This month I have vowed to myself that I will finally finish off the online course that I've been chipping away at for years. Yes, it's time to take those faded Post-it-Notes off my wall, transcribe them into modules, decide on a snappy title, and start to market the sh*it out of this thing.

To expedite this process, I (once again) signed up for one of Amy Porterfield's online course creation bootcamps. In case you don't know who she is, Amy Porterfield is basically The Grand Dame of online course creation. Fifteen years ago, she quit her job working for Tony Robbins to strike out on her own. She began by teaching how to use Facebook ads and email list building.

Now she focuses on how to teach others to build their own digital courses in her signature course Digital Course Academy. I have not taken this (the price tag is around $2,000 for a 9-week program, as I understand), but I have cheaped out and bought her smaller courses along the way that have great value; she has many between the $50–100 range. The trick is to use these shortened helpful materials on your own and then get out before she turns the final modules into a marketing machine to upsell her bigger course.

There is no reason to deny that Amy Porterfield is massively successful: her net worth has skyrocketed. Through her podcast, her New York Times best-selling book, and her own sales, she claims to have made over 85 million dollars in her business in the last 10 years.

Yes, she's edging towards the B club simply by teaching all of us how to break down our knowledge, packaging it as a course, and getting it out into the exactly right niche that we should occupy.

She preaches that we can all do this, that we can all achieve that financial freedom we dream of all while doing something we love.

But it makes me wonder if this is all just a dream. A very specific variety of internet-pipe-dream dreams, to be sure.

I recognize that like any good internet marketing guru, she's giving us exactly what we want.

But what is that? What do I want? And how can we get there?

I'm not looking for a fabulous six-figure launch conclusion. I'm looking for a basic roadmap of what it is, exactly, that I should pour my efforts into, after two decades of work across a variety of different media and arts management jobs.

I know a lot, but how should I quantify it? What do I know better than anyone else out there who can teach the same thing that I do?

Amy Uses a Formula to Help Students Find Their Niche

Amy Porterfield's message is that you don't actually need to be an expert in what it is that you're trying to sell, make, or do. This is sort of counter-intuitive to a person who is planning to teach, coach, or lead folks toward a new go, so stick with me.

What she means, specifically, is that you don't need to have a Ph.D. in the field that you're planning to teach. She does not believe you must have toiled away in some workplace for a decade, or been born into a particular discipline.

Instead, she explains from a well-lit studio, fresh out of a hair and makeup session, what you need to figure out is your 10 percent edge.

And she says, once you zero in on this exact zone, you will know that you have hit upon that sweet spot of the subjects that you know intuitively, and the areas that you know explicitly.

This zone, where your unique 10 percent edge dwells, will also indicate that you're further down the road than your prospective students or clients, which is, generally speaking, a good idea when you're taking their money to guide or lead them toward a new place.

It's an approachable idea…that we only have to know just that much more than the other people in the room in order to teach something. I like the move away from the frantic credentialism.

As I write this, I do recognize the limitation of this treatise. We are not saving lives here. What this 10 percent edge represents is our best ability to teach a subject we confidentially know more about than the other things in our lives.

This Made Me Wonder What My 10 Percent Edge Is

So I decided to dig into the time machine and think about some of the oldest jobs that I have had.

When I was younger, I actually chose stupid jobs.

I was anti-career track. There was absolutely nothing in me that wanted predictable hours and a scheduled paycheck. The offer of a stable 9–5 job, with a set schedule and routine actually made me run faster in the opposite direction.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of stupid jobs that I've had over the years:

• Valentine's Day flower delivery girl
• Craft service for TV sets
• Personal Assistant to a pyramid scheme boss
• Line Cook at a forest fire kitchen
• Christmas Tree Farm fertilizer-er
• Bar Maid
• Treeplanter
• Outhouse painter

None of these jobs are what I do now. But all of them have helped me build a unique skill set:

All these "bad" jobs helped define to me who I was

As an entrepreneur, the first thing that you need to learn is who you are. Because until you can define what your unique strengths are, and what your ten percent edge is for the world, chances are you'll fail.

Here's what these stupid jobs taught me:

• I can find the good in any situation
• I'm an excellent judge of character
• I'm physically strong and healthy — so I can work long days
• I gained a work-until-it's-done work ethic
• I learned to hone my attention to detail
• They gave me the ability to talk to anyone and see them as an equal

But let me get more specific here. Defining what your 10 percent edge is should drill down to something quite specific.

Here are the 3 Things I Learned From My Stupid Job as a Tree Planter

What is this job? It's grueling. It requires you to live in a tent, plant trees by hand for eight hours a day, test your sanity, and push your physical body beyond anything considered reasonable.

The conditions are horrid. The weather is either totally freezing or unbearably hot. If you're not swarmed by black flies, you're swatting deer flies, or being chased by a bear.

It's an ugly, ugly landscape. Think of a forest, with a babbling brook, with animals and pleasant rocks to sit on and water to dive into. But then plant a bomb and walk away. That's what it looks like.

I loved this terrible job. Which is perhaps not reasonable. I even came to see these places as beautiful, at least in a post-industrial zombie-apocalypse sort of way.

I learned how the worst job can also be your BEST job…but that's too basic. I want to show you exactly what I learned, and how it benefits me today.

When you are paid by the piece, or you're part of a team that has to finish something together. It's not done until it's done.

That taught me perhaps the most important skills of self-motivated work:

1. Don't clock watch

This makes work that might already be painful difficult and boring-as-snot go so much slower.

Instead of staring at the clock as the hours slowly tick by…you're working with the other members of your team, helping them to succeed, so that you can succeed (and move on).

The work ends when the work is done, not when the clock strikes a certain hour.

This is not an advertisement for how insecure and unsecured Gig jobs are; I took that get-it-done attitude and put it to good use.

This is what teaches you to drive and stick-with-it-ness.

2. If you take these extremely physically challenging jobs on in your early years, your body imprints on that healthy state of being

Sitting tied to a computer all day does nothing for your physical well-being, we all have to work at that.

But hauling around heavy bags full of tree saplings whilst you navigate a bombed-out terrain of a clear-cut forest actually changes your entire body.

As the years progress and you slip away from that time in your life, your body and your mind will desire to go back to that state. It means you will continue to work harder to stay healthy, and you prioritize that in your life.

This could, actually, save your life as you age. This is not hyperbole.

So say you're contemplating a job working with a landscaping company, or on a construction site that wants you alert and on your toes by 7 a.m. …and you're wondering how you will be standing after 6 p.m. …which is a valid question… which is when you can get back to your passion, your side-hustle, the thing you're hoping to do more of.

And the answer might actually be: You won't! Because you're going to be so dead-tired that you're ready for bed by 9 p.m. while your friends are heading out to some bar somewhere.

But know this: You are building your physical self, and it does get easier with time. Trust me on this one. What you might actually be doing here, is building your body for your whole life, and not just this month, for this paycheque.

This is less directly connected to you as a message deliver-er and more about being able to show up and be that person. Year over year, job after job, transition after massive transition.

If you hardwire your body for actual hard work, it stays with you for the long haul. This is invaluable.

3. This job allowed me to see life through a different lens

This is actually the key part of marketing…it may be the only thing you really need to learn about communication; how to connect and convey ideas with different types of people and meet them where they are.

Over the years, in my various jobs, both good and bad, I have been part of different communities. And each comes with its own specific nuances, local cultures, and personality traits.

My early training with tree planting taught me the importance of adaptation. Each new job reminded me to change and adapt to fit the new work culture and environment. Because no two are ever the same.

Different types of jobs mean that you will meet different types of people and spend time in different socioeconomic quarters. Guaranteed you will pick up some extremely helpful skills along the way.

If you can embrace this concept, you will adapt more quickly and more fluently to whatever new situation you find yourself in. Never assume sameness.

This is how you learn to communicate: without confusion, without compromise.

Let's Set the Record Straight

I want to be clear that I'm not making a judgment call about what is a good job, and what is a bad job, because there are plenty of smart people who, for one reason or another, end up doing stupid jobs their entire life.

These are not stupid people. With any luck, they are happy, or at least content, in their position. And more than likely, they are actually brilliant.

As an entrepreneur and a freelancer, I can't tell you how valuable the skills that I've learned from all of my jobs are, no matter how we want to define them on a good-bad matrix.

The chips are down. My 10 percent edge is that I understand I can see life through a different lens….which is fundamentally the job of storytelling (which is what I teach, narrative audio storytelling).

It wasn't my internship at a magazine, working at the National Broadcaster, my Master's Degree in communication, or the 10,000 hours I've spent learning the technology that taught me this unique and individual skill…it was tree planting, the worst job in the world. That's what gave me my edge.

Samantha Hodder is an audio producer and writer. If you love narrative podcasts as much as I do, subscribe to my Substack Bingeworthy.