attention industry — You aren't Da Vinci.

You aren’t Da Vinci.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Very few people are Da Vinci, very few people have the ability to excel in many different areas. But the assumption that you HAVE to be Da Vinci causes some serious problems.

If you’re crap with numbers, you wouldn’t do your own accounting. It would be idiotic to do so. Similarly, If you are a world class painter, you would probably want to hire someone of similar skill to frame your work.

This is my issue with people who insist that consultants are often useless, because they can’t ‘do it themselves’. I’d rather work with someone who has an expertise in a specific element of my business that I don’t, than assume that because they can’t paint, I should ignore their framing expertise.

Just because you make the best furniture in the world, doesn’t mean you can sell it to people in an effective way. If you have a great internal marketing team repping a strong product line, that doesn’t necessarily make them a team that specializes in influencer relations, or social media outreach, or a specific demographic or community.

If you use consultants as a security blanket, or to protect yourself from the realization that what you are doing or selling isn’t sufficient, that’s a problem. But if you refuse to bring in an expert frame maker because they can’t paint, you’ve missed the point entirely.