The Skill Stack Manifesto (Part 2)

Unlock Your Unique Edge

Jack Butcher was burned out — trapped in the graphics designer hamster wheel. For ten years, he’d done everything “right”. Moved to New York from his home in the UK, built a solid portfolio, worked at multiple agencies for the biggest clients. He even started his own agency. But he felt like he was pushing a boulder up an endless hill. If he stopped pushing for just a moment the boulder would roll back down and crush him.

Every day he was fighting for design work competing with hundreds of other skilled designers. Sure, he was good — but not so exceptional that he could command the highest rates and be picky about who to work for. He was stuck, burned out and hungry for something more.

Then Jack had an insight that changed everything: graphic design wasn’t his only skill. He had a deep interest in philosophy and a unique ability to compress insights down into simple graphics that instantly conveyed a message — like a visual version of Naval Ravikant.

He started experimenting. He published his graphical nuggets of wisdom on Twitter doing it with his own unique style defined by simple black-and-white shapes and just a few words. His work embodied the essence of compression — boiling profound truths down to their most essential elements. His graphics spread like wildfire and Jack’s brand “Visualize Value” took off. Within 18 months he had built a brand worth $1M+ and now companies were pursuing him, not the other way around.

What transformed Jack from burned out agency owner to category leader? A skill stack. He combined solid (but not exceptional) graphic design skills with his interest in philosophy and a world-class talent for compressing ideas to their core. This unique combination put him in a category of one - with the result being a massively valuable brand. (Jack himself breaks down this concept of strategic skill stacking in this video)

This is exactly the playbook I outlined in part one - the “combine, create, dominate” formula. Combine skills to create a category of one, create compelling value with those skills, and dominate your category. That’s how you win. The alternative? Staying stuck on the hamster wheel unable to break free.

Jack’s transformation reveals something crucial about skill stacks: they’re not just a collection of random skills. They’re carefully crafted combinations that set you apart. But what creates a truly powerful skill stack?

After analyzing dozens of skill stacks like Jack’s I’ve identified three essential ingredients:

1. It must be unique — that’s what puts you in a category of one.

2. It provides value by solving real problems.

3. It doesn’t have any fatal flaws which bring the whole stack down.

Let’s dig into each of these concepts.

Building a Category of One Stack

The whole point of building a skill stack is to become a category of one…and the only way that happens is if that stack is unique. If lots of people can do what you can do then you don’t have a category of one.

How do you make a stack unique? Here’s five key insights:

Key #1: The Magic is in the Combination

The first and most important thing to understand is that a skill stack isn't just a collection of independent skills. This is the mistake that most people make. They build up multiple skills but they never figure out how to combine them effectively. It’s at the intersection of the skills where the magic happens.

We saw this with Mark Rober: combining his ability to make engineering cool with his taste in great video concepts and his personality. It’s the intersection of these three things that makes the whole thing work. Same for Jack Butcher: he combines his ability to identify compelling philosophical insights with an ability to compress that insight down to its essential elements and finally the graphic design skills to convey the message. It’s at the intersection of those three where the unique value lies.

Key #2: How Good is Good Enough?

One fundamental question you’re probably asking: how good do you need to be?

You need at least one, and preferably two or three core skills that you're ridiculously good at. The kind of good where people say “oh yeah, you need to talk to [your name] about that.”

Mark Rober’s core skills? He’s world-class in three things: coming up with video concepts, on-screen charisma, and being able to take engineering and make it interesting and accessible to a broad audience.

The mistake a lot of people make is that they get to “above-average-good” at many things but not exceptional at anything. You know what that makes them? A generalist. Which is great if your goal is to be a killer at dinner party conversations. Not so great if you're trying to build something meaningful. It’s not going to put you in a category of one…and you’re going to stay stuck pushing that boulder up the hill. You definitely need a couple of heavy hitter skills.

Supporting Skills

Your heavy hitter core skills need backup - three or four supporting skills that need to be solidly above average…but don’t need to be exceptional.

Some of these are just the basics you need to get the job done. For Mark Rober that’s being able to make videos. He’s way above average but not off-the-charts exceptional. Sometimes these supporting skills are amplifiers which take one of your core skills and make it way better. Take world-class technical expertise and pair it with solid writing skills…now you’re able to leverage that expertise and make it pop.

Key #3: Unlikely Combinations

One particularly good strategy for building a unique stack is to combine skills that rarely show up together. This doesn’t have to be a wild combination like a chef who's also an astronaut. (Though if you are a chef-astronaut, please DM me - I have questions about zero-gravity soufflés.) What matters is finding skills that are not commonly seen together in the same person.

Think about Mark Rober. Engineering knowledge and video production skills? Not a common combo. Engineers with great on-screen charisma and a sense of humor? Also, not that common (hey, engineers don’t take it personally — some of us are pretty cool). Ramit Sethi combines personal finance and psychology — an uncommon combination. For Anthony Bourdain it’s cooking and storytelling — also not commonly seen together.

Here's the thing: it's fine to have some obvious skill pairings in your stack. If you're a developer, knowing both frontend and backend makes total sense - that's gonna help you build better products. But if that's all you've got, you're swimming in a crowded pool. You get the uniqueness when you add in unexpected elements.

Key #4: Hard Skills - the Scarcity Advantage

Another way to get to that uniqueness that we’re looking for is to add in difficult, hard-to-acquire skills. It's basic supply and demand (yeah, that concept from economics class actually helps here). Hard skills mean fewer competitors — you’re using scarcity to your advantage.

Adding difficult skills is…well, hard. (Shocking insight, I know.) But that’s exactly why it’s valuable. While everyone else is looking for shortcuts, you’re taking the path that’s unpopular precisely because it’s difficult. And that’s the point.

So what's the smart way to pick hard skills? Ask yourself: what's hard for most people but feels oddly easy for you? That's your unfair advantage. Start there.

Key #5: The Hidden Gold Mine — Soft Skills, Character Traits and Taste

We all know about hard skills. The technical stuff. The expertise. The specialized knowledge. We grind away at these, take courses, get certificates. We know how to level up.

But when it comes to skill stacks we want to think of ‘skill’ much more broadly. I'm talking about soft skills, character traits, and taste. These are gold hiding in plain sight. We totally overlook them because they're just "who we are”. It's like having a superpower and thinking “oh, this old thing? Everyone can fly, right?”

Character traits and soft skills such as charisma, enthusiasm and empathy act as multipliers that make other skills exponentially more valuable. Shaan Puri, host of the My First Million podcast, is always looking for those undervalued skills like "enthusiasm" or "storytelling". He gives the example of “Miss Excel”. She's this woman named Kat who makes learning Microsoft Excel fun and easy. (Yeah, you read that right - Excel and fun in the same sentence.) She's got 1.1 Million Instagram followers and has trained more than a million people in Excel. Wild. You know what makes Kat special? Pure enthusiasm. Watch her Instagram reels - her energy is infectious. It is a world-class skill that powers her whole stack.

Taste is your ability to discern what's good and what isn't. Taste matters - a lot. Take for instance, Rick Rubin. He’s the legendary music producer behind Adele, Lady Gaga, the Beastie Boys, Kanye West, Jay-Z….you get the idea. In an interview with 60 minutes Rick declared the he has “no musical ability” and that he doesn’t know how to play a single instrument. And yet, he’s the guy the big acts go to. Why? Because he has great taste. He knows what’s good and he knows what’s true for that artist.

Or take MKBHD (Marques Brownlee) — he’s the biggest tech reviewer on YouTube because people trust his taste. That taste in what makes a good product is what has made him one of the most powerful people in all of tech. If he’s particularly critical about a product that product is effectively dead.

The message is this: don't ignore soft skills, character traits, or taste. In fact, in the age of AI these skills are going to be significantly more important. And, contrary to what most people think, these skills can be developed just like conventional skills. So lean into them — they might just be the secret ingredient that makes your technical skills unstoppable.

Create Real Value by Solving a Real Problem

Here's the thing: your amazing skills mean nothing if they don't actually help anyone. You need to solve real problems for real people.

One of the case studies I’ve got in part 3 is about Lenny Rachitsky. His newsletter “Lenny’s Newsletter” (yep, that’s really what it’s called) is the #1 business newsletter on Substack. And his podcast “Lenny’s Podcast” (again, what a name) is one of the top business podcasts. I dunk on the name but once you listen to Lenny for a while you realize that it’s perfect. Lenny is the most unassuming guy and that leads to super-high levels of trust.

With Lenny, it’s all value bombs — one after the next after the next. He brings in the best product managers and executives in the tech world and they talk about what works and what doesn’t. Real solutions to real problems. Lessons learned. If you’re a product manager or executive in tech his podcast is a must-listen. You’re learning how to make better decisions and run better teams…which leads to better products shipped out more rapidly. And that then increases the value of the product manager both in their company and in the industry as a whole. It’s a win-win.

All good stacks deliver great value:

• Mark Rober delivers inspiration to the next generation of engineers through mind-blowing projects where he builds everything from scratch.

• Ramit Sethi transforms how young professionals make financial decisions so they can make and save more money.

• Grant Sanderson takes complex math concepts and makes them clear and beautiful for those who love math turning confusion into “aha” moments.

At first, you may not know how you'll provide value. That’s okay…Mark Rober didn't. He just knew what was cool and fun, and he leaned into his engineering background. The value emerged naturally. But, you should have a hypothesis…some idea of where it could lead. This hypothesis will help you make decisions on which skills to combine….and then you’ll adjust as you go.

Who Is This For? Audience Matters

Let's talk about who you're actually helping. Because 'everyone' is not an answer. That's like being a restaurant that serves 'food' - it's technically true but totally useless. You need to know who 'your people' are and their specific headaches.

Let’s take a hypothetical example. You're an accountant who specializes in pro athletes. These aren't your typical tax returns - we're talking multi-state complications, endorsement deals, and yes, expensing those extra-large shoes. If you're the accountant who understands these specific challenges, that specialized expertise is valuable. That knowledge of who you’re serving is part of your stack.

There’s one more important piece to the value part of the equation…making sure that others know about the value you can provide. Ramit Sethi’s case is the perfect example of this…

Cracking Ramit’s Code

Let’s break down Ramit Sethi’s skill stack because it reveals some important lessons that aren’t immediately evident:

The starting pool is people with good personal finance knowledge in the U.S.: 10 million. Ramit is in the top 15% of those leaving us with 1.5 million.

Of those, let say 60%, or 900K, can simplify complex financial topics. Ramit is in the top 10% of that group leaving 90K.

Of those 90K about 20% could write persuasively leaving us with 18K. Ramit would be in the top 5% of that group leaving about 1000 people.

Of those about 10% — or 100 — would also have an understanding of psychology and could use it to motivate people to make or save more money. Ramit is in the top 10% of that group leaving 10.

What this tells us is that about 1000 people in the United States have the ability to write a book about personal finance that simplifies complex financial topics well and is written in a persuasive way. That seems about right since there are about 500 personal finance books published every year in the U.S.. Now, adding in the understanding of psychology and how it affects financial success there are about 10 people left. That’s Ramit’s competition….he’s not in a category of one.

And book publishing definitely follows a power law effect. If there are 10 authors with basically the same book: 1 will have big success, 2 will break even, and 7 will fail miserably.

So, Ramit has about a 10% chance of success. Not great…that is, until we add in Ramit’s world-class marketing and brand building skill. About four of the ten authors will be decent at marketing but Ramit is world class (top 1%) and so this now puts him in a category of one and so he wins. He has the best seller that sells millions of copies.

Want more proof of this in the real world? Take James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” and compare it to B.J. Fogg’s book “Tiny Habits”. “Atomic Habits” is one of the best selling non-fiction self-help books of all time with more than 20 million copies sold. It’s a great book and yet “Tiny Habits” is, in my opinion, an even better book. And its author, B.J. Fogg, is a true world expert in habits running a behaviour lab at Stanford University. So, why did James Clear win? Why does everyone have a copy of “Atomic Habits” while few have heard of “Tiny Habits”?

The difference is that James Clear is world class at marketing (top 0.1%). Go and listen to the interview of James on the Tim Ferriss podcast…it’s immediately clear that he’s a master. Type “habits” into Google and see whose content is at the top of the list. It’s James — he’s #1 for this incredibly difficult-to-rank-for keyword. James Clear understands, maybe as well as anyone, that there are these “winner-takes-most” effects and so he’s built a powerful, complete skill stack and so he wins.

The lesson: most of the skills in your skill stack should directly contribute to providing unique value to a customer but you also should take a broad view of the word “value” to also include things like marketing that bring attention to and build trust in your value.

No Stack Killers

When Warren Buffett was a student going to Colombia Business school he was so afraid of speaking in front of a group that he chose his classes based on whether or not he’d have to speak. "I would get physically ill if I even thought about having to do it." he says.

But Buffett’s a smart guy — he knew that his fear, and the communication skills that he lacked, were holding him back. And so he did something about it — he took Dale Carnegie’s speaking course and then volunteered to teach at the University of Omaha so that he’d build those skills.

We all have weaknesses. Things we avoid, things we struggle with. And you know what, that’s fine — we’re not trying to be generalists here. We want to spend our time building up our strengths — those core skills that turn our stack into something unique and valuable. But some weaknesses can undermine the whole stack rendering it weak and powerless. We can’t ignore these stack killers.

Here are the three most dangerous stack killers I’ve observed:

Can’t Tell Your Story — If you can’t communicate your value or express what you can do then it doesn’t matter how good you are at everything else. Your ability to articulate what you do and why it matters is as crucial as the skills themselves.

Can’t Finish — Half-completed projects are the graveyard of potential. That groundbreaking algorithm you're perpetually tweaking? That revolutionary app you're eternally architecting? I get it - your code is your baby. But at some point, the baby needs to leave the house and get a job.

Stuck in Stealth Mode — The world's best skill stack is worthless if you keep it to yourself. Those three videos you’ve put together but haven’t posted. That blog post sitting silently in a file on your computer. That app you’re “polishing”. At some point, you have to hit publish and let the world see your work.

Here's the good news: you don't need to turn your weaknesses into strengths. You just need to prevent them from being fatal flaws. Buffett didn't become a world-class orator - he became good enough that his speaking ability no longer held him back. It let the world get access to his world class thinking. That's the goal: build these supporting skills to the point where they enable rather than undermine your core strengths.

What’s Next…

Building a powerful skill stack isn't about collecting random skills like they’re Boy Scout badges. And it’s certainly not trying to master everything. It's about strategically combining two or three core strengths with the right supporting skills to create something unique and valuable. It’s about taking a broad view of the word “skill” to incorporate key aspects of your personality and your taste in what’s good to super-charge your technical abilities. It's about finding that combination that puts you in a category of one and frees you from the hamster wheel.

But how do you figure out what skills to include in your stack? In Part 3, we'll explore concrete strategies for identifying your core strengths, choosing the right skills to develop, and combining them into something that puts you in a category of one. We'll examine case studies of those who've broken free from the pack so you can develop a feel for what a great skill stack looks like. I’ll see you there.