Forever Employable - by Jeff Gothelf

Date finished 02 Jul 2020

I like the way Jeff takes us through his personal epiphany that led to the central idea of this book; to become a well known expert in a particular niche and have employers seek you out. The message is good but you really could get the key points across in an article (it’s a very short book as it is). Useful enough to recommend though.

The big idea. What, so what, now what?

• Traditional career paths lead to a dangerous place. You become a manager rather than a doer. You loose skills and become dependent on a company. Instead become a recognised expert.
• Far from becoming irrelevant. People will come and find you. You won’t depend on a company. You’ll be “forever employable”.
• Develop a specialism in a niche. Get out there, produce content, deliver it. Build a reputation in that area.

My notes

• 5 key areas of the philosophy:
  • Entrepreneurialism
  • Self-confidence
  • Continuous learning
  • Improvement
  • Reinvention
• SOLVE REAL WORLD PROBLEMS. GIVE PEOPLE SOMETHING THEY CAN ACTION.

• Plant a Flag

  • A topic, an expertise or point of view that you own and then go all in on.
  • You have to have an opinion, a strong conviction about some topic. You build a platform on top of your informed opinion about a very specific topic.
  • You have to have a story - to keep people listening. Something you realised about the profession, early failures, ridiculous things you’ve seen.
  • What are you pasionate about? What are you expert in? What path do you want your future to take? What aspects of your whole person has value to others?
  • Who is your target audience? What are you going to help them with - what will you improve? What are you going to teach them? How are you going to reach them?
  • TOPIC: In what field will you plant your flag and what will be your unique angle?
  • AUDIENCE: Who will be your target audience? Beginners? Experts? Creating content for everyone means creating content for no one.
  • FORMAT: How will you reach your target audience? Videos, blogs, events, podcasts. Choose 1 or 2 initially.
  • MEASURES OF SUCCESS: How will you know you’re reaching your audience? Resonating? “If my content resonates and reaches my audience, what will they be doing differently?” More followers, inbound requests to speak at meetups and events. Evidencing attention, changing behaviours is the true measure.
  • Write hypothesis. I believe that something provided to target audience will achieve this outcome. I will know I am right when I see quantifiable changes of behaviour in my target audience.
  • Run experiments.
  • Pay attention to:
    • Trends. geopolitical, economic, social, environmental.
    • Technology. Social media, privacy, security, ethics, machine learning, artificial intelligence.
    • Opportunities. ““In the middle of difficulty lies.” #opportunity #difficulty #quote”Look for pain points that businesses, employees and customers endure, seek solutions that have potential to resolve them.
    • Expertise, keep yours up to date.
    • The intersection of all of these.

• Tell your story

  • Solve a real problem.
  • Real world experience gives you authenticity and credibility.
  • Be humble, share the wins and losses.
  • Practical and tactical advice for people to use.
  • Consistent and refined vocabulary that people can use.
  • Characters, plot and story arc.
  • Personal anecdotes.
  • Practice.
  • Speak the language of your audience.

• Follow the (new) path

• Teach

  • Workshops, conferences, meetups, webinars, podcasts, guest articles and interviews.
  • Workshops are a good revenue source or for lead generation.

• Give it all away

  • The more you give away, the more success you’ll drive for your business.
  • Expensive means people value it more.
  • First build a following and credibility.
  • Be consistent. People know you’ll always publish a newsletter every month, a post on one of 4 subjects every month.
  • Give back to the community. Free events.
  • Be a recognised expert (Stand out, book by Dorie Clark):
    • content creation
    • social proof
    • your network
  • Think about the things that aren’t going to change - the things that people are going to need consistently time and time again. That’s going to be good process, good collaboration, good places to work, good leadership.
  • ““I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two – because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ [or] ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.” #quote #change #stability #future”
  • Do this:
    • Follow thought leaders, what are they talking about and how are they talking about it?
    • Join the conversation. Always be polite, contributing, not trying to take it over.
    • Share your work regularly. Every couple of weeks or month, blog post, tweet, article.
    • Provide value, not just noise. Something tangible the audience can do. Something someone could try to do differently
    • Scale ideas that resonate. Double down on them. From tweets to blog posts to presentations.
  • Intercom as an example, get their people to generate content and be present in conversations - generates buzz and inbound leads.