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Skill stacking is the art of combining several “normal” skills to create a unique combination of abilities that are extraordinarily valuable.
If your goal is to become wealthy, then increasing your earned (active) income so you have more money to invest is a critical first step. For this reason, skill-stacking is one of the fastest and easiest ways to command more money in the marketplace.
If you aren’t experiencing regular bumps in your income, then chances are that you aren’t properly skill stacking for success.
The Art of Skill Stacking
What I love about the skills is that you can “skill stack” them on top of each other.
Much like a piece of real estate that gets more valuable with each floor that you add, skills are identical. Your earning potential will increase each time you stack a new skill-set on top of your existing capabilities.
Intrigued by this concept but need some real world examples? Let’s dive in.
A Real World Example of Skill-Stacking
Many of you know doctor Sandra Lee, who is widely known as Dr. Pimple Popper. While she is a Dermatologist by training, she did not come into wealth until she learned how to dominate on YouTube and Instagram.
Only when she spent time and resources to learn how to integrate social media into her medical practice, did her wealth grow exponentially.
Have you ever noticed that her video is high quality, her sound quality is great (not garbled), and her content is engaging? Did you also notice that her videos get wide reach?
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These things didn’t happen by accident. She wasn’t lucky. She was smart and strategic about skill-stacking.
First, she got her medical degree. Second, honed her social media skills. Third, she invested in herself and the equipment she needed to produce quality video footage. Fourth, she mastered video distribution, using strategies like video SEO and collaborating with YouTube stars, to get her content wide reach.
Because of her investments into self-education in the years after acquiring a medical degree, she now has her own realty TV series, skin care line, and merchandise.
She also attracted 3.9 million followers on Instagram.
How A Designer Can Skill-Stack for Success
Need another example?
Let’s take a graphic designer who works for an employer for $50,000 per year.
Right now, there are graphic designers graduating from high schools and colleges all over the world, so they are not in scarce supply. It is also possible for business owners to hire graphic designers in other countries through websites like Upwork.com for very little money (a couple dollars per design).
So, how would a USA-based graphic designer command more money in the marketplace, when the supply for their skill set is not scarce, nor in high demand relative to the number of people who have it?
The answer is that the designer needs to stack other skills on top of their design skills.
First, I’d recommend that this person invest in a course to learn social media skills. By growing a large social media audience, the designer could get their work in front of large audience of people on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and other platforms worldwide.
They could also showcase testimonials of people raving about their work. Seriously, social proof can work wonders!
Next, I’d recommend that they invest into learning sales skills, by buying books or online courses or watching free videos on YouTube. Once they know how to sell with confidence, they could offer their design skills to businesses at a higher price point than what their employer is paying them now.
Not only would this create a second stream of income for the designer, but they would immediately benefit from the abundance of tax advantages available to business owners, because they would be selling their services directly.
Third, the designer could target high income opportunities, such as designing landing pages for ad campaigns for individuals or companies who are running paid media ads. To do this, they would need to learn about designing to drive sales conversions. Most likely, this would require an investment of time or money to acquire this higher level skill-set.
Once the designer acquired the capacity to design for sales conversions, they could command a high price point up front, plus ask for a share of the revenue produced from the ad campaign over time. Now we’re away from the chump change and talking about some real money.
If the designer also studied buyer psychology (the psychological triggers that cause people to buy), they could command even more money on top of that. If you want to acquire this skill, go grab the book Influence.
Ask yourself…
- Do you think a designer working for a single employer will make more money?
- Or, do you think a designer who works for an employer and who has huge social media audiences showing hundreds of client testimonials and who knows how to pick up the phone to sell to companies who are spending $500K a month on Facebook ads and who knows how to design landing pages for sales conversions will make more money?
The answer should be obvious. Simply put, the second designer has made themselves more valuable to the marketplace by stacking new skills on top of their design skills.
The first one has not.
My Experience With Skill-Stacking
My background is in Biotechnology and Molecular Biology, so many of my peers are scientists or work for biotech companies.
However, I went a different route years ago and chose to buy an online course that taught me about blogging and search engine optimization (SEO). This allowed me to create an exponentially more profitable opportunity for myself.
Today, I run the world’s largest stem cell industry blog, BioInformant.com, which attracts nearly one million unique visits per year.
Through that site, I have an automated process for selling digital products to biotech and pharma companies, as well as consulting services, site ads, and more. Over time, I studied online marketing, sales funnels, high ticket sales, buyer psychology, and more. These skills “stacked” nicely.
It was these early investments into myself that changed my life and positioned me to move into larger income-producing investments, such as real estate, in the future.
An Extraordinarily Valuable Combination
In short, skill stacking is about combining normal skills into an extraordinarily valuable combination of skills that few people have.
This, my friends, is how you can readily 2X, 3X, or even 10X your income.
Will it happen overnight? No. Will it require you to invest in yourself? Yes. Will it take work? Of course.
However, can it change your life in profound and powerful ways? Yes, without a doubt.