3 Steps on How to Increase Your Value In the Marketplace...
I'm back with a blog post after a longgggg while.
Quick side-story…
It's been 6 months since I joined Databricks, one of the fastest growing Data and Artificial Intelligence companies in the world.
As I reflect on the past 6 months, I decided to take inventory of some of the skills I was developing,
Specifically: Sales
This blog will be relevant to a lot of you (and if you’re here now, you may want to stick around…)
Here me out...
Your career is LARGELY defined by specific knowledge (AKA 'SK'). A term I came across from Naval Ravikant - a highly successful Tech entrepreneur and investor in companies like Twitter, Uber, etc…
SK is valuable knowledge that is specialized to the person and circumstance.
You’re probably pursuing some form of specific knowledge right now with whatever you do for work, or a hobby you’re really into…
How to find Specific Knowledge?
From Naval himself: ‘Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion’ — Naval
if you're:
- between the ages of 15-24+
- hungry to solve problems and make money
- Want to build a solid foundation for a successful career
- All while making a positive impact in the world through your superpower,
One thing I'm doing to make headway in these areas is choosing to learn the art and science of sales...
What to start...
- Follow your genuine curiosity: Focus on something that truly interests you, rather than trying to force a passion where it doesn't exist
- Develop SK: build on your existing expertise by investing in books, courses, and consuming relevant content related to the skill which you want to learn
- Embrace repetition: With focused learning and practice ( studies show you need just 20 hours of learning to get good at a skill- whether it's riding a bike, learning to cook, sales, or boxing... you can become quite proficient, quite quickly...)
Let me give a quick example of how I did this for Sales (even if Sales bores you, you need to be good at this):
Example - My Personal Experience...
Step 1 - Follow your genuine curiosity:
Example - I first read the book 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' by Dale Carnegie in 2020, almost 3.5 years ago, and re-read the book every year…
This book taught me the foundation of effective communication and sales and sparked my curiosity to learn more…
- Developing specialized knowledge:
I took this spark and began investing in other sales books, and courses and consumed dozens of hours of content from YouTube creators (i.e. Alex Hormozi, Jordan Platten, and Chris Voss to name a few)...
1st unpaid job... In my final year of university, I hustled my way into my first Sales role at a tiny start-up...
Here, I purposely chose to gain deeper, specialized knowledge in learning the skill of Sales…
Embrace repetition:
To build on my theoretical learning I;
- Summer 2022- Hustled into a Scale-up doing over $100m revenue as the first ever Intern in Sales Operations (not quite sales but this experience was priceless)
- Summer 2023- Began my first, full-time Sales role at Databricks, as the youngest full-time Sales rep in the company,
And now I’m practising sales day-in-day out!
There you have it.
Once you've honed in and get really really good at one skill, repeat with another one and maybe start thinking about what you want to do with your expertise.... (That’s for another blog…)
If you found this anecdote helpful,
- Reach out to let me know
- Subscribe to these blog posts (it's free, & as long as they don't bore you lol)
- Share it with a friend or family member who could benefit from it.
Peace out & take care,
Danyal