Why You Need To Work From Your Strengths...Even The Ones You Don't Know You Have Yet

In business, it's critical to work out how to play to your strengths, so why do we find it so hard to find and acknowledge our strengths?

For some reason, most of us seem to struggle with identifying the things that we are great at and just simply admitting to ourselves that it’s a strength.  

The people who get ahead though? Without feeling like it's a constant struggle...they are the ones who figure this out. Let's see how!

Want to know what hard work looks like?  

Trying to grow a business without playing to your strengths.  That's what.

Let me describe for a second what that feels like:  

• You get tired and twitchy just thinking about the things that you need to do in your business 
• Everything feels like a lot of hard work, and you are kinda dragged down under the weight of the minutiae of details that you need to deal with 
• You don't really love working with your clients, or there are parts of the services that you deliver that you dread having to do 
• There are things that you need to do in your business that seem to take forever and it’s a combination of taking too long and a bunch of procrastination thrown in 

Is any of this hitting close to home?  

It's pretty likely that you know what I'm talking about…there aren't too many mums in business that haven't experienced this. I know I experience it all the time.  

Now, I'm not saying that you can always find a way to avoid doing the things that you don't love in business (although there isn't too much that you can't find a way to outsource!) 

But so often, people design their business around things that aren't their strengths. If you aren't combining your strengths and your passions, then it can be pretty challenging to find the get-up and go to push past all the resistance and barriers that come up when building a business.

Your zone of genius

Growing a business from your strengths is called working from your zone of genius. It’s when you feel like everything is in flow, and your inspiration and passion for new projects or developing existing ones just sparks when you’re in that zone.

Your expertise grows so much faster because you are working from a place of strength. And self-doubt seems less of an issue once you learn how to acknowledge those strengths.

So how can you identify what your zone of genius is? How can you know what your strengths are and what do you do if you realise that you haven't designed your business right for what you think maybe it needs to be?  

We delve in detail into how to go about identifying your strengths and what to do with them in my signature course Conflicted to Confident. It's about learning the art of being able to recognise the things that you are really good at.  (Join the waitlist for C2C here to be the first to hear next time it opens)

Identifying your strengths

When was the last time that you allowed yourself to think about how great you were at something?  

Humility has a lot to answer for actually.  

We've taken it so far in our avoidance of anyone thinking that we might be too arrogant or over-confident or "full of our own self-importance".

That we end up not allowing ourselves to even acknowledge the stuff we are actually quite good at.  

I want you to say this aloud: “I am a talented and intelligent woman and I have many amazing strengths!”

Think for a second what it means when we are practicing humility in the way I described above… 

• You never think about what you are great at 
• You never talk about the things that you do really well 
• You constantly worry about what people will think of you if you do these things 
• You start to subconsciously infuse self-doubt and lack of belief into everything that you do!  

So it's not just about whether you come across as arrogant anymore. All of a sudden you are undermining the very self-belief that is critical to your success!  

So I want you to start to practice thinking about the things that you are great at…in every part of your life. Get comfortable with that feeling of just knowing that you always get good outcomes or results.  

Then, we start to look at how you make sure you are playing to those strengths in your business.  

See, when you grow a business from the ground up, you need to learn how to do a whole bunch of stuff that probably isn't in your genius zone. The trick is making sure that those things stay as things that can be outsourced, delegated, eliminated…and not core to how your business will grow.  

If you love coaching and teaching people, then don't set up a done-for-you services business.  

If your strength and passion lie in creating bespoke custom jewellery, then don't build a high volume/ bulk piece business. 

The genius in finding the right business model for you lies in knowing what you love and are great at and finding a way to make money at doing that.

Where people come unstuck is that they find something that they think is a great way to make money and don't make sure that it is playing to their strengths and what they love to do.  

The absolute best bit about being in business for yourself is that you can pivot your business whenever you need to. 

Sometimes you might start things off in your business differently from where you ultimately want to end up. It’s fine.

It's fine for your business to evolve.

It’s fine for what you want to change.

It's fine for it to take some time to work out what your genius zone actually is.

What is going to make the difference is recognising how you are growing and designing your business and doing it consciously…and making smart choices to shift and pivot when you need to, to make sure that you are still on track.

When you are ready to take the next step, I invite you to speak with me 1:1 in my Biz Breakthrough Session, completely free of charge.

We will dive into where you are at in your business and what you need to be focussing on to get the breakthrough growth that you are looking for.  

Click here to secure your spot on my calendar, before someone else grabs your session!