From the Felt to the Boardroom: How Poker Skills Can Boost Your Career Success | Ep. 289
In this captivating episode, Erin Lydon of Poker Power deals out a hand of wisdom showing how poker strategies can shape your financial and professional world. Learn why folding isn’t just a poker move, but a life skill, and how calculating risks can lead to big payoffs both on and off the felt.
About Our Guest
Erin Lydon is a thought leader, frequent speaker on equal pay and workplace equity, and President of Poker Power. Her passion to lead Poker Power stemmed from her experience working on Wall Street twenty years ago. After learning that she was not being paid the same as her male colleagues, and struggling to find a seat at the table in the male-dominated financial industry, Erin was confronted with the reality of the “force field” surrounding tables of power that keep women from sitting down, playing, and competing equally. Erin discovered poker during this time, and made the connection that learning to think, negotiate and take risks, like a winning poker player, trained her in skillsets that offered a solution for pushing the needle on women’s empowerment in the workplace. Erin now leads Poker Power’s mission to teach one million girls and women how to stack their skills, negotiate, and take calculated risks by gamifying key leadership lessons with poker gameplay.
Before joining Poker Power, Erin was the strategic advisor to the management team of Evil Geniuses, a global e-sports organization. She has previously served as an independent corporate director on the boards of Marbles and Roomlinx and began her finance career at JPMorgan.
Erin received her MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and BA from Bates College. In 2023, she received the Global Gaming Women “Women of Inspiration–Woman to Watch” award and has spoken on many premier stages including TEDx, Money 20/20 RiseUp, AWS Women’s Leadership Summits, TEDx Talk, Monaco Positive Impact Summit, and many more. Erin serves on the Advisory Board for Money 20/20 RiseUp and was a mentor for SXSW Edu in 2023. Additionally, she is a member of McKinsey’s Midwest Executive Women’s Forum.
Connect with Erin
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Transcript
Intro/Outro: You know what it is. That's right. It's time to talk
money with your money nerd and financial coach.
Speaker:Now, tighten those purse strings and open those ears.
Speaker:It's the money talk with TIFF podcast.
Hey, everyone. I'm so excited because I have Erin
Tiffany Grant:Leiden on the line, and she is the owner of poker
Tiffany Grant:power. And I, wanted to bring her on because,
as the name may hint, we're going to talk about poker,
Tiffany Grant:but also how it relates to your money. So. Hey, Erin,
Tiffany Grant:how are you?
Hi, Tiff. It's great to meet you.
Tiffany Grant:Yes, and it's great to have you on. I'm so excited about
Tiffany Grant:this conversation. So, first and foremost, let's
just get the elephant out the room.
Tiffany Grant:why poker? What does poker do
Tiffany Grant:for our money?
Yes, it's a very sound question to
Erin Lydon:ask. largely because there are so many stereotypes around the
Erin Lydon:word poker and the game, certainly. And what we are doing
at poker power is we are using the
Erin Lydon:strategy, the negotiation, the risk taking
Erin Lydon:of the game, and we are bringing it to women in the
workplace to help them empower their own success.
Erin Lydon:And so we're not at all about getting you into the
Erin Lydon:casino. what we are all about is, can you
start to think and negotiate and
Erin Lydon:strategize like a winning poker
Erin Lydon:player? And what we have found is this is a game
of imperfect information. It's a game of
Erin Lydon:asymmetrical information. It's a game of
Erin Lydon:calculated risk taking. All of those things
require practice to get better at. They're skills for
Erin Lydon:everybody. They're certainly not limited to women. And it is through
Erin Lydon:the repetitive gameplay and the scenarios that we
practice at our table, both virtually in person, that
Erin Lydon:we really can hone these key leadership skills for
Erin Lydon:women in the workplace.
That is so interesting. And I'm
Tiffany Grant:like, darn, we're not going to get rich quick.
Tiffany Grant:No.
There is an element of luck to poker, but it is primarily
Erin Lydon:skill.
Tiffany Grant:Very cool, very cool. So give us an example of how
that plays out. like in corporate
Tiffany Grant:or in a career for a woman. what is
Tiffany Grant:something that they can learn from the game of poker?
Yeah. so we have twelve lessons, and
Erin Lydon:each of the lessons has a leadership theme. And so let's
Erin Lydon:talk about negotiation, because I think
negotiation is a skill that you can
Erin Lydon:get better at. It is a skill that we don't necessarily
Erin Lydon:come pre equipped in knowing how to do
successfully. And it is also a skill that
Erin Lydon:if you do it successfully, you can apply that,
Erin Lydon:certainly to promotions, asking for
raises, getting your partner to take out the
Erin Lydon:trash. There's a lot of really useful negotiating with
Erin Lydon:your teenager. I have two of them, so I use my negotiation
skills with them. and so what we do with
Erin Lydon:poker power is through the gameplay. so
Erin Lydon:we're not lecturing to you. We're not just talking
about the game. We actually have everyone who's learning with us,
Erin Lydon:actively playing with us. And so as you are playing
Erin Lydon:poker, you're really going to come to what we call the
three levels of thinking. And these directly are
Erin Lydon:paralleled to a negotiation. So in level
Erin Lydon:one, you are making a binary decision. You
have two whole cards. They are hidden from everybody else.
Erin Lydon:You look at them and you have to make a decision. Do
Erin Lydon:I raise or do I fold? If you fold, you're
out of that hand and you're saving your chips for the next round.
Erin Lydon:If you choose to raise, then you're putting chips into the pot
Erin Lydon:and play has begun. That is
negotiating at its most simple. You are only
Erin Lydon:looking at your cards and making a decision from your own
Erin Lydon:perspective. What's important is that you then go to
level two. So once you get the basics down, we take you to level
Erin Lydon:two. Level two is where you're going to ask
Erin Lydon:yourself, what do I have and what do I think
my opponents have? And the question you're really
Erin Lydon:asking is a shifting of the perspective. So
Erin Lydon:it's no longer just, what is my chip stack?
What are my toolhold cards? You're observing and
Erin Lydon:starting to notice behavioral patterns at
Erin Lydon:the table with your opponents. And what you're really trying to figure
out is, do they hold something that possibly
Erin Lydon:can beat what you hold? And should you stay in the hand or should you get
Erin Lydon:out? that's level two, and that's where most
recreational players are playing poker. it's a very
Erin Lydon:helpful tool in a negotiation. For example, with a
Erin Lydon:client is that you can start to see, the
situation from their perspective and know, are you stronger
Erin Lydon:or are you weaker? Now, level three is the most
Erin Lydon:complex, and that's where you ask yourself, what
do I have? What do I think you have? And what
Erin Lydon:do I think you think that I have?
Erin Lydon:And so it's this ever evolving,
complex thought process. And what's great
Erin Lydon:with poker is it's occurring in every single
Erin Lydon:hand. and unlike once a year, you get to
negotiate for a raise or a new
Erin Lydon:promotion, at a poker game, you're
Erin Lydon:actively practicing that power shifting, that
assessing of imperfect information at the
Erin Lydon:table, because you don't know what the cards, other people's cards
Erin Lydon:are. And, what you may not realize about
poker is that depending on where you are
Erin Lydon:seated, whether that's in an app, virtually, or actually at a
Erin Lydon:real table, you are seated in positions of
relative strength and weakness, and that
Erin Lydon:shifts with every hand. So you get to play all the power
Erin Lydon:positions. but you're going to make different
decisions with exactly the same two whole
Erin Lydon:cards depending on whether you're in a seat of strength,
Erin Lydon:which is the dealer, or you're sitting in a seat of
weakness, which is where the blinds are, or under the gun.
Erin Lydon:that is a fascinating experience to,
Erin Lydon:again, practice over and over, because that is real
life. you don't always come to the negotiation table
Erin Lydon:with the biggest chip stack. and so you have to be able to
Erin Lydon:maneuver and navigate the environment that you are
in. And we really feel that poker is a great way to get
Erin Lydon:comfortable doing that.
Tiffany Grant:Wow, I love how you just broke that all the
way down for us. And the
Tiffany Grant:crazy part is like, level three. It sounds very meta
Tiffany Grant:like, what are they thinking that I'm thinking? That
you're thinking?
Erin Lydon:And it's interesting because I'm sure, when people
Erin Lydon:hear the word poker, they often think of poker tells or poker
face. And that's absolutely part
Erin Lydon:of this game, is being able to. What you're really trying to
Erin Lydon:do is assess change in baseline behavior. And so
that requires some amount of time playing with the same
Erin Lydon:people to be able to determine that.
Erin Lydon:But that's one element. There are
so many other elements to the game, and
Erin Lydon:it's the synthesis of all of them and
Erin Lydon:doing it successfully. That's what makes you really good at poker
as well as certainly in real life negotiations. It's not
Erin Lydon:just a single thing you have to get good at.
Tiffany Grant:Wow, that is so interesting.
And, my first
Tiffany Grant:foray into poker was in high school,
Tiffany Grant:and my math teacher actually brought out the
cards and I had no idea how to play. Like,
Tiffany Grant:I knew how to play rummy and all these
Tiffany Grant:spades and other games, but I've never played poker.
And she brought it out to teach us
Tiffany Grant:probability, and I learned so much
Tiffany Grant:in doing that. And so let's talk about that a little
bit. When we're
Tiffany Grant:thinking about using poker as
Tiffany Grant:probability and risk taking, what does that look
like?
Erin Lydon:Yeah, I love that your math teacher was
Erin Lydon:so forward thinking in giving you that opportunity.
We, work with a lot of corporate partners, but we also work with a
Erin Lydon:younger population, and we're very eager to bring
Erin Lydon:poker into school settings. to do exactly what you
experienced is through playing this game.
Erin Lydon:There is what we call it poker math and I'll tell you a funny
Erin Lydon:story in a moment about that. but it is simple
calculations that you can do at the table
Erin Lydon:to determine, does it make probabilistic
Erin Lydon:sense for you to continue to put chips into the pot? And
just for anyone who's not at all familiar with poker, your chips is
Erin Lydon:your value. So when we play at poker, power, there's no
Erin Lydon:monetary value because we don't play for real money. But
every chip represents, an amount of value that you're
Erin Lydon:putting into play with the other players. Now,
Erin Lydon:what's funny with poker math is that that was the title of
lesson three when we built our first curriculum, which was during the
Erin Lydon:pandemic, it was 2020, and every one of the
Erin Lydon:lessons had a title, and it was poker math. We weren't being very creative. We didn't
have a marketing person on board yet, and,
Erin Lydon:it was the most skipped
Erin Lydon:lesson. Now, in retrospect,
okay, of course, because you always hear women are afraid of
Erin Lydon:math. Women don't like to do numbers, which I actually don't believe
Erin Lydon:is true because we're all very good at our home budgets and going to the
grocery store and deciding if we can buy those shoes. But do
Erin Lydon:we want to do complex financial math at a poker
Erin Lydon:table? Absolutely not. But you don't have to.
so what we did with poker math is we retitled it to
Erin Lydon:calculating. And women seemed much more
Erin Lydon:amenable to the word calculating, and
we moved it from lesson three to lesson seven, because I
Erin Lydon:know if you've already devoted 6 hours of time to learning with
Erin Lydon:us, you're coming back for lesson seven.
Especially if I tell you that learning how
Erin Lydon:to do the simple math at the table is
Erin Lydon:such a secret sauce. And even more importantly, it's
so unexpected that you know how to do
Erin Lydon:that, because you have to remember that most of the people you will play
Erin Lydon:poker against are men, just because
5% of the professional players are women. So we're a very small
Erin Lydon:part of the population, number one. But even
Erin Lydon:recreationally, men who play this
game, they grew up playing it. So they learned in summer
Erin Lydon:camp, they learned from an uncle. they
Erin Lydon:didn't really study or learn the strategy in most
cases. And so many of them actually don't
Erin Lydon:bring that secret sauce of being able to do the risk analysis
Erin Lydon:at the table. I love empowering
women with skills that are
Erin Lydon:outliers that people are not expecting them to have.
Erin Lydon:And being able to assess whether this is a
mathematically good decision to put more money and more chips
Erin Lydon:into the pot is one of those secret sauces that I think
Erin Lydon:women should have.
I love that. And I'm glad you changed that title
Tiffany Grant:to calculate, because people
Tiffany Grant:just. Most people are like, oh, math.
But calculating is like, moha.
Erin Lydon:That's strategy. Yeah. That's something you want an upper
Erin Lydon:hand.
With right now, listening
Tiffany Grant:to you speak about poker in this way, because I've never
Tiffany Grant:thought about it this way before. it
also seems like it may help with
Tiffany Grant:confidence as well. Do you see that?
Erin Lydon:That's actually, the very first thing that
we see. And so lesson one is titled
Erin Lydon:courage, and we titled it courage because we know it takes a
Erin Lydon:lot of courage to sit down at a poker table. so
few of us have done it. So many of us have negative stereotypes
Erin Lydon:of the game. So we get you to come to class, we get you to
Erin Lydon:come to a workshop that's in person, and you have the courage. You
sit down, and what happens, about
Erin Lydon:15 minutes into playing is someone at
Erin Lydon:that table is going to shove all their
chips into the pot, which means they're going all in, which
Erin Lydon:is a term that's usually familiar to people. So they've taken the entire chipsack
Erin Lydon:in front of them, they've put it into the middle of the pot, and they're hoping to win
a great big pot of chips. They've probably done that because
Erin Lydon:they're holding two very strong cards. Maybe they have two aces
Erin Lydon:or two kings or an ace and a king, and they believe they're
going to win that pot. what happens
Erin Lydon:next is that person wins. And so there's
Erin Lydon:this moment where she gets to scoop back this giant,
colorful chipstack back into her
Erin Lydon:area of the table and start stacking them up, and
Erin Lydon:she's feeling like a rock star. I mean, truly like a rock
star. someone at that table is capturing a reel for
Erin Lydon:Instagram as this is happening. And
Erin Lydon:what's most important is, yes, we're celebrating that
woman who just did that. But everyone else
Erin Lydon:at the table is also cheering and
Erin Lydon:celebrating and taking pictures. And that's what's so
unique about our poker power classes, is they
Erin Lydon:are collaborative. They are truly
Erin Lydon:a celebration of women's success. Whether you're competitive
with them or not at the table, you want everyone to have
Erin Lydon:that winning opportunity, and once you have
Erin Lydon:it, it's Pavlovian. You just want to hit
again and again and again so you can re
Erin Lydon:experience that pulling of the chips back.
Erin Lydon:all of that leads to women starting to build
the confidence at the poker table, where just 15
Erin Lydon:minutes ago, they had never played and they really couldn't
Erin Lydon:imagine themselves negotiating and being successful
at this game. That is such
Erin Lydon:a critical experience for us
Erin Lydon:all to have, whether it's winning for something
tangible or truly just for bragging rights, which is what we do at
Erin Lydon:poker power, it's very validating
Erin Lydon:to be able to learn something new, apply it, and then
be successful at it. And so that starts the
Erin Lydon:confidence. What we see women do from there is
Erin Lydon:we have a total of twelve lessons, so you can spend quite a bit of time with us.
But at some point in those lessons, they're going to say, you
Erin Lydon:know what? I can take and translate these skills
Erin Lydon:from the poker table to my real life. And so,
for example, we have a woman in our community,
Erin Lydon:who was going through a divorce. And
Erin Lydon:I love when we have workplace successes and we have lots of those
testimonials on our website, but this one is not because it was personal to
Erin Lydon:her. And she decided to come to the poker power
Erin Lydon:lessons during the divorce process and it was getting rather
contentious. And she credits poker power
Erin Lydon:with helping her negotiate differently and
Erin Lydon:better. And she never told her ex that she was learning how
to play poker, because she really did want to have that upper
Erin Lydon:hand. One of the skills that I think
Erin Lydon:directly translates from that is the power of
the pause. And what I mean by the power of
Erin Lydon:the pause is the ability to take in
Erin Lydon:information and not immediately react.
And again, when you are negotiating, that is such
Erin Lydon:a critical skill to just be able to
Erin Lydon:pause, which in poker is called check. You literally just tap on the table
and you're checking your action and you're not playing any more
Erin Lydon:chips at that moment. taking that breather, being
Erin Lydon:able to really analyze everything that is being put in front
of you and then making a sound decision with all the facts
Erin Lydon:that you have.
Tiffany Grant:I love that. And that's something that I stress to
my audience about financial purchases and
Tiffany Grant:things. just taking that breather. If you're
Tiffany Grant:a spender, you know, you're a spender and
you shop a lot on Amazon, leave something in the cart
Tiffany Grant:for a day and see if you come
Tiffany Grant:back to it or if it just goes into
the abyss of violator stuff or
Tiffany Grant:what have you. But just taking that time to
Tiffany Grant:pause. And I love that you all teach that
with the poker as well, because it is a great
Tiffany Grant:skill to have, that instant
Tiffany Grant:gratification can get us in a lot of trouble
financially.
Erin Lydon:You are absolutely right about that. And I think,
Erin Lydon:our third lesson is discipline. And discipline
in a poker game is so applicable to real life.
Erin Lydon:But when we're teaching discipline. It's all
Erin Lydon:around folding the cards you shouldn't have in play.
And what you find, particularly with beginners in poker,
Erin Lydon:is once they understand the jargon and the rules, they're very
Erin Lydon:excited to play. They just want to keep the action going and
have some chips in that pot. we teach our
Erin Lydon:community that you're going to fold about
Erin Lydon:80% of the time, which sounds
extraordinarily high. We always poll our community,
Erin Lydon:and they'll say, oh, 40% of the time, you fold. Oh, 50% of
Erin Lydon:the time, you fold. when you look at professional players,
on average, they're actually folding about 80% of their
Erin Lydon:hands. And the reason for that is there are
Erin Lydon:very opportunistic and strategic moments in
a game where you should be putting chips in, you should
Erin Lydon:be betting, and when you do that, you should do it in a very
Erin Lydon:aggressive way. So, in our games, we're teaching you three
times the big blind, which just means you are putting a great big
Erin Lydon:stack of chips into play. That feels
Erin Lydon:uncomfortable, but it's the right decision, and
you get the validation of making the right decision by winning the
Erin Lydon:pot.
Tiffany Grant:I love that. And also, how I can see this
translating as well is my background is in
Tiffany Grant:HR, and I saw
Tiffany Grant:a lot of people, men and women,
honestly, not ask for more. they
Tiffany Grant:just sat at work, and they were just waiting for their manager to
Tiffany Grant:tap them on the shoulder and say they deserve a raise that day,
which I've never seen happen, by the way. and
Tiffany Grant:so I love that
Tiffany Grant:this gives the confidence, the
negotiation, the discipline. All of
Tiffany Grant:these different things can translate into the
Tiffany Grant:workplace and making sure that you're getting what you're
worth. And so I love that.
Tiffany Grant:I'm like, I want to go play poker tomorrow.
Erin Lydon:We would love to teach you or bring you back to the game, you know, how
to play, but we would love to take your game to the next level, for
Erin Lydon:sure.
Tiffany Grant:So, with that being said, if somebody's listening and
they're like, okay, Erin, I hear you. Poker is
Tiffany Grant:amazing. I want to learn how to play. How
Tiffany Grant:can they learn these skills? How can they learn
how to play poker? And then also all this goodness
Tiffany Grant:that you gave us today on the show.
Erin Lydon:Yes. So there are a couple of ways to get involved. we
offer monthly community classes, so
Erin Lydon:the next round will start in January, and it's 1
Erin Lydon:hour a week, and it's over Zoom, and it's very
accessible to sign up on our website. It is affordable, which
Erin Lydon:is very intentional, as we do not want there to be financial barriers
Erin Lydon:to women getting comfortable with this game. You
also can install the poker power play
Erin Lydon:app that you can also access by getting to our website, which
Erin Lydon:is pokerpower.com. And what's great about our
app is you can actually, go through some self learning
Erin Lydon:modules on your own time, and you can learn the
Erin Lydon:jargon, learn the basic rules, take some quizzes with each of
those 14 modules to test your knowledge. And
Erin Lydon:then your next step is you play in the app against the
Erin Lydon:bots. And that's actually the most popular part
of our app, and that's where most of the women go first, is they
Erin Lydon:want to just practice this game, make mistakes
Erin Lydon:with no one watching them. They don't want any feedback yet. They
just want to practice and practice. And then the last thing you'll
Erin Lydon:get to do, if you're in class with us, virtually, you'll be playing on
Erin Lydon:the app in a live class. Or you can also join our
community games, which, again, there's no money transacting. And those are
Erin Lydon:offered three times a day.
Tiffany Grant:Ah, awesome. That is phenomenal. I love that you
have so many touch points and so many ways
Tiffany Grant:that people can get involved and have that support and
Tiffany Grant:practice. I'm a firm believer in practice
makes perfect, and we can do anything we
Tiffany Grant:put our mind to. So thank you for sharing that.
Tiffany Grant:So I'll make sure that I have all of those links in
the show notes for you all. And is there any way that they can
Tiffany Grant:follow you on social?
Erin Lydon:Yes, they should definitely follow me on all the social channels.
if you type in Aaron Leiden. Actually, if you type the word Aaron
Erin Lydon:poker and you google that, you will find me. but I'd love for them to
Erin Lydon:reach out on LinkedIn. Feel free to dm me.
Perfect. Well, thank you so much, and I enjoyed this
Tiffany Grant:conversation. Like I said, I want to play maybe later
Tiffany Grant:today, just for fun. just with some
of this information that I learned from you. So thank you so much,
Tiffany Grant:Erin, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
Erin Lydon:You as well. Thank you.
Bye.
Tiffany Grant:Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening, joining, and being a part of the Money
Tiffany Grant:Talk with TIFF podcast this week. You can check Tiff
out every Thursday for a new Money Talk podcast.
Tiffany Grant:But if you just can't wait until next week, you can listen
Tiffany Grant:to previous podcast
episodes@moneytalkwitht.com
Tiffany Grant:or follow Tiff on all social media
Tiffany Grant:platforms at moneytalkwitht. Until
next time, spend wise by spending less
Tiffany Grant:than you make a word to the money wise is
Tiffany Grant:always sufficient.