Mastery is for athletes, Skill stacking is for entrepreneurs.
Have you considered why the best entrepreneurs are not just good at one thing?
Think about it for a minute. If You pick Elon, Jeff Bezos, and Zuck as an example, can you put a finger on any of them who you only know for one skill?
Try doing the same for these people; Lionel Messi, Floyd Mayweather, CR7🔥 and Lebron James.
The answer is pretty obvious, isn’t it?
Unlike sports or music, where you, know what to do to improve. Entrepreneurship requires dynamic skills working together as a unique piece. Zuck and Elon started as programmers but learned that building billion-dollar businesses required seeking knowledge and skills needed asides from writing lines of code.
Mastery is for athletes, skill stacking is for entrepreneurs.
This brings me to the idea of today’s post.
As a value creator, you have this problem, You are excellent at what you do but you are failing to reach your desired success. You’ve tried to improve your skill but it doesn't change anything. It’s like a puzzle, a question you are trying so hard to answer.
The issue here is not that you are terrible at what you do, it’s because you lack skills.
“Did you just say I lack skills?”
Yes, you do. Remember, the difference between where you are and where you want to be is a skills gap.
“But how do I lack the skills when I’m great at my work?”. Yes, you are right, what you lack in skills is not because you don’t know how to do your job well, it’s because you don’t know how to get the outcome you want.
What you must do is build a skills stack.
What is a skills stack? It’s your ability to learn complementary skills and combine them in a unique way to help you succeed.
Over the years, I’ve developed a number skills. Here’s what my skill stack looks like:
Productivity and time-management
Persuasion and Psychology
Product Development/Management
Writing
Content Marketing
Copywriting
Design
Am I great at any of them, no! not yet at least. But I’ve studied each of them well enough to get the result I want.
Scott Adams, Author of the book, How To Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big, writes:
“If you think extraordinary talent and a maniacal pursuit of excellence are necessary for success, I say that’s just one approach, and probably the hardest. When it comes to skills, quantity often beats quality.”
If you argue that this quote doesn’t apply to areas like sports and music. I would agree. However for an area like entrepreneurship, you don’t need one skill to attain mastery, rather, you need to have at least 5 skills in your stack if you are ever going to succeed. Ask Dan Koe
There are many examples around you. How many people do you know who are not the best in the world at what they do but are doing very well in their business and career because they’ve acquired multiple skills?
Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds Of Success
Your skills are not supposed to exist in isolation, they can be layered on one another to create something Unique. As a creator or Solopreneur, You can build or solve any problem in the market with a skills stack.
Do you need to become the best in the world to succeed? Absolutely not! There are no Olympic medals for this one.
You need just enough knowledge to be able to deliver the required value.
The more skills you have, the more value you can create, the more rewards you receive. And yes, over your career, that’s probably more than a million bucks. So what are those valuable skills?
What Skills Will Make Me More Valuable?
The big question we’ll be answering in my next post.
Stay tuned till next week,
Ben,