What Chess Taught Will Trepp About Business
About this video
For Will Trepp, chess is more than just a childhood passion - it's a profound teacher of strategic thinking and adaptability. From a young age, Will learned under the guidance of Sunil Weeramantry, a renowned chess coach whose insights have shaped his approach to both chess and life.
In chess, success hinges on anticipating moves several steps ahead and considering multiple scenarios simultaneously. Will Trepp draws a parallel between this strategic foresight and the way he navigates complex business decisions at Rockport.
One valuable lesson from chess is the importance of changing perspectives. Will recalls how reordering his approach to a problem led to new solutions—a concept he applies to business by continuously reassessing strategies and exploring different options.
To find out more about Rockport and the Trepp legacy behind it, visit www.therockportgroup.com.
Video transcript
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I started playing chess when I was four and a half. That was when I played my first adult tournament. I studied under Sunil Weeramantry, who may not mean a lot to some of the people listening but in the chess world is a big and famous coach. His two stepsons ended up becoming very well-known. The youngest, especially, is Hikaru Nakamura, who is now currently the number two in the world. I think maybe the first lesson I learned is to think of combinations in a sequence.
I still remember the lesson with Sunil where he saw me struggling with a problem and said “You're looking at it in this order, try changing the order. So instead of A, B, C, try C, B, A.” And so, the combination can work in that order and not the first. And so, in life you must realize that sometimes you must take a slightly different order of operations to get the end result. Another thing that I learned from chess, is you need to be able to extract yourself from a situation and try to lift yourself up to 10,000 feet, 20,000 feet, and look down at life's problems like it was a board.
And when you look at it that way, sometimes life gets a little bit more predictable, understandable, and doable.
Posted by Rockport Editorial Team
