Let me tell you a story.
My oldest daughter is now a year away from graduating college, and we’ve had a lot of discussions over the last couple of years and have just enjoyed watching her go through this psychology years and working for other people. And a couple of real quick stories that I wanna share. First off, if you don’t know, I mean, I’m kind of a technology nerd. I love computers, always have, I love technology toys, and I’ve always got myself playing with some sort of tech toy around the home or around the office. And by virtue of that, my kids have been immersed in lots of technology just because it, it’s been around us and I have showed them how to use technology to, to do good things. One of the things that happened a couple years ago, my daughter graduated from high school and she was embarking on a summer internship.
So she lived park first summer and was working as an intern in an office. Well, one day they were in in the office and they were doing their work. And the, the manager had some computer issues and was getting kind of frustrated, didn’t know how to fix the problem, and my daughter instinctively went over to her and was able to help her solve the problem.
She was able to fix whatever was wrong with the software that she was using. She was allowing her to go back in and, and continue her work. And Hannah tells me this story, and she’s like, you know, the manager just kind of looked at me like, I had no idea you could do that. And my daughter just kind of at, you know, out of surprise was like, well, I guess I didn’t really think about it, but I did and I helped you. And so now you know things are better. And so I wanted to talk to you today about how our skills are really, really valuable, and sometimes we discount what we know and don’t factor it into how it can really benefit us as a freelancer.
The Valuable Skills You Don’t Know You Have
So I tell you that story about Hannah, because it really plays into what I want to share with you today. The first thing I want to share with you, number one, is that sometimes our most powerful skills are skills that we unknowingly picked up somewhere else. In my daughter’s case, I mean, she’d hang around me and she’d hang around in her school and she would learn things on the computer and not really considering that those skills that she was learning would be very valuable in her job.
And what come, come to find out is the skills that she thought she had that were the most valuable, which they are. She had other skills that she brought to the job unknowingly with her that were just as powerful. I think back to a lot of the jobs that I’ve had in high school, in college, and I think about all of the things that I learned in those jobs.
Not just the hard skills, not just the how to do things, but the soft skills, the customer service and the patience and communication skills, and showing up for work on time. And lots of those little skills that I really didn’t think about learning at the time, and they weren’t something that I would put on a resume, but they actually culminate into a very, very powerful skill set. So my challenge to you today is to think back through your work history, whether it be in school as a high school student, or maybe in college. Maybe you’ve had jobs, you’ve had different types of responsibilities, you’ve worked for, you know, companies. Or maybe you’ve volunteered for a not-for-profit organization, or you’ve helped out somewhere else, or you volunteered here or there. And by doing that, you could have picked up some skills that you really didn’t realize you had. And see, here’s the key guys. As a freelancer, we get to draw on all of those experiences. All of those skills that we’ve had in the past can really come in and make a significant impact in the way we serve others today.
One quick example. I remember one of the jobs that I had just very, very shortly after college, I was working as a tech support agent. I was working on a phone helping people install the internet in their houses. Now, this is way back when dial-up was the method of getting people connected. So there was the modem, there was the phone line, there was the dialer, and there was all sorts of things that would come into play when getting your internet hooked up for your house. And I would remember getting phone calls from older folks that were completely confused in how to get their internet. And so that job taught me how to be very patient, how to communicate clearly, and how to help them make their way from frustration to satisfied customer to where they could use their internet and get what they paid for.
So that’s just an example. And I use those customer service skills to this very day, helping clients by communicating, by taking their frustration and communicating with them and helping them move from frustration to satisfied customer. So thinking about all those skills that I’ve picked up over the years as a worker now come into play as a freelancer, and they pay me back day after day after day.
What Problems Can You Solve With Your Skills?
So number one, sometimes our most powerful skills are skills that we’ve un normally picked up somewhere else. Number two, sometimes the skills are not about what you can do, but about the problems you can solve. This is something I think that a lot of people in general get wrong on their resume. I think that a lot of people think that if I just put down a skill and show people what I can do or what tool I can use or what I’m proficient at, that’s automatically gonna communicate to either a prospective employer or in a Freelance situation, a potential client. What I would like to do is I’d like for us to reframe our skills, not as things that we can do, but we need to think about our skills as what problems can we solve with those skills when we start to think about the problems that we can solve.
And I think about my daughter who was working in that summer internship, and she had the skills. She didn’t realize that she had them, and she was able to go in with just being able to read the frustration in her manager’s voice, able to go over, use her skills and solve the problem. And see, here’s the key guys. When we solve problems for our clients, that is where the real value lies. So when we are able to solve the problems for our clients, that’s where the money comes in. People will pay to have their problems solved all day long. If they think that you’re just a nice guy who can, or a nice girl who can do some really cool things. You know, maybe that’s attractive.
Defining Your Amazing Business Superpower
But if you can solve a specific problem that your client or potential client has, and you can show them how you could do that, that my friend, is how you make a client and sometimes can make a client for life, which leads me through my third point. When we combine our skills with our talents, experiences, and passions, our skills can then become this amazing superpower that we can use to solve our client’s problems.
And you can make yourself an asset that your client will not want to live without. So when I talk about, you know, talents and experiences and passions, skills is one part of what I call a four part organism as a freelancer. And so skills, talents, talents are things that we can do naturally well. Things that we were born with.
Experiences are that sum total of life that we’ve experienced up to this point. And then our passions, the things that we value and care about the most. When you can find a job or a client that allows you to incorporate all four of those components, that is where you are going to really realize what your superpower is, because you’re using your experiences, things that you’ve learned in the past, along with the skills and the problems you can solve, and talents, things that you can do really well with passions, things that you care deeply about. When all four of those things are put together, that’s where your superpower will emerge. And when you can show your superpower to a client, believe me, they will not want to let you go.
So when you have a superpower, remember, you are all about solving problems or solving problems for the client. So just let me recap today. So number one, sometimes the most powerful skills that we have are skills that we have unknowingly picked somewhere else or learned somewhere else. Number two, skills are not about what you can do better, but it’s about the problems that you can solve, right? And number three, when you combine your skills with your talents, experiences, and passions, that’s where you’ll find your superpower that clients will pay for again and again and again.