Self-awareness is one of the most valuable things you can have as a professional.

There’s almost no better way to become self-aware of your strengths than to assign values to each skill or attribute you have (or lack) as a professional.

Video games like NBA2K do this with athletes all the time, which got me thinking if there was a way we could do this with business attributes.

I’ve broken this down into three levels…

High-Level attributes – these are generally attributes that you’re born with. While they can (and generally will) grow stronger over time, it is generally done through experience, not effort. These would include attributes like:

  • Vision/Leadership
  • Intelligence
  • Domain Expertise
  • Motor

Mid-Level attributes – these tend to be attributes that we can be naturally good at, but we can also become better over time with education and effort. This would include things like the ability to:

  • Sell
  • Design and create
  • Copyright
  • Build things (physical & digital)
  • Organize and manage projects and people
  • Network
  • Problem solve
  • Work with numbers

Ground-Level attributes – these are the skills that you can begin to niche down and specialize build a fortune by being great at one thing. For instance:

  • E-commerce – Instead of being good at every aspect of e-commerce, specialize in post-conversion sales optimization or product supply chain to be the best at one of these
  • Marketing – rather than being a general marketing specialist, become a social media expert or even consider niching down to one and being a master of TikTok social media marketing.

Now that you have a framework for identifying which attributes you are strong and weak at, grade yourself on each of these.

For High-Level attributes that you’re great at, double down and find projects that maximize these strengths.

For Mid-Level attributes that you’re weak at, invest in yourself to strengthen these skills to make you a more well-rounded and valuable professional.

For Ground-Level attributes, find one thing that you can become known as ‘the best’ at and devote your time and energy there until it becomes yours.