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#196 - What's your remix?
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When my kids were much younger, I saw these t-shirts online:
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Instant buy. Take my money.

The shirts -- one for me, one for each kid -- came just in time for Christmas, and for the next year, I made the kiddos rock them around Singapore with me.
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I know, I know, cringe. But we'd wear them on the subway, and get curious looks from strangers; some smiles and laughs; some sly iykyk nods from dorkier dads.

I was the Original. And they were the Remixes, right? Well, yes, and also no.

What makes you different in what you do?

Last week I went to sign up for a startup event in Singapore. When I clicked to join, the form asked for the standard stuff: my name, email, and LinkedIn profile. But then there was a curveball: "Explain in one sentence what makes you different in what you do." 🤔

At first, I'll be honest, I was a bit put off. It felt like a lot of lift for a startup event. But my next thought was actually, "Huh. What an interesting question."

The more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t a startup question at all. It was a career question. Maybe the career question.

I know what I do. I know why I do it. But what makes the way I do it different?

Scott Adams' talent stack

Dilbert creator Scott Adams has a concept called the "talent stack.". He explains in this YouTube clip that we don't need to be the best at any one thing; we just need to stack enough pretty-good skills together, and that combination becomes more valuable than fully mastering any one of the skills.

He argues you can pick up 80% of most skills surprisingly quickly. Stack up those good-enough skills, and you get something rare and unique.

His career is a good example: Adams was funny, but not a world-class comedian. He could draw, but wasn't the best illustrator. What made Adams Adams was the way he combined good-enough comedy and good-enough drawing. That combo generated a $75 million comic strip empire.

It's an important idea, and the logic is still powerful. But the term is already dated.

For one, AI now gives millions of people a fast, cheap path to the functional 80% of a skill. And when everyone can access the same knowledge and tools, a stack stops being much of a differentiator.
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At the same time, “talent” is too narrow a word for how careers actually get built. It captures skills, and maybe roles, but careers are also shaped and defined by experience, timing, phases, and the need to keep adapting and recombining.
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Even the word "stack" is off, because it's static. It's vertical and linear. It tells us to collect ingredients, but skips the more interesting questions: why these ingredients, and what are we making from them?

From stack to remix
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​So if stacking is off, what's the better word?

I like remix.

With a stack you collect skills, and pile them up. With a remix you compose them. You take what you've got, what you've built, what you've learned, and you make something new from it. Something that's yours.

A great DJ doesn't just stack songs. They remix them. They select, sequence, and create combinations. The output isn't a pile: it's something new that builds off of something old.

Now, careers need to work the same way.

Because your resume is not your moat. Your title is not your moat. Your company's logo isn't either.

Your moat is the way you combine your chapters -- skills, experiences, identity, judgment, taste, curiosity -- into a coherent story and a distinct way of creating value.

And that's the difference: when everybody has access to the same knowledge and tools, your edge is no longer your stack. It's your remix.

Remixes for an uncertain world

If you've followed TalentStories, you know I don't believe in ladders. Careers aren't vertical. They're diffuse, fluid, non-linear, and unpredictable.
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We take swings. We make bets. We chase "hits", knowing some won't land, but that those that do create asymmetric returns. We stay in motion, because motion creates options, and options create luck. We learn as we go.

That’s why remix works better than “talent stack” as a career metaphor. A stack is static. A remix evolves. It captures the actual rhythm of modern careers: you explore, you try things, you follow what tugs at you, then you go deeper on what sticks. Then you explore again. Each cycle sharpens your mix into something more distinctly you.

That’s how creative work gets made. And increasingly, it’s how careers get made, too.

The muscles behind the remix

The reality we have to internalize at this point is that AI is making knowledge dramatically more accessible. A lot of what used to take years of training, or gatekeeping, is often just a prompt away.

So as knowledge becomes commoditized, what are we left with?

Our muscles. The human stuff that AI can't replicate or provide: Curiosity. Courage. Judgment. Agency. Taste. Imagination. Pattern matching.

These are also the requirements of remixing. Without curiosity, you never explore. Without courage, you never try. Without judgment, you don't know how to bet better. So you don't evolve.

The good news is that the remixing compounds. Every time you stretch into something new, you're building the exact muscles that make the next remix possible.

You're not starting from scratch, either. You have a foundation: skills, experiences, awareness, identities. You've got the ingredients. It's a question of what you're composing with them.

And that awareness matters on a practical level, too. It shapes how you network, how you interview, how you tell your story, and how you position yourself.

My one-sentence remix

You know, there was something else that stood out to me on that cheeky event form: it asked for one sentence.

That was sly, not because a career should be reduced to a sentence, but because there is so much value in being able to distill it. Part of the work, now, is making your bigger, messier experience easier for other people to understand, remember, and share.

So, here's what I told the event, when it asked me to "Explain in one sentence what makes you different in what you do":

I combine big-tech leadership and operating experience with writing, storytelling, and community-building as an entrepreneur.

That's my career remix right now.

For a long time, I was a talent acquisition leader in tech. During those years, I remixed as I went: companies, cultures, products, business models.

Then I started TalentStories and remixed again: writing, storytelling, coaching founders on leadership and hiring, and building community. Now I help people navigate their careers more intentionally. Consciously and subconsciously, I continue to remix.

I'm not quite sure what call it all. But it feels like me, and it feels distinct. It's my bet. And my moat.

You have a remix too. Something that makes you visible and distinctive in a noisy, AI-distorted market. The challenge is to define and own it.

The Original, and The Remix

After writing this, I feel like I need an adult-sized “Remix” shirt to go with my “Original" version. Because I realize now that I’m a remix of my original self.

The question isn’t whether we’ve changed. We all have. The question is whether we’ve made sense of what we’ve changed into. Whether we can name the thread for ourselves and for others. Whether we can own the composition. Whether we can say, clearly, what makes our mix ours.

That clarity matters. Not just for getting a job, but for building a career that actually feels like ours.
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So maybe the real question is: what's your remix?

Thanks for reading and exploring with me -- and have a great end of the week! 🙏

Aki

P.S. It gets easier to distill your story once you’ve done the work of making sense of your chapters.

We spend so much time on our careers, but we rarely pause to make sense of them. What connects the chapters? What have we built? How does it connect, and why does it matter?

That clarity is nourishing. It's also the leverage we need: for connection, for interviews, for steering to what's next. In an uncertain world, our story is an entry point and a compass.

"Most Important Story" is a paid, small-group course I'm running next month where we work on this together.

You'll mine the moments that shaped you, find the thread, and write a narrative in your own voice. Then you'll hone and practice it out loud with me and a small group of peers to push your thinking and hold up a mirror when you need it.

As a TalentStories subscriber, you get early access and a discount. The first cohort will be 6-8 people. Details and timing to follow, but if you're curious, it's just one click to register interest: