TES 008 - Find Your Distinction Through Your Strengths

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. 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 this is still we're dealing with stage one of the three phases of business and product life framework that we talk about. It's in the think 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.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur Solution where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want. One of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution where it's time for you to be bold, dream big and live life your way.

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 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 the that first phase of the get up phase in stage one, which is about decide. And we talked earlier about the kinds of entrepreneurs there are passion entrepreneurs and purpose entrepreneurs and money and transformation. We talked a little bit about that and 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 entrepreneur so we can continue and push forward and move forward. Remember, it's this concept, that cycle of.

Oh, that might work.

Then it's will it work? Then is, 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 the entrepreneur so we can push through that. And so in this session, let's. 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. And 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. It's dealing with three factors. One is what are your abilities on one side, what are your interests on the other side, and 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 key word 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 a unique strategic distinction within the marketplace. And that's why it's 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, 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 interest, that's where your potential lies. And the intersection between the abilities, the interests and the needs is your core strengths. And so that's what we want to do, is the rest of this is really to spend a bit of time talking 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 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 that are something that are part of your life. Many times it could be what Malcolm Gladwell calls your 10,000 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. And sometimes we find ourselves discounting the value of our experience, the transferable skill set 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 projects, then I have a skill set that's associated with product management, team management, team incentivizing, team motivation. That is a transferable skill set. Maybe the technical stuff associated with.

That specific industry, that specific company will change, but the skill set is transferable. So as you think about your current or your prior work experience.

What are the abilities, the skill set that you attain 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.

Guidebook that, that will 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 experience 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? I know for me, it's fitness, it's martial arts, it's, you know, there's a lot. I do a lot of reading, you know, messing around with gadgets, much to my wife's chagrin. But all of that, you know, 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, I can bring to a business that can bring to some sort of endeavor. And we want to list those out. Then going back and saying, you know, 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 mean, I'm an accountant by education, but I've taken a tremendous amount of training in psychological psychology and communication in the context of the psychology of communication and influence in that context. And so understanding that you've gotten education that may be formal education, you've gotten education that may be informal education, you may have attended conferences and trainings, or you've been through some training program at your prior prior work experience or your current work or your current job, all of those things come into play to 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. Maybe it's putting things together that you pick up pretty easily and it comes to you pretty quickly. Others, it might be numbers and being 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.

Egocentric or anything like that, what are you simply good at?

There are things that you're 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 with a customer or a 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, to a project, to a volunteer situation? Ask them about that. And as you go through this List those out, because you're going to take that list and then 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 is supported. So once we've gotten the abilities, we need to look at the interests. Now, maybe these are things that haven't been developed yet. Some of these may have been developed. These may be things that 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, that you can look at and 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 interest, when you think about, you know, what interests you, what's the first thing that comes to mind? You know, is it, is it cars? Is it fashion? I know with my wife, it's, it's fashion, you know, is it, 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 a 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 brings 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 a 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 mine and 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, 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 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, you know, in 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. I mean, it's 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've 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. I've always, 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 one, 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 at 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 of 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, and 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 in and you got to make it work. And so what intrigues you?

How do you define fun?

You know, 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 the 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 gives 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 daydream, what do you daydream about? What is it that's in your mind, that's occupying your mind that you're thinking about? And 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. And 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 get a chance to look at your. You look at your abilities on one side, you 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 interests, 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 some 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 maybe 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 strength with, well, I can forget all the weaknesses because there are certainly. Listen, I'm not the best at some of the technical stuff 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 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 at 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 interests. 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. And 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 interests 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 types of businesses exist? The first is an advisory type of business, a consultant such as myself. I'm a CPA by education, and by and 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 maybe an advisory type of business or a consulting type of business is where you might want to consider playing. Are you a builder? You know, there's the builder type, builder, creator, people that like to create something. I've got, I've got a nephew who's. Who's really young in age, but he loves building things. So right from an early age, he's a builder, he's a creator. And so you might find that businesses like construction or creation or artistry or something because you're creating maybe fits with your abilities and your interests. Are you a nurturer? Are you someone that likes to take care of people in that context? So maybe you're going to create a business such as a daycare business or a cleaning or something of that nature, where your abilities and your interests 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, move people to action, to shift their mind, shift their thinking, to influence them and 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, could be a speaker, could be an event planner, could be a wedding planner. Those kinds of things that are focused on entertaining and those kinds of concepts. Maybe you're just a investor owner. I am an investor owner in a number of businesses where I'm not really running the business, I'm not really advising it, I'm simply an investor in it. And maybe that's, you know, if you're good with numbers and you're good with money and you can evaluate risk and control risk, maybe you have some of the abilities and skills and the interests necessary to, to be an investor. Or are you an organizer, an implementer, an administrator type, where you can go into place 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, in the heat of a deal. In the heat of a 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?

Then the last one I think is really, are you 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 stereos? I don't know if they even call them that anymore. But theater systems, where there's technology involved with that, is that where your strengths are and your abilities are? So those are the kinds of businesses just give you a rundown where it 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 out, how they may make sense for you. So advisor, builder, nurturer, communicator, entertainer, investor, organizer, administrator, salesperson, or, or what I call a techno addict are some of the things to consider. But remember, it's all about, it's all about the concept of understanding that you've 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 strengths. Because there's a distinctive strategic element 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 want 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'd 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 allow you to fill it all out and start to inventory your abilities and inventory your interests. And so you can look at the possible business types or 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 you get notification of the next episode because we're going to keep building on this. We've got a lot to cover just in this framework and I 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 your 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 by on the foundation of entrepreneurship and business. And 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.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

And that's it for this episode of Building your Money Machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom, freedom's your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.