Success Advice
How Video Games Made Me A Multi-Millionaire
How I made $3M in 15 weeks with a brand new business.
And how video game theory made me a multi-millionaire…
First, let me clarify – this isn’t my first company, but that shouldn’t distract you from the true and honest reality that you can replicate what I am about to teach you.
Yet before I lay out a strategy, let me warn you, if you have never played an RPG video game, like Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo II™, then the following will likely fly right over your head and you should download any RPG game that has a SKILL TREE and here is why…
In life everything you do, unlocks new opportunities, yet every single business strategy, project management system, and business framework I have seen, fail to incorporate this fundamental reality into their daily business operations.
And this is where game theory and specifically the importance of understanding how skill trees in popular RPG video games play a critical role in my past success and soon to be yours.
Every game ever, shows you the ENTIRE skill tree, and allows for you to see the end destination and the beginning of the decision you are about to make.
You put a skill point into “Firebolt” and then level it up to say level 5, and you unlock “Firewall”, repeat, and you unlock “Meteor” and so on and so forth, but because you can see the entire skill tree, you know where to put your skill points in order to unlock the most powerful skills as early as possible.
Now for those of you that are lost in all this video game jargon, essentially in video games, as you level up through quests or fighting monsters you gain experience, similar to how you do in real life reading books and reading or watching “How To” videos and articles on the internet to learn about a new skill, industry, or craft like marketing or copywriting for instance.
The more time you invest, the greater your experience and hopefully your skill, and just like how in real life your resume builds up, you unlock higher and higher paying jobs based on your skill level and accolades; In video games, specifically RPG games, it is the exact same.
This entire methodology however is simplified for children of all ages to play, and that is where the genius of game theory applies to building easy to execute business plans that anyone can follow to achieve wealth and rapid growth, while at the same time avoiding many of the pit falls and traps that kill motivation and businesses before they have a chance to truly thrive in the world.
So what is so genius about this “game theory” I keep referring to?
It is the very categorization by gaming companies and how they layout objectives in such a simple and intuitive way that a child as young as 6 years old, can recognize and make not only the correct decision, but also achieve taking the shortest path to success if they know only the starting point and the desired end result – that is so absolutely genius.
“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” – Albert Einstein
As Albert Einstein says, genius is in the simplest of practices, but the irony is that many are mislead by gurus pushing complex solutions to create the illusion of authority and prestige, and as a consequence (even those of you reading this) will overlook simple executable systems that all age ranges and backgrounds can follow, because their simplicity makes you so wary and cautious of their efficacy because of your prior conditioning to look for complex solutions over those that simply and directly solve your problems.
This symptom of being conditioned to only give attention to complex solutions, is a corrosive dogmatic ideology that has created a disease I like to call “analysis paralysis” amongst every day people and especially entrepreneurs and business executives of whom I coach with great frequency, to help recover from this metaphorical paralysis that can cost millions or worse – their business.
So in order to help you now, to help you understand the value of the solution I am about to outline below, you have to consciously make a single commitment to me while reading this, you have to take a deep breath and blink three times.
Right now!
And while I could go into the psychology as to why this will help you remember what I am about to say, I will keep it short – you have been reading this long article of text, straining your eyes, while constantly both consciously and subconsciously connecting different phrases and key points made above against your wealth of personal life experiences to determine how well they either do or do not relate to you. You do this in order to determine if you can exact true actionable value in this post that will help you get ahead or solve a problem – all actions which naturally stress you out and lessen your attention span.
We, humans are natural problem solvers with an innate desire to win.
So by a simple micro-commitment to your future, such as blinking three times to give your eyes a short break and taking a deep breath (which you may or may not have noticed you have decreased the frequency and depth of your breathing when you started focusing on this article,) will all help combat the stress chemical (cortisol) in the brain, and increase overall retention. After all, the classes you were likely best at in high school and perhaps college (if you attended), were the classes you had the most fun in. Where you smiled and laughed the most, both two textbook reactions that release serotonin and dopamine (the happy chemicals) that kill cortisol (the stress chemical) and help you not only narrow in your focus, but also greatly retain more information.
Fascinating, right? Now STOP!
Pay attention or everything you have read to this point will vanish and be forgotten in the void a thousand new experiences, you are bound to experience today. HOWEVER, if you are committed to making a positive change in your life, if you are committed towards your future success, get closer to the screen, stop skimming the text and read WORD by WORD, for I fear if you do anything else, you may miss the simplicity of the solution I am about to provide by your haste to get to the end.
Each word I use from here on out is carefully crafted and I implore you to re-read not only the following section but the entirety of this article again, and then in the company of friends, to thoroughly retain and then talk over the strategy covered until YOU fully understand – this is for YOU – not THEM.
Step 1 – Start with the end in mind, but leap with clear conscious where others misguidedly step
In game theory and in this article, I gave you a glimpse about the depth of the topic we would dive into at the start in order to prepare you for the next set of information and the next and so on. In game theory, this is no different than you having a basic skill such as typing on a keyboard, which aids you in being able to complete more complex tasks such as navigating the internet, blogging, copywriting, and more. Every bit of prior information and experience, unlocks the next opportunity.
For those of you feeling numbed by the common sense above, thinking “of course you need to know how to type before you can navigate the internet” you have already failed this lesson. For you could never type and instead use speech or any variety of inputs such as a simple computer mouse to complete the task… and this is where you need to kill past prejudice about the simplicity of things, to allow for the genius of game theory come to life.
Having a firm and CLEAR understanding of where your starting point is (where you currently are now in your life at the time of reading this), and the resources that are available to you like money, time, and assets in the form of experience or relationships that you can withdraw from ( know that every relationship is like a bank account that can go bankrupt ) for any of the prior mentioned resources, and MAPPING all of these resources out before you, is the single most IMPORTANT action you can EVER do because…
It allows you to identify your ORIGIN, ground zero, your base, the lowest point at which you will ever be if you are truly investing in yourself and have already started taking notes with a pen and paper by this point of the article.
You need to write down, all of the resources I mentioned above, how you spend your time, your income, the valuable assets you have from the device you are reading this on, to your car and any other miscellaneous valuable things in your possession including junk which could be repurposed ( this list will be LONG ) and any valuable connections, etc.
STOP! Remember how I said genius is in simplicity?
Why are you falling into the SAME TRAP of pursuing complex solutions?
Consider for a moment, how can you know what is valuable or what you should write down when you DO NOT EVEN KNOW YOUR GOAL?!
I gave you a NEW PROBLEM disguised as a solution that you believed would advance you closer to your GOALS, without giving any context as to what is considered valuable. Subconsciously in your innate desire to win and solve the problem, you already started thinking of things – or worse, already committed to writing them down without knowing the END GOAL of why you are writing anything down to begin with.
Again, and this is the last time I will test you, as any room for future confusion will only hurt your ability to learn what you need to from this experience, you need to LISTEN and become a student. Kill any and all form of ego, pride, and status you believe you have – only through abandoning those distractions will you reveal your ORIGIN and with complete and total CLARITY, understand that you are truly at the STARTING point and no closer nor farther away.
It is incredibly important that for the purpose of the remainder of this article you think about nothing else but YOURSELF and reflect on everything I will say in the context of where YOU want to go with YOUR LIFE in the context of the two following questions :
What fulfills YOU, makes you HAPPY?
Who do YOU want to be in the FUTURE?
Take your time to answer both of these before continuing to read the remaining steps to understanding the genius of game theory and how to apply it in the context of YOUR LIFE, because any LACK OF CLARITY will cause you to misstep, instead of take the actions that will progress you by LEAPS and bounds closer towards your goal.
Once you have a CLEAR idea of what the answer to both of these questions is, write them down. It doesn’t have to be organized in any way, it doesn’t need to be even in complete sentences or even words at all, it can be in any form that makes sense to YOU. Remember, this is not for others, this is for YOU and how YOU hit your life goals.
Once you have your answers written down, a FUTURE is created. Now we can get to work – as you now have both pieces that are NECESSARY to successfully utilize game theory to it’s fullest extent as I have to achieve success.
You have an ORIGIN and a DESTINATION, the two points that even a 6 year old can connect the dots between to find the shortest path.
Remember how I said ego, pride, and the status you believe you have would only serve to distract you?
Do any of those things truly matter if a 6 year old is on the same playing field as you at being able to connect the dots between two points?
That is why I told you, to be a student, a BLANK SLATE, as are children who are still eager to learn how the world works.
Now get ready for the GAME part of the theory.
Final Step – Work Backwards From Failure
This is how NASA put a man on the moon, they used game theory, defining the two points above, to discover their ORIGIN and their END POINT, and then proceeded to work backwards from failure.
Luckily, achieving your goals is likely easier than putting a man on the moon. If what you are about to read is properly followed, you will learn the system by which even NASA and the billionaire elite operate, as well as 6 year old children who all realize that FAILURE is only the temporary status of a MISUNDERSTOOD dependency of SUCCESS.
Consider for a moment, you have both the INPUT and OUTPUT of a PROBLEM, does it matter what you put in-between as long as the ORIGIN equals the DESTINATION in the end?
If I have a desire to make 382.18 equal 3,000,000 does it matter whether I use multiplication, division, addition, subtraction or any other process in-between to make the numbers equal one another in the end?
NO!
And when you realize how powerful that concept is, you will have fully grasped the power of game theory and how anything becomes possible for anyone with the willingness to UNDERSTAND that FAILURE is only a TEMPORARY status of a MISUNDERSTOOD dependency of SUCCESS.
To put it plainly, the secret to success is not wealth, money, status, or power – it is through finding fulfillment through understanding failure.
It may take you a few years to fully grasp that last statement, but if you know the ORIGIN and the desired DESTINATION of any given problem, then all that’s left is to work backwards from failure.
Pay special attention to what I am about to say next.
Most people when they start a project, they just dive in and try to build as they go versus looking at the entire landscape to see where the points of resistance, obstacles, and death traps are.
DO NOT BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE!
Furthermore, most business owners and consultants tend to create roadmaps for businesses from the ORIGIN, however this is an incredibly TOXIC and limiting approach to scaling any company.
Why?
Consider this, if I asked you how to build a $100M million dollar company right now, would you know which questions to ask yourself and which actions you should do first in order to have the GREATEST IMPACT for the LEAST amount of capital or resources?
No, because you are thinking from the BOTTOM UP, you essentially are forced to think small because you are likely looking at your available resources and going “what can I initially build with X tiny budget to make more money so I can afford the next step”.
And just that question alone, can create “analysis paralysis” where you are so caught up in trying to make the right decision with what little funds or resources you may have, that you unintentionally stress yourself out as a result, and make rash emotionally clouded decisions.
However, if you follow game theory and instead worked BACKWARDS from your DESTINATION/GOAL, and repeatedly asked yourself the question of, “What ways can I achieve this?”, then instead of having to constantly try and figure out what the next step is or even beat yourself up whether you are asking the right question, all you have to do is continuously list actions that are necessary to achieve the last step.
You solve for failure.
To achieve this GOAL, I can do A, B, or C action to get there, and to A,B, or C action, these are the things I need to do in order to make sure those happen, and so on and so forth. You KEEP DOING THIS until you can not break down the dependencies (requirements) of any one action any further.
And without you even knowing it, you will have discovered that the actions that are all listed at the very bottom of what will look like an upside down tree, have become so granular and simple, that any one of them have become STARTING points, that all lead to your DESTINATION.
Do not be afraid to spend a week or more doing this, it is by far a lot more efficient and smarter to spend a day to sharpen your axe to cut down a tree in a few short swings, than spend an entire day hacking away at a tree with a blunt axe.
By the time you get done, it should look like a really large triangle of sorts, with rows that have the least amount of steps at the top and dozens if not hundreds of steps or actions on the very bottom row.
Now, you might consider you are done and that you have the most thought out business plan in the world and there is no possible way you could fail, and while you will certainly out perform others who do not plan, still have skipped an incredibly important step.
You haven’t written down what any of these actions will COST you in terms of time and money.
You likely don’t want to retire and start living your dream life at 65, when you’re so old that you can break a hip riding a jet ski. So now the question becomes, which path will get you to your DESTINATION the fastest for the least amount of time, money, and effort?
Right now, just by looking at the web of possible futures you have created for yourself there is no context or way of telling which path is the easiest and which one will cost you the most or stress you out the most.
What you will read next, is the MOST IMPORTANT step of game theory, and if followed incorrectly will render everything you have done up until this point useless.
In order to add context to this massive web of possible actions and steps before you and to make the entire thing so easy to understand that even a 6 year old can answer the question of “Where do we start?”, we need to add two values.
The first, the time it will take to find and have SOMEONE ELSE do that task.
The second, the amount of money it will cost to have SOMEONE ELSE do that task.
Consider for a moment, what is the #1 trap you hear most entrepreneurs and business owners falling into?
That they get so caught up IN their business instead of ON it, right?
So why would I have you write down the amount of time or money it would cost YOU to do any of the tasks that you have written out?
If you don’t know the time or cost it would take to do a task on your decision tree, ask someone who would know, utilize your network. If you do not have someone in your network, jump on LinkedIn and look up people who are in positions at companies who can.
Make educated estimates, but do not GUESS.
The goal of game theory is to give you the shortest executable path to achieve your end DESTINATION/GOAL and to answer the question that has probably been nagging in the back of your mind of “Where do I start?”.
Once you have filled out the answers to these two questions above for every action you have in your decision tree, have likely made all of your friends feel like you’ve fallen off the deep end and become some mad genius – the real fun starts.
It is time to find the shortest path to success.
You have thousands of ways you can succeed, thousands of ways you can solve the problem of how to get from where you are now to where you want to be, and there is NO WRONG ANSWER, just a series of shorter and longer paths that will get you there.
It’s time to get out a blank notepad and a calculator and get to work. Start adding up which path will take the LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME AND MONEY to get you to your desired end DESTINATION.
Sound like a lot of work? Work smarter, not harder.
Do not calculate paths from the bottom up, start from your DESTINATION and then work backwards yet again. Only follow the path that has the SMALLEST time and monetary commitments, and repeat until you get to the end.
I suggest that you highlight this path as you go in green, as this is the SHORTEST possible path. When you reach the very last action at the bottom, which should be the easiest action you can do today to start on the path of SUCCESS, you have officially found your point of ORIGIN.
In doing everything above, you have literally created a roadmap and system so simple, that if you were to show a 6 year old, they would be able to follow it, and in doing so you have freed yourself from every possible entrepreneurial trap and mental block that would ever get in-between you and the future you are trying to create.
As a consultant, public speaker, and as a serial entrepreneur myself, the greatest barrier I have found that prohibits people from achieving any form of success, is that they (especially business owners and executives) mistake action for progress.
By following game theory and the exercise above, you’ve fundamentally done what 99.9% of people in this world have failed to do. You have predicted the future.
It sounds wild, but in life nearly every person you meet, never considers the consequences of their actions beyond any immediate sense.
That is why 99.9% of people happily exchange time for money, they wake up and go to work because the immediate result is money.
They are too distracted or stressed by relationships, money, how they look and what people think of them, that they never take a moment to step back and consider if the actions they are doing each and every day lead to any true progress. That is the cause of every major world problem.
There isn’t a single school in the nation that teaches you to THINK like this article does. They all teach you to REACT, instead of carefully predict each move you make with calculated precision.
Following the traditional way of thinking will make your life progress no differently than if you were to have a single bow and arrow and fire it with all your might, only to then spend time chasing down the arrow (the direction of your life) to fire it again, only to end up wherever it is that you end up.
Whereas game theory and methodology that I have explained above will allow for you to accomplish each and every desire you ever have in this life.
It is like having that same bow and arrow, but having a clear and defined target to aim for. Instead of exerting all of your effort and strength into aimless progress, your life becomes a series of precise and calculated accomplishments, that all line up to the culmination of the ultimate goal in life – fulfillment.
Whatever you seek in life, whether you seek to create multiple multi-million dollar businesses as I have, to travel the world, to be present with friends and family, or to press the boundaries of human ability or imagination, the drive you have to achieve that goal, the thing you are seeking is called fulfillment.
No book, nor article, nor advice by any “guru” has ever come as close to answering how to achieve the true success or fulfillment as well as game theory does.
This is not just a theory, it is act, the dedicated craft of predictive thinking that is not taught in universities or schools, nor by the internet’s most followed influencers nor business gurus, but the one trend you will find amongst all billionaires and top performers of any industry or craft, is that they all do it.
None of their actions are by chance. Each decision is carefully crafted to set themselves up in the best possible position to achieve the next goal.
If I can give any more of my parting wisdom in this post than I have already, it is that anything easily earned is never truly valued. Our goals are our goals in life because they are hard, because they are worth earning. If they were easily obtained, we wouldn’t task ourselves with trying to accomplish them for they would have no value to us.
The true secret of success, is that success isn’t about having a lot of money, it is about finding fulfillment, a sense of purpose and meaning and pride, in every action you do.
How could you not be happy with a life like that?
A life where you never regret any decision?
That is the true meaning of success, the pursuit of happiness.
Utilizing this way of predictive thinking as I have outlined in the article above, will help you diagnose any problem you have in your life, allow for you to achieve anything you can imagine, and the only limitation of what you can achieve or become in this life, is the belief that you can.
This is the very process I go through with all of my clients, business partners, managers within my companies, and entrepreneurs and executives I coach at private masterminds that I frequently host.
Now that you have the keys to success, and the very blueprint for what has helped me become a multi-millionaire and hit $3M in 15 weeks with my latest company (as was the original title and reason why you clicked on this article), what will you do with it?
Will you study this article and use it to achieve your dreams?
Or will you let life’s distractions distract you from this little gem and will everything you read fade away in time with life’s every day events?
You decide.
Nobody in this world will ever care about your dreams coming true, so if you don’t make them real, who will?
Thanks for reading!
I can’t wait to see how you apply game theory and this model of predictive thinking in your own life, and if you understand the importance of immersing yourself in the right environment and people, and want to immerse yourself deeper in a culture of select people who think this way, then you can use this very theory to figure out how to get ahold of me and become part of the community of people I surround myself with.
Don’t worry it’s not that many steps to achieve success there 😉 I’m pretty easy to get ahold of…
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