Getting Your Brilliance Used

It’s one thing to feel brilliant. To master your craft and build seemingly endless wisdom to offer your ideal clients.

It’s another thing to actually get your brilliance used.

To have a steady stream of clients, readers, buyers (take your pick) who not only absorb your advice, but also weave it into their own work, creating new strengths and building their own successes.

Isn’t that at the heart of the work we consultants and advisors do?

We make change happen. We make lives better. Sometimes we even make profound, earth-moving transformations.

So laboring in obscurity is not good for your future clients and it’s certainly not good for you.

The question becomes: how do you take your proverbial light out from under the bushel basket and shine it into the right corners?

Hey, if there were a magic button to push, I’d tell you, I truly would.

It’s more like a way of thinking. Of reminding yourself that your brilliance has a purpose.

Not certain how to pinpoint your best, highest use? You may have to take a look into your past to grab hold of tangible examples of successes (and get someone you respect to hold a mirror up so you can see it).

When I first met “Sam”, he was a 30-something college dropout who kept telling himself he wouldn’t amount to anything. He was waiting tables, renting a room in a tumbledown house, trying to figure out how to support his daughter.

But just a little digging proved that his world had once looked brighter. He’d been a bat boy for a major league baseball franchise (an infinitesimal percentage of applicants get THAT job), where two different household-name star players befriended him and gave him pointers.

His people skills were off the charts, which was one reason why he was the waiter who always went home with the biggest tips.

As he started to see his life—and his work—through a new lens, things started to change.

Today, Sam is a financial advisor. He went back to school, studied hard and invested in his natural brilliance—his care and concern for the people who cross his path. Now he’s the guy they trust to build their financial future.

Sam had a very deep well to climb out of—but chances are you’re far better positioned to identify and share your brilliance.

Start with your experiences and stories—both life and work. Jot down a sentence or two about each and keep them in a single document where you can peruse them at your leisure.

Look for the ones that resonate most clearly. Maybe you were in a family business that gave you a practical MBA. Or you traveled the world as a military brat and speak a smattering of languages. Perhaps you were a soccer star in college and still play in a local league.

These stories can be fodder for your brilliance. They may stay safely inside you, serving as internal reminders of your worth and life path. Or they can become tent poles for your brand, building your reputation and engaging your audience in your particular brand of brilliance.

Because no one—absolutely no one—can match your unique combination of talents, passions and experiences.

And isn’t getting your brilliance used what it’s all about?

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