Unlocking Your Unfair Advantage

0:07Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz and my guest today is Ash Ali and Hassan Kuba. We're going to have two guests today. They're award-winning authors and entrepreneurs. And despite not going to university, Ash became a serial tech founder and the first marketing director of the unicorn startup Just Eat. Hassan built a successful startup from his bedroom with nothing more than an online course and a yearning to escape the rat race. They're now international bestselling authors, coaches, and keynote speakers. And we're going to talk about their latest book, The Unfair Advantage, How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed.

0:48So Ash and Hassan, welcome. Hello. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Awesome. So the book starts out with this premise, and we could probably do the whole show without me asking another question, but here it is. Life is fundamentally unfair. Who wants to take that dollop of hope? I'll take it I'll take it go on then so life is unfair yeah that is the under underlying principle behind our book is that life is not fair and sometimes when you get into self-development like I did and still I still enjoy a bit of self-development you know you learn that you know what you got in life is what you deserved you know you built the life that you're living now you designed it your decisions led to the moment you're in now and all these kinds of quotes and beliefs and mental models to make you take responsibility for your life which is a very useful tool but it's limited because it's not actually that accurate so one of the ways to look at when we talk about this in the book is it's all about mental models so there's one extreme which is to think that all success is based on hard work and you know merit and the other extreme is to think it's all luck and unearned and the reality is squarely in the middle right there's a lot of serendipity in life there's a lot of luck of births and genetic lotteries and there's a lot of things that just happen because you're in the right place at the right time yeah but at the same time you can you know stack the deck in your favor you can make the right decisions you can be consistent in how you think and how you behave and the decisions you make to lead towards success so it's a mixture of both life is unfair and ultimately you know we're so lucky and we should all be so grateful for everything that we have going for us.

2:29And at the same time, we can also exert our own agency on the world. We can also bear some responsibility. We can also take control of our lives to an extent. Yeah. Cause it's interesting. I mean, we all know people have had everything handed to them, all the funding, all the backing, all the mentors, all the, you know, whatever, and they've still found a way to piss it away, haven't they? So it really is kind of that combination. So let's maybe start out by defining what an unfair, maybe some examples of what you would call an unfair advantage that people tend to recognize? Yeah. So, I mean, an unfair advantage is something that's unique to you based on your circumstances and also based on your background and who you are as an individual.

3:10There's so many books out there that talk about strengths, but what we do is talk about your strengths, but also about yourself as an individual, as a unique person. So we talked about, you know, life is unfair and it's not a level playing field. But sometimes when life is unfair and it's not a level playing field, some people can grow up with a victim mindset and a victim type of thinking, say, I didn't have this, I didn't have that. But actually what we say in the book is actually, how do you turn that around? How do you make that stuff that you felt was unfair growing up in poverty or growing up in an area that wasn't great?

3:41How can you turn that around and make it part of your authentic story and use it to an advantage? So an example for me would be, I grew up with little money. And when I start companies now, and I know a lot of listeners are listening here who run small businesses, when you don't have a huge amount of money for marketing budgets, for example, I'm the perfect person to come in and work with you because I know how to be resourceful because I had no money. Right? And so my mindset is always based around being resourceful. That's just an example of something that you could use straight. But again, I, you know, to the flip side of that, I guess we all know people who had everything and should have made it, you know, there, we all probably know at least somebody, or at least you've read their story of somebody that never should have, you know, like you said, they didn't have the education, they didn't have the backing, they didn't have the money, they didn't really have seemingly, you know, didn't seem that smart, you know, but, you know, they've, they've made themselves successful the way we define that.

4:33So, you know, what are, you know, I guess to Hassan's original point, it's kind of somewhere in the middle, isn't it? It is somewhere in the middle. It's interesting because, you know, like I've got a daughter now who's growing up in privilege and I look at her and I look at my life and think, okay, you know, does she have the fire in the belly? And what can we do to help her have the same mentality of working hard and trying to achieve things in life? and one of the things I found was that interestingly is that constraint does kind of foster creativity and if you just live give everything to your children for example straight away then they're not going to feel grateful for it straight away and unless they've worked for it so sometimes having constraints does make you more resourceful and more creative that's as an example of something we live in an abundant world now where everything is available quickly you can order your takeaway quickly.

5:24You can order your cab quickly. And, you know, they're growing up in a different environment compared to us where we had to wait for something, but we had to have some patience around something. So it's understanding what constraint is and how to manage that, I suppose. Yeah. Of course, it's so cliche now, but, you know, I like to tell even 30-year-olds, you know, about dial-up internet and things of that nature. Can you imagine that now? You know, it might take 10 minutes and we had to take turns. Who could use it, right? Only one person could be on at a time and pretty crazy. So I think, would you classify or would you characterize this book as a business book or a self-help book?

5:58Yeah, good question. It really is in the middle because what we've done with our book is we've, the origin of the book, let's get into the origin. We did this book because we were getting pitched by loads of startups for funding. And it was just like Shark Tank, essentially, that come in and pitch us. And we thought, what is the difference that makes a difference here? You know, when we confer with we and ourselves, we're like, what is it with some people that were like you know even if we did believe in them they're not going to close out their funding ground nobody else is going to believe in them and they're going to really struggle here and what is that difference and we start thinking about this and really diving into it and we decided to write this down this idea of the unfair advantage it's essentially a sustainable competitive advantage for a big business it's kind of the type of thing Warren Buffett talks about in value investing you want a business that has the economic moats the defensibility that it's going to sustain and it's the same thing for individuals because at that early stage of a business when you don't yet have a product even sometimes when you don't yet have customers you don't yet have traction and sales how are you going to judge it well you're going to judge it by the team by the co-founders and when you're judging it by the co-founders that's when you have to try and decide okay what have they got going for themselves what do they have that's going to allow them to push through do they have a track record do they have something that gives you the idea that they'll be able to get into this.

7:18Do they have the unfair advantages? And essentially that was the idea behind the book. And that's what made us think about like how we can help people to gain that kind of self-awareness, to know what kind of business to go for, to know what kind of strategy to go for. Should you raise funding? Should you bootstrap? Who should you partner with? These are the kind of decisions we wanted to help people with at that early stage. So we're just bringing it back to the individual. So that's why it's in between a business book and self-development because it's about the early stages of a startup workshop.

7:48So I think there are some unfair advantages that are pretty obvious that people could identify. But if I'm out there listening, what are some of the places that you go looking? I know you have a framework you call the MILES framework. So we can kind of go letter by letter for the acronym. But what are some of the places maybe that are less obvious that you've said, hey, these are unfair advantages that people don't even realize they have? So the MILES framework stands for money, intelligence, location and luck, education and expertise and status. And it sits on top of mindset. And we talked earlier about why it's important for people to understand the unfair advantage in the context of business.

8:26Because business is all about people. And most investors invest in small startups and early stage startups because of the people, not because of the idea itself. It's the founders themselves. And so if you can identify your unfair advantages and then amplify those in your pitch, in your message to hiring people or getting customers, it will help you get your early traction, which is what starts a business. So coming back to the MILES framework, it's about understanding within each one of those MILES frameworks, in each one of those letters, what you have that's going for you. And one of the big ones is insight.

9:02Like, for example, when you're starting a company, if you have insight into something that nobody else has and you're starting a business around, that's a very powerful unfair advantage. And there's so many case studies in our book around that, about specific insights around that. Another one is being in the right place at the right time, right? The location and look, you know, can you find the right co-founder? Can you find the right customers who are close to you potentially, who can become customers straight away? Status is another one, you know, your network and who you know. When you're starting a business, if you know how to raise money quickly and you have a network, that's an unfair advantage.

9:36And if you need to go out to the market to raise money from ground zero and have nobody, no network, it's much harder to do, much harder to do. And we know that's how investment generally works. So there's lots of little examples in different places for different types of projects or businesses. It depends where you want to apply the framework itself, whether it's a project, whether it's your career, whether it's a business itself. Let me, I want to come back to insight in a minute and have you share some examples to help clarify that one. But let's talk about luck. Some people are purely lucky.

10:05I mean, they run into luck, right place, right time, like you said. I would say a lot of entrepreneurs have come to the realization that they make their own luck. And that's almost something that's earned as opposed to something that's an unfair advantage. How would you respond to that notion? I totally believe in making your own luck as well so we talk about luck and we talk about the fact that it's overlooked and luck exists hey luck does exist talent does exist you know all these books have become trendy to say there's no such thing as talent just work super hard and get the 10 ,000 hours in and that will be that's enough these things exist Tiger Woods was like could swing a could swing a golf could swing a club before he could walk like these are the kinds of things that that is like pure talent oprah winfrey was like giving speeches to whole congregations at church when she was three years old making so these things exist but making your luck also definitely exists we talk in the book about how you can actually increase your luck there have been psychologists who've studied the phenomena of people who think of themselves as lucky versus people who don't and how the fact that they think of themselves as lucky just makes them more proactive makes them more observant to opportunities that come up and it's been literally proven in studies.

11:16So it's quite interesting that you can make your own luck. We say, put yourself out there more, increase your surface area to luck, and maybe more lucky things will happen. So it's essentially like rolling the dice, just keep rolling it. No one's counting how many times you're throwing the dice. If you keep rolling, you're more likely to roll the double six. It's my pleasure to welcome a new sponsor to the podcast, our friends at Active Campaign. Active Campaign helps small teams power big businesses with a must-have platform for intelligent marketing automation. We've been using ActiveCampaign for years here at Duct Tape Marketing to power our subscription forms, email newsletters, and sales funnel drip campaigns.

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12:36That's ActiveCampaign.com slash duct tape. Now this offer is limited to new active campaign customers only. So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth, boost revenue and save precious time by upgrading to active campaign today. Yeah, I actually, I started my blog in 2003 that I talk about being in the right place at the right time. That was luck to spot that technology, but also it, you know, it led to my first book four years later, but that point I had also written a thousand blog posts. So, you know, I always talk about really that was a lucky decision on my part to go that route but then i i do think you know you have to you you can also then turn that luck into something that is very fruitful yeah absolutely so what's your unfair advantages you know i'll let you both answer that one go on because i for example as you mentioned you didn't go to college so we're yes the college degree from oxford off the table right yeah that is that can be an unfair advantage if you know how to use it some people We don't know how to use that as well.

13:37You know, we see people coming to us and like, oh, yeah, I went to Oxford and Cambridge or wherever. And it's just, I'll say it's normal for them. But actually, that could be an unfair advantage if you know how to use it properly. An unfair advantage, you know, there's several different things with strength. There can be double-edged swords, as we call them, right? So having something and not having something. And we talked about constraint earlier on. I'll go through it from my perspective, which is the double-edged sword version of it. And Hassan will go through it from his perspective. So from my perspective, I had no money growing up.

14:04So now when I'm building startups, I'm really shrewd and very lean and I can build things very quickly and I'm very resourceful. And actually what it does has done to me is made me more creative. So one of my high skills is creativity, intelligence and insight. I have lots of insights with businesses because I'm doing things all the time. I'm always taking action. So I'm seeing opportunities and getting insights and different things. And intelligence, there's different types of intelligence. A lot of people said to me, Ash, you're really cool. You're the glue amongst your friends. So I'm good at bringing people together and doing things together, which is cool.

14:35I don't like to be the smartest person in the room. I'd rather not be the most intelligent person in the room, but I can learn from other people quickly. So I suppose that's the eye side. Location and luck. I was born in Birmingham, which is like the second biggest city in the UK, an automotive retail industry kind of community. And the tech industry was booming in London. So I moved to London at the age of 19. If I didn't move, I wouldn't have had the same opportunities, wouldn't have been able to join companies like Just Eat and do the IPO. And luck, the IPO, how many companies IPO? oh, far and few between once again.

15:04And there's a luck factor behind that and the right timing of that and then seeing how that would work out. Education expertise, I didn't go to university, so I didn't feel entitled, you know? So that's what made, so I kind of did everything and anything and I built my expertise up in digital marketing. So I was, and the time when everyone wanted to know how to do SEO and online marketing, I was there. And then status, you know, like who you know and your Rolodex of contacts, you know, like I didn't know many people, but now I know lots of people. So if I need to do anything now, for example, I can open my black book of contacts, LinkedIn network connections and make things happen because of my status of having connections that are built up over time.

15:39So that's become an unfair advantage. It's interesting. As you said, you know, the degree from a prestigious school used to really mean a lot. It feels like in the, particularly in the entrepreneurial space, it's more about what were you doing for your summer job, you know, than what degree you got or your side hustle or whatever seems to actually hold more weight than, you know, cost. And I think a lot of it's because people realize college is great for making connections. What they teach in a lot of like a marketing course in college will have very little application to what it's like to market in the real world.

16:11And so that, you know, that education, the actual learning classroom education is probably not that valuable. Yeah. I mean, if you want to learn. So Hassan, how? Then the fastest way to learn is reading blogs like yours, John. And if you want to learn about marketing, you can learn a lot more from reading blogs. and marketing books can get old very quickly, right? What happened some time ago, timing-wise, might not work now. So it's keeping fresh and up-to-date with knowledge. I think that's really important. And we talk about this in a book about there's three aspects of university, but I'll let Hassan talk about Amal's framework from his side and what his advantages are.

16:45Yeah, so for me, look, so it's easier to simplify it to what is your unfair advantage. Well, the reality is we all have a set of unfair advantages and a unique set of them. and that's why ash goes through so many well you know for ash i would definitely say his creativity is just one of the top things about him and the fact that he just gives things a go he just goes for it so for me i would say that it's my ability to learn really fast so i think i have that kind of the intelligence where i pick things up fast and then i'm able to communicate them so one thing that really helped me to get my initial clients and start to develop and get referrals is the ability to build rapport and build trust very quickly so i think that's partly just from my ability to absorb information and knowledge in the space that's so new and like something that was one of the main things i was doing was seo i was doing branding and website stuff but seo and getting people to the top of google was huge and so the fact that i was able to explain it to local businesses build connections with them build trust i think that massively helped me so that was huge for me and then you can go further back and just say listen i was born in baghdad iraq and i came to the uk and london when i was three years old with my family to escape the war and all of that so i'm my unfair advantage is we moved to the uk when i was a baby and i grew up here in london if you imagine if i'd come when i was 20 years old i have the thickest accent and i'd have so much difficulty in terms of just how i come across the status side of it in terms of building rapport, building trust.

18:14So this is so lucky. So you can kind of go into the genetic lottery of it all. You can go into where you grew up and what kind of schools you went to. You can go into your ability to skill stack and build your skills and expertise and learn things quickly. So I think that learning side is kind of the massive piece for me. So I suspect as you've both gone out there and maybe given talks on this or done webinars on this, that ultimately somebody comes to you and says, look, this is great, but I don't have any unfair advantages. What do you say to that person that feels, especially since mindset really sits on top of this, what do you say to that person that has that mindset?

18:54So I would say that essentially this idea, and Ash has touched on this idea of double-edged swords, what you think is a disadvantage, you can turn into an advantage. And I'll give you an easy one. So we have a few examples in the book of people who had a kind of a classic disadvantage so a classic disadvantage is a woman entrepreneur right so a woman founder the example is sarah blakeley founder of spanx now if you think about it what was her unfair advantage okay well it was tough she had no idea about how to raise funding nobody would believe in her she had no connections in that space etc but what did she have she had an amazing insight into a problem based on her status as a woman which is that this idea of like shape wear and Spanx, what turned out to be Spanx, you would cut off the feet off tights.

19:41A man wouldn't have come up with that. Wouldn't have had that insight. The same with Tristan Walker, who's another example in the book. He grew up in the projects in, I think it was the Bronx maybe, or if I'm remembering correctly, Queens, actually, Queens in New York. And really poor, his dad was murdered when he was young. But hey, he was smart. He got scholarships. He got into good schools. He spent a long time thinking about what his big idea is. In the end, his insight was that black men need a different shaving system than other people do because they have more ingrown hairs. And so he developed this single blade shaving system.

20:14He used different wrappers who also from his location. So the rapper Nas grew up also in Queens and then he promoted his brand. And then eventually he was acquired by Procter & Gamble for$30 million. So it's like what seems like a disadvantage you can use to your advantage. If you grew up poor, then you have an insight into how poor people live, what needs they have, what mass market products you might be able to create let's say or if you grew up as whatever like you grew up from another country or you're learning languages or you're there's all these different aspects to everything so it's all about your mindset if you have a growth mindset and we call we talk about in the book the growth the reality growth mindset because we want to root it in some reality then you can grow and you can turn what seems like a disadvantage into an advantage and listen if you're listening to this podcast if you're able to read this book you probably have a lot to be grateful for.

21:05So you just need to kind of do a sort of an audit. And gratitude is one of the underlying themes of our book. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because as we grow up, a lot of the things that drive our parents or teachers crazy, you know, ultimately come out as an advantage. You know, we were told they were a negative. For example, I, you know, my parents used to always joke about how curious I was and always getting into things because I didn't teach her same thing. You know, I was told for a long time that that was a problem that has served me extremely well in my professional life. And I think that's sometimes we just have to overcome, you know, what society has told us is a negative, don't we?

21:40Yeah, absolutely. When people focus on your weaknesses more than your strengths, that's when you start to misunderstand really what your unfair advantage is, because we've all got strengths. And what we, the idea of the premise for the book is to double down on your strengths rather than focus too much on your weaknesses, and then plug those gaps where you can appropriately and understand that we work in teams and people is about businesses about people so it's not just about you as an individual so so ash hasan where tell people where they can find more of you more of the work you're doing and obviously grab a copy of the unfair advantage yeah we're all all over social media so i'm at startup hasan hasan is spelled with one s and ash is it ash ali uk hash for most of your socials you can find us and our website is the unfair com awesome and the book is will be available in, I don't believe there's an audio version, is there?

22:33There is. There is. Okay. So an audio and then in ebook format, as well as hardcover and available, depending upon when you're listening to this, available everywhere that you buy books. Yeah, it's available now because it's at the time of recording, it will be released tomorrow. So it will be available by time comes out. And I should have mentioned this, but the book has been awarded, I don't have it written here. Tell me the best business book in the UK in 2021 or something? You can do it better than I just did. Tell me what the award was. So we were surprised and happy to learn that we'd won our category of the startup category of the business book awards.

23:09And then it was like 12 different categories. And then it turned out we'd won the whole thing as well over all the categories. So we'd won the business book of the year 2021. It was actually, it's based in the UK, but it's an international award as well. The only country that the book hasn't come out yet until now is in the US and Canada and North America. So yeah, it's done really well. It's really popular on Goodreads. It's on YouTube. It's on viral videos on YouTube summarizing it. So if you want to check it out a bit further, you can see some summaries on YouTube. You read all the reviews.

23:44Thankfully, it's spreading by word of mouth because people are loving it. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. And hopefully we'll run into you both somewhere out there on the road. We'll be right back.