Thinking About Becoming a Professional Poker Player?

Becoming a professional poker player is difficult. Not only do you have to be good at the game you have to have a good business head. To that end you have to learn to treat your beloved card game as a business, rather than a pastime which in the past you have been good at.

If you are thinking about becoming a pro read this first.

Business Element

Like most businesses there will be good times and bad times. You must be prepared for the latter and use the former to offset your losses. Professional poker playing also needs capital like any other business, and for poker this means having a substantial bank roll.

To that end you must try and work out how much you will need to maintain a steady income from playing poker. A highly competitive profession if ever there was one. From the income figure you can estimate how much you will need to bankroll your career as a pro player.

Every player has a severe losing streak no matter how good they are. You must be able to deal with this financially.

You are going to be self employed. This is scary and hard at the best of times, and rather than making a sale, you are going to have to win a considerable amount of money to make your business thrive.

Evaluate Evaluate

To become a pro and a better pro, you have to be able to honestly evaluate your play style after every game. Ideally, having an honest opinion from someone you trust is best. A fresh, unbiased pair of eyes will be able to tell you if you are leaking too many tells, if your bluff was too obvious, and generally pick up on your weaknesses. In essence you must be able to take criticism and be honest with yourself to know when your big loss was down to you. All of this will improve you as a player.

As a professional poker player constant improvement is needed. Otherwise it is a long walk to the poor house and back into mainstream work.

The evaluation of your poker play should have already started. If you can find a mentor or at least someone you trust who understand the game, so much the better. Many players record their games in the form of notes. How much they staked, how much they won, nearly every statistic you can think of. They then refer to them constantly.

Why?

Many professionals started our as good amateur players and realised that playing a game they love for a living would be a good way to live. The chances are you are of the same mindset. On the surface there is edginess to the lifestyle that is very appealing. A little like being a spy. The reality is however, that it is a business and a job. In ten years time will you enjoy the game so much?

You may not ever view the game again like you do at the moment. A point to ponder perhaps?

Social Life

Once you embark on being a pro your social life will be centred on poker. Poker will dominate: Your friends will be poker players, your partner will be from a poker background, and even your pets will be able to shuffle cards. You will study poker when you are not playing it, and your maths will improve.

This is an aspect you need to think about to become a professional. Are you prepared for the change and sacrifice?

Percentages

If you have not worked it out already, you are going to have look at poker as a business. This means working out percentages to the nth degree and then perform in tournaments. You will start to think of the game statistically and indeed start to study your own game in the same terms. This is common to most gambling.

Summing up

A career in poker is hard. Make no mistake big losses and incredible lows are coming your way. There will be times when you wonder why you thought it was a good idea.

With a clear steady mind however, a good business head, and a mentor or friend who is willing to help you, you might just make it.

Business Ethics for the Mindful Dance Professional

Once upon a time, a dance teacher opened her own studio down the road from her former employer’s school, taking advantage of her former teaching position to start her own studio. Sound familiar? This is an all too common story in the dance studio business and unfortunately, this is no fairy-tale.

We have all heard a version of this story or perhaps experienced it first-hand. Poaching students–direct or indirect solicitation of another’s students–is a practice that mindlessly fragments and divides the dance community. In addition to poaching students, other subtle, but just as divisive, practices include: making negative remarks about other teachers/schools, misrepresentation of the self by making false, exaggerated, or ambiguous claims, and making disparaging comparisons or references about others.

What drives otherwise enterprising individuals to engage in business practices that burn bridges, sow the seeds of deceit, and model mindless behavior?

Darwin. You heard me–Darwin is to blame. Well, not really Darwin himself, but the misinterpretation of his theories into a business context is at the root of this dilemma. When the business world adopted the neo-Darwinian philosophy of “survival of the fittest”, they unleashed a ready-made excuse for unethical action.

As a culture that witnessed the “cola wars” first hand, we picked up the idea that anything goes when it comes to business and marketing. Ethics and morals need not apply. “That’s business” they say while defending their actions. They fail to see the big picture: to look mindfully at the situation. They unknowingly hurt the larger dance profession and therefore themselves. It is a case of one’s right hand shooting one’s left and thinking this is good.

What makes one feel justified in approaching the business of dance studios in this mindless manner?

At the root of the neo-Darwinian business approach is a sense of isolation and scarcity. These teachers believe that it is “them against the world”–or, more directly, “them against the other local studios/teachers.” Add to this sense of isolation a sense of scarcity–that there are not enough students to go around–and you start to understand how one begins to rationalize why stealing students is necessary for survival. However, these twin concepts–isolation and scarcity–are illusions in the dance world.

Studios fighting over the same group of students create a negative atmosphere in the community. Parents sense this negativity and choose alternative activities for their children because they seem more wholesome: the potential young dancer takes up soccer. However, in a community where more than one dance school thrives without negativity, a greater number of students enjoy dance as an activity. This greater number of students translates down the road into a greater number of future dancers, dance teachers, and, most importantly, audience members. If dance studios stopped seeing each other so much as competitors and more as colleagues, the entire dance profession would benefit.

The solution starts as simply as making replacements: replacing mindless competition with mindful collegiality, mindless isolation with mindful interconnectedness, and mindless scarcity with mindful abundance. We must realize that the dance profession, from the smallest recreational dance class to the largest professional company, is interconnected. The entire web of the dance world is vitally linked.

For example, the dance community is rather small in comparison with the larger world of sports. There are many more children participating in sports than the arts. Rather than interpreting this as a reason to fight for resources, we should embrace a sense of abundance. There are more than enough potential students out there to sustain every school if we focus on bringing more students into dance rather than fighting over those already there. It is to the benefit of the dance profession at every level to include more of the non-dance world inside our walls rather than put up walls within our own.

So, how can we begin to break down the twin illusions of isolation and scarcity in the dance studio world and open our eyes to interconnectedness and abundance?

We need to base our actions and practices on ideals that reflect the dance world as a healthy and vibrant community rather than a dire and hopeless one that lends itself to mindless behavior. Adopting a code of ethics that reinforces a mindful and wholesome outlook will not just serve as guidelines, but also help promote a positive environment for those whom they effect.

Going forward, we all need to embrace a code of ethics that addresses these issues. The following list is nowhere near complete, but it is a place to start.

Business Ethics for the Mindful Dance Professional

In all professional and business relations, the dance professional shall exhibit respect, honesty, and integrity for themselves, clients, and colleagues.

A. Respect

A dance professional shall refrain from making negative remarks that may discredit, malign, or in any way cast reflection on the professional standing of another school/studio or teacher.

A dance professional shall refrain from making any disparaging references to, or disparaging comparisons with, the services of others

A dance professional shall refrain from publishing, or causing to be published, any notice, newspaper advertisement, or any other matter likely to damage or depreciate the reputation of any colleague.

B. Honesty

A dance professional shall accurately portray his or her qualifications or affiliations to the public especially in advertising material and avoid any ambiguity or exaggeration.

A dance professional shall refrain from portraying his or her qualifications or affiliations to the public in a way intended to deceive the uninitiated. For example: having danced a child role in the Nutcracker with a professional company and listing it as to portray having danced professionally with the company.

C. Integrity

A dance professional shall refrain from directly soliciting business from another teacher or studio by approaching, in any manner the pupil, pupils or employees of another teacher and, for any reason at all, to try to induce them to join his/her school.

A dance professional shall refrain from indirectly soliciting business from another teacher or studio by making adverse criticism against other teachers’ methods, by offering free coaching, by citing the advantages to be gained by the pupil from the change (e.g. offering roles/parts), or other similar methods.

With each of us taking responsibility for our own actions by embracing a mindful ethical base, we can co-create a healthier, connected, and abundant environment in the business of dance schools. Moreover, with all we have in common, we might just discover we make better friends than enemies.

Business Education – A Professional Support for New Business

Entrepreneurship education elucidates a lot of success stories encouraging several people to join the bandwagon of successful entrepreneurs – but how? There are certain prerequisites and skill sets that are imperative to pursue the dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Merely a desire, ipso facto, cannot transform your vision to reality. One of the preconditions is entrepreneurship or business education which can open the doors of opportunities and success for future entrepreneurs and prove to be a support for new business.

Appropriate education in entrepreneurship will assist you becoming more prepared to brave the hard realities of business world and take calculated risks. Business education prepares you to take the challenge of venturing into the business world head on, as you virtually have no idea how the market will react to the change you introduce. Given this situation, you need to anticipate the multiple risk factors that may affect your calculation of business. Cutting down the risk factors is of utmost significance in the business. Business education organizations, acting as support for new business, offers the well rounded and precisely structured courses that educates you how to run and succeed as an entrepreneur integrating innovation and business skills.

Every entrepreneurship education stimulates innovation and, in turn, innovation triggers progress. Leveraging these business courses students can develop effective business communication skills, critical envision and problem solving techniques. These business courses offer more rigorous education that is driven towards career-oriented professionals. This type of entrepreneurship training gives students the creativity, innovation and flexibility that are needed when undertaking the task of establishing their own companies.

Just business education is not enough entrepreneurs also contemplate on the business services that can consolidate their business. They search for better service vendors and suppliers for the non-core activities so that they can focus only on their core business. There are some non-profit organizations those are helping entrepreneurs and small business owners to get the best vendors and suppliers at reasonable cost. Such support services are also fast becoming a part of business education structure of several business education institutes.

What it takes to become an entrepreneur are passion, determination, knowledge, self discipline, and commitment. The spirit of entrepreneurs is catapulting and enabling more youngsters to take ownership of their responsibilities. Huge corporations value an entrepreneur due to their willingness to make sacrifices to gain a foothold for their business. Business courses produce such entrepreneurs and enable them to pursue their goals in the genre of business world.

The only contemplation and focus that should be taken into consideration is the right selection of educational organization suiting your needs and long term goals. Don’t take the plunge in haste and take enough time to research, find and zero in to the appropriate business institution which can help you in transforming your dreams of carving a niche in the competitive world of business.

Writing Your Business Plan? Don’t Forget Your Own Professional Development

This may seem obvious to more serious or experienced individuals who are climbing the ladder of success, but one must endeavor to stay current and invest in professional development. Many of the business plans that I review fall short in this area, and a lack of vision at the outset of the planning process can eventually be fatal to the enterprise.

When a prospective entrepreneur shows me a plan that cuts corners in important ways, I become concerned. Going “bare on health care”; family members working for free; no plans for time off; delayed or unpaid salaries; a statement that marketing will all be done by “word-of-mouth”; and no budget for professional development: one or more of these is a sure-fire tip-off that there’s trouble ahead on the entrepreneurial railway. You see, if a product or service which is to be offered is really viable, it stands to reason that the business would be profitable enough to support necessary business expenses, which include creating an environment that is suitable for human beings, as compared to machines.

In addressing the subject of “professional development,” we might divide it into two sub-topics: How does one “do it?” and “What are the benefits that cost-justify the investment?”

How exactly does one “do” professional development?

For the past couple of years, I have purchased an average of two or three books per month, which are related to a subject area that is of interest to me, either at a book store, or when a book club circular associated with this area of interest is delivered to my mail box. The reason I have not specified my area of interest is that it doesn’t really matter, relative to the overarching point, which is: You should buy books that address a topic of interest of your own, and read them. This practice (virtually made into a “habit” because of the book club) costs me about $50 dollars per month.

I also subscribe to about two dozen periodicals (journals and magazines). Some are industry specific, some are business magazines, and some are consumer magazines. Some are paid subscriptions, and some are complimentary subscriptions based on my ties with certain industries or subject areas (and some are included in membership fees). My paid subscriptions cost about $300 per year.

It is also very important to attend conferences and workshops. If one goes as a speaker, he or she can use the visibility of the conference platform as a means to network, create a reputation for having a certain type of expertise, learn from others who have different viewpoints or specialties, and justify travel expenses. If one goes as an attendee, he or she can accomplish many of the same objectives, sans the visibility of being on the official program. Conferences vary widely in price, but several hundred dollars for conference fees, and $1500 for food, lodging, and travel might be typical for a four-day national conference. Regional conferences are typically less expensive across the board, as they are held at less expensive facilities, have smaller conference fees, and may be within driving distance. I plan to attend a one-day workshop in Atlanta within the next month or so. That will cost $149 for the workshop fee, and mileage expenses (about a three-hour drive). Annually, one should probably budget at least a few thousand dollars for these activities (e.g., four or five), and of course, the “sky is the limit.”

Networking soirées are all over the place. These happen in any given community as social, cultural, and business events. Organizations such as a local chamber of commerce will often sponsor gatherings that allow people to mingle and meet over drinks and light fare. Many cities have bona fide networking clubs, which are operated to provide a free exchange ideas, resources, and contacts. The entry fee for most of these events is low: $30 may be typical. How often should one attend? Oh, I’d say about a hundred dollars-worth per month would prevent anyone from accusing you of being reclusive.

Professional memberships are also important. For any given discipline or area of specialization, there are probably three or four associations or similar organizations that one should join. (Hint: discounts on conference fees, publications, and other perks are usually available to members as an incentive to join). Being an active member is also important. Try to contribute in some way, besides paying membership dues. You can participate in the conferences and support the organization’s sponsors (which keeps the organization viable), serve on committees or in leadership positions, be responsive to other members, provide pro bono services, or the like. While fees and the availability of memberships varies widely, $1000 per year would be a good place to start.

Some training is covered above in the context of workshops and conferences, but you may want to also consider taking a formalized course from time-to-time, or even enrolling in a degree or certificate program. On a smaller scale, you could buy software, take courses, and stay current on the Internet (e-learning is predicted to be a major trend). If you are now convinced about implementing the suggestions that I have mentioned above, but still looking to cut costs, you can certainly spend time in the library, and online, conducting research and staying current. I would recommend that you do not attempt to cut all of the costs, because that would mean that I am back to square one, with regard to the purpose of this article. The issue is discipline, and creating positive habits. (Remember, I said that the book club circular ensures my own habitual behavior? Meeting announcements, membership and subscription renewals, and other regular reminders will help you make sure that you follow-through with action – if you are determined to do so in the first place, of course).

What are the benefits that cost-justify the investment?

Now, some people will say they can’t afford to invest in books, conferences, workshops, and the other tools that would aid their efforts to either stay current, or advance in their careers. I would reply that it’s a matter of attitude and planning, at least to a great extent.

Can you afford to pay for your own professional development?

Well, that’s up to you, and your own attitude, and the choices that you make about your career and your business pursuits.

One’s own professional development (and the development of employees, assuming that you are still working on your business plan) is a far better investment than just about anything else you can buy. Paying attention to your own professional development, and addressing the means by which you will grow the people in your organization within the pages of your business plan will assist you in proving that you are long-sighted, adaptable, and worthwhile investment, yourself (if you are seeking outside capital).

As for me, I figure the several thousand dollars per year that I keep investing will eventually be worth far more than what I have spent. I know what I won’t have if I don’t invest: No current knowledge; no contacts; no contracts; no industry knowledge; and no ability to demonstrate that I even have a clue about what’s going on, as a so-called professional, among my cohorts in academia or the business community.

That would be a very high price to pay, indeed.

Tim Sales – Insiders Review of Professional Inviter and Professional Presenter

Tim Sales is a leading authority in Network Marketing and has developed great products such as Professional Inviter and Professional Presenter.  If you are looking into purchasing these materials in hopes that it will help you build your business, read this article so you know what to expect and make sure it is right for you.  

Tim Sales’ Professional Inviter is geared towards people who are in the Network Marketing industry and are looking at sharpening their skills in approaching prospects.  Tim has a formula which he calls the ‘Inviting Formula’ and it breaks down how you can invite a prospect (whether it is for a product customer or and business partner) to see if what you have to offer is a good fit for the person.

The Inviting formula is:

1) Greet the prospect.  The purpose is to have people talking openly and freely.

2) Qualify the prospect.  The focus here is to see if they need or want what you have to offer.

3) Invite.  Which means to invite the prospect to have a look at what you have to offer.

4) Close into action.  Which means to schedule a time to talk for example.

5) Follow up and follow through.  The focuse here is to make sure you are following up with your prospect.

In Tim Sales’ Professional Inviter he says that there is another ‘step’ that could happen anywhere in the formula, and that is to handle and questions and / or objections.

Tim Sales’ Professional Presenter is set to hit the market very soon.  As we have a look at the inviting formula Tim has said a number of times (on different training calls) that the formula is very much the same, it just changes as to what you are INVITING your prospect to.  In Professional Inviter you are inviting the prospect to a future meeting, where in the presenting formula you are inviting the prospect to get into a CONVERSATION (the presentation) about the product / service / opportunity you have.

Now obviously I cannot do the training materials Professional Inviter or Professional Inviter justice in this short article.  This is one training material I would highly recommend if anyone is serious about building a home business.

If you are looking for new strategies to find QUALIFIED prospects, that’s a whole other game.  I recommend you check out the link below where you will find the 7 Fatal Mistakes I have made in my business.  I also share with you how I am now able to open my home business doors for business… to the world!

Tim Sales Professional Inviter and Professional Inviter are great tools, but the link below will show you how to go from part-time struggling network marketer to full-time success.

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