Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy

The most dangerous unhappy people I’ve met are those who are both extremely ambitious and extremely lazy. What this combination produces is envy, which is a deadly sin that will make your life a living hell. These are people who think big and want to do something big, but they’re not willing to put in the work to earn it. They’ll cheat. They’ll throw you under the bus. They’re constantly looking for shortcuts. And if someone else has what they want, it eats away at their very soul. If someone is winning at a higher level than you are, either lower your expectations to match your work ethic or increase your work ethic to exceed your expectations. If you do neither, you’ll be miserable. What it all boils down to is that alignment is the key to fulfillment

Your vision must align with who you want to be. Your choices must align with your vision. Your effort must align with the size of your vision. Your behavior must align with your values and principles.

Every master, both in chess and in business, learns more from studying the moves that led to defeat than the ones that led to victory.

Studying others gives us knowledge, but studying yourself ultimately leads to an incredible amount of freedom.

You're going to use experiences to become either bitter or better. To get better you must reflect on your mistakes.

The less your business depends on you, the more valuable it is. The more your business depends on you, the less valuable it is. There’s no exit opportunity if the business relies on your personality.

A talented entrepreneur with bad habits eventually becomes an employee. An average employee with great habits can eventually become a great entrepreneur.

You must act like a great company (or a great entrepreneur/intrapreneur) long before you ever become one.

Your anger at others dies out once you see that no one but you controls your fate.

Any entrepreneur who wants to stay sane needs to let go of the silly notion that challenges are scary. Challenges never stop coming, so you’d better learn to love them and thrive on them. Every struggle is an opportunity to grow and improve.

You want to choose a path that puts the odds of winning in your favor; in poker, it’s called game selection. What determines if you win in any game (or business) isn’t how good you are; it’s how good you are relative to your competition. That’s why it’s so important to know your own strengths and weaknesses and find a market in which you have an inherent advantage.

I cannot teach you desire. If you prefer to avoid hard work, if you feel no desire to do something important with your life, there’s not much I can do for you.

When you study the most important person (you), you will begin to learn how to conquer the most important person who is holding you back (you).

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. —Alexander the Great

increase your income is a formula. If you’re not fulfilled and happy with the current results in different areas of your life, it’s most likely due to your needing to make some adjustments in some of the formulas you’ve been using for a while.

Wealth and success are not waiting for most of us at the top of anyone else’s ladder. A richer life—financially, emotionally, intellectually—is possible only when you take responsibility for your own success.

What determines if you win in any game (or business) isn’t how good you are; it’s how good you are relative to your competition. That’s why it’s so important to know your own strengths and weaknesses and find a market in which you have an inherent advantage.

You really need to get clear about what you can sacrifice and what you absolutely will not sacrifice.

You are going to have to endure more anguish than you can imagine to get there. Those who can tolerate pain the most—the ones with the most endurance—give themselves the highest chance of winning in business.

People who don’t think more than one move ahead are driven by ego, emotion, and fear.

The irony is that each time you step up, you have to start at the bottom. The king of grade school becomes low man on the totem pole the day he goes to middle school. When he finally climbs back up to the top of the ladder, high school starts and he’s back at the bottom again. Your career is going to feel similar: each time you advance, you’ll officially be at the bottom of the next level.

If you can walk away from a deal, you’re in the best position to negotiate the best terms.

The person who really has the leverage is the person who needs the deal the least.

If you use too much leverage and overplay your hand to maximize your profit from a particular deal, you may win the battle but lose the war.

In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.

What it all boils down to is that alignment is the key to fulfillment. Keep these things in mind: Your vision must align with who you want to be. Your choices must align with your vision. Your effort must align with the size of your vision. Your behavior must align with your values and principles.

Studying yourself helps you reach self-acceptance, which liberates you from self-judgment.

Going silent during a crisis is an example of making the easy choice instead of the effective choice.

it’s foolish to believe you can win at somebody else’s game.

Envy is an indicator that alerts you if you’re being honest with yourself. If you can look at someone who has things you don’t and say, “You know what. I really don’t want that,” you know you’re in a good place. If you say you don’t want something but don’t mean it, envy will eat away at you. What it’s telling you is that you really do want it but are afraid to work for it.