Hi, this is Nick Webb and welcome to another episode of the disruption podcast. Today, I’m going to talk about the skills based economy. You know, the skills based economy is actually a real thing. It’s not a unicorn, it means that the economy is driven by particularity of skills, not by generality of skills. Yet, it’s interesting. You know, I’ve served several years as an adjunct professor at a top medical school and one of the things I realized is that the traditional educational model is really based on delivering generality of skills. Even in something as granular as a particular course on something we still can’t resist to add lots and lots of generality, ised skill can take a fraction of the time and be far, far more valuable to the student and to the company, or organization they serve. Let me give you an example. Recently, we were going to hire a project manager at one of my companies. So we took a look at the average price to hire a graduate, somebody that graduated with a bachelor’s degree in LA County at the time, it was in this 60,000 range to hire somebody that had some expertise in project management with a four year investment. They thought, you know, that’s probably not good enough. We want somebody that has real, real real skills around project management. So we decided we wanted to hire somebody that was a certified project manager. You take a look at Jeff, that job description and the average salary was $120,000, double the value of a four year college, yet that particular certification took on average about 18 months, half the time, twice the value. Let me say that again. In a skills based economy, you can take training that is possible to acquire in half or less the time with twice the financial value to you the employee. But wait, there’s still more. The Enterprise also benefits significantly from the granularity of a skills based education. So there you go. The skills based economy says that if you have contemporary skills that meet the three P’s of the skill based economy, you can make more money. Be more relevant to the organization you serve, and provide provable real value to the enterprise you serve. I think that’s incredible. Now, I said there are three P’s, to the skills based economy. Let’s talk about that. The first one is what I call priority. Priority says disruption, market trends, the economy, all the complex variables that make up the ecosystem by which an organization lives determines what skills are most valuable. So the ecosystem, the economy, the marketplace, technologies in some cases, but it’s all of these complex variables that says, hey, today, the overwhelming majority of ads are put in the form of Google advertising, not print advertising. So we’re looking for a certified AdWords partner, somebody who has been trained by Google to know how to manage a Google AdWords campaign. Right so the technology change the direction of the educational priority. Or it may be that your organization uses a CRM like Salesforce and you need to be certified in Salesforce. The point is, is that sometime we hit priority to changes in technology and technology utilization. And other times it’s driven by market changes. Were an example innovation certifications have become very popular because people need to learn how to identify new ways to deliver novelty In terms of internal and external innovations. So when you see the overall first p, it’s about the priority that’s driven by the complexity of the marketplace.

The next one is the perishability of skills. This is why online certification training is so valuable, because the truth of the matter is the things that we were training people in just three years ago have completely changed, I mean, really, just completely changed. And they changed because of the priority of the market scape, the economy, market trends, and so on. So perishability is something we always have to look at, well, we can’t go back and get a new, freshly minted new bachelor’s degree. But we can go on and get a QuickBooks Online certification that’s highly relevant and highly granular that gives us the tricks and tips that we need to be a superstar. And the last P of the three P’s of of the skills based economy is what I call prized. If you’re in the marketplace, for a great job, it’s really important that you have the credentials reality of a series of specific and granular training rather than general training, employers may likely want to hire somebody that’s got eight certificates that are specific to the needs of the current priorities of the marketplace, rather than having somebody with a master’s degree. But for you, as an employee, or as a job seeker, you can do that for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time and still be able to significantly increase your salary. For the organizations you serve. You get to learn from the Masters, you get to learn the stuff that took them decades to learn. In my training programs, I learned these things the hard way. I mean, I could have bought nine Harvard education’s in the amount of money that I wasted doing this stuff wrong, until I figured out how to master it. Learn from the Masters? Not from the regurgitator. Learn from the Masters, not from the regurgitator. And when I say that, I mean, literally that. Did you know that the overwhelming majority of online courses or people that are simply googling the internet to find out what people do? And then they create a course around it and deliver it to you? Well, I mean, that certainly sounds like it makes perfect sense. I mean, you find out what people do in customer service, and you develop a course around it based on what you googled. Here’s the problem. Remember, perishability the stuff that people do is no longer relevant. The baseline and expectations of consumers have changed significantly. And it’s only through the rockstars that live in the space and are learning a practical way that can really serve you. So when you’re thinking about the skills based economy and its impact on your life, remember, you want to learn from the Masters not to regurgitate and not the Sherpas that can never make it to the top of mount to the top of Everest, right? You don’t want to learn from people who haven’t done it. So that’s my tips. The skills based economy is a real thing. lean into it. Even if you’re still paying on your student loan for your undergraduate degree or your graduate degree, realize that the best thing that you can do to invest in your career is to identify the three P’s, what are the priorities? What is the perishability and what is prized. And again, priority is what the market is demanding. perishability means the current state of a body of learning and prized means what companies are looking to pay for. apply those three in your life in your career trajectory, and you will win.