Unlock Your Genius Zone

How do we find and harness our best talents?

86,400.

That’s how many seconds there are in a single day, and the 8 hour workday (yeah, that’s funny) has only 28,800 of them.

So how do you spend that time the right way?

Well, I have my fingers crossed on that DeLorean time machine and an entrepreneurial 8 hour workday where everything gets done.

In the meantime, I learned you need to harness your inner genius to use every single second to its fullest .

When I started LexION Capital, it was headquartered in my apartment-pseudo office. Dodging hanging cooking pots to answer the phone wasn’t a big deal (even though some nasty head bumps would argue otherwise). It was that I had a staff of one rescue pup.

And now I had to design a logo. My drawing skills weren’t up to snuff, and my Mona Lisa was that drawing of my house I was forced to do in 5th grade.

Even if you aren’t in charge of making a logo when stick figures are an epic struggle, you’ve encountered the same problem.

When life is filled with a never-ending to-do list, and there’s only a really limited amount of time in the day, how do we find and harness our best talents?

Unlock your genius zone

Sara Blakely is the world’s youngest female billionaire (I’m totally not jealous).

Her original plan was to become a lawyer, and then she failed the LSATs. Twice.

Then she tried her hand at dressing up as Goofy at Disney World. But Blakely found out she was too short for the costume. So her next career was ushering annoying kids while “Snow White took her cigarette breaks” (sorry to disappoint your inner-child).

After many more stints, she got “inspired by her butt” when she was at a meeting.

She didn’t like the look of her panty lines under cream-colored pants when she was selling fax machines.

So she cut the feet out of her control-top panty hose to create a smoother, more shapely look.

And then it still didn’t work. They kept rolling up her feet.

She dove a little farther into the deep end. By spending two years and her life savings ($5,000) on creating a footless, pantyhose-shaper. Thus began Spanx.

How was she sure that investing her life savings would result in billions of dollars?

How did she know she had an expertise for fashion and solving clothing problems?

I’ll give you a big hint: she had no clue.

She said:

“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.”

Blakely had the fashion knowledge that I still have (not a lot).

But she saw a possible Genius Zone: the intersection of skill, passion and marketability. And she put her butt on the line and ran with it.

Owning it

I’m not going to tell you that I eventually made a great logo for LexION Capital. Because it was garbage.

I knew my runway. And any amount of time spent on the logo wouldn’t have made it look better than what I scoop up from my pup at the park.

But I did encounter a thousand and one “failures” to find my talent in finance. How would I have known I wasn’t the next Picasso, too?

You don’t have to be a hopeless optimist or have a string of successes to be a genius.

But you do have to make that leap into the deep end, even if you don’t know if you can swim.

Your genius isn’t found by getting everything right.

It’s in failing again, again, and again.

It’s the idea that you keep going, no matter what, until you find that square inch that inspires you. And then owning that square inch until it covers the world.

Your Genius Zone is what you bring to the table better than anyone else. It’s what you do effortlessly and easily, even if you don’t know it yet. It’s what you can gravitate towards.

So try that new job, try that new “wacky” business idea, and then fail miserably. Eventually, you’ll unlock that inner genius you’ve always had.