When most LDS missionaries come home from their missions their mission president sits them down and has a talk with them about returning home.
I remember a few things from what my mission president spoke about but one of the things I remember most was a quote:
“There’s always room at the top”
He was talking about being at the top of your industry, at being the best at whatever it is you do. It doesn’t matter how crowded your industry is, if you’re the best, there’s always room for you.
My wife was recently looking at making one of those wooden boards that has a cool quote on it that said:
“Whatever you are, be a good one”
I just wanted to put in my two cents on this.
My experience has been that if you’re mediocre at something, people aren’t interested. Even if you’re reasonably good at something, people are only somewhat interested. But, when you’re the best at something, that’s when people really want you to do stuff with/for them.
I wrote a while back about life not being about who you know but more about what you know and THEN about who you know. Being the best in your field applies to this. If you’re not the best at whatever it is you do, people don’t want to know you. If you’re the best, they’ll seek you out and present you with opportunities to make money, help others, change lives, make a difference, stuff you never thought possible.
I may not be the best php programmer ever but between Dan and I we wrote some pretty darn good software that is better than anything like it and it has changed our lives. We have had amazing people come to us offering us amazing things.
Here’s another example: Recently I hired two different people to do some web work. I didn’t know very much about them when I hired them. It turned out that one of them was “the best” at what he does, the other is not. Not that the other isn’t good at it, he is. He’s just not even close to how good the other one is at doing layout/design for web pages. I’m now paying the one who is super good at it 4 times what I hired him at. The other one isn’t working for me anymore. He was good, he wasn’t the best.
If you’re starting out in a field, work to become the best at whatever it is you’re doing. Read like crazy what other people are doing/have done and do it yourself. You’ve gotta try things in order to really know if what other people say is true.
I’m going to echo it again:
There’s always room at the top