The New Skill I Added To The Soup This Month

I said in the capstone that a skill soup has to keep growing. One new skill a quarter. This month I started on mine. The skill is short form video.

The business problem is a specific one for consultants. Clients increasingly want to see you before they book a call. Written content and a LinkedIn profile are not enough. Short videos are the new cover letter.

Why this skill now

It shares a base with things I already do. Writing. Brand design. Narrative structure. The marginal cost of adding it to the pot is lower than it would have been two years ago.

The bar I set

A skill earns a seat in the pot when I have shipped three client deliverables with it. Until then it is a hobby. I gave myself twelve weeks.

The process

• Week one to three: ship two videos a week for my own channel
• Week four to six: draft one for a client using their brand
• Week seven to twelve: offer it as an add on in proposals

The tools I picked

• Descript for the edit
• Adobe Express for captions
• Claude for the script outline

Three tools. No more. Simplicity wins.

What I am watching

The risk with a new skill is that it steals from the existing ones. If video time eats into client delivery, the pot is worse off. I time-box it to three hours a week until the twelfth week.

The rule

A skill joins the soup only after it has shipped real work. No exceptions. A pot full of hobbies is a personal brand problem, not a consulting practice. See my earlier piece on skill soup for the full framing.