Most people assume that to be a successful entrepreneur you have to know and do everything yourself … especially when it comes do building an online business, as this is the story that is sold a lot of times.

To this I say yes and no.

While this is a great marketing tactic and story that sales millions of books, training courses and coaching, again especially in the make money online or internet marketing world.

It is typically understood that there are two kinds of knowledge, specialized and general.

And millions of people clearly understand the axiom, “knowledge is power!”

This is not case in reality, while it is a great tag line and/or slogan and is probably used widely when recruiting new students to some of the most prestigious universities in the world, the statement is not exactly correct.

Having or gaining knowledge especially general knowledge does have a power of its own…

But just gaining that knowledge will not make you a living on its on … You have to take it a step further and organize your knowledge and make a practical plan of action, and execute that plan or stated more clearly you have to take the knowledge and put it to work!

In the book by Napoleon Hill, "Think and Grow Rich" this is the fourth step toward riches…

The example used in the book is of Henry Ford a man that did not have much schooling or was not considered by most of the public to be an educated man.

But the majority of the public was not as educated as they thought, and did not understand the real meaning of the word “educate” … The word educate is derived from the Latin word “educo” and means to develop from within.

So as we all know Henry Ford was a man of very specialized knowledge, the making of cars, and more so than making cars the specialized knowledge of streamlining the process of making cars, or the automation of the car assembly line…

And he considered that all other general knowledge that was not related to his specialization was just clutter in his mind …

... but what he did have was enough education or he had developed the idea from within his own mind that it was better to surround himself with people that had the knowledge that he might need that pertained to the business he was in.

So was Henry Ford a successful entrepreneur?

Did he know everything about everything?

No just like you do not need to know everything about starting an online business to get started and even to be a success.

You need to focus your effort on specialized knowledge that will serve you well.

Now here is where the weird or confusing part comes in to the story I am typing …

I am as most know what I call a 30 Minute Marketer, I do this part time and have a full time job as a Network Engineer for 25+ years and have a specialized knowledge in building Cisco based networks, specially Local Area Networks.

But I have a general knowledge of all things in Information Technology, and I know who I need to contact when I have a problem in a certain area and it needs to be fixed to keep my network running smoothly and giving the best service to the customer.

So as I learn how marketing online works and how to build my own online business I started with collecting a general knowledge about all things marketing and selling with the goal of specializing with online marketing.

Currently I am focused or specializing on content marketing online and how to use different formats of content to attract people to the affiliate products that I promote.

And as I studied these forms and gaining a specialized knowledge in them, I was able to create an actionable plan and execute that plan and turn my knowledge into power!

Well I don’t know about power, but I was able to make my 1^st affiliate commission using this specialized knowledge…

And then continuing to learn more and specialize on this topic I was able to turn that knowledge into a course and package my specialized knowledge to share with others…

So the other online entrepreneurs out there that have a general knowledge of online marketing can know use the specialized knowledge that I put together, and this will allow them to specialize and place put that knowledge to work for themselves.

This is the true power of knowledge, understanding that “It pays to know how to purchase knowledge.”

And to wrap up this thought I am going to use the text straight from the book, Think and Grow Rich to drive home this message…

My take away and my hope for you to take away from this?

Never stop learning and never stop doing!

With this combination you have the recipe for success, so go forth and do great things…