I feel as if I’m becoming great at what I do. It’s no longer an issue to find work, my rates are perpetually on the rise, and I am closer than I imagined I would be to starting my own business. That said, it’s taken a long while to reach this point, and has required deep passion for design and marketing. The catalyst for all this was in sticking to one community and growing my reputation one person at a time.

If you can’t find the passion to dedicate to every client, then you’ll probably never be able to grow your business how you’d like. I’m fortunate enough to have saturated a small market with great clients who continue to love the things I create for them because I care for my work more than anyone else can:

Just a plug for @StevenKovar - and his sites still kick ass, always have, and always will.

— Bofu2U

As Cal Newport explains in his recent blog post about what he calls the Pyramid Method about how to go from good to great at any given topic. The name actually originates from a unique story between Cal and his friend Chris.

The story begins with Chris growing up with talent in producing beats and rhymes in hip hop and setting out to eventually pursue his passion to make a career in the music industry.

Instead of listening to the common advice of distributing demo tapes to radio stations and potential agents, Cal and Chris decided to stick to one venue until Chris mastered it and accomplished complete saturation there.

The place was Pyramid Club, hence the name.

Starting out with entering small hip hop contests, Chris continually lost and learned what worked and didn’t work in his act, refining himself over and over; always coming back to try again. As time wore on, he started winning the smaller competitions, then a few bigger ones, until ultimately he was unbeatable and forced to retire from competing in hip hop contests at Pyramid Club.

This “Pyramid Method” is very effective in just about everything you want to become amazing at—be it journalism, photography, or even something as common as video games. They key to becoming great at something is to root yourself in one place and using your experiences there as benchmarks to improve upon.

Over time, your tiny little hobby has the potential to turn into the ability to do something you love and cherish for a living. I think that is absolutely amazing! It’s never an easy path to take, but when you cross the border from amateur to professional, the feeling is beyond liberating.

What about you? What sort of hobbies or projects do you think the Pyramid Method could apply to?