How do people truly succeed in life?
How do entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs achieve extraordinary success where others have failed? We are often told that success is directly corelated with hard work and determination, but according to Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba's book - The Unfair Advantage, that's not necessarily the case. It further explains that life is fundamentally unfair, and that it is never a level-playing field. For someone to achieve great success in life, they have to leverage and exploit some unfair advantages that they have or could potentially have.
According to the book, success is a combination of fair play, this is where you factor in hard work, determination, persistence, or grit, and unfair advantages. It doesn't necessarily mean that if one works harder, they will instantaneously have more success than the others. Ali and Kubba also pointed out the importance of identifying one's unfair advantages in life to be able to leverage them for their own benefit. Furthermore, they often highlight that although hard work is important in getting things done and moving yourself forward, it is only but a fraction of the true formula for success.
The MILES framework
After years of experience in growing and boosting start-up companies, Ali and Kubba came up with a formula that helps identify people's unfair advantages in life. The MILES framework, stands for Money, Intelligence, Location and Luck, Education, and Social Status. In order to get ahead in life, the right identification and exploitation of unfair advantages you already have, gives you a better chance at success. A person who has a better network and money, will have an enormous level of advantage than someone who doesn't have the network and money, despite the amount of hard work that the latter has put in.
Money
Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snapchat, became the world's youngest self-made billionaire at age 24 because of money. Spiegel grew up in a multi-million dollar home in Los Angeles and obtained education from ridiculously expensive private schools paid by his parents who are both well connected lawyers in America. All of these luxury brought Evan into unique circles and opened doors to meeting tech entrepreneurs and CEOs that most people would never have access to. Evan Spiegel worked hard putting in a lot of hours for Snapchat to be successful, but the bigger catalyst for success in this example was that his family already had power, prestige, money and connections to propel him in the direction of success.
Intelligence
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1975 to start Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen. In the foundation years of the company, although Gates never publicly divulged his IQ, the billionaire scored 1,590 out of 1,600 on his SATs in 1973, which converts to an IQ of 160, similar to Albert Einstein's and Stephen Hawking's. This score technically means that Gates is a genius, and is smarter than 99.96% of the population. With the introduction of Microsoft products and services, Bill Gates became the richest person on the planet from 1995 to 2010, then again from 2013 to 2017, with a current net worth of $132.3 billion USD. This level of success tells us that Gates was technically smarter than the rest of us, and has used that advantage to create a revolutionary software company that dominated his niche market for years.
Location and Luck
According to McDonald's pioneer Ray Kroc, the two important factors for success are being in the right place at the right time, and doing something about it. A tech entrepreneur or a start-up co-founder living in Silicon Valley gives them the advantage of unlocking business opportunities, and building networks with people who can boost their companies to success, as the place itself is the start-up capitol of the United States. There are also better ways to get funding from angel investors who live just a few miles away from you who could potentially have the same goals and vision as you. Luck however, is the end product of the relationships and networks you've built around yourself, giving you a longer arm's reach to better opportunities in life. By simply taking more action, doing more things, meeting more people, going to more events and getting feedback, increases your chance of luck and success.
Education
It is quite common knowledge that having a degree from prestigious universities such as Cambridge, Oxford or Harvard gives you a better network of people well connected enough to help with recommendations to big firms, and other institutions. Others also recognise cultural traditions, or the notion that people who came from the same schools or graduated from the same universities tend to help each other more in the real world, than people with different schools. On the other hand, the significance of having good education relies on the quality of learning material that one has obtained, which can be crucial in increasing the intelligence of a person. Children enrolled by their parents into advanced learning schools in their primary years, gives them the advantage of having better learning foundation as early as possible, pushing their limits of learning at a young age.
Social Status
Elon Musk can influence the price of Bitcoin and Dogecoin with a single tweet, as what happened in December 2020 when he hosted the SNL. The Kardashians can pretty much sell or promote any product or brand with a single Instagram post, and get quick and sizeable amounts of profits. Status and influence has been no doubt one of the biggest driving force to achieving success and is more common in politicians and celebrities. Politicians hold power and connections well enough to expedite things and cut red tapes for their friends, while celebrities and social media influencers are simply likeable most of the time because of their online presence and popularity.
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