The Manual #19 - The Competition Trap

How to not care about the competition

RedesignManual

My latest project is live! We just launched RedesignManual and have been blown away by the support. We haven’t even been pushing it hard but have already made 5 figures from the guide. I’ll do a breakdown of income of it at some point in the future.

The plan is to build a design community around it, helping people get into design and improve their skills all the way up to helping them get clients and make money from design.

Check out RedesignManual.

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The Competition Trap

I’ve recently been reading The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and there are so many gems in there, there’s one I wanted to share.

The way to get out of the competition trap is to be authentic, to find the thing you know how to do better than anybody. You know how to do it better because you love it, and no one can compete with you. If you love to do it, be authentic, and then figure out how to map that to what society actually wants. Apply some leverage and put your name on it. You take the risks, but you gain the rewards, have ownership and equity in what you’re doing, and just crank it up.

This is something I see from anyone who is good at what they do. They’re not trying to compete or compare themselves to anyone. They’ve found their way of doing things, and people like their work or them because of it.

When you truly love doing something, you naturally find ways to constantly improve. Your heart and soul is in it. No one can compete with that.

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2022 Goals

Much of 2021 has been spent on fixing my health and getting back to before I had my cancer. I’m nearly there and feel ready to take things a step further creative and business wise. So I have a few goals for 2022:

• Focus on getting to my healthiest and strongest yet — I truly now believe in optimal health to help achieve any goal.

• Start a new business or partner with someone else that’s specifically in Saas

• Start taking on client work again — I’ve learned so much in the past two years when it comes to branding, marketing, photography and video, that I feel I can provide real value to businesses. It’s not a really scalable business idea but it’s just so much fun and another way for me to flex my creative legs.

• Expand ULX into our most popular areas such as US and Australia

• Continue expanding the ULX product line — we’ve launched a bunch of new products this year and have been so impressed with the response.

• Add more people to the team — I’m looking for video editors, designers, developers, e-commerce experts and many more.

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I recently uploaded a Q&A video answering some questions I get.

Also made a video sharing my favourite tech and gear of 2021. I love doing these end of year videos as it’s a great way to reflect on everything from the past year.

I released a new wallpaper pack. Been blown away by the response for these. I think these might be my favourite set yet. Gradient blur wallpaper pack.

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Link Lowdown

A collection of links to stuff I think are worth sharing.

Tally — A simple way to make forms for anything, and even accept payments.

RedesignManual — My design course that I’ve been working on with another designer for the past few months.

Phosphor Icons — Free icons that can be used for commercial use.

How McDonald’s Really Makes Money — Interesting video going through how McDonald’s is in the real-estate business and not the food business.

mmm.page — A new type of website builder. I tried it and it’s amazing to see how different it is from the traditional website builders, but also makes a lot of sense.

Inside Apple Park — Title says it all. It’s funny seeing how meticulous everything is. Yet I love it.

Remmo — Control your Mac with your iPhone or iPad.

$500/month side projects show and tell — Awesome thread where people share their small side projects making them money.