If you’re looking to create a low-stress consulting business where you can still earn well yet work less, discovering Your Zone of Genius is a great way to home in on the area of your business that you love the most and is the most profitable.
Are you ready to make a switch to a low-stress consulting business and find high profit projects and clients that light up your heart? When you’re doing work that is important to you and your values, then it’s easier (less stress and more fun) to stay focused and put forth your best work. On the other hand, when you’re working on projects or with people that drain you or stress you out, often you might procrastinate or wish that their call or meeting was over so you can move on to something more fun.
That last scenario is a disservice to both you and your client. Don’t rob your clients of your best coaching – that they are paying for. Instead, learn what excites you about your business and discover how to recognise more of those opportunities.
When you create a low-stress consulting business, your heart and soul will thank you!
This article aims to help you sort those daily, weekly, and monthly business tasks into four work zones: Incompetence, Competence, Excellence, and Genius. As you read through, hopefully these zones will make more sense and you’ll be excited to find ways to add the more fulfilling Genius tasks into your daily life.
The Ultimate Secret to Doing Highly Paid Work You Love
What sense does it make to start a business if you don’t want to get highly paid? None, plain and simple. If you can create the foundation of your business doing what you love AND get highly paid, you’ll be less stressed and happier. Right?
So first, make a list of all the tasks that make your business run. Just do it like a big brain dump – use Word or Excel so you can reorder it and edit it, but to start with, just go round one and then keep adding to it.
Next, think about how “good” you are at doing each of those tasks. Categorise them into Zones for Competent, Incompetent, Excellence, Genius.
Let me define these zones a bit to help you.
- Competent: You CAN do these tasks, but you don’t like to do them.
- Incompetent: You don’t know how to do these tasks or it’s not your strong suit, and/or you truly dislike doing them.
- Excellence: You enjoy doing these tasks and you have innate talents here, but is it your life’s calling?
- Genius: Your zone of productivity! You enjoy these tasks, you have great strength and talent, AND you feel that these are part of your life’s calling. It’s likely you’re only put about 3-5 tasks into this zone!
The Ultimate Solution to Efficiency and Productivity
Next, let’s look at how you can leverage systems and people to offload some of the tasks in the non-Genius zones.
Questions to ponder:
- Are you working efficiently? Are there ways you can streamline some of your processes to make them easier or more efficient?
- What business processes take a long time? Research ways to streamline those processes.
- Which tasks can be outsourced to an assistant or to specialists?
As solo professionals, it can be quite difficult for many of us to delegate. Yet that’s what necessary if you want to create a low-stress consulting business. You might feel like it means giving up control. But looking at this from the Zone optimisation perspective and setting out your key business processes makes it easier to hand some things over, and your business will feel more joyful.
Self-exploration is an important step in discovering your Zone of Genius. Instead of listening to what others think your genius is, be a little self-serving here and explore what YOU want out of life and your business.
- Describe yourself. What type of person are you?
- Do you enjoy the work you’re currently doing? Why or why not?
- What kind of work would you truly love?
- What tasks make you feel resentment or make you procrastinate?
- What tasks would you LOVE to pass on to someone else?
There is nothing wrong with owning and being happy inside your Zone of Excellence too. These are your strengths and likely what you used to start your business, and working in this zone can feel satisfying.
But is it your life’s calling? Are you passionate about the work you’re doing inside this zone? It’s time to explore if you want more.
- What do you already have a quality reputation for in your work/career?
- What am I really good at?
- What do I or others think “my thing” is in my business?
- Are you happy in this comfort zone? Why or why not?
Shaping Your Days for More Income & Less Overwhelm
Delegate like a Pro, so you can profit like a CEO!
Do you think Jeff Bezos of Amazon answers his own phone or answers his own emails? Absolutely not! That’s what personal assistants are for. He’s busy managing his Vice Presidents and thinking about the next big thing Amazon can offer their millions of users. Those people under him figure out how to make that next big thing happen.
It’s time to consider yourself the CEO of your company. Yes, you can still work with personal coaching clients but delegate the smaller tasks to an assistant or other experts (aka specialist freelancers) so you can stay focused on your own “next big thing”.
To get ready for more income and less overwhelm, carve out some time to plan for it.
Here’s five suggestions to get you started:
#1 Make sure you carve out an hour of Genius work into your day
#2 Take time for your own wellbeing – check out my articles on work-life balance.
#3 Look at where you can automate tasks – check out my list of key business tools that leverage technology to save you time.
#4 Identify tasks you could outsource to a personal assistant (or virtual assistant VA) – look at job sites, LinkedIn or ask for recommendations in business groups you belong to.
#5 Identify tasks where you waste time and could benefit from using a specialist – check out Upwork for freelancer creatives, website experts etc.
In summary, the more you start to streamline key processes, build a team around you and implement systems, the more you can switch your own work towards your most profitable and joyful tasks. Your business will run way smoother and feel more stress-free, giving you more time to work in your Genius zone.
Because when you work on the things you love to do and are good at, the result is a much more low-stress consulting business. You can still achieve high profits but work-life balance feels more of a reality.
