Choosing a Career With a High Barrier of Entry?

Choosing a career is hard.

There are many considerations you have to make.

Does this career suit my temperament?

Can I take care of my family with income from this career?

Will I enjoy this career 5, 10, or 15 years from now?

While these questions are good, none help you discern whether the career is valuable.

To determine if a career choice is valuable, you must look for signs of a moat (or competitive advantage).

In a business, moats come in several forms. It could be a high barrier of entry, absence of alternative products, or zero competition.

Moats apply to careers as well. You can build a unique career in an industry with a high entry barrier, a lack of alternative skilled professionals, or zero competition.

A barrier of entry refers to the qualities of a career or industry that makes it hard for newcomers to take over your job, customers or industry.

How do you know a career with a high barrier of entry?

Let’s take an example . . .

Tunde works in Automobile sales at a Toyota dealership.

While onboarding as a trainee, he got to choose between a customer-facing role with sales targets and other KPIs. Or a sales support role, where he’d help ensure sales orders are processed smoothly.

Like most Nigerians, Tunde chose the support role since he and other trainees in sales would earn the same salaries.

Also, Tunde will face less stress upfront in the support role. Who wouldn’t like less work for equal pay?

But here is what was not obvious to Tunde at the time.

A sales role at the high level is a specialist role, where to succeed, you must be skilled in communication, negotiation, empathy, management, finance, etc.

Also, it’s super tough to replace an elite sales person.

The network an elite person builds over the years can generate billions of revenue for a company. So, companies value them. Money talks, bullshit walks.

On the other hand, a sales support role is a rinse-and-repeat job.

Once you learn the basic techniques, you get to do same thing repeatedly.

In fact, it’s possible to grab a fresh graduate and teach them the job in 3 months.

There’s really nothing special.

For Tunde, he will come to regret seven years later.

His fellow trainees, who chose customer-facing roles and had to find creative ways to generate sales, now earn higher salaries and commissions.

Tunde appears to be stuck in a rut. He’s been on the same salary for five years now.

No vertical or horizontal career growth.

Early in the year, Tunde’s direct boss called him into his office and placed him on a personal improvement program.

What changed for Tunde?

Forget all the excuses we may want to give to explain his predicament.

Make no mistakes. He chose an easy career early on. Now, he is stuck in a hard position years later and is extremely replaceable.

Younger lads who can do what he currently does faster and cheaper are graduating from universities yearly.

Firms are created to make money for owners. He’s standing in the way of this objective, so he has to give way sooner than later.

That’s how the world works.

Tunde is stuck in a rut because he chose a career path with a very low barrier to entry.

A performing salesperson is hard to find; a grumbling sales support is everywhere.

Where does a high barrier of entry come from?

Suppose you are just starting out and looking for entry-level jobs.

In that case, you probably want to know what qualities make a career path have a high barrier to entry.

I had the same questions many years ago when I started my career.

Below are the top four qualities that raise the entry barriers for a career path.

1) Value

Being valuable means being able to help other people or businesses solve problems.

The harder it is for any random person to solve the same problem, the higher your value. People and businesses will practically beat their way to your door to have you deliver results for them.

To become a valuable person, you must have spent many years in a particular domain building up specific knowledge.

The many years required to build specific knowledge in a domain help you create your best self and a high barrier of entry.

Take the salesperson example. Becoming an elite salesperson comes from years of refining your selling skills.

You can’t just pick any Mohammed and turn him into an elite salesman in six months.

2) Rarity

Rarity is what you should pursue when choosing a career.

If possible, you want to be the only person who can do what you are doing the way you do it.

The solution you provide must be so unique that no one can do it in a better way.

Rarity doesn’t mean you should try to hide knowledge or sabotage others.

It means no one can compete with you because you are playing at a different level.

For most careers, it is easy to find someone somewhere who can deliver the exact solution faster and even cheaper. That’s why most careers have a low barrier to entry.

You want to work where your skillset is rare, so the barrier of entry rises.

3) Imperfect Imitation

When you have a creative solution that is valuable and rare, it is nearly impossible for anybody to imitate what you are doing.

Yes, they can try.

But their results will always be an imperfect imitation.

It can never come close to exactly what you have done.

4) Zero Substitute

You want to have a unique solution, and there must be no alternative to your solution.

For example, if you are a skilled taxi driver, there is a limit to what you can ask customers to pay.

Customers will use other alternatives like keke, okada, and buses if you charge fairly high prices.

This downside of having so many close substitutes is why being a cab driver isn’t a career path with a high barrier of entry.

When choosing what to learn, you want to look for career paths with a high barrier of entry.

Careers with low barriers of entry are dead ends. Avoid them.