What Are Your 3 Vital Functions?
One thing I learned early on in my online career is that I sucked at a few things.....
- Coding / Programming
- Web design / Graphics
However when I got started, I tried to become a jack of all trades. I used free sites like Bravenet (You have been in this business a long long time if you remember that site lol) for all my design and development needs...Heck I even bought a book on PHP Programming way back in 2003...And it's been gathering dust ever since!
This seems to be the biggest hurdle for anyone that is trying to make money online or carve out a niche for themselves in any kind of online business. You keep asking yourself, where do I fit in and what must I do to generate some traction.
Attempting to be a jack of all trades is your sure fire way to failure. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a basic knowledge of all aspects of your business, however trying to become a master web designer when you can't even color in the lines....Well, leave that stuff to the experts!
But what can you do? Where do you 'fit in'?
It takes some soul searching and some personal discovery but once you find your '3 vital functions', and focus on those, your world opens up.
For example, these are my three that best served my online company (revised over the past few years but still the core of what I focus on day to day in my businesses) ;
Let me break these down to help you maybe see how developing your own 3 vital functions can help you 'fit in' and deliver value every day.
Live Streaming - I also called this 'public speaking' in my first attempt to develop my 3 vital functions. My company needed to have a voice and public face to help train our customers, develop relationships and deliver value through live seminars. I have brought that to my live streaming and have been doing it for years. I'm comfortable behind the camera and LOVE interacting with people in a live streaming environment.
Content Creation - On top of the live streaming I also love to write. So blogging, drafting emails, ad copy and creating training videos was a natural fit for me. And could be one of the reasons I love the Steem blockchain so much ;)
Media Representation - Closely attached to the first function of doing the live streaming, I was the face of my company for years (and still am to a certain extent). Years ago, I was the guy that showed up to the seminars, did the interviews and was quoted from the blogs I wrote. My partners felt much more comfortable being behind the scenes so I had no problem taking the responsibilities of working every day with the public and our awesome customers.
These 3 functions allowed me to focus on what I was good at. And yeah, I may not be the BEST at them, but because I focus on them I can continue to get better each and every day.
Like I mentioned, my partners dealt with the design, the programming and the technical aspects and I worked on being the 'marketer' per se. And it worked!
Instead of trying to be the jack of all trades, I focused on my passions and what I felt was a good fit for me. And allowed others to focus on what they were great at.
Crazy concept? Maybe...But when you are focused, the sky is the limit!
Couldn't agree more - it's very similar to looking at a product's 3 unique selling points!
Interesting. Never thought of that but that's a great point.
It is ironic that you post this. I have been visiting my business plan recently and using my thoughts behind it to write some posts.
Kind of been trying to do the same for the sake of my customers, and my sanity.
Trying to be a jack of all trades in my line of work is also dooming one to failure...eventually.
Yeah and it also takes away from what you are really good at. I mean, when I leave the coloring to the experts, my 'stuff' looks better and it allows me to work on the content side of things / ad copy etc...When my websites work and perform as advertised, it's not because of my awesome sauce lol it's because someone much more knowledgable than me, focused on what he was great at. Just works out :)
For sure!
Absolutely. Do what you do well and leave the rest. The last site I had designed I told the designer "I want boy colors not girl colors, the rest is on you."
It's always good to remember. Thank you.
LOL Boy colors not girl colors LOL Narrowed it down right?
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This is such a good post and could be one of my stumbling blocks, the fact that I do everything myself probably explains why I often feel sometimes overwhelmed with tasks, I tried outsourcing a few times with various things in the past most worked out ok and freed up my time a bit, I think I need to focus more on delegating some of my basic work activities so I can free up more time to work on just 3 skills im passionate about. Thanks for this great post it has really got me thinking differently about building my business going forward.
Thanks man. Yeah dude it helped me a ton when I stopped trying to do it all.
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One of the best advice one can receive, to focus on your expertise, and yet so often ignored.
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