My strengths (according to Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath) are everything about looking at a situation, gathering necessary information, looking to the future, figuring out the highest and best use of available resources and plotting the next steps to get there.

  • Futuristic
  • Learner (I don’t just like learning, I crave it.  It’s why I read 50+ books a year)
  • Input (Looking for the information to apply to a situation or issue)
  • Maximizer (Figuring out the highest and best use of available resources and seeing connections)
  • Strategic

I love, love, love to sit with our business owners and talk about their businesses.  We talk about what they hope to achieve, how we can design their business to achieve it and some strategies, tactics and resources to help them.  We use their financial statements as a starting place to talk about all aspects of their business and life.

I know I help them, because I watch them and their businesses grow.  I’d love to help more business owners, and I know I can.

But, and it’s a big one, my business isn’t as profitable as it should be.  In fact, I hate doing that hourly calculation because it tells me I would be making way, way more if I took a job as a bookkeeper.   Which means, of course, how can I possibly put myself out there as a business guru-type if I’m not meeting our society’s standard of success of being wildly profitable?

I spend much of my time learning, looking into the future and talking with other business owners about business, their industry, the way the world is changing and life in general.  By unconventional standards, I’m successful: I’ve traveled the world to go to some of the coolest events; I have conversations with some of the world’s top thinkers; I surround myself with amazing people; and I live in a wonderful place with a wonderful family.  I would spend all my time doing those things and more if I could.  I would love to continue to gather the best and turn the info around back to other business owners and help them to get what they want from their business.  If only I could figure out how.

So despite actual, real results, and people telling me, for years, to offer these services as a real honest service, I’ve taken the coward’s way out.  I did it without doing it properly, without charging appropriately, without making it good enough to give the even more awesome results that I could.

I’ve listened to the people in my life who told me that work is hard and it can’t be something you love and it certainly can’t just be talking to people.

Yes, the lizard brain won – until now.

I can do this.  I can help people grow their business into the business they need it to be to give them the life they want.  I can make a decent living doing it.

How about it?  Does that sound appealing?

Have you experienced this? Are you working from your strengths and your passion?

Do you hesitate to charge for the fun things?