In a world obsessed with being number one, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind. Ankur Warikoo often hears people compare themselves to peers, thinking they lack the skills to succeed. They feel they can’t code, can’t sell, can’t speak, and therefore can’t grow. Warikoo challenges this mindset, showing that career success isn’t about being the absolute best at one skill—it’s about stacking value, combining multiple strengths, and becoming indispensable in ways no single skill could achieve.
Warikoo explains that most people assume success equals being the top performer in one domain. While that path exists, it isn’t the only way forward. A more practical approach is to become very good—top 20%—at several skills that rarely overlap. The combined value of these abilities far exceeds mastery in a single area.
He reflects on his own career, noting that he isn’t the best teacher, the best speaker, the biggest creator, or the strongest leader. But collectively, these roles make him unique. He is a teacher who speaks well, maintains a meaningful social media presence, and leads a dedicated team he genuinely cares about. Individually, each skill is good-to-have; together, they become invaluable.
The key, Warikoo emphasises, is to focus on usefulness, adaptability, and being hard to replace. By stacking skills thoughtfully and nurturing a diverse set of strengths, success tends to follow naturally, even when you aren’t the best at any single thing.
A video editor added that the concept of becoming top 20% in several skills is a relief, as trying to be the absolute best at one thing is exhausting and often impossible. They suggested mapping current skills, adding one adjacent area, reaching competence, and then moving to the next. The key is not comparing your early progress in a new skill to someone else’s advanced level, but focusing on stacking skills over time.
An entrepreneur described this as a powerful reframe of career growth, emphasising skill stacking over singular mastery, and posed the question of which combinations of complementary skills create the most leverage today.
Warikoo explains that most people assume success equals being the top performer in one domain. While that path exists, it isn’t the only way forward. A more practical approach is to become very good—top 20%—at several skills that rarely overlap. The combined value of these abilities far exceeds mastery in a single area.
He reflects on his own career, noting that he isn’t the best teacher, the best speaker, the biggest creator, or the strongest leader. But collectively, these roles make him unique. He is a teacher who speaks well, maintains a meaningful social media presence, and leads a dedicated team he genuinely cares about. Individually, each skill is good-to-have; together, they become invaluable.
The key, Warikoo emphasises, is to focus on usefulness, adaptability, and being hard to replace. By stacking skills thoughtfully and nurturing a diverse set of strengths, success tends to follow naturally, even when you aren’t the best at any single thing.
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A career coach shared that they started out as an average coder and quickly realised it wasn’t their strength. They shifted into a support and analyst role, and later in the US discovered a talent for stakeholder management and coordination, which led them into project management and team leadership. Had they stuck with coding simply because others earned more or it offered higher pay, they would have struggled their entire career. The lesson is to identify your strengths, find your flow, and build on it to become unstoppable.A video editor added that the concept of becoming top 20% in several skills is a relief, as trying to be the absolute best at one thing is exhausting and often impossible. They suggested mapping current skills, adding one adjacent area, reaching competence, and then moving to the next. The key is not comparing your early progress in a new skill to someone else’s advanced level, but focusing on stacking skills over time.
An entrepreneur described this as a powerful reframe of career growth, emphasising skill stacking over singular mastery, and posed the question of which combinations of complementary skills create the most leverage today.
