Know what game you’re playing
The other day I was scrolling and landed on one of those YouTube shorts, a couple of guys who started a pizza business. But instead of doing the obvious thing, opening their own brick-and-mortar shop like every other pizza place, they went to petrol stations. Petrol stations were already everywhere. Already built, already trafficked, already trusted. So instead of building their own version of that, they put pizza ovens inside them, put their own staff in there, and piggybacked off infrastructure that already existed. That was the whole idea of the video: you don’t have to build your own building. These guys grew exponentially just by thinking differently about where the game gets played.
And I watched that and thought, that’s such a good idea.
And then, I’ll be honest, for about thirty seconds I caught myself actually wondering if I should start a pizza restaurant out of petrol stations here. Which, when I say it out loud, is obviously ridiculous. But it’s worth pausing on why my brain went there, because I don’t think it’s actually about pizza.
It’s easy to think “I’m in business, this is about business, so this is basically the same thing as what I’m doing.” And it is similar, on the surface — I’m providing value to people, I’m helping them get better outcomes, I’m building something people didn’t have before. That’s not nothing. But it’s also a completely different game underneath. Selling pizza through existing infrastructure and helping people implement real change in their lives are not the same set of rules, even though they rhyme.
That’s the thing I want to name here: it’s really important to know what game you’re playing. And when you come across another game that rhymes with yours — same energy, similar shape, a clever move that clearly worked for someone else — it’s worth checking whether it’s actually your game, or just a game that looks like yours from a distance.
Because if you get enticed by something like that, you’ve got two honest options. One — you actually want to change games, and if that’s true, at least know that’s what you’re doing, with your eyes open. Or two — you don’t want to change games at all, you just spotted something useful. In that case, don’t take the whole game. Take the element. Pull out the principle that made it work and see if it applies inside the rules you’re actually playing by.
What you shouldn’t do is get sidetracked chasing something because it looks easier, or looks like it’s growing faster, or looks smarter — when really it’s just different. Different isn’t better. It’s just a different set of rules for a different game.
So know the difference. Know what game you’re playing. And stay in it.
