Let me defend the ‘spaghetti throwers’ for a minute.

(’Spaghetti-throwers’ is the tacky name I gave to the customized-generalist consulting segment that serves clients in any vertical with customized ad-hoc projects.)

An offline example:

There’s a hardware store called Pacific Supply Co. around the corner from me in Seattle that’s been around for decades. Quite a feat, considering the high rents in a tech-gentrified neighborhood!

They don’t do any outbound marketing, but a limited Facebook business page uses some language like:

“That obscure part you need for that thing broken in your home? We probably have it.”

And sure enough, when I need an obscure part for something broken in my home, I go there, they guide me through their shelves, and they always have it.

I won’t go into the economics of inventory-levels and scale for brick-and-mortar retailers, but regardless, the model is working for them.

Here’s the catch when applying this to a consulting model:

Yes, you can attract business as a customized-generalist, but there are trade-offs:

• Your leads will likely come from your warm network or word-of-mouth, which can be inconsistent and eventually exhausted
• You will be compared against specialists anyway, so to compete, you’ll likely have to drop your rates
• For projects you do close, you’ll face a new learning curve on each one
• Your project work will be reactive to any given client need, slowing your ability to specialize, even organically

While you can certainly get your feet wet as an independent consultant embracing variety and ‘casting a wide net,’ these trade-offs make the spaghetti-thrower model a difficult place to position yourself permanently.

So what instead?

If you still want to serve ‘everyone’: what’s one service you could do exceptionally well? That can start to move you to another quadrant…

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And by the way, Pacific Supply is arguably doing "one thing" after all.

💡

-Wes