Stop Trying To Be All The Flavors

It's Halloween candy season, and I'm here to tell you not all Halloween candy was created equal. If your house is like mine, there is usually a jar full of assorted candy — everything from Reese's cups to those little orange-wrapped peanut butter things that nobody actually likes.

Most people grab the Reese's. Nobody's reaching for the black licorice.

Now here's where I'm going with this: too many people are trying to be all the flavors at once. They want to be the expert in sales, and leadership, and marketing, and operations, and strategy, and personal branding — all at the same time. They spread themselves so thin across so many disciplines that they become unremarkable in all of them.

The most successful people I've coached are the ones who knew their flavor and leaned into it hard. They didn't try to be everything. They picked a lane, got really good at it, and then built out from there once they had credibility in that space.

There's a version of versatility that's valuable — the ability to collaborate across functions, understand different perspectives, and adapt. That's a strength. But there's another version that's actually just avoidance. It's staying broad so you never have to go deep, never have to be the best at anything, never have to take the risk of committing to one thing and owning it.

The market doesn't reward generalists the way it used to. There's too much competition, too many options, too much noise. What cuts through is specificity. What gets remembered is clarity. What builds a reputation is being the person people call for one specific thing because you're the best at it.

So here's the question: what's your flavor? Not what you're capable of — what are you actually known for? What do people say about you when you leave the room? What problem do you solve that nobody else solves quite the way you do?

If you can't answer that quickly, it's time to get clearer. Stop trying to be all the flavors. Pick one. Own it. Build from there.