How To Find Your Trillion Dollar Skill

On a recent episode of My First Million, Hubspot Co-founder Dharmesh Shah described his strategy for identifying the skills you possess that, when combined, could be your trillion-dollar unfair advantage.

Side note: if you’re in the startup space and don’t listen to My First Million you’re missing out. The value-packed podcast is both enlightening and entertaining thanks to startup superstar hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.

Dharmesh Shah breaks down the simple process anyone can use to discover which skills can be combined to set you apart from the crowd.

Step 1: Draw a circle and write your best skill in the middle

Take stock of your professional skills and determine what you think your best skill is.

What is something you’re in the top 5–10% of given all the people in your field?

As a personal example, I tend to think I’m a pretty good writer and it’s a skill I practice often because it’s something I enjoy doing. Specifically, I enjoy business-focused writing about new ventures, business models, and startup breakdowns. So, I might write down “long form business writing”.

Step 2: Draw an intersecting circle with a second top skill or area of domain expertise.

The second circle is going to contain your second best skill or a domain where you have a lot of experience. Think broadly about this one — it could be a specific business model (like B2B or B2C), it could be a hard skill (like graphic design), or it could even be an area of knowledge (crypto, music, or climate change).

Whatever ends up in the second circle should be something you’re very experienced with — maybe it’s not your best skill and maybe you’re not top 5% in the world at it but it’s a top area of expertise for you.

To continue with the personal example, I have a particular skill in new venture building and innovation management. Specifically, I excel in the operations role of 0–1 business building. In the second circle, I might write New Venture Creation: Operations.

Step 3: Capture the intersection of the two circles

Here, all you need to do is determine what is at the intersection of your two top skills. This puts you in a category of your own.

The number of people who can do skill #1 really well and skill #2 really well is much much smaller than the number of people who can do 1 of those 2 things. That’s where your specific trillion dollar opportunity lies.

*Dharmesh notes that the skills or domains have to have a way to build on each other. If they’re completely unrelated (he uses the example of Olympic swimmer and expert programmer) these skills don’t match up to a valuable outcome.

To finish with the personal example, the intersection of my two best skills might be something like “writing business model playbooks for emerging startups” or “redesigning corporate innovation processes” as both require writing in a business context and operationalizing innovation frameworks.

Once you know where your skills intersect to create your own lane, you’re not one in a million anymore — you might just be one in a trillion.

The bottom line is, you’re unique. Your experiences are unique, your voice is unique, your perspective is unique, and your skills — when combined — are rare. Use that to your advantage and do what no one else can.

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