How Can I Become So Good I Can't Be Ignored?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:04.760 | All right.

00:00:05.060 | So we have a question here from Sam.

00:00:07.640 | Sam asks, do you have any advice for jack of all trades type people who want to

00:00:13.420 | become so good they can't ignore you?

00:00:16.920 | Well, my typical advice for that question is go read my friend,

00:00:22.300 | Dave Epstein's book range.

00:00:24.500 | Range is all about this.

00:00:27.220 | It's about all the benefits of having multiple different skills.

00:00:31.600 | It's about the serendipity that can unfold down the road where you don't

00:00:36.440 | really know where you're going, but this skill plus that skill plus this skill

00:00:39.440 | combined to be something that was really uniquely valuable.

00:00:42.040 | And I think he does a really great job of talking about how this jack of

00:00:45.880 | all trades approach can work.

00:00:47.120 | The thing I will add, and Dave and I talked about this when it came on my show,

00:00:51.420 | you can find an older episode where we, where I interviewed Dave and we talked

00:00:54.340 | about this is that even if you're doing a generalist or jack of all trades

00:01:00.160 | approach, you still have to get good at the individual things.

00:01:03.020 | You still have to get to what we called in that interview, the non amateur level.

00:01:09.180 | That is the table stakes for a skill to potentially be useful in some sort

00:01:14.340 | of unique combination going forward.

00:01:16.060 | In my book, so good, they can't ignore you.

00:01:18.500 | I talked about this as well.

00:01:19.620 | And I called it the auction market of career capital, where you build up

00:01:22.620 | career capital in several different areas and the combination is unique.

00:01:25.860 | And then you can apply that unique combination to get

00:01:28.260 | cool things in your career.

00:01:29.260 | Same idea.

00:01:30.940 | You still have to build the capital.

00:01:32.740 | You still have to get good.

00:01:34.060 | So if you want to combine a master's degree in science with the ability

00:01:40.100 | to write like Dave Epstein did, he still went through and got the

00:01:43.060 | master's degree in science that was time consuming, and he still learned

00:01:45.820 | how to write by building his way up from entry level positions, the

00:01:48.780 | higher and higher level positions.

00:01:49.980 | And then those two things came together and he could do science

00:01:52.860 | writing in a very interesting way.

00:01:54.100 | So that's the only thing I would say.

00:01:55.700 | You don't have to just have one skill that you're trying to master

00:01:59.060 | and be the best in the world.

00:02:00.100 | That is one approach.

00:02:01.180 | It's not the only approach.

00:02:02.140 | It's fine to build up a collection of skills that might come

00:02:04.860 | together in interesting ways.

00:02:05.820 | Just keep in mind that you still have to build the skill.

00:02:08.980 | There's no, no shortcut in getting good at something.

00:02:12.100 | If you're not good at something, it basically doesn't count.

00:02:14.580 | It's not a tool in your toolbox.

00:02:17.780 | So you don't have to be the world's best scientist to bring a science skill

00:02:23.580 | over to your writing career and have it help, but you also have to do more

00:02:26.900 | than just read one book on science.

00:02:28.700 | You actually gonna have to do some hard work, maybe get a degree,

00:02:30.820 | really learn what's going on.

00:02:31.740 | So that's what I would say there.

00:02:33.260 | Get non-bad, leave the amateur level.

00:02:37.060 | Then you have something you can play with.

00:02:40.260 | [Music]

How Can I Become So Good I Can't Be Ignored?

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