How to change your life using creative skill stacking

In late 2019, I found myself in a dire financial situation.

I was 3 months behind on rent, I had nearly maxed out my credit cards, and I had absolutely no source of income.

I was beyond broke.

So in a desperate final attempt to save my skin, I started an online affiliate marketing business. 

With high hopes, I signed up for the cheapest web hosting platform I could find and built my first ever website. It was truly my last resort.

After a few months of relentless work and countless late nights, I finally started to make enough money to keep my head above water.

Looking back, this experience opened my eyes to the concept of making money online, but it also showed me the importance of a crucial concept in building an online business: skill stacking.

Skill Stacking: leveraging your creativity

If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you are a creative individual. Maybe you’re a designer, an artist, a musician, or even a content creator. Maybe you are interested in learning a creative skill such as website building or fashion design.

Whatever the case may be, if you are not stacking your skillset as a creator, you are missing out on an infinite amount of growth and financial opportunity.

So what exactly is skill stacking?

Skill stacking is the idea of leveraging other creative skills to reinforce your foundational creative pursuit.

Let me give you an example.

As I was building my website, it dawned on me that I could utilise other skills I had acquired over the years. My foundational skill was website building, but I also had a strong understanding of graphic design (I had prior experience with Photoshop) and was a fairly proficient writer.

These “secondary” skills allowed me to build a profitable website that is still my main source of income to this day.

How to determine your skill stack

My skill stack: The graphic above shows exactly how I plan to build a new graphic design business over the next 6 months.

As you can see, my foundational skill is graphic design. I’m also a writer, I can edit videos and have prior experience with online business. 

Why would I not utilise these skills to reinforce my foundational creative skill?

I’m still in the process of fleshing out the details, but this will be my fundamental strategy to grow my business (stay tuned!)

Laying the foundations

So how can you determine your own skill stack to take your creative pursuits to the next level?

Firstly, determine the fundamental skill that you want to use as a foundation for your skill stack. If you’re reading this, it’s likely graphic design, but it could be art, music, website design, fashion, photography, the list goes on.

Next, establish 2-3 “secondary skills”. These don’t necessarily have to be skills you already possess, although it helps.

Consider:

• What am I skilled at already / what skills do I have an interest in learning?
• How could I use these skills to reinforce my current creative passion?

This will allow you to build your own personal skill-stack that will act as a framework for your journey as a creator.

Removing the bottleneck

Here’s the thing: if you’re relying solely on a singular skill to achieve your goals, you are swimming upstream.

Let’s say you’re a graphic designer. Even if you possess a supreme talent for design, simply uploading your work to Instagram and hoping for the best will get you nowhere.

Don’t limit your creativity to one artistic ability. It’s crucial that you extend your creative tendencies into other skills that can enhance your foundational talent.

• If you have a vibrant personality, use video content to showcase your creative work.
• If you can write, use long-form written content to explain certain techniques you use in your art. Then, post to a newsletter and a blog to promote your creative work. Additionally, you can then re-purpose these long-form pieces of written content into twitter threads and Instagram captions/stories.
• If you have experience in marketing and sales, implement this into your social media strategy and outreach.

The list goes on. The overarching point is that limiting yourself to one creative skill could be the reason you’re not growing. This is especially true if you’re trying to grow a following online or a career as a freelancer.

Diversify your creativity

At this point you might be thinking: won’t investing energy into multiple skills take up too much time that I should be spending on my craft? Won’t I be diluting my creativity by spreading myself too thin?

I disagree. While you should be dedicating most of your free time to your foundational skill, investing time into other disciplines can be incredibly advantageous. This is because learning an additional creative skill will only enhance the rest of your skillset.

Learning to edit videos will enhance your creativity in visual design.

Learning how to create engaging video content will enhance your ability to sell your services to clients and customers.

Learning to write will enhance your ability to structure your creativity and present your ideas in a coherent manner.

The reason this becomes incredibly powerful is because it allows you to stand out from the millions of other creatives in your sub-niche. 

Whether you’re a designer, an artist, a musician or even a writer, your niche is undoubtedly saturated. Therefore you need to set yourself apart by leveraging other creative skills. Plus, skill-stacking is something that a surprisingly small amount of people do, so for many creators it can be an absolute game-changer.

So, to recap:

• Determine the fundamental skill or talent that you want to use as a foundation for your skill stack.
• Establish 2-3 “secondary skills” that you are already good at or interested in learning.
• Leverage these secondary creative skills to enhance or promote your foundational skill.

I hope this concept is making sense to you, as it’s something I wish I had been told years ago.

As always, thank you so much for reading. Be sure to message me on Instagram or Twitter if this was in any way valuable for you, and have a beautiful day.

George

Instagram:@waveindex

Twitter:@waveindex_