Upskilling yourself for a rapidly changing world

Focus on the things that truly add value and not the things that look good on the CV because that 'old world' is dying fast.

I work with lots of freelancers that do a wide variety of things for the past 4-5 years.

Some do content, others do operations or marketing, etc.

I often have zero clue what education they have. I don’t care.

I often have no clue what courses they have taken to upskill themselves. Again, I don’t care.

The only thing I see and care about are two things: Can they get the work done and do they follow my ‘Beast method’ system well.

And I’m consistently surprised by just how bad some people are at it… despite it being so simple.

Today i’m going to talk about this a bit as I think it points to some interesting trends for the future.

How do people typically upskill themselves?

People generally love to take courses and get higher education.

Many folks go to get an MBA. Even though I think it has declined a lot in popularity and value.

Other folks might take an online course on Udemy or something.

Or perhaps they just watch Youtube videos teaching the latest AI techniques.

Generally folks love to get some type of certificate that they can show to others on their Linkedin profile. As if this is a badge that says “hey… i should be paid more.”

They want to think that this downtime when they are not working is somehow being invested back into their future so that they will be worth more later.

And that kind of used to be true before. But I think it is rarely true today.

Does this pay off?

Unfortunately most of this upskilling is optimizing for an old world that does not exist anymore.

Almost nobody cares if you have an MBA anymore.

It’s almost a negative sign. As if you’re announcing that you want to be paid more than you are worth.

Because if you’re good.. you will get to where you wanna go without this MBA.

And I say this as a person who has an MBA…. yes it was fun and it was good networking. But do I realistically think I used what I learned?

Not really. 98% of it was forgotten within the first couple of years.

And this is even more true the last few years where many people have been laid off for an extended period of time already.

Traditional ‘careers’ are dwindling rapidly

Large companies struggle to maintain their margins against aggressive overseas companies, AI, etc.

And the overpaid people that add questionable value are the first ones to go.

For the few good corporate careers that are left the competition is getting very intense. You need to be really good not just at what you do but also at politics.

I consider that I can pretty accurately tell whether a person is going to have a successful career in the corporate world within about twenty minutes of meeting them and be probably 90%+ accurate.

How? Because it requires a communication polish that most people do not have. And no amount of upskilling is going to give it to them.

So what happens to the others? Well even if they get the job they want they’re usually out within a relatively short amount of time.

Either because they’re pushed out or they get frustrated and leave of their own accord. They’re just not as good at the politics as some others.

And so I think most people are incorrectly focusing on this ‘old world’ when trying to upskill. When they should instead be preparing for the ‘new world’.

And the ‘new world’ is all about working with relatively small, nimble companies that capitalize on AI and remote, asynchronous work.

How to think about upskilling yourself?

I recommend upskilling yourself for the things that business owners actually care about. Things that add ‘true value’.

Things like:

• Do you figure out and solve problems quickly?

• Do you work in a very structured and organized way?

• Do you have experience doing some of the things that I ask you to do, which allows you to do it more efficiently?

And that is about it!!!!

Business owners like me don’t care what masters degree you have or what online courses you took. Because we almost never see any direct influence on how you work and create value.

But I can tell right away when a person is good at the things I care about. Because they do what I ask of them quickly and stick to my system, ‘the Beast Method’, very well.

I think getting good at the ‘Beast Method’ is perhaps the best form of upskilling

First let me rehash what this method is. We all use Clickup (a project management tool) and you follow these simple rules:

• Everything is a task

• All work is an update to a task

• Clear your Clickup inbox a few times a day

That’s it.

It’s so simple! But I can tell you that at least 75% of the hundreds of freelancers i’ve worked with in the past don’t do it very well.

And if they can’t pick it up in a reasonable amount of time, it slashes my view on their value by 50% or more.

I don’t care how smart they are if I’m not getting updates on what they are doing and I can’t feel secure that they are on the right path.

I don’t care if they worked at great companies if they are not commenting in a timely way with the rest of the team.

Just being good at this simple system makes them SO MUCH MORE VALUABLE.

And I think more and more business owners that have to compete in this new age will start thinking like me.

How do I recommend people upskill themselves?

I think folks make the biggest leaps in their careers when they work for people that are really good. Not when taking courses.

I know this is true of me.

I am an amalgamation of numerous rock stars throughout my career. And the ‘best’ ones were organizational freaks of nature. Like I consider myself now.

They could stay on top of hundreds of balls that were flying through the air while also responding to almost everyone on all channels almost immediately.

Get really good at this and this is probably the biggest leap in value you can add to any team or company you work for going forward. And it’s actually pretty easy to learn.

Closing thoughts

This one guy that used to work for me years back had lots of organizational issues.

He upskilled himself like crazy in the years since. A fancy MBA, all kinds of seminars and courses, etc.

But I am pretty sure he never solved the root cause of why I let him go.

And when I look at what he’s done these past years.. it has the hallmarks of a person who has essentially gone in circles.

Compare this to another young guy in his early 20’s that I just worked with at a client recently. I showed him the ‘Beast method’ and he picked it up almost immediately and ran with it.

Hell he was almost as good at it as I was after awhile. Juggling lots of projects and keeping them all on track.

He had no fancy degrees. No upskilling. But he can come work with me anytime he wants. And in almost any function.

Whereas the first guy.. the one with the fancy MBA and all the degrees . I wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole. And I have a feeling lots of his ex-managers would probably say the same thing lol.