Conventional financial wisdom told me to diversify.
Work in X. Live in Y. Invest in Z.
This leads to working in Santa Monica. Living in Woodland Hills. Investing in bitcoin.
Or, even further: working in Vegas. Living in Westchester. Investing in Beanie Babies.
What if you strived to work in X, live in X, invest in X?
For me, I work in Venice. I live in Venice. I invest in Venice.
If my work in Venice hits, my life in Venice gets better. Then, my investment in Venice provides greater returns.
If it doesn’t, I have two other things I can lever to make work better: my life in Venice and my investment in Venice. If I improve my life in Venice, I get more rest, more locked in, more able to increase the likelihood of improving my work. If my investment in Venice wins, I get downstream effects to Life/Work.
Meanwhile, for the Beanie Babies bro: say that Beanie Babies triple. Does it naturally have the same downstream effects as if he lived in the Beanie Babies factory and worked for Beanie Babies? Not unless he extracts resources from his investment so it can no longer grow, so that he will then have to reallocate resources to the other two. No flow, no compounding returns.
In entrepreneurship, focus only on the opportunities that compound in every dimension you care about.
In education: same thing: if you go to school on the east coast but know that you want to live on the west coast, how would that east coast lifestyle bring you back? If a school with a national network (any big state school, Ivies), alumni exist everywhere, won't matter. If a small school, need to think about the implications and assess the risk.