In high school, my friend Wilson was always able to achieve enormous scores playing Tetris on his calculator. Nobody could even possibly come close in comparison. There were quite a few of my classmates trying for months, but none could even seem to come close.

The basic goal of Tetris is to arrange Tetrads (4 squares arranged in 6 possible shapes) so that rows are filled up without gaps. Then the row disappears and you receive points for them.

Or at least that’s the common knowledge about Tetris. Wilson and everyone who is serious about these blocks knows that there are ways to substantially rack up the number of points you can receive. And if you can create such significant changes in a game by altering a few moves, why can’t you do that in business? After all, life is a game.

In Tetris when you remove a row you get a small number of points, when you remove multiple rows at once you get a larger number of points. And when you get a Tetris (four rows at once) you get the most possible points for your level. Wilson knows this, and whenever he gets a long piece, there is always a place waiting for it. Compare these to deals or business transactions. Sure your business can get by selling only one part of the equation, but if you could provide all the parts needed you certainly would become more valuable.

The next point is levels, you can start off at level 1 and get peanuts for lining up the bricks with 10 lines before the speed increases, or you can start at level 9 and get about ten times the amount for your work with a stable speed for 90 completed lines.

How fast are you prepared to be? Can you handle a hundred orders in a day? Can your company’s infrastructure handle the stress resulting from them? You might not know when the situation will arise that requires you to be available for the big order. So do you want to flop or be Johnny on the spot?

As I was playing once Wilson was watching me as the number of gaps started to gradually increase. I asked him what I should do or if he could save it. He told me that he would probably just restart the game.

Instead of sitting around taking a beating, he would just start over.

Wilson was able to recognize that I was in serious trouble, and instead of messing around with a thousand different small pieces, it would be better to start over and try again. Of course throwing out all the work to simply start over might not always seem like a good idea, but the knowledge that you learned from the previous experience should help guide your next version of the project.

Every time I play the game I think about how the end goal is the same. You can’t beat the game, the bricks just keep coming faster and faster. But you can strive to do your better than you have ever done before. To me, I can certainly see a link between Tetris and Entrepreneurship. How about you?

If you can learn to create value for other people by doing what you love, then you’ll never have to get a “job”. The problem, of course, is figuring out how to create that value in a way that fulfills both you and your customer.

Self-fulfillment can guarantee the greatest level of success because when you feel satisfied with what you do, you’re motivated to do more. You’re committed and inspired. But how can you assure the greatest potential for self-employed happiness? Below are the three keys to determining the most successful value that you can offer:

1. Passion

You go to work from 9 to 5 because you have to. You’re probably not doing work that you love… just work that you know needs to be done so that your boss will give you money in exchange.

Running your own business requires more. You have to feel passion about the field you’re working in and the niche you’re focusing on. Business won’t become your life, though it’ll be a bigger part. An employee has to worry about putting in time. You have to make sure that your time brings in money. Of course, if you have a passion for what you’re doing and you believe in what you’re doing, sales and marketing come much more easily. You want to actually enjoy working, a luxury that most people never experience.

Without a love for what you do, you’ll fall to the hard stuff.

Yeah we all know that if we don’t like animals, we shouldn’t open pet shops. But think of what you love. Some passions’like scrapbooking’are difficult to turn into a marketable business that leads you toward riches. Other passions’like building stuff’could take you on the road to building hotels (which are a hot ticket item right now), custom cabinets, finish carpentry, birdhouses, or cabins for the Girl Scouts.

2. Talent

When I was in high school, a good friend wrote, “Katie, you’re one in a million… which means there are about 6,500 of you in the world.” I think that he wanted to get a message across: every person is unique, and yet you’re always going to find people who are better than you. But does that mean give up?

The hardest part of starting anything is the fear of failing. Failing to succeed, failing to find happiness, failing to find appreciation or fame… We don’t hesitate to think of a handful of things that are wrong with us. You’re not doomed to failure, though. The key is to use the talents that you have to build your business.

If you don’t know some of your greatest attributes for business potential, ask a friend. You’ve got to give it your best. Your passion probably has something to do with your talent’you’re good at it, you enjoy it.

3. Values

If you don’t stand for something, then you’ll fall for anything. Who said that? Well besides your mom. Every business has a set of core values besides making money. In the strongest businesses, every employee knows those values and makes them a part of the work environment and decisions. In some businesses, even the founders don’t know where the values lie, and that neglect leads to struggle.

We hold values in our personal lives, why not in our business ideas? You have opinions on what’s right and wrong, whether we should drive Hummers, eat meat, pay for education, alter illegal immigration policy, and wear shoes in your house. Why not look for those values in yourself and make them a part of your business. The happiest person holds the same values as his company.

In a previous article I have talked about setting up a balance sheet for your company. Now I would like to cover the next type of statement you will run into during your time in business. This form is none other than the Income Statement.

The income statement has a simple and straightforward purpose, to report the success or failure of the company’s operations for a period of time. The net income (or loss) is determined by deducting expenses from revenues.

Outside of the company itself, there are two groups interested in a company’s income statement. Investors are interested in the past income because it can give information about possible future income which may affect the stock price. The second group of interested people would be creditors; they certainly don’t want to lend money if there is no way that the company can pay it back.

Here is an example using the fictitious currency ‘Planet Aridni Dollars.’

It is important to notice that any amounts received from issuing stock are not revenues, and any amounts paid out as dividends are not expenses. Neither one of those are reported on this statement.

After your income statement is complete, you are ready to go on to your retained earnings statement next, which will show the amounts and causes of changes in a companies working capital.