Ace of Spade Innovative Start-up Growth Strategy

People can give you many different definitions of what strategy is. But really it comes down to one concept. If you understand this concept you will be able to think like Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey you'll be able to disrupt the competition.

All innovators describe concepts in different ways.

Ray Kroc the founder of modern-day McDonald's said my attitude was that the competition can try to copy my style. But they can't read my mind. So I'll lead them a mile and a half behind.

He's talking about that unit to outthink your competition and there is a certain specific way in which he wants his competition to think. They all describe it in different ways.

My favorite phrasing of that is that of Mahatma Gandhi who said “First they ignore you then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win”.

What he's saying is that you must do something that your customers will love but that your competition will ignore and laugh at. So that while they're ignoring it laughing at this thing that you're doing you get to grow with it.

And by the time they wake up and say wait for a second that thing that you're doing is actually working.

It's too late.

You've already won. if you look at any successful company you will see this concept at play.

For this book, I invite you to call this concept “Ace of Spade”.

We are going to look for “The Ace of Spade” in your business. That's simply a metaphor that says there is a point at which others are looking for options. They are going to start repeating themselves you're going to hear the competition say oh the way you do this is A, B, or C.

Oh, you have to do one-two, or three.

And what you're going to do is you're going to think beyond that and you're going to see the “The Ace of Spade”.