Learn or leave the market

ASPIRATIONS AND VALUES
This is the second component that constitutes your competitive 
advantage. Aspirations are our goals and vision of the future and what 
we would like to achieve in one, five or ten years. Values are the guide-
lines we use in building our lives. For example, some people focus 
on making a profit, while others focus on the well-being of their loved 
ones, etc. It is rare for aspirations to coincide fully with values. Some-
times they even contradict each other. That is why you need to deal 
with both in order to assess your real situation. For example, some-
one who loves his job works better than someone who simply wants 
to make money. In the heat of personal development, it is important 
not to lose track of what you are really doing it for.
MARKET REALITIES
The final piece of the puzzle is the conditions we live in. Skills, experi-
ence and other assets are not worth anything if the market does not 
recognize them as valuable or have demand for them. For example, Joi 
Ito would have unlikely achieved such success had he spoken Czech 
instead of Japanese. That is why it is so important that your knowl-
edge and skills match the realities of the world. Sometimes this match 
is coincidental, and sometimes it is a planned result. To acquire the 
necessary assets, you first need to understand clearly which ones your 
future employer favors. The same applies to aspirations: is it possible 
to realize them in the market of your choice?
For example, before opening his Italian- style coffee chain in the United 
States, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz first visited about a hundred 
cafes in Milan and Verona. He took notes of everything he saw there 
because he wanted his chain of coffee shops to accurately reflect Italy. 
He was also guided by the needs of his future customers since he knew 
that without guaranteed demand his offer would be doomed to fail. 

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How to Choose or Change Your Profession. Chapter 4.
74
Similarly, it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much you love 
your job if there is no one in the labor market willing to pay you for your 
services.
So, we have learned that all these components — assets, values, aspi-
rations, and realities— need to complement each other. Browse online 
to familiarize yourself with your market and see if there is a demand 
for your skills. In case there is, where exactly? What if you are passion-
ate about a job, but not as competent as others? Each component 
has to be assessed with the context of the other two in mind. You 
should do it regularly: the realities of the market change over time, 
and so do your values and assets. To achieve a competitive advantage 
in the market, you need to work on these three components simultane-
ously and continuously.