I remember when I got my life coach certification. I was ready to take on the world! I wanted to use my training to help any- and everyone who was having any problem of any kind, anywhere in the world.
Although I had a particular passion for at-risk youth and survivors of sexual assault/domestic abuse, I did not want to limit my “help” to just one set of people, even if my training did include the need to find a niche’.
So I began building an all-encompassing website to cater to… everyone.
Or so I thought.
Although I had some successes as a Life Coach, I couldn’t credit my website for it. Any successes I had really came down to my personal interactions in my small community. As for the World Wide Web, well, I was just a molecule of a drop in a bucket.
I am no longer a practicing life coach but I continue my writing career which has spanned more than two decades. And in the past couple decades I’ve seen many, many shifts in the way my work, works and now I am seeing that my trainers at iPEC were absolutely right: find a niche.
It is the nature of my work as a freelance writer that I research and study the things I write about. Whether it’s a short, 300-word post or a long, 1,000+ word paper, I am required to research as much as possible to ensure my content is accurate, appropriately aimed, and professionally presented.
I find that a lot of the content I write is aimed at marketing and sales. Particularly, internet marketing.
In researching this stuff, I have learned the importance of being an expert at just one thing.
Technology has changed our lives in irrefutable ways and part of that is the need to really focus on one thing within a core group or organization.
Where the model used to be having a manager who would lead the teams to success, now those people have to be specialized in their own ways. Organizations have to have a specialist in each arm of their teams which can be whittled down to the most pinpoint specific specialties.
For example, a marketing team is no longer just about doing research and reporting to their managers what the current market trends are. It involves needing people who are technologically savvy and have the wherewithal and diligence to recognize not only trends, but specific marketing needs that have not even been developed yet.
It’s like a cell that works within an organism, that makes up another organism. Each cell has a certain function (reproductive, endocrine, etc.) even though the cell is the tiniest part of a whole.
That’s how technology is changing everything at the core.
Each part of the cell [team member] has a purpose and – without those particular parts – the cell [team] cannot work as a cohesive part of the whole so it will wither and die and, thus, affect the organism [organization] as a whole.
So when you are trying to figure out what to do with your future, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the options but what I am seeing is the need for the niche. This is a good thing because – as opposed to needing to be an expert in accounting, for example – you need only be an expert in a certain part of accounting because now, accounting firms have teams that include accountants, marketers, analysts, design teams, and all the different aspects of those “organisms” that are required to succeed.
Pick apart the things that you are passionate about all the way down to a cellular level and you can find many different aspects of that particular passion that are categorical.
Although it seems counterintuitive to focus in on one single specialty, in the future that’s what is going to be necessary and technology is the place where specialties are going to be vital.
Cristina Johnson, Vagabond Writer 