You're Just 1 Skill Away From Changing Your Life!

This Phrase Gets Butchered Horribly…

You’ve probably heard it countless of times:

“Jack of all trades…”

I don’t even need to finish the sentence, because you’re doing that inside your head now (or just did). Just in case of anyone reading this that doesn’t know the answer, the commonly used phrase is:

“Jack of all trades, master of none.”

People often use the quote to highlight the idea that specialization is the key to getting ahead in life. “If you only get great at one thing, you’ll make it big” they say.

But…

But did you know that this is only half of the quote?

The full quote is the following:

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

Weird, isn’t it?

When you take the full quote, the meaning completely changes.

The true meaning of the quote is that you should become a jack of all trades. it is the idea that a broadly skilled person is gonna do way better than the specialist.

In this newsletter, we’ll dive deeper into this topic.

Just know this:

You are 1 skill away from unlocking a completely new level of life!

Fun sidenote:

Did you know that the same thing happens to the quote “Blood is thicker than water”? The quote is often used to describe that family is more important than friends.

But the full quote?

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

Again, this is the complete opposite of what most people repeat like parrots. The real meaning is the importance of friends and brothers in arms. Those who you are loyal too and are loyal to you in return. Those would come above family in most cases.

But anyyyyywayy….

The Synergy of Skills

What comes to mind when you think of a programmer?

You might think about some nerdy guys with little social skills sitting in a dark computer room. Two of my programming/IT friends can confirm that this is scarily accurate for a lot of them.

Of course this doesn’t go for everyone.

The two guys I know are actually pretty social guys.

The reason I’m sharing this is to highlight the synergy of skills.

One of my friends was recently promoted at the company he works for. He got a leadership role with more responsibility. And that’s with him being one of the least experienced people on the team.

What gives?

He got the function not because he was the best or most experienced programmer. But instead, he got the manager role because he had both programming as well as great social skills.

This is a fictional example to highlight the point:

The idea here is that someone who is great at programming but terrible at interacting with other people would be a terrible manager. Even though Phill is a perfect programmer, there no way anyone with 3+ braincells would make him a manager!

That’s why it’s crucial to have multiple skills that strengthen one another!

The Power of Skill Synergies in Life

Let me give you some examples:

There’s a part in Robert Kiyosaki’s book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” that has always stuck with me. It’s the part where he’s interviewed by a reported who wanted to become a successful writer.

She was an excellent writer and journalist.

Robert gave her the advice to pick up some courses on sales and marketing.

She was furious and found it insulting to be suggested that she should learn how to sell. She thought that it was beneath her. She said she would never stoop to that level.

Then, Robert pointed towards his book on the table.

The journalist looked confused to which Robert pointed to the words on the cover of the book. It read “Robert Kiyosaki, best selling author”. He told her that with the classes she could be a best writing author and a best selling one!

See the point?

The journalist never managed to sell books because she lacked the skills of marketing and sales. She was a specialist in writing whereas she would be way more successful as a generalist with marketing, PR and sales skills added to the mix.

Examples of Synergies

Let’s say you’re a great teacher.

You love teaching and helping people understand new concepts and information. However, you might be worried because it’s hard to pay the bills. Additionally, you want to make an even bigger impact.

What if you learned marketing and/or content creation?

You could create content that teaches people new skills. You’d be able to reach more people, have a bigger impact and make more than you ever could as a teacher.

All while still doing the thing you love most.

If you had the desire, you could add leadership and business skills to go from a content creator to turning this into a full blown business.

That’s how a synergy of skills work.

Another example that I shared earlier was that of a programmer + social skills. It’s the synergy that got the promotion. Even if he was a 10/10 in one of the areas, he would never have gotten it if he sucked at the other.

But we can take this further:

Programming + sales = Freelance developer
Programming + business = SaaS company
Programming + cyber security = Ethical hacker

Or, let’s say you love coaching.

What if in addition to the specific skill and social skills, you also studied psychology? Your effectiveness as a coach would shoot through the roof. You’d be way more effective at helping your students/players grow.

Obviously these are simplified, but that’s how the idea works.

Finding Your Synergy of Skills

Now that you understand the importance, how can you get started?

Let me share a brief overview here.

Note: We’ll dive deeper into this in the homework section below.

Before you start thinking about which skills you should learn, it’s important to get clear on three things. These are your current skills, your current career and the end goal that you’re working towards.

You’re now creating a path.

What you’ll see is that there is a gap between where you are and where you want to be. In order to bridge this gap, you need to get the right skills.

That would be the next step in the process.

Think about the skills that someone in your dream position would have. If you feel stuck thinking about this, there’s a little site called Google. Or you can ask ChatGPT of course.

Congratulations, you’ve got your map!

Now it’s time to get started with learning the skill that you think would help you advance the quickest and create momentum for yourself.

Something More Devious Than Procrastination

Procrastination can be difficult to overcome, but there is something worse….

“Productive procrastination”

When you’re wasting your time on things you know you shouldn’t, you’re going to feel guilty afterwards. In order to avoid this feeling, your mind plays a trick on you…

Listen to today’s audio lesson to hear how it works & how to stop it!

Boost Your Skills, Faster!

Want to learn how to build that synergy of skills faster?

This video will teach you my strategies for learning 5x faster!

Building Your Synergy of Skills

Let’s get practical!

In order to find and create more synergies, we’re gonna go through a simple process. We’re going to identify where you’re at, where you want to be and which skills can bridge the gap.

Get that pen ready!

(I’ll include an example of how I thought about this below)

Step 1:

This is where you’d sit down and think about your past experience and skills. It would be a good idea to go through everything you’ve done and the skills you picked up. Think about jobs, subjects at school, sports, volunteering, this newsletter, hobbies, passions and so on.

Tip: Don’t forget about soft skills either.

Step 2:

The second step in the process is to journal about your current stage and situation in life. After all, in order for your navigation to work, you need both your starting point as well as the destination.

This is getting more clarity on point A.

Step 3:

Write down in as much detail as possible what you want to achieve. This is your time to think about those huge goals that society wants you to forget about. I on the other hand will encourage you to dream as big as possible!

This is your point B,

Step 4:

Here’s the misconception about achieving goals:

You don’t just achieve a goal. You first become the person capable of achieving that goal. Then the goal follows from your effort and consistency.

So for this step, think about the skills you need to achieve your goal. Write down both soft and hard skills. If you don’t know what skills would be required for your chosen goal, there’s the little site called Google. You could also ask ChatGPT or god forbade, a person you know that has achieved the same goal already.

Step 5 (optional):

One thing you could do to create more clarity and structure for yourself is to map out intermediate steps. If you’re in marketing and you would like to become a CMO, you’re probably not going to make that leap in one go.

It would probably look something like:

Marketer → Marketing Manager → Team Lead → VP of Marketing → CMO.

Mapping out intermediate steps help you out in the next step.

Step 6:

Congratulations, you now have a map from A to B.

What remains now is to look at the skills you need to develop and figure out in what order you’re going to learn them. If you did step 5, you can get started with the main skill gap to get to intermediate step 1.

If not, it’s probably best to start with a skill that:

• Is applicable more generally (in other areas of life)

• Helps you gain some quick wins

• Helps you advance other skills more quickly

• Is easy/quick to learn (perhaps you have the foundation already)

You don’t need all of them, even 1 can be sufficient. But these criteria help you to create better priorities.

Example of the Exercise

I did a watered down version of this back in the day. Back then, I didn’t know anything about skill development, so I kinda winged it.

But it teaches a good lesson about sequencing.

Back in the day, I started off at pretty much 0. We’re talking about like 16-17 years ago, when I was still in high school. Back then, I decided that one day I would own my own successful business.

So, I decided to learn online & network marketing.

That was a mistake…

The mistake I made was that I did not identify the soft skills required to build a business. At the time I had no discipline, no social skills, no willpower, poor time management and I didn’t believe in myself.

I failed miserably and got into massive debt.

That’s when I changed plans.

I decided that it would probably be smarter to work on myself first.

So I switched to learning all about building confidence and self esteem. I got deep into personal development. I managed to raise my productivity and become disciplined enough to stick with it.

At the same time, I went to college (again).

The study I chose was economics. But to tell you the truth, I didn’t really care about the degree itself. I just wanted to learn how economies and markets work, since that would help out in business.

See how I’m working back from the final goal to determine the skills needed?

And now, I’m at the point where I got my soft skills, economic knowledge and I’ve gotten started on the business side. Within this, I’ve already gotten the skills of content creation (still learning though).

My current step is figuring out how to get more people to see it.

Once I get these basic skills of marketing down, I know I’m going to need leadership skills to start building a team. Which is something I’m already learning about on YouTube.

And so, I have mapped out the skills needed for my ultimate goal of bringing real personal development lessons to tens of millions of people every month.