What is your Unfair Advantage?

Have you ever wondered, how do people get ahead to be successful? How does someone like Elon Musk succeed where others have failed. You’re often told that success is correlated to hard work and that you won’t make it anywhere in life without putting in thousands of hours of work and effort. But what if that was not the case? What if the people who made it to the top just had an unfair advantage over their competitors and others? And what if we all have our unfair advantages to succeed in our lives as well?

When you look at successful people, they normally did not just get there with sheer hard work. Numerous circumstances play a role such as luck, conditions, circumstances, etc. Success may vary in everyone’s dictionary. From making a routine to dedicating 2 hours in a day to a hobby, anything can make you successful. But from a consensus, an equation that comes to mind is this -

“Success = Fair Play x Unfair Advantage “

For example, business owners hustling every single day, setting up a routine, working all day to set up or run their business, toiling away to achieve the targets that they have set, having the determination and grit to make it happen would all be counted as “Fair Play”. On the other hand, an unfair advantage is not just our strengths but our circumstances, for example, a competitive edge that another person cannot easily replicate. This can vary in a vast range of fields from grasping a concept fast which would otherwise be difficult, all the way to creating a network with different people. This is not only for the rich and famous, it is for everyone. We all have our unfair advantages and our ways. So how do we find out what our unfair advantages are? This could be explained by the “MILES” Framework.

The MILES Framework, based on the name is broken down into 5 key insights and that is:

• Money

Let’s talk about money. Let say you grow up in a multi-million dollar household, attend expensive private schools, and have parents who are powerful and well connected. This can put you in unique circles and give you access to well-renowned entrepreneurs and CEOs. In this case, money can be an unfair advantage.

• Intelligence & Insight

Let’s take the Collison Brothers for example. They co-founded ‘Stripe’ which became a multi-billion dollar payments processing company before either had turned 22. Patrick Collison invented his programming language and enrolled at MIT and John Collison was accepted at Harvard before even finishing his school. In these cases, you could say that their intelligence was sort of an unfair advantage to them.

• Location

Location is very important and businesses set in the right location can unlock key opportunities, make connections and focus on a targeted market. A good location can be an unfair advantage, a classic example would be Silicon Valley.

• Education & Expertise

Well, having a fancy degree from a fancy university can be an unfair advantage. For example, say you wanted to start blogging in the Cybersecurity niche and you happen to be a good student in the field from a renowned university, you probably would want to publicize that as much as you can. This could be your unfair advantage because that is something other people in the space cannot easily replicate therefore making you more brand-able. Education also brings you a large network of experts like your professors and colleagues. Our unfair advantage does not necessarily come from the qualification we’ve got but more often than not, these days it’s coming from our expertise and that is something we can build over time and learn throughout our lifetime.

• Status

Status can be an unfair advantage. Take Elon Musk for example. His status is so high at this point that any company he starts is guaranteed to be successful in some way, shape, or form. Talk about a guy whose tweets can either exponentially raise the price of Bitcoin or crash them completely. But you can also develop inner status such as confidence, self-esteem, and not just the outer.

So the MILES Framework can help us determine our unfair advantages and this is not only restricted to people who want to start a business or become entrepreneurs, it is for everyone. What might seem like a disadvantage can be turned into an advantage over time. Many of us when starting a business do not have the necessary capital to invest in our business or idea, but having little money to work on makes you more creative and hungry to achieve it and that is your unfair advantage. Having less money and less social economic status can give you more of a fire in your belly to succeed.

One of the most important things when it comes to your unfair advantage is your mindset. The idea is that our abilities aren’t restricted, everything can grow given time and effort, but the mindset needed to put in that time and effort is what matters. A growth mindset makes everything a learning experience and part of a grand process. It is very important to have a balanced outlook towards things.

We can curse all the things that are not going in our favor or fixate over privileges we do not have but in this process, we blind ourselves over the unfair advantages and the competitive edge that we do have. A lot of the time we can manufacture our luck. Take more action -> Do more things -> Meet more people -> Go to more events -> Blog about your ideas -> Produce and Publish them -> Get FeedBack -> Put yourself out in the world. Whatever stage in life you are in, you have so much to be grateful for.

Reference :

I got my references from the book I read "The Unfair Advantage" By Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba and focuses on one of the most enlightening topics I’ve read about.