Life lessons from the pool table

Rod and I were playing pool this week and as per usual I would remember a grandpa's lesson who taught me to play pool for many years and spill it to Rod. 

This time the lesson I remembered was "when it's your turn to hit the ball and you think you see the winning shot, make sure to go around the table."

You might be missing another shot that could be better. 

And one that could be even better for your long game.

Later that day I kept thinking about it. 

There are so many of these lessons I have been applying subconsciously in hospitality ventures and in life. 

So today's article is life lessons from the billiard table. 

Three of them.

Lesson 1: Walk the table before you shoot

Here's what actually happens when you see a "winning shot." Your brain locks on. The pocket looks huge. Everything else on the table disappears. 

Grandpa would make me put the cue down and walk a full circle around the table before I was allowed to shoot. 

Every single time. It felt ridiculous. 

Until the day I walked around and saw that my beautiful corner shot would have left the cue ball buried behind two of my opponent's balls. The shot I couldn't see from where I was standing was uglier. But it left me set up for the next three.

In hospitality, the winning shot is the first pretty parcel of land. It's the deal that comes to you. The land has a creek, the price feels right, the seller is motivated. You've already built the resort in your head before you've walked the property line.

Walk the table.

Sometimes people buy the first parcel they toured because it photographed well, then discover the flood plain, the neighbor who runs a gun range, the county that just changed its rules. 

Meanwhile two counties over there was a less romantic piece of land with utilities at the road and a seller who would carry the note.

Same with design decisions. 

And as I think about it more, most of the decisions I make follow this pattern.

The discipline is physical. 

Grandpa didn't say "consider your options." He said walk. 

Move your body to a different vantage point. 

In business that means drive the backroads around the property, not just to it. Call the county before you call the lender. Sleep in your own unit before you write the listing. 

The winning shot you see from where you're standing is the winning shot for where you're standing. Move your feet.

Lesson 2: You only ever touch one ball

This one took me years to understand. 

In pool, you never touch the ball you're trying to sink. You only ever touch the cue ball. Everything else is transferred energy. The object ball goes where physics sends it, and physics doesn't care how badly you want the shot.

Beginners obsess over the object ball. They stare at the pocket. 

Grandpa taught me to give the pocket one look, commit, then put every ounce of attention on the cue ball. 

Where exactly am I striking it. 

How hard. 

What spin. 

The object ball's path is decided the moment the cue tip makes contact.

After that, watching doesn't help. Wanting doesn't help.

Hospitality is a transferred-energy business. 

You cannot touch the review. You cannot touch the booking. You cannot touch the guest's mood when they arrive after six hours of traffic with three kids melting down in the back seat. Those are object balls.

What you can touch: the check-in message that arrives before they ask.

The firewood that's already stacked. 

The mattress you spent money on because eight hours of the stay happens unconscious.

Hosts who obsess over reviews write defensive listings, argue with guests, and refresh Airbnb at midnight. 

Hosts who obsess over the cue ball build systems. They know that a five-star review is the object ball dropping into the pocket, and the shot was actually taken three weeks earlier when they rewrote their listing.

Strike the cue ball clean and let physics do its job. 

When a shot misses anyway, and some will, review your contact point, not the pocket.

Lesson 3: Sometimes the best shot doesn't sink anything

The most advanced lesson grandpa taught me was the safety. 

There are moments in pool when the best players deliberately don't score. They hit a soft shot that sinks nothing and leaves the cue ball glued to a rail, buried behind traffic, giving the opponent no shot at all. 

To a beginner it looks like a wasted turn. It's actually the most aggressive move on the table. You're not playing this shot. 

You're playing two shots from now.

Nobody teaches this in hospitality. 

Everything in this industry screams score. 

Fill the calendar. 

Take the booking. 

Add the unit. 

Say yes.

The safety play looks like this. 

It's declining the New Year's Eve booking from the guest whose messages already smell like a party, because one trashed cabin costs you three weeks of revenue and your best cleaner. 

It's blocking your own calendar for two nights after every stay during your first season, because the margin you lose on turnovers is smaller than the reputation you lose on rushed ones. 

It's building four cabins on land that could hold ten, because unit five through ten are worth more after four have proven the concept and the bank can see the numbers.

It's also knowing when not to launch. The pressure to open before you're ready is enormous. The mortgage is running. The safety play is eating two more months of carrying costs so your first thirty guests meet the finished product, because those thirty guests write the reviews that price every night for the next three years.

A safety only works if you know why you're playing it. And I want to clarify that passivity is not strategy. 

The player who hits soft because they're scared loses. The player who hits soft because they've read the table three shots ahead wins. 

Same shot. Different game.

The long game

Grandpa never framed any of this as strategy. He framed it as respect for the table. The table has more information than you do from any single position. Your job is to go collect it before you commit.

Obvious is a vantage point problem. Walk around. Touch only what you can touch. 

Some of your best turns will be the ones where it looks like nothing happened.

That's all for today, 

Till next week, dear readers.

p.s. I often see the game of pool as an art. Don't you?