Here on the Obvious Expert blog and in both our book, How to Position Yourself as the Obvious Expert, and in all our workshops and teaching programs, we tell businesspeople, “Become recognized as an Obvious Expert. Achieve recognition as the top-of-the-mind person in your niche. Carve out your identity in such a way that clients and customers are seeking you instead of you searching for them.” And then, because fair is fair, when we throw out a challenge like this, we follow it with instructions for how to accomplish it.
But is there such a thing as casting your net too wide?
Seth Godin suggests there can be. In a post titled “Scalejacking,” on Seth Godin’s Blog, Godin says, “Because marketers were raised on the scale of mass-TV, radio, newspapers-they have a churn and burn mentality. The internet turns this upside down. The internet is about who, not how many. The internet lets you take really good care of 100 people instead of harassing 2,000.”
No, there is no such thing as being too much of an expert expert or too well known as the obvious expert. But you can try to be too many things to too many people with too many different kinds of needs.
If you over-reach, you could wind up under-serving and that won’t do anything positive to help build your brand as the Obvious Expert in your field. More importantly, failing to serve your clients well, will leave you frustrated, and that is about the worst thing that can happen. When you work for yourself, you are always the heart and soul of your business’ growth and future.
