Warum sich Fähigkeiten so schwer kombinieren lassen

0:00Why is it so hard for people to compound their skills? [sighs] >> So compounding skills, I'm trying to think of how I would clearly define it for for the audience. Um, I would probably say it's when multiple skills when used together uh create an outized outcome compared to either of the skills used independently just so we have a basis for talking. Um, but beyond that, um, I think I think part of the difficulty is that you do not know what you're going to yield and and the perspective change that's going to occur after you have a new skill that you don't have yet. And so it's like if you understand accounting and then you learn e-commerce, it's like, oh, this makes like you you don't know what you were going to know. It's a very unknown unknown, right? Similar similar context we were talking about earlier. Um and so that's in terms of like why do I think it's difficult people to imagine the upside potential of having um multiple skills that stack together. I give this example all the time but like you think about like Jay-Z right?

1:04>> Yeah. >> So in the beginning he might have had a base level of like call it rhythm. Um that was like his what maybe he was naturally inclined that way. Um and then he started developing you know beats and that was a skill that he you know figured out and then he started you know rapping. Um and then that became a skill. Um, and then from there he learned how to uh promote. And it's like, okay, that's that's a much more valuable, you know, he if he only knew how to promote and uh didn't have rap.

1:30Like he it wouldn't been nearly as valuable of a skill, but having both makes him super successful rapper. But then after that, it's like, okay, well then he had to learn how to recruit other uh artists and musicians. And so it's like, okay, well, recruiting is a different skill than promoting, you know, publicly. And doing deals is another skill. And so all of a sudden it's like these skills when stacked together become a label, right? And then that becomes the next thing that he's able to do. But a lot of times like you can only you can only uh and this is Steve Jobs, but you can only connect the dots in reverse. And I think the one thing that I would say is consistent among the people that I that I frequent who are hyper successful is that they're just intensely curious about things in general. And so I'll see um somebody who's a billionaire have a conversation with somebody who makes I'm just I'm only using money here as a you know to to show the stark contrast, but you know somebody makes $80,000 a year, you know, fixing lights, whatever. And they'll find a way to extract information from this person and be like, "So how does that work? So tell me more about that."

2:31Um and they'll still be able to at the end of that conversation be better off than they were prior. And I think they're kind of blood hounds for for knowledge. >> Um, and I'd say that that is that is probably like just something that I have witnessed. But like why is it so difficult for people to to do compounding? There's the obvious answer which is patience. And the other is that they don't understand the upside. >> How do you balance compounding of skills with becoming a master in one skill?

2:58It's really good. Well, you know, um I would say that the difference between those two things um is really just comes down to how narrowly we define the domain. So it's like let's say you want to be a quote master at business. It's like well there's so many skills there. It's like you got marketing, you got sales, you got recruiting, you got finance, you got like there's so many things >> compounding becomes part of the master. >> Yeah. It's like so which Yeah. So where where is the the skill versus going, you know, super deep on biotech, right? M

3:27>> now in the world of biotech um and going deep on anything it feels like you're still like the deeper you go in something the more you feel like you don't know anything >> um and I certainly feel that way constantly >> curse of ignor the curse of knowledge >> I I was like I I have this uh we have this big marketing that's going to that's going to h my my next book's going to come out and I have some some big plans for it and I think it's going to do big stuff. Um and I was already like playing out like what I thought I'd be able to say afterwards which is like this is my letter to the internet. I still don't understand marketing that well. [laughter] Like I just feel like there's so much that I honestly have no idea about.

4:01>> Is it because you don't understand the details or are you still missing some of the bigger picture areas? >> I think it's just like there's so many things. It just like when I think about what has gotten me success with marketing has been like there's probably maybe like 15 rules that I pretty much follow and the rest is just like let's like the amount of times that I've been like this is going to be a winner and it bombs and something that we do in 5 seconds as like a last second thought ends up being the the home run advertisement or you know an email that just crushes compared to another one. I just I have I I have been I've been wrong so many times that I have like zero ego when it comes to marketing.

4:39[laughter] >> It's interesting because a lot of people will discount and say that's just probabilistic, but it isn't. When you put out a new video, >> Yeah. >> hundreds of thousands of people are telling you this is a 5.2% clickthrough versus 7.2. It it is not probabilistic. It's just the wrong answer. >> Yeah. >> Meaning there's some kind of ignorance debt there. >> Totally. How could how could there be an ignorance that after you've done something so many times?

5:03>> That's what drives me drives me nuts. But like so to to this point though, it's like um so I see prediction and control as the same thing, equal equal opposites at the same point. Like if you can if you could predict something with absolute certainty, provided you have influence over the variables, then you can control the outcome, right? And I see that as like intensely cool. Um, but like for a let's say a sales conversation, right? If we have one person here, I do believe that there is something that could occur that would create a 100% close rate process. The problem is it just might not be worth creating that process because some people might have to go back to their childhood and re-educate them on, you know, elementary math in order to get them to understand this concept or whatever it is, right? So, there's a certain amount of education that has to occur in order to get someone to change their behavior or at least the way that we want. I'm going to loop this back to the the marketing thing. Um but I see like sales is just increasing the likelihood that somebody purchases right within a conversation and so marketing serves more or less the same function just done one to many the amount of variables that exist in marketing

6:08>> I don't think anyone has even come close I mean maybe I AI will but like human beings like I don't think any any humans have come close to quantifying every single variable that exists and so we can say here's 15 things that I know always work like fast will pretty much always be slow. So you could control like 70% of the var of the probability and then there's 30% >> variance. That's exactly. So it perfect you you got to exactly where I was going which is like

6:35>> it's if there's a thousand variables it's like maybe the the 15 that we know that are the chunky ones it's like maybe that gets us 60% of the way and then we still roll the dice and it's just our downsides truncated. And I think it's just over time you just continue to move up the median. um at least from a content from an organic content marketing perspective but the same thing you know same thing with with paid ads just different different beast >> set another way in the land of the blind the oneeyed uh man is king so you're the oneeyed man

7:02>> yeah it's just willing to take >> which is a high compliment >> yeah honored >> so there's compounding of skills there's also the compounding that occurs to somebody that sticks to a domain >> why do people systematically underestimate that and why can't people stick with one thing for many years. >> Man, these are these are all hard hitters. So I think that um luck surface area is something that uh it's a very you know kitschy term but basically uh if you have if you have if you think about I'm going to draw a little analogy and I think it'll it'll make sense but like if you think about intelligence as accuracy and determination as the number of shots you take uh as you're shooting a target then it's great to be intelligent.

7:55But if I had to pick between unlimited shots and perfect aim, I would rather have unlimited shots, [laughter] >> right? And so the idea of the luck surface area there is like if we're shooting at least in this direct like this general, eventually one of my my arrows is going to hit the target and and on a long enough time horizon, one of the bullseye. And so the advantage of sticking with things is that you tip luck in your favor. You just are around for more things to occur. And by basically the same concept of of this there's a certain level of variability um that's going to always occur just within business chance whatever. But if we're there the whole time it's like we give we give luck time to happen

8:37>> rather than like if if you try to quote time things it's like you're you almost never get it. Um but if you're there the whole time then luck occurs. And so and those those lucky breaks are the ones that typically like define people's careers. Um it's just you just don't know when it happens. I mean Oggovie talked about this all the time where he said like um you know I've wasted uh you know 90% of my advertising dollars. He's like I just don't know which ones right like to say it's like the vast majority of the things that we do in our careers are not going to actually make a meaningful difference and then a very small percentage make all the difference in the world. You just don't know which one it's going to be which means that you just want to maximize the likelihood that it occurs.

9:12>> But in business >> you internalize once you get a hit you internalize there. You're like, "Oh, I said this line in the sales script. Now I could scale it across all my sales people." Totally. >> So, you do know in this in most cases of business, it just you don't know when your next knowing is going to come. >> Yeah. The next big breakthrough. And I think that's like kind of that that truncated downside risk. It's like um I used to say this a lot, but like the bottom floor of the building of your opportunities continues to get higher.

9:40So, like when I >> when I quit my job when I was in my early 20s, my plan B if my gym didn't work was going to be I was going to drive Uber and strip. >> Yeah. >> Um and so that's a pretty, you know, that's that was kind of a baseline, you know, floor of the building. Once I learned how to sell, I was like, "Okay, well, the absolute worst case scenario here is I can keep my clothes on and I don't have to work, you know, 18 hours or I probably still work 18 hours, but now I can sell cars, right? I can sell something that's like high high velocity. I could I could probably make $400 $500,000 a year just being top top car salesman. Okay, so that's now my baseline. And then once I learned how to advertise and get leads, then it was like, oh, okay, multiple millions of dollars a year is kind of like the baseline. It doesn't really matter what place I'm going. If you know how to market, you know how to sell, you can drive business. You're a rain maker fundamentally. And so it so like the bottom floor of that building. Um because like when people are like, you know, if you lost all of your reputation and all these things and you had no money, like what would you do? I'm like, I've had that happen twice and I'll tell you what I did. Like I don't have to do it as a hypothetical. I'll tell you exactly what I did, right? Like I went to a business owner and I said, "Hey, I'll bring you business. Let me keep whatever I kill and then you get customers for free." And most business owners say, "Sure, zero c sounds good."

10:47And then that's it. And I've done that. I've done that's what I did both times. And I was able to just restart and generate cash quickly. Um and that was a few years into my career. Um that was after I already had the marketing hat. Uh so I didn't have to go back to, you know, doing car sales or something like that. So, >> I've heard you use this analogy of levels. Once you learn how to pass and beat the level one boss and the level two boss, you could quickly get to that level three and then you start from there.

11:13>> Yeah, it's tough because um I think to circle back to the question you had earlier about why do people struggle with this? And I think it's because you get it's it feels good to win, right? And and losing sucks. And so if you know how to beat level one, two, three, and you get stuck on level four, there's a big part of you that after a sustained period of time of not beating level four, you're like, you know what, I'm just going to start a new character and I'm going to play the game slightly differently this time. And you and then the thing is is you have a rapid feedback loop of things going well because you're probably better. And you go you breeze through one, two, and three again, but then you hit four and then you're still there. But now four is hard because you're still battling level four on the other one typically because you us because most people don't completely stop doing one thing. They try to chase too many too many rabbits um and they catch none. Real quick, if you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.comroadmap, plug in your business information. And if you want us to actually help you deconstrain the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out on the thank you page. You can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help. And if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.