It’s Tuesday morning, and I still don’t have this week’s letter ready for Thursday.
That’s not my standard practice.
I’ve spent most of last week working on something that doesn’t show up on any dashboard.
I’ve been clarifying my circle of competence and my moat. The two things that will largely decide what the next 10 years will look like for the company.
When I do this kind of work, everything else takes a back seat.
I want to stay with this long enough to its conclusion and document it properly.
So instead of forcing a full edition, I’m sharing my current thinking, in blocks.
Use this as a lens to examine the edges of your own business. Identify what you’re already good at, and what might compound if you designed around it intentionally.
3 things I’m realizing
1. My circle of competence functions as a system.
I understand revenue, profit, valuation, people, and product as one integrated system, and how decisions in one area affect the others. The constraints of a bootstrapped business make this integration even more important.
I deeply understand founder psychology; many of their decisions are fear-based.
Structured thinking, using multiple mental models as an interconnected system to make long-term decisions under uncertainty, is increasingly critical to founder success.
2. Moats are often built accidentally before they’re built intentionally.
In my tech company, our moat was speed.
When banks (our clients) needed urgent digitization for compliance purposes, they thought of us first. Our delivery team was designed and optimized for that velocity, which allowed us to charge premium pricing.
In my fitness business, our moat came from desperation.
We allowed personal trainers to bring their own clients, something no other gym would do. That single decision created network effects, attracted premium members, and drove growth without marketing.
Looking back, the pattern is clear:
A moat forms when a business is designed around a non-obvious advantage.
In this current business, I can see the same pattern forming.
CEO Mastery started as a writing outlet. Now everything flows downstream from it: clients, partnerships, opportunities, and long-term optionality. And over time, as more editions are published, a community of high-intent learners and decision-makers is forming.
But it’s important to remember that the moat is not the newsletter, it’s the judgment engine behind it.
3. Your next moat is often hiding inside your past decisions.
When you’re clear on what you’re good at, you stop borrowing ideas from the market and start building your own.
But the biggest blocker is the belief that we’re not doing anything extraordinary.
So we never take time to verbalize our circle of competence or our moat. And because we don’t verbalize it, we never work on widening it systematically.
Without that clarity, even strong advantages decay.
2 quotes I’m thinking about lately
“You don’t make one big decision. You make hundreds of small ones that decide who you become.”
“Every day, in countless ways, the competitive position of a business grows either weaker or stronger. When our long-term competitive position improves as a result of these almost unnoticeable actions, we describe the phenomenon as ‘widening the moat’. If a business has to rebuild its moat every quarter, it doesn’t have a moat.”
1 question I’m sitting with
Now that I am clear on my circle of competence, what offer can I put in front of it that delivers real outcomes and creates an economic moat at the same time?
You might want to sit with that as well.
Thank you for being part of this journey with me.
I will see you next Thursday,
Surabhi
PS: If you want a clear explanation of what a moat is, watch this video: Warren Buffett explains the analogy of the “castle and moat” that he uses to evaluate businesses.
PPS: Last week’s letter was a little off-beat and I wasn’t sure how it would land… But I got the highest replies to it. In case you missed it, read it here.
