The Power of Personal Development
If there’s one thing I didn’t know going into entrepreneurship, it was how much personal development I’d have to do.
But if I back up, my first exposure to PD was during the first few weeks of my stint in corporate. My jobs up to that point had been in ad agencies and market research companies, where it wasn’t really used.
I joined a team in chaos mode, and so the company threw all sorts of personality tests and facilitated discussions our way. The first test was StrengthsFinder.
Hands down, StrengthsFinder (now Clifton Strengths), was a pivotal tool for me. The basic premise is stop worrying about, or working on, your “opportunity areas” and instead focus on your Strengths. I loved this idea so much, it’s probably what first got me to start breaking rules and thinking differently about my work.
Throughout the rest of my career working for other people, I soaked up every opportunity for personal development. But it wasn’t until I was a year+ into my own business that I went DEEP and started to see the magic.
When you understand yourself and how you work, you can start to work with yourself instead of against yourself — which I found was the case for me…a lot.
So what does this mean? Here’s how you can apply these tools to your business and work style:
Ex: StrengthsFinder
Three of my top five Strengths are in the “Influencing” Domain. As a team lead, looking at my strengths compared to my team’s, it made sense that I was the one leading, and that that was where I should focus my responsibilities.
The other two of my top five are in the “Relationship Building.” None are in Executing. As an Entrepreneur, I lean into this by hiring out for things that feel more executional to me, e.g. Design work. That’s not my forte and never will be, so rather than burn countless hours and be dissatisfied, I prioritize that area as one for investment.
Ex: Astrology
A client of mine had her birth chart read. She has Mercury in Aries, in her 3rd House. Basically, what this means is her communication style tended to be fiery🔥 During one of our calls, she expressed a block she was having talking about her work and new service. TL;DR — we discussed what it would feel like to work with that fire. Translation: what if she thought about some of the topics that fired her up, and used those as content pieces?
Ex: Human Design
Human Design resonates with another client of mine. She’s a Projector and her strategy is to “wait for the invitation.” Which means instead of tactics where she’d proactively reach out to people (cold dm’ing 🤢), doing things like creating content and then having a CTA that invites people to contact her works better.
Personally, I use all of the above tools and a lot more. Ultimately, we all want a business that feels in alignment with our values, style, and soul. These tools are just one way you can do that.
