#4 Focus On What You Do Best

Focusing on what you do best, aligning your passion and your values with your goals, and working authentically results in a business that will continue to be inspiring for you and alluring to your clients.  By doing so, you exude natural positive energy and exhibit greater confidence--compelling attributes that will have clients coming back for more. Who doesn't want to be around someone with great energy and great self-confidence?

Three Questions to Clarity

Answering three important questions and finding the common thread among them will result in a business you love and will keep you naturally focused. It will highlight your uniqueness and help set you apart as an expert enabling you to charge more for your product or service.
 

What Do I Do Best?

Whether you've been in business for a few years, or are just starting out, one key to success is to keep doing and developing what you are already good at, what you have a natural aptitude for. Just like the musician who focuses her practice on a specific instrument each day, you will want to focus your practice on refining your specific skill or product.  

If you're not quite sure what you do best, here are some questions that will help you gain clarity:

1. What skills do I repeatedly use?
2. What environments do I most enjoy being in?
3. What tasks or projects give me the most satisfaction?
4. What skills do people often compliment me on?
5. What am I repeatedly asked to do because I'm so good at it?

The next step is to combine what you do best to create your unique business.  Illumin client, Marie-Claude Stockl, has created a business based on skills as a world renowned communications expert and avid equestrian.  Her company, The Horse Institute, offers corporate communication programs that have profound results using horses as the medium.

What Do I Love Doing?

Whether you've been in business for a couple years, or are just starting out, the key to having a successful business is to base it upon what you love doing-- naturally.  Not doing so results in the feeling of "pushing uphill," loss of inspiration, motivation and creativity.

Identify three activities that give you the most joy and fulfillment.  Activities where you become oblivious to time, engrossed in the moment, and are in a true state of flow.  Maybe its dancing, reading, working in your garden, traveling, meeting new people, photography, writing or volunteering.

Take Janera Soerel of JANERA.com.  This unique and brilliant business targeting global nomads marries her three loves: travel, hosting fabulous events, and being around interesting people.

What Are My Gifts?

What else about you makes you so uniquely you? What characteristics would your co-workers, spouse, friends or family say is "so you."  What comes naturally and intuitively to you? Perhaps you're great with children, you're always ready to seize an opportunity, you're an adventurer, or your highly intuitive.
 
Illumin Strategic Partner, Kathy Davison, PhD, founder of Tonic Capital leverages amazing intuition and an ability to analyze situations quickly to help businesses and their leaders release blockages.
 
What are your top three gifts?

Hopefully, by answering these questions you'll be able to see the amazing possibilities for a business that is uniquely yours.