Something that’s taken me a while to learn in business is that being different matters.
For just about as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to do something in business. I guess maybe I’m lucky that I’ve always had that interest in life where others maybe struggle to find their calling.
I should backup, I did want to be a professional basketball player for a long time. There was one summer when I earned a badge or ribbon or something for shooting 15,000 shots during the summer before coming back to school.
But at some point I realized there weren’t many 5′ 10″ basketball players in the NBA. And I couldn’t really jump that high. And my mid-range shot wasn’t that good.
My Path To Business
Anyway, I always kind of had an idea that business would be my path in life.
The struggle came when I tried to figure out a business idea. The error in my thinking was trying to think of “cool” business ideas. As an observer, it’s easy to read about all the cool businesses out there. And you see something going on and you figure you can do something just like that.
Then after college someone asked if I knew about blogging. I had been interested in online marketing and had been messing around with blogging. The person asked if I wanted to blog for their business blog because they didn’t want to do it themselves.
But even then the light bulb didn’t go off. I started doing it and then I finally started looking around and I could see that others wanted to have business blogs, but didn’t want to so the blogging.
Some would start blogs and maybe do it for a few weeks or months, but then realized they didn’t like writing, formatting, editing and all that good stuff.
Do What People Want, But Refuse To Do
Then the lightbulb went off and I realized that Ghost Blog Writers could be a business because it provided a service that businesses wanted, but that they didn’t want to do.
That intersection of things people need/want, but what they don’t want to do is the key for many businesses.
I like to think of Dirty Jobs. Not all the jobs pay well, but some of the featured jobs on the show pay really well. And the people doing them are definitely willing to do something that other people aren’t willing to do in order to make a really good living and in some cases even a fortune.
Obviously you can get into dangerous things, but there are other reasons people refuse to do things:
- Discomfort
- Awkward
- Too Difficult
- Too Long To Master
- Boring
- Disgusting
- Etc.
Apply This Rule To Life In General
This tip seems to work in other areas of business as well other than the original business idea. If you start to see competition come in it’s a sign that the industry or niche you’re filling is getting a little too easy for others to do. They’re more willing to do what you’re doing.
So you need to look back on what people aren’t willing to do again while also looking at what people need. That’s how you can continue to carve your niche.
Or even if you want to climb the corporate ladder maybe from the Director Of Marketing to CEO, you’ll need to be willing to do what the board wants to see that others aren’t willing to do. Maybe that is carving out time each week to walk around and meet with people in other departments. Maybe it’s committing to join more boards in the community where you can build your reputation in the area.
Conclusion
Whatever it is in life a key to success is doing what people admire, want, need or whatever, but that others aren’t willing to do. It doesn’t mean you have to take on something dangerous or anything crazy, but if you can find something from that image above that is near the top right you’ll really be into something lucrative that is somewhat safe because you know others won’t be willing to compete with you.