I was talking to my dad, who is one of the best civil engineers in the country, and I asked him what his secret to success was.
He told me it was hardwork.
Hardwork? I thought — I don't think so. The people cleaning our houses, fixing our AC, building our roads — they are not wealthy. Hardly anybody would call them successful. He however had built what he did through sheer hardwork, so what was different?
SCALE.
Now that's not to say that it is easy. For most cases, business is all about finding your place in a system. You see, the bigger you are in your scale, the bigger chunk of the pie is yours. But if you are increasing your scale, you are moving to a bigger pie.
So you just optimise for the biggest pie you can take the biggest chunk from. Because some pies will have lots of takers, some pies will be small, some are just not your cup of tea. So what matters most is finding a place where you can have a pie you would happily have for a long time, have a good chunk assigned to you, and the pie is big enough for you to scale.