Stick to the Knitting for Freelance Success

Diversification is key to the survival of any business right now. But so is remembering your core business—what you are known for, and the services and products that allowed you to grow your business in the first place.

In the well-known management book, In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, there’s a chapter called “Stick to the Knitting.” The chapter talks about the importance of sticking with the business that you know. And it talks about what happens when companies wander too far away from their core services and products—the things that they they do best, and the things that originally contributed to their business success.

In recent months, I’ve talked a lot about the importance of diversification. And I still maintain that freelancers—now more than ever—need to constantly diversify and redefine what they do to stay viable and competitive. You can’t stick to the same business model you had 5 years ago—or, in this climate, even a year to six months ago. You have to continue to evolve your business to reflect changes in the marketplace and shifts in demand for your products and services.

But while you’re diversifying your business, don’t wander too far from your core. What I mean is this: If you are a known expert in health writing, and you have built your personal brand around that body of knowledge, it wouldn’t be smart for you to completely abandon your focus on that topic. However, you could expand pure health writing into other areas. For example, you could transfer some of the knowledge you have about health into topics like fitness and sports medicine. But if you were to suddenly stop writing about health and start writing about HR or business, you’d lose the traction you gained in the marketplace as a health writer.  You can diversify your writing focus so that you are still writing about health-related topics—just in a different way, and for different markets.

So how does the phrase—Stick to the Knitting—apply to you and your business? How can you diversify your business while still remaining true to your core business?

Photo credit:  abbynormy (Flickr)