So, did you know that you already know the basics of running a business and managing your money? There are a ton of specifics, to be sure, but if you’re a gamer you absolutely have your foundation in place. You might not remember the training but you’ve been training for this your whole life! I think you’ll be surprised how many business lessons immediately cross over from gaming. Disclaimer: I’ve played a lot of Blizzard games so they’re going to feature heavily on this list. Part 2 of the list is here.

First, examine your surroundings (scouting is good)

What resources are available to you and how much is available? Who are you competing with? What strengths do you want to play towards and what weaknesses do you need to cover? What are you trying to accomplish? Is there a best strategy that you can think of given what you’ve scouted?

It’s near impossible to know how to get to the place you want to go if you don’t know where you are right now. There might not be a literal fog of war in your life but you also aren’t an omniscient third person commander. You should take some basic steps to get a sense of where you are.

First, put together a net worth statement. Take everything that you own and add it up. Those are your assets. Then take everything you owe and add those up as well. Those are your liabilities. Your net worth is your assets minus your liabilities.

Second, take stock of your cash flow. What is your income? What are your expenses? Make sure you’re including taxes when putting together your cash flow (more tax info here!). While your current step is to just understand the current situation you’ll want to eventually make some tweaks and improvements.

Third, take some time to think through your personal and business strengths and weaknesses. What comes naturally? What’s a struggle? Write it all down- also, don’t despair if it feels like you need more strengths or have some big weaknesses. We’ll get to that.

Finally, scout your competition. Who, either for your stream or in your job, is competing for resources? While it certainly doesn’t have to be a zero sum outcome between you and them, you want to make sure you have a sense of your opponent.

Focus on building infrastructure

In Starcraft the first unit you’ll build, unless you’re a terribly cheesy player, is a worker. That worker is there for the rest of the game (hopefully) helping you gather resources. If you’re Terran you need production buildings, supply depos, and tech buildings. All of these cost resources, for sure, but without them you wouldn’t be able to win the game. Take a bit to think through what in your personal and business finances is the infrastructure you need to have in place. It could be your job, which brings in income. It could be an investment account you save to each month. You certainly need a bank account. Heck, your computer certainly counts as infrastructure as it helps you obtain information and potentially earn some of your income. While you don’t need to go crazy on getting all of these things in order you should consider when spending some resources now will help you out a whole bunch in the future.

For your business you need accounting software, likely something to help with graphic design, and an advertising platform. Again, your computer and peripherals are key. If something needs an upgrade to help you improve your stream you should see if there are other areas you might cut back on so you can afford it. Know that the temporary pain or delaying pleasure could really help you do better in the future. Build infrastructure! Once you have the groundwork in place you can start doing all of the fun and interesting things that make running a business interesting.

You have to balance your resources

Ok, so you’ve scouted and know what resources you have on hand. You know you need to manage mineral, supply, and gas (or gold/lumber, or scrap/hull, or health/mana/gil, or health/stress/gold/heirlooms) and you have your workers humming away at their tasks. Tell me, would you win many games in Starcraft 2 if you never harvested any gas or didn’t build any supply? The answer is no, except for at the lowest level of competition. If you want to succeed, you need to balance what you’re bringing in.

You probably need to make your own list but in my life I try to manage time, income, stress levels, knowledge, and motivation/focus. Those are my resources. Spending a lot of time to bring in a lot of income also probably increases my stress level and lowers my motivation. If I spend a week building up my knowledge (like I did this past week) my income temporarily suffers. If I spend all of my time relaxing then I don’t learn more and I don’t earn income. You know yourself better than anyone else so you should do the analysis on how your time and energy should be spent. Going out in the extreme won’t hurt you if it’s only temporary but mind that you don’t overextend/over-relax and lose what you worked for.

Your training and upgrades matter

Could you imagine playing WoW without leveling up your hero or trying to use a marine based army without stimpak or combat shields? If you don’t spend resources on improving yourself and your business it’ll be like you’re stuck in Goldshire for your entire life. Yeah, it sucks to spend money on school. We all know that. This is actually quite similar to the infrastructure idea, but with people instead of tools.

First, you need to decide on whether it’s better to remove a weakness or improve a strength. Both have a ton of value, so it’s not always an easy decision. Your strengths are what got you where you are and your weaknesses could be what’s holding you back from getting further.

I suck at design work. I’m absolutely terrible at it. It might help my business a lot, and save me money over the long term, to take a class on design. However I don’t think I’d be very engaged in that class. I’ve made the decision to outsource that work, effectively purchasing someone else’s training and upgrades to cover that weakness.

So what am I good at? Well, certainly personal finance. I’m also decent at making connections in person. With that in mind I’ve gone back to school to get my MBA and spent a good deal on professional courses and conferences. My current spending on upgrading myself, my knowledge, should help in the long term.

Don’t hoard resources unless you have a specific plan

Your capital does more for you when it’s actually doing something. Just like in any RPG it doesn’t make sense to hold off on spending talent points and in Dota or League it doesn’t make sense to stockpile gold, having everything in cash can be bad for you. Yes, it’s very reassuring to know that you have cash available for an emergency. I’d argue that it’s crucial to have some cash on hand, actually. But once you have enough that you’re in a safe spot it makes much more sense to spend what you have to improve your business. This could be building infrastructure, building knowledge, or even taking a risk in a new venture.

However, if you have a specific plan that takes a specific amount of capital and you’re saving up to enact that plan, feel free to ignore this advice. Maybe you’re saving those talent points to be spent in a burst once you open up a new skill. Maybe you’re hoarding that scrap in FTL because you know you want to buy cloaking. Don’t do it without reason because you’ll suffer the opportunity cost.

Real-time decision making takes practice

Do you review replays of your games to see what you did well and what failed you in the moment? In the moment decision making can be incredibly difficult but it’s a skill you can practice. Take what helps make you great at gaming (obsessively learning to improve) and apply it to your business and personal finances. Did you go out and spend a shitload at the bar? Hopefully you remember that the next time it comes up and can moderate. Did you miss an awesome opportunity to grow your business because you were too worried or caught up in the moment? Take some time to think back on it and see if you can set up some systems to catch the next opportunity. This will take practice and the key is focus.

Conclusion

Gaming teaches you to manage a whole bunch of things at once while dealing with competition. That’s exactly the kind of challenge that can teach you awesome lessons for running your own business and your own finances. Take some time to reflect on what helps make you great at games and see if you can apply it to your business. If you have any other pieces I missed, or want to ask a question on this, leave a comment!