“I always say, “Be so good that they can’t ignore you.” If someone’s thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you…”

~ Steve Martin 

Last week I told you the story of my client who tripled her business and only added five employees, by focusing on a specialty and getting good at it. 

But how can that work for your firm? How did it work for her?

She went all in. 

Once we decided that she needed to focus on drug companies, she changed her website and focused all her sales and marketing efforts on just websites for drug companies. 

She went and read the regulations, and she learned what the FDA said she could and couldn’t do. She learned them better than the compliance officers at the drug companies. 

She started an industry group for healthcare women marketers so that she was in the place where her clients went to meet one another. 

She didn’t let her love for “the web,” or for a pretty design, or for the creative process, keep her from learning about what her client valued most. Her “passion” was to solve a complicated and expensive problem in a way that made her company stand out, and she did that.

Then she doubled down

Once she knew she was good at drug company websites, she focused even more. She focused on drugs for disease states that made you sick but weren’t going to kill you. Newly diagnosed patients with those illnesses were worth more to the drug company, so they’d pay more to find them.

“This is what you should experience in your own pursuit of “good.” If you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re probably stuck at an “acceptable level.”

~ Cal Newport,  So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Specializing is a risk. You pick something to be good at, and that means that you can’t pursue lots of other things. 

But that’s the way to grow.