2-3-4 Friday
‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’
1 thought
“The secret of life is weak
competition.”
Warren Buffett
I used to think I was quite stupid to niche so specifically into designing annual reports for charities, ghostwriting, and publishing books.
But since reading Buffett’s words, one realises,
hey maybe I wasn’t so stupid after
all.
In modern Singapore, there’s a chase to do what’s hot in the market, and what everyone else is doing. Just look at what people want to study, or where they want to move.
Most want to do technology, even though they don’t seem to realise that the best coders have been programming since they were 12, and you might be far far away in terms of
being able to match them.
Today you might be thinking about the future viability of your career, especially in the face of AI. You might even be taking skills upgrading courses to try and figure out what’s next.
None of these are bad efforts. But why none of this usually translates into lasting change is because we keep trying to start from places we are not
good at, rather than building off our circles of competence. It’s about expanding from our primary circle of competence, rather than trying to build new circles of competencies.
It is from those lateral expansions into adjacent areas of competencies, that you find yourself overpowered when compared to the rest of the competition.
Think of yourself as Iron Man and getting an overpowered suit compared to the rest of those men with only guns.
So why don’t we find weak competition, and why don’t we stick
to our circles of competence?
- Because we don’t think of trying to beat weak competition, and
- Because we fear what we don’t have.
1 talk
Buffett: An interesting question is to think about, if you had 500 Jack Welches and they were
running the Fortune — they’re cloned — and they were running all of the Fortune 500 companies, would returns on equity for American business be higher or lower than they are presently?
It’s way better to be in securities markets if you have a hundred IQ and everybody else operating has an 80, than if you have 140 and all the rest of them also have 140.
So the
secret of life is weak competition, you know. (Laughter) Somebody said, “How do you beat Bobby Fischer?” You play him in any game except chess. (Laughter) That’s how you beat Jack Welch. You play him in any game except business, although he’s a very good golfer, I want to — (laughs) — point out.
1 tip
Don’t believe me?
I grew up in a neighbourhood primary school, where I consistently scored top. When I entered an elite school, I landed at the bottom. For the 6 years I was there,
I thought I was stupid. I lost most of my confidence.
Then I landed in business, starting in one of the most competitive industries - adult training, where most people were twice my age, with PHDs to show.
Why would they pick a 26 year old to teach?
The next iteration of our business was
doing websites. Again, why would they pick a Singaporean with no coding knowledge, where there were people on Fiverr, at half the price, and twice the experience?
The iteration we are on now, are annual reports. We’ve been doing this since 2023 December. Mind you, I have no design background. We were lucky to win the first tender we did by undercutting the competition.
But since then, we’ve gotten a constant inflow of queries simply by focusing on areas with little competition.
So today, if you want to win, perhaps you should ask:
- Where can I play, where I know I can easily beat the competition?
- And if I can’t win the competition, where else should I
look?
John
Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love