have you ever wondered how did people
get ahead how does someone like evil
must succeed where others have failed
we're often told that success is
directly correlated with hard work that
we won't get anywhere without putting in
10,000 hours or by working 100-hour
weeks but what if that wasn't the case
what if those who'd succeeded simply had
an unfair advantage over their
competitors and what if we find out that
we've all got our own set of unfair
advantages that we can use to succeed in
our lives as well hey friends welcome
back to the channel and to the very
first episode of book club a new series
where I am going to be summarizing key
insights from books and today we're
talking about the unfair advantage how
you already have what it takes to
succeed it's written by these two
entrepreneurs and investors ash Ali and
Hassan kuba and it starts with the
thesis that life is fundamentally unfair
when we're looking at successful people
they normally didn't just get there with
hard work there was normally other stuff
that played a strong role like luck
circumstances privileged that sort of
thing and the equation that came to mind
when I was reading through the book was
that success however we want to define
it is some sort of combination of fair
play and unfair advantages fair play
means factors that we would look at and
think or I've made fair play like let's
say there's a start-up fondo who gets up
at 3 o'clock every morning and then goes
for a two-hour run and then kind of
hustles on his or her laptop all day and
just like works really really hard that
would be a fair advantage we would say
or I made fair play to that in a way
it's something that any of us could
replicate if we wanted to and therefore
it is fair but that same startup founder
let's say his or her parents was
super-rich and invested half a million
dollars into their company from day one
that would be an unfair advantage it's a
it's an advantage that really helps the
business but something that the rest of
us can't easily replicate the unfair
advantage is about stealing kind of one
of the root causes of success that isn't
spoken about and that's essentially that
life isn't a level playing field
everybody has different strengths and
weaknesses inherently less number one
anyway but number two circumstances are
different so people have access to the
network to finance or the right location
the right timing as hasn't explained
unfair advantages aren't just about our
strengths they're also about our
circumstances basically something that
gives us a competitive edge something
that someone else can't
replicate and one of the main ideas of
the book which is why the subtitle is
how you already have what it takes to
succeed these unfair advantages aren't
just for people who are rich and famous
they're for everyone we all have our own
unfair advantages in our own ways how do
we find out what our unfair advantages
are well we can use the miles framework
where did the miles framework come from
is that something that you guys came up
with oh yeah it's something ash actually
initially came up with is the mass
spring work yeah just breaking down into
money intelligence and insight location
and luck education expertise and status
so we developed into that and then we
thought okay where's mine sniffing and
then we thought okay this is all on a
foundation of mindset if you don't have
the right mindset you're just not
getting anywhere let's talk with M which
stands for money
let's take Evan Spiegel the billionaire
co-founder of snapchat who became the
world's youngest self-made billionaire
at just age 24 he grew up in a
multimillion-dollar house in Los Angeles
attended expensive private schools and
had parents who were powerful and
well-connected lawyers this put him in
unique circles and gave him access to
tech entrepreneurs and CEOs that most
people could never dream of accessing
clearly he had to put in the work and
the ideas but his example shows how
money prestige and power can be a big
unfair advantage secondly the I stands
for intelligence and insight so let's
take the Collison Brothers for example
they co-founded stripe which became a
multi-billion dollar payments processing
company before either of them had turned
22
Patrick Collison's sort of invented his
own computer programming language when
he was 16 and he left school a year
early to enroll at MIT his brother John
finished with the highest ever score on
his leaving certificate sort of the
Irish equivalent of a levels and he'd
been accepted into Harvard before he'd
even done his exams and yes of course
loads of hard work and effort went into
it but I think it's reasonably fair to
say that the Collison brothers
intelligence was some sort of unfair
advantage thirdly we've got ell which
stands for location and luck and as Ray
Kroc the pioneer of McDonald's once said
the two most important requirements for
major success are first being in the
right place at the right time and
secondly doing something about it
location is clearly important for
instance businesses cluster as they do
in Silicon Valley and the right location
can be key to unlocking opportunities
making connections and accessing a
target market Locke is even more
interesting and I'd probably argue that
Locke
isn't really an unfair advantage I'd
probably put it into the Fairplay
section instead yeah there are gonna be
some lucky breaks that are as Professor
McGonagall says dumb luck but a lot of
the time we can sort of manufacture our
own luck by just exposing ourselves in a
non weird way to more things fashion
Husson talked about this in the book as
well take more action do more things
meet more people go to more events and
blog about your startup produce things
and publish them get feedback put more
stuff out into the world and the idea is
that as we expose ourselves to more of
these opportunities we get a lot more
luck coming our way so in a way the more
of this stuff we do the more of a
surface area we have for serendipity the
more we allow luck to appear and then we
can take advantage of it so I think
that's more a sort of fair advantage
rather than an unfair advantage moving
on the e stands for Education and
expertise right let's be honest having a
fancy degree from a fancy University
probably is an unfair advantage
depending on what you're going for like
let's say hypothetically you wanted to
start a YouTube channel aimed initially
at medical students if you happen to be
a medical student at Cambridge
University which is famously a good
University you'd probably want to plug
that wherever you could because yeah
that's your unfair advantage it's
something that other people in that
space can't replicate very easily and
therefore it becomes more more
interesting more brandable beyond that
in the book Ashin Husson say that there
are basically three benefits to a good
education knowledge Network and
signalling but to be honest for me and
most of my friends the majority of our
medical knowledge comes from books and
the internet not from our fancy
university degrees when it comes to
network yeah fair enough being at
university unlocks a certain type of
network but when it comes to signalling
like increasingly especially in the
startup world people are caring less and
less about where you went to university
and much more about what you've been
doing on the sides or what skills you
can bring to the table our value you
know the unfair advantage doesn't
necessarily come from the specific
qualification that we've got although it
can but more often than not these days
it's coming more from our expertise and
that is something that we can build on
our own by learning in our own time and
education it's not just something hasn't
done to us until the
age of 22 it's a lifelong endeavor that
you can you know take online classes and
stuff in fact if you want you can even
check out my own online class on how to
edit videos if you want to become a
youtuber and stuff on Skillshare link in
the video description not sponsored
finally we have s4 status and of course
status can be an unfair advantage Elon
Musk status in the world is so high
right now that if he starts any new
company it's guaranteed to be successful
in some way or at least everyone's gonna
hear about it regardless of how
ridiculous the name is in the Berk Asian
Husson talk about how we can develop
inner status so things like confidence
and self-esteem and how this can help us
if we don't have the outward status of
people like Elon Musk
and to be honest I fully agree with the
thesis that you know it's really
important to develop confidence and
self-esteem and all that stuff in
ourselves I just think it's a little bit
contrived to put that under the status
segment because I don't know I think
it's more of a fair advantage like
anyone could gain more confidence and
self-esteem and stuff if they put the
effort into it therefore I see that more
as a fair advantage rather than as an
unfair advantage that some people are
just gonna have so the idea behind this
miles framework is that we can use the
categories to help us figure out what
our own unfair advantages are but this
stuff isn't just for people wanting to
start a business or to be entrepreneurs
and going back to sort of our audience
are hypothetical audience offer for a
first-year University student what is
the value in them understanding this
idea of unfair advantages well yeah any
career path that you want to take you
want to know what you get out naturally
so there's this concept which is double
down on your strengths yeah don't try
and bring up necessarily from a career
point of view or a business point of
view bring up your weaknesses yeah focus
on your strengths but in your personal
life focus on your weaknesses of where
you can bring up your weaknesses you
need to know what is going to be the
path that's least resistance for you so
to determine the path of least
resistance you kind of have to know
where do you have an unfair advantage
what would you say to people who say
that they don't have any unfair
advantages everybody has unfair
advantages what might seem like it this
is what it you can actually turn into an
advantage so one example is having
little money which a lot of are starting
off in business might have little money
with very very tight budgets or hardly
anything to invest that's how I started
off just hardly anything I had saved up
some student loan maintenance grant and
loans and stuff and I just kind of saved
them up and been a bit frugal with them
which really helped but
little money makes you more creative the
necessity is the mother of invention
anything I've had lot of startup
founders kind of pitch us and when
they've had money behind them their path
to growth it's like yeah Google ads and
Facebook ads but there's no creativity
there you're just burning money and it's
gonna be very difficult to sustain that
especially in the early days before you
know that the market the customers
really liked your product you don't want
to be doing that having less money and
less status less a socioeconomic status
can give you more of a fire in your
belly to succeed I knew some really well
of kids in university and they just were
playing World of Warcraft had no
motivation whatsoever to get a job yeah
so that can be a downside so not
necessarily being born rich is a good
thing being in the wrong location just
to give one more example you can be in a
great location like London or the Bay
Area in San Francisco but rents are
gonna be higher and everybody's going to
be fighting over the same talent that
your runway in terms of how much you
know you have to spend on living you
know cost of living basically is gonna
be super high whereas if you live in the
middle of nowhere where costs are cheap
a lot of people go to Southeast Asia for
that reason actually there's pros and
cons so the final idea from the book
that I want to talk about is related to
mindset you might have come across Carol
Dweck's idea of the growth mindset and
the fixed mindset it's based on research
that she's done when they got a class of
10 year olds and they gave them a
challenge that was a little bit too hard
for them some of them reacted in a
shockingly positive way they said things
like I love a challenge or I was hoping
this would be informative
they understood that their abilities
could grow through their hard work they
had what I call a growth mindset but
other children for them it was tragic
catastrophic from their more fixed
mindset perspective their core
intelligence had been tested I've been
preaching about this growth mindset
stuff for years to my friends and family
and anyone who listened basically like
you know this is this idea that our
abilities aren't fixed we can grow
everything as a learning experience and
that's why I did have like less than
zero qualms about putting my hand up to
ask a question in class or in a lecture
or looking like an idiot because I
recognized that it's all it's all a work
in progress it's all part of the process
of improving it's all part of the growth
mindset but one of the issues with the
growth mindset in fairness is that you
can kind of take it too literally so
taking this sort of thing into account
Ashin Husson in the book talked about an
evolution of the growth mindset they
call the reality growth mindset this
mindset encourages us to try to strike a
balance between self awareness and self
belief as they say in the book the
reality growth mindset is about having
your feet rooted on the ground with your
head in the clouds so again this is one
of those paradoxical things which is
like we're all humans we're all cut from
the same cloth whatever somebody else
can achieve I can achieve versus like
don't kill yourself trying to achieve
and feel bad and get depressed about it
because not everybody's born with the
same opportunities in the same talents
but what can we learn from them anyway
so having that balanced outlook rather
than just pedestal izing them wow
they're amazing
nobody's like them Elon Musk is an alien
robot but then verse is saying anybody
could do it when we think about success
we can think about all the things that
we don't have going for us we can fixate
on the privileges that we don't have but
when we do that we blind ourselves to
the unfair advantages the competitive
edge that we do have we often don't
appreciate that wherever we are whatever
stage of life we're in we've got so much
to be grateful for as ashen hussam
talked about in there
it's not about focusing on the negatives
it's about knowing the realities and
leveraging the unfair advantages that we
do have to help us live off best lives
thank you for watching
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