A couple days ago, I read an article by Leo Babauta about Doing One Thing Well. In it, he professes that his secret of success is to do the thing you love and do it well. Leo is a popular and successful guy in the world of productivity junkies like me so my tendency is to want to believe he’s right.
But I disagree.
And you know why?
Because I’ve proven him wrong on numerous occasions.
Take my band Four Wall Flight, for example. The core of the band is me on drums and Kelli and Katrina on vocals. We have touring musicians who fill in the remaining parts. The three of us also have other talents that we use in conjunction with the band. I have a music business degree so I manage the group and I handle the web site since I am also a freelance web developer. Kelli has great talent for writing and is fabulously skilled in creating our music videos. Katrina is a graphic designer and handles our artwork and all of our promotional materials.
Because we have skills outside of our musical abilities, we often have the opportunity to cross-promote our band with our other networks. This frequently leads to even more opportunities for us as a band to book gigs and generate new fans. I’m confident we wouldn’t be nearly as far along in our musical journey if we didn’t also continue to sharpen our other skills alongside our music.
In fact, this post is a real-life example of cross-promoting. I turned my love of drawing into the Girls Can’t WHAT? business and from that I am able to cross-promote my band through this post. I’ve also picked up many new web design clients through the Girls Can’t WHAT? web site. I don’t advertise or try to push one thing over another. I just mention my “other skills” whenever it makes sense to discuss them. I get to do all the things I love to do and they benefit each other.
Now, I must confess, I’m probably over-dramatizing what Leo means in his post. I don’t think he sits at a computer all day typing up his thoughts on simplicity. In fact, I know he doesn’t. He has outside interests, too, like running, eating healthy and writing books. I get what he means by focusing on what you love. I just want to be clear that having more than one thing you love is healthy and in fact I think it’s more energizing and motivating to maintain several interests whether it’s a career, a hobby or a sport. You CAN do them all and you can do them all WELL!
And when I feel burned out in any area, I always have other things I can turn to and still be productive while doing something I love. No matter which of my interests has my attention, I’m in a constant state of learning something new and building my skills. I don’t have a clue what it’s like to be bored.
So what do you think? Do you juggle multiple interests? How do you deal with them and are you combining or cross-promoting any of them?
If you’re easy way to promote yourself or your business, share your story with us!
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