How to utilise the greatest meta-skill
Hey friends, happy Sunday
Let's get straight into the Filter!
One Lesson
How to utilise the greatest meta-skill
Most people are awful at marketing.
And recently, I've realised that marketing is the greatest meta-skill you can learn.
Because it crosses over with every area of day to day life.
If you can persuade someone to buy from your landing page, you can persuade someone to give you a job.
If you understand how to grab peoples attention then you'll never struggle to make friends.
As a web designer + developer I've been working closely with marketers for the last 4 years and I've seen this first hand.
The top marketers find it easier to get better jobs and build their own companies than those without marketing skills.
I think the reason here is that most other skills are less beneficial in day to day life.
Understanding how to create a great user experience is useful when designing a website or app but less so when trying to grab someones attention.
And knowing how to code a great app is awesome, but unless you know how to effectively communicate that value to others your business will struggle.
Marketing is really just communication at scale.
As David Perell says: "The world rewards the people who are best at communicating ideas, not the people with the best ideas."
Those who understand how to grab attention, persuade others and communicate value have an unfair advantage in all areas of life.
No matter what industry you're in, learn how to market yourself.
Two Ideas
I.
Someone else's success does not prevent you from achieving success.
Life is a positive-sum game.
II.
Life is good when you can feel the synergy between everything you do:
read books → improve yourself → improve your business
meditate → mental clarity → deeper relationships
workout → more energy → better quality of life
Three Favourite Finds
5 Megabyte in 1956 vs 1 Terrabyte Today:
This is a great example of things feeling like they don't change day to day but over the course of years those improvements compound.
The average kindle book is 2mb, so that hard drive on the left could store 2 1/2 books where as the memory card on the right can hold roughly 500,000 books.
Cheat, Pray, Work - How to win the attention game When you’re starting on social media it feels like you’re shouting into the void. With no one listening you have three options, to cheat, pray or work.
This framework from Jakob Greenfeld is a great strategy for winning the attention game of social media.
Growth without Goals: I find myself going back and forth between setting goals and focusing on systems/habits but every time I seem to revert to what Patrick O’Shaughnessy calls “Growth without Goals”.
Instead of setting audacious goals just set yourself some daily practices that align with the type of person you want to become. These practices might produce things that look like end points or achievements but really they are just byproducts of who you’re becoming.
End note
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Have a fantastic week!
- Stephen