5 Entrepreneurial Lessons From the Movie “Rounders”

Monday, April 2, 2007 at 09:47am by David Askaripour in Life

Last night I watched one of my favorite movies, Rounders. For those of you not familiar with the movie, it’s about a young law student, Mike, who is a brilliant poker player internally struggling to define his life as either a magnificent poker player who will someday win the championship or just another soon-to-be lawyer who lives a boring and uneventful life.

The reason that this is one of my favorite movies is because of all the valuable lessons presented. Throughout the movie you’ll learn about passion, staying motivated, never letting go of your dreams, and learning not to go against your destiny, your life’s calling.

1. Don’t Let Anyone Domesticate You

There was a scene in the movie where Mike, played by Matt Daemon, walks into his apartment and he finds out that his girlfriend has left him. His best friend, Worm, tells him “she domesticated you!”

This scene was powerful because it shows the reality of how people try to break young entrepreneurs; how people try to make them “get a job,” or “stop following your dreams.”

Girlfriends, mothers, fathers, professors, etc… all of these people, at some point, may try to “domesticate” you. They may try to encourage you to give up your aspirations and dreams to become a successful entrepreneur and change the world.

Don’t let these people rain on you parade. Don’t let ‘em try and distinguish your flames. Though they may think that they are helping you, they really aren’t. Shut down their words, block out these messages, and push forward!

Mike’s girlfriend simply couldn’t understand that it wasn’t just a game for him, it was his life. His true passion. Mike says:

2. Don’t Run From Your Destiny

Mike is sitting down in a bar with his law professor and he listens to the story of how he went against his parents’ wishes to become a rabbi and instead became a lawyer because he felt that it was his true calling in life.

He stated:

The last thing I took away from the yeshiva is this: We can’t run from who we are, our destiny chooses us.

At that moment, Mike then realizes that he can’t run from who he is anymore. He’s a poker player, not a lawyer. He knows that his true desire in life and personal legend is to play poker, live for the rush of competing against the best in the world.

You must do the same. You have to follow your gut; follow your passions. Don’t run away from what you know you must do in life. If you do, then you’ll look back one day when you’re old and gray and say “ I wonder what I would have been if I had….”

They end the conversation with:

Mike: If you had it to do all over again, knowing what would happen, would you make the same choice?
Professor: What choice?

Exactly, there shouldn’t be a choice. You just have to do it!

3. Loyalty

Mike never forgets about his best friend Worm. When they were kids, Worm got caught for an incident in school and took the blame without ratting-out Mike. Worm was expelled.

Worm has been in jail and upon his release Mike helps him raise money to pay off his debts incurred before he got locked up for credit card scams.

Mike stays with him no matter what happens. He helps him hustle other players, protects him from his collectors, and loans him thousands in cash. And though he gets himself into an even deeper whole, Mike still remains by his side.

This type of loyalty is rare. I doubt many of us have friends who would do the same. It’s this type of loyalty that separates the good entrepreneurs from the great.

Loyalty to your word. Loyalty to your clients. Loyalty to your promises. And most of all loyalty to yourself. If you can’t stay loyal to your own dreams and to your aspirations in life, then don’t expect to stay loyal to anything else in life. Loyalty is key to success.

4. Knowing When To Fold

Though Mike was extremely confident and played very aggressively, he always knew when to fold a hand. He constantly said:

“You can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle.”

Sometimes we entrepreneurs have to know when to cut our losses and regroup. I’m not saying give up, I’m saying be smart and know when you are losing too much from gaining little to nothing.

Maybe you’ve diverted your original plans to try something else and that “something else” hasn’t been helping you, only sucking your life away and bleeding capital. An intelligent entrepreneur needs to know when enough is enough — when it’s time to kill an idea and bring life to a new one.

5. Recover from Losses and Moving Forward

Mike loses his entire life savings, $30,000, in the opening scenes of the movie. He takes a chance and risks it all. I actually admire what he did and the courage that it took to take such a risk.

After losing it all, Mike took a job delivering food to delis in order to pay his rent and his law school tuition. He didn’t make any rash decisions like go out and start gambling again, he make a smart move to give up gambling and get a job in order to pay the bills.

He didn’t let his loss destroy his life. In time, he found out that his loss was a blessing in disguise and gave him the necessary time to figure out his life’s purpose. He made the decision to go against his “mind” and follow his “heart” and began rounding (re: playing poker) again.

Though he lost such a tremendous amount of money — all his money — he realized, in time, that it didn’t matter and it wasn’t about the money. It was about his love for poker.

When you fall down hard, get back up hard. You’re going to mess up and make huge mistakes as an entrepreneur, expect that. But you must push on and never give up no matter how bad a situation may be. You can “take time” like Mike did, but you better come back swinging.

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