I met up with an old friend I'd not seen for nearly 30 years recently.

It was one of those weird coincidences as it happened just a few days after a mutual friend from back in the day had asked if I knew how he was doing.

Very, very well it turned out.

Which would have surprised our mutual friend as she was actually worried about him. In her view, he “didn't really have any skills”.

What she really meant was that he didn't do well at school.

The thing is that school rewards good all-rounders academically. And people who don't rock the boat.

But life is very different. Life rewards people who are really good at one in-demand skill. There's no need to be good at many things.

And sometimes in life, you've got to rock the boat to make waves.

In John's case, he'd tried a number of jobs after school, but had eventually harnessed his natural grasp of mechanical things and ended up setting up his own business around it. And the business had been a great success.

I'm smiling thinking about his success right now because he's a nice guy and thoroughly deserves what he's got.

And it's a nice reminder that you don't have to be a great all-rounder to be a success at marketing too. All it takes is one brilliant lead magnet, one reliable way to get that lead magnet in front of potential clients, one method for nurturing relationships and one way to turn those relationships into paying clients.

(And frankly, you don't have to be great at all of those – just OK at them all and great at one of them).

You don't need half a dozen different ways of generating leads or a myriad of complex nurture “funnels”. Just get something simple to cover each step. Then repeat.