Discover Your Passions, Harness Your Talents and Profit!
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Hello dear reader,
Today I want to share a concept that I think can help you home in on what you should focus on in YOUR business to make the profits you deserve.
Nothing for sale here, I’m just giving you my thoughts 
The key to running your own business relies on understanding the intersection of three major circles:
- What You Are Deeply Passionate About
- What You Can Be The Best In the World At
- What Drives Your Economic Engine
Let’s examine these three circles in more detail.
Discover Your Passions
It’s absolutely vital that you’re doing something you are passionate about in your business, otherwise you will eventually lose interest and even hate what you’re doing, even if it brings in the cash. You wouldn’t want your own business to turn into a *gasp* Day Job now would you?
So make a list of the things that you are deeply passionate about. Go ahead, pick up a pen and paper right now and start putting down what you’re passionate about.
Write down as many as you can think of. Then look at each of them and give them a score of 1-3 stars, where 3 stars is what you are most passionate about. Those are the ones you should probably go deeper with.
If you’re not sure what you’re passionate about, or can’t think of anything right now, don’t worry – go ask your family, friends and colleagues what they think you’re passionate about. That should give you a good list to think about. The answers may surprise you
Harness Your Talents
Everyone is born with a gift of some natural talents. Usually you know pretty well what your talents are, but if not, again ask people who know you, and you should get a good idea what they are. If you think you have no talents, don’t worry – you DO have talents, you just have to discover what they are.
Here’s an execise to discover what your talents may be. It’s about your 5 senses, what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.
You may be a visually oriented person – i.e. think in terms of pictures, images, video. When you close your eyes, you can paint vivid pictures in your mind, in black and white or even full color. You can easily recall pictures from your photo album or replay scenes from your favorite TV show.
You may be an auditory oriented person – i.e. think in terms of sounds, voices, noises. When you close your eyes, it may be mostly dark, but you can vividly hear soundscapes, like ocean waves crashing on the shore, leaves rustling in the wind, children laughing, music, people speaking, etc.
You may be an olfactory oriented person – i.e. think in terms of smells and odors. When you close your eyes, you can recall smells easily. Think of a rose and it’s like it’s right under your nose, think of your partners perfume and it’s like you just got a whiff of it.
You may be a taste oriented person – i.e. think in terms of tastes, sweet, sour, bitter and so on. Think of a food or drink and you can taste it like it’s there.
You may be a tactile oriented person – i.e. think in terms of touch, textures, hot and cold. Close your eyes and imagine the feeling of running your fingers through hair, sand slipping through your fingers, burning your hand on a hot plate, the feel of silk cloth, touching the soft skin of your partner.
Of course we are always a mixture of these sense orientations, but usually one is dominant, and being aware of what it is can help you strengthen that ability, or even strengthen the not-so dominant abilities to make you a more well-rounded person
Note: Your talent may well be something that you are NOT currently doing in your day job, business or personal life. It may be hidden and is yet to emerge. Expand your horizons – you may surprise yourself with a nice talent you were not aware of
Drive Your Economic Engine
This is all about running a profitable business, not about having a hobby, okay? – So when you have found out what it is you’re passionate about and talented at, you should focus on those things that gives the best “profit per x”, where X is the denominator you need to determine.
For example if you’re passionate and talented about writing, what can you write that gives you the best profit per word, page, article, book?
Why Is This Important?
Well, imagine that you’re passionate about something and have a great talent for it, but there is just no money in that particular market, then you can’t run a profitable business based on that passion and talent. It may be a great hobby, but not a business.
Or how about having an awesome talent and there is a huge demand for that particular skill, but you just hate doing it (no passion), then it’s not much fun right, and if you’re not having fun working your business, then it might as well be a freaking DAY JOB. Don’t build a business unless you have fun working in it.
Finally you may be in a market with great profit, and you’re passionate about it, but you lack the talent – then you’ll be putting out bad or low quality and you won’t make the profits you need to run the business long-term.
Fixing What’s Lacking In Your Circles
You may find yourself in the situation that you’re running a business or want to start a business on something where you have found through this understanding of your circles, that you’re lacking in one or two, but you really want to be in that business. What can you do?
Once you have identified what you’re lacking in, find like-minded people to work with in your business. That may be people you hire, physically or virtually (outsourcing) or people you do a joint venture or enter a business partnership with.
Depending on what your lack is, you can find these people in your neighborhood, on outsourcing sites like elance, on forums, related blogs etc. My guess is that often you will find yourself lacking in talent in some area, so find talented people, or you’re not really passionate about something, so find passionate people.
Conclusion
The understanding of the intersection of the three circles of passion, talent and profit is vital to running your business. Note that this is not a goal or strategy, it’s actually an iterative process. It may take a couple of run-throughs of discovering your passions and talents and profitmakers before you’re homed in on YOUR understanding and are ready to act on it. I recommend doing this execise with a friend and/or accountability partner. You should also do the exercise again after a few months and reexamine if you’re on track.
I am doing a serious examination of my own circles these days and I have identified that I have passions and talents with great profit potential, that I am not deploying in my business. And on the other hand, several things I am currently doing in my business I am really not passionate about and I need to figure out if it’s really worth my time doing them …
Alright, that’s what I had on my mind for you today
I hope this will help you in your business. Let me know what you think!
Thank you,
Odinn Sorensen
P.S. You may recognize the concept I discuss above as the “Hedgehog Concept” (google it), as popularized by Jim Collin in the book “Good to Great”.
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WOW I found that very powerful. There is a common debate about whether to go with your passions or just look at the profit potential – but this model goes beyond that rather tired argument.
I am not familiar with what you called the hedgehog concept Odinn but it looks like Amazon is going make even more money from me.
Alex
This is a really good post you have written here. I believe you do need to consider all 3 things you mentioned above when figuring out what you are going to do with your life. Unfortunately one can’t just go with their passions alone. It is a good place to start though and that is where I start.
Take care,
Cheryl
Hi Odinn,
I just wanted to say thank you for this exercise. My biggest hang-up in getting a business put together, other than my health has been discovering what I am passionate about. I discovered in my youth that I was a skilled analyst and have used that in my several careers but through my life, without going into all the gory details, I managed to suppress most of my feelings. I essentially became an automaton. I worked to support my family but had no life outside of work. I am trying to turn that around and finding it very difficult to awaken those feeling that for so long I hid away. I saw in this exercise a way to dig them out and awaken them. Your article will go into my journal as an “aha” moment.
Thank you again for an excellent article and guide.
Ken