MBA1878 Must Read: The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova

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I had the pleasure of meeting Maria Konnikova in a virtual meetup. Actually good friend and friend of the show. John Levy runs these virtual meetups and Marie was in one of them and I was just fascinated with her story and she talked about her book and then I looked her up and I was like, wow, this woman is a four time New York Times bestseller. Maybe I should pick up this book and read it. And boy am I glad I did. The Biggest Bluff is a nonfiction book, but it reads like a page turning novel. I was fascinated with the concept that she was trying to learn more about primarily decision making. In poker you got to make decisions based on the cards that are in front of you, your own cards, and the cards that are on the table, the ones that are faced up. This is the information you have. You don't have all the information. You don't know what cards everybody else is holding or what cards are still in the deck. So just like in life, you have to make decisions based on limited information. And one of the things she gets into early in the book is that in poker, especially Texas Hold' Em poker, which is the style of poker that she was playing, it's actually more important for you to have a set of rules or system of making decisions than having a good hand. If your system, if your decision making system is a solid one, you're eventually going to win even if you lose that particular hand. And this reflects in life sometimes we're going to make Decisions. And in that moment, based on what you know, it was the right decision, but the result was not a positive one. The issue with this is that often when we get a negative result, we change the way we make decisions or we change the criteria in how we make decisions instead of evaluating, hey, did I actually make the right decision based on what I know? If it is true, even though it's a bad result, we have to resist changing the way we make decisions if it was the right way to make decisions. So she gets into that kind of topic, and it's fascinating because in business, we're making hundreds of decisions every single week. We're making small decisions, big decisions, and everything in between. So we have to have a system in how we make these decisions. Why? Because probability is the name of the game. If our system for making decisions is solid, then our results, our wins, our successes, will more likely outweigh the failures. Now, a word of caution. When you're reading this book, there's a lot of poker talk. And to be honest with you, I didn't actually know how to play poker when I bought this book. So I actually learned how to play poker. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos. I took a master class, actually. And then I actually played a game of poker with a bunch of friends one night. This is prior to lockdown and before I had that poker night. I actually got into this book. I actually read a few chapters and really started to grasp some of the concepts. Now, remember, this is the first time I'm playing poker. I took an online course and watched a couple of YouTube videos, but really got into her concepts in the first couple of chapters on decision making. That night, there were about eight poker players, and lo and behold, I came in first. I couldn't even believe it. And guess what? I didn't win every hand. In fact, I was losing for most of the time and just made a really strong run at the end and won. So I feel like I got a lot out of this book because I understood poker better, because I took the time to learn it a little bit. But if you don't understand poker, you're still gonna get a lot from this book. Don't get overwhelmed by that. Don't get confused. Poker is a complex game. Even Maria says that after months of learning it, I still didn't fully understand all the ins and outs. Luckily, Maria breaks things down and takes away the nuggets that she learns and shares them with you. So you don't need to be a poker master. One of the other concepts I love in this book is losing well. She says losing well is key to learning how to win. If you want to win a new skill, the best place to start is finding a good mentor or a coach or a trainer. It's probably the fastest way to learn how to do something or to get really good at it. For her, she found an ex poker champion to help her get up to speed so she can enter some competitions. When she was learning how to play poker, her coach, her mentor actually really emphasized losing. Every time they lost, they had to kind of debrief and say, you know, why did you, what happened here? What did you do wrong? What could you do better than next time around? The next time you get this hand? Because you will get this hand again, will you make any different decisions? Being consistent and staying true to your decision making code is what's key here. This is what they're drilling here. Stop changing your strategy or changing the way you make decisions because consistency is key. There's a lot of inconsistency out of your hands in poker, so it's important for you to be consistent so there is some sort of common ground. So a lot of this has to do with self discipline, meaning a lot of us, when we play games like poker or we run our business, we're afraid to lose because we don't like the feeling. But when you're not afraid to lose because you know you're going to learn something from it, you're just focused on making good decisions, doing the right thing and learning, and that's actually the fastest way to succeed. Robert Kiyosaki talks about this in his book Rich Dad, Poor dad in failing fast. When you fail, you learn, but when you resist trying and doing things, you just delay the inevitable. One of the concepts I loved in this book was about playing smart. Playing smart means not caring about what others think of you. You might do things differently. You might make decisions that make people raise their eyebrows. You might do things that are just not cool or interesting in your business. The way you approach your business or the way you solve problems may not be orthodox, but sometimes what works for you is not what's popular for everybody else. This is why it's important for you to try things and experiment, to hone in what works. And regardless of what other people are doing, if it works for you and your business, do it. For example, in poker, I tend my own inclinations is to not bet that much money on a given hand. And I realize that when I do this, regardless of the hand I have it doesn't really result in stellar results. I learned through failure and through the courses I took and things like that, that you have to treat different hands differently. So when I get a really rare hand, a hand that I know I have a very good chance, a very good probability of winning, I gotta bet big money, even if it's uncomfortable, because you can win the whole game, the whole night of poker off, just one hand, if you bet big enough. And that's exactly what happened in my poker night. Actually won the game off the last two hands. I had really good hands. I realized, okay, I can't keep betting low because this is a really tough hand. And actually, early on in the night, even better hand, I didn't bet high and I lost a lot of money or a lot of chips, I should say, because, like, we're playing for nothing. But the point here is, is that I learned, hey, I can't approach every opportunity, every situation the same way. I have to change my reaction based on what's in front of me. And that has a lot to do with just who you are as a person, social conditioning, your tendencies, whether you're risk averse. And we'll pull this back from poker, I mean, even just in life and business, we make decisions all the time based on our own inclinations and our own comfort zones. But even if I look back at my own business where I had to bet big on a hire or an investment in technology or whatever it is, I recognize this is a good hand. Let's bet big. Because you can't bet big that often. You only have a little amount of resources, right? So when something does come your way that is worth the bet, you got to do it regardless of the way you feel or your resistance. One of the reoccurring themes in the book is focus on how you play and not on the cards you're dealt, right? So a lot of times in life and business, we're dealt different cards, we are dealt different opportunities, but we gotta show up and we gotta be professional. We gotta be the best we can be every single time. So if you're doing a webinar for a partner and their audience is 50 people, you gotta show up just as much as if it was 500 people. Why? Because you can't turn it on and off like a switch, okay? These are opportunities for you to get better and better at what you do. This is why, if you look at sports, for example, the athletes that do really well at the extremely high level, they put in the effort, no matter how critical that game is. So for example, Kobe Bryant, one of the most popular competitors in sports history, played game one of the season just as hard as, you know, Game seven of the NBA Finals. He was just as competitive, just as hungry with why? Because he knows that if I don't put in that practice, if I don't play at that speed, at that level, at that intensity, it's going to be strange for me, for me to just try to do this when it matters. So regardless of the opportunities in front of you, bring your A game.

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Terms apply to wrap up today's must read episode, the Biggest Bluff by Maria Kournikova, I want to leave you with a quote from the book that really resonated with me. The quote is the best players don't need pocket aces to win. Everything is in how you perceive it. One of the big concepts in poker is perception. This is where the practice of bluffing is. Do people perceive you to have a good hand? Do people perceive you're a good player? And the way people perceive you as an entrepreneur, as a business, as a brand, has a great effect on on the success of your business. This means you don't have to be the best product in the market. It's great to be the best product and you should strive to be the best product. But if you're not, it doesn't mean you can't be the market leader. Perception is everything. How people perceive your business, perceive your brand, perceive your product, the emotions they evoke will really have a lot of influence on if they choose to do business with you. So this is why working on your website, working on your content, your blog, even your elevator pitch, how you describe what you do is so important because it shapes the perception people have of you and that has a lot to do with your success. That's a big component of what I learned from this book. This is a big part of this idea of poker and how it translates to life and business. This also means you can have a pair of aces right you can have a great product, but if people perceive you negatively or think you're standoffish or arrogant, or they just don't see the value in your product because you didn't convey it or communicate it, eventually you will lose because you're not always going to be given that hand. Guys, I highly recommend you pick up the Biggest Bluff by Maria Kournikova. Great, great book. Like I mentioned, it's a page turner. It's fascinating. I think that she did an incredible job with this experiment. If you're interested in a book that can help you along the journey of success, one that can remind you to focus on the development of your own skills, your thinking and your performance, rather than the cards that you were dealt. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. As always, if you'd love to leave us a review on your favorite podcast app, we'd love to hear from you. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I got so much Ada Maria Kournikova's book. What do you think I'm going to do next? I'm going to dig into her other three best selling books. She brought the goods. I'm pretty sure that the other books will provide great value as well. So if you ever read a great book, look up the author. Find out what other books they have written because there's probably a war chest of great information and knowledge and value that they've written before or after the book that you read. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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