The Subtle Art of Specializing Without Sinking
Focus doesn’t limit your work—it clarifies where it lands.
One sure way to give most business owners instant anxiety is to suggest that they stop doing certain work.
So that’s what I’m going to do for you today. You’re welcome.
Ridiculous example time: Ford manufactures cars and trucks. They don’t make washing machines, refrigerators, or mattresses. Nope, cars and trucks. They specialize.
It can go a step further. Lucid doesn’t make any pickups, just cars. In fact, they only make two models of car, and they only make electric vehicles. No gas engines anywhere, not even hybrids. Very, very specialized.
OK, sure, Ford has a market cap that’s around 15x bigger than Lucid, and Ford is actually profitable. But Ford is also 104 years older than Lucid, so one would sort of expect them to be further ahead like that.
Lucid, despite being smaller and younger, has a lot of advantages over Ford. They don’t have the insane overhead of building and supporting numerous models of automobiles, with complex supply chains and dealer networks. They have to source far fewer parts, as in tens of thousands less. They can focus on engineering one chassis system, one software system, and “one” of many other things, since they only build two models, the Air and the Gravity.
Will these advantages eventually outweigh the disadvantages of being a cash-strapped startup? Only time will tell, but they certainly have a much simpler task at hand than Ford does, which manufactures some three dozen different vehicles with hundreds of different trim options.
If you want to build a simpler business for yourself, one very clean way of doing this is to also specialize. Eliminate entire services, and focus only on the few that are in most demand by your clients, the most profitable, or the most enjoyable for you to deliver.
Back when I worked with independent tax professionals, I was a broken record on this. My advice was always to stop preparing tax returns, stop doing financial statement preparation, stop doing bookkeeping, stop doing payroll, etc. Instead, I urged them to focus on the thing that I was known for and that they sought me out for: IRS Collections representation, colloquially known as tax resolution.
That’s it. Do that one thing. Nothing else. Shut down all those other services, unless they were in service to an IRS Collections case. Even then, I encouraged outsourcing bookkeeping and tax return preparation to other tax professionals, so they could focus just on the tax resolution work.
I will admit, this was rarely received well. I lost count of how many times those tax professionals told me it was impossible, that their business would implode if they did that — all while other tax professionals working with me were making record profits by doing exactly that.
Specialization in your business isn’t necessarily about doing less work. It’s really about optimization.
Diffuse vs Defined
Diffuse positioning tries to speak to everyone and anyone. Here, your signal scatters, and the right clients hesitate. The more different things that you say you do, the more prospects question whether you can actually meet their needs.
Defined positioning names a clear problem that you solve, and for whom you solve it. The work you actually do for the client may still be a bit broad behind the scenes, but the entry to the harbor of working with you is obvious and distinctive.
Specialization is like choosing a shipping lane. The Salish Sea is still vast, but ships move faster through the marked routes.
Here are three ways to help you specialize without boxing yourself into a corner:
Lead with the problem, not the modality. Name the core problem you solve for people, even if you use many tools to solve it.
Define who you’re for, not who you exclude. Simple clarity here attracts the right clients, and it doesn’t require negative or rejection cloaked language.
Keep the front door narrow. In your marketing, be very specific about the service you offer, but be flexible and adapt to the clients needs once they’re inside your sphere.
Specialization brings very strong clarity to your marketing, introduces operational efficiencies, and strengthens your impact.
If this helps to refine your positioning, you’re invited to join your peers inside the Bizorca Pod. Right now, we’re focusing on helping members really define what their business is all about. You’re invited to join us to help you build a better business that serves both you and your clients.