Captain’s log, stardate 20180815

[BESTOF] Your skill is not your business

Sent by Jonathan Stark on August 15th, 2018

FYI - I’m currently off-grid at a lodge on a lake in a remote corner of Maine. I’ll be back in the saddle on Monday, August 20th. In the meantime, here’s a greatest hits post from the last year:

Your skill is not your business

Sent by Jonathan Stark on March 4th, 2018

Let’s say you’re an amazing seamstress. How might you monetize your expertise?

There are scores of ways. Let’s consider just three:

Open a small retail location where you tailor suits for local business people
Make custom wedding dresses for your friends, family, and neighbors
Design historically accurate costumes for regional theater productions

In all three of these options, you’d be doing TONS of sewing, and therefore deepening your mastery of the craft that you love.

But each is a completely different business, a completely different customer, a completely different value proposition, and most likely a completely different lifestyle.

Your skill - whether it’s sewing or node.js or devops - is not your business. This is why getting better at your skill will hardly ever improve your business (and why people who aren’t as skilled as you can make more money than you do).

So...

Figure out what business you’re in and concentrate on getting better at that.

Your skill will improve as a side effect.

Yours,

—J

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