Skills take time to build and master. They take practice, dedication, consistency, and constant improvement. This can seem daunting, especially if the skill you wish to obtain is one of high skill or difficulty that will help you reach financial freedom. By using the skill stacking method, these large skills become much easier to unpack and piece together little by little. Essentially, the skill stacking method is taking apart a larger skill and breaking it down into smaller more achievable components with the end goal being to add that higher level skill to your arsenal. For example’s sake and to illustrate the power of skill stacking, let’s take apart the large and complex skill of real estate investing and break it down into bite-sized components. The rest of this blog entry will break down the skill stacking strategy using the real estate investing example as a guide for you to follow the process.
The roadmap
The skill stack starts off with identifying the major components of the large skill and isolating them. Being that real estate investing is a large-scale skill that encompasses many strategies, the best thing to do is to pick a strategy in which you would like to master. This ensures you become the best you can at one thing instead of mediocre at a lot of things. In this example, we will choose the house flipping method. Now that we have this large decision out of the way, it is time to break down house flipping into small pieces.
Establish your knowledge base
Establishing your knowledge base is the first component of every skill stack because without it, you will have no guide towards what success looks like and lack the knowledge to reach success. You should plan accordingly to read a book or two and watch some videos online about whatever the skill is that you’re trying to achieve. This will help you grasp its basic concepts at the very least and establish an understanding of exactly what it is you’re trying to do and how to do it. A lot of people get lost in this step and never take action. They think they just need to learn that “one more thing” to ensure they don’t make any mistakes. This phenomenon is called analysis paralysis, and it stops many people from getting started and taking action due to their fears and insecurities. This point in the skill stack is not intended for you to learn everything there is to know. The only way to develop a well-rounded skillset is to take action, make mistakes (sometimes very painful ones), and learn from them. A lot of people don’t want to face this realty and drown themselves in material that in turn produces inaction. Turning our attention back to our example, as a house flipper we may want to develop our base with The Book On Flipping Houses by J Scott and following it up with some BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcasts. This should be all you need to take action. You should always look to learn, read, and even take courses as you go so long as it doesn’t hinder your action-taking.
The components
Now is the time to get into the meat and potatoes. What exactly makes a good house flipper? Based on the previous step, you know that the basic components are finding deals, finding contractors, making scopes of work (SOW) for your projects, connecting with local realtors and other investors, selling your property, and then repeating the process. You know that first and foremost, the most important thing to do at the current moment is to develop a steady pipeline of leads to get your business what it needs. This is your first area of focus and skill. Learn and master this skill without distraction from the other components. One of the best ways to enhance this strategy is to find people who are experts at what you are looking to do and see how you can add value to their business all while obtaining their help for yours. The best example in the case of deal finding is to find a good investor-friendly agent who can find properties that match your criteria for you. Developing several of these relationships and leveraging them to find deals is an amazing way to master this skill and add fuel to the fire of your business.
The next most important step is to get a contractor to work on your projects. You know that this will be a difficult task, but you now have connections with realtors who have been helping you find deals. Chances are that if they are good at what they do, they will be able to provide you with good contractor references to start your search with. You know how important this piece is and you don’t want to mess it up. You get several referrals and contact all the contractors asking for bids on your projects that are itemized and priced for labor and materials. From that base of knowledge you collected in the first phase of the skill stack, you know how much materials and labor generally cost in your area and can eliminate some contractors off the bat based on their pricing. You eventually land on one contractor and move on to the next stage of house flipping, managing the project.
You know from reading The Book On Flipping Houses that in order to manage a project effectively, you must have a good SOW. Alongside your contractor, you will map out exactly what needs to get done, when it will be done, and how much is costs in order to develop an effective schedule and budget. If you have a general contractor in place that takes care of finding the subcontractors to complete all the jobs, you will become an overseer in the process making sure everything goes smoothly and is being done properly in a timely manner.
Finally, the last step will be to sell the property and collect your earnings. This skill can easily be taken care of by one of the real estate agents you met at one of the earlier stages of the stack. By implementing a stack, you will better be able to leverage other people to create systems that help tackle large skills such as house flipping. You did it! The house has been flipped and you now have an extremely valuable skill and some money to show for it all thanks to skill stacking!
Why This process works
The purpose of this blog was not to show how to flip houses (although this is a pretty good starting guide), it is to show you the power of breaking a much larger skill into components and then mastering each one individually. These skills build up and mastering one may help with another as demonstrated. By taking larger skills and breaking them up, you are more likely to be able to leverage other people to help you and develop systems to make your overarching skill run like a well-oiled machine. Implement this process into any large skill you want to adopt and you will see tangible progress and results guaranteed.