Good Selfish

I’ve spoken before about how everyone tells you to pick one thing and stick to it.

I’ve had several people who I respect tell me to just stick to one thing and to pick a lane and to double down on it.

Honestly, they’re probably not wrong. From a pure money perspective, that would have worked faster. It simplifies my message, I attract an audience, I can build more funnels, It’s a clean thing to do.

But the thing is, I would have hated it.

Not in a dramatic, ‘I’m quitting self-employment and getting a job’ kind of way, but just in a way where I would wake up in the morning and realise that I built something really efficient that I actually don’t care that much about.

I think there’s something to be said for not just being consistent because you’re supposed to be, but because you’re genuinely interested in what you are doing and saying.

There’s a version of selfishness that gets a bad reputation where you pursue what’s right for you first, which sounds like it comes at the expense of your audience (and those around you), but it’s actually the foundation for you being able to serve them more.

It is good selfishness - which sounds counterintuitive because business advice always says start with the audience, the market, with people and what they will pay for.

Obviously, there’s logic to that, but it skips over an important thing, which is the person delivering the thing has to actually want to deliver it and be able to communicate their excitement for it for years.

Because when you build around what is genuinely interesting to you, you bring energy and depth that you can’t really fake or generate with AI. Your curiosity is visible and is also magnetic. The coaches that I see who build interesting businesses, the ones with leverage, with loyalty from their audience, with intellectual weight behind their content, they start by asking

‘What is it that I find fascinating?’

Then they figure out how to make that valuable to other people. Good selfishness first, and then service second. Not because the service doesn’t matter, but because you can’t sustain a service that you don’t care about.

The people who told me to narrow down were optimising for short-term revenue: pick a thing, make it simple, sell it really quick - and fair enough.

But I’m already having a bigger impact than I would have done by picking just one lane.

The work is better, my thinking sharper, the content connects more because it comes from genuine interest.

Long term, that impact compounds into more money than the sensible would have produced anyway. Don’t ask whether you can afford to follow your curiosity more, ask whether you can afford to build a business that you’ll want to quit in the next couple of years.