In a recent blog post, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh insightfully wrote that everything he knows about business he learned by playing poker. The analogy is poignant, and since Tony’s company just hit $1Billion in sales this year, I’m inclined to listen to what he has to say.

But since I’m not the world’s biggest poker player, I set out to find other business analogies more suited to my tastes. In my search, I found a book relating success in business to the board game Monopoly, and another article using World of Warcraft as a model. Interesting, but neither one really did it for me.

Outside the realm of games, Tim Knox writes that everything he knows about business he learned from his poverty-stricken “mama”, while another author states that what he knows he learned from his children. One guy gained business savvy by flipping burgers at McDonald’s. For another guy, it was mountain biking that did the trick. Other EIKAB (Everything I Know About Business) stories use sports, movies, and even the TV show Seinfeld to make their points.

It appears that virtually any experience of the human condition can be stretched into an analogy for successful business practices, which, in turn, can be used to sell books and articles. Someone should write a book called, “Everything I Know About Business I Learned from Everyone Else’s Business Analogies.” On second thought, no they shouldn’t.

So what does this say about the information itself? Is one analogy better than another? Or do they all cancel each other out?

For me, the answer is: none of the above. In fact, when taken as a whole, these analogies say more about the authors themselves than they do about business in general. They illustrate that successful people, from all walks of life, have some core things in common.

First of all, they are great students. We’re not talking about conventional classroom students either. These men and women are students of life, picking up useful traits, philosophies and habits no matter where they are and no matter what they’re doing.

Secondly, these people have vision that allows them to see the potential in everything. A pile of rocks might be useless to someone else, but to the person with vision it might be a castle. Or a bridge. Or a playground.

Lastly, successful business people cultivate successful habits. By implementing proven practices from other disciplines into their day-to-day routines, they create working models for themselves and foster environments where success can take place.

What experiences from your life could be used as a business analogy? And what are your keys to making that analogy work in the real world?