Personal Monopoly

My approach to work has always been: find an interesting project, work on it, then work on another interesting project. Sometimes it meant making apparel designs, sometimes it meant creating games. The most recent project is a cat book that I am making with my brother.

It has occurred to me recently that I have never really planned my career, I don’t even have any projects planned in advance. I focus on one or two projects at a time, but I have no idea what I will work on in 3 months.

I’ve recently watched “How to build a Personal Monopoly” where David Perell and Jack Butcher talk about defining a path to a successful career. They are both writers but what they talked about applies to other professions too.

Watch the video and get inspired:

I made notes while listening:

• A Personal Monopoly is a combination of Curiosity, Competence, Character.
• To find your Personal Monopoly answer these questions:
  • Curiosity: What do you care about?
  • Competence: What are you good at?
  • Character: Who are you? What are your unique traits?
• When you define and combine these things, you can then package them into a product.
• Dice methodology:
  • First, you collect everything you are interested in.
  • Then you connect the dots — all your interests and experiences come together.
  • And then it all combines and emerges into a final form.
• Strip away all things that don’t drive you towards the outcome.
• Listen to feedback. Talk about what you are interested in. Attract like-minded people and find out what they need. Based on that, create a product.
• “The greatest source of wealth will be the ideas you have in your head.” — a quote from “Sovereign Individual”.
• Thanks to globalization we get to become citizens of the Internet.
• If you want to create a Personal Monopoly you need to find skills that are:
  • Complementary — skills that reinforce each other,
  • Specific — find a niche,
  • Unusual,
  • Experiential — gained through experience.
• Path to Personal Monopoly
  • Write what you are interested in. Have conversations about it. Get Feedback. Share it. Create articles and content. Repeat. This way you find your niche.