How to find your competitive advantage

What’s your competitive advantage? 

My friend has a three-year old daughter, and she dances and sings nonstop. Every time I go to his house, she puts on a performance for us. When people are looking at her, she lights up. I’ve heard people say things like “I was always performing for my family.” This idea became so clear to me when I met my friend’s daughter. If she decides to sing and dance in her future, she’ll have such an advantage over her peers because she’s been doing it longer than she’ll able to remember. 

I think the same thing about my cousin, Hudson. He’s been creating YouTube content since he was nine years old. I’m a few years older, so I was too busy trying to be cool to realize how cool he was. When he moved to Los Angeles to start his career as a director and content creator, I told him “it might take you a while to find success, just like it took me a while.” It did not take Hudson a while. He caught a wave instantly and hasn’t looked back, because he had been creating videos for twelve years by the time he moved to Los Angeles. 

What’s my story? I’ve switched from interest to interest, trying to find the thing that fit me. I’ve been a true generalist. If I failed at something, I found something new to work on that felt fresh, and wasn’t tainted by failure. 

Recently, (since watching the documentary on Martha Stewart) I’ve been wondering what my competitive advantage is. I’ve been looking back to my childhood and school days to the things I’ve always done. I’m trying to find an area where I’m already ahead. I think the things I’ve failed at in the past are better indicators of a future path than new things. If I’ve failed at them before, that means I’ve already gotten far enough to fail. 

Instead of starting a new learning curve, I should be grinding my way through the plateau. I should be leveraging the things I’m already good at.