The 6 Levels of the Entrepreneur Game: Why Most Never Make It Past Level One

Your business problems aren’t random. They’re symptoms of the level you’re stuck on — and Dr. Dave is about to show you the map.

In this episode, he breaks down the six levels of the Entrepreneur Game so you can finally see why more effort hasn’t been converting into progress.

• The Map: The 6 levels of the Entrepreneur Game and how to identify the one you’re operating from right now.
• The Shift: Why effort stopped being your advantage in the Transformation Age and how Flow becomes the multiplier that actually moves you forward.
• The Upgrade: What changes when you rise beyond Survival Mode & Scripted Mode and why Creator Mode is where high-profit businesses truly come alive.

▶️ Listen Now - Because the game is accelerating, and knowing your level is the first step to rising to the next one.

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Transcript

It was Christmas in seventh grade. I don't really remember the unboxing. I don't even remember who actually bought the Nintendo, whether it was my parents or my aunts and Uncle pooling money together. I think at the time, it was $99 and Super Mario Brothers came in the box. But I vividly remember playing it. I remember being on the living room floor with my younger siblings watching closely, carpet pressed into my knees, thumbs cramping from hours of running Mario across that pixelated world, that old eight bit soundtrack looping like a metronome, a little burst of adrenaline every time I beat a stage and the world shifted into something a little faster, a little harder, a little less forgiving, and even then, before I had language for it, I understood something each level expected more of you. The game never stayed still if you hesitated, if you didn't adjust to the new timing. If you kept playing the way you played at the last level, you just didn't last long. Well, fast forward to today. We're living in the transformation age, a world where markets, technology and expectations evolve every quarter, sometimes every month, but most entrepreneurs are still playing like it's level one, still using outdated rules, still trying to grind their way through tough environments that now demand something entirely different. And the truth hit me the other day like a memory from that living room floor. The game of entrepreneurship works exactly like that video game, if you don't keep leveling up, the world levels up without you. So as we walk through the six stages of the entrepreneur game, I want to hand you a single question, are you rising to the next level or hoping that this level will slow down for you? Because in this age, the transformation age stuck is a certain way to lose. Now let's map the game. Welcome to flow driven. The number one problem in business today is flow deficit disorder. You see the symptoms everywhere. Burned out, teams, high turnover, employees sleepwalking through their work and profits that never rise to match the effort proof the old way of work isn't working at all. For a century, business ran on industrial age rules, efficiency, consistency, compliance. Then came the information age, where knowledge processes and titles defined value. But those rules no longer apply, because we've entered the transformation age, an era of relentless change fueled by AI, and if you're still using the old playbook, you're experiencing a very bumpy ride. The Cure, of course, is flow. Flow is the state where high performance and deep enjoyment collide, where human flourishing meets business excellence, and it's the only way to keep up in the transformation age, your host and coach is. Dr Dave Maloley, former Army officer, retired dentist and now a flow obsessed performance coach. And let's be clear, if you're an entrepreneur who's okay wasting your team's potential, this show isn't for you. But if you're committed to unleashing genius and building a business that wins in the transformation age, you're in the right place each week. Dr Dave shears strategies, stories and science to help you beat flow deficit disorder, grow profits and reclaim your time freedom. Want to go deeper. Go to flow. Code, dot news and subscribe to flow. Code, your weekly prescription for flow deficit disorder, one sharp idea, one strategy and one GPT prompt to help you build a high profit business that makes people better, all at no charge. The link is also in the episode description. Here's a truth that I think most business owners right now sense, but don't articulate you're not running a business. You're moving through levels in a game that keeps advancing fast for most of our lives, we were taught a different model, the industrial age model, which essentially told us to work hard, be consistent, follow the rules and repeat. But that world has quietly disappeared now. AI automates what used to consume entire days and information, which was the old advantage in the information age, is now instantly available to everyone in this era, effort isn't the differentiator anymore. Everyone is working hard, everyone is busy, everyone is overwhelmed. So the real advantage becomes something much simpler. Can you upgrade at the speed in which the world is changing? That's the entire game. The entrepreneurs that I know aren't struggling because of lack of discipline. Passion or lack of ambition, they're struggling because they're applying yesterday's logic to today's environment. It's like they're making smart decisions, but for a version of business that no longer exists. And this is where the idea of flow stops being a nice to have, and it becomes a strategic necessity. Flow is the one state where your mind matches the pace of the environment, again focused instead of fragmented, decisive instead of reactive, creative instead of cornered, and energized instead of depleted. Once you start seeing entrepreneurship as a level based game in this era as one that rewards continuous evolution, everything you're experiencing will make more sense. You'll understand why old strategies feel flat, why growth feels heavier, why the pressure feels different. Now nothing is wrong with you. We're just in a much more sophisticated game. So before we walk through the six stages of the entrepreneur game, think about this. The businesses that will win now aren't the ones who work the hardest. They're the ones who evolved the fastest. Now let's break down the six levels so you know exactly where you are and what your next upgrade actually requires level one is survival mode, and I've spent literally years here, level one is where everything feels urgent and nothing feels under control. You wake up feeling behind, you end the day feeling behind, and most of what happens in between is reacting instead of leading you're not thinking strategically here. You're thinking, what do I absolutely have to deal with right now, researchers from Harvard and Princeton who study cognitive load have shown that when your mental bandwidth gets overloaded, your executive function drops, not dramatically, but just enough that prioritizing becomes very hard, planning becomes harder. Making good decisions takes more energy than you actually have. That's why everything feels urgent, and why even simple tasks feel heavier than they should. So the important thing to understand is this, if you're in this stage, you're not broken, you're just overloaded. Survival Mode isn't a motivational issue, it's simply a bandwidth issue, and you're not going to get out of this stage by doing more. You're going to get out of this stage by creating enough space to think again if you happen to be in this mode, your goal shouldn't be growth. It should be more like stabilization, because this is the doorway that you have to walk through before anything else becomes possible. Next. Level two is scripted mode. Level two is where you finally get your feet under you. You're out of pure crisis mode, and you start looking for structure. Naturally, the safest place to start is what other people say works. So you follow the playbooks, you install the recommended software, you adopt the proven systems you've heard about 100 times. And honestly this helps structure is an upgrade compared to all that chaos. But here's the honest part. At this level, you're still running a business that doesn't fully fit you, yet you're executing somebody else's blueprint. You're following steps that made sense for their world, not necessarily yours, and meanwhile, your workload rises. As your revenue rises, your tools are going to multiply. Your team is going to get bigger. That means your payroll is bigger, your processes might feel heavier, your to do list will grow faster than your capacity. Psychologist Barry Schwartz, who pioneered research on decision overload explains that the more options and inputs you add to your world, the more mental energy it costs to navigate even the simple choices that's what's going to happen here. You're going to look productive, but you're quietly stretching yourself very thin. You're moving forward, but not always in a direction that reflects your strengths, your wiring or your vision. At this level, the business is functioning, but it's not yet aligned with who you are and where you want to go. Think of scripted mode as using training wheels. It's safer than falling on your face, but it's not how you're meant to ride. Your next level is the moment you start trusting yourself. Level three is agency mode. Level three is when you stop defaulting to what everyone else says, and you start taking the business back into your own hands. You begin seeing what action. Actually works for you, not the version the internet says you should want you start noticing which customers drain you, which tasks waste your time, which tools add complexity, and which team members aren't a fit, and for the first time, you give yourself permission to remove them. This is where something powerful will shift. You stop waiting for approval, and you start trusting your own judgment. Eric Weinstein captures the spirit of agency perfectly. He says, When you're told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialog in your mind, how to get around whatever it is that's just told you that you can't do something well, that second dialog, that willingness to think for yourself, that's the birth of real agency. Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, in decades of research on motivation, found that autonomy is one of the strongest predictors of sustained effort and well being. When you choose your path, your mind stops resisting and starts supporting you. That's why this stage feels lighter, your days feel more possible, your decisions feel cleaner, your energy begins to return. Agency mode is where the business starts adjusting to you, not the other way around. And once you reach this stage, you're finally operating from a place of choice, instead of peer pressure. Now we're ready for level four. Level four is identity mode. Level four is when you realize that the next level of your business requires the next level of you. It's not about tactics anymore. It's about who's making the decisions. You begin by asking different questions, not what should I do next, but something more like, what kind of leader do I need to become for the future that I'm building? And that shift will change everything at this level, your standards rise naturally. You hire differently because you finally know what you stand for. You communicate differently because you're anchored. You use your time differently because you respect yourself. Neuroscientist Ian Robertson in the winter effect shows that confidence and identity are built through a loop. When you make meaningful progress, your brain reinforces the belief, and that belief helps you make even better decisions. Identity mode activates that loop. This is where your past stops being a reference point. Your future self becomes the compass you start leading from intention, not old habits, from principles, not pressure, from clarity, not survival, and the business will respond, because a company can grow as far as the person running it has grown. Identity mode is where you stop repeating the same year and start becoming the person who's capable of level five now. Level five is flow mode. Level five is where your work finally feels like it's moving with you instead of against you. Your attention will settle. Your mind will stop jumping around. You're fully absorbed in what you're doing, and time stops feeling like an enemy. This is the state Mihai chic set. Mihai the psychologist who spent decades studying peak experience called flow, the feeling of being so engaged in meaningful work that the rest of the world fades out. In flow, your brain isn't scattered anymore. It's unified, it's efficient, and it directs your energy towards a single important goal. People often describe flow as effortless effort, total absorption, clarity, without trying the best version of my mind. So it's not about working harder, it's about your attention and your ability finally lining up. You're doing fewer things here, but they matter much more. You're making cleaner decisions. You're not fighting yourself all day. You end these days feeling accomplished instead of depleted. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that I believe that in the speed of the transformation age, flow isn't a luxury, it's what allows you to operate at your real capacity instead of constantly firefighting. This is the level where your days start to feel meaningful again, where momentum replaces pressure, where your best work actually sees the light of day. And once you've reached this stage as an individual, as an entrepreneur, you're ready for the most. Powerful level of all when your team enters flow with you. Now we're ready for level six. This is creator mode. Creator mode is the point where you're not just playing the game anymore. You're actually building it. Your team moves with you, not behind you. Problems sharpen you instead of slowing you down. Execution becomes smoother, faster, cleaner, and it happens when three capabilities lock in. The first is anti fragility, the team gets stronger under pressure instead of cracking challenges create learning, not blame. Stress activates, collaboration, not shut down. This is Nassim Taleb, idea of systems that improve because of stress, your company becomes one of them. Next. We have agility. The business will adjust quickly without losing velocity. Decisions happen close to the problem. Priorities shift without drama. Innovation is normal because no one is afraid of being wrong. The team stays flexible and focused. And finally, we have trust ability. This is what makes it all work. People show up the same way every day, competent, reliable, aligned. You trust them. They trust you. They trust each other, the system becomes predictable in the best way, not rigid, but dependable. Trustability turns a group of individuals into a true team. When these three qualities take root, you have a high profit business that makes people better. Momentum builds without forcing it. Culture becomes your operating system, and you finally step into the role the whole journey has been preparing you for. You stop reacting to the game, and you start creating it. That is level six creator mode. So that's the map, six levels of the entrepreneur game. Most people will stay stuck in those early levels. They'll be working hard and not really stepping into their dream. A few will climb to level four and level five, but level six creator mode, that's the level that I want you to aim at, because creator mode is where your business starts working the way it was always meant to it becomes stronger under pressure. It adapts quickly. When things change, it becomes a place that customers, employees and you can count on. And when you get there, two things show up together, profits go up, and your pride comes back. I'm talking about real profits, the kind built from clean execution, aligned people and smart decisions, and also real pride, the kind you can feel when you look at what you've built and think, this is the company I was always meant to run, anti fragility, agility, trustability. Those aren't just leadership traits. They're the conditions that make both profit and pride possible. So here's my coaching challenge for you, be brutally honest about the level you're on right now. Skip the shame, skip the guilt. Just look for pure truth. Then choose one behavior this week that matches the next level. Don't go into a huge reinvention mode. Don't look at a 90 day overhaul just one aligned behavior that proves that you're done repeating the same year over and over and you're ready to build the business and the life that you're capable of in the transformation age. You won't rise by grinding harder, you will rise by evolving faster. The game is moving either way, the entrepreneurs that will win moving forward will be the ones that decide to keep leveling up until they reach the place where they have a high profit business that makes people better. That's the type of business that you'll be proud to put your name on. That's creator mode, and that's where I think you should play. Thank you for being a part of flow driven the movement to build high profit businesses that make people better. If this episode brought you value, share it. It's an act of generosity helping other ambitious entrepreneurs navigate AI disruption and thrive in the transformation age. If you want the upgraded experience, make sure you're subscribed to flow code. At flow code, dot news, until next time, stay focused and flow driven.