The Why, How and What to Acquiring a 6-Figure Skill

It's nearly impossible to find someone who hasn't felt like life is just becoming too expensive

Between inflation, layoffs in the 100s of thousands and low-paying jobs people are feeling stuck.

Housing is the most expensive it's ever been.

Food is the most expensive it's ever been.

Job satisfaction is the lowest it's ever been.

To add salt to the wound, the cost of education continues to climb and the "American Dream" seems to be slipping away with each passing day.

The days of going to college, getting a good job and retiring at 65 are over.

This used to be the ideal way of life, because for most people it was the best outcome to strive for.

But the world has changed and the dream with it.

The typically successful life has moved online and transformed to a life of maximum freedom and fulfillment.

One without corporate chains, large amounts of debt and location restrictions.

It's filled with ideas you love, people you enjoy spending time with, and more money than you thought possible.

There's only 2 catches to this dream life: It takes time and requires you to shift your perspective.

First we need to realize that we are all products in a marketplace whose value determines it's income.

Everyone chases money, when in reality they need to be chasing value.

The more valuable something is, the more money it attracts.

Just think about any famous painting, company or internet personality.

Paintings sell for 10s of million because of the perceived value.

Companies are worth billions because of the perceived value.

People are paid millions because of their perceived value.

The money is in the value. (you can dive deeper into this topic in last week's letter)

That begs the question: How Do You Increase Your Value?

There's 2 ways to increase your value: skills and attention.

The quality of your skills and the attention you can generate (which is also a skill) are the 2 factors that determine your level of value.

All of this boils down to your skillset because that is what determines your ability to accomplish an outcome.

Your ability to generate an ROI for your employer is the result of your skills.

Your ability to achieve a desired outcome for your client is the result of your skills.

Your ability to generate attention for a product or service is the result of your skills.

Skills are the building blocks of your individual ability.

An entry level worker needs one skill.

A CEO needs 10s of skills.

Each block you add, exponentially increases your value and ability to achieve desired outcomes.

Which leads to more $$ in your pocket.

This is why we owe it to ourselves to live a life of constant learning and skill stacking.

Become an Entrepreneur or Don't

Hustle culture and the big entrepreneurs on social media will have you thinking you should never touch a 9-5 and be making $10 million by 25-- that is absurd and extremely unlikely.

Alex Hormozi had a consulting job.

Dan Koe worked at web design agency.

Codie Sanchez worked at Goldman Sachs.

Gary Vaynerchuck worked at a liquor store until he was 32.

Each of them stated that their initial job gave them the skills, drive and perspective needed to get where they are today.

Some people can jump right into entrepreneurship, but don't get stuck thinking that a 9-5 is a sign of failure.

It can be the biggest advantage you can have.

Why?

You're literally being paid full-time to learn.

It's important to know you have a choice.

You can go full-time entrepreneur or do a 9-5 and transition to entrepreneur.

Both are equally valid and successful.

Going from $0 to a 6-Figure Skill

This is where we need to embrace patience and play the long game.

Getting your first high value skill will take a bit of time.

But time is your friend in an exponential game-- never forget that.

It took me several years to learn my first high income skill, but I boiled it down to a system for you all so you can do this 2x as fast.

Step 1: Pick the Right Skill for You

The first thing we need to do is pick what skill we want to learn.

There are 4 main factors in picking a skill:

• Value

• Demand

• Scalability

• Personal interest

Based on the heading of this section we are shooting for skills that are at least worth over $100k per year.

Some high value skills are:

• SEO

• Sales

• Coding

• Marketing

• Content Writing

• Product Management

• Web + Product Design

• Social Media Management

Any of those skills can net you 6-figures per year once you master them.

If you are wondering about a skill not on the list, leverage Google, Reddit and YouTube to see what people are making with that skill.

The next category is demand.

It's great to have something of value, but if no one has a need for it, you're left with nothing.

According to Upwork these are the most in-demand skills from 2023:

Personally I would recommend trying one of the above since we know its market validated.

The third piece is assessing the scalability of our skill.

A digital skill like SEO or UX design is highly scalable. You can deliver a lot of value to a lot of different people at once.

Contracting on the other hand is not very scalable. You are locked to physical locations, requires reliance on vendors for materials, and is a major time commitment.

It's a high value skill and can easily land you in the 6-figures, but it's more difficult to eventually buy your time back.

The easiest rule of thumb is that if your skill can be done from a computer, you're good to go.

The last factor is your personal interest.

At the end of the day, we should at least somewhat enjoy the skill.

If you're a creative consider a design or marketing style skill.

If you're a techie, try a technical skill like coding.

If you're a people person, try sales.

You'll never know if you like something until you try it. So don't get caught in analysis by paralysis.

Pick one up and give it a go.

Step 2: Learn it

Now that we have our skill locked in, we have to "hit the books" and learn everything we can.

We all have our own learning styles but this is what I found works best:

1. Search your topic on YouTube

2. Spend 10-20 hours consuming educational content on the topic

3. Refine your learnings by taking notes

4. Start a personal project to apply the skill

5. Hit Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Tik-Tok etc and follow people in that niche with that skill

6. Continue learning and applying what you learn

7. Read 1-2 books on that industry

If you do all 7 of those steps you will be ahead of 90% of people.

By the end of that process you should have a fundamental understand of the skill, the biggest players in the space and how the larger industry it's a part of functions.

Step 3: Build Your Own Experience

If you're anything like me, you absolutely despise the idea of relying on other people to "give you a chance"

When I first learned SEO, I started grappling with that issue.

I had this newfound skill but was struggling with convincing someone to let me prove my skill.

So I took matters into my own hands.

I built my own experience.

There's 2 ways I did this.

The first was doing a tear down of a popular website, outlining what I would do if I was the SEO working on their strategy, and then posting about it on social media.

The second was starting my own niche websites and getting them to rank in search.

The combination of these two skills landed my job at Forbes and has changed my life indefinitely.

This experience I built ended up landing my first client and a job I love.

The trick if finding ways to flex your skill muscle that doesn't require anyone's permission:

• Designing a mock website

• Creating a fake product for a real problem

• Creating brand materials for your favorite company

The ways are endless, the important part is to do it, and document you meant it so others can see it.

Step 4: Get Paid

Now that we have a skill, learned it, and applied it-- we want to spend all our energy finding a way to make money from it.

If you want to go the entrepreneur route immediately: start a service based business where you sell that skill to businesses in need of it.

This path is more intensive, but if done right you can be your own boss from the start.

But it's up to you to continue learning and refining your craft at the skill.

If you want to get as fast as possible, look for a 9-5 that position centered around that skill.

For most of these skills you'll be in the high 5-figure range (70-80k) as a beginner, which is great.

You'll learn from the people ahead of you in the company and get paid to get better.

After a year or so, you can begin to explore going full-time entrepreneur.

Step 5: Become So Good They Can't Ignore you

After the first year or so of working with this skill, we can start to transition into a big picture thinker.

This is where people make the big money.

Anyone can learn SEO, few can get good enough to stay ahead of trends and deliver consistent results.

This is where steps 5-7 from the learning phase really come into play:

1. Hit Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Tik-Tok etc and follow people in that niche with that skill

2. Continue learning and applying what you learn

3. Read 1-2 books on that industry

You want to be a sponge for your industry and follower the top people in the space.

Study them, test what they are testing and always be looking for how you can improve yourself and the skill.

An average skill worker applies the fundamentals and knows how to get results.

A big picture skill worker applies the fundamentals, gets results and is studying where the puck is going.

The SEO industry has been rocked by the advent AI content. It's completely changed the game.

An average SEO is probably drowning in the change, but the smart SEOs have been studying AI and keeping up with the curve.

The ones who look to the future, are the ones who soak up the most value. ($$$)

To Recap:

1. Pick Your Skill

2. Learn It

3. Build Your Own Experience

4. Get Paid

5. Get Good

If you apply this framework, you will be making more money by this time next year.

Happy skill hunting

PS: I’m launching a free Magnetic Content Masterclass this month. You’ll learn:

• How to build and scale your online attention

• Craft content that creates your own customers

• Create unlimited content ideas

• Create content that sells

If you don’t want to miss out, you can use the button below. Spots are limited and won’t be free forever:

Talk soon,

Matt