TWP 006 - Soft Skills Are a Scam - Here's Why

Before you go out and upskill, you need to understand what skills are. In today's episode we go over Soft Skills, Hard Skills, Domains, Roles, Expertise, Generalism (if that's a word), and everything related to what you should know about upskilling.
P.S Soft Skills are a scam, not for the reason you think - find out in the episode.
Hosted by Saqib Tahir

Read companion summary article: https://sknexus.com/twp006/

Chapters
0:00 - TWP 006 - Soft Skills Are a Scam - Here's Why
1:38 - Intro to Soft Skills
2:36 - Hard Skills vs Soft Skills
3:42 - Examples of Hard Skills
4:12 - Examples of Soft Skills
5:18 - What is a Domain? How is it different than a Skill
7:18 - Why are Soft Skills a Scam?
8:11 - What Skills are required for me to start a business?
9:06 - Why you should think about Skills differently in developing nations
9:17 - What is an IC (Individual Contributor)
9:53 - Lack of Expertise Career Path in Pakistan
10:21 - Why most people end up becoming Manager in Pakistani Career Paths
11:39 - What is a Generalist role?
12:01 - Why should you become a Generalist rather than Specialist
13:29 - #1 - Written Communication
15:37 - What it means to be concise
17:06 - #2 - Organization and Documentation
19:28 - #3 - Ownership
20:42 - Validating your value to others
22:11 - A question for you
22:31 - In the car segment: What skill I am struggling with currently

Further learning and references
https://sknexus.com/be-more-than-a-manager/
https://sknexus.com/pick-your-career-carefully/
https://sknexus.com/gap-to-expertise/
https://sknexus.com/keep-learning-as-a-professional/
https://sknexus.com/validating-your-value-as-a-professional/

Chapters

• 0:00 TWP 006 - Soft Skills Are a Scam - Here's Why
• 1:38 Intro to Soft Skills
• 2:36 Hard Skills vs Soft Skills
• 3:42 Examples of Hard Skills
• 4:12 Examples of Soft Skills
• 5:18 What is a Domain? How is it different than a Skill
• 7:18 Why are Soft Skills a Scam?
• 8:11 What Skills are required for me to start a business?
• 9:06 Why you should think about Skills differently in developing nations
• 9:17 What is an IC (Individual Contributor)
• 9:53 Lack of Expertise Career Path in Pakistan
• 10:21 Why most people end up becoming Manager in Pakistani Career Paths
• 11:39 What is a Generalist role?
• 12:01 Why should you become a Generalist rather than Specialist
• 13:29 #1 - Written Communication
• 15:37 What it means to be concise
• 17:06 #2 - Organization and Documentation
• 19:28 #3 - Ownership
• 20:42 Validating your value to others
• 22:11 A question for you
• 22:31 In the car segment: What skill I am struggling with currently

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to another episode of The Wandering Pro. As you know, this is a series going on, right? And I try to tie-in every episode with another episode so that it becomes a good holistic collection from start to finish. So, in the last episode, we covered how to learn new things and in that last episode, we covered how to make time for those new things, right? In today's episode, I want to cover the next step, which is basically what kind of skills to learn, right? As you can see in the title, I have a bias. Before we get into it, let's talk a little about what skills are. So, I'm sure whoever is listening, maybe they're not there yet. In agreement, when we're in university, the third or fourth year comes and everyone says, man, make your resume and apply for a job. So, I don't know if it's a career workshop or a resume-building workshop. And for the first time ever, most of us are introduced that in the resume, there is a box where you have to write skillset or competent skills or top skills. And I think everyone looks at this box on their resume and picks up and googles and puts in whatever they want. Or I think nowadays people do chat GPT and put it in. Okay, let me tell you one thing, a little on the side. What's the point of people who put a percentage in front of the skill in the resume? A person will never put a 10% skill. So, why do people put percentages on their resume? Like, they put it to fill an empty space. I'm sure I must have done it too at some point, but I always found it funny that people put percentage bars in front of the skill. The company is sitting and watching and saying, yes, this guy knows 20% to hire him. But yeah, getting back to the point, I think most people's introduction to skills is like one day you have to go and make a resume and you have to put skills in it and we start putting them in. Then, when you're doing a job or you're looking into doing jobs, a term comes up, soft skills. Everyone ignores it, everyone disregards it, nobody cares about it. Until a day comes in life and when you're like, okay, soft skills are actually necessary. I only focused on hard skills all my life and now I don't have any soft skills. And then you're listening to this and you're like, okay, what is this hard-soft skill? So, let's define that. Like in every episode, you know, I like to define everything we're gonna talk about. So, in this episode, I'm gonna try to define soft skill versus hard skill, which is in my perspective. And obviously, these things are not 100% in one box. There's a bit of overlap. But generally speaking, in my experience, most people, especially here in Pakistan, they suffer a lot when it comes to learning soft skills, right? And that's why the name of this episode is Soft Skills is a Scam. Because in the beginning, people think that the name is soft skills. So, it must be soft and easy to learn. But then they quickly realize once they look into it, that no, man, learning from hard skills is actually harder than soft skills. So, why is that? Okay, so, it's pretty straightforward to define hard skills. It's very simple to understand. It's simple, not easy. This is the keyword, remember. It's simple, not easy. So, in hard skills, basically, you have a fixed set of instructions. Okay? There's a skill. It's written that, bro, this is the input. If you do this, this will happen. And this is its output. And usually, we associate hard skills with a job to be done. You need that hard skill to complete a job or a task. Right? And then, the other aspect that a hard skill has is that it doesn't change. And for a very, very, very long time, it doesn't evolve or change that much. Unless, like, its overall domain changes. Right? Now, all of this seems very confusing when I give examples. But I'll give some examples. On the other hand, we have soft skills. You can define soft skills like this. These are skills that are malleable. It means that they change over time. They evolve over time. And they're not well defined. Depending on what culture you live in or what environment you work in, those soft skills could have a very different kind of definition for you. And they're not easy to define. You can write it down on a piece of paper. But to actually learn it, it's not as simple as a hard skill is simple. Again, I'm saying simple, not easy. Hard skills, in summary, are required for a job to be done. And soft skills, in summary, are something that are required for a life. So, let's take some examples to make it easy. Hard skills are basically, like I said, for a job to be done. Right? So, some hard skills would be like, I've learned Microsoft Office. How to use Microsoft Office Suite. How to use Microsoft Word. I've learned how to use Adobe Suite. How to do video editing. I've learned Photoshop. Or I've learned how to code on a software development tool. Or I've learned how to operate a machine. Right? I've become a box operator, as they call it. So, these are all examples of hard skills. They usually involve a tool or technology which you use to complete a job. Okay? And then, on the other hand, you have soft skills. Examples of which are, Communication. How to talk to people. How to get up and sit. Right? Or written communication. How to message people. How to email. And so on and so forth. Time management. Another very important soft skill. How to manage your time in the day. Between your work, non-work, life, etc. We've covered this episode in detail. Then, one of the most common skills that I see is missing here is leadership. That if you're a team manager or a team director, how to take it to success. Okay? So, as you can tell, when I give you examples, hard skills and soft skills, the common theme is that, see, the hard skills are something that you do in a course or a lecture. Or you'll sit on a stool or a computer for a month or two. You'll most probably learn it. Okay? But the soft skills, no matter how much you do a course, no matter how many books you do, or read a lecture on it, until you go and execute it, or experience it, or get up and sit in people, until you have a hands-on experience, you won't be able to learn it that easily. And this is not to say that there's no execution required for hard skills. I'm just saying, generally speaking, a person learns soft skills through experience and exposure. And a person can learn hard skills alone to a great extent. Which brings me to another point that people often confuse. Which is that, a person should have a skill in sales, or a skill in marketing, or a skill in software development. Okay? It's fine. We call these skills in common conversation. But these are actually domains. And the difference is that, a domain is formed after a combination of certain skills. So, let's say sales is a domain. It has both soft and hard skills. It has soft skills like, how to negotiate, how to do client management, how to talk to people, how to use your charisma and confidence. Okay? These are like some soft skills a salesperson will use. But then on the other hand, there are some hard skills also, right? Like how to make a quote and send a proposal, how to use CRM to manage your leads, which is their sales software. How to manage outbound or inbound calls or emails. These are some hard skills. Overall, what happens is that, mostly because soft skills are more important, we call that whole domain or role a soft skill. So that's why people usually call sales a soft skill. Although sales is a domain. Similarly, on the other hand, when it comes to web development or app development, mostly because hard skills are required, like coding, using tech, using tools, and very few soft skills are required, at an entry level at least, like interpersonal communication or documentation. So, generally speaking, we call that a hard or technical skill. Just wanted to clarify that, because often what happens is, people don't differentiate these things properly, and then they get confused for a very long time. So, whenever we talk about the Wandering Pro episodes, that if you learn soft skills in a hard skill or technical role, and if you learn technical skills in a soft skill oriented role, it doesn't mean that a sales person becomes a developer, and a developer becomes a sales person. It just means that you start learning certain skill sets in that domain. So, if you're a developer, you start learning communication, or you improve your documentation. And if you're a sales person, you learn a development no-code tool, or see how the code is pushed, so that if you're in a software company in sales, you have a better understanding of that. That is what we mean when we say, learn skills, which means start learning the whole domain. So, just to summarize all this, right? Why are soft skills a scam? Because as I said, in the beginning, it seems like soft skills are easier to learn because their name is soft. Soft skills are much harder to learn, because they are basically life skills, right? If you go and Google it also, oftentimes when you Google soft skills, you won't get the result that these are interpersonal skills. These are the skills that will be used your whole life in any role, regardless of whether you're in a low-level position, or you're a manager, or you're a VP, or a director. Soft skills are used in every role of yours. Whereas the hard skills, they are fixed, they are well-defined. They will only be applied when you're in a certain role. In fact, we often have an issue here, that people who are very good at hard skills, they eventually have to transition out, and then they have a lot of problems. And that's exactly why I'm recording this episode, that if you understand that difference, you can start working on it earlier. Then when the time comes, and you're forced to switch to soft skills, and then it becomes a very big problem. In my experience, soft skills are harder to learn, especially in our cultural environment, which brings us to the second part of the episode. Recently, we were sitting in the community, as usual. I'm giving a real-life example. So a guy or a girl came here, I don't know, everyone is unknown, and asked, which skill do I need to do business with? Or do I want to do business? Which degree do I need to open a startup? And obviously, a little bit of a joke started, and a little bit of a joke came out. But genuinely, people who think that to open a business or to open a startup, there is a degree or a course that I will do, and then I will open a business. Right? And there is a little mistake in this, which we have talked about in the last episode, we have talked about YouTube, and content and media as well, that everything is made a joke. But look, at the end of the day, what matters is that your skill set should be complementary. That is what advice I can give you. If you listen to this and say that tomorrow I want to start a business or a startup, then which skill do I need? You need a complementary set of skills. A little bit of hard skills, a little bit of soft skills. You need a mix of them. If you are struggling to learn those skills, go and listen to the last episode, in that I have covered to a great extent that how you can learn new skills. Right? Because the developing nations, like Pakistan or India and so on and so forth, the issue there is that because we are developing nations, there is not much value for an expert level role here. Now let me explain what this means. Let's say you are a software developer in America. Right? You work in a company. Two years later, they will make you a senior software developer. Five years later, they will make you a tech lead. So your role will still be very technical and well defined. But eventually a time comes where your experience increases a lot. Let's say 10-12 years later. There the company gives you an option. That look, you are a very technical person and you have become an expert in this thing. You understand everything technically speaking. So now you have two career paths ahead. Either you come into management and manage the other technical people. Or you become an individual contributor. So this is called an IC role. You can google it. You can join that. And what happens in the IC role is that we will remove this senior with your name. And that basically means that you are already at the expert level and you are individually in different departments where you have a technical need. You are supporting it as an individual contributor. You don't have a manager or a team under you. You are just at a high level position. So this IC role is common in developed countries where there is a lot of need for experts. And you will see a lot of people in their 40s and 45s who will have a software developer with their name. They will have a software developer with their name. Pro max management of 100 people. Which is the case here in Pakistan. What happens in Pakistan is that you go to any software house. So a person is a developer. He will remain a developer for 4 years. He will become a senior developer. Then he will be told to become a manager. And I also put a post on it. You can read it. I will put it in the description. That there is no other option here. Most people have it. They say, brother, you were very good at this technical thing. You knew so much technical work. You didn't have so many hard skills. Come on, now you become a manager who has nothing to do with technical knowledge. And then what happens? What ends up happening is because everyone wants pay raise. And the only way to get a pay raise here is to become a manager. They become managers. And their skill set is not oriented towards being a manager. And then the culture of the companies gets spoiled. People's culture gets spoiled. And eventually those bad managers get blamed for it. Because it's not their fault. They were never good at being a manager. They were good at their technical roles. And they were never given soft skill training. Or they didn't know that, brother, this soft skill is necessary for this. And you'll need to adapt to it. And I've seen this happen a lot. Because I've worked in a lot of software houses. And this podcast is usually about IT and tech industry. So often the technical people get frustrated when they have to come into a managerial role. They have to do managerial work. And their core skill set of software development or whatever is not used anywhere for the next 5-10 years. So that's why my go-to recommendation is that look, in Pakistan or in our ecosystem, because this is the environment, we need to adjust better. And how we can do that is that look, on one side, as I told you, there's the IC, the expert path. On the other side, there's the generalist path, okay? So specialist, generalist. So even though if you go online on LinkedIn, the common convention is like, you should be a specialist, you should know really well what your role is, what is it, whatever, whatever. That's all well and good where there's an opportunity. In a country like Pakistan, where the opportunities are very limited, I think being a generalist is way better. Especially in the early 10-20 years of your career. Because, look, if I was a software developer and I was on the generalist path, maybe I wasn't spending so much time on learning development, maybe I would have learned communication or sales or a little bit more skill set or negotiation. Then maybe I would have left my job and gone into freelancing. Because I came to write proposals, I came to talk to clients, and I started making more money. And then like in freelancing, I got some clients. I would have opened an agency, right? And the interesting thing is, all the software agencies that have opened up, they only open up to software developers. They just figure out that, okay, I don't want to be a manager here, and I don't want to benefit from being a manager in this company. So if I get out of my comfort zone a little bit, learn a little bit of generalist things, learn communication, learn to write messages, learn to send proposals to clients, maybe there is a better path. And it just happens that the majority of the software agencies that have opened up in Pakistan, small ones with 5-10 people, those aren't open to ex-software developers. And this is just one example, but I'm just telling you that it is like this, that in Pakistan, I've seen that when a person takes a generalist path, and he leaves the pursuit of being an expert, then it's better for him if they stay in Pakistan. Because the path of being an expert is the same thing, he'll be frustrated, then he'll say that there is no opportunity here, then they'll find an opportunity somewhere else, and they'll get up and leave, story over, the rest is history. But people who stay here, and they say that they want to be an expert, in my experience, they generally suffer a lot. So you're listening to this episode, and you understand that, okay, these are the hard skills, these are the soft skills, and I have to build a complementary skill set, so that I can become a generalist, and the value of a generalist in Pakistan is very good. Here's the thing, I can recommend you 4-5 soft skills, that are my favorite, and give you some suggestions on how you can start out with learning those. Right? The number one soft skill that we all lack, because I don't know why, we are very fond of talking like this, is communication. And when I say communication, I don't mean how to talk to your friends or family. It means a communication that has an impact, that has a response. Like, if you work in an office, you should be able to write such messages, that people listen to you, understand you, and then respond to you. Right? There should be a point of communication. If you're writing an email to your boss or manager, there should be a value of this email, there should be an understanding, right? I'll give you my example, that my biggest struggle in my writing journey was that, I didn't know how to say small things. Do you want to write a small thing? And this happens often. People who learn English or write, whatever they can say in 5 words, they're saying it in 50 words. I used to do the same. I used to write an email, it should have been a 2 line email, I used to write it in 10 lines, or 20 lines. So then I said, there's no point in this, the next person doesn't even bother to read it, so I'm at a loss. So I learned how to be concise, to the point. Then I started using my emails slowly, using Hemingway editor and such things, and started making it smaller. Then, another problem started arising. Now what happened was that, now all my emails and all my messaging, were very small and to the point. If there was something that I wanted to have a lot of impact on, because of being a small email or being concise, its impact would lose. So I was like, okay, now I should write a long email again. So it wasn't like that. Then, what I figured out, my formula was, that if I ever had to send a long email, I used to write a small summary at the start of the email, that these are the highlights of this email. Then I used to write my entire email. And in the entire email, I used this technique. The important lines, the ones with impact, I used to highlight them in red and blue. And the funny thing is that, I used to highlight the negative things in blue, and the positive things in red. And when I started writing emails like that, especially to the management, to my manager, or to the team manager, or even to the clients later on in my freelancing journey, I saw that it had a lot of impact. Because people used to see the red and blue lines, so their eyes would go to it. They started scanning the whole message. And that impact, was being driven by important messages. And then eventually I learned, that good communication is that, you have to balance everything, right? Where there is a need to talk small, talk small there. But where there is a need to talk long, talk long there as well. But don't talk nonsense. So today, whenever someone comes to me, that you have to be concise in writing, I tell them that, look, concise doesn't mean small. Concise means to the point. But if your point is big, then don't feel ashamed, that you have to explain in more words. Just be careful of, that you're not talking nonsense. And that's exactly why we have this podcast also, and not one minute YouTube shots, in which I'm telling everything. Because these complicated things, like skills, learning, upskilling, these are very hard to explain things, in a one minute video, or in one article. Podcast allows me, that I define everything first, then explore it, and then give my real-life examples, right? So communication is the number one soft skill, that anyone can start learning. And the best way you can do it, if you're in university or college right now, start learning how to write. Start writing small blogs, make your medium, start doing it on social media, whatever. Start learning to write. On learning to write, as I'm teasing, there will be an episode, which will be 2 hours long. And if you're in your office or in your job, then communication can be improved. Just improve the cadence of communication. If you have a manager, write him an update email after a week. On a daily basis, if you have emailing, learn how you can improve your formatting. Is the impact drive coming? Is the reply coming or not? If you communicate a lot on Slack, learn to organize. I've often seen people on Slack, instead of one message, sending 20-20 small messages. And like, they don't communicate their thoughts properly, and then the last message, the person makes a thumbs up and leaves. So if you're working in that organization, you'll understand this point. Okay, second favorite skill of mine, and I guess this could be like a 2-in-1, is organization and documentation. I think it cannot be said enough, that what a superpower an organized person has, compared to a disorganized person, right? If you know me in my personal life, everything is hyper-organized. Everything has a box, a folder, my folders have folders. Everything in my head, in my life, in my finances, like I talked about in the last 1-2 episodes, it's all organized into a sensible structure. Okay? And what's the benefit of that? That when you are at a job, or in your career, when you naturally build the habit of organization, you do everything in a very calculated and step-by-step based approach, right? And that helps you a lot, because if you combine that organization with the second thing I'm about to say, documentation, you know how to do good documentation, then you'll become basically the favorite person of every manager, or every leader, or every entrepreneur, right? Because what happens is, most people, on entry-level roles usually, they are disorganized and they don't document their progress. And what happens because of these two, they don't drive any impact. They're just another headcount. Let's say a manager comes to the company's floor, there are 200 people working, he's just another head for them. But if you learn to organize and document yourself better, and then you use it in combination with the previous skill set, communication, you tell them, I did this work this week, I achieved this this week, these were the issues, these were the issue blockers, and that's how I would like to solve them. That's usually what I do in any company I go to. I make my own report and send it to the manager every week. So they know that I'm not one of the 200 people, I'm not taking my work so seriously, I did this extra effort on top of it. Because that effort, the fun part is that I'm so organized and documented, I was already doing that for myself. The only thing I'm changing here is that I was doing it for myself as well, and I also put my manager in the CC. And the only reason I did it for myself is because I already had that soft skill, organization and documentation. I like to organize and document everything. And that comes handy, especially in career. And then again, if you're like, how do I learn to organize and document better? Yeah, start very simple. Learn to make a good to-do list, learn to organize your daily chores, learn to put emails on your calendar. The thing is, each of these soft skills, I can make a whole episode on them. And maybe someday I will, if there is enough demand. But the goal of this part is to tell you that this is a very important skill to have, like organization and documentation, and communication. These are the key skills you'll need to excel at any job role. You'll see these three things on your left and right, master them, you'll automatically elevate to the next level, right? But you can only do that if you learn the next soft skill, which is on my favorite list, is ownership. Now, our culture has become such, unfortunately, that people don't like to take ownership. And like we talked about earlier, people tie expectations with everything here, that if I do this, how much money am I getting? Or what's the benefit to me? But some things you should do for your self-worth or for your self-fulfillment as well. And the biggest issue I've seen with that is that people don't take ownership of anything here. If you ask them to do a job, or if they want to do a job, they'll just say, they'll do it without thinking. Oh, this is my job description, I did it without thinking. I won't put in any extra effort. I won't do it carefully. What's the benefit to me? I won't get any extra salary. And that's the mindset we need to change. And this has become a toxic culture. Again, not to blame, but just to say that, yes, it's the fault of the education sector as well. And then it's the fault of our companies as well. So, it's easy to say that you should have ownership when the companies themselves have taken ownership. Or the education system has taken ownership. But if you're listening to this, you're someone who wants to do better, right? And if you want to do better, you need to understand that some things have to be done that you don't get a return from anyone else. You get a return from yourself. Because at the end of the day, you're competing with yourself, not others, right? So, ownership is something that is a soft skill. Yes, in my eyes. And you learn over your life that it can become the best skill you have because you become a very dependable and responsible person. You become that go-to person who solves every problem. And then if you turn that value into value for yourself, then you become irreplaceable to any company, right? I had written an article on my website. Its name was Value and Validation. And it targets exactly the same thing, ownership. Here, people often say that I do everything in a particular company, they'll fire me, the company will shut down tomorrow and they'll get fired tomorrow and nothing happens to the company. The thing is, they think they're providing value. And maybe they are. But there is no validation of that value. There is nothing to show for it. That's why it's important that when you're providing value, there is validation for it. And then you can only do that if you have good ownership over everything you do. You don't just do this that I've done this thing and I've done it very well. But you also have to learn how to communicate that that I've done this thing, I've done it well and I'll keep doing it. Just letting you know. And that's why ownership is really important. And the list goes on. The fact of the matter is, when we talk about soft skills, there are so many that I can just keep talking about. But these are just three or four that most people in Pakistan, especially in the culture we live in, lack. Like out of the gate. Like if you go to any company and see 100 people at entry level, they'll have issues with all of them. They won't know how to communicate well. They will not be organized with anything in their life. They don't know how to do documentation. And if a developer is listening, then you know that tech documentation and court documentation is not available at all. And lastly, it is that the simple thing is no one takes ownership. They just don't care. They're just doing it to get from point A to B. And there is no sense of ownership in the long, long run. Right. I do want to leave on one question, however. And this is a question for you to reflect on. Right. So tell me, if you have reached this point, usually 10% of the people who listen reach this point. What skills do you believe that you know very well? And if there is a skill that you are saying that I want to learn in the next six months, maybe it gives me an idea for a future episode. Right. Because as always, the goal is not to be right. The goal is to be less strong. Welcome to in the car section. So for the uninitiated, this is basically where I just talk about anything that's going in my mind. And I try to tie it to the episode, but it's not necessary. In this episode's in the car section, here's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what is the skill I am currently trying to get good at. Look, my background has been in marketing, project management, product, so on and so forth. But one thing I've always struggled with social media presence. If you go online, search my name, you won't find any public facing profile where I have posted my family vacation or something. Everything is private. I've always struggled with being, you know, confident in being social or public online. So right now, because I'm doing this podcast and I wanted to reach the maximum number of people, because I think this will be helpful for a lot of people. I'm trying to be more comfortable with what to do on social media and how to do it. So I did step one first. I have posted my face everywhere. That's why if you see my face on YouTube, that's the reason. And the second thing is that I think when you're making this kind of content, which you're trying to help or share knowledge, building a parasocial relationship is really important because people can always, you know, leave feedback and be like, you did this thing wrong or do this tomorrow. And that gives me feedback to, you know, keep on going and keep getting help with future episodes. Because right now, the goal is that the first 40 or 50 episodes of this series will be interconnected or there are those concepts which I want to talk about. But eventually, I will run out of ideas. So hopefully by the time I run out of ideas, after these 40 episodes, there are enough people listening to this that they can give in their feedback and ask their questions. And in future episodes, they can be about their issues that other people can learn from. So, yeah, like the skill I'm trying to get good at is get good social media, I guess, if you want to put it under one bucket in your domain. But overall, it's being comfortable out in the public for the sake of what I'm trying to build here, right? And it's a hard skill to learn. Especially for people who are a little introverted or don't like to show off their whole life and eventually decide to do so. So as I said, like everyone has skills and things that they struggle with. I do too. So don't feel like you're alone in this. Everyone is struggling with something all the time, right? And if you want to struggle with everyone together, there's another thing. As I mentioned one or two episodes before also, we run a private Discord server where people come, chat, do their work, so on and so forth. It's a small community, there aren't many people in it. So it was a very filtered and gated process. But 3-4 people showed their interest and when I went through the process, I realized that the process is very difficult. So I've made it much easier now, which is like you can just go to discord.sknexus.com and you can sign up for the server. And after coming to it, you just have to do one thing. After onboarding, you have to give a good introduction about who I am, what I do, what I want to learn. And then after that, we will let you in the server and if you're an active member, we will give you access to more stuff. And basically, the purpose of that server is that this content, this podcast, these articles, as I mentioned back in episode 2, these are more for maximum number of people, right? But there will always be people who have specific or unique issues that I can't sit here and cover in every episode because it's not feasible that I make an episode on each issue. So my goal is that I pick topics that apply to the maximum people, but not everyone. But if you feel like you're someone who needs some one-on-one help, joining the discord server is the best way because we are always online and chatting there. So if there is something that is unique to you or you just want to generally hang out and talk to us, join the discord. I'll see you in there. And as always, if you have any questions, send to podcast.escanexcess.com.