Recycling our skillset in a changing world: My take on a Seth Godin blog

\"English:

Do you ever read something and think “that person knows my story, they are telling my story?”I recently read a blog by Seth Godin that I really appreciated because it felt like it was telling my story as a professional.

 

In his post Your Alphabet posted Sept. 13, 2013, Seth starts out talking about the original art of typesetting that involved taking the same block letters and using them to make many different words. The same tools created very different results. 

 

He continues to point out that the same is with our personal skillsets. When we develop a set of skills, those skills don’t have to be used in just one profession, in just one job. The skills can be reformulated, combined and recycled to help us excel at a variety of jobs.

 

This excerpt says it short and sweet:

 

Our skills, resources and assets are like letters in the alphabet and we can re-use and recombine them in many different ways.

 

When I was laid off from being a reporter, I knew I had other skills but figured I had to put my reporting skills on the proverbial shelf.

I’ve learned that nothing is farther from the truth and for that, I’m grateful. I was able to take my reporting skills and apply them to website copywriting, blog writing and well, pretty much every form of copywriting I now do with Jamie’s Notebook.

Think about it. What does a reporter do? They develop ideas, ask people questions, then formulate an interesting summary of the information in a written form. That’s exactly how I prefer to write websites.

The best research comes from talking to the business owner and capturing their passion about what they do and how they do it. It gives such a stronger voice to the words on the website than simply looking up information and making sure I use the right keywords.

How have you found this in your professional life? I believe that as the economy changes and industries evolve, we as business owners and professionals need to realize just how valuable our skills can be.

We aren’t trapped in one job, we aren’t trapped in one box. Even if we love that box and don’t feel trapped at the time, we need to realize that our potential goes beyond that proverbial box.

 

I invite you to do a little exercise and list all of your skills. Then take a look at your list and realize how you can take different items from your list to create a completely different skill set. What did you come up with? What kind of job could you do with those skills? Is it any kind of service you could consider adding to your current business? Share your story!

(I originally published this blog in 2013 and revised it for republishing)

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