A Powerful Hack To Transform Your Skills In 90 Days Or Less
When I started my business career, I was thrown into the deep end—barely knowing how to swim.
No leader, no manager, no mentor, I had to learn how to tread water on my own—not only to survive but thrive.
The first few years, even after getting my MBA (whoopee-do), I was splashing around, barely able to keep my head afloat. I was tasked with leading a multi-million family business that was slowly dying. Every night, I laid my head on my pillow and thought, "What the F am I doing?"
Then reality hit me—I had no clue.
Slowly I realized a powerful shift that changed everything.
Because I didn't have the "budget" to hire anyone or outsource important functions to an expensive firm, I had to do them myself or delegate them to limited internal resources with my guidance.
I had to dig deep and figure it out, or we'd die.
The Spark of Genius is Within You
I was in my mid-twenties, and one evening, after an incredibly stressful day, the urge to jump in a hot bath teased me.
Drowning myself was likely my first motivation, but instead, I glanced at the Kindle my mom recently bought me. Even though I told myself that I had hated reading since I was a child, I purchased my first non-fiction book. It was the No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits by Dan Kennedy.
Then, I grabbed the Kindle and slowly dipped my toes in the scorching hot water—the heat slowly melted away my internal stress.
I began to read, and read, and read.
I was shocked at what I learned.
I became addicted.
Over several weeks, I started to execute what I learned and established quarterly goals that I knew would drive my business forward. My goals were ambitious, so I had to learn the necessary skills to achieve them.
Books became my obsession.
Courses were my splurge.
Mentors became an investment.
I needed these to develop my skills to achieve my goals—there was a big skill/knowledge gap, despite my higher education.
As BJ Fogg says: "Your ability is only as strong as its weakest ability factor link."
So, I learned how to sell, market, and negotiate, which lead to writing, strategy, and leadership. All macro skills, but with time and focus, I filled in the foundations with micro-skills.
Although this was a long and slow process, instead of hiring experts—I learned a ton.
If You're Not Growing Your Dwindling Into Complacency
This isn't some bullish, "you must grow or die" soldier mindset.
It's just a fact of life. Everything is cycling through birth and death within every moment. It's what Buddhists call impermanence. But things die quicker when they don't evolve.
When people let one skill dominate their life, they get replaced with technology.
When a business depends on a core business model that was essential twenty-five years ago, it gets replaced with an innovative competitor.
Developing your skills and stacking the skills on top of each other is how people, you, become profoundly valuable. And they don't have to all be "business" related—but business is life.
My mindfulness training has taught me to be a better leader.
My copywriting training has taught me to be a better salesman.
My sales training has taught me to be a better communicator.
You should align skill development with your goals 85% of the time.
Here's how to develop skills that matter right now to improve your career and life dramatically:
Step 1: Establish impactful quarterly goals.
You need to know where to aim to avoid missing the target.
The best goals are quarterly because it's where the action occurs. Quarterly goals are the sprint to your yearly goals or long-term vision.
Ask yourself:
What is the most important strategic objective or idea that would have the most significant positive impact on X?
Why is this quarterly objective important? How does it help me achieve my yearly goal of Y?
Who can help me accomplish this objective?
Before you haphazardly waste time jumping into a book or course, you must establish what's most important.
Having a quarterly goal sets your focus and helps you filter out distractions.
Step 2: Identify the one or two essential skills that will help you achieve your quarterly goals (remember the 80/20 rule).
There's often an ability gap between what you want to achieve and what you can achieve with your current abilities.
However, you don't need to spend 10,000 hours to learn a valuable skill.
For example, a salesperson can set a goal to sell $10,000,000 worth of something, but if they lack the skills to create and capture opportunities, it'll only be a dream.
Goals and skills need to mold together. As you start to set bigger goals, you deepen your knowledge.
But you don't just randomly choose something to learn.
Elon Musk recommends,
"View knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to."
Start by looking at your goals, and ask yourself, what skills am I lacking that will help me achieve this goal?
Then, follow Tim Ferris's DSSS Method:
Deconstruction: Break down a skill into its major components (The Macro Principles)
Selection: Look for 20% of the components that give you 80% of the value.
Sequence: Decide which order to learn and practice in.
Stakes: Determine the consequences you take on if you don't follow through.
Choose two to three action items you'll actively learn over ninety days in your quarterly sprint.
For example, let's say you're a salesperson and want to 5x your current quota. In that case, 70% of the results come from your ability to prospect and create opportunities, so you should invest in sharpening your prospecting skills.
Step 3: Actively learn.
As you read or learn, your goal is to extract something powerful.
So powerful that if you practiced it regularly, it would transform your skills and goals.
As you learn, you highlight or take notes that serve as a highlight. Then, you become even more active. You start to turn your highlights into something more useful, like a concise literature note written in your own words.
Literature notes are the key points you want to build more knowledge around.
Once you've extracted the key points and summarized them in your own words, it's time to practice.
Step 4: Extract the key lessons and practice.
Without practice, what you learn gets lost in the abyss of mental noise.
You must practice the skills that matter, and it's the P in the Learn, Practice, and Execute Framework.
You practice in low-stakes situations.
If you want to develop your prospecting skills, don't start to cold call a dream client with a weak script, no value, poor confidence, and a lack of knowledge on handling objections.
Instead, role play with a coach or colleague—these are low-risk situations, no matter how awkward they can feel.
Practice doesn't make perfect.
Perfect practice makes perfect.
Step 5: Execute what you learned in areas that matter.
It's a waste if you never use the skills you've been developing in the game—during the times that matter the most.
With your new set of skills, you will apply them to your quarterly goals.
You're now going to use the prospecting skills you've worked so hard to sharpen on the opportunities that matter the most.
As you execute, you'll fail—which is what you want.
The best learning occurs through disfluency.
When you struggle, you learn. When you make that cold call (or other skill scenarios), and an objection causes you to stutter and flop around like a fish out of water, GOOD.
Conduct a post-mortem and ask yourself:
What did you like best about what you did?
What can you do better next time?
Disfluency deepens your knowledge.
Goals without the necessary skills to achieve them will fail—or you'll procrastinate and make excuses.
Set big goals, and define the skills you need to achieve them.
If you do this, you will see powerful results in any domain over time.
