Narrow the Niche Until You're the Only One

"Unreasonably successful people construct their own proprietary mental map to guide their steps. They create their own segment, which reflects their personality, their objective and their way of working, all at the same time. Nobody else can enter their skin; nobody else can enter their segment; it is impenetrable, because they fill it, and nobody else can."

"•  The first stage is to take a new field – or market – which is exciting and pregnant with possibilities, because knowledge is being discovered quickly, particularly knowledge or ideas which seem to contradict established theory or procedures. Part of the apparent genius of scientific or other discoveries is the choice of broad field from which to branch out into new speculation and discovery. •  The next steps are progressively to narrow the field of enquiry, by building on the discoveries of the most unconventional and creative enquirers, and applying their insights, alone or in a new permutation, to a new avenue of speculation and experimentation, that could lead to a dramatically different picture of how the world works."

"You don’t want to be the best at what you do; you want to be the only one. —JERRY GARCIA"

"The first lesson is to build up expertise in a fast-growing but small, narrow area of expertise, where few people currently operate. Without deeply understanding a specialised and relatively unknown area, your intuition is unlikely to propel you forward decisively."