This post is BOTH for individuals and for companies (see the part for companies farther down)
What is that special combination of talents that you enjoy practicing, are great at, and add meaning to your life?
It's extremely hard for companies with commodity products or services to create inordinate wealth or success - because so many other companies are doing the same thing.
Companies often describe themselves as broadly as possible, attempting to make themselves open to the broadest number of customers. The problem with this is that it usually makes them sound more generic, diluting their differentiation and uniqueness….and making it 1) harder for customers to find them and 2) to decide to do business with them over their competitors. It also reduces word-of-mouth referrals the more generic a company is, because the ‘message’, the ‘specialness’, doesn’t stick in peoples’ brains as well.
Sales & marketing strategy always emphasizes focusing on your core competencies and unique differentiators. Being uniqueincreases word-of-mouth marketing, win rates, pricing value and it shortens sales cycles.
The analogy is the same with people. Rather than thinking about how broad your talents and passionsare, and emphasizing how many (too many) things you can do, consider what passions and talents you have and your unique twist or combination of them?What unique combination of things do you enjoy doing, are talented at, and add meaning to your life?(Or create value for customers) It's not an easy question. Or, in other words, what is your superpower?
Aaron: “helping people make money through enjoyment”.
Tony Wong, www.digitalonioninc.com: “making software project management successful, effortless and fun”
Clues to help you find your unique genius(es): (unique genius = your combination of talents + passions + adds meaning /makes a difference)
Think about puzzle pieces and clues - take a blank sheet of paper and list all of these above components of what you love to do, are great at, and add meaning to your life...
* What part of work do you truly enjoy doing? (Not what you 'can' do) What daily activities do you like to do?
* Assuming you had plenty of money, what would you do for free, that would add meaning to your life?
* Who are you jealous of? Who do you tell "i want to be like you when i want to grow up?"
* What ideas or cause(s) or vision are you passionate about? A cause doesn't have to be nonprofit - it could be anything you truly believe in.
* What do people keep coming to you for help with, to ask your advice on?
* What hobbies or interests have you suppressed since junior high? What do you secretly love to do, or love about yourself?
* What section do you go to first in a bookstore?
* What kind of 'meaning' would it have? (A unique genius involves making a difference, and usually involves helping others in some way)
* What is your superpower(s)?
* If you could start a business that wouldn’t fail, what would it be?
* What do your friends think are your strengths/ passions?
All these puzzle pieces and clues add up to something greater - your unique genius. Take a bit of love from one area of your life, combine it with others, mix - what do you get? Take the different themes you love and mash them together into a greated whole. Not just horses...but "horses" + "endurance horse racing" + "travel" + "helping others" = ?
Let's say you love writing, helping passionate people, and comforting people who lose loved ones. Do the puzzle pieces combine somehow into your genius? Ex: "helping passionate people articulate their thoughts and ideas when they're too close to them and need help, especially in times of loss"..which might include writing obituaries and memorials that move families to tears of gratitude. (This is real example of a unique genius)
If you can find a way to understand and communicate your unique passions, that will do more to create crazy success for you than all the 80 hour weeks in the world.
Results
- The people and companies who really need that unique talent will be able to find you more easily
- They'll want you specifically for your unique talent or passion...which means you'll get to do more of what you love
- As a unique service (and the expert/best at it), you can charge more for your value
- It will be easier to refer you to others (uniqueness increases the success of trigger questions) [could use an example]
Uncover / eliciting it:
- the first step is being aware that you have one, even if you don't know what it is yet
- write - keep a journal. what do you love/enjoy?
- pay attention to yourself, practice self-awareness. what works? what doesn't work?
- talk to people. ask them questions. find others with common passions, entrepreneurs, brainstormers, pebblestormers...
- talk to coaches, mentors, intuitives...
at some point, it'll begin to crystallize
Some questions...
Why am I in this business?
What is my vision?
What are my goals?
What am I most passionate about?
Who do I want to serve?
Or another way...
Who am I? What do I do? What do I WANT to do? Why does it matter?
I think Steve has a good idea for a technique here to get the ball rolling, but it's just a first step. Also, most purposes involve making a difference in others' lives, or the world in some way, rather than 'here's how i want to live'.
More ideas on questions to elicit the clues and puzzle pieces...
* If you had plenty of money, what would you do to add purpose and meaning to your life?
* What ideas are you passionate about?
* Which parts of your work are the most enjoyable, and that you would want to do more of?
* What do people come to you for help with or advice on? What kind of expertise are they looking for?
* Which parts are the least enjoyable, and you'd like to figure out how not to have to do?
* If you sold products, what kinds of products would you want to sell for fun and inpiration? What kinds or themes would resonate with you? (Could be anything from yoga to horses to cars to homes to books to the color green to spreadsheets to...)
* Imagine you have clients that sign up for a monthly subscription to your company, paying just $9 per month. What would they get or what kind of information would your be sharing with them?
* What if they paid $90 per month? or $900?
Focus on your strengths, manage around weaknesses:
Pebblestorm: focus on your enjoyments, eliminate/reframe/outsource your unenjoyments
Skills to Develop
1) Need to identify what your strengths are
Take a blank sheet of paper, divide it into 2 columns “Loved it” and “Loathed it,” carry it around with you for a week and write things down in those 2 columns
4 simple signs of a strength
Success
Instinct – any activity you’re looking forward to doing
Growth – Time flies by and you can focus on it.
Needs – Fulfilled a need of yours
Need to pay close attention to how you feel about activities. What you feel good at you’ll accel at.
Lots of appetite but no aptitude. We call those hobbies.
Pick three items from the “I loved it column”
Write in your own words a statement that starts with “I feel strong when…”
Not necessarily what you’re good at but what makes you feel strong.
Examples for Companies
what is to the simple, strategic mission, a unique genius, a "thing" that doesn't change over 10-25+ years that acts as a beacon both for the company and for the market? similar to jim collins wrote about in Good To Great.
my Los Angeles client, www.Leads360.com, has a mission of "We make leads more valuable" wow!! it makes discussions so clear in the company... "will this product/feature help make leads more valuable? how can we make leads more valuable? etc"
PebbleStorm: "Make money through enjoyment"
ColdCalling2.com: "Create sustainable revenue"
case study: LucidEra. today: "business visibility ondemand" (not unique at all)
tomorrow: "A time machine for sales data....?"
that stuff just came to them - you could also look at the good to great tools for ideas on how to identify it:
It's a hard question. Here's some current thoughts on mine:
Sept '07: -I love collaborating with people, in ways that help bring out the best in them (their unique talents) -Designing mental models/systems -Building tools/output that help people act on new ideas, change -Helping people realize their true potential, which includes casting off the external (artificial) pressures that society or their family has trained them to think is important
May 08
- Collaborating with people I like on projects (any kind of project)
- Pushing the boundaries of thinking; leading edge work philosophies
- Making impractical ideas practical
- Coming up with inspiring visions (TGLD, 2057)
- Helping / coaching people and businesses
- Organizational design / development (how can you design a team or system or company to be as productive/self-sustaining as possible?)
- Writing
- Having multiple projects that are all interesting, but that I can work on whichever one whenever i'm feeling energized about it
- Expressing ideas that people appreciate, that help them or change their thinking for the better
- Connecting people with common passions
- Adventure (getting out of my comfort zone)
- Starting companies, creating things
- Designing self-sustaining systems
- Figuring out how to accomplish things with minimum energy/effort and maximum productivity (elegant problem solving)
- Photography
- Adding funny captions to pictures (www.flickr.com/photos/aaronross)
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