https://www.listennotes.com/e/cec9e1dd09604dc8bf4ddc1416761add

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are in a room and somebody talks about something that has happened with them, and they describe how they hired someone to fix that problem, and you're, like, shocked because you're thinking, well, like, that's what I do. And so you ask them, hey, why didn't you ask me to do that? And they said, well, I didn't know that's what you did. Well, this happens far too often. Even when you say, hey, I'm a plumber or I'm an electrician or I'm a digital marketer, it can happen. Let me give you an example. Many times when a business starts, they are focused on doing one thing, and let's just say they are focused on being an electrician. But along the way, because they're building their business, they'll take on different side jobs, they'll do additional things. And so what'll happen is it will dilute their specialization. So today I want to talk about, are you a generalist or are you a specialist? And which one? I'm not saying one is worse than the other, but there are distinct issues when you're a specialist, but you come across as a generalist. Hi, my name is Jeff Harrison. Welcome to the Local Voice. And today I want to really get into a situation that really kind of came across my plate just recently. As I describe, when someone starts a business and we all do this, we take on jobs because, hey, we got to pay the mortgage, we got to pay the rent of the office, we got to pay our staff, whatever it is, we have to take on jobs that maybe not are our specialty, really our desired job. Well, this happens also as one's career might evolve. I'll give you a very personal, specific example. Yes, I'm pointing the finger right at me. We are a content marketing company. I own a company called Swing Point Media. We're located in the Coachella Valley in Southern California, the Palm Springs area, if you will. But we help companies all over the country create content that solves problems that their ideal customers might ask along the way in making a decision. In other words, our content is created to be found by those people searching on the Internet asking those questions. Their solution pops up. And because they are seen as the person who knows how to answer that question, they are the authority, the expert, the specialist in their marketplace. Well, in about the last, let's say, 24 months, I'm recording this Cinco de Mayo, May 5th. So whenever you're watching it, keep that in mind. See Cinco de Mayo. And about two years ago we started getting involved heavily with AI and we did it for some writing and this, that and the other, and then helping with editing and writing scripts and things of that nature. Well, we are full blown AI marketing agency. But here's what happened along the way. I kind of lost my specialty. So if someone were to ask someone else, hey, what does Jeff do? They might have gotten confused about what is I do. They may say, well, I think he does something with chatbots. I think he does websites and I think he does AI agents. I think he does automated workflows. I think he does. Well, these are things that happened along the way that, that I kept testing out and implementing and then I would help clients who needed that. And next thing you know, I have a bag of generalities. I'm no longer that specialist. My awareness today in wee hours of the morning was like, wait a second. It would be hard for me to describe what it is I do. Yes, I say I create content for local businesses, specifically search service based businesses. I help them develop content or I develop content for them to attract their ideal customer. I use organic content. Now we use AI tools to get that done. Give me give you an example. We've evolved from having many human writers to now AI writing that content. And then our human writers have become human optimizers and they look at all the content, make sure it passes the mostly written by a human and it doesn't have any weird things in there. They'll check all of that. But again, along the way I was distracted with AI agents, chatbots, AI voice agents, automated workflows, all this stuff, the cool things that AI can, can bring. The reason I'm bringing this up is I want you to understand that it happens to anyone and sometimes it can catch you off guard. And I want you to ask this question and this will kind of be that filter that'll be the, the what is it? The that question that tests your mettle. If you had someone ask someone else, hey, what does fill in your name? What do they do? And if they can say without hesitation, oh, they do this for these kind of people and they're the best at it, fantastic. You are a specialist. But if they're going, well, you know, I think they do this and I think they do this and I think they can help you with that, but they really don't know. Now let me ask you a question. If it's the latter and I'm suggesting they go see you, do you go there with a lot of confidence or trepidation Personally, I would go there with some trepidation because I'm thinking, well, they might be okay at that. They know a surface level, they know one or two rungs up the ladder more than I do. But do they really know what, what they're doing? Differences are like, okay, if I go to see my gp, my general practitioner, and he recommends a particular type of surgery, God forbid we don't have that going on. But if he recommends a particular type of surgery, he says, well, you know, I did this in college 22 years ago. I remember studying, we did about an hour's worth of it. Let me give it a go. I mean, think about it. Probably not going to say, yes, let's get it done, it's an outpatient, I'm here, let's do it. No, I'm probably going to say, can you recommend a surgeon who actually specializes in that? Because it's somebody, you know, think about it. Someone who specializes in something is what, they've done it countless times, they're an expert at it. And you can take this to any field. I recall many, many years ago, there's a speaker, he's passed now, his name is Zig Ziglar and he was an expert, expert, professional speaker. And he often said, I didn't give a lot of different talks. He said, I gave the same talk for 30 plus years. That's an expert, that's a specialist. And I have to say I have fallen victim to generalization because there are times I wake up and I'm not sure what the heck it is that I'm doing. Yes, I know I still have a company and we still make content and we do that and we do it very, very well. So this is what I have done and maybe this will help you, or this is what's happened to me and maybe this will help you. So what I did is I created this matrix and it's a decision making matrix of saying, okay, these are all the things that I've got going on. And now this not only includes what I've got going on, but it includes all the apps and AI and all that kind of stuff. And I'm looking at it, I'm filtering, saying, okay, everything has a grade. But my point is, is if the great, if this particular tool, this particular activity is not supporting creating content for local businesses to attract more of their clients, then it's not something I want to be involved in. I can jettison it off, I can get rid of it and I can go back to doing what I can Focus on what I'm a specialist at. Like, if I'm a knee surgeon, I'm not one day going to hang up a shingle, say, oh, and I also do hips just because, well, you know, I just thought I'd give it a go. I've read some articles about it. No, no, no. You specialize in knees. To me, I specialize in content marketing. I content. And I could probably even go deeper on that and say, I specialize in content that are blogs, but I do blogs and I do video and I do social media. Those are the three areas. And I also do email marketing because it all fits together. Those are the areas I deal with. Now, do I have a shingle up that says I do websites? No. Have I done some websites? Yes. Why? Because some of my customers come back to me and say, do you do websites? Can you help me? The best thing I could tell them is, yes, I do. But I don't actually do that work. I've actually hired someone. Like, I have someone through my company who's an expert in building websites. The other piece that I need is I need someone who's an expert at optimizing websites. Meaning as it's being built, it's going to work the very best, not only for, hey, speed of loading, but is it SEO optimized? Does it have content on there that already will start attracting that person's ideal customer? Or is it just this shell that says, it's about you, it's your contact page, it's your services, and here's your website. To me, that's like me giving you a Ferrari and I forgot to put the engine in it. So my point is, is like, my focus now is going to be on being what we call owning my category. Now, you can't own your category if you are a generalist. Even. Even if you are a handyman. A handyman is someone who can do a lot of different things. But I'll give you an example. Recently, we had some work done in our house, and our handyman did some demo work for us. And I asked him, I said, well, do you also do drywall? He said, no. And when I pressed him, I said, well, why not? He said, because the level of results that we get is not the level that we want to put our name on. Now, at that point, that should have been a clue to me, but I really wasn't into the looking in the mirror stage and saying, hey, Jeff, are you doing work that you're not totally hip on, putting your signature on? I'm not saying we're putting out bad work. I'm just saying, you know what? I am distracted at times by doing a lot of different things because I have been generalizing as I'm trying to stay on top of. Of this AI stuff. Now, can I use AI to make me better at owning my category 100%? Let's stay with a surgeon as an example. If somebody comes out with a better procedure for you to work on replacing knees, does that mean you're no longer doing these? Absolutely not. You're examining that procedure and saying, will it make me better what I do, or is it just another option? But it's not my option. So as I start to filter this and I make that matrix and I say, okay, I'm looking at, let's say, a product like what we call Synthesia. Synthesia is an avatar platform that allows me to use my. My picture or the picture video of my clients. And then from there, I can create all kinds of videos without them ever having to be in front of the camera again. Or there's a host, hundreds and hundreds of different avatars that I can use to create videos for that same customer without them ever having to be back on camera, except for that one time. So I look at that and say, is that a product that. That will make the content I need better? And I say, possibly. See, that's one of those iffy things, because what, what we're looking for now is, is will it. Will it remove my client from authentic content? Will it keep that authenticity in the message, or will it dilute it and somebody say, oh, that's. That's not really. Jeff, that's an avatar. Or is it so good that it can't. You can't see the difference. And by using that particular tool, it allows me to create 5, 10 videos or 5, 10. 5 or 10 videos a month for my client without them ever having to worry about take two or take three, and quite frankly, me not having to set up the cameras every time. That's what I'm talking about. Now, if I'm looking at something else, I'll give you another example. We have a product that we've used now for a few years, and it helps us take all of our content, put it on a calendar, schedule it out, and then it posts automatically to these platforms. Well, just recently, like in the last 30 days, it went up significantly in cost. And because I was exposed to artificial intelligence building automated workflows, I got my designer and I said, hey, or my developer and said, hey, let's take a look at this and let's see if we can build our own that we own. I would rather invest one time and we own our own platform that does the exact same thing. And we're very close to having that done. I'm excited about that. But the bottom line is, what I'm using this decision matrix for now is I'm putting everything in there. All my activities, all my tasks, all my software, all my memberships. And I'm saying, is this really making me better at owning my category as the best content marketer to attract new clients for my local businesses, or am I confusing them? And when they're at a dinner party and they say, who would you recommend for X, Y and Z? And they recommend somebody else because they're really not sure what it is I do. I want you to have that question with yourself. I want you to have that conversation with yourself. Hey, do my customers really know? Does the industry really know what it is? I do. And there are people that I think of that are, I'm going to say category. They own their own category. You know, there are people like Neil Patel, he owns his category. There's people like Gary Vaynerchuk. Vaynerchuk, he owns his category. Now he has started to expand what he's doing because he owns an agency. And now he does a lot of different things, but. But he does basically the same thing. He owns his category. We can all own our category, even if there are other people out there. But when we start diluting and saying, you know what? I'm a heat and air conditioning company, but now I've added plumbing, now I've added electricity, now I've added this, now I've added this. We become so diluted. We're not sure if it's a convenience for our customers or our customers find it a convenience or they find it a confusion. Because there's, there's that saying, jack of all trades, an expert at nothing. Again, it's surface level. As I said before, even my handyman, there are things he says, I don't do it because I can't put my name on it and be proud that, hey, it was something I did. So today, I want you to think about that. As we go through our day, I want you to ask yourself, do I own my category? If someone asks someone else for referral about something, you know, you think you do, and they don't refer you, that's a clue. You, you have become a generalist and not a specialist. What does it say on your Business card. We want you to be the best at what you can do, at what you do. And it's so simple. It truly is. I have a client right now and they are in the medical field and they have started to expand on who they are. And there's a part of me, I'm excited for them, but I also have to be very careful not to get too many things going on because again, we sometimes think, hey, it's easy to go to convenience store because there's a lot of other things in there, but there's not very many to choose from. Or do I go to a, you know, like a Bristol Farms, a very high end, and I go there because it has the best of that. Not saying one is better than the other. It's just you have to know which playground you're in. So today we're talking about, are you a generalist or are you a specialist? I want to be the specialist and I want to own my category. When somebody says, hey, I need to get more customers and I really don't know if I want to do ads, well, then you need to talk to Jeff Harrison at Swingpoint Media because he is the best at creating content that attracts your ideal customers. And he does it over and over and over again. And we see growth with customers and, you know, tell them the story about Fraser Pest Control. And because we created their digital footprint that they added one client that added 2200 new pieces of property that they service every month with their pest control. Or it could be for Coachella Valley Home Watch, where they've had a nice number, 35 new clients because of nothing special. We did. We just do it very, very well. And we put content out there. So they were always present on social media, their blogs, their video. They didn't have that before. They only had social media. We added the blogs and the videos. We do that every week and it's starting to show up. Says he's had to hire new people and he's growing. I think that's exciting. So again, before I sign off, ask that question. Ask somebody, hey, can you tell me what I do? Ask of somebody that you know very well, Hey, I just need to ask you a question. Call them up and say, if you had to describe what it is I do because someone mentioned that they were looking for somebody to do what I do, could you tell them this is what I do? I know there's a lot of what I do's in there. If they can't, then that's a sobering moment. That's that fork in the road and you got to say which one am I going down? Who am I going to be? Am I going to be a generalist or a specialist? I really recommend you be a specialist and go deep in that. Now it doesn't mean you don't know about these other things, right? Doesn't mean you don't know about knee surgery or excuse me, hip surgeries if you're a knee surgeon. It doesn't mean if I don't know about AI voice agents if I'm a content marketer. It just means that that's not what I do as my specialty. Thanks for joining me today. My name is Jeff Harrison. I'm a company called Swing Point Media. We are a digital AI content marketing company that we create content, organic content for our ideal customers which are local service businesses. Help them get more customers who are more ideal for them and are better quality customers. Have a great day. Thanks so much.