Skill-Stack Arbitrage
Keep your skill, move it to a market where it is scarce and the buyer stands to make far more from it.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 94%
The final third of the conversation builds a portable pricing model for a single skill. Bartlett's observation is that he has one narrow skill set — social media — and that its value changed by orders of magnitude purely by moving markets: selling dresses for Boohoo, then working with pre-IPO biotech companies who considered social media witchcraft and stood to gain a billion or two from a successful listing. Sanchez formalises it into the whiteboard exercise: skills on one side, money on the other, and the money side resolves to three variables — sector, size of the business, and profit margin. She adds a fourth lever: deal structure. If a copywriter is offered $35,000, take $10,000 to eat and ask for a percentage of the upside driven above goal. Her broader point is that step-by-step formulas never make anyone rich; outsized returns come from cross-pollinating ideas that do not obviously go together, and that weird combination is where massive growth happens. Her own version was newsletters plus private equity plus social media plus laundromats and car washes.
Origin
Bartlett described moving the same social-media skill from Boohoo to pre-IPO biotech during the Reddit/WallStreetBets retail-investor moment, where he was paid in options: around 400,000 shares in a company that IPO'd at $3.2bn, giving him roughly $10m of equity value for about six months of work. Sanchez then ran her live whiteboard exercise on him.
Core principles
- 01One skill, many markets — the skill is fixed, the price is not.
- 02Money resolves to sector, business size and profit margin.
- 03Sell attention to the people who can make the most money from attention.
- 04Deal structure is a fourth lever alongside market choice.
- 05Cross-pollination of unrelated ideas produces the outsized returns, not step-by-step formulas.
How to run it
- 1
Get a whiteboard, a pen and a smart friend
Sanchez's literal requirements. Skills on one side, money on the other. The friend matters — she specifies your smartest, most brainstorm-open-minded friend.
Pro tip Doing it out loud with someone else surfaces skills you do not count as skills.
Watch out Solo, you will list only your job title.
- 2
List skills granularly
Not 'social media' but short-form video, data-driven social strategy, charisma, getting to people, asking good questions. Bartlett's list decomposes into several distinct tradeable capabilities.
Pro tip Network counts as a skill — you do not have to know rich people, only be able to get to them.
Watch out Coarse labels hide the specific capability that is actually scarce.
- 3
Score markets by sector, size and margin
Look up the average revenue and profit margin of the target industry. Sanchez contrasts a trade-services business with biotech at roughly 50-80% margins and hundreds of millions of revenue. Walmart's ~6% margins are the counterexample she refuses.
Pro tip She frames it as size of the problem times value of the solution.
Watch out Applying a great skill to a low-margin sector caps your outcome regardless of how good you are.
- 4
Invert to find the floor
Sanchez suggests it is sometimes easier to work out the worst application first. For a writer: fiction, or a local newspaper at around $14 an hour. That sets the bottom of the range and clarifies the top.
Pro tip Their top-end answer for a writer was not copywriter but medical writer — Bartlett could not hire one in biotech.
Watch out The obvious high-paying answer is usually still the mid-range answer.
- 5
Restructure the deal, not just the market
Sanchez's copywriter script: you offered $35,000; I will take $10,000 so I can eat, plus 10% of everything I drive above your current $100,000 a month through the funnel.
Pro tip Bartlett's biotech version was options — 400,000 shares rather than salary.
Watch out Taking the reduced base without a written upside clause is simply a pay cut.
- 6
Cross-pollinate deliberately
Sanchez says step-by-step formulas will never make you rich; the returns come from putting together multiple ideas that do not seem to go together. Social media plus biotech plus IPO is exactly that shape.
Pro tip Her own combination: newsletters plus private equity plus social media plus laundromats and car washes.
Watch out The combination has to be genuinely yours — copying someone else's cross-pollination puts you back into a competitive market.
In the wild
Bartlett moved his social-media skill to a pre-IPO psychedelics biotech that knew nothing about social media, and took payment in equity — around 400,000 shares — rather than salary.
→ The company IPO'd on the NASDAQ at $3.2bn and his net return on equity value was close to $10m for roughly six months of work helping build the marketing team.
Running the exercise for a writer, Sanchez and Bartlett rejected copywriter as the top answer. In Bartlett's social-media company an entry-level copywriter earned about £25,000; a medical writer who could write about a psychedelic compound earned $150,000 or more.
→ Bartlett found many people who could write and nobody with the medical vocabulary — a skill he estimates could be learned in a month with real commitment.
After being pushed out by a CEO who told her that if she wanted to row left and he wanted to row right she needed a new boat, Sanchez combined newsletters, private equity, social media, and laundromats and car washes.
→ 26 businesses doing tens of millions in revenue, some venture ones in the hundreds of millions, funded largely with their own money and acquired on unfair terms because of the social-media presence.
Common mistakes
Seeking a promotion instead of a market
Bartlett's point is that most people think they need a promotion or a raise, when the same skill moved to a scarcer, higher-margin market delivers a step change no promotion can match.
Following step-by-step formulas
Sanchez says what people like — steps one through four to get into real estate and you too will be a millionaire — will never make you rich, because a legible formula has no scarcity.
Accepting standard compensation structure
The market choice is only half the arbitrage. Without a percentage of upside or equity, you capture a salary from an outcome worth orders of magnitude more.
Is it for you?
Best for
Specialists whose skill is commoditised in their current industry, and anyone negotiating compensation where they can influence a large revenue outcome.
Not ideal for
People whose skill is inherently sector-bound, or roles where upside-linked compensation is structurally unavailable.
From the transcript
“just move your skill set to a better Market where it's scarce the person that's paying you stands to make more”
“the way that you get rich is actually putting together multiple ideas that don't seem like go together and that cross-pollination is what gives you…”
“skills plus money really equals to three things which is like sector size of the business and profitability of the business”
From the episode
Codie Sanchez: They're Lying To You About How To Get Rich! How To Turn $1,000 Into $1M! Hard Work Doesn't Build Wealth!
Codie Sanchez