How to Build a Personal Moat to Further Your Career

Founder's Journal

Morning Brew

Careers, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Building a personal moat isn’t just about accumulating knowledge or building skills. It’s all about finding a mixture that creates a massive unlock in your career. In this episode, I give you a guide to building your own personal moat. For more on personal moats, check out Erik Torenberg’s tweet thread here. Check out the full transcript at https://foundersjournal.morningbrew.com to learn more, and if you have any ideas for our show, email me at [email protected] or my DMs are open @businessbarista. More info on our presenting sponsor at https://attentivemobile.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up, everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.
0:05.4	Welcome back to Founders Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you the business builder,
0:11.0	the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business,
0:15.9	a team, or a new product. Today, I am talking about building your own personal mode. Let's hop into it.
0:23.2	All of the time, we talk about companies building modes. For example, Netflix has the amazing
0:35.1	mode of economies of scale, so does AWS or Amazon web services. Apple and Salesforce have the amazing
0:43.2	mode of switching costs. Louis Vuitton and Rolex have branding. Now, understanding the different
0:49.6	drivers of company power and modes is super important, and if you're looking for a resource on
0:54.8	this, Hamilton Hemler has written an amazing book. It's become like the Bible for competitive
1:00.7	advantage in business. It's called Seven Powers. But what isn't talked about enough is this concept
1:05.9	that Eric Torrenberg, the founder of Ondeck, calls personal modes. So here's how I think about a
1:12.8	personal mode. A personal mode is basically the company equivalent but for an individual worker.
1:19.7	If you want to understand what your personal mode is, you need to ask yourself the question,
1:25.0	do I have a unique accumulating advantage in my career? And if so, what is it? So if a personal
1:32.6	mode is a unique accumulating advantage, that is a mouthful, what does that actually mean and what
1:37.9	does it look like in practice? To build a personal mode, you need an asset that is hard to build.
1:44.2	It is unique to your interests and talents and it accrues value when you sleep. So let me give you
1:50.4	a few examples. I'll give you two massive names and then someone near and dear to my heart,
1:55.5	who is a good example of just like a worker, just like you or I. So first example is Gary Vee.
2:01.4	Gary Vee, his specific unique interest is building businesses. He has a love for the game of
2:07.6	building businesses and his amalgamation of skills includes self-awareness, empathy, and storytelling.
2:15.2	And when I talk about empathy, what I really mean is his understanding of consumer trends and
	...

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