 Yeah, you read that title, right? You should fire yourself. And what I want to talk about today's video is being a linchpin. A lot of you requested this topic. I've covered it before a couple of times. I kind of want to delve into a little bit deeper and really understand the psychology of what I'm talking about. Like bottom line, what do I mean when I say become a linchpin? So let's talk about some facts right now. Back in the day when your parents went to university, college, whatever you want to call it, their post-secondary education actually had some merit to it. The educational system was different. It was 10 times cheaper and companies back then were looking for the diploma degree. That was kind of your, that was your key to the door so you can get better opportunity. Times have changed, but yet the old message is still there. You have to go to college, you gotta go to university and that piece of paper is gonna give you the degree that you want. Now, I'm not here to tell you don't go to college. I'm just telling you if you do go to post-secondary you gotta be really wise on the subject matter that you pick. A bachelor of arts or a liberal arts degree, there's no demand in the fucking marketplace for that shit. No demand, what am I gonna hire you with a liberal arts degree? 95% of people go to college for bogus bachelor of arts degrees and it's a waste of your time and waste of their money. Now going back to the linchpin thing, the landscape of knowledge required to be competitive in the workplace has never been more demanding. Technology's changing very fast, products are changing really fast, demographics are changing really fast, everything is super fucking lightning speed. And so when I talk about a linchpin and Seth Godin has a whole book about this, the fucking linchpin, which I recommend you go read, it's becoming or I should say it is graduating evolving from a commodity worker. So what is a commodity worker? A commodity worker in a nutshell is like most people. Let's be honest over here. Most people want a job that's nine to five, stable and they want their paycheck and they're zombies, they're robots. I can go fire Joe and I replace Joe with John. I can go fire Nancy and replace Nancy with Sally. They're commodities. There's a million Joes and Johns and Nancy's and Sally's. And so most people are commodity workers. They're not linchpins. They don't bring value towards a company. They're not indispensable. They're not a rare specimen. And so companies that view you as a commodity where you're dispensable, you offer zero value. So the next fundamental question then is how the fuck do you become a linchpin? What is this linchpin thing? It's like, okay, Amir, I'm in marketing or I'm in sales or I'm in HR or I'm a computer program, whatever you may be, it really doesn't matter because it's linchpin philosophy. It is a philosophy. It's literally how you live your life. There's a saying. How you do one thing is how you do everything. So let's get into the linchpin aspect. Going into the fact that you're indispensable. You are a rare specimen of specimens. Okay. So going back to the example of a commodity worker, nine to five, linchpins are people who are more or less entrepreneurs. I made a video about why you should not be coming entrepreneur and I said a lot of people are better off as entrepreneurs. And so what are companies looking for? Companies are looking for people that want to take initiative. Companies are looking for people who think on their own merits. Companies are looking for people who are creative. Companies are looking for people who want to take risk. Companies are looking for people, get this. And this is a fucking shocker. Companies are looking for people that can make them more money. And how does a company make more money? Well, there's a couple of ways. Reduce overhead, speed up some processes, figure out better profit margins within the product, figure out more products to sell. There's many different ways that you as a business can increase your revenue and guess what? This is why salespeople are paid the most because they focus on the bottom line, right? They get the sale, company gets more revenue, there's more profit, it's not rocket science. And so becoming a linchpin, it is a philosophy. It is a psychological blueprint that you need to have is like, how can I add more value to people? The people will never let go of me. Okay. So let's say now you decide to become a linchpin. You're like, fuck it. Yeah, man, I'm gonna become a linchpin and kick some fucking ass. Do, do, do, do, do. Okay. So number one, not all companies respect linchpins. Let's get that out of the way right now. Like any good marriage, a business marriage, a religious marriage, whatever marriage you wanna talk about, it takes two to tango. So both parties have to acknowledge each other. Both parties have to respect each other. So it's not like you can just walk into any company and be like, hey, I'm gonna, you know, through your own, let's say, act or through your own volition, they recognize you. That's not the case. It takes two to tango. So, you know, I'm a firm believer in identifying companies from first hand, vouching from people. So finding referrals from other people that worked in that company, looking at their culture, looking at what they care about. That's a really good crystal clear, I wanna say crystal clear, but a good enough signaling for you to kind of identify what type of culture they have within that company. Now that's a company thing. You can't really control that. You can just identify companies that represent linchpins. What you need to do is figure out how the fuck do I become the best at what I'm doing? End of story, period. Like, that's it, man. This is why headhunters exist, literally. And you look at all the best startups, guess what they do? They hire headhunters, okay? They don't go on to like regular forms and we're talking about like high level people. We're not talking about, hey, I need a junior developer or I need junior sales or junior growth hacker. No, no, no, no. We're talking about the creme de la creme, the top tier people, headhunters. Because the top tier people aren't sitting on their fucking couch going on Angel List or whatever looking for jobs. They're getting paid extremely well because they're offering value to the company. So headhunters exist and headhunters make a killing. You know, they're gonna charge you on average 20% on the person's salary and these guys are making these six figures, these top guys and the deal is usually three months so they gotta stay with the new company for three months and the headhunter makes 20% off the 100K salary so you do the math. Very difficult job though, extremely, extremely difficult. And so you need to figure out, let's say you're a marketer or you're a developer, whatever you are, how can you become so, so fucking good at what you do that people find such tremendous value in what you offer the company and they're never gonna let you go. And it's not just the work you do, right? It's your attitude. It's the initiative that you take. It's the extra emails that you send out. It's the, you know, all these extra small compound things. Well, guess what? They fucking compound out for success. You know, Warren Buffett had a good saying. It's like, if you follow everybody else, you're gonna end up like everybody else. Everybody uses credit cards. Everybody follows a herd. Everybody picks the same stocks. Mimetic theory, right? As Rene Rajar talks about, where does this lead you? It leads you to be mediocre. No one cares about mediocre. No living creature cares about being mediocre. You don't care about being mediocre. Do I care about being mediocre? Fuck no, you're gonna be great. The fucking best of what you do. And so you need to sit down and become the best of what you do. And there's no straight path to it. It's a zig, it's a zig, like this and that and you blink and two, three years later, like fuck, I'm really good at what I'm doing. And people notice that. People really notice that. When you are really, really, really fucking good at doing what you do, people come out knocking on your door. And so you need to audit yourself right now, man. And see, hey, what kind of mistakes am I making my life? Are you gonna be like everybody else? Hey, here's my resume. I fucking hate people when they just send me their resume. What the fuck? What does this tell me about you? You're just following everybody else. You think I'm gonna knocking on your door? You're obviously looking for a job. You're not high level. People aren't looking for you. Why on earth should I hire you? No offense to the individual, but like, fuck, I almost got wiped out of there. No offense to the individual, but like what value you're bringing and you plus the next hundred people in line, you need to stand out. You need to fucking stand out. And so audit yourself right now. It's like, are you in a company that respects you? If not, get the fuck out of there. I don't care if they're paying you 40K, 300K. If they are not respecting you, appreciating you, and really understanding the value that you bring in. Trust me, there's headhunters out there. They'll headhunt you to other companies and startups that appreciate and value the value that you bring to their organization. That being said, now going back to the audit. Audit, what you're doing, man. If you're just setting up resumes, fuck that, man. Get on the phone, send personalized messages. I talked about this for marketing. So my background's marketing startups, you know, I'm a jack of all spades. I wouldn't say I'm like a specialist is one thing. Maybe SEO, I've been there a very long time. So one marketer is really good. I'll tell you what I used to do when I was consulting and someone actually did this for me and I'm like, this guy knows what he's talking about. So most people, let's say you are going for a marketing position and I'll just use this as an example. What most people will fucking do is like, hey, I'm this guy, blah, blah, blah. Here's my resume. Here's my references. I'm like, whatever. This one individual that came to me, he audited my whole business as much as he can. So he did the audit on my website. He looked at my funnels. He looked at my copy. He looked at everything, the whole fucking nine yards and made me the whole proposal. He's like, this is what you can do. Like the literally I would implement this like today. I'm like, fuck, this guy took his time out of his day. First, what this teaches me or showed me is he knows what he's talking about. He understands campaigns. He understands funnels. He understands marketing. There's a saying, don't tell me, show me. Like I don't care how, I don't care what it says on a piece of paper. Whoopie do, you have all this stuff on your resume. Bitty, as small as mine. I don't give a shit. I actually want to see what you're capable of. And so these are like small tips that you can take. If you're a programmer, you see someone's time for programming, like send them your, you optimize something on their website, man. Send them like, here's some free open source GitHub code, boom. If you're a market or audit someone's company, like do some free marketing for them. If you're in, whatever. Like it doesn't really matter, man, but like you need to stand out from the herd. You need to become that purple cow as Seth Coden talks about the fucking linchpin. And this applies to all philosophy of life. Do not be motherfucking meaty yoker. And I'll leave it at that. If you guys have a question for me, leave a comment below this video, hit the like button and of course subscribe. And I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace out.