After Rendy Williams came to visit our class last week, my wheels started turning as to what kind of consulting business I would like to pursue one day. I became even more intrigued of starting my own consulting business when I started to do research on sport psychology in equestrian for my seminar presentation. I began researching sport psychology consultants in the field of equestrian, and I came to find that there are not many of them in the United States. In fact, the ones I did find are limited to their specific, ‘local’ area and do not seem to travel. Equestrian sport psychology is something I am extremely interested in and I believe that becoming a sport psychology consultant in this field would be quite rewarding. However, do I want to specialized in this one area and advertise as only an ‘equestrian sport psychology consultant’ or do I want to be a ‘more broad’ sport psychology consultant?

Specialize or not? Since I am leaning towards the specialization consulting services, I am going to address it’s pros and cons. As for the pros of specialization, I believe you can become ‘the person’ in that area and perhaps the only one in your region, which makes you high demand. Furthermore, I find that you can become an expert faster by focusing on only one sport. The thought of not having a competition is appealing. As for the cons of specialization, it keeps you ‘married’ to your sport does not allow you to become ‘well-rounded.’ Though no competition sounds appealing, there may not be a high demand for ‘you’ and your prices cannot be compared. Lastly, if you make a mistake and ‘ruin’ your reputation then you would probably have to relocate or restructure your consulting business. So, what do you think? Specialize or not?