If you’re a freelancer, a creative, a small business, then you probably have a competence problem, and not the obvious one.

The obvious one is lacking competence. Not that one. That’s probably not the problem. No, your problem is the opposite.

The competence problem is that there’s too much of it.

Every Facebook group, every WhatsApp group, every website, they’re filled with competent people, people who can competently do your work. Maybe not as well as you, but competently.

And if your customer can get it from anyone, then they’ll just take the cheapest one, because it’s all the same to them, because everyone’s competent.

So your job isn’t to be competent because the world doesn’t have a competence shortage. Of course you need to be competent. Being competent is the ticket to the game, it’s a minimum requirement. But it’s not your job.

No, your job is to stand out. To be specific. To be something for something and not everything for anyone.

P.S. I know that not all your competition is competent, but your customers struggle to tell the difference, and so if you’re something for someone you won’t have to compete with the incompetent folk because they’ll be racing to the bottom on price and you’re no longer playing that game.