Chapter 4
Think small.
Do something unique and important in some small market.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
– Rumi
What seems different in yourself; that's the rare thing you possess. The one thing that gives each of us our worth, and that's just what we try to suppress. And we claim to love life.
- Andre Gide
As someone who has bounced around between different worlds, different realities, different mindsets, I’ve always been fascinated by those who create their own reality outside the dominant systems of the mainstream culture. How do you make a living without participating in the status struggle, the life of desire, that the mainstream culture obsessively chases?
Small markets are better. Small markets attract less competition from highly skilled, big money in search of an above average return. You want to operate in a small market where unique skill rather than capital makes the difference. And you want to make a living where unique skill rather than hard work make the difference. You don’t want to be better than, you want to be the only.
How can you contribute the most to other people’s lives doing something that no one else is doing? It may not be art per se, but if it is unique, it is creative. In fact, art is highly competitive. Writing novels, poetry, are examples of highly competitive endeavors. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue your passion, but ultimately your internal drive is going to have to overcome the market’s indifference. It may take years for your determination to triumph over reality. And your work is going to have to be unique. The more crowded the market, the more unique your work is going to have to be, and the more unique it is going to have to be in a way that is important to your potential customers.
This is all as it should be, probably. This is what free enterprise is good at, despite the heartache competition causes. It encourage innovation, uniqueness. It fascilitates great music, great books, a rich, diverse culture. If an endeavor is not unique in terms of output, then it had better be unique in terms of offering something needed at an exceptional price. Both unique, important products or services, or arts, and exceptional price, are important contributions to the lives of others.
For more on this, see Competition is for Losers with Peter Thiel. He says, essentially, what John. D. Rockefeller said over a hundred years ago:
"It is surprising how many businessmen go into important undertakings with little or no study of the controlling conditions they risk their all upon.
"In the choice of your profession or your business employment, let your first thought be: Where can I fit in so that I may be most effective in the work of the world? Where can I lend a hand in a way most effectively to advance the general interests? Enter life in such a spirit, choose your vocation in that way, and you have taken the first step on the highest road to a large success. Investigation will show that the great fortunes which have been made in this country, and the same is probably true of other lands, have come to men who have performed great and far-reaching economic services -- men who, with great faith in the future of their country, have done most for the development of its resources.
"...avoid the unnecessary duplication of existing industries. He would regard all money spent in increasing needless competition s wasted, and worse. The man who puts up a second factory when the factory in existence will supply the public demand adequately and cheaply is wasting the national wealth and destroying the national prosperity, taking the bread from the laborer and unnecessarily introducing heartache and misery into the world.
"Probably the greatest single obstacle to the progress and happiness of the American people lies in the willingness of so many men to invest their time and money in multiplying competitive industries instead of opening up new fields, and putting their money into lines of industry and development that are needed. It requires a better type of mind to seek out and to support or to create the new than to follow the worn paths of attempted success; but here is the great chance in our still rapidly developing country. The penalty of a selfish attempt to make the world confer a living without contributing to the progress or happiness of mankind is generally a failure to the individual. The pity is that when he goes down he inflicts heartache and misery also on others who are in no way responsible."
- John D. Rockefeller, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events
Almost everything we do has some creative element, and certainly doing work of your own invention, work no one else is doing, has a major creative element.As Rick Rubin says in his important book, The Creative Act, finding a new way home to avoid a traffic jam is creative.
. . . a first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
- Abraham Maslow
Examples I’ve encountered:
High-end stereo installations on Hilton Head Island. I rented, for a few months, an office on Hilton Head. A couple of doors down from me was the office of the only installer of high-end stereos on Hilton Head, an affluent oceanfront community in South Carolina. He’d charge around twenty thousand dollars per installation, which would take him less than a week per install. I image the equipment itself cost him several thousand dollars, but it was an extremely profitable business. He worked two or three days a week, on average.
Custom fifty-caliber black powder target muzzleloaders. I used to have a neighbor who made these. He had an eighteen-month waiting list and they sold for about twenty thousand dollars each. He made about one a month working twenty or thirty hours a week.
Limmer hiking boots. These high-end hiking boots are available either off the shelf for $475 and up, or custom for $750 and up (I understand up to $2000). They are the only custom cobblers of hiking boots (setting aside small local shops) in the US. I’m told their boots are extremely comfortable.
These are offered not as career suggestions, but as general examples of businesses that dominate, or are actual monopolies, in some small or tiny niche. Getting into the high-end stereo installation business on Hilton Head Island, for instance, is probably a bad idea. The market can’t support two highly profitable business. All you can do is compete on price, and turn one great business into two lousy businesses.
Also crucial, know your tribe. Who do you serve? What group of humans light up your imagination? What group of humans can you pour your heart and soul into serving? Who do you want to celebrate life with? Who do you respect and want to learn from? The importance of these questions varies, I imagine, person to person. For me, they are crucial. Unless I’m in harmony with the people I serve, or a vast majority of them, I can’t do my best work. I need to serve people I respect. I fully understand that this is not a crucial consideration for others. What is important is knowing where you stand so you can do your best work.
I define my tribe this way:
People who have carefully thought through which values of this culture add to their life, and which limit their experience of life. Fringe characters, authentic people with a minimum of fake courtesy and fake congeniality and contrived social skills.
Thoughtful risk takers. Courage is required to get a lot out of life.
People who take creative ideas and manifest them through hard work and persistence.
People with imagination, creativity, open mindedness.
Kindhearted, considerate people. There is no point in being a great artist, but a miserable person who is mean to others.
Ultimately, the objective is for the business you run, the creative endeavor you embark upon, to serve both your life and the lives of others. Businesses can become all consuming, particularly if they exist on either end of the failure/success spectrum. All-consuming endeavors create a life out of balance. Great work requires time for quiet contemplation, a still point out of which to evolve.