Lessons - Knowing Your "Zone of Genius" | Mike Zeller - Entrepreneur, Mentor & Author

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Please visit mentallyhealthynation.org to learn more. I just wanna take a second and thank Cornbread Hemp for supporting today's episode. Now, Cornbread Hemp CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use 'em every day, just when I want to unwind after those extra busy weeks, but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance, really just shut off from work. And what makes 'em special is how Cornbread Hemp crafts them. They only use a flower of USDA organic hemp plants. That's the best. Part for the purest, most potent experience. No fillers, no artificial fluff, just clean full-spectrum goodness and delicious watermelon, berry, and peach flavor. I keep them in my nightstand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing, and I love how transparent they are too. Every batch is third-party lab tested so you know exactly what you're getting. And they put together a special offer for all Success Story podcast listeners. All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com/success and use code SUCCESS at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com/success, code SUCCESS for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. In this Lessons episode, discover the transformative power of aligning your values, passions, and genius to build a fulfilling life and career. Learn how values act as filters for decision-making, why passions fuel curiosity and energy, and the importance of strategic positioning for extraordinary results. That sort of dovetails quite nicely into the fourth point, which is values and passions. So values and passions, just being self-aware enough to understand how your talents, your relationships, your life experiences all have such an impact on who you are, and then living those and championing those and evangelizing those values and passions in literally every interaction you have and everything you do and every business you start? Like, what is values and passions?

Yeah, so it's a couple of things. The value side, if you look at, hey, what do I stand for? What do I stand against? Like, I don't— I've made the mistake before of having potential partners, business partners that I was exploring that were a little more ego-driven. And, you know, I have a healthy ego, but I'm not ego as in dominate, Mike is, you know, my poop doesn't stink type deal. And I want humility, I want devotion to the greater good, I want contribution, innovation. I believe business exists first to serve the world and make it a better place, but profit is necessary, but secondary for sustainability. So that's one of our values, um, that it also culturally— customer client experience, we want to thoughtfully anticipate our clients' potential challenges. And, um, uh, so then I, I will stand against things that are like selfish ego, just purely ego-driven, um, and I'll stand for some of these things of human potential. Like one of our core elements of our mission is unleash human potential. And so everything I do is oriented towards that in some way. So that becomes a filter. Your values become a filter of like, who do you let in? Who do you let out? Who do you protect yourself from? And then the passions are like, hey, what am I insatiably curious about? What could I study all day long? Who could I spend time with more and more? Like, who am I not going to get bored being around? Like, I used to think, I don't, I don't want to be around bankers. I don't want to be, for the most part, I don't want to be around lawyers and real estate investors. I like real estate. If, if you're a real estate investor, but you have something else, then 100% I'm game. But I have 4 or 5 friends that have $100 million real estate portfolios. I'd rather go spend time with a bestselling author friend.

Interesting. Yeah. So that, it's all about, again, it comes back to like also what gives you energy. So all these, all these areas, they, they like, these are not mutually exclusive. They, they all basically create just a really healthy, strong persona that you are self-aware of that you can sort of take into. And that sort of brings me to my next question. How do you, how do you build a business knowing your zone of genius that is built on these 4 key areas? Because that must be the best. That's, that's all they hire you, right?

Yeah, there it is. It is, you're right. And, and, and, but it also— look, look at people who do extraordinary things. What's in common with them? They put themselves in extraordinarily right positions. Are you a sports fan?

Yeah, yeah, it depends which sport though. Like, I'm more hockey than, uh, than football, but I, I don't mind the Steelers. They're okay. They haven't won. My hockey team— well, none of my hockey teams have won in a long time because I'm Canadian, so it True.

Yeah, you guys have had a suffering year out. But, um, but the Toronto Raptors, you mentioned earlier from Toronto, right? Well, a few years ago they won the NBA championship. So how did they win the NBA championship? Kawhi Leonard. Uh, he was in the right position, right time. Warriors get injured, uh, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant go down, they're hobbled. Uh, extraordinary results come from people putting themselves in extraordinarily right opportunities with a group. So if you look in business, Richard Branson hits the timing right. Amazon hits the timing right with riding the wave of the internet. They were the, you know, they want to be— they just want to sell books initially. Now Bezos had a bigger vision, but we've— at the time, people were afraid of buying things online. When Amazon started. Now we're like, uh, no big deal, buy whatever you want online. So you have to think, am I riding the right wave? Some of us have been right. I realized I was riding some waves that were dying. Like, I was in a socially-minded car dealership. That was a dinosaur industry. If you look at the diffusion of innovations, what is it? A laggard business? Is it, you know, late majority? Is it about to go out of business? Or the industry is about to be majorly disrupted. Do I want to be a disruptor? Do I want to be the disrupted or do I want to be the disruptor? So now, you know, part of the reason I'm in the thought leader space. Hey, that's an early-stage venture still and there's a lot of innovation, a lot of opportunities within that. Biohacking, I'm launching a new biohacking venture because industry is going to go from a $12 billion industry to a $54 billion industry from 2019 to 2027. So I'm jumping into that space and I'm doing it in a way that I'm aligned with my genius. I get to create, I get to architect the business, and I get to put people in their zones of genius and attract people that I'm attracting a dream team. I know I'm not a great operating partner. So this time I'm not freaking starting the business without a great operating partner.

I just want to take a second and thank Cornbread for supporting today's episode. Now, Cornbread Hemp CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day, just when I want to unwind after those extra busy weeks, but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance, really just shut off from work. And what makes them special is how Cornbread Hemp crafts them. They only use the flower of USDA organic hemp plants. That's the best part for the purest, most potent experience. No fillers, no artificial fluff, just clean full spectrum goodness in delicious watermelon, berry, and peach flavor. I keep them in my nightstand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing, and I love how transparent they are too. Every batch is third-party lab tested so you know exactly what you're getting, and they put together a special offer for all Success Story podcast listeners. All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com. .com/success and use code SUCCESS at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com/success, code SUCCESS for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. No, you, so you, I, I love this. So what the last thing I wanted to touch on, and I think it's just interesting because you mentioned, you mentioned a good point, like, so you know what your zone of genius is, you, you wanna be, you know, like you have certain industries that you can disrupt so that you're, you're not, you don't want, you wanna be disruptor, not disrupted. And that's sort of where you position yourself. One thing that you've spoke about before is a $10,000 per hour activity. So my question, I think that's an interesting point because just even like just saying it just sounds like funny, just like a funny sentence. So it's somebody who wants to, somebody who wants to start a non-service-based business, because I can understand as a coach, if you want to be a coach, this makes a lot of sense. You're trying to up your billables and you have to create more value. And these are— and there's things you can do to up your value when you position yourself to your customers. But this is more like a mindset I find than just like a truly $10,000 per hour activity. So what does that actually mean for somebody who is somebody who wants to start a dog walking business, somebody who wants to start a software or SaaS business? What does that actually mean and how do you find that? Claude by Anthropic is a success story partner. Now every week I'm prepping for guests for the show. I'm writing newsletters, I'm creating content across all these different platforms, and Claude has become the tool that I actually think with. 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So most of us come from a middle-class mindset. What's a middle-class mindset? Hey, if you want a job done right, do it yourself. Right? That's, that's a middle-class mindset. Billionaire mindset. If you want a job done right, what do you, what's a billionaire do, Scott?

Pay someone else to do it. You find the best person to do it for you. Yeah, exactly.

Find the best person to do it for you because the billionaire knows that what the biggest amount of value that he creates is smart decisions, strategic decisions. Bezos, Jeff Bezos. I listen to this great podcast series about Amazon versus Walmart, and on it it said, said that Bezos has one goal every day. To make 2 smart strategic decisions. So that's his goal. He's not trying to do things. He's trying to decide things. So $10,000 per hour activities. They are not the doing of things. Even the very best attorneys in the world maybe get $500 to $1,000 an hour for billable hours. So your, your income is capped there. Me, when I was in real estate, I calculated that my average hour, if I was setting up the deal and would spend 1 hour with a potential client, get them on board as a client, hand them off to one of my junior agents to, to work with them and close the deal. That was a $5,000 an hour activity is what I would average. But that's still limited, right? $10,000 an hour activities are massive strategic positioning, offer decisions, leadership decisions. Sometimes it's who you hire, who you bring on as a partner. It's your offer. If you craft an irresistible offer that goes gangbusters, cool thing about business, you know, if I hit in baseball, I played college baseball. If I hit a grand slam, the most runs I can score is 4. In business, if I hit a grand slam, I can score 1,000 runs from that. Right? Now I might, you know, craft an offer. This is where maturity comes into play too. I gotta know that 9 out of 10 offers are probably going to strike out or not do that great. But if I get to that 10th offer and I keep learning and, um, kicking butt, man, I could do— I could hit a massive home run and get that $10,000 an hour activity. So $10,000 an hour activities are usually longer-term strategic elements than the, uh, the short-term ones.

So I'm glad that I clarified that. So it's nothing to do with how you— of course, it's great to increase your own value if you want to bring, you know, value to the world. But it is— I love that Bezos analogy. Make 1, 2, whatever, however many super strategic decisions that will move the needle. And then the aggregate of that over 5 years, 10 years, Well, it could be $100,000 per hour.

Yeah.

At that point, doesn't— there's no limit. There's no limit on that.

Yeah. And so let's, let's think about it like this too. I have friends that charge, you know, $25,000, $50,000 for a speech. So what is, you know, they step on stage for an hour, that's $25,000 an hour. But how did they get to that $25,000 an hour activity? Oh, they had to write a book or they had to do these other business things. Now writing a book, do they have to write every single word and design the COVID and proofread and all that? No, they can outsource that to $20, $50, $100 an hour type team members, but then that book positions them to get a $25,000 an hour activity.

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