Abuse your unfair advantages

Happy Sunday!

When I was a kid, there was a game I couldn't put down called AdventureQuest. You made a character, and every time you leveled up you got points to pour into stats like strength, intelligence, and dexterity. I would sit there for way too long deciding where the points should go.

The smart-sounding move was always to spread them out. A little strength, a little intelligence, a little of everything, so you'd be ready for anything. That felt responsible, the way eating your vegetables feels responsible.

The build that always won

But I kept noticing the same thing across every build I tried. The balanced characters never did well, and the ones that dumped everything into a single stat were the ones that carried.

The game hides nothing, so you watch it happen in real time. It was proof of a rule, sitting right there in a closed little system.

The rule hiding in the game

The rule is that most people have an unfair advantage and refuse to use it. They play their real life as a balanced build, a little of everything, out of politeness or fear. Meanwhile the huge upside is sitting in one stat, not five okay ones.

I think about a kid I knew in high school who was cracked at math, genuinely gifted, and spent all his free time grinding English because it was his weaker subject. He should have hammered the math until he was world-class at it, because being the best at one thing turns into the thing that moves everything else.

The part that keeps it honest

Here's the twist, though. In the game you don't pump the stat you like. You pump the stat your class actually scales off of.

A mage who pours points into strength is wasting them, no matter how good it feels to hit a little harder. The mage scales off intelligence. That's just how the math of the character works, and wanting it to be different doesn't change the numbers.

So the real rule isn't "pump your strength." It's pump the stat with the highest payoff for the build you're actually playing. Sometimes that's the thing you're already naturally good at, like the math kid, and sometimes it's the stat you've been avoiding because it makes you uncomfortable.

My own build

When I look at my own build, I'm strong at operations and product. That's where my points naturally went over the years, because that's what I'm good at and what feels satisfying to do. Marketing is my okay stat, good but not world-class like the other two, and for a long time I let it stay that way.

The problem is that the founder class scales off marketing. It's the stat that everything else runs on for the build I'm actually playing. Being great at operations doesn't matter as much if nobody hears about the work.

So I'm pumping marketing now, even though I'm not world-class at it yet. That's the uncomfortable part nobody warns you about.

Abuse your unfair advantages.

Look at your own build this week. Find the stat that everything else scales off of, and stop being polite about it.

If you're not world-class at email marketing, it's the one stat my team and I have maxed out, so you don't have to be. I put together free email marketing plans that show you where your real money is hiding.

Have a great Sunday.

- Raymond

P.S. Go max out your stats.