Having recently been asked about any of my own business nightmares what Seth Godin writes in his post We specialize in everything strikes a cord:

… if you can find the best in the world to do what you want, no matter what it is you want, does that change things?

… When choice is limited, I want a generalist. When selection is difficult, a jack of all trades is just fine.

But whenever possible, please bring me a brilliant specialist.

If you’re shaking your head in agreement with this obvious point, then the question is: tell me again why you’re a generalist?

Being a generalist is a mistake so many SMEs make. My first business was no exception, we started off with a clear focus on what we were going to specialise in, but like many new businesses we felt we couldn’t turn down any work to start with - we needed to “build our reputation” and “create a customer list” so we took on work we didn’t really want, in areas we didn’t want to specialise in. Later on in the businesses life, when times were quiet we succumbed to temptation and did it again. The result? A difficult couple of years.

Eventually we decided that we either needed to specialise, or close the business. We chose to specialise, we started turning work away so we were free to work on our speciality and we put our prices up by 100% taking the attitude that we’d either do well on less work (for more money) or we’d be out of business quick. In actual fact the business quickly gained more of the right sort of work from customers willing to pay the higher rates - specialising wasn’t the risk we feared, it was the key to a successful business.

So be brave, be a specialist!

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