The Talent Stack

Hi,

I heard this idea of Talent Stacking today and it has been swirling through my brain, and I just have to talk about it.

But first let me bring clarity to something, this is mostly for my own purposes, but I will bring you along for the ride.

Back in May, when I stepped into a new role, I was really fighting an internal narrative. My job was to essentially run an entire eCommerce business.

The issue?

Well, I have only ever really run my own business. I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to run someone else’s eCommerce business. The owners were busy focusing on their main revenue channel, and let me kind of just run free with the eCom side of the business.

Very early on, I was second guessing myself a lot. I felt more risk handling someone else’s business than my own.

Maybe that’s the pleaser energy rearing its ugly head.

Anyway, two months into my tenure, the whole thing clicked, and we started to have some of the biggest sales days in the history of the company. Then we had the biggest sales month in the history of the business.

Where did my thoughts go? Wow, that was lucky.

I talked about this last week, but this idea of not allowing yourself to see your own success can be as detrimental to you as not having any at all.

It takes evidence and it heavily caveats it and forces it to become something that isn’t usable for future problems.

Well, today when I heard this idea of Talent Stacking, it clicked everything into place for me.

No, it didn’t solve the internal problem of not giving myself the wins, but it did explain this win to me.

Let me explain…

Talent Stacking is this idea from Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, who theorized that it is actually a better hedge to become a top 25% talent in multiple areas rather than being world class in one pursuit.

Being singularly focused is too risky because if your 1% skill isn’t sought after in the market, you do not have any other fall back skills.

Now, if you are top 25% in multiple complimentary skills, then you have an advantage because putting all of those together makes you an upper echelon talent in your field.

Take Scott Adams himself as an example, he got his degree in economics and his MBA, and drew comics for fun.

Then he took his understanding of the workplace and his skills of writing and drawing to create one of the most famous cartoons in the history of print.

It wasn’t just the one thing, it was the collection of all his talents that made his success happen.

Okay back to my story.

When you start a business, everything is your problem, which makes you… as you can guess… good at solving problems.

It makes you especially good at solving business problems. So when I stepped into my new role, I wasn’t starting as a seasoned ad buyer who knew all the ins and outs of the meta advertising algorithm.

Actually I hadn’t run my own ads in years.

I stepped in as someone who understood everything the business needed to sell a product. Sure we needed a well crafted ad campaign, but we also needed a landing page, we needed a lead magnet, we needed copy, we needed inventory.

These were all things that I had more than enough experience working with.

When it came to buying ads, my skillset wasn't the best in the world, but when you put them all together it made me good enough to build a strong foundation for the business.

I will admit, what I built there wasn’t necessarily “best in the world,” but what I did build was something that could be built upon. Because the ability to build a system is well honed.

The thing about building a system is that you can upgrade pieces of the system while it runs.

Which is the last important thing to mention about the talent stack. It isn’t just a helpful frame for how to build out a skill set, but it is also a good reminder that you are capable of learning new skills.

When you are adding a skill to your repertoire you aren’t just adding to your tool belt, you are also showing yourself that you are a foundation that can be expanded upon.

So here is my call to action to you.

Look at any of the big problems that you face in your career or daily life, and ask yourself not just what skill do you need, but what collection of skills would make the solution palatable.

The true strength of this approach is that even if you fall short of your goal, you give yourself the chance to discover a new skill that may help with a future endeavor.

Or as I would say, “maybe you find an easy A.”

Nothing better than a self quote to round this bad boy out.

Hope you have a great week!

Kyle