LISTEN TO THE LATEST PODCAST EPISODE:

Find Your Distinction Through Your Strengths

SUMMARY

In this episode, we continue our discussion of the key decisions you need to make as an entrepreneur. Specifically in this episode we explore how to gain market distinction through your core strengths.

Of the three phases of business and product life framework, the first stage of the Think Up phase is the Decide stage and it comes before Idea. In this episode, we dive a bit deeper in the decisions you need to make as an entrepreneur.  We dig into the decide stage which relates to the concept of core strengths.

This concept of core strengths deals with three factors:

  1. What are your Abilities?
  2. What are your Interests?
  3. How to connect these with the Market Needs that you’re going to serve?

If You look at these three as a circle or Venn diagram:

image

  • The intersection between the abilities and the interests is where your passion lies.
  • The intersection between the abilities and the needs is where the solution lies.
  • The intersection between the needs and the interests is where your potential lies.
  • The intersection between the abilities, the interests and the needs is your core strengths.

You need to ask certain questions to step in and understand your abilities, interests and needs. Answer these questions and journal them to get an overview:

Questions to Understand Abilities

  • What are your current and prior work and volunteering experiences?
  • What skills and talents come out of those experiences?
  • What are your hobbies?
  • What kind of training do you have?
  • What kind of formal and informal education do you have?
  • Do you have a degree or do you attend seminars?
  • What types of skills do you quickly learn or what are you simply good at?

These things define and refine what your abilities are. You can ask about your abilities and skills to other people that know you or are close to you.

Questions to Understand Interests

  • When you think about what interests you, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
  • What do you read, shop for?
  • What TV shows/movies, music and audio that you prefer?
  • What do you do with your free time?
  • What are your favorite physical activities?
  • What is it that you always wanted to learn?“
  • What are you curious about?
  • What intrigues you?
  • How do you define fun?
  • What’s something that you’ve always wanted to do?
  • What training program do you want to go through?
  • If you day dream, what do you day dream about?

Market Needs: This defines the types of businesses that might fit with your abilities and interests. There are a number of types of business that exists. They are:

  • Advisory
  • Builder
  • Nurturer
  • Communicator
  • Entertainer
  • Investor/Owner
  • Organizer
  • Implementer
  • Administrator
  • Salesperson
  • Techno Addict

When you look at these types, think about where and when your abilities and interests come to play. When you feed the needs of the marketplace with your unique abilities and interests, you create distinction which in-turn creates a level of strength and that is what we call Core Strength.

 ****— Start Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution, the Founder of Business Breakthrough Academy and welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution Show and I’m really excited.

In this episode, we’re going to dive a bit deeper in the decisions you need to make as an entrepreneur, as a business owner. And still we’re dealing with Stage 1 of the three phases of business and product life framework that we talked about, it’s in the Think Up stage. So, after a brief introduction we will be back and we’re going to talk about how to define and determine your core strengths and the types of businesses that those may work with.

See you soon!

———————————

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life: A life of financial freedom and peace of mind.

And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur’s Solution Show and I’m real excited because we’re starting to get into the details of the process framework of building a business or taking a new product out to market. And we’re still in that first phase of the Get Up phase in Stage 1 which is about decide.

We talked earlier about the kinds of entrepreneurs there are:

  • Passion-Driven,
  • Purpose-Driven, and
  • Money-Driven, and
  • Transformation-Driven.

We talked a little bit about that. Now, I want to take another step forward in some of the other decisions that you need to make.

Remember, this concept of decision before idea becomes important because we need to take on the identity of an entrepreneur which means that we’re going to take the roles, the characteristics, the activities, the commitment as an entrepreneur to move forward; because if we become an idea centric entrepreneur and that idea doesn’t work out or we start to hit obstacles; then all of a sudden our entrepreneurial career is gone—it’s over.

So, what we want to do is take on the identity of an entrepreneur so we can continue and push forward, to move forward.

Remember, it’s this concept that cycle of:

  • “Oh, that my work”.
  • Then it’s, “Will it Work?”
  • Then it’s “Oh my god, that’s work!”

And it’s those last two stages that all of a sudden start to create resistance and reluctance and doubt and uncertainty that make it so you may or may not continue forward.  So, we need to take on the identity of an entrepreneur so we can push through that. So, in this session let’s dig in because I want to talk about core strengths.

For a business to really be successful, it’s my opinion that:

  • To increase the probability of success.
  • To increase the likelihood of success.
  • To decrease the risk.

Remember, we’re going to try to minimize the downside and maximize the upside. The way to do that is to make sure that we’re operating within our core strengths.

And how I see this concept of core strengths, it’s dealing with three factors:

  1. “What are your abilities?” on one side,
  2. “What are you interests?” on the other side. And
  3. “How do those connect with the market needs that you’re going to serve?”

So it’s the intersection, if you will, of your abilities and your interests with the market needs and that’s where the core strengths are and the keyword there is:** Core.**

When we talk about core strengths, core strengths will provide you because they’re core to you. In order for them to be core, they’re going to provide you unique strategic distinction within the marketplace and that’s why it is tied to your abilities and your interests in the marketplace.

So, what we want to talk about is:

  • What are your abilities? How do you define those?
  • What are your interests and how do you define those?

And here’s the cool thing about it, is the intersection. If you think about intersecting circles:

  • The intersection between the abilities and the interests—that’s where your passion lies, that’s where your passion lies.
  • And then the intersection between the abilities and the needs—that’s where the solution lies.
  • And the intersection between the needs and the interests—that’s where your potential lies.
  • And the intersection between the abilities, the interests and the needs is your core strengths.

So that’s what we want to do is the rest of this is really to spend a bit of time, talk about how do you define … what are the questions you need to answer? What are the questions you need to ask? To step in and understand:

  • What are your abilities?
  • What are your interests? And then,
  • What are the needs?
  • What kind of … what type of business do you think you would fit with?

And through that we start to define and refine some of the concepts in your entrepreneurial identity. So, why don’t we get started?

The first thing I want to touch on is your abilities.

Now these are core to you. These are things that you’ve been doing, that you’ve got experience with, something that are part of your life. Many times, it could be what … you know … Malcolm Gladwell calls your ten thousand hours.

So, one of the questions that I would ask is: “What is your current and prior work experience?”

What does that give you, that the skills, the talents, the things that come out of that and all of that experience?

Sometimes we, find ourselves discounting what are the values of our experience, the transferable skillset of our experience. You need to look at it from a broader view. Step away from the details of what you do each and every day and say, “What skills are there?”

If I’m really working, and I’m managing teams and managing productivity and I’m managing project, then I have a skillset that’s associated with product management, team management, team incentivizing, team motivation that is a transferrable skill set. May be, the technical stuff associated with that specific industry, that specific company will change; but the skillset is transferrable.

So, if you think about your current or your prior work experience, “What are the abilities, the skill set that you’ve attained, that you’ve got in that process through that experience?”

So, go ahead and get your journal out as we go through these and start writing these things down and I’m going to give you a downloadable work guide book that’ll allow you to kind of go through this too. At the end of the session, I’ll tell you where to get that.

So, what are your current and prior work experiences that you can take your abilities from?

Also, don’t discount what your volunteer experience is. If you volunteer for different events or different community service, there is experience that you’re getting through that volunteer process. That also creates abilities or has created abilities that you want to bring into play here.

And then ask yourself, “What are the hobbies that you like?”

For me it’s fitness, it’s martial arts. I do a lot of reading, messing around with gadgets much to my wife’s chagrin, but all of that, all those hobbies have given me certain abilities, certain talents, certain skills:

  • That I can bring to a project.
  • That I can bring to a client.
  • That I can bring to a business.
  • That I can bring to some sort of endeavor

And we want to list those out. Then, going back and saying:

  • What kind of training do I have?
  • What kind of education do I have?
  • Do I have a degree in a certain area?
  • Do I have other training?
  • Do I attend seminars?
  • What other training have you gone through?

I’m an accountant by education but I’ve taken a tremendous amount of training in psychology and communication in the context of the psychology of communication and influence in that context.

So, understanding that:

  • You’ve gotten education that may be formal education.
  • You’ve got an education that may be informal education.
  • You may have attended conferences and trainings.
  • Or you’ve been through some training program at your prior work experience or your current work or your current job.

All of those things come into play. They start defining and refining what the abilities are that are within you, that we can bring out as core strengths.

Then, what types of skills have you found over the years do you quickly learn?

It may be manual technical skills, it may be it’s putting things together that you pick up pretty easily and it comes to you pretty quickly; others that might be numbers and be able to calculate things pretty well. Others it might be simply memorization. I know that some people have a tremendous amount of recall.

So what are the types of skills that in your life you have found that you can quickly learn?

And write those down in your journal and then, not being ego centric or anything like that.

What are you simply good at?

There are things that you are pretty good at and write those down because if you’re good at it:

  • That’s an ability that we can expand on.
  • That’s an ability that can create distinction in a marketplace.
  • That’s an ability that you may be able to resonate with a customer or client.

And then think about or ask:

  • People that are close to you
  • People that know you.
  • People that have worked with you and say:
    • What do they think you’re good at?
    • What do they see as your skills, your abilities that you bring to a job, a project, to a volunteer situation?

Ask them about that. As you go through this, list those out because you’re going to take that list and you’re going to compare that list to your interests and in that you’re going to brainstorm some of the ideas where these skills and these interests will come into play and find that that’s supportive.

So, once we’ve gotten the abilities, we need to look at the interests.

May be these are things that haven’t been developed yet. Some of these may have been developed. These may be things you want to do in the future. So, ask yourself these questions when it comes to trying to define and create an inventory of interests if you will that you can look at compare and say:

  • “Can I bring this to the marketplace?”
  • “Can I bring this to the product?”
  • “Can I bring this to the clients or the customers?”

And when you think about interests, when you think about what interests you, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

  • Is it cars?
  • Is it fashion? I know with my wife it’s fashion.
  • Is it technology?
  • Is it gadgets?

What is the first thing that comes to mind when we ask you, “What are you interested in?” and write that down in the journal.

Then, what do you read?

I read a lot of entrepreneur, business types of things. I will read some political, some biography. I don’t read whole lot of suspense or thriller but I will watch those kinds of movies but most of my reading is related to my life ,and the way I do my life and personal development and business development and market.

So, what do you read? What do you read that bring up those interests that you can bring to bear in the marketplace? And write those down.

And if you’re not reading, you need to start reading because it’s one of the greatest ways to soak in knowledge; to bring in experience and to take in consolidated form of information and digest it and basically digest what would be decades of knowledge that’s in a book. Books are phenomenal for that.

What do you shop for?

When you think about going shopping, are you going shopping for gadgets which is … me, you’ll find me in the Apple store or some other gadget store.

  • Or are you going shopping for clothes?
  • Are you going shopping for housewares?
  • What do you shop for?
  • Where does that come into play in there?

Then ask yourself, what types of TV shows or movies, do you like to watch?

This will start to give you an indication of your personality traits and some of the things that you like. In fact, I have a very close friend of mind, colleague of mine, business colleague of mine and a good friend in Australia that he actually has some of his clients write down 52 movie titles about their life and these movie titles are really an indication of the personality traits that they have lived throughout their life.

And if you look at them and it starts to give an indication of:

  • Who they are,
  • What they stand for, and
  • How they show up.

What do you listen to?

  • Music?
  • Talk radio?

What are the things that interest you from an auditory standpoint?

  • Audiobooks
  • Podcasts

What is it that you’re listening to? What genre?

What information do you start putting into you from an auditory standpoint when you’re going throughout your day, going throughout your week, going throughout your life?

And then, once you do that ask yourself this, look at it and say, “What do you do with your free time?”

If you had free time, what would you like to do with it?

  • Is it watch TV?
  • Is it to go exercise?
  • Is it to go pick up a good book and read?
  • Is it to connect with people; connect with customers or friends or family or loved ones?

What would you love to do with your free time?

Then ask, “What’s your favorite activities, physical activities, sports; things of that nature?”

What revolves around that process?

I know that, my family and my nephew plays college football and so the concept of tailgating and everything, it’s a religion down in the south where they live. So, it is not even a day affair, it is a week affair. It is planned for and they revolve everything around that.

And so what activities and that becomes connection with families, connection with competition, overcoming adversity. There’s so many things that you can draw out of that when you start to really refine and look at the kinds of activities in your life.

Then, ask yourself this and think back and say, “What is it that you always wanted to learn?”

I know for me, I always wanted to learn the piano and I’ve always wanted to learn a foreign language, and someday I’m going to try it; I just haven’t done it yet. I travel around the world a lot and I get a chance to try language, but I haven’t sat down and really learned it as a skill but it’s an interest and I want to continue that.

So, what is it that you’ve always wanted to learn?

And this question I think is a great question for a lot of us to live our life this way and that is, “What are you curious about?”, “What are you curious about?”

To come with a passionate curiosity to life, to look things and say, “Why is that, that way?” To not just accept things.

And I’m not talking about refuting things and being argumentative—I’m just talking about being curious of why …

  • What makes the sun come up
  • What makes the sun go down?
  • Why do we get light?
  • How does electricity work?

All that curiosity, what are you curious about starts to give you an indication of some of the things that are of interest to you.

And then, ask yourself—this is a little different, what intrigues you? What is it that you look at?

I mean, I like solving puzzles, and to me business is a puzzle and even life is a puzzle. There’s little pieces that you got to fit it and you got to make it work and so:

  • What intrigues you?
  • How do you define fun?
    • Is it sitting back and relaxing?
    • Is it going out dancing?
    • Is it going out and working out?
    • Is it sitting and reading a book?
    • Is it singing with a church choir?

How do you define fun?

Then, what’s something that you’ve always wanted to do?

Whether it’s piloting a plane or skydiving, or doing a cooking class? What is it that you’ve always wanted to do?

And then ask yourself, “If I had a chance to take a class, any class, to go through any kind of training program, what training program would I want to go through?”

Because that give you an indication of really where you would spend your time and spend your energy and spend your effort.

And then I’d probably ask you just one other question that is, “If you day dream, what do you day dream about?”,  “What is it that is in your mind, that’s occupying your mind, that you’re thinking about?“

When you start to list all these off and you start to ask these questions, when you fill out the guidebook, when you download the guidebook, if you’re not doing it in a journal. Hoping, you’re doing it in a journal but you can have the guidebook. I’m giving you guidebooks with almost every session, so you can put them in a binder or something; so you have them.

But you can list them out and now you got a chance to look your abilities on one side, look at your interests on the other side and in-between where these things coincide, where they intersect; that’s where your passion is and that’s where you’re going to get the most energy, that’s where you’re going to get the most done because it’s not coming from a place of drudgery and work, it’s coming from a place of passion; because it fits your interest, it fits your abilities and everything grows.

And doesn’t mean when I talk about core strengths, sometimes we have to grow. I know that people say, “Well work to your strengths, work to your strengths; forget the things that aren’t strong” and I think that that may be misinterpreted in the sense of, “If you’re not good at it, don’t worry about doing it”.

And I think that we still have a human desire to continually grow and just because I’m not good at it today doesn’t mean that I just give up because if we did that we probably wouldn’t even know how to tie our shoes or even walk.

So there are abilities and skills that may be we’re not good at today but we can get good at, and because they’re core to our business, we should get good at them and we need to invest the time to grow. So, don’t confuse this concept of strengths with, “Well, I can forget all the weaknesses”.

Look, listen I’m not the best at some of the technical stuffs on the online strategies and all of that and I have people that guide me but I am spending the time to learn it, to understand it, to put it all together in a way that’s meaningful because:

  • It’s core to my business.
  • It’s core to be me being able to communicate with:
    • You,
    • My friends,
    • My community,
    • My clients,
    • All of you in this way.

I need to understand how to do this and so, though it may not have been a strength in the beginning—I’m growing. I’m learning every day that I do this and I think that we all need to do that.

So, now we’ve got the abilities, we’ve got the interest. So, now we look at them in the context of what kind of business that might fit in.

What types of businesses that might fit?

So there’s a number of types of businesses, I’m just going to kind of run through them and then it’ll be up to you, to take the interest and the abilities, and look at the business types, and then start asking yourself what market needs will these types of abilities and interests serve. Because remember, we’re trying to create a solution, we’re trying to solve problems, we’re trying to create community, support society and live our dreams in the process.

So, what type of businesses exists?

– The first is an advisory type of business, the consultant such as myself.

I’m a CPA by education and by at large, the majority of my work has been strategic work—consulting, advising, mentoring and working with businesses.

So, if you have a set of skills, a set of abilities and a set of interests that coincide with someone that wants to be in an advisory role that supports communication, that allows you to provide and bring expertise into play. Then may be an advisory type of business or a consulting type of business is where you might want to consider playing.

Are you a builder?

There’s the builder type, builder-creator…people that like to create something. I’ve got a nephew who’s really young at age but he loves building things. Right from an early age, he’s a builder—he’s a creator.

And so, you might find that businesses like constructions, or creation, or artistry or something because you’re creating may be fits with your abilities and your interest.

Are you a nurturer?

Are you someone that likes to take care of people in that context? So, may be you’re going to create a business such as a day care business, or cleaning or something of that nature where your abilities and your interest fit because you’re taking care of people and you’re nurturing people.

Are you a communicator (When you look at your abilities and your interests)?

Communicator is a teacher or someone that uses language, uses communication

  • To move people to action,
  • To shift their mind,
  • To shift their thinking,
  • To influence them,

… And then persuade them to living a better life—doing things differently. So, can you use communication as a base?

And then the other type of business would be: An entertainer

Which is someone that wants to be the center of attraction. Not necessarily an actor, it could be a speaker, it could an event planner, it could be a wedding planner; those kinds of things that are focused on entertaining and those kinds of concepts.

May be you’re just an investor/owner.

I’m an investor/owner in a number of businesses where I’m not really running the business, I’m not really advising, I’m simply an investor in it and maybe that’s … if you’re good with numbers and you’re good with money and you can evaluate risk and control risk. May be you have some of the abilities and skills and interests necessary to be an investor.

Or are you an organizer, an implementer, an administrator type?

Where you can go into places and say, “I got all this chaos and I’m going to put it together and I’m going to organize it—we’re going to get it done. What are your abilities and interests in that context that do that?

Are you a salesperson, a seller?

Someone that likes to have a dialogue, and be in the middle of the heat of the deal, heat of the transaction. You may find that your business may bridge across a lot of these lines, mine does: advisor, builder, nurturer, investor, seller; all of them.  But where do you lean to from your strengths and all of that type of stuff.

And then the last one I think is really: Are you a gadget kind of techno addict? Do you focus really on things like technology?

Whether it’s computer based and online types of training things, or putting together computers or stereo (I don’t know if they even call them that anymore but), theatre systems; where there’s technology involved. Is that where your strengths and your abilities are?

So, those are the kinds of businesses just give you a rundown where kind of give you an idea when you think about these as to where … when you look at your abilities and your interests, how they play on? How they may make sense for you?

So:

  • Advisor
  • Builder
  • Nurturer
  • Communicator
  • Entertainer
  • Investor
  • Organizer
  • Administrator
  • Salesperson
  • Or what I call a techno addict

Are some of the things to consider.

But remember, it’s all about the concept of understanding that you got abilities and you have interests. And where those two intersect is your passion. But you want to take those abilities and interests, and you want to feed the needs of the marketplace.

And when you feed the needs of the marketplace, with your unique abilities and interests, you create distinction which creates a level of strength—which is what we call core strength because there’s a distinctive, strategic elements to the strengths that you bring which are unique to you. And when you do that; that shifts the way the market perceives you. It shifts the way you perceive the market and the relationship in the market.

So, what you to really do is operate from a core strengths level:

  • In the marketplace,
  • In your business,
  • In your product perspective.

So, here’s what I like you to do: I’d like you to go ahead and go to MelAbraham.com/session008, and go ahead and download the guidebook. We’ll take you through some of these questions and it’ll allow you to fill it all up and start to inventory your abilities and inventory your interests. And so, you can look at the possible business types and product types and see “What fits?” to make sure that you’re operating within your core strengths.

So, I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution and if you haven’t already, make sure that you subscribe so you get notification of the next episode because we’re going to keep building on this.; We got a lot to cover just in this framework and I’ve got a ton of information, a ton of business tips—things that I want to give you.

If you have questions for me, go ahead and leave me a question. You can also leave me a voicemail question by going to MelAbraham.com/ask and leave me a question there. I’ll make sure that we get the question answered on one of the future episodes coming up.

And go ahead, share this with a friend. Go ahead and give them the gift of possibility in their life to take their dreams, to try and build their dreams on the foundation of entrepreneurship and business.

Until we get a chance to see each other again,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon!!

— End Transcript —

++++++++++++++

Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again.  Cheers, Mel

++++++++++++++

image

Mel is one of the smartest business people I know. I don't make any decisions without him! "

Brendon Burchard
#1 New York Times
Best Selling Author

"

FINALLY, GET A CLEAR PICTURE OF YOUR PATH TO FINANCIAL LIBERATION

 

Understand where you are currently in your wealth-building journey and know the path you need to take to BECOME FINANCIALLY LIBERATED!

Share
Tweet
Share
Pin