Different is better than better

The value that a person provides in their professional life is linked to how replaceable they are. If you are an extremely irreplaceable person, you are inherently valuable and people will pay to hire/keep you. However, most people take the long and often arduous journey to becoming valuable in a market. In this piece, I will talk about a more effective, alternative path I have recently discovered.

There are two main streams for becoming valuable. The first is the path that most people choose and it involves becoming as skilled in your domain as possible. This means that you are in the rat race with everyone else and often requires you to spend years in formal education to gain the necessary knowledge required for your respective career. Then, you work at an entry level job for a few years, advance your career and eventually you may be valuable enough for companies to cough up the big bucks.

Here’s the catch: In any career path you choose, your skillset and knowledge must be in the top 1% of all the people in your market to justify you getting paid in the top 1%. This is an extremely difficult for most people and most career paths. Often unattainable for the average person. For example, in the Uk, there are 2.2 million people who work in the finance sector. In order for you to get paid among the highest salaries, lets say you should be in the top 2200 bankers. This means you have to be in the top 0.1% of bankers. In other words you have to be in better than 99.9% of the other bankers in order to be valued more than them. Good news, there is a more efficient method.

Differentiate yourself.

It is better to be a banker who is in the top 5% of bankers, who is can also build websites who can also write scripts for social media and can also play the piano. You would probably be the only person in the world who can do all of those things. The more you can differentiate yourself, the more valuable you will be. You automatically become among the top people in the world with a similar skill set because there will only be a few people with the same skills as you.

It is better to be a banker who is in the top 5% of bankers, who is can also build websites who can also write scripts for social media and can also play the piano. You would probably be the only person in the world who can do all of those things. The more you can differentiate yourself, the more valuable you will be. You automatically become among the top people in the world with a similar skill set because there will only be a few people with the same skills as you.

Ali Abdaal is one of the people who is an inspiration and example of how this principle works. He is a doctor who studied at Cambridge University who also runs a very successful youtube channel, has his own podcast, a website where he posts blogs and articles, has numerous classes online classes via a paid subscription and also has a business that helps students get into UK medical schools. He has diversified his skills portfolio and we should do so too.

We increase our value in a market by either being better or being different. I think the latter is the better option. Being different is better than being better.