At a café last week, a man at the next table was explaining his job to a friend. He organised things: schedules, suppliers, and people who never answered their emails. His description was like a mild cold. His friend, who runs events, put her cup down and told him, quite seriously, that she would pay good money for someone like him. He laughed. She did not.
I have been thinking about that pause ever since. What she was telling him, without the vocabulary, is something the markets teach every single day. The same thing can be worth very different amounts depending on where you try to sell it.
The Same Thing, a Different Price
A bottle of water costs one price in a supermarket and several times that price at an airport gate. Nothing about the water has changed. Only the room has. Financial markets work the same way. Gold, currencies and shares can trade at slightly different prices in different places, and entire trading desks exist whose only job is to spot the gap and close it.
Your skills behave exactly like that bottle of water. Most of us never test it, though. We accept the price the first market we walked into, often chosen for us by a school timetable, a family expectation, or whichever job replied first. Then we assume that price is the truth.
It is not the truth. It is a quote.
Why Mismatch Feels Like Failure
Here is the cruel part. When your skills sit in a market that doesn’t particularly need them, you experience every symptom of failure. The reward is low, the energy is lower, and every week feels like walking up an escalator that is going down. From the inside, a mismatch and a weakness look identical. Both feel like Monday.
The difference only shows up when you move. A weakness follows you into the next room. A mismatch stays behind.
This matters more now than it did even a few years ago, because the rooms themselves are changing. This week, Kristalina Georgieva, Head of the IMF, said 40% of jobs worldwide would be augmented, downgraded or eliminated by AI. I do not read that as a reason to panic. I read it as a reason to check my price, because when whole markets get repriced, some of them start paying far more for things you already know how to do.
How I Check My Own Price
I do this a little like reviewing a portfolio, and, in keeping with my character, rather less patiently than I should. I ask myself three questions.
The first is what people already ask me for without being prompted. The second is which problems I solve so easily that I do not even notice I am solving them. The third is where those exact problems are expensive.
That third question matters most, and the one I avoided the longest. A skill is worth most wherever the problem it solves is costly. Keeping suppliers in order is pleasant in a small office. In an industry where one late delivery costs a fortune, it is essential, and essential gets paid accordingly.
I have written before about building your own ladder rather than climbing somebody else’s. This is the step that comes before it: making sure the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Moving Without Burning the House Down
Repositioning does not mean resigning on Friday and reinventing yourself by Tuesday. Investors rarely move everything at once to something new. They take a small position first, watch how it behaves, and add to it when the evidence arrives.
You can do the same with your working life. Take on one project in the new market. Have one proper conversation with someone already there. Do one paid piece of work on the side and see what the room is willing to pay. The first time someone hands you a better price for something you thought was ordinary, you will feel it in your chest.
I am still adjusting my own position, and I suspect I always will be. That used to frustrate me, because I would quite like to have “arrived” somewhere by now. These days I think it is simply what being in the market looks like.
The Other Side
There is something on the other side of all you have been doing. It is not always a new skill. Very often it is the same skill, placed in a room that finally recognises what it is worth, with more money, more energy, and frankly more life at the end of the week.
The man in the café went back to his sandwich. I hope he went back to that conversation too. Somewhere, there is a room paying properly for the ‘thing’ he finds boring. There usually is.
The Jacqueline Brand: knowledge builds confidence; confidence builds wealth.
This is editorial commentary for information and education only. It is not financial, investment or professional advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any investment. The Jacqueline Brand is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The value of investments can fall as well as rise, and past performance is not a guide to future returns. Figures were correct at the time of publication. Always do your own research and consider speaking to a regulated adviser.
