🔓Unleashing Your Unfair Advantages in Life & Business

Hello Friend,

Thank you for being a consistent reader and viewer. This project has meant more to me than I could ever imagine. I will say there are many challenges with balancing everything, but my goal is to continue doing this newsletter and weekly (or more often) videos for the years to come. In every episode, I learn a little more about myself and share it with you. This week’s video was centered around The Unfair Advantage, and if you have not had the chance to watch it, these newsletters expand the information presented there.

This Sunday we are going to we are going to delve into the concept of unfair advantages and how to identify yours in life and business. Our exploration is grounded in the insights shared by entrepreneurs Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba in their book, The Unfair Advantage. They propose that we all have unique unfair advantages that can be harnessed to foster success, and they have developed a handy framework for identifying these: the MILES Framework.

🏠The MILES Framework

The MILES Framework posits that unfair advantages can be found by examining the following areas of our lives:

• Money
• Insight & Intelligence
• Location & Luck
• Education & Experience
• Status

Before we dig into these areas, it’s crucial to set a proper foundation with a growth mindset.

Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is a synergistic blend of vision, resourcefulness, constant growth, and lifelong learning, underpinned by grit and perseverance.

• Vision: It involves having an idea or visualizing a change that you want for yourself or your organization.
• Resourcefulness: This entails faith in your ability to devise solutions.
• Constant Growth / Lifelong Learning: This means regularly seeking to learn about new topics or absorbing book summaries and applying these insights.
• Grit and Perseverance: This is the tenacity to persist, even when faced with resistance.

This is easier said than done, in my opinion, to get into a growth mindset, you need to release yourself from the daily struggles and pressures. Focusing on a growth mindset is more about expanding your event horizon. Once you have ensured your foundational requirements are met, then you can open your mind. Mindset is a continuum influenced by many internal and external factors, and you can influence all those factors to channel your energy and intention toward your goals and vision. People often ask me how I have the time to do everything that I do, and part of it is being intentional with my time when I am working or hanging out with my family and friends. My goal at that moment is to do what I am doing, and I try to avoid feeling guilty about not doing something else. One quote I remember from my time in the Navy was, “Make sure you invest time into your friends and family as they will be there long after you leave [the Navy].”

🪜Breaking Down the MILES Framework

• Money: Having financial stability can free you to think creatively and problem-solve without the stress of survival.
• Insight & Intelligence: This incorporates various forms of intelligence, from theoretical understanding (book smarts), to people skills, common sense, and creativity. It also includes the ability to detect falsehoods and the insight to identify a need.
• Location & Luck: Being in the right place at the right time, or in a place where a community can be built around a specific topic, can be a significant advantage. Optimizing your chances of experiencing good fortune by adopting a ‘lucky’ and open mindset, taking action, and seizing opportunities can also play a pivotal role.
• Education & Experience: Education offers the unfair advantages of knowledge, networking, and signaling, while hands-on experience allows you to hone your skills to a high level of expertise.
• Status: This includes both your outer status (economic and cultural capital, appearance) and your inner status (self-esteem). Improving your inner status can rapidly enhance your outer status.

To leverage your unfair advantages, begin with a growth mindset, then look for areas where you have existing strengths. Continually learn from and grow your areas of weakness. Once you’re in this growth mindset, audit the MILES in your life.

I use the MILES framework to identify my unfair advantages before I knew was the MILES framework was. I leverage experiences in disparate industries and situations to add insight to a problem. I leverage education as a credential to open the door, then win people over by connecting with people. I am a self-described sour-patch kid… My sarcastic and sometimes sour demeanor hides a gooey-sweet center that will be there in a time of need. As for location and luck, many of my most influential experiences were because I was in the right place at the right time. I haven’t tried counting the number of times that I was able to experience something special just because I said yes and made the best of a situation. The Unfair Advantage then goes into a section dedicated to creating startup businesses. The section starts with Why, then describes types of start-ups, then the business idea, the people, and fundraising. This section outlines a step-by-step approach to starting a business, and if anyone wants me to cover this topic more in-depth, please let me know by sending an email.

➰Stay in the Loop!

Please feel free to share your thoughts on this week’s newsletter by leaving a comment. If you enjoyed this read, we’d appreciate a thumbs up or a share! We look forward to accompanying you on your journey toward self-improvement and success.

📖What’s Next?

Next week, at viewer request, I will review Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. If there is something you want me to review, or if you have any questions or comments, shoot me an email. I work to reply to every email related to my YouTube channel and newsletter.

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Until next time, keep creating, keep sharing, and stay inspired. Thanks! -Cyle H.

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