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

I just want to take a second and thank Cornbread Ham for supporting today's episode. Now Cornbread Ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine 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. Now what makes them special is how Cornbread Ham crafts them. They only use the flower of USDA Organic Hamplants. 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 slash success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com slash 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 as values and passions, just being self-aware enough to understand how your talents and 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 and literally every interaction you have and everything you do and every business you start. What is values and passions? Yeah, so it's a couple things. The value side, if you look at what do I stain for? What do I stain against? 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 is 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, the ably 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. It also culturally customer client experience, we want to thoughtfully anticipate our client's potential challenges. And so then I will stain against things that are like selfish, ego, just purely ego-driven. And I'll stain 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 insatially 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 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 you're a real estate investor, but you have something else, then 100% I'm game. But I have four or five friends that have a hundred million dollar real estate portfolios. I'd rather go spend time with a best-selling author friend. Interesting. Yeah. So that's all about again, it comes back to also what gives you energy. So all these all these areas, they like, these are not mutually exclusive. They all basically create just a really healthy, strong persona, but you are self-aware of the you can sort of take into and not 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 four key areas? Because that must be the best. That's, that's all I hire you, right? There it is. That is. You're right. And, and, but 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. The pants are sports though. Like I'm more hockey than football, but I don't mind the Steelers. They're okay. They haven't won my hockey team. Well, none of my hockey teams have won the long time because I'm Canadian, so it doesn't. Sure. Yeah. You guys have had a suffering. You're out, but, 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? Quite Leonard. He was in the right position, right time. Warriors get injured. Clay Thompson and Kevin Durant go down there, hobbled. Extraordinary results come from people putting themselves in extraordinary right opportunities with so if you look in business, Richard Branson, it's the timing right Amazon. It's the timing right with right in 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, no big deal, buy whatever you want online. So you have to think, am I writing the right wave? Some of us have been right. I realized I was writing 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 a late majority? Is it about to go out of business? Or the industry is about to be majorly disrupted? Do I want to be disrupted? Or do I want to be the disruptor? So now, brothers, I'm in the thought later 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 new biohacking venture because that 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 Ham for supporting today's episode. Now Cornbread Ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine 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. Now what makes them special is how Cornbread Ham crafts them. They only use a flower of USDA organic hand 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 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 cornbread ham.com slash success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbread ham.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing dummies. No you so I love this so what the last time 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 want to be you know like you have certain industries that you can disrupt so that you're you're not you don't want you want to be disrupt or 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 like 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 wants to start a software or a SaaS business what does that actually mean and how do you find that. 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 no class mindset billing their mindset. If you want a job done right what do you what's a billionaire do Scott pay someone else to do it and 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 are listening to this great podcast series about Amazon versus Walmart and on it is said that Bezos has one goal every day to make two 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 has kept there it made when I was in real estate I calculated that my average hour if I was setting up the deal and would spend one 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 it was a $5,000 an hour activity is what I would average that's still limited right $10,000 an hour activities are massive strategic positioning offer decisions leadership decisions sometimes as who you hire who you bring on as a partner it's your offer if you craft an ears this will offer that goes to gangbusters cool thing about business you know if I hit in in baseball I played college baseball if I hit a grand slam the most runs I can score is four in business if I hit a grand slam I can score a thousand runs from that right now I might you know craft an offer this is where maturity comes in and play two I got to know that nine out of ten 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 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 this short term ones so I'm glad that I clarified that so it's it's nothing to do with how you of course it's great to increase your own value if you're you want to bring you know value to the world but it is I love that baseless analogy make make one two whatever however many super strategic decisions they'll move the needle and then the aggregate of that over five years ten years well it could be a hundred thousand dollar 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 $50,000 for speech so what is you know they 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 now we're writing a book do they have to write every single word and design the cover and prove free to know that no they can also force that to $20 or $50 or $100 an hour type team members but then that book positions them to get a $25,000 an hour activity thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one