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Competitive advantage

I still feel like I suck as entrepreneur. I suck as writer, as blogger and I have no clue about how to properly use social media. Now some people tell me that I’m good at those things. Might be true, might not be true. I don’t know and I don’t really care about it that much.

All I did is that I just started some day without any knowledge about any of those things. My main focus right from the very start was on getting better at it every single day. Now maybe not every day because I have lots of lazy days as well, but let’s just assume I follow my own advice…

But here’s the thing: I have one really big competitive advantage. An advantage that allows me to set myself apart from most of the people out there. An advantage that is very hard to beat for 99% of the people out there. It’s an almost unfair advantage.

I already started. I started doing the things other people usually only talk about and I now build on this advantage and try to strengthen it every day. When you read this right now and followed me since day 1 and started doing the same stuff that I’m doing I would still have a competitive advantage of one day.

Now as most of you probably didn’t start right away my competitive advantage might even be a lot bigger by now. I guess you get the point…

And every additional day you don’t start means that your potential competitors (we’re all somehow competition in one way or the other) will have one additional day of more experience than you’ll ever have.

And every day means up to 5-8 hours you need to catch up at some point in time.

That might add up to a total number of 50+ hours a week. What’s that in a year? I have no clue but that’s probably quite a huge number and almost impossible to catch up, even if you’re the smartest person on this planet earth.

It might be close to the number of hours you need to practice something until you’re an expert in it. Remember, the 10.000 hour rule? The rule that says that you need at least 10.000 hours of practice to become an expert in anything? 

Now you don’t need to be an expert but I guess you get the point of it all.

If we look at all the successful people out there, there is one very astonishing thing. One thing that barely anyone ever talks about. One thing I would like to mention here:

All successful people have or have had one competitive advantage before they even started working on becoming what they are today.

They all started (consciously or unconsciously) to build up a set of skills that allowed them to build up a competitive advantage in their early ages many months or sometimes even years before their peers.

Some of them were even having an unfair advantage, such as unlimited access to hardware, software or any other sort equipment that their peers would only get access to a few months or years later.

They started to build up their skill sets way before everybody else.

And once their peers started, it was already almost impossible to catch up. This is true for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, The Beatles, Steve Ballmer and many other people we call geniuses today. They might also be some kind of geniuses, but the most important thing to remember is this one simple thing:

They all started way before everybody else.

And that’s the hardest part we have to start realizing and need to understand. We think that it’s about having a breakthrough idea, a rockstar team, the biggest and most famous investor out there, be insanely talented or stuff like that. 

But the truth is that it’s actually about something else entirely.

It’s about starting way before everybody else and building up a certain skill or skill set. It’s about building up a competitive advantage that others have to catch up to. And I’m not talking about first mover advantage.

I’m talking about skills. Skills that need a hell lot of training and practice. It’s just like a group of muscles you need to keep exercising over and over again, otherwise they’ll just atrophy. But even more importantly you need to get started on exercising them today!

You need to start exercising them and start building your competitive advantage or you'll be the one that tries to catch up…

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  • "97% of the people out there won't care about what you do. Act accordingly."

     

  • "Money is not for buying things. Things don’t make us happy. Money is for buying ourselves some freedom to do the things that make us happy."

     

  • "Being unrealistic is the most realistic thing you could do."

     

  • "You just need one person who cares about what you do. And that person is you. And no one else. It all starts with you."

     

  • "We always think we have enough time. Until we realize there's no more time left."

     

  • "The only way to stay ahead of the curve is to create your own curve."

     

  • "Be the dealer. Don't be the junkie. The dealer always wins. And the junkie always dies."

     

  • "The only person you should try to please is your 80 year old self."

     

  • "It's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you keep your eyes closed.."

     

  • "Most advice doesn’t work. Because most advice comes from people who’ve never even done the things they're taking about. And that's dangerous."

     

  • "Being able to build something out of nothing is the most important skill. For what? For everything!"

     

  • "Why are people who write about millionaire habits not millionaires?"

     

  • "No one will magically find out about you."

     

  • "The things you don't want to do are usually the things you should be doing. They're almost always the things that will get you where you want to be."

     

  • "Don't let other people's reality be your reality.."

     

  • "Today it's easier to get started than ever before. That's why most people give up so easily. Because it was so easy to begin with."

     

  • "When you hate your job you'll never be able to do more than just mediocre work."

     

  • "Don't listen too all the life advice out there. It's all B.S. Just like this right here."

     

  • "No one starts as an expert. We all start from the bottom. And have to work our way to the top."

     

  • "The only thing that will ever lead to quality is quantity. To do it over and over again. That’s the only way."

     

  • "Be a Warrior, not a Worrier!"

     

  • "New ways of doing things never work. Until they do. Just like old ways of doing things always work. Until they dont."

     

  • "Constantly thinking about things won’t get you anywhere. You'll never find a solution just by thinking about it. You've gotta start doing."

     

  • "Not getting it right is part of the process of getting it right."

     

  • "How long does it take to change the world? As long as it takes to change yourself. So probably your whole life."

     

  • "Focusing on results won't get you results. Focusing on the actions that produce results will get you results."

     

  • "It's easy to forget all the things you have when all you do is to focus on the things you don't have."

     

  • "Perfection will only hold you back"

     

  • "Never listen to anyone who has never done what you're doing or want to do. Ignore your parents, your friends and pretty much everybody else."

     

  • "Trading time for money is not freedom. It’s a prison. The only way you’ll ever be able to make more money is to trade more of your time."

     

  • "The only way to beat the system is to know the system. Inside out."

     

  • "It's not what you do on your good days that will make you. It's almost always what you do on your bad days that will either make you or break you."