All By Myself

[00:00:00] Do you know who the best banjo player in the world is? Me either. Don't have a clue, couldn't even be bothered to look it up if you want to know. Google it. Here's the question I really care about. Who's the most famous banjo player you can name?

[00:00:16] Now if you're like me, you probably thought of Steve Martin. But funny enough, Steve Martin isn't really famous for playing the banjo. He's famous because he's an amazing comedian and writer and actor. For sure, he's also a very talented banjo player but that's not what's made him successful.

[00:00:35] It's the unique collection of skills he's assembled that have given him such a successful career. My name is Jeff Weaver and I want to welcome you to my new podcast Talent Stacked. On this show, I'll be sitting down with a wide range of people who have achieved uncommon

[00:00:50] success by stacking together a curious collection of skills and talents. The result is a kind of alchemy that creates unique value for them and those they work with. If you love to learn, have an insatiable appetite for trying new things or consider yourself

[00:01:06] a jack or jill of all trades but master of none, this is the show for you. But today I'm all by myself because I wanted to start my answering two important questions. First, what the heck is a talent stack?

[00:01:20] And second, who am I to tell you about them? The first one is easy. Simply put, a talent stack is a collection of skills or talents that when stacked together form a uniquely valuable person.

[00:01:32] It's an idea that I've been enamored with most of my life but the term has only recently been popularized by author Scott Adams. In his book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

[00:01:43] I'm so glad Scott was able to give us a term to talk about this approach to personal development. If you haven't read his book, you definitely should. As for the second question, my origin story begins at a future business leaders of America conference in Long Beach, California.

[00:02:00] I was just a freshman in high school and I went to a workshop posted by a guy named Skip. Up to that point, I knew I wanted to be in business but I had no clue how that would happen. That day, I found out.

[00:02:14] See as a kid, I had thought about being an entertainer or a teacher. Skip was both. And when bouncing tennis balls around the room turned into a series of true aha insights, I had an epiphany of my own. This was my future.

[00:02:31] I could be an entertaining teacher in corporate America. Skip was, I could be too. And so with no language for what I was about to do, I set off to build my very own talent stack. My first stop was at Human Resource Development for Polk County School Board.

[00:02:50] I was an office clerk, due to flea preparing packets, filing completion certificates, helping to schedule training classes all over the district. My boss, Paula gifted me the kind of grunt work that never lets you not appreciate how much goes into a simple day's training.

[00:03:06] One day, as we were prepping for an upcoming course, we were checking off that breakfast treats and lunches had been ordered. And right about the point where Paula asked if I had ordered a bunch of balloons for the room to court, she said to me,

[00:03:18] some days, this job is just being a party planner. It stuck with me. The idea that you needed skills beyond just getting up in front of a room to be a trainer.

[00:03:30] That job gave me a lot of the skills I needed, but more importantly, it showed me just how many skills I never realized I would need would become important. I went to work for Disney Resort in Orlando, Florida.

[00:03:44] My passion for training was only fueled further by being part of one of the greatest training organizations in the world. I had a front row seat and a backstage pass to the greatest training show on Earth. But it wasn't just what I learned.

[00:03:59] Disney instilled in me a set of standards that I would never shake. One of the biggest secrets to Disney's success has nothing to do with budget. When your business is built by entertainers, you learn that the quality of the show is in the eye of the holder.

[00:04:16] The ability to put on the greatest show on Earth without breaking the bank was a talent I didn't realize I was gaining but would prove to be one of my most valuable later on in life. In college, I took up a spot on the forensics team.

[00:04:29] No, not the CSI kind, the speech and debate kind. I had always enjoyed public speaking, but going competitive took me up to a whole new level. Under the watchful eye of my communications professor slash coach, I went from naturally gifted to an elite competitor.

[00:04:47] By the end of my time, I was the national champion for impromptu speaking and a top finisher in parliamentary debate. It was grueling and exhausting but it solidified my talent for commanding a room and controlling my voice. Those skills would become cornerstones for much of my future work.

[00:05:05] As much as I loved education, I did not love school. My initial plan to major in psychology with thoughts to pursue industrial organizational psych, fizzled out when I couldn't suffer all the traditional psych courses that I was made to taking core classes.

[00:05:20] I switched to business, a semester that began and ended with my distaste for accounting. After a semester off and some soul searching, I ended up in political science. This was the result of scaring the course catalog and deciding that those were the classes

[00:05:34] that looked interesting enough that I would get up for them even if it was a morning session. Luckily, this half-hazard approached my education paid off. Not only did he get me to graduate, it got me a spot writing op-eds for the school newspaper.

[00:05:48] Suddenly I had a new talent in my stack, writer. And by spending time around the journalism department, I also picked up a basic understanding of typography, layout and design and some marketing. My status as an op-ed writer stacked with my debate skills and impromptu speaking ability,

[00:06:06] got me a spot hosting a local talk radio show once a week. The station manager would also let me come in on the weekends to help run the boards, cut promos and do ad reads. That added audio editing and production to my talent stack as well.

[00:06:20] Block by block, I was learning skills and stacking talents. I never thought of it that way. My whole life, I had a pension for getting intensely interested in things, diving deeper than the average Joe and then moving onto something new.

[00:06:36] It was a kind of alchemy that my elementary school labelled gifted but was probably also fueled by undiagnosed ADD. Regardless, I never thought of it in an intentional way. It was just my nature. I wouldn't realize until looking back years later that the pattern was always there.

[00:06:53] After college I went to work for Target. I had never had an interest in retail but I did love training people and I had had a successful run during an internship as a campus recruiter.

[00:07:03] My long-term career Mac with the company had me going in that direction but a couple of years in that plan had to be scrapped and I was moved into store operations.

[00:07:12] While it didn't end up being the right fit for me, it did give me the chance to lead a team of more than 60 people and that hands-on operational leadership would prove to be invaluable later on. Another block in the stack.

[00:07:27] I spent a year working for a small private college on the West Coast of Florida. This was the first time I landed a job based solely on my talent stack. I had zero traditional qualifications.

[00:07:38] I did not have an advanced degree, I had never worked in academia but I did have experience in hiring college students and that's what the college was trying to get employed.

[00:07:49] I did know how to teach others and I did know how to sell and those were the essential skills they were looking for. So I spent a year as the director of graduate services and in that year I did some of my most meaningful work.

[00:08:03] In a job I had no traditional background for but exactly the right talent stack. For the past decade I've been in charge of training for a mid-sized family beer distributor and for most of that time I've been an army of one.

[00:08:17] This job has been my most rewarding, my most successful, and my most fulfilling. It's the job I set out to have my freshman year of high school after meeting skip.

[00:08:27] Some might say it's the job I was meant for but I see it as the job I built myself for. When you're the only training person in the company, you have to be pretty stacked, talent-wise.

[00:08:38] I have to do the instructional design work of designing courses that can meet outcomes. I'm my own graphic designer and desktop publisher when it comes to course materials but that's no more difficult than my days in laying out my editorials.

[00:08:51] Thankfully I still remember what Paul had taught me about putting together a training day, party planning at all. But now it's done to the Disney standards that I was taught by the mouse.

[00:09:00] When I get up in front of a room of veteran leaders to teach them, I draw on my experience leading my teams at Target and when they want to argue with me about how this training

[00:09:09] won't work in the real world, I can debate them right back in their place like I did on the podiums in college. When I'm out working with frontline employees, my target training kicks in and I can rely

[00:09:20] on the industry leading methods that I help them put in place. And when it comes to developing young leaders, they're not that much different than the college graduates I coached so many times. Every so often we have a new hire in our office brought around to meet everyone.

[00:09:35] Without fail when they get to my office, their manager will stop say hello and introduce me by saying this is Jeff and he does kind of everything. And I love it. If you've ever been introduced that way or if you ever want to be, this podcast is for

[00:09:50] you. Join me as I sit down and talk to the many talented people I know who are stacking their talents in weird, wonderful and unique ways that allow them to create incredible value to themselves and others.

[00:10:04] Along the way, I hope you'll be inspired as I have been to keep learning, keep acquiring new skills and keep combining them in surprising ways. Are you ready? Me too. Let's get talent stacked.