is happening here?

There's a Choice to Be Made

It happens so often in our lives that we end up in situations where we feel trapped. We observe what the people around us are doing, then ask them for advice or simply copy their behavior.

And then a few years later we end up in a mess of a situation and ask ourselves where we took a wrong turn? (oh no worries I received my own fair share of messy situations!)

But what we don't realize is: There is a hidden web of millions of existing games being played in our society at any given time.

And when we sit down at a new metaphorical poker table and want to join in, we are giving our silent consent that we accept the rules of the game that's being played at this particular table.

BUT: We have a choice which tables we want to join. So before we sit down and join a game, let's examine the rules first.

In the example of my friend starting companies and ending up unhappy: He started out loving the traditional startup game, raising money from VCs and hiring a big team feels good.

The ego loves that shit.

But after a while, he realized that he sold a substantial share of his company to a fund (aka VC) that has only one interest: Make as much money as possible. You just entered their game.

And so if you have different motivators for starting your company that is okay, but at least you need to know what you are in for and prepare accordingly.

Choose Your Games Wisely

So how can we choose more deliberately?

If we take a step back and decide the rules (or principles) we want to play by FIRST, we can then choose the game that best reflects them (or start our own games if we dare).

In case of the startup:

• Do you value freedom? -> Bootstrap, don't get investors on board.
• Do you want to optimize for free time? -> Hire freelancers (employees are players too and they want your money, your time and a fulfilling job).
• Is money your big driver?
• Or do you want to make a big impact in the world?

Whatever you want, define it before you start.

Before we started GrowthBay we thought long and hard about this. We've had similar experiences like my friend and felt burned out. So we wrote down a set of such rules and principles (I'll share them another time) whom we try to live and work by. One of them comes straight out of Naval Ravikant's playbook:

Play long-term games with long-term people.

For us this is a lens through which we evaluate new projects, clients, partners, freelancers, before we engage with them.

Our world's changed once we started to be more deliberate in choosing the games we want to play and the players we want to play them with.

Choose wisely.