Your genius is something you do better than other people. Identifying it is vital in your business because it brings so much value. In this episode, host Eric Anderton flies solo to bring light on how you, as a construction business owner, uncover, embrace, and leverage your unique genius. Only by doing that can you influence your company’s success, taking it to newer heights. From mindset shifts to making the commitment to fully embrace your genius, Eric gives us a show you won’t want to miss. Begin your journey to success with this episode!
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Uncovering, Embracing, And Leveraging Your Unique Genius
We are going to talk about identifying and embracing your genius. What do I mean by genius? It’s that which you do better than anyone else. As the owner of your construction company, it’s important that you understand what your genius is and that you spend as much time as possible doing that thing. In this episode, we will get into great detail about what I mean by that, how you can identify your genius, the danger of knowing your genius, changing your mindset so that you spend time working on that genius and expressing that genius, and making sure that your time isn’t taken away by other things, which though important, aren’t as essential to impacting your bottom-line profit. Enjoy this solo episode here. If you find it helpful, let me know. If you have any questions about it, contact me on my website, ConstructionGenius.com/contact, and thank you for reading the show.
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How to discover and embrace your genius, and what I mean by your genius is that which you do better than anyone else. I was chatting with one of my clients. He’s the President of his construction company and we were having a one-on-one coaching session. One of his big challenges is the way that he spends his time. As we were chatting about that, we started to discuss an interaction he had with a potential client. He was in front of this client with one of his PMs.
In his business, the PM is responsible for landing the work as well as running the projects. The PM was a bit intimidated by this potential client who was old-school, crusty, a little confrontational, and not necessarily easy to build a relationship with. My client, his genius is building relationships with people. Though he’s not crusty or old-school in any way, he is not intimidated by types like that, and in fact, he’s able to bridge the gap and build relationships with them and land work.
I’d like to talk about how you should be identifying and embracing your genius. You think about your construction company. Everyone’s got a bid work, land work, build work, and get paid. As you think about the areas of your genius, you should be able to identify that, and as your company grows and develops, you should be spending as much time as possible in your area of genius.
The first thing we are going to talk about is how to identify your genius if you don’t already know it, and then we are going to talk about the danger of knowing your genius. We are then going to talk about changing your mindset. Finally, in the end, we will talk about making a commitment to embracing that genius.
Let’s talk about identifying your genius. Your genius is something that you do better than other people. One of the fastest ways to identify your genius is when you notice it. You don’t know why you do something well. You just do it well. For instance, let’s say you are looking at a set of plans, and because of the way that your mind works, you immediately see issues and opportunities in that set of plans that another person who might have a lot of experience in construction and some technical skill doesn’t necessarily see because of the way that your mind works.
Think about that for a moment. What do you see that others don’t see? What insights do you have that others don’t? What tasks do you perform that provide value to your business that sometimes don’t feel like work? Where is your intuition sharpened to such an extent that without even knowing why you are doing things very well and performing at a high level?
Another way for you to notice or identify your genius is for other people to notice you doing it well and comment on it regularly. For instance, they say things like, “I’m glad you are doing that and not me.” Going back to my client, I can tell you the PM was struggling to build a relationship with a crusty dude who had a project they were bidding on. He was super happy that my client was in the room because my client has the genius of building relationships with people.
One of the ways that you can think about this idea of genius is by using this phrase, “Unlike others in my field, I,” and then fill in the blank. Unlike others, what is it that you do that others don’t? You have got to be able to identify that genius. Remember, your genius is something that adds value to both the top and the bottom line of your business. Whether it be in terms of the way you work with people, your understanding of processes, your understanding of how to build a project profitably, or whatever the case is, you have got to be able to identify that genius.
Your genius is something that adds value to both the top and the bottom line of your business. Click To TweetThe second thing we want to talk about is the danger of knowing your genius or the danger of identifying that genius. This is interesting because let’s say you have come up through the trades and you are used to having your belt on. You are used to doing hard work, physical manual labor where you can see that, “I accomplished X. I did this amount of work. I laid this amount of tile. I was able to frame this square footage.”
Whatever the case is, you can see what you are doing and there’s a finished product at the end of the day that tells you and others that you did some work. That’s one of the dangers of your genius because some of us, the genius that we have isn’t directly related to what others call work and it doesn’t feel like work to you. As a result of that, you can sometimes feel guilty when you focus your time on your genius, even though that genius may add bottom-line profit to your business because it doesn’t feel like work.
That’s the danger of your genius. Because it doesn’t feel like work, you don’t dedicate enough time to it, but you know in your heart that that genius if you exercise it regularly, has a massive positive impact on your business. What do you need to do? You need to change your mindset. I have 5 children and we have 3 bathrooms in our house. I don’t clean toilets anymore. It’s not what I do. It’s not because I’m not willing to clean toilets. I can clean toilets just like anyone else, but I do not do it anymore. There are other people in my house who clean toilets and I don’t feel bad about that because there are many things that I do that they can’t do.
Division of labor is a wonderful thing, and if you are going to take your construction company to where it needs to go, a lot of that is going to depend on you being able to focus on your genius while other people take on the other important aspects of your business. Division of labor is a wonderful thing and it’s okay for you to say, “You don’t do what I do.” That’s not in any way saying that you don’t work, but the particular type of work that you do is different than what others do.
Here’s a little mindset that you need to have and it’s particularly true if what your genius is doesn’t feel like work. It’s true if others perceive it to not be working, and it’s this. Here’s the mindset that you need to adopt. What I’m doing now has a direct bottom-line influence on the success of our company. For instance, if your genius is business development and you are meeting with the right people who have the right projects in the right locations.
You are having a conversation with them and you are not sweating and you can build those relationships. At the end of a conversation, 2, 3, or however long it takes, you land a project. You may not have sweated 1 ounce of perspiration, but you have had a massive positive impact on the success of your company and the bottom line.
You need to embrace that mindset that when you are doing your genius, what you do has a direct bottom-line influence on the success of your company. Don’t be ashamed of it. Embrace it and commit to it. With that in mind, you have got to make a commitment, and here’s the commitment. Number one, you have got to get together with your partners. Sometimes what happens at a partnership level is there can be some tension.
“My genius is not your genius and what I do doesn’t look like work to you, and so you think that when I’m doing that, I’m not working.” That’s not the case. Get an agreement among the partners as to who’s going to do what. I have seen this in many construction companies. You get one guy and he’s the numbers guy. He thrives on spreadsheets and he understands and sees numbers in a way that other folks don’t.
Whereas another guy sees the plans in a way that another person doesn’t, or another person has the ability to develop those relationships. They have different abilities, they see that, they divide the labor and responsibility, and it works well. Get an agreement on what it is that each one of you does, unlike others in the business. With that agreement, make a commitment to spending time doing your genius and then communicating that out.
One very practical way for you to do this is simply to block out one day where all you are doing is your genius. Let’s say your genius is business development and Friday, that’s your business development day. I don’t care if you are going out golfing, if you are having lunch or breakfast, or if you are dropping by someone’s office and having a conversation. It may not seem like work to others, but what you are doing is having a bottom-line impact on your business. If you didn’t do that, then your business would suffer.
Block out that time, commit to spending time executing your genius, and then discipline yourself because I can guarantee you this one thing. If you understand what your genius is, you get agreement that you should be working on that genius from others in your company, and you block out the time to do it, immediately, there are going to be incursions into that time block.
People are going to be saying, “Can I get some time for this project issue over here?” when you know you should be face-to-face with a potential client having a conversation about a project opportunity. What do you have to say in that situation? You must say, “No. I am not going to spend time doing that. I can do it on Monday. I can do it on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, but Friday is the day that I spend time in front of clients and potential clients building relationships.”
Back to the crusty dude, the scared PM, and my client who is a genius at business development and building relationships. At the end of the meeting, they land a $1.5 million job. Now, I don’t know how big your company is. $1.5 million may not be a lot for you, but every little bit counts. On that $1.5 million job, they are going to make about $180,000 to the bottom line. Nice 12% profit at the end of the day.
Now, extrapolate that into the relationships that you have. Maybe you are bidding on a $15 million job or working on a $150 million job, and that 1 or 2 conversations with key decision makers that you are able to get into and bring your genius to the table in order to build those relationships and secure that work. Think about the massive impact it has on your business and all because you have identified your genius. You have changed your mindset and given yourself permission to embrace doing that genius, and you have everyone on the same page so that you can make a commitment in your calendar on a consistent basis to execute that genius.
Let me wrap it up here. Identify your genius, set aside time to do it, and don’t worry if it doesn’t feel like work. Hope you enjoyed this episode and just let me say this if you are the president of a construction company and you find yourself out of control a little bit in terms of the way you are spending your time.
You are saying to yourself, “I need to be more disciplined in executing my genius,” then perhaps you could benefit from an executive coaching relationship with someone like myself who’s an expert in construction and has spent decades working with contractors, helping them to build profitable companies. Reach out to me on my website ConstructionGenius.com/contact. Put your details in there and I will get in touch with you and we can have a chat about if or how I can help you with the executive coaching services that I provide to contractors. I hope you found this helpful.
