Recently, businessman and investor Charlie Munger passed away.

Probably best known for being Warren Buffet’s business partner, Munger was a lifelong learner who had lots of wisdom to share. A few years ago I heard Munger describe the idea that every business has a “moat” that surrounds it just like a physical body of water around a castle.

The purpose of a moat of course was to prevent incursion and therefore keep all who lived inside of its circumference safe. Munger stated that all businesses have competitive advantages of varying sizes that function like a moat.

The size of a business’ moat is dependent on

A) the number of positive factors working to their favor and

B) the quality of each factor.

The Idea of Competitive Advantage

Imagine for a moment the difference between the moat of Amazon and that of say, SEARS. Huge moat vs. small moat right?

If someone came to you 6 months from now with news that Amazon was on the verge of going out of business…this would be impossible. While it is possible for any company to become the next Blockbuster, for a company like Amazon losing such a large moat would take a tremendous amount of time not to mention extreme mismanagement.

Your Personal Competitive Advantage

Taking this thought of competitive advantage as a moat, let’s translate it down from the company level to that of you as an individual.

Each person has this same moat at play in regard to their career.

• How large is your moat?
  • Is it enormous, almost non-existent, or somewhere in between?
• What specific things are already working to your favor so that your moat is larger?
• How are you specifically growing and fueling each of these advantages to maximize them?
• What new advantages are available that you have not yet worked into your repertoire?
  • How can you get started on incrementally adding those?
• On the flipside, what detrimental things are working against you and shrinking your moat?
  • How can you limit these or create workarounds to neutralize them?

One tangible action:

Take a piece of paper and draw you moat. Is it small, medium, large?

Write in a few things that you are certain differentiate you from your peers. Outside of the moat write one thing that you can focus on for the next week that can be a new addition to your moat.

Pro Tip:

If you’re having trouble identifying personal competitive advantages, ask a few people who know you well. They often can see and appreciate things that you might just take for granted!