Have you ever looked back at key moments in your life and realized that a single quote you barely remember fits like a glove?
Well, that happened to me this week.
I’ve always been known as a generalist.
Never too deep in a single area, but deep enough to be ‘dangerous’.
It’s led to creating some great opportunities, but comes with the pain of not fitting ‘into a box’.
In a discussion with a friend about our career choices and the principles that guide them, I produced: “To be the best, you need to be in the top 5% of one thing, or top 20% of two things”.
In what felt like a moment of clarity, it became clear that subconsciously, this slight mis-quote was a lynchpin of how I had lived my entire life.
I wasn’t great at a single thing.
I didn’t have a deep expertise in a single area.
I wasn’t a specialist.
This quote had been pulled from deep within, and I could not place where I had picked it up, but could tell it had been there for some time.
Some digging later that evening, it turned out that Scott Adam (Dilbert comics) had a blog post on this from 2007.
I would have been 14 when he posted it.
My 14 year old mind stored this quote deep down, and it became a guiding principle that drove decisions, whether I acknowledged it or not.
Most people specialize.
You go to College, pick a specialism and study it for 4 years.
Graduate and work in that field.
You dive deeper into this area for the rest of your life.
Becoming an expert.
But, to get into the top 1%, you need to not only work hard, but get lucky and have some underlying natural talent.
That’s a lot of uncontrolled variables.
All of those dominoes need to fall in your favor to become ‘rare’.
So, how has the two skilled approach played out so far?
Taught myself to code, but wanted to beat the glass ceiling that I viewed a developer would have.
Selected ‘The Business side’ of things as the second top 25%.
Went to college for Entrepreneurship.
Got kicked out. Ended up with a degree in Economics.
Graduated.
Interviewed at MetLife Insurance. Was told “We are sure you could do the job (Analyst), but you’d get bored and quit, you’d be a better fit at a tech startup”.
Interviewed at 70+ startups in NYC.
Got 0 offers.
Founded my first VC backed business.
Found that the technical knowledge was incredibly disarming in Sales conversations.
Currently a 4x Founder, with a few of those being moderately successful.
17 years on from reading Scott Adams blog post, I am still not a specialist.
I have no intent to ever be one.
But, I have been referred to as rare in many of the places I have operated.
Seeking rarity has been, and continues to be, a guiding principle.
So, thankyou Scott Adams, a single blog post has profoundly impacted my life.