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.

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Twitter: @joinpokerpower

Instagram: @joinpokerpower

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Intro/Outro: You know what it is. That's right. It's time to talk

money with your money nerd and financial coach.

Now, tighten those purse strings and open those ears.

It's the money talk with TIFF podcast.

Hey, everyone. I'm so excited because I have Erin

Leiden on the line, and she is the owner of poker

power. And I, wanted to bring her on because,

as the name may hint, we're going to talk about poker,

but also how it relates to your money. So. Hey, Erin,

how are you?

Hi, Tiff. It's great to meet you.

Yes, and it's great to have you on. I'm so excited about

this conversation. So, first and foremost, let's

just get the elephant out the room.

why poker? What does poker do

for our money?

Yes, it's a very sound question to

ask. largely because there are so many stereotypes around the

word poker and the game, certainly. And what we are doing

at poker power is we are using the

strategy, the negotiation, the risk taking

of the game, and we are bringing it to women in the

workplace to help them empower their own success.

And so we're not at all about getting you into the

casino. what we are all about is, can you

start to think and negotiate and

strategize like a winning poker

player? And what we have found is this is a game

of imperfect information. It's a game of

asymmetrical information. It's a game of

calculated risk taking. All of those things

require practice to get better at. They're skills for

everybody. They're certainly not limited to women. And it is through

the repetitive gameplay and the scenarios that we

practice at our table, both virtually in person, that

we really can hone these key leadership skills for

women in the workplace.

That is so interesting. And I'm

like, darn, we're not going to get rich quick.

No.

There is an element of luck to poker, but it is primarily

skill.

Very cool, very cool. So give us an example of how

that plays out. like in corporate

or in a career for a woman. what is

something that they can learn from the game of poker?

Yeah. so we have twelve lessons, and

each of the lessons has a leadership theme. And so let's

talk about negotiation, because I think

negotiation is a skill that you can

get better at. It is a skill that we don't necessarily

come pre equipped in knowing how to do

successfully. And it is also a skill that

if you do it successfully, you can apply that,

certainly to promotions, asking for

raises, getting your partner to take out the

trash. There's a lot of really useful negotiating with

your teenager. I have two of them, so I use my negotiation

skills with them. and so what we do with

poker power is through the gameplay. so

we're not lecturing to you. We're not just talking

about the game. We actually have everyone who's learning with us,

actively playing with us. And so as you are playing

poker, you're really going to come to what we call the

three levels of thinking. And these directly are

paralleled to a negotiation. So in level

one, you are making a binary decision. You

have two whole cards. They are hidden from everybody else.

You look at them and you have to make a decision. Do

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.

If you choose to raise, then you're putting chips into the pot

and play has begun. That is

negotiating at its most simple. You are only

looking at your cards and making a decision from your own

perspective. What's important is that you then go to

level two. So once you get the basics down, we take you to level

two. Level two is where you're going to ask

yourself, what do I have and what do I think

my opponents have? And the question you're really

asking is a shifting of the perspective. So

it's no longer just, what is my chip stack?

What are my toolhold cards? You're observing and

starting to notice behavioral patterns at

the table with your opponents. And what you're really trying to figure

out is, do they hold something that possibly

can beat what you hold? And should you stay in the hand or should you get

out? that's level two, and that's where most

recreational players are playing poker. it's a very

helpful tool in a negotiation. For example, with a

client is that you can start to see, the

situation from their perspective and know, are you stronger

or are you weaker? Now, level three is the most

complex, and that's where you ask yourself, what

do I have? What do I think you have? And what

do I think you think that I have?

And so it's this ever evolving,

complex thought process. And what's great

with poker is it's occurring in every single

hand. and unlike once a year, you get to

negotiate for a raise or a new

promotion, at a poker game, you're

actively practicing that power shifting, that

assessing of imperfect information at the

table, because you don't know what the cards, other people's cards

are. And, what you may not realize about

poker is that depending on where you are

seated, whether that's in an app, virtually, or actually at a

real table, you are seated in positions of

relative strength and weakness, and that

shifts with every hand. So you get to play all the power

positions. but you're going to make different

decisions with exactly the same two whole

cards depending on whether you're in a seat of strength,

which is the dealer, or you're sitting in a seat of

weakness, which is where the blinds are, or under the gun.

that is a fascinating experience to,

again, practice over and over, because that is real

life. you don't always come to the negotiation table

with the biggest chip stack. and so you have to be able to

maneuver and navigate the environment that you are

in. And we really feel that poker is a great way to get

comfortable doing that.

Wow, I love how you just broke that all the

way down for us. And the

crazy part is like, level three. It sounds very meta

like, what are they thinking that I'm thinking? That

you're thinking?

And it's interesting because I'm sure, when people

hear the word poker, they often think of poker tells or poker

face. And that's absolutely part

of this game, is being able to. What you're really trying to

do is assess change in baseline behavior. And so

that requires some amount of time playing with the same

people to be able to determine that.

But that's one element. There are

so many other elements to the game, and

it's the synthesis of all of them and

doing it successfully. That's what makes you really good at poker

as well as certainly in real life negotiations. It's not

just a single thing you have to get good at.

Wow, that is so interesting.

And, my first

foray into poker was in high school,

and my math teacher actually brought out the

cards and I had no idea how to play. Like,

I knew how to play rummy and all these

spades and other games, but I've never played poker.

And she brought it out to teach us

probability, and I learned so much

in doing that. And so let's talk about that a little

bit. When we're

thinking about using poker as

probability and risk taking, what does that look

like?

Yeah, I love that your math teacher was

so forward thinking in giving you that opportunity.

We, work with a lot of corporate partners, but we also work with a

younger population, and we're very eager to bring

poker into school settings. to do exactly what you

experienced is through playing this game.

There is what we call it poker math and I'll tell you a funny

story in a moment about that. but it is simple

calculations that you can do at the table

to determine, does it make probabilistic

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

your value. So when we play at poker, power, there's no

monetary value because we don't play for real money. But

every chip represents, an amount of value that you're

putting into play with the other players. Now,

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

pandemic, it was 2020, and every one of the

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,

it was the most skipped

lesson. Now, in retrospect,

okay, of course, because you always hear women are afraid of

math. Women don't like to do numbers, which I actually don't believe

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

we want to do complex financial math at a poker

table? Absolutely not. But you don't have to.

so what we did with poker math is we retitled it to

calculating. And women seemed much more

amenable to the word calculating, and

we moved it from lesson three to lesson seven, because I

know if you've already devoted 6 hours of time to learning with

us, you're coming back for lesson seven.

Especially if I tell you that learning how

to do the simple math at the table is

such a secret sauce. And even more importantly, it's

so unexpected that you know how to do

that, because you have to remember that most of the people you will play

poker against are men, just because

5% of the professional players are women. So we're a very small

part of the population, number one. But even

recreationally, men who play this

game, they grew up playing it. So they learned in summer

camp, they learned from an uncle. they

didn't really study or learn the strategy in most

cases. And so many of them actually don't

bring that secret sauce of being able to do the risk analysis

at the table. I love empowering

women with skills that are

outliers that people are not expecting them to have.

And being able to assess whether this is a

mathematically good decision to put more money and more chips

into the pot is one of those secret sauces that I think

women should have.

I love that. And I'm glad you changed that title

to calculate, because people

just. Most people are like, oh, math.

But calculating is like, moha.

That's strategy. Yeah. That's something you want an upper

hand.

With right now, listening

to you speak about poker in this way, because I've never

thought about it this way before. it

also seems like it may help with

confidence as well. Do you see that?

That's actually, the very first thing that

we see. And so lesson one is titled

courage, and we titled it courage because we know it takes a

lot of courage to sit down at a poker table. so

few of us have done it. So many of us have negative stereotypes

of the game. So we get you to come to class, we get you to

come to a workshop that's in person, and you have the courage. You

sit down, and what happens, about

15 minutes into playing is someone at

that table is going to shove all their

chips into the pot, which means they're going all in, which

is a term that's usually familiar to people. So they've taken the entire chipsack

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

they're holding two very strong cards. Maybe they have two aces

or two kings or an ace and a king, and they believe they're

going to win that pot. what happens

next is that person wins. And so there's

this moment where she gets to scoop back this giant,

colorful chipstack back into her

area of the table and start stacking them up, and

she's feeling like a rock star. I mean, truly like a rock

star. someone at that table is capturing a reel for

Instagram as this is happening. And

what's most important is, yes, we're celebrating that

woman who just did that. But everyone else

at the table is also cheering and

celebrating and taking pictures. And that's what's so

unique about our poker power classes, is they

are collaborative. They are truly

a celebration of women's success. Whether you're competitive

with them or not at the table, you want everyone to have

that winning opportunity, and once you have

it, it's Pavlovian. You just want to hit

again and again and again so you can re

experience that pulling of the chips back.

all of that leads to women starting to build

the confidence at the poker table, where just 15

minutes ago, they had never played and they really couldn't

imagine themselves negotiating and being successful

at this game. That is such

a critical experience for us

all to have, whether it's winning for something

tangible or truly just for bragging rights, which is what we do at

poker power, it's very validating

to be able to learn something new, apply it, and then

be successful at it. And so that starts the

confidence. What we see women do from there is

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

know what? I can take and translate these skills

from the poker table to my real life. And so,

for example, we have a woman in our community,

who was going through a divorce. And

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

her. And she decided to come to the poker power

lessons during the divorce process and it was getting rather

contentious. And she credits poker power

with helping her negotiate differently and

better. And she never told her ex that she was learning how

to play poker, because she really did want to have that upper

hand. One of the skills that I think

directly translates from that is the power of

the pause. And what I mean by the power of

the pause is the ability to take in

information and not immediately react.

And again, when you are negotiating, that is such

a critical skill to just be able to

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

chips at that moment. taking that breather, being

able to really analyze everything that is being put in front

of you and then making a sound decision with all the facts

that you have.

I love that. And that's something that I stress to

my audience about financial purchases and

things. just taking that breather. If you're

a spender, you know, you're a spender and

you shop a lot on Amazon, leave something in the cart

for a day and see if you come

back to it or if it just goes into

the abyss of violator stuff or

what have you. But just taking that time to

pause. And I love that you all teach that

with the poker as well, because it is a great

skill to have, that instant

gratification can get us in a lot of trouble

financially.

You are absolutely right about that. And I think,

our third lesson is discipline. And discipline

in a poker game is so applicable to real life.

But when we're teaching discipline. It's all

around folding the cards you shouldn't have in play.

And what you find, particularly with beginners in poker,

is once they understand the jargon and the rules, they're very

excited to play. They just want to keep the action going and

have some chips in that pot. we teach our

community that you're going to fold about

80% of the time, which sounds

extraordinarily high. We always poll our community,

and they'll say, oh, 40% of the time, you fold. Oh, 50% of

the time, you fold. when you look at professional players,

on average, they're actually folding about 80% of their

hands. And the reason for that is there are

very opportunistic and strategic moments in

a game where you should be putting chips in, you should

be betting, and when you do that, you should do it in a very

aggressive way. So, in our games, we're teaching you three

times the big blind, which just means you are putting a great big

stack of chips into play. That feels

uncomfortable, but it's the right decision, and

you get the validation of making the right decision by winning the

pot.

I love that. And also, how I can see this

translating as well is my background is in

HR, and I saw

a lot of people, men and women,

honestly, not ask for more. they

just sat at work, and they were just waiting for their manager to

tap them on the shoulder and say they deserve a raise that day,

which I've never seen happen, by the way. and

so I love that

this gives the confidence, the

negotiation, the discipline. All of

these different things can translate into the

workplace and making sure that you're getting what you're

worth. And so I love that.

I'm like, I want to go play poker tomorrow.

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

sure.

So, with that being said, if somebody's listening and

they're like, okay, Erin, I hear you. Poker is

amazing. I want to learn how to play. How

can they learn these skills? How can they learn

how to play poker? And then also all this goodness

that you gave us today on the show.

Yes. So there are a couple of ways to get involved. we

offer monthly community classes, so

the next round will start in January, and it's 1

hour a week, and it's over Zoom, and it's very

accessible to sign up on our website. It is affordable, which

is very intentional, as we do not want there to be financial barriers

to women getting comfortable with this game. You

also can install the poker power play

app that you can also access by getting to our website, which

is pokerpower.com. And what's great about our

app is you can actually, go through some self learning

modules on your own time, and you can learn the

jargon, learn the basic rules, take some quizzes with each of

those 14 modules to test your knowledge. And

then your next step is you play in the app against the

bots. And that's actually the most popular part

of our app, and that's where most of the women go first, is they

want to just practice this game, make mistakes

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

get to do, if you're in class with us, virtually, you'll be playing on

the app in a live class. Or you can also join our

community games, which, again, there's no money transacting. And those are

offered three times a day.

Ah, awesome. That is phenomenal. I love that you

have so many touch points and so many ways

that people can get involved and have that support and

practice. I'm a firm believer in practice

makes perfect, and we can do anything we

put our mind to. So thank you for sharing that.

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

follow you on social?

Yes, they should definitely follow me on all the social channels.

if you type in Aaron Leiden. Actually, if you type the word Aaron

poker and you google that, you will find me. but I'd love for them to

reach out on LinkedIn. Feel free to dm me.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much, and I enjoyed this

conversation. Like I said, I want to play maybe later

today, just for fun. just with some

of this information that I learned from you. So thank you so much,

Erin, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

You as well. Thank you.

Bye.

Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening, joining, and being a part of the Money

Talk with TIFF podcast this week. You can check Tiff

out every Thursday for a new Money Talk podcast.

But if you just can't wait until next week, you can listen

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episodes@moneytalkwitht.com

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next time, spend wise by spending less

than you make a word to the money wise is

always sufficient.