How To Pivot Your Business & Work in Your Zone of Genius

As a solopreneur, we often have to spread ourselves thin with so many different to-do’s, roles and areas of our business.

However, what tends to happen is that we try to be good at too many things and get caught up in trying to prove ourselves in areas that don’t necessarily bring us that sense of joy or excitement.

If you’re completely honest with yourself and look at everything you do on a weekly basis, what percentage do you actually like doing?

50%? Even less?

This is why designing your business so that you can work from your zone of genius, is absolutely essential.

You might have heard about the concept of the “zone of genius” before, maybe in a podcast episode, business course, or self-help book. But chances are that you haven’t reflected on what your zone of genius is and how you can leverage it to create a biz that is more fun and easy to manage.

Fortunately, it’s never too late to discover yours. It can certainly help you create the life and business you want and deserve. So, in this blog post, I’ll guide you through the whole process so you can figure out your zone of genius and create more space and time in your biz to focus on it.

Related read: This Is How You Know To Pivot Your Business

How To Pivot Your Business & Work in Your Zone of Genius

Before diving into the nitty-gritty, let’s first define what “zone of genius” actually means.

What does “your zone of genius” mean and how can you identify yours?

Psychologist Gay Hendrix coined the term in his book The Big Leap. In it, he describes the concept where an individual can perform certain activities that are effortless and do it all day without getting bored. It could be painting, teaching, designing, coaching, writing, organizing,… whatever it is, it gives us a deep
sense of fulfillment, it energizes us rather than taking away our energy, and we lose our sense of time while doing it.

Your zone of genius is something that you’re both passionate about and naturally gifted at.
So, I want you to take a piece of paper and jot down what these activities in your business are for you, personally:

• What activities in your biz do you get excited about and look forward to doing?
• What activities could you do all day long and don’t even feel like it’s hard work?
• What are the activities that you get the most compliments about?
• What activities give you a sense of purpose and energize you?
• What activities do you passionately help others solve?

Identifying your zone of genius allows you to create a sustainable business that is set up for long–term growth and success. You will discover the tasks that energize you and the ones that drain you.

Related read: The Struggle Of Being Multi-Passionate And How To Embrace It

Why working from your zone of genius is important

When it comes to having a business, there are so many areas and aspects we need to deal with, from accountancy to support and from marketing to PR.

And it’s impossible to be good at all of them, right?… Chances are that you suck at a few of them, and you find other ones really annoying.

What tends to happen is the following: you procrastinate and neglect those you don’t feel passionate
about, and they create this feeling of heaviness and pressure on you.

And instead of doing those annoying tasks you are struggling with and not doing a great job anyway, you could be using this time instead to work in your zone of genius, excel, and create exceptional results.

Just like the activity above, ask yourself what tasks or activities drain you. Here are some questions that will help you figure this out:

• What activities do you spend so much time procrastinating on?
• What activities do you feel just take forever?
• What activities make you think “I could be doing something so much more important right now”
• What activities do you feel just aren’t really your thing?
• What activities make you feel exhausted after completion?

How you can pivot your business to work more from your zone of genius

Now that you have more clarity about the activities that give you energy, as well as the ones that drain your energy, let’s talk about how to pivot your business.

The golden question here is the following:

How could you transform your business so that you can focus more on energy-giving activities
rather than energy-draining activities?

This question, we will be answering in three simple steps.

STEP 1: REMOVING ENERGY-DRAINING TASKS FROM YOUR PLATE

Remove the tasks that are distracting and outside of your zone of genius so that you can focus more on the ones you are passionate about.

How?

There are a few options to choose from

• First, try to automate these tasks. There are many tools out there such as IFTTT, Zapier and automate.io that allow you to connect different apps and create different triggers, conditions and filters to automate thousands of tasks.
• If automation isn’t possible, then outsource it to someone else. Recruit a VA, or an expert in the area that you want to delegate, on platforms such as Fiverr or Upwork and let someone else do it for you.
• If outsourcing isn’t possible and it has to be you performing this task, then at least streamline and simplify the process in such a way that it doesn’t require so much time and energy.

STEP 2: ADDING ENERGY-GIVING TASKS TO YOUR PLATE

The second step is all about finding ways to refocus and realign our business on the things that we love and we’re gifted at.

So take back your list of energy-giving activities.

• Can you monetize these activities? Can you create a digital course or a membership teaching these skills?
• Could you offer these activities as a service?
• Could you write an eBook or a guide about these topics?
• Can you be a consultant for these activities?

STEP 3: CREATE AN ACTION PLAN

As the last step, we’ll need to create an action plan that describes specifically how you will be implementing this transformation of your business in small, baby steps.

So, what are the next 5 small steps that you can take to make your business filled with energizing tasks and significantly less energy-draining tasks?

Conclusion

You will notice that as you enter more into your zone of genius, you’ll experience the state of flow much more regularly, and it becomes much more fun and easy to manage your business.

It might take some work initially, but I promise it’s so worth it in the end.

So focus on what you do best and surround yourself with a great team that helps you take energy draining tasks off your plate.

You’ve got this 🙂

Let’s Chat!

Are you currently working within your zone of genius? Let me know in the comments down below.

Author: Tascha from One Latte Too Many

Tascha is a productivity strategist, blogger, and educator (and a big coffee enthusiast!).

She created One Latte Too Many to help
entrepreneurs with simplifying, organizing, and automating their businesses, so they can work way LESS, while scaling their businesses MORE.

Check out her blog for more blog posts about productivity, intentional living and personal growth. You can also find her on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.