To Specialize in Your Niche, or Not?

I often hear from the average people that in order to build a successful career you need to specialize in doing something. I also that in school where you usually get high specialization in one skill while ignoring the rest. But I have always been a generalist myself, and so I used to think that when I switched from skill to skill I was only loosing my time. At least this is what they told me, I knew I was doing the right thing.

It all started when I was young, when I would practice a sport for one or two years, only to discover that I was interested in doing something else, and so I ended up doing like six different sports in less than ten years. Eventually this attitude followed me in everything I did from school to work.

It wasn’t until two years ago that I discovered the importance of being a generalist. Being able to do multiple things is an important skill itself, and it’s the essence of personal development.

Take for example Mc Donalds and his hamburgers, could you make an hamburger better than him? If yes, why is he richer than you? This is a common example, but it helps to illustrate a fact: Mc Donalds sells hamburgers because he know how to sell and reach people, but not only that, he also know the real estate business very well, that’s why you can see his restaurants in all the corners of the world.

But he is not the only one who know this secret, you can find this attitude in every successful person you know.

Talking about the opposite, I know a few copywriters who can do amazing work, yet they often struggle to pay bills on time. I had a chance to talk with a few of them and they told me they would like to increase their sales, but once I told them that they had to learn how to sell their services, they refused saying that I was advising them to become a sort of sales people.

The reality is that the world is full with talented people, but few of them succeed, and they always do because they learnt how to sell themselves. Of course selling is not the only important thing to learn, I am emphasizing it here because most people hate it, and I want to touch a nerve. Other important things includes communicating, solving problems, managing others, etc.

So how do you actually learn a new skill? One of the best ways I know is by doing it as a job. If you want to learn to sell and overcome shyness, try to get a job at selling; if you want to learn to communicate, offer free seminars to strangers (who said that a job must be paid?). You can switch your main job if you have the opportunity, but you can also start your new ‘profession’ in your free time and still be able to pay your bills. Be creative.

This is important because you’ll be able to catch more opportunities. It will be essential for you five years from now to know how to sell and how to market when you’ll have written your first book about gardening.

The last step is knowing how much you need to learn. In my opinion, you should be able to reach the top 10 percent of what you are trying to do. Not the top 10 percent in the world, but rather in your area. That’s like getting an A when you are in school. This is effective because it will be easier to get the equivalent of an A in a relative short period of time (say 2 years), but you would only spend unnecessary time trying to get an A+ and become the best in the world in everything you do.

I conclude this post by remembering to have fun. You should always have fun when you learn new things and take every experience as an opportunity to grow. It ma be hard at first, but once you’ll get started it will be easier, and you’ll be glad you had started today.

Posted on August 13 2009

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