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Let’s see what we can learn from “The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed”. Here is my book review.
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Book Review
The Unfair Advantage gave me a much appreciated inspirational and motivational boost. While it didn’t teach me many new things, I very much enjoyed its realistically optimistic view on the startup world and the real-life examples.
It’s a great book for anyone thinking about starting a business or already growing a business.
1. Hard Work Alone Isn’t Enough
“Success in the startup world is not simply awarded to the hardest workers. It is awarded to those who develop and use their Unfair Advantages.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
“It seems that the more successful people are, the more willing they are to admit that factors other than simple hard work played into their success.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
“That’s how these statistical anomalies of mega-success are made: with a very large endowment of luck, and hard work ‒ and usually the hard work is something that comes easily to them because of their natural talent for it, as well as their passion and obsession with it, which means that they’re happy to put in the hours.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
There is a lot of talk in the self-help world that you only need to put in your 10,000 hours of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, and you’ll be able to succeed.
Clearly, it’s not that easy. After all, there are plenty of hardworking poor people who amount to little in their life.
As much as we don’t like to hear it, luck plays a big role in success.
For example, I am lucky that I grew up in wealthy and post-war Germany, I have a supportive family, my state offers basically free education, and the university fees are next to nothing compared to other countries, I have access to a world full of online courses, books, and podcasts that teach you how to build a business, and luckily I discovered them while I was still young.
Of course, I won’t be successful if I just rest on all these unfair advantages.
My success very much requires hard work, and I am eager to put in the hours.
Still, I have to attribute any success that I’ve already achieved and will achieve in the future, at least partially, to all the lucky advantages in my life.
2. Privileges Alone Aren’t Enough
“Plenty of privileged kids amount to absolutely nothing.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
Before you get all depressed about your success not being due to hard work, you need to look at the other side of the coin.
Good fortune alone is also not enough for success.
There are plenty of spoiled kids that never have much success of their own because they are content to rest on the success of their family.
3. Every Unfair Advantage Is A Double-Edged Sword
“every disadvantage can have a corresponding advantage, and vice versa. Your circumstances and unfair advantages, whether apparently positive or negative, can be double-edged swords.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
If you grow up wealthy, you will never have a burning desire to earn a lot of money. This means a key driver for many people during the tough times of growing a business is missing for you.
Suppose you grow up always scoring A’s and everyone telling you how smart you are. In that case, you might not be inclined to educate yourself outside of academics because you already feel knowledgeable.
Going to an ivy league university can elevate your status in society and open new doors. However, it can also bring decades of debt.
4. Everyone Has At Least One Unfair Advantage
“An Unfair Advantage is a condition, asset or circumstance that puts you in a favourable business position. And yes, we all have unfair advantages.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
We have the tendency to always focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do.
Yes, tons of unfair advantages would be great to have. However, don’t sell yourself short; you have some unfair advantages of your own!
In my daily gratitude and self-worth practice, I take some time to appreciate a few things that are great about myself and my life.
5. Find People That Complement Your Unfair Advantages
“Always partner up with somebody with unfair advantages that balance out yours.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
Most unfair advantages can be acquired with time.
If you don’t want to wait, you should surround yourself with people who balance your unfair advantages.
As an introverted business owner, you might want to hire an extrovert to deal with marketing or customer service.
If you have a great business idea and the money to make it a reality but lack the skills, you should consider hiring someone with the technical knowledge to develop your vision.
6. Success compounds – the beginning is the hardest
“Just as with the ‘magic of compound interest’ which, when started early, leads to massive success over time, similarly unfair advantages and early success lead to stronger unfair advantages, and that success begets more success.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
The more unfair advantages you have to begin with, the easier it is for you to succeed.
By the time you’ve managed to succeed in your chosen pursuit, you will have gained new unfair advantages, which will, in turn, make your next success easier.
This is a very comforting fact. It means that you will never have to struggle quite as much as you do at the beginning of your journey.
7. You have to decide if you want a hyper-growth or a lifestyle startup
“Lifestyle startups are still intense, but not as intense as hyper-growth startups. They’re also not as binary in terms of huge success or total failure. They’re more likely to succeed, not likely to need funding and even less likely to make you extremely wealthy.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
It’s helpful to decide early on what kind of business you are going for because this decision will heavily impact your lifestyle.
A hyper-growth startup that aims to become a unicorn (1 billion dollars) is more grueling work, it requires investors or enormous savings, and it either succeeds or fails; there is not much in between.
By comparison, a Lifestyle business is great for someone who primarily wants to live a great life instead of sacrificing the living for the working.
You can run a lifestyle business as a one-person show if you want to; you can have moderate or even great success, yet most likely won’t become a unicorn, and you can start it from scratch and slowly but steadily scale it with its own revenue instead of bringing in investors.
Knowing what kind of business you are building helps you follow good advice and avoid business tips for people playing a different game.
8. Creativity is a crucial skill that can luckily be developed
“Creativity is largely about training your mind to connect things you learn in one domain to situations that seem completely unrelated. This is known as intersectional or interdisciplinary thinking.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
“We all have creativity in us, and we can all develop our creativity ‒ it is a skill we can consciously work on.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
“One way to improve creativity is to increase your interdisciplinary knowledge: learn from areas and fields of knowledge, and other industries, that are completely different to what you already know. You will learn a lot and develop mental models that are more diverse and that will allow you to think more laterally.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
“Once you have attuned yourself to thinking in this interdisciplinary way, and learned to look for pain points and solutions, you’ll find that ideas come easily. You might even be inundated with them.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
We often talk about creativity as if it were a set trait that we are either born with or not. We say, ‘I’m not a creative person just like we say ‘ I have brown eyes.
Fortunately, the truth is that creativity is inherent in every human, and it is simply a matter of how much we’ve developed it.
Creativity is a skill that is becoming increasingly important in a world full of technology that is capable of replacing us in many ways.
9. You don’t want to be the first business to enter a new market
“Being too early or the first to market is bad because you have to educate your potential users and customers about the benefits.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
“Consider that it may actually be worse for you to be the first in any industry. All these businesses learned from the failures of first-movers in their respective fields.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
Many people interested in starting a business never actually get around doing it because they tell themself that the market is already saturated.
When I started my blog, I also worried about my competition which has been around for much longer. I always envied those who were lucky enough to be the first of a new trend.
That’s why it was eye-opening to hear about the downsides of being the first business in a new market.
Ideally, you will enter a market that is already interested in what you have to offer, and you already have a few competitors to analyze for what’s working and what isn’t.
Beyond that, always keep in mind that whatever you have to offer, as long as you do it authentically, you will be unique and stand out amongst the competition.
Furthermore, the longer you are working in this specific market, the more ideas you will get beyond what others are offering.
10. Your ideas are much more likely to succeed if your unfair advantages are aligned with them
“It’s very important to bear in mind which ideas you have unfair advantages in.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
You might have a business idea for a product for parents that’s objectively brilliant.
However, if you are not a parent, don’t talk much to parents, and don’t interact with children, you will have a much harder time getting that business off the ground than someone who has insight into your target audience.
That’s why especially for your first business when you most likely don’t have the financial means to bring in experts on the topic, you should choose something that aligns well with your unfair advantages.
For example, I started a personal development blog (with a bit of blogging content).
I have the unfair advantage of insight and expertise in this area because I am consuming personal development content myself. I have done so for some time to have the relevant knowledge to share from my own experience.
In which area do you have unfair advantages?
11. Finding a new and unique idea is overrated
“First of all, ideas are overrated. Yes they’re important, but there are countless people all over the world having the same genius ideas at the same time, and the overall conversion rate from idea to successful startup is close to zero. Second, it’s a myth that they need to be completely unique and new to be successful. Most startups are either a twist on an idea that already exists, or the implementation of the same idea but in a new market or industry.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
“If you simply start paying attention to successful businesses, from unicorns to successful traditional companies, you’ll notice that it’s not usually the case that the idea in and of itself is ground-breaking. It’s more the execution of it, including leveraging a lot of unfair advantages to succeed.”
– Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba (The Unfair Advantage)
So many people are scared of starting a business by the competition they encounter.
They think: There already are so many personal development blogs, beauty bloggers, food delivery services, etc., I don’t stand a chance if I start one of my own.
If you look at the history of the most successful businesses, however, you will be surprised to discover that many of them didn’t have such a groundbreaking new idea.
Instead, they worked on an already existing idea and simply executed it much better than before.
One way to better execute your competitors is by having more unfair advantages that help you with the endeavor.
Especially insight into the target market, which ideally comes from being part of the target market yourself, is helpful.
So don’t get discouraged from trying your hand at an already existing business idea.
Well, what do you think about The Unfair Advantage? Did the lessons excite you to read the book yourself? Or did you already read it?
If so, share your own favorite lessons with your fellow Felicity Seekers. After all, we learn best by teaching.
Until next time!
