In Simon Sinek’s book The Infinite Game, he says that business & entrepreneurship have all the hallmarks of an infinite game:

• New players can join at any time.

• Everyone’s playing by their own strategy.

• The rules are always shifting.

• There is no defined endpoint.

So there is no winning in business. There’s only playing the game sustainably.

When I was white-knuckling every launch and dreading my endless to-do list, I was playing my business like a finite game. Every launch had a winner and a loser. Every proposal was pass or fail. Every month, my profit & loss statement was a pass/fail test on whether I was cut out for this.

But the whole point of entrepreneurship is to keep playing. There is no finish line or trophy at the end. Only bigger goals.

After understanding this, I realized that I already know what this game feels like in a different context: job interviews.

Before I was a photographer and business coach for creatives, I was a software engineer. When I was job-hunting, I treated interviews like a game because that was the only way I knew how to handle rejection.

Sending out resumes & taking interviews is strictly a numbers game. The more resumes you send out, the more interviews you will get, and the more interviews you get, the more job offers you receive.

Therefore, if it’s only a numbers game, every “no” is just one step closer to the right “yes.”

Easier said than done, right?

But knowing the rules of the game doesn’t make it easy or painless.

Once, I had an interview with Two Sigma at a career fair. It’s notoriously difficult to get in as a software engineer. During the technical interview, the interviewer actually stopped me and said, “We won’t be moving forward.”

Big ouchie to my ego. I actually went to the bathroom and cried immediately.

So, not painless. But I didn’t let that one brutal round derail the rest of my interviewing game because I needed to keep playing.

I left that career fair with multiple internship offers, including the one that changed everything for me: an internship at Apple.

That’s how you play an infinite game. You can’t quit the game because you lost one round. You need to play more rounds.

Think about the last time a potential client ghosted you. Or the time someone said your prices were too high. Or your recent Instagram post that flopped.

Did it feel like a total loss? Or did it feel like one round of a much longer game?

I know firsthand that these things can feel like a personal loss. Because when you’re playing a finite game, when every single interaction feels like pass or fail, getting ghosted doesn’t feel like data. It feels like a report card that says, “I’m not cut out for entrepreneurship.”

But here’s the thing: your next client doesn’t know that you got ghosted yesterday. They don’t know about your launch that flopped. They don’t care what happened last round. They only care that you showed up to play this one.

The creative entrepreneurs I see struggling the most are the ones playing every round like it’s the final boss. They agonize over a single Instagram post, they rewrite a proposal fourteen times, they let one “no” bleed into how they show up for the next conversation.

That’s finite game energy, and it’s exhausting and unhelpful.

Infinite game energy looks different:

• Treat your next launch like an experiment.

• Know that a “no” only gets you closer to the right “yes.”

• Show up to your next sales call feeling loose, excited, and detached from the result, rather than tying your whole worth to an outcome you cannot control.

• Embody iteration over perfection: you cannot improve unless you get in the reps. Rejection is getting in the reps.

Alysa Liu, 2026 Olympic Gold Medalist, is the perfect example of someone who is playing an infinite game versus a finite game. But she wasn’t always like this.

In 2022, she went to the Olympics at 16 years old and hated every second of it.

She was miserable on the ice and walked away from the sport entirely.

Two years later, she decided to come back on HER own terms. She took creative control over her choreography, the music, and her schedule. She decided she was going to skate because she loved it, not because she had to prove or win something.

This is exactly what happens to creative entrepreneurs. You start your business because you love your craft. Then slowly, the pressure, the stakes, and the constant need to perform suck the joy out of it. And you end up dreading the thing you used to love.

Alysa Liu’s answer was to walk away, rediscover the joy, and come back to play on her terms.

When interviewers ask how she stayed so calm with an Olympic gold medal on the line, she basically said (I’m paraphrasing here): “I love falling, and I love struggling. I don’t really care if I win because I’m here to skate.”

She won gold in 2026. If you compare her 2022 and 2026 performances, you can see and feel the difference. When she stepped off the ice in 2022, her energy said, “Thank God it’s finally over.”

When she stepped off the ice in 2026, she said, “That’s what I’m f*cking talking about!”

THAT is the energy I want you to bring to your creative business.

Not “thank God it’s over” after every launch, every sales call, every piece of content you push out into the world. But “heck yeah, I did that - let’s go again!”

But you might need to change the way you’re playing this whole business game.

You’re playing an infinite game. The rules will shift, the algorithms will change, and new players will join every day. Change is the only inevitability.

So the next time you catch yourself dreading something in your business—a pitch, a launch, a follow-up email—ask yourself: am I playing this like a game?

Or am I playing this like my life depends on it?

Show up loose. Show up excited to play. Show up like someone who knows the game keeps going.