The Zero Sum Game of Niches

The problem, however, is that blogging in the advice space—where his site existed—is not an auction market, it’s winner-take-all. The only capital that matters is whether or not your posts compel the reader. (Location 1155)

The best advice, the best piano player, the best dancer. These are zero sum games. Customers choose the best offering that is affordable.

A way to subvert this is to niche yourself into a role where competition is zero to minimal, and then acquire an immense amount of career capital. The risk here is that supply may never come.

You may work and work and work in a field where no one will ever truly give a shit. Especially if you choose a super niche, super out there line of work.

Big ideas, Johnson explained, are almost always discovered in the “adjacent possible,” a term borrowed from the complex-system biologist Stuart Kauffman, who used it to describe the spontaneous formation of complex chemical structures from simpler structures. (Location 1769)