Business Coach : Focus On Strengths
Now, on to life lesson number four in this business coach video. When choosing a career, run to your strengths. Now, before we get into this, if you’re watching this, if you’re being realistic, you have a certain set of strengths and you have a certain set of weaknesses. So just go ahead and take a moment and ask yourself what are you good at and what are you not so good at?
And Business Coach Sean, can you tell us why it’s so important to focus on those strengths?
-In your earlier point about if you’re out there and you don’t have a clear vision or a clear focus, that’s very normal. And so we spend time in the book trying to help people, as you know, achieve that focus and vision. And this is the first step in that.
As you’ve said, all of us are good at things and bad at things. I’ll just give you a personal example. I am in the banking business. I am good at and I really enjoy relationships.
I love developing new ones. I love expanding existing ones. I love employee relationships. I love relationship.
I hate loan write ups. I hate sitting down, putting all the numbers in, you know, trending the numbers, figuring out. I am terrible at that.
So I have had to, in essence, over time, craft my position such that I do more relationship and have people to do write ups. I think a lot of times what happens is, we go to school. People come to campus to interview, and we interview with them because we need a job. And no matter who it is, we’re going to interview and maybe we’ll get some offers.
And we’ll take whichever one pays the most without any thought given to, do I fit with this company. Do my skills fit with this job, you know? And just making sure that we are in a career that, in which, we can spend most of our time doing what we’re good at and what we enjoy.
-And I want to give just one example to the Thrivers watching this. Just in my own life, I really like systems. I love order, which is why you’ll never see me without a red tie and a white shirt. I just like the same consistency.
And so travelling to me is discombobulated. And so as Thrive has grown and as I’ve done more speaking events, like, the desire of my heart, just being totally transparent, I like to be in the same place, at the same time, on the same days, doing the same thing. I love that.
Other people might be watching and say, I love to travel. And the idea is, like for me, I’m trending towards, I’m moving towards a place where I don’t travel very much. Where for some people, they love to travel all the time.
And so I thinks is just really important that you have to ask yourself if you’re even in a season right now where you’re doing a task you’re not necessarily super great at. I know when you started out in banking you probably did some number crunching that didn’t want to do. But if you will work hard and be diligent where you’re at, you’ll eventually get promoted out of that position and you can craft the ideal job.
But you can’t just tank and do a horrible job thinking that eventually you’ll get promoted out of where you’re at if you’re doing a poor job. So it’s really important that you’re diligent in all that you do.
Now, in life lesson number five, find a mentor who has reached your goals and follow her or his guidance. That’s massive right there. Almost nobody does this. Talk to me about this principle.
-Well, I agree with you. And I don’t understand why nobody does this. I have always been blessed with a mentor. Always.
And my grandfather told me– a lot of these things come from when I was little– and things that my grandpa told me and they’ve all come to be true. And he said, if you want to be successful, find someone who’s done what you want to do and ask them how they did it. You know? My grandpa could have been a business coach.
But for what ever the reason, I think people believe that we are too busy or we won’t take time. We always do. I mean, if somebody reaches out and says, tell me how you’ve gotten to where you are, I’m going to be able to tell you more about mistakes than I am successes. But I think it’s extremely valuable.
-I’m going to take the devil’s advocate. For some who are watching this who maybe says, well, yeah, but. There’s three, I think, reasons that I’ve seen a lot of people that they don’t reach out to mentors or a business coach. And I want to hear your feedback.
One is I know the feeling of rejection. They call a mentor and maybe they say, now, I know I’ve called mentors in the past who’ve said no and some have said yes. But some people fear that rejection. What would you say to someone who fears that rejection? They’re going, man, I’d love to call that person, but what if they say no?
-I would say, if you can’t handle rejection then don’t plan on going very far.
-OK, that’s some truth right
there.
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