Finding Your Talent
Finding Your Talent – Creating Products from What You Already Know How To Do!
Let’s get down to brass tacks with a few thoughts. The phrase to “get down to brass tacks” is an idiom that means to focus on essential details …some words just don’t lose their impact. =)
You’re nose to the grindstone at your day job, but you sometimes have to shake yourself awake after mentally drifting away thinking thoughts of what you’d like to do if you won the lottery! Let’s put the magnifying glass over what’s really happening in your brain when you do this: You’re going directly to where your passion resides. You’re aching to create your own success instead of working toward someone else’s success.
Instinctively, you know you need a talent to achieve the kind of success you’re longing for.
It’s at this point you shake yourself awake, and reach for some water to splash in your face…because you have NO clue what your talent is.
Then your self talk kicks in and you hear that gruffie little voice in your head gravel out “Yoooou don’t have the kind of talent, what’s the matter with you? Other people have THAT talent, not YOOOOU!”.
Shocker here!!! Bad Little Gruffie Voice is NOT voicing the truth. In fact, let me whisper something in your ear…are you ready?
“Kick Bad Little Gruffie Voice out of your head, he’s taking up valuable space and you’ve been giving him free room and board for far too long!”
So give the boot to Gruffie Guy! Trust me, many people are giving free room and board to that same little guy in their heads.
Now, after you’ve evicted the nasty little interloper, take over the valuable space in your head and start recognizing that you DO have a talent you can use to make money.
How do you discover your talent?
One way would be to keep hoping the prize committee will show up at your door with balloons and a million bucks, pushing the envelope into your hands…then go out and do whatever your heart desires.
I wish you all the luck in the work for that one! It didn’t work for me either!
A much smarter approach to discovering your true talent is to begin asking yourself a few extremely simple questions:
1. What do I do on those precious vacation days, when my time is totally my own?
We protect and guard our vacation days for what we personally enjoy doing. You know how it feels, nobody looking over our shoulder, no guilt involved, no obligation to do things for anyone else, after all it’s MY vacation time! Me Time.
What you enjoy doing during these precious few days will lead you to the things you’re drawn, it’s totally your call…YOU in control of how to spend the time YOU have to yourself.
What would that look like for you?
It will most likely be something you totally lose track of time doing, while you’re doing it (a little like how time spent on Facebook goes from a few minutes to a few hours), landing you and leaving you in a good mood and an uplifted feeling. When this happens to you, you’re very near your talent. If what you lose track of time over is gardening or woodworking or writing or cooking or even something as simple as sightseeing, that would be your talent.
Your talent grants you boss status, and you can profit from your status abilities in many different ways.
2. What are your natural gifts, I like to ask “What’s your Authentic Core Talent? In my book Find the Talent Within You & Sell It! I explain how to find your Core Talent.
You absolutely possess talent, experiences and wisdom that are totally unique to YOU, no matter who you are or where you live or what your circumstances are.
You might be great at organizing small spaces or teaching children how to do something, or maybe you’re great at painting rocks or creating bridal bouquets or birthday party fun.
These are things that have probably come easily to you, you most probably haven’t really looked at this activity as a talent others would pay you for providing or learning.
I never thought I had the “drawing and painting” gene, I was 25 yrs old before I picked up a paintbrush. Then after sitting on the riverbank one summer afternoon, I painted a character on a little piece of Mississippi River driftwood and with my daughter, Lisa McNeal, imagined the beginnings of a book. Within a month, sales rep (Vicky Badavinac) picked up my hand painted product and presented me with $55,000 worth of orders. I certainly hadn’t seen THAT coming!
So take a look at your surroundings! What do you enjoy being around or near on your days off?
3. What knowledge has come from your life experiences?
We gain experience from the things we’ve had to learn throughout our lives at work and at play.
Perhaps you’ve had to learn skills for personal reasons or just to make something your friends and family will enjoy, it’s during that kind of learning, that the potential for developing a talent we can use to ‘turn a profit’ shows up.
Perhaps you’re the designated piano player in your family…you know the drill, you’re the one always asked to play at weddings and other celebrations of life. Because you’ve learned to play, you could also teach even the most elementary of basics for beginners. You most likely can tell when a piano is out of tune, right? Options for you might be to either tune pianos or teach others the basics of piano tuning… all for a fee of course!
Do you like shopping flea markets and garage sales? You could turn this into a furniture flipping business. You start by shopping your fav haunts, then up-cycling, re-purposing your finds and buys…what the heck, you’re already enjoying the hunting.
Maybe you’re like my Auntie Jodi, I swear she brakes for every dog-gone garage sale or rummage sale, it matters not to her what the weather or circumstances of the day might be…so much so that she has to HAVE a yearly tag sale of her own…but with a twist! She opens it up for her daughter, cousins and nieces to sell their wares as well! It’s become a big (profitable) deal!
4. What do you do everyday while working for someone else?
This knowledge can lead you to more talent insight.
Maybe you’re the type of person who is always inventing a better mouse-trap…finding a better way to do things.
Maybe you’ve prepared taxes for H & R Block, and friends and relatives comes to you for tax advice. This might be a talent you could profit from. There are additional ways to create income for yourself using this skill; write a blog, write a book or actually prepare taxes for a fee. I’ve always thought that a great opportunity for someone with tax preparing knowledge would be to advise home based businesses…entrepreneurs need this kind of advice.
Your talent might just be laying in wait within your job, so take a closer look at it.
If that kind little Genie were to pop out of the lamp right this moment..what is your hearts longing? What would you do on that proverbial deserted island if you knew you had an entire year to yourself?
Your Authentic Core Talent is just waiting to be acknowledged so it can perform profit magic for you! I talk extensively about this in my book Find the Talent Within You & Sell It!
Talents come in all shapes and sizes, just like we do…some skills will be easier than others to manifest. However, just think about how fabulous you’re gonna feel about yourself when you make the discovery that you’re already in possession of this talent AND this skill, knowledge or experience can make money for you!
Score!! How much money you ask? That’s up to you…get down to some ‘brass tack’ talent thinking once you’ve ousted Bad Little Gruffie Voice from the prime real estate he’s been occupying for far too long and replace him with star tenant YOU!
Now, go forth and conquer your Authentic Core Talent…and don’t forget to be your biggest fan! It matters not a ‘hill of beans’ how much money you make at first, everything is scale-able with the right twist!