The Unfair Advantage Quotes

“It's not about focusing on the negatives, it's about knowing the realities and leveraging the unfair advantages that we do have to help us live our best lives.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Another way to solidify expertise is to teach what you know, whether face to face or by writing up an article or recording a teaching video. It helps you learn it twice.”
― Hasan Kubba, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“There’s always somebody you know who knows something you don’t.”
― Hasan Kubba, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Always keep in mind how others succeed and what status they may have had before they started. Don’t feel disempowered by others’ success, as there’s always more to it than meets the eye.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“The main thing to consider if you don’t have the unfair advantage of Money is to build a business that doesn’t have a high startup cost, and doesn’t need to burn much money before it becomes profitable. In other words, get paying customers fast. Let that be your first priority.”
― Hasan Kubba, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Without the right mindset, you can’t get very far. After all, there are rich kids with tons of unfair advantages who have amounted to nothing. All the world lay at their feet, yet they never took action. Perhaps an even better example in today’s world is the huge numbers of people who have paid huge amounts of money for an education they are not using! Still others have status, but may not be leveraging it. Yes, we start from what we have and what we are born into, but we also start from how we see the world, and what we are driven to do in it – and we can change these things in our favour at any time.”
― Hasan Kubba, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“your education is very important. What doesn’t matter so much, however, is how you get that education.”
― Hasan Kubba, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“By and large, you are born into an extravaganza of fixed variables that you do not control. You must accept this. At the same time, you also must believe you are the master of your own future. You can take responsibility for the outcomes in your life. You can achieve virtually anything you set your mind to, as long as what you set your mind to is within the realms of possibility for you, based on your strengths and assets (your unfair advantages).”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Reality-growth mindset is about having your feet rooted on the ground, with your head in the clouds. Not just your head in the clouds believing anything is possible! And not just your feet on the ground thinking, ‘I can never be above average and ordinary.’ You need both! It is about setting achievable goals rather than looking at outliers and anomalies.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“you’re very high on neuroticism, entrepreneurship is not likely to be something you’d enjoy, as it is very stressful and filled with uncertainty. You will need a healthy dose of emotional stability because of the incredibly high highs and low lows in starting and running a business. It may be worth considering doing something with less risk to help manage your mental health.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Conscientiousness ‒ how organised, self-disciplined and goal-oriented you are”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“The MILES Framework is a powerful tool to help you identify your unfair advantages. It will tell you whether you should be focusing on leveraging your location, whether your education sets you apart or whether your true strength lies in your status.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Before dreaming about the future or making plans, you have to articulate what you already have going for you ‒ as entrepreneurs do.’ These are the words of Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, in his book The Start-Up of You. He and his co-author Ben Casnocha were trying to illustrate how exactly a person could transform.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Unfair advantages (just like disadvantages) build one on top of another and have a snowballing effect. They don’t just add together, they often multiply together. In other words, the more unfair advantages you can stack up in life, and the earlier in life you can develop them, the stronger they will be.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Ask yourself: What do I personally have going for me that few other people do? If you have a co-founder, what personal advantage does he or she have?”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“hard work also plays a very important role, because it’s true that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. But combine the two and that’s when you get rocket fuel.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“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, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“It’s not about working harder. It’s about working the system.’ Working hard without working smart is useless.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Most startups fail, not because they can’t build a product. But because they can’t get traction.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“An unfair advantage is a competitive upper hand, and your set of unfair advantages is unique to you.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Meritocracy means those who “merit” it are the ones who achieve it. In other words: those who deserve to get rich, get rich. At the core of these narratives, you’ll find a fallacy: We can all become billionaire entrepreneurs on the cover of Forbes, if only we pulled our socks up. If only we wanted it badly enough. If only we got up at 4 a.m. and hustled hard enough. We read articles and watch news segments about these superstar startup founders, and we read books that tell us we can all be like them if we simply get our shit together. Bullsh*t.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“disempowering victim mindset where, instead of looking at what you have in your favor, you focus on what you don’t.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“impetus”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Here are some tips on finding a mentor:
1. Identify who could be a good mentor for you. Remember, you don’t need to aim too high; somebody simply a couple of years ahead of you on their journey might be enough.
2. Get their attention ‒ break through the noise. These people receive huge numbers of messages asking for help and advice, and offers to meet for lunch or coffee so that their brains can be picked. Naturally, they put most of these long emails (they’re often really long) straight in the junk folder to protect the most valuable thing for them ‒ their time. Bear that in mind. To break through the noise, you need to be straight to the point and you need to do Step 3…
3. Seek to add value. Just because potential mentors are successful or higher status, this doesn’t mean you can’t add value to them. Have faith that you have some way of helping them. Study what they’re doing. Are they involved in any philanthropy or social impact causes? How can you help? That’s a great way to get their attention.
4. Act normal. This applies wherever there’s an imbalance of status. For example, when you meet somebody that you’re interested in romantically, and you feel as if they’re probably ‘out of your league, you have to not let that make you behave strangely. If you are too deferential, too reverent, and basically tripping over yourself to do stuff for them because you perceive them to be on another level, then they are unlikely to feel attracted to you. And conversely, sometimes acting ‘not normal’ means you go the other way, and behave like a schoolboy pulling the pigtails of the girl he fancies, going too far in overcompensating. Again, that is not good. Be pleasant to be around.
5. Apply what your mentor advises you to do as quickly as possible, then immediately feedback to them on the outcome of the action. This feedback loop will generate and strengthen the mentor-mentee relationship in the fastest possible way, because entrepreneurial mentors love coachable people who take action. And they feel more and more
responsibility when they’re the ones directing your action and you’re coming back to them to report what happened. It’s like an interesting and fun game for them, and they want to know that they’re helping you in a tangible way. Be coachable.”
― Hasan Kubba, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“An Unfair Advantage is a condition, asset or circumstance that puts you in a favourable business position.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“Location affects the vibe that you’re infected with. It’s said that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with, so being surrounded by innovative and entrepreneurial people, who are ambitious and hardworking, is likely to have a positive effect on your own ambitions, attitudes and productivity.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

“One of the biggest ‘hacks’ or shortcuts to personal growth and development is via those we spend our time with.”
― Ash Ali, The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed