Contributed by Stephen McGee
The 2025 Bigelow Connectors event was held on Friday October 17th, bringing together 150 expert advisors at Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club in Portsmouth, NH for some relationship building and scholarship. This community of expert advisors were comprised of wealth managers, financial planners, attorneys, CPAs, tax accountants, and a variety of other expert advisors who help Entrepreneur Owner-Managers (EOMs) build and capture Enterprise Value.
The scholarship for this year’s event was provided by our keynote speaker, Maria Konnikova, psychologist (Columbia PhD), best-selling author and professional poker player. Yes, you read that correctly! Maria took the theory and concepts from her doctoral thesis, which she did under the mentorship of Walter Mischel (think marshmallows and kids), and applied those theories in the real world “lab” of the poker table. And won! She captured these adventures in her best-selling book The Biggest Bluff.
Maria kept the audience enthralled with her talk which, at a high-level, focused on how we think, reason, and make decisions asking us the question, “In an uncertain environment what can you control and how can you control it?” She provided our community of expert advisors with a framework to use with their EOM clients to help them make better decisions: “the BEE mentality” Boredom. Ego. Emotion.
BOREDOM is not what you think it is, however! According to Maria, boredom is attention overload. In our busy, connected world, EOMs are completely overwhelmed. Action is the name of the game when inaction might be the answer. There’s too much competing for their attention, none of it meaningful enough to hold it. Sometimes EOMs act when they don’t even know what the problem is. Maria suggests the antidote for this is to slow down and be like Sherlock Holmes – famous for sitting down and smoking a pipe rather than rushing out the door to solve a case. Think, don’t rush to act. This applies to us too. How often do we, as expert advisors who are paid to give answers, rush to a conclusion when we may not even know what the EOM’s real problem is? Can we be more persuasive through strategic attention allocation, reframing “inaction” as action?
We all have EGO. According to Daniel Kahneman, “The combination of overconfidence and optimism is a potent brew, which causes people to overestimate their ability to control events. It also leaves them vulnerable to statistical surprises.” By definition, the EOMs we all work with have been super successful, right? They still run a high-performing private company, they have survived, unlike the majority of private companies that never make it. Success is a poor teacher however, and that success can pump up ego. Can this also apply to us as advisors? Here, Maria used an example of escalating commitment (also known as the sunk cost fallacy) where people continue to invest time, money, or effort into a failing course of action — not because it’s rational to do so, but because they’ve already invested so much, largely driven by ego. To try and overcome this, Maria suggested we look to The Godfather, in particular the coldly objective Michael Corleone when he avenges the attempted hit on his father and says, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” Can we be more persuasive through strategic ego appeal, reframing the situation as an ego boost and not an ego threat?
And finally, EMOTION. For this, Maria brought us back to the poker table and the term “TILT”. When someone “goes on tilt,” they’ve lost emotional control, often becoming angry, reckless, or irrational. It’s common in poker, a small setback like losing a hand triggers a disproportionate emotional response that derails performance. Tilt is ultimately a feedback loop: frustration → poor decisions → worse outcomes → more frustration. Ever seen an EOM go on tilt!? Or have you ever gone on tilt? According to Maria, the fix for this is the Cooling Antidote. How do we, as advisors, cool the hot stimulus. Can we be persuasive through some strategic distancing from the setback?
Maria brought “the BEE mentality” and poker analogy full circle with a discussion of process versus outcome, and the role of luck. When you focus on process, you control your actions, habits, and systems. Success is then measured by how well you execute. When you focus on outcome it’s all about the results and end goals. Success is measured by whether you achieve the target.
We discussed how luck is completely outside your control, so by focusing purely on outcomes you can become overly reactive to luck. Good luck may make you feel successful even if your process is weak. Bad luck may make you feel like a failure even if your process is excellent. Conversely, focusing on process minimizes the impact of luck on your perception of success: You can control your effort, habits, and learning. Over time, her advice is that consistently strong processes increase your probability of favorable outcomes, even when luck fluctuates. Are you trying to win the current hand, or the whole tournament?
If we are playing the long game, I suggest we all listen to Maria!
