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> The issue is that its common for there to be very low demand for such an overlap of skill sets. Also, how would you leverage such an overlap? The only overla
by joecot 7y ago
> The issue is that its common for there to be very low demand for such an overlap of skill sets. Also, how would you leverage such an overlap?
The only overlap they really gave in the examples was "They're good at X skill.... and marketing themselves." Literally, the example people were good at both a skill and then marketing themselves as being good at that skill. Gary Vaynerchuk is both a good writer and good at marketing himself. Steve Jobs was good at design and also marketing himself. Tomas Pueyo is apparently decent at engineering and also ... marketing himself, with articles and TED talks like this. This is also why people can name Neil deGrasse Tyson but probably not a single other living astrophysicist. He's not the best in the world, but he's the best astrophysicist in the world at marketing himself.
So the advice isn't really to be good at two different skills. The advice is to be pretty good at one skill and then be really good at marketing yourself as being good at that thing. Even though other people in the world will be better at it, if you're good at marketing yourself you'll still be in more demand.
- agota 7y agoI think that's a great observation. One exception I can think of where you legitimately need to be decent at three skills is bootstrapping as a solopreneur. You need to be able to code, design, and market your product. Other than that, it does seem like "X + marketing" is what you need, though I guess "marketing" is an umbrella term (content marketing requires writing ability, public speaking requires public speaking ability, etc.).
- joecot 7y agoSure, and I'm sure there are actual cases where being good at 2 different skills (not one of which being some form of marketing yourself) is relevant. Devops pretty much requires being good at both development and server administration. You're correct that bootstrapping requires multiple different skills, including some amount of business sense. There are many cases where having multiple different skills could make you the best in the world at that combo. But those correlations aren't random -- so lots of different people will be trying to be the best at the same set of skills as you, since they're connected as requirements -- and despite the article's premise, that's not the case the author's examples make. The article really just makes it clear it's important to be able to market yourself. However "people able to market their skills achieve more than people who can't" is not as interesting an article premise as "How to Become the Best in the World at Something (by being good at multiple skills)". And the author went with the latter because, well, it's important to be able to market yourself well.
- WalterBright 7y agoEverybody is a salesman, yet few people realize it.
- musicale 7y ago> This is also why people can name Neil deGrasse Tyson but probably not a single other living astrophysicist Brian May :)
- arvinsim 7y agoI agree with you. I used to think that marketing is just another department's job. Turns out that your own personal branding is very important to your career.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- themeiguoren 7y agoI don’t think this is the right takeaway - the examples all had marketing as the second skill because the author wanted them to be people that the reader would recognize. This means that they needed people with a public persona, which lends to self marketing being the shared skill. A person with a skill set that doesn’t include marketing could be just as successful, but you as a reader aren’t going to connect to the example of the author’s second cousin Sam.