Hey, it’s Nathan. This is the "Welcome" series for How to be Second, especially built for us that are "Seconds", this kind of person. If you signed up for the email list, you're probably already getting these! But of course, you can absorb them as fast as you'd like.
Here's the whole series:
Buying into Your Self (A Second?)
Introducing H2B2 and your Second's Community
OK, I’m a Second… now what?
We want Seconds to have Resources for themselves and those they care for and work they feel good about bringing into the world. To do that, you (usually) need to be valuable in the market, and increasing that value over your career. Here’s how we’re supporting that along the Second’s journey:
- Skool Platform
- Workshops (Finance, Marketing, Management, etc)
- Masterminds (Group Coaching) for Seconds
- 1-1 Coaching (Tier 1 for early-career and Tier 2 for when “you’ve seen some shit”)
- COO Financial Training 1-1 Program
In an episode of Ask Nathan called “Talent and Skill”, Samantha and I discussed professional development for Seconds at the true length it deserved, but I’ll write a slightly shorter version here, and there’s a super short summary in video form.
The question we asked was, “How are talent and skill different?” and my answer was effectively, “They are VERY different, and all Seconds have talent, and the market value difference between Seconds is often in part the lack of intentionally developed skill.”
The ways we believe we grow in this are, of course, Growing Together, Getting a coach, Intentionally developing Technique, and finding places to Practice when their are real Stakes.
Now, to the longer answer of Talent vs Skill…
I think of Skill as the sum of 4 (unequal) parts: Talent, Technique, Practice… and War.
At the time we recorded, we were watching the Olympics, and we heard commentators say dozens of times, “Oh my gosh. So talented.” And of course, the immediate response is “No, thousands of hours of practice.”
But neither of those can be the full answer, because there are plenty of people who are talented but didn’t put in the work, and also people who have invested ten thousand hours… who suck. Which means there must be more to this. I have many books that talk about talent being something you’re born with, and at How to be Second we buy into the idea that there are “innate” things we’re born with, and in observation that seems to hold steady.
Like, you don't become LeBron by practicing, he is a special breed of human being, as were Kobe, Jordan, Messi, Pelé… so, talent must be a real thing.
So then what must Skill be?
Here’s my 4 part theory, built on many other theories I’ve absorbed, and how this relates specifically to Seconds and Secondness.
Talent and Practice are the first two, and everyone already talks about them all the time.
The next one is Technique - because there are people who have practiced intensely AND have raw talent… with poor technique. We can see examples of this in amateur sport at any time, those who, if their technique got some polish, could go to the next level. (part of why Coaching and Mentoring are so important)
There’s this guy in figure skating called “The quad god”, who is consistently landing quad spins, which was impossible until just a few years ago. What happened there? He's incredibly talented, and has put in the practice… but also technique has evolved.
So Technique MUST be part of this.
Which leaves War.
You can possibly sub in the word “Competition”, but I value the “War” for the true brutality it conjures. War stands almost on its own in how good a person can become at something. I took some martial arts when I was younger, and you can get really good in the dojo and still get your ass kicked by some punk who's just been in lots of street fights. It is NOT the same.
Here’s a “Second” example of how we conflate (and mess up) these ideas.
In our Matchmaking work we hear every story you can imagine, because we're working with CEOs who have either worked with Seconds or their friends have. Consistently, we’ve been hearing (and battling with) Seconds believing they’re qualified for every role that looks like this because the jackets DO fit our bodies so well. My response has consistently been, “Well, Seconds ARE the most talented at this”, but I then have to follow with, “Do you have the OTHER 3 components?”
Have you put in the intentional practice, with a coach? Focused on truly improving your techniques? Or have you just “figured it out” in every area? And, have you ever gotten the shit kicked out of you?
Like, have you had a business go bankrupt under your watch?
If you’re a Second, you are a NATURAL, you are gifted, talented, at so many things. Your figure it out muscles are gargantuan.
So, you’re just like LeBron when he was a child - not yet fit to play in the NBA.
I fight this constantly with Seconds - I’m like, “You’re talented, but you don’t know how to read the three basic financial statements, so you’re just not qualified. You don’t have the techniques, and you haven’t practiced with them. I can’t match you with anyone. I'll stand behind your TALENT, but I will not vouch for your SKILL.”
So, if you are missing one of those things, how do you get it?
“Go Together” is the most important answer.
I was speaking with a CEO of a 100 person company, who said “I've always had a coach. 100% of the time I've had a coach. I feel like I've invested in an obscene amount of money into making sure that I had a coach all the time, and I don't feel like it's enough. Because of it I have more than an edge. I have put people in the ground because I knew to go together with a coach and other people.”
Go together. Stop trying to figure it out your own damn self. Everyone should have a coach. You should have AT LEAST one coach. Really, you should have a personal AND professional coach.
Also, dig into educational resources and get taught by other people. (P.S. You’re not self-taught; you just don't give credit to your teachers. Watching Youtube is not being self-taught - It's being taught by a bunch of teachers you don’t bother to remember the names of and can’t ask questions to.)
Finally, go see if you can go to war somewhere. Go do some free work in the area you’re developing if you need to. Stop figuring it out for yourself and do the work for someone GOOD at it.
Without people around you to guide you and speak to what you’re doing, you will not know your technique is bad until you’re embarassed. And then you’ll need to recover, and you won’t know how.
In those moments when you realize you had bad technique, what the heck do you do to recover better? Not to avoid it, that’s bad advice, don’t avoid it, but how do you recover better?
A lived experience story from Samantha: “I was a chef. In a crazy turn of events, I went from being the assistant pastry chef at a multimillion dollar country club to being the executive chef in 24 hours. It was incredibly messed up. My first day being the executive chef, I had no idea what I was doing. So, I simply tried to mimic what I had seen the old chef doing, which was he would take a stack of invoices or papers or whatever, go sit at the table in the middle of the entire kitchen and people would just buzz around him. So that's what I did, 'cause I didn't know. And someone came up to me, and was like, what are you doing? And I was like, “I'm doing the job.” And they were like, “They need help!” And I was mortified. I did not realize I had bad technique. And then I then needed to recover and it took me a while 'cause I didn't even know how to recover.”
We can get this lesson from our Dreamer (1iC) counterparts. One of the things they have on us is this incredible risk tolerance, it’s not even usually ready, fire, aim… it’s just fire. But the thing about that is they get so many shots and learn to recover. It's like having infinite ammo. If you’re willing to shoot one thousand times with 1% accuracy, you still hit 10 shots. Find somewhere you can take shots and not die (I didn’t say ‘not fail’, I said not DIE.) You have to go fail a bunch because the recovery muscle is a muscle.
And… Get a coach.
And what if you have get a shitty coach?
Lots of people are coaches and one problem for Seconds who get coaches is that we learn to be pretty good so fast that we’re like, “Well, I'm better than my coach now.” Well, that might be true in some aspects - but, what about their experience in war? I appreciate my coaches for techniques but I VALUE them for their lived experience - their War. but and also time and war, right? Right. Like, yeah, your techniques might be better, but you have not been to war. Go with someone who has been to war.
And the last thing for Seconds is to find your inspiration. That person, or those people, who inspire you to go in a direction in the first place. You have to find that. And community can help so much with that.
Which I think is an uplifting way to end this one, since I’ve personally known that everything I’ve written is fair and I’ve hated that reality even for myself, hahahaha
I’m so thankful that I do not have to do ANY of this alone.
I can go together, and grow together, here.
And so can you.
That was a lot - but we always like to ask what you’re ready for next: To go alone, or go (and grow) together?
If you're ready to go alone:
You could check out the other parts of this series.
If you'd like to listen to what it feels like to "Be this person", especially contrasted with a "Dreamer" type, the One Second podcast is for exactly that experience
If you're ready to stay on the pulse of H2B2 and the community, you can make sure you're set to get the weekly email
If you're ready to go (and grow) together:
You can register for the Monthly Meetup and come spend some time in community - or check out the main nav and touch base for what's interesting to you, and talk to a real person about that!