BarrieRs to entry

Each enterprise or trade has certain barriers to entry. For instance you can’t just wake up and become a medical doctor. You have to spend and persevere through several years of training. You can’t just wake and become a software engineer. You need years of learning and practice. Barriers of entry can be in terms of knowledge, experience, intellectual property, distribution, market share, capital investment, time, networks, geography, brand equity, regulatory/legal, scale, etc.

The value of an enterprise or trade is usually in direct proportion to the barriers of entry. The barriers to entry act as a gate keeper to keep potential competition out of a certain industry. The fewer the barriers to entry the greater the competition. It is best if you can start a business with many barriers of entry. This way very few people will be able to catch up if you manage to succeed. Often times you many need to create a whole new category for yourself. By the time everyone catches on you will be far too gone.

One reason I do a daily blog is because it is difficult for most people to generate and publish daily content on the topics I focus on. This requires reading hundreds of books every year just to keep up. I built a backyard aquaponics garden which is not so easy to replicate by other people. I am investing in a manufacturing operation. The project is capital intensive and requires a lot of innovation. Plus sourcing unique fruits like tamarind is difficult. So anyone who tries to replicate what I am doing is up for an uphill task.

You too can create your own barriers to entry in your field. You can choose to focus on a certain aspect which no one is doing in your field. Then you acquire a lot of knowledge and expertise in that area. Or you could massively scale up your operation and dominate your business field. Solving difficult problems often creates massive barriers to entry. So embrace all the difficulties you might be going through because they will make you very rich one day.