Been watching the movie “The Judge” while I do my exercise routine. It got me to thinking how people today want to hire the best of the best – sometimes even stretching their budget too thin just to get ‘the job done’.
I’m not much of a lawyer but the way the movie goes is that there’s this amateur attorney who tried to defend the suspect (the judge) and he goes on to fail on the preliminary hearing – thus needing to proceed to a trial. That attorney sucks. I know it. And if you watched the movie, you would too.
Robert Downey Jr. is the son of the suspect and he is one of the best attorneys in town. While I haven’t been able to finish the movie yet, I realize that I’m not much of a fan of amateurs – and there’s lots of ’em.
In the SEO and digital marketing industry, there are tons of amateurs who read this and that and think they can wing it on game night. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Even more unfortunate is the lack of education for the companies who hire them.
These amateurs can’t play so what do they do? Display.
They come out as great, as professionals – as specialists. But they really are not. Sooner or later the client will find that out. The sad thing about it is that it is often too late and the client’s rankings go down the drain.
I admit that I started out as an amateur. And like all things, not all people who start out as amateurs end up as specialists. It takes a combination of grit, guts, discipline, growth, humility and faith among other things. I’ve been blessed – a whole lot – to be able to land in the specialist section of SEO and finally build my own SEO Company. If you knew me back then, I was a galaxy away from where I am now.
That was five years ago.
The book Outliers told me that it takes at least 10,000 hours of practice for you to be successful in something. That 10,000 hours is equivalent to 5 long years.
Often, that’s too long.
I was able to cut that down to three by working on my personal growth, my projects and my clients for more than 8 hours a day and more than 5 days a week. Today, I’m a specialist of a number of things – SEO, SMM, CRO, Email Marketing, and the list goes on.
People want a specialist on their case. Whether it’s a marketing problem or whether they’re standing in court – it’s all the same.
The question is, are you working on being a specialist? Or are you merely playing to display?