Do you have what it takes to start your business today? Do you need to wait a bit more or just go for it? This is what we are going to cover in today's podcast and the answer might suprise you. If you like the podcast and want to support me, don't hesitate to drop an review (I won't hold it against you hehe).
How's it going guys? So today I wanted to talk to you about something very important, as usual because it's a one of these limiting beliefs that’s stopping people from making progress.
I think it's very important to talk about it so we can debunk it together and you can move forward. So the subject of today is going to be Skills versus Attributes. So for now it might not make a lot of sense but we're going to go through that together and you'll see what I mean.
I meet a lot of people who refrain from starting something because they think they don't have the necessary skills.” I don't have enough skills. I don't have enough knowledge in a particular field to go and do it”.
Because the assumption is that you have to be the expert. And they might be the case for you. I still have to go through that stuff too, but you know what? Once I explain what I'm going to talk about today you can actually go past and naturally start something without being the expert.
While you're writing your CV, you put more emphasis on your skills. “Well I know this I know this particular programming language. I know that” and blah blah blah blah blah. The emphasis is on your skills.
You go to a job interview. They will ask you for your skills. What skills do you have? And my assumption was that was the most important thing and that you should be judged on your skills and guess what happened when I went for my interview in England?
The interview was awesome! I arrived at the company, called Black Spider. It was really the best company I've worked for, like honestly. And when I got there I went for the interview and well strangely enough they didn't ask me anything related to my skills. They didn't ask me the kind of questions like which school did you attend and which this and which that? All the typical questions you would expect in a job interview.
They didn't ask me if I knew you know Bayesian filtering or stuff like that, because I was in anti-spam. Right. So they didn't ask me about my skills. They asked me questions about who I was. What I liked and what I wanted to do in life and stuff like that. And this is when I realized something.
The atmosphere and the team we had there was the best team I've been a part of. Then I had another team that I absolutely loved, because I was head of the team, so I was the manager and stuff. So this was my family. And that's where I learned a lot about working with people and a lot about you know being a better person. And they managed to create this atmosphere where you know everybody was helping one another.
And you knew that for example, if even if your neighbour super busy and stuff or sweating and was like super stressed. If you needed help, that person will stop everything he or she was doing and will help you. And that made for an amazing dynamic and the business was flourishing.
And so I started thinking “why didn't they ask me anything about my skills?” And you know after a while I basically realized and came to the conclusion that there are two different things that you can be judged on. I'll say you have your skills and you have your attributes. OK.
Do You Have What It Takes? You'll Be Suprised.
So I'm going to explain. So your skills are stuff that you've learned. Like, I don't know HDMI out. CSX Facebook ads, etc. You know what I mean. And this is again what people will judge you on most of the time, but the skills actually matter less than your attributes.
The attributes are who you are as a person. So are you a curious person? So are you going to go and look for the answers? Are you like a helpful? So are you going to help your teammates? All these attributes. Or you're a nice person or are you a jerk?
So the attributes is who you are. And slowly but surely I realized something. Skills can be taught easily. If you don't know anything about a CML, I will give you a book and in the next week or the next two weeks or whatever, you’ll know everything there is to know about it!
Same for Facebook ads. You sit in front of the course and you’ll know it all right. But if you're a jerk, if you're the biggest jerk on the planet, if you're rude, it's not going to change tomorrow.
Your skills can change tomorrow. They can change overnight, but your attributes can't change overnight and they hardly ever change. Like people don't actually change that much. They can evolve but they can't change.
And for some reason we put a lot of emphasis on skills. So from that day, from that point on I stopped paying attention to skills. You know when you join a company, you’ll have a training program. That's the reason why you have a training program, is to get the skills right?
So whatever you need the person to do in your company, you're going to give them training on it so that at that point you're going to get the skills.
But if you get people who have the right mind-set, who are going to move forward, who are going to look for the answers, who are going to share with the team members and just have a positive attitude that that's necessary when these things get rough and stuff, this is what you want.
Because this is not something you can teach the person right? So after this experience, I started applying this in everything I was doing when I was recruiting people.
For me, the cohesion of the team and the dynamic of the team was 10 times more important than the mere skills, because once you're involved in a team, people are going to give you all the knowledge and the skills that you need.
And so why am I telling you this is because this is stopping you right now. Right now you're telling yourself “dude I don't have the skills. I don't know which email I don't know this, that” but you know what? I didn't know anything. I had no Idea about funnels and stuff like that when I started.
You just buy a course, you buy a book or you go on Internet. You go on the Internet on YouTube and there are a lot of like tutorials of stuff. You watch it for like two three days or whatever and then you know about it. Look at the attributes. It's what's going to make the difference.
If people see that you want it and you like it and you're hustling and you're there to help them and stuff. This is what matters. Skills can come later. Don't worry about it.
2 Responses
You are so right man ! Take action now. Great episode.
Hi Timo,
Yes its a great episode.
There is proverb that says; “The early bird catches the worm”