Imagine with me that you live on the USA/Mexico border and learn that there’s a $25 gap between the price of gold across the border. With this information advantage in your hand, what would you do?
I won’t speak for you, but most people would fill their vehicle to the brim with Mexican gold and sell it to American buyers as often as possible, a process the financial world calls arbitrage.
If we consider applying this concept to our lives, we need to realize that there are two types of arbitrage opportunities.
The first is “legible” — easily understood by a metric (price) that quickly gets “arbitraged” away.
Such is the nature of short-term games.
The second category is what we’ll call Illegible Arbitrage.
If it’s true that your story is your most valuable asset, then it’s up to us to properly leverage it.
Illegible Arbitrage is how.
As you know, it’s much easier to point to a degree, certification, or any number of legible, system-approved credentials than one’s story.
But those who carve their own path & circumvent the system that exists to produce reliable mediocrity will reap the benefits of the gap between the legible & the illegible.