1. You Can’t Win the Tournament on Day One, but You Can Lose It

Do not play in a manner that is overly risky.

In business terms, understand your financials and apply the proper amount of risk to your organization. Understand your mission and vision clearly and communicate them to your team. From there, your values and goals need to align, and you need to focus on the opportunities that make sense for your organization.

Once this is in place, you are ready to establish how much risk you are willing to take.

You can’t achieve all your goals on day one, but you can move in the right direction through your daily actions. James Clear says in Atomic Habits, “Every action you take is a vote for the person you wish to become.”

Goals are achieved by taking small steps that add up to a whole.

2. Don’t Overplay Premium Hands

Negreanu's second piece of advice is not to overplay premium hands or avoid smaller hands, like small pairs and smaller suited connectors, early in a tournament. As the tournament continues, however, you need to shift toward playing premium hands more aggressively.

In poker, we must focus on the opportunities that lie in front of us. The best starting hand in Texas Hold ‘Em is two Aces, but even the strongest starting hand doesn't guarantee a win.

Early in a poker tournament, many players will play nonpremium hands. You should do the same to take advantage of opportunities to win more chips and advance in the tournament. As the game progresses, premium hands become more valuable.

As we start our business journey, we cannot be afraid to take measured risks. Swinging for the fences at every big opportunity is dangerous, but taking smaller opportunities and making the best of them can set us up for greater success as our businesses progress.

This also gives us the opportunity to fix problems in our strategy at the system level instead of trying to address everything at the level of our goals, as James Clear discusses. This does not mean we avoid big opportunities early on if they drop in our laps, but we must approach them in a manner that is consistent with our abilities and our strategy.

3. Watch Your Table Image

In poker, table image is everything. We want people to think about us the way we want to be seen, so there is proper respect when we bet, fold, or check when faced with a decision.

Business owners need to watch their image early in their operations and throughout the life of the business.

How do we do that?

Operating ethically is paramount. Being a person who does what they say is critical to success. News of good work travels slowly, but bad work and dishonesty travel like wildfire.

Operating with a high level of integrity allows you to build trust with others, and your advocates will see that behavior.

This includes the way we treat our vendor partners. Far too often, I see business owners treat vendors like they are there to serve them and nothing more. While they need to serve us, we also need to help them.

The more we help and include these strategic partners, the more willing they will be to support us when we have immediate needs. More importantly, the relationships we build with our strategic partners can influence how others see our businesses.

Great relationships with vendors can also become a launching pad for relationships with others. On several occasions, these alliances have referred me to new opportunities because of the relationships we've built through respect and trust.

Put Down the Phone and Pay Attention

Another piece of advice Negreanu gives is that when you sit down at the table to start a tournament, it is not the time to pull out your iPad or phone.

The same applies when starting a new venture. You need to apply a significant amount of focus.

This is the time to study and understand what success looks like and how you plan to get there. It is not the time for pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Instead, focus intensely on where you can find strategic advantages and what the first year of your business should look like.

Starting and scaling a business is not for the faint of heart. It requires risk and focus while maintaining strong ethical standards.

Being prepared helps you recognize when it is best to fold on an opportunity and when it is time to shove all-in.