October 16, 2016

Specialization allows you to rapidly create a body of work

Specializing down to a laser focused market position has an unexpected side benefit:

Specialization allows you to rapidly create a body of work.

Having a cohesive body of work is a valuable asset and a huge trust builder. It implicitly positions you as an authority in your area of expertise.

The Wall Of Confusion

Years ago, I used to haphazardly blog about whatever subject grabbed happened to my attention. Some posts were about obscure user agent strings on Windows phone, other posts were about programming smartwatches, and still others about mobile strategy in the enterprise.

There was no obvious central thread that held everything together. To an outsider, I’m sure my blog looked like a schizophrenic mish-mash of seemingly random thoughts. A wall of confusion, if ever there was one.

A little over a year ago, I launched my business coaching program for software developers. At that time, I decided to focus 100% of my publishing efforts toward topics that would help software developers improve their business. Over time, I’ve even gone a step farther by adding a particular sub-focus on how we price our work. Like a focus within a focus.

In the 18 months that followed, I have generated probably 100x more material than I ever did in my “wall of confusion” years.

Here’s a sampling:

Books

Webcasts

Podcasts

Articles

Virtually all of this output is from the last year and a half. I haven’t actually counted, but I betcha this new material contains literally hundreds of thousands of words, both written and spoken. And in spite of the volume of content it all hangs together as a cohesive body of work because there is a thread that runs through it - a topic focus, a defined audience, a desired outcome... a mission, if you will.

People ask me all the time how I’m able to keep up this level of output and the answer is that I picked a focus. I specialized. I choose a passion and I committed to it. I staked out a claim and started digging.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a big fan of specialization.

Now, let’s tie this back to our current conversation:

Having a massive body of work increases the likelihood that prospects will:

In other words, having a body of work increases the likelihood that prospects will hire you, which in turn will increase your confidence when having a Why Conversation with prospects - i.e., it’ll be harder to talk them out of hiring you.

Yours,

—J

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