How to Build Personal Moats
Stand Out by Leveraging Unique Skills and Long-Term Assets
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give”
― Winston Churchill
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We hand-picked 3 good pieces of content for you to highlight this week. We hope they’ll help you get new ideas and perspectives.
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📚 3 Good Recommendations
(5 mins)
Develop a Unique, Durable Edge: A personal moat is a unique, hard-to-replicate advantage that compounds over time—built on rare skills, specific knowledge, or talent. It's legible (easy to describe and share) and ideally something you enjoy and are naturally good at (Ikigai framework).
Avoid Commoditized Paths: Don’t follow playbooks or crowded paths—if something can be easily replicated or found on Quora, it’s not a moat. Instead, focus on building assets that grow over time like a newsletter, angel portfolio, or podcast, and look for opportunities in emerging fields or through exclusive relationships.
Specialize or Combine Skills Creatively: Whether you’re a generalist or specialist, aim to be great at something or at the intersection of multiple skills. Success often comes from creatively combining expertise, relationships, and sensibilities into a distinctive edge that others can't easily imitate.
Curiosity Snacks: How to Redirect Your Impulse to Know
by
Curiosity is like a craving: Just as we tend to eat what's within reach, we also consume the information that's most accessible. Curiosity, driven by the brain’s reward system, can either lead to enriching knowledge or junk content depending on our environment.
Redirection over resistance: Instead of fighting impulsive curiosity, we should channel it by making small environmental tweaks—like using educational apps, placing books visibly, or installing helpful browser extensions—to guide us toward more meaningful content.
Create your own “curiosity snacks”: Simple habits such as following thought-provoking accounts, subscribing to insightful newsletters, or setting up prompts can make curiosity a powerful tool for learning, without relying on willpower.
How to Speak So That People Want to Listen
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Seven Deadly Sins of Speaking: Julian Treasure identifies common speaking habits that hinder effective communication, including gossip, judging, negativity, complaining, making excuses, exaggeration, and dogmatism, urging people to avoid these to foster better listening and understanding.
The HAIL Principles: To speak powerfully and inspire change, Treasure introduces four foundational principles encapsulated in the acronym HAIL: Honesty, Authenticity, Integrity, and Love, which guide speakers in delivering authentic and meaningful messages.
Vocal Toolbox: Treasure emphasizes the significance of vocal techniques such as register, timbre, prosody, pace, pitch, and volume, suggesting that enhancing these elements can improve how messages are received, ultimately leading to more impactful communication.
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Glasp Talk features intimate interviews with luminaries who reveal their emotions, experiences, and stories. The guest,
, is the legendary growth pioneer credited with coining “growth hacking.” He’s an early-stage marketing leader behind unicorns like Dropbox, Eventbrite, LogMeIn, and Lookout—businesses that reached billion-dollar valuations under his data-driven, experimentation-focused approach. Sean is also the creator of the “Sean Ellis test,” a go-to method for gauging product-market fit, and the ICE prioritization framework widely used by startups worldwide.
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Kei and Kazuki
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Love this edition—especially the reminder that personal moats are built, not bought. The idea of combining rare skills and following non-commoditized paths really resonated. Also really appreciated the “curiosity snacks” metaphor—such a clever way to frame intentional learning! Thanks for curating such insightful reads each week 🙌
I like the concept of personal moats and ikigai.
Here's my learning: https://glasp.co/kei/p/6teUrUk5PUafcjfrANaR