Control the Center of the Board in Your Life and Business

I grew up playing chess. It’s one of my favorite activities. It was one of my favorite games. The strategy, the insights, the tactics, the amount of concentration and focus that it requires, it’s tremendous. And there’s so much that we can learn from this powerful game that we can apply to our business and to our life. And one of my favorite concepts from this game is this idea of controlling the center. I want to share this framework with you today because I think it has the power to really help you as you’re thinking through. How do I continue to grow and scale my business? How do I continue to grow and scale my life? So this idea of control the center stems from the idea that at high level, chess, grandmasters are in this push and pull, this tension, to control the center, four squares of the board.

Because if you control the four squares in the center of the board, if you can place a piece there, your piece has the maximum amount of visibility and mobility they can get anywhere on the board as quickly as possible. They have the most options available to them. And you compare that to when you put your pieces on the rim or the edge of the board. They have half as many moves available right now. A lot of amateur players never stop to think about this. They never stop to consider that your pieces in the center of the board are more powerful than on the periphery of the board. But I want you to imagine that a chessboard is actually sloped upwards. So the closer that you get to those center squares, the higher the peak.

So think about it like the high ground. Now, in chess, we’re constantly battling to control those four squares. And the metaphor then transfers over to our business, into our life when we ask ourselves, what are the fewest number of squares that I need to control? And what are those squares that, if I were to control, would have the maximum influence? If I was to place my piece there, my piece would have the maximum influence on the game in life. I consider the four most centralized, most important squares to be your mindset, your physical health, your relationships and your skills. I think that if you take care of those four things, you get your mindset right, you get your physical health right, you get your relationships right, and you work on your skills every day, then everything else gets much easier. Now, in your business, this is also quite simple. I believe that it really just boils down to getting customers, delivering products to those customers, and then keeping enough money in the bank to fund the whole operation. So really, there’s only three squares in the center of your business board.

You have marketing operations, finance. Now, within that, we can break that down and get very granular, right? So on the marketing side, we talk about how do we raise awareness? How do we breed consideration lead to conversion? How do we then, onboard, how do we retain, how do we ascend? How do we turn them into advocates? Right? So there’s all these different subsquares within those four powerful central squares. But whenever you’re struggling in your life or in your business, I want you to take a step back and ask yourself, is this a mindset problem? Is this a physical health problem? Is this a relationship problem? Is this a skill problem? On your business, ask yourself, is this a marketing problem? Do I need more leads or do I need to convert those leads at a higher percentage? Is this a product problem? Is this a delivering of the product problem or a team problem in delivering that product? And then is this a money problem? When you start looking at those very few squares and you wake up every single day and you triangulate a plan of action that then says, these are important things, therefore, I need to make time for them. I put them on your calendar. You time block them, because you show me your calendar, you’ve showed me your priorities. I know what you value. And so if you truly value those central squares on the board, I need to see them on your calendar. Make time each and every single day to prioritize and to focus on moving those balls forward, and I guess in the analogy of the chessboard, to take care of the pieces that are sitting on those squares.

So I hope this brings you a helpful frame to think through both in your life and in your business. If it did, do me a favor, leave a review. It would help me tremendously. As we’re trying to expand and grow the podcast. We have very big, ambitious goals in the next year for the podcast, and you can be a part of helping us achieve that. Just share the podcast with anybody that you think would get some value out of it. Share it on Instagram, tag me in it. I would love to share with my community and get you a little bit of eyeballs on your business or whatever it is that you’re building.

And so be part of the community. Don’t just be a passive listener. Reach out. I’d love to connect with you, but until you do, I’ll see you in the next episode, my friend. Stay happy, focused. Until then.