I am not a commodity

For years I struggled to understand my place in the world. I hopped jobs like I was competing in a game to rack up as many positions in a decade as possible. Turns out I won.

I wanted to build things. I wanted to create things. I wanted to make and do and show and tell. But I didn’t know how to do those things myself. I didn’t code. I didn’t design. I didn’t physically make things with my hands or have a degree in business management. I didn’t have an MBA and was only twenty when I started my first business, which failed dismally.

As a young and naïve businessperson, I felt as if I had no value. I was not a commodity that could demand a price (salary). For those in the technology world, let me sum it up:

I am not a software engineer.

This is a gut-wrenching realization in a world filled with hotshot developers, engineers, designers, and creators. I was not one of them. I had nothing to trade. I was searching for a commodity and coming up short.

But here’s the thing about most makers out there: Their skills are actually commodities. Let me offer up a definition of what a commodity is so that we’re all clear on what I mean when I use the term:

com·mod·i·ty

noun \kə-ˈmä-də-tē\

: something that is bought and sold

: something or someone that is useful or valued

The thing about a commodity is that it can be defined, boxed, valued, and traded. Traded.

Looking back, I now realize that I was trying fit into a mold of what I was being told was valuable. Of course I did. I was twenty and trying to make a name for myself, and the only way I knew how to do that was to speak in a language that others were using.

I tried to get a corporate job and build a product with a pretty standard title behind my name, like Product Manager: Social Networking. But again, a title like that is a also commodity and can be traded and negotiated (down, mostly).

I don’t like to negotiate for my value as an individual.

But when you are trying to create value in someone else’s company or vision, you have to play by the existing rules.

The good thing about being a commodity for a while is that you begin to understand how people define value. You can also then learn how they take advantage of the people who think in boxes and play by predefined rules.

Once I figured out what these rules were, I learned how to break them and how to operate outside of the tradable commodities that others were building their careers on.

It’s difficult and lonely to shun the natural order of things. But ultimately you cannot build real wealth trading yourself off as a commodity. You need to set the rules, the boundaries, the terms of operation, and the price to get in the game.

The price of a commodity is set by the people trading it, not by the commodity. Which means that if you are that commodity, you aren’t in control.

I have worked hard to become a trader and not a commodity.