Skill work
The most common misconception about being rich is that having a business and through investments are the only ways to secure “financial freedom”. Skill work is the least risky path and the most overlooked among the three income streams that could generate millions of dollars.
A skill is the ability to perform specific tasks. With finesse and expertise, a good set of skills could land a career. Skills are often acquired through formal education and are commonly motivated by a person’s personality, experiences, and hobbies. Skills are validated in the form of a diploma from a school, attending training seminars, or career attributes from past experiences but skills could be easily proven through results. It can be classified into two: Hard skills and Soft skills.
Soft Skills
It is mostly regarded as Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) plus social intelligence. Soft skills mainly revolve around interpersonal skill sets such as communication, management, teamwork, leadership, and motivation. It seeks to understand the feelings and emotions of oneself and others to resolve character relationship conflicts. Soft skills optimize social optimism that is functional in any kind of social environment.
On January 7, 1983, the senior vice president and the general manager of the Portland Trail Blazers, Jon Spoelstra, was widely regarded as one of the best general managers of the NBA of his time. Indiana Pacers traded their NBA all-star point guard Don Buse for two weeks of Spoelstra’s marketing consultation and management services. Spoelstra’s expertise in his soft skills landed him as one of the most unusual/bizarre trades in NBA history.
Hard skills
It’s what employers are looking for and what applicants look for in job descriptions. Also known as technical skills, hard skills are job-specific abilities. Hard skills are objective and concrete as it targets direct skill sets to work towards a direct purpose. Skills such as writing, engineering, programming, athleticism, and data analysis are considered hard skills as it seeks on aiming usability, functionality, and value in certain situations.
In the 1997–1998 NBA season, there were only 46 players who earned at least $4 million as their base salary and out of those 46 players, only 9 of them earned $10 million above. In that same season, Michael Jordan’s $33.1 million NBA salary was higher than 19 NBA teams earning him the title as the highest-paid NBA player and Forbes’s highest-paid athlete in both 1997 and 1998.
To put that in a crazier comparison, Michael Jordan’s 1997–1998 NBA salary was the highest in league history until both LeBron James and Stephen Curry broke it in the 2017–2018 NBA season, 20 years later.
“Which one is better? Hard skill or soft skill?”
Neither. Both are Yin and Yang, the two complement and are interconnected with each other. Comparing it is wrong because both are needed to succeed like working hard and working smart.
It’s evident seeing the difference between watching a professional game of basketball against a normal game of basketball in the streets. They move differently, significantly better, and a lot more careful. Professional basketball players look like they are doing surgery where each move is a precise well-choreographed and well-thought-out idea. Their strategies are methodological that grants them perfect execution in every second and in every play.
There’s a reason why only a couple of players are in the NBA. They have to be the best of the best at it if they want to earn more. People are paid higher if they are great at doing their craft. Their basketball skills alone allowed them to earn millions of dollars in revenue. However, even being one of the best at a certain craft, doesn’t always translate to higher income. Some are paid higher while why some aren’t because of these three factors: Entertainment, Demand, and Difficulty
Entertainment
People had always been valuing entertainment over anything else. An average person could name at least ten “influencers” but couldn’t name at least one Nobel Peace Prize and one Pulitzer Prize winner from last year without searching.
Entertainment is escapism. It is the anesthesia of life. It creates a numbness to not feel anything besides the entertaining moment. People are ready to waste their time and money on entertainers because it serves as a distraction from the horrors of the real world such as loneliness, stress, and fears. Entertainment has become the reality. People are much more aware of what’s happening in the entertainment business than in their own miserable lives.
The French philosopher Blaise Pascal said it best “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. People that could make other people laugh and entertain are better-secured financially than people that could make others think. This is the main reason why Nobel Peace Prize and Pulitzer Prize winners aren’t celebrated as musical artists in Grammy’s and modern-day “influencers”.
Demand
Demand is the quantity needed by the market. Jobs that are always globally in-demand are either technology-related, physical health-related, or mental health-related. As we approach deeper in this Information Age, technology-related jobs such as programmers and software developers surely secure a better paycheck. Physical doctors never came out of style because people are dying every day but wanted to extend their lives. In today’s modern society, mental health is valued better than physical health, making mental health-related job salaries continue to increase.
Difficulty
It has two main factors: Quality and Intelligence
Quality
If a lot of people could do the same job, the wage for that job is lowered. It is because if more people could do a certain job, the less likely it is to be special. Quality relies upon its quantity, the fewer, the more difficult it is.
There are more waiters than astrophysicists which makes an astrophysicist’s salary to be higher than waiters’.
Intelligence (IQ)
Not all people are gifted with great abilities but cognitive abilities are valued higher than physical abilities. Cognitive intelligence is inclined with IQ, the ability to reason, adapt, and learn quicker.
Complex jobs such as science-related, engineering, and neurosurgeons have higher salaries than construction workers who work physically harder than most workers.
Unemployment continues rising as technology rises too. More and more people are being left behind since jobs that are simple and repetitive are going to get replaced soon by machines. Packers, factory workers, and drivers are getting replaced by robots and it hasn’t been an uncommon occurrence. Now, there are driverless cars. Technology hasn’t been slowing down and continues pursuing greater feats.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffet (left to right) have been recognized as the wealthiest people in the last decade. These four also have IQs above 140, the “near genius” or genius-level intellect.
Intelligence’s main component is speed. Life’s an endless racing competition and smart people are more often getting there first.
If the line of work is entertaining, globally demanding, and difficult, there’s a higher probability that the job ends up earning higher than everyone else.
“How about firefighters, teachers, and nurses?”
These jobs are globally demanding and difficult but these are not entertaining enough to catch attention from the public eye. This is the reality we have to face, heroic deeds ALWAYS get lower-income, sadly. Apparently, the public masses tend to support and love “heroes” such as professional athletes and influencers to a greater extent.
A random person might be the greatest at something but if the world doesn’t acknowledge it, that random person won’t be earning a lot.