How to Build an Online Business When You Have No Special Skills

We’re forever being sold a lie on how to succeed in life: find what you are best at, work hard at it, and swim in an ocean of happiness.

That works brilliantly if you were born the best at something, but for everyone else, earth is calling you back to the harsh reality. What if you don’t have any special talent? What if you’re just okay at lots of things?

The good news is, nearly everybody is like this, even ultra-successful megastars. Very few successful people are actually the best at something. They’re usually the most effective at mixing lots of things that work well together.

Make Competition Irrelevant

Steve Jobs wasn’t good at only one thing. He wasn’t the best engineer, leader, designer, marketer, or public speaker. Countless others were incredibly more talented than him. But Steve was good enough at these things and learned to fuse his skills together into something far more valuable.

Everyone knows about Steve Jobs and Apple products today. Nobody remembers the team that built better, faster, and more sophisticated computers back in 1980’. If being the best at only one thing was true, Apple’s competitors would be the ones worth $950B.

And Steve Jobs would have ended up being a used car salesman.

Even when your skills are mediocre, a clever combination of mediocrity can turn into something priceless.

Create and Capture Unique Demands

Say you’re a passable soccer player. You love the game, but you know you’ll never be a world champion.

By itself, this skill won’t do much. But when you learn to combine that skill with the ability to teach well, it becomes much more interesting. You also start interviewing professional athletes who used to be your teammates.

You then figure out how to make tutorial videos and market yourself on the Internet. You won’t be the best at making videos, or online marketing, but even your combined “average” skills make you unique and valuable.

How many people are teaching about FB ads? Too many.

How many are teaching amateurs and semi-pros to become a better player and selling courses through FB ads? Much less.

You can build an outstanding online business doing what you love and, yet, never have any of your individual skills go beyond ‘great-ish’.

Package Average Skills Into a Unique You

Individual skills are common. Combinations are rarer. If you want to raise your value, take a step back from your strengths and consider building a broader combination of them.

Like many others, I built my businesses around this very principle.

I wasn’t the best interviewer. Nor was I the most connected person. But I had event planning experience, some online marketing knowledge, and loved to read biographies of successful entrepreneurs.

By gathering different skills and interests into a unique ability, I built a 6-figure business by hosting an online summit for millennial entrepreneurs. And had a total blast doing it!

Having a laugh with Jordan Harbinger during our interview

Speakers were excited to speak to a younger demographic and attendees were happy to listen to their favorite speakers and discover some new entrepreneurs – all under one roof.

If I had solely pursued facebook ads consulting, I would have been a small fish in a big pond. It is almost always better to swim in a blue ocean free of competition and market saturation.

Ordinary and average skills are the very things that make you can make you very special.

This is a Contributor Post. Opinions expressed here are opinions of the Contributor. Influencive does not endorse or review brands mentioned; does not and cannot investigate relationships with brands, products, and people mentioned and is up to the Contributor to disclose. Contributors, amongst other accounts and articles may be professional fee-based.

Tagged with: