How To Access Your Zone of Genius

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of The Crazy Ones. This is Alex, and I'm back with a Founder's Journal episode where I do a short dive into a topic that I'm thinking a lot about as an entrepreneur and that will help you become a better business builder. Today's episode is focused on 2 topics. I read about both of them in CEO coach Matt Mochary's book, The Great CEO Within. The first topic is zone of genius. The second topic is an energy audit. I talk about why each of these are so fundamental to an entrepreneur's journey and how they work together to push you in the right direction. So let's hop into it. What's up, everyone? I'm Alex Lieberman. Yo, this is Jesse Pujji. And this is The Crazy Ones. I do not believe that the most successful entrepreneurs are so much smarter than others, and Honestly, most of the time I don't think they're even harder working than entrepreneurs who end up failing in their businesses. Of course, there are exceptions, but I actually believe that the best entrepreneurs are simply more self-aware than others. They know what they love. They know what they hate. They know what they're great at. They know what they're weak at. And they spend as much time as humanly possible doing things within their zone of genius. Zone of genius is this idea coined by Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap. And the goal for any entrepreneur should be to spend 75-plus percent of your time within the zone. As Hendricks describes, there are 4 zones, and what zone you fall in depends on how you're using your talents, which are your God-given abilities, your strengths, which are the things that give you energy, and your skills, which are your learned abilities. The first zone is the zone of incompetence. These are things that other people probably do better than you, and therefore you should outsource them if they don't give you joy. And if they do give you joy, maybe they should be hobbies and not professional endeavors. The second zone is the zone of competence. These are the things that you do just fine, but others are as good as you, if not better, and therefore you should outsource them if they don't give you joy. The third zone is the zone of excellence. This is the danger zone. These are things that you do better than others. It is part of your unique talents, but you don't love doing these things. Now it's dangerous because many people will want you to keep doing these things, because if you do things that you're really good at, it's going to help other people. And since they will derive benefit from it, they're going to want you to keep doing those things. But this is an area that you should look to move away from, delegate away from, because they don't fill you with energy. And the 4th zone, the great zone, the zone where you should be as much as humanly possible, is the zone of genius. And these are things that you are uniquely good at in the world and that you love to do. So much so that time and space likely disappear when you do them. This is where you can add the most value to the world and yourself. This is where you should be driving towards spending the most, if not all, of your time. So of course, as I was reading the definitions of these 4 zones in Mochary's book, Great CEO Within, my next reaction was very clearly, how do I know what my zone of genius is? Because you can only spend 75% of your time in your zone of genius if you know what sits within it? And so I went through a 2-step process to answer that very question. And you can do the same if you either don't know what's in your zone of genius or you haven't revisited this question in a while and you want to do so. So first I asked myself, what am I both very talented and skillful at? And then I also asked the same exact question to people that know me well, and I was curious if they were going to say the same things as me. And so first, I made my list of the things I think I'm really strong at. The first is conversationally educating people on topics that I'm interested in, a.k.a. creating content or storytelling. The second is relationship building and getting people to like me, a.k.a. persuasion. And the third is creative thinking, whether it's business ideas, ideas for growing a new business, or whether it's content ideas. So that was my list. Then I asked Jesse, my co-host for The Crazy Ones, for his list, and he said, and I quote, def something around media, like how you communicate, how you think of entertaining and teaching others, educating people on X, Y, Z. So that was what Jesse had to say. So a lot around storytelling and content. Then I asked Austin, my co-founder for Morning Brew, the person who, you know, he's known me for the last 8 years, 8 of 9 and a half years in my professional life. He said, one, seeing the best in people, 2, creative thinking, and 3, lack of care for what others think. So once I had my compiled list, the next step was to isolate what are the things in this list that are also strengths. So they're not just talents or skills, but they're strengths, which means they are things that give me so much energy that time seems to evaporate. And this is a tougher question to answer because it requires memory, and sometimes memory of our experiences is imperfect. But when I think about what activities over the last number of years haven't felt like a chore, the things that come to mind are: 1, creating content; 2, creative thinking; and 3, persuading people. So let's say those 3 things are in my zone of genius. Then the question becomes, Am I spending 75% of my time doing those 3 things? And the way to answer that question is through something that Matt Mochary calls the energy audit in his book. Here's how you do an energy audit. I'm going to literally walk you through step by step. And I did this exact thing before the episode. Step 1, get 2 highlighters, or they could be pens or pencils, but you want them to be different colors. Ideally, you have a red and a green. Step 2, print out Your calendar from last week, or just like the last week when you were working. So if you're on vacation last week, don't print out that one. Print out the last week you were working. Step three: Go through each workday, hour by hour, and ask yourself the same question: Did that activity give me energy or drain my energy? Step four: Highlight in green everything that gave you energy, and highlight in red everything that drained your energy. There are no neutrals. Every hour must be marked either in red or in green. And step 5, when you are finished coloring, look for patterns of where and how your energy is drained. Now think of all the ways to outsource or eliminate those activities. And the goal is you keep doing this energy audit every single month until 75% or more of your time is spent doing things that when you do the energy audit, ultimately 75% of the blocks are green. If you do, you will be able to achieve far more in less time. And I find this exercise of doing the energy audit so valuable for 2 reasons, and I find it so valuable also when it's paired with figuring out your zone of genius. The first reason it's so valuable is the energy audit helps you understand if your zone of genius is actually your zone of genius, because there may be things that you write down as being Your skills, your talent, and your strengths. But then when you go through the energy audit, you find you've covered something in red you would have expected to be in your zone of genius. And what that could be telling you is it sits in your zone of excellence, meaning you're really good at it, like it's a unique skill set of yours, but actually it's energy sucking versus energy giving. And so this can be a really good way to reorient and gut check if you actually know what your zone of genius is. The second reason that the energy audit is so valuable is it gives you clarity. Whether you're actually spending your time within your zone of genius, which we all should be trying to do. After I did this exercise, I found out that there were a few tasks that I spend a lot of time doing that don't give me energy. For example, 60 Second Startup. 60 Second Startup is a short-form social media series where I do rapid-fire Q&A interviews with entrepreneurs. And you would think that I would love it because it's creating content and it's teaching people through storytelling. And I like it in general because I get to meet founders and help them tell their story. But it takes energy away from me because I don't get to be creative. I don't get to be persuasive. I say the same exact thing every episode. It's too short of an interview to really learn an entrepreneur's business. So there's not real learning that happens there. And so I think figuring out ways for me to evolve this series so that I lean into my zone a little bit more could make a huge difference. So my view would be like, how can I make the interviews longer? So I'm learning more about their businesses and I leave feeling like I've gotten a golden nugget every single interview I do. Or maybe there's a world in which I just record me asking the questions. I send that recording to the entrepreneurs, they record their answers, and I don't have to record time and time again since I'm asking the same thing. And so here's how I plan on using these concepts of zone of genius and energy audit moving forward. On a weekly basis, I'm going to be revisiting my calendar, marking every event as red or green, continuing to evolve or delete red ones until 75% of my time is spent on green zone of genius tasks. And then on a less frequent, maybe monthly or quarterly basis, I'm going to write down what my longer-term goals are and continue to gut-check those goals against the things in my zone of genius. Educating through storytelling, a.k.a. creating content, persuasion, and creative thinking. And so that's my zone of genius and energy audits and how you can use them within your business. Now, I would love to hear from you. What is your zone of genius? This should be 1 to 3 things, things that you are uniquely good at, like best in class. And they are the things that incorporate your skills, your talent and your strengths. So it's the things that you're born skillful at, the things you've accumulated skills at, and the things that you gain energy from. So time melts away because you enjoy them so much. Once you've had to think about that, shoot me an email to thecrazyones@morningbrew.com sharing what's in your zone, and I will respond with a question that will make you think about if you're spending your time the right way. As always, thank you so much for listening, and I'll catch you next episode.