Specializing

Barry Morris commented on my last entry, making me a liar for saying nobody commented. Thanks, Barry! I like comments.

Barry said that freelancers often find more success by specializing in a niche rather than being generalists. I believe he's right, too! When you specialize in a field or a particular product, say newsletters or annual reports, the learning curve is much shorter and it's easier to prove your worth.

Those who know me know that I love metaphors. So here's another one: specializing is like playing poker (or rummy, I guess). You can either have three of a kind, or a series in a suit. You can specialize in brochures, for example, or write many things for one industry, such as finance.

Either way, when a new client asks for your portfolio items, the chances you can pull out something similar to what he needs increase exponentially when you specialize. If you don't, that vocational school marketing guy may have to use some imagination to see that you can do for him what you did for a bed & breakfast.

But at some point during your card game, you might want to change strategy, so it's not a good idea to get attached to your royal flush in-the-making. Your industry may take a nose dive, or a new technology could make your service outdated. And if you're foolish enough to "specialize" in one company, well, any number of awful things could happen.

Mostly, I don't specialize because it's BORING. I like to do brochures one day, newsletter articles and ad copy the next. I like having assignments in lots of different industries because it's fun to keep learning. And really, all of these things have a lot of common ground. So here's what I really specialize in:

1. Really listening to clients
2. Doing comprehensive research
3. Focusing on the end goal, not the process.
4. Having a great time doing it, which means I get to maintain enthusiasm!

What's YOUR specialty?