Winning as a company may seem like a complex concept, but in reality, it is extremely simple on the surface. It only gets complex once you’re a couple of layers in. Hear me out.

Let’s say you’re trying to build the best car making company in the world.

The best car making company in the world will be the company that serves its customers best.

Better cars, more convenient experiences, cheaper prices. That’s all there is to it.

Sounds like an oversimplification, but that’s literally all there is to it at that layer.

If you want to peel the onion further, however, here’s what you get:

The best founder to build the best car making company, is the founder that is absolutely in love with building cars or car companies.

I know these sound obvious, but they’re often lost on people.

If you want fantasize over being the best pianist in the world, you will never be one.

You will only be the best pianist in the world when you absolutely love the process of playing.

You can’t stop once you start. You love the hours and hours of countless practice. You hate the mistakes so much but they drive you to practice even more. You don’t even think about who’s listening. You’re just playing. You’re in your own world. (I wrote about this here)

So, the best person to build that car making company will have to be madly in love with making amazing cars.

Until now, it’s still relatively simple.

Here’s where it gets crazy complex: what the hell makes someone fall in love with car making?

Like, what events and variables have to exist in order to create such monster? (as if you were Frankenstein, trying to create one)

This is where the answer is so complex, that I don’t think our human brains can ever fathom or understand.

This person might’ve stumbled upon building cars because their dad was a mechanic (chance, they had nothing to do with it).

Or maybe because they had lots of car trouble.

Or maybe because they were hit by a car.

Or maybe because a car company gave them a really bad treatment.

Maybe while one of these events were true, this person also happened to have a chip on their shoulder that made them work like mad to prove something.

Maybe that chip on the shoulder was created because they had an older sibling who always had the attention of the parents.

Maybe it was because this person was born in a poor family but hung out around rich kids.

Maybe it was because he/she was born to a wealthy family, but felt like he/she didn’t earn it and lacked purpose.

Maybe while all this was happening, someone embezzled a large sum of money from a global car manufacturer, making them go bankrupt, and giving this person a chance to rise as a gap in the market was created.

In reality, nobody knows what makes these anomalies. These people who end up succeeding.

Again, let’s zoom out:

Principle 1:
The best company will be the one that serves its customers the best.

This is almost laughable to write, as it’s so obvious. But this can breakdown to a large number of variables:

1. Better product
   • Better technology
     • Access to smart kids in good universities
       • The history of that geography becomes involved (chance, not choice)
2. More convenient experience
   • a
3. Cheaper product
   • Access to natural resources
   • Government subsidies / support
   • Investor capital to finance the early R&D

There are so many things that need to go right to make that initial statement true.

This person will also need to turn into many people (the founder may start, but they won’t be able to make that vision come to reality as one cannot be great at multiple things)

The same story will need to apply on someone in finance, another in engineering, and another in marketing, etc…

This is why building great companies is so freakin’ fascinating.

It’s because statistically speaking, it’s almost impossible.

Principle 2:
The best companies will be built by those who are genuinely in love with building it.

This is different from industry to another, profession to another, etc… and the company that wins needs to get every one of those right, not only one. (best finance people, best marketing people, best engineering people, etc…) that all happen to be in love with doing what they do, and at the same time in love with doing it for the problem they’re solving (in this case, car making).

Note: if you made it this far, thank you, as this was mostly a free flow rant. I might come back and edit it, but I want to publish it instead of it aging in my drafts forever, like many others did.

I realize that the idea is not 100% clear or the flow isn’t 100% organized. A friend told me one ‘write drunk, edit sober’. I’m not drunk, but I’m in a state of flow, if there’s any difference.

Edit:
To make this a bit more practical

Principle 3:
The best person to do X is made by a gigantic list of coincidences. Good luck trying to be one.

The only advice I can give you is this:

• You 100% are best positioned to be the best at X. This is factual
• Finding out what that X is, that’s the tricky part (most people give up on finding it)
• The only way to find out what X is is to try 1,000 different things, and seeing which one sticks
• X could be anywhere from ‘be the best mother in the world for Ali, Khaled, and Mariam’ to ‘be the president of a country that hasn’t been established yet’.

All roles are important for this world to be a beautiful place to be. Don’t underestimate what your ‘calling’ may be.

Most people will not get it. They’d either think it’s too much or too little.

Remember that you’re living your life, and it will end in a few days (or few thousand days).

Do what sets your soul on fire.