Inventing Pawns

In the game of chess, there are 6 types of pieces. King, Queen, Rooks, Bishops, Knights, and Pawns. Pawns are viewed as the least powerful piece, yet they serve a very important purpose. Without pawns the game of chess gets much more difficult and your chances of winning go down drastically. Pawns are essential to winning in chess.

Now, imagine you could create more pawns. Rather than the 8 pawns you start with what if you had 12, 16, 20, or more? Would that increase your chances of winning?

It would.

Now in chess, there are rules that are set in stone. And those rules clearly state the maximum amount of pawns allowed in a game. However, in business, there are no rules. You are able to create pawns.

So what does this mean and how can we create pawns?

Creating pawns goes hand in hand with creating leverage.

We can create pawns by leveraging tools, outsourcing work, hiring employees, automating processes, and creating efficiency. Here is an example. Let’s say you are doing an outreach campaign to potential clients that require you to manually sort and tag customers based on their geographical location. This would take you 4 hours to complete. You can outsource this work to Virtual Assistant. Creating and outlining the task for the VA takes 15 minutes, and now you have unlocked more than 3 hours to focus on executing higher-level tasks. Now, this may seem trivial, but unlocking more time will allow you to focus on the highest return activities.

If Jeff Bezos had worked inside an Amazon facility 24/7 packing boxes Amazon would not be what it is today.

Now each industry has its own best practices for inventing pawns. However, the general rule is that you should focus your time on irreplaceable tasks. Tasks that only you can complete, and have an outsized return. Where an hour of work can create 100x your hourly rate. By eliminating time spent on non-high-returning tasks through the creation of pawns you are able to stack the deck in your favor and increase your odds of success.