You’re Probably In The Wrong job. Mix It Up And Earn Way More Money

Combine your strengths and you can command a much higher income

You’ve got bills to pay. You’ve got clothes to buy. You have holidays to experience.

All this requires money. For most of us, that money comes in the form of pay from a J O B.

What do you get paid for?

There’s an old joke about a plumber coming to a man’s house to fix his toilet.

The plumber looks at the leaking toilet, pulls out a $1 washer from his pocket and fixes the toilet in less than a minute.

He then asks the owner of the house for $100 as payment. The owner is incredulous about the seemingly extortionary price and demands a breakdown of the charge.

The plumber responds — “$1 for the washer and $99 for knowing where to put it”.

You get paid for the value you bring to the table.

If you are in a role which requires minimal skill, and basically anyone with a heartbeat can do the same thing — you’re not going to get paid much.

Being a cashier at the supermarket for example — the number of people in the world capable of doing that job is upwards of 5 billion!

To work as a neurosurgeon, however — the number of people with that skillset is comparatively minuscule; thus fittingly — the amount of income earned from it is a whole lot more than a supermarket cashier.

What does this mean for you?

Well — to significantly increase your income, you need to find a job where your particular combination of skills is harder to come by.

This is your competitive (and comparative) advantage; hard for any old Tom, Dick or Harriett to replicate.

An example

Imagine for a moment that you’re great at computer programming.

You’re probably able to make a reasonable living off that.

You are however also gifted with the gift of the gab — thus are quite persuasive, and great at presenting to an audience.

Now — so long as you’re working as a computer programmer, you’re competing with a field of millions of other programmers and thus not only don’t have less scarcity factor, but you’re unlikely to be at the top of the mountain of computer programmers worldwide.

Bringing your different skills together however, as only you and a few others can, allows you to become a technical sales consultant who converts lots of sales, receives big commissions and makes significantly bigger bucks.

The greatest value you can deliver lies in the intersection of your various key strengths — provided of course that there is sufficient demand for the way in which you bring it together.

What next?

What are your key strengths? Think about them, write them down.

Are you harnessing them together as part of your day job? Are you bringing all your great skills to the table, or are you only bringing one or two?

If you have more to offer — what does a job that involves all your skills look like? What are their job titles and approximate salaries? Pick one — and start trying to move yourself into that space.

What’re you waiting for? Go get them tiger!

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