Episode 7: If You Are Following, You Can’t Be Leading
Unfair advantage is something others cannot readily copy
There are many inspiring people writing articles about success online. They are shouting to everyone that their success can be replicated and copied, and if you work hard enough, success can be yours too.
And so, you analyse their advice and do what they advocate in the hope that you could follow in their footsteps to success. But successful writers are like Master Chefs; they only share 99% of their recipe and deliberately miss mentioning one to two key ingredients critical to their success.
You thought you had mastered the recipe only to fail time and again until you finally realise you don’t have the entire formula to reproduce that same result as advertised by the Master Chef.
Life is unfair, and the playing field is never even. What you don’t realise is every successful writer has some unfair advantages they created to achieve that success.
When you first embarked on writing, you would have heard some of the top writers who have amassed a huge following on Substack or Medium, and you would certainly be enticed to follow them and analyse their winning formula in the hope that you could be the next top earners.
You didn’t know a million writers before you have already tried. Their conclusion is that their success cannot be replicated if you only follow what they advocate. They have unfair advantages that powered their success which you do not know about. Even if you could figure out their unfair advantages, you realise they are not something you can readily copy.
Blindly following someone else’s advice will not work. To succeed, you have to get beyond hard work and go deep into understanding their unfair advantages. Through the process, discover how to harness your own unique circumstances and build your own competitive edge that no one else can copy.
What is an unfair advantage?
Grit, perseverance, hustle, talent, passion, and discipline are certainly important for a startup’s success, but they alone won’t guarantee success. Life is not pure meritocracy based, and what also helps is wealth, connections, wits and other forms of assets. For example, a social media influencer with a massive following from another platform certainly has an ‘unfair’ advantage over someone anonymous trying to start from scratch. Despite the latter being more talented and passionate, the former will find it easier to attain a head start on Substack than the latter. Coming from the right place at the right time with the right background considerably helps with the luck factor.
How many advantages do you have?
If you try to compete by attempting to replicate all of the others’ advantages, you may become better, but it will not give you the success you seek.
To enter the winners’ club, not only must you equip yourself with the skills that your competitors have, you must also create unfair advantages your competitors cannot compete in
We all have our unique advantages and point of differentiation, and, no, it won’t make you an overnight success, but it will help set you apart from everyone else. All you need to do is create and use it to its fullest potential.
If you say your advantage is your good command of English, you are setting yourself up against millions of writers who have the same advantage as you. If it is the books you have authored, you still compete with an infinite number of authors.
What can you create to help massively reduce the number of people you compete with? And how can you turn that advantage into an unfair advantage?
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