Monetize Your Arranger Strength to Realize Your Money Potential

Do you love managing all the variables, aligning and realigning the parts until it all comes together?  Is finding the simplest, most efficient way to get things done something you strive for?  Do you keep many things in your head at once? Are you flexible and willing to shelve well-laid plans in favor of some brand-new configuration that has just occurred to you? Can you not imagine behaving in any other way? If you answered yes to these questions, then you are an Arranger®.

In whatever you are doing, you are an example of effective flexibility. Whether you are changing plans last minute because something you think is better popped up or considering the right combination of people and resources to accomplish a new project. From the routine to the intricate, you are always flexible enough to find the perfect configuration.

Guidebook author and travel TV host Rick Steves is an Arranger. An Arranger is like the conductor of a symphony; you manage and organize all of the people, resources, and other variables in a project. You are flexible and make great multi-taskers. Steves, for instance, is America’s most respected authority on European travel. He took his first trip to Europe in 1969, and in 1976 he started his business, Rick Steves’ Europe, which has grown from a one-man operation to a company with a staff of 100 full-time, well-traveled employees at his headquarters in Washington State. In 2011, his business was worth nearly $50 million in revenue.

Arrangers can look at a complex situation like travel, a complex problem, or a complex team and arrange it into the perfect configuration. They like to go big. Steves, for instance, has produced more than 50 guidebooks on European travel, as well as America’s most popular travel series on public television, a weekly hour-long national public radio show, a weekly syndicated column, and a successful European tour program.

For entrepreneurs, coaches, speakers, attorneys, technology specialists, and other solopreneurs, going big could be as simple as setting big financial goals or doubling or tripling previous goals. Why not? If you are an Arranger, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Arrangers need a clear vision, and there’s nothing better than an income goal expressed as a single number. Don’t waffle. Choose a number and get to work.

Arrangers can sometimes struggle with communicating why you have chosen a particular goal, process, or configuration of people. If this is the case, partner with someone who can help communicate ideas and explain decisions.  In addition to clear goals, Arrangers thrive with deadlines and need them to stay on track. Deadlines assure details will not overwhelm you. That said, Arrangers are not fans of routine—you like the excitement of complex projects, so you often overlook or just skip activities that bore you.

Unlike Achievers, who simply outwork the competition, Arranger’s special talent is keeping all of the balls in the air. Arrangers are happiest when part of a team. You offer a natural sense of organization that can keep a group or project moving toward its goal. You love change and often play an integral role when massive change is in the works.

So how do you turn a talent for juggling tasks into income? First, develop a strategy for getting things done. Say you want to attract one new large client this quarter. List a dozen ways to locate, contact, and make your pitch to potential customers, then narrow your strategy to just one or two approaches. Here’s the hard part: Once you have the strategy, stick to the strategy. Rather than changing strategies, challenge yourself to find ways to make even the most successful strategy better. If the strategy doesn’t work, and you get pushback from colleagues or fellow entrepreneurs, encouraging you to try another approach, communicate that your natural flexibility doesn’t mean your priorities and strategy are constantly changing. Your priorities remain the same, but you are simply looking for better ways to implement them.

For some Arrangers, selling is awkward because the process is often not logical. In fact, that first conversation with a new coaching prospect can be downright emotional, and there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to put emotions into a nice straight line and expecting all the fuzzy sensations to stay in place.

What big, clear goal will you set?  How will you develop a strategy to scale your business? What people, systems, and connections will you need to monetize your Arranger?

Let’s have a conversation about how to monetize your Arranger. Remember you can schedule your Ask Brent Anything call. Let’s talk about strengths.

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Monetize Your Achiever Strength to Realize Your Money Potential

Do you have a constant need for achievement? Do you feel as if every day starts at zero? At the end of every day, if you don’t achieve something tangible, you likely feel unfulfilled?  And by “every day” you mean every single day — workdays, weekends, vacations.  If you answered yes to these questions, then you are an Achiever®.

Achievers like you are driven by the thrill of achievement. When you wake up in the morning, and typically early risers, you start at zero and try to accrue as many points throughout the day as you can. You have an inherent restlessness that pushes you to complete anything you put your hands on.

Mark Cuban is an American businessman and investor with a net worth in 2019 of 4.1 billion. He is the owner of the National Basketball Association (NBA)’s Dallas Mavericks, co-owner of 2929 Entertainment and chairman of AXS TV. He is also one of the main “shark” investors on the ABC reality television series, Shark Tank.  Mark Cuban is a good example of an Achiever. Now before you start telling me you can’t be a Mark Cuban, let’s look at what he has done and how.  Then you can use some of that information to create your action plan to live richer your way.

Nowadays, On Shark Tank, Cuban meets countless aspiring entrepreneurs who think they have the next great idea. Most don’t. So what separates the good entrepreneurs from the bad? According to Cuban, it’s hard work — that and being better than everyone else in your industry.

Cuban puts it another way. “Busting your ass. It’s not about money or connections. It’s the willingness to outwork and out learn everyone when it comes to your business. And if it fails, you learn from what happened and do a better job next time. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once, and everyone will describe you as an overnight success.”

Cuban’s Achiever strength allows him to outwork his competition, and in many ways, this simple, natural talent is enough to create and sustain one business after another.

Shortly after college, Cuban lived in a three-bedroom apartment with five other guys, slept on the floor, and ate cheap chicken dinners as he worked on launching a hardware and software integration company called MicroSolutions. “It allowed me to stay focused on turning MicroSolutions into a $30 million business,” said Cuban.

If you’re an Achiever, you like to be busy. You like to have projects. Every day is about climbing a mountain and getting to the next great peak. The key then is to use your stamina in ways that produce tangible financial gains.

As for Cuban, what’s the key to success? Applying his Achiever to learning.

“I was relentless in learning new tech as it came out. If it had anything to do with the PC or networking industry, I was on top of it. I bought the manuals. I read every book and magazine. Then I got involved with industry conferences and put myself out there.”

Not surprisingly, Achievers love certifications. You love to know that you have finished something or achieved something, and as soon as you finish one thing, you are on to the next. You love new initiatives, new projects. Achievers want to finish what they start. You are fueled by success.

Creating Your Own Action plan!

o    Find a job that honors your desire to work hard and encourages you to do so.  One where you measure your own productivity.  This is the place that you will feel alive and thrive in your Achiever strength.

o    Take advantage of your self-motivation by setting challenging goals. Every time you finish a project, set a more ambitious goal for the next project.

o    Even if your boss doesn’t focus on metrics, get clear on timelines and goals so that you can measure and celebrate your progress toward success.

o    Since you enjoy completion, break the milestones and activities into smaller steps so that you can relish the feeling of accomplishment more often.

o    Use your energy as efficiently as possible. To do this, partner with someone with strong Discipline or Focus talents.

o    Partner up with other hard workers. Create accountability agreements that feed your desire to push yourself. Share your goals with them so they can help you get more done.

o    Give yourself “credit” in your personal tally system for using your Achiever talent with friends and family. That will keep you from over-indexing on the workaholic scale.

o    When it comes to financial outcomes, limit your commitments to tasks aligned with your highest priorities. For example, focus on one outcome at a time: Profitability, gaining new customers, or disrupting an existing market.

How effectively are you monetizing your Achiever strength?  Are you ready to brainstorm on how you could monetize your Achiever strength?  Are you ready to design your action plan ?  Let’s have a conversation in the comment section below.

Not sure where your money making possibilities are and need some conversation around that.  Remember you can schedule your Ask Brent Anything call. Let’s talk strengths.

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Live Richer – Monetize Your Strengths

Do you sometimes feel like you’re wasting your potential? And do you also feel unsure about how you can even reach your full potential, even financially? If you do, you’re like a lot of us who want to live our best life.

Here’s the secret to living your best life – there is no secret.

What you do need is a willingness to be open to a new level of self-awareness and apply your unique talents. Use them every day in your relationships at work and everywhere else.  Thomas Edison said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

There is a great deal of training on strengths right now and how to integrate your top 5 into your personal and professional life.  However let’s look at them a different way; let’s look at how to aim and turn your natural talents into strengths to grow your money potential.

It is possible to aim your strengths and get paid well for them? I’ve done it and over the last 10+ years I’ve helped other entrepreneurs and coaches double and even triple their income.  I thrive on coaching people just like you to grow stronger, work smarter, and live richer with your strengths.  You too can use your strengths to do the work that you love and get paid well for it.

I received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and a Masters of Behavioral Science. During this time I married my college sweetheart, and now it’s been 35 adventurous years. We launched two adult children and have our 1st grandchild. In 1993, I started a private counseling practice which multiplied to 5 office locations, 13 counselors and more clients than I could handle.  However, I was ready for a significant career breakthrough.

I was studying positive psychology, and a business coach introduced me to StrengthsFinder®. Just reading my customized report ignited a transformation in my personal development, my career, and my purpose. Over the next several years I built a niche as a strengths based coaching business.

Are you ready to learn how you can use these unique talents to make a difference in your life? Taking the Gallup CliftonStrengths® was my first step and yours too. (If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to take the CliftonStrengths® assessment. You can pop over to my website and purchase your assessment code at  https://brentobannon.com/cliftonstrengths).

Over the next few months let’s take an in-depth look at each of the 34 strengths and discuss how you can put them to work for you.  If you’re an entrepreneur – discover how can you use them to take your business to the next level.  As a coach – how can you help your clients refine their talents to live their best life and fulfill their money potential? or a company employee – how can you use your strengths in your daily job to show yourself as an exceptional employee and raise your pay grade? I invite you to come on this strengths journey with me on monetizing all 34 strengths.  Let’s focus on how you can use those talents to live richer.  By diving into each of the 34 themes, you will gain greater self-awareness so you can be more confident as you move forward with an eye toward how you can naturally do your best every day and monetize your unique set of talents.

As I said, there is a lot of conversation around strengths today but not a enough conversation around monetizing those strengths.  Join me in this blog series have on how to make money and monetize all 34 talent themes.  And here’s the big takeaway. The fastest and easiest way to monetize your strengths is by leveraging who you are.

Are you ready to live richer?  Sign Up for the Monetize Your Strengths blog series at https://pages.convertkit.com/47fb6f9d84/1ef2534410

How are you currently monetizing your strengths?  Let’s have a conversation in the comments section below.

 

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Gallup Q12 – Q2: I Have the Materials and Equipment I Need to do my Work Right.

Have you ever been tasked to do a job and not given the tools you needed to do the job properly?  Have you ever been the manager that had to assign an employee to do a job where you couldn’t provide the tools they needed?

The second question that the Gallup Q12 Employee Engagement Survey asks is – “I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.”  There are very few things more frustrating than wanting to do the best job you can, but you don’t have the right equipment to do so.  As valuable as hardware and software are to have the physical tools, systems, and processes necessary to do the work often the human component can get overlooked as long as there is someone in the seat to do a job.

In their book, First Break All the Rules: What the Greatest Managers Do Differently, 1999 Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, sought to answer the following questions:

  • “What lies at the heart of this great workplace?”
  • “Which elements will attract only talented employees and keep them, and which elements are appealing to every employee, the best, and the rest?”

They were looking for answers to recruit, retain, and develop the best employees. To help them find the answers they went to the Gallup Organization’s research into the workplace.  The authors believed that today it is no longer enough to look at the monetary profit and loss of a company; companies develop their real value from its human capital.

As important as recruiting, retaining, and developing the best talent is to an organization they often stop after this initial hire.  When an organization stops at this point after hiring the employee and develops the wrong talent, it can be detrimental and costly to organizations not to mention what it does to the engagement level of the employee.

Carol was hired to be the database administrator for the learning management system at her company over ten years ago.  Working with data was where she shined.  The analysis of data and using it to tell a story was something she loved to do.  When it was decided that a new learning management system was needed they didn’t purchase a third party system, they had someone in house build the system instead of paying the price of a third party system.

About a year after creating the system the designer took a job on the other side of the country. The decision was made to keep him on a maintenance contract to take of any coding issues or updates that the system needed.  Shortly after the designers left, the system was moved to another department under a new leadership team.  The new leadership team decided they did not want to pay for the maintenance contract with the designer.

The lack of a maintenance contract caused problems with the system when the operating system and security upgrades caused issues with the code that was already written.  To add to the issue, the manager that she was assigned to work with did not think work on the system was a good use of resources.

Without a coder for the system to keep up with IT changes and a non-supportive manager who wanted her doing everything except what she was hired to do; her job that she one time loved had turned into a job she didn’t know how to do and didn’t want to do.  And no one noticed or did they just not care?

There are four stages of engagement that everyone goes through on their way to achieve total engagement in their workplace.  Every question on the Gallup Q12 also represents a point within the four stages of hierarchy—from primary needs and individual contributions to the desire to make improvements and apply new ideas. The second question that the Gallup Q12 Employee Engagement Survey– “I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work” right falls into the primary stage.   If no one is paying attention to the primary needs of their employees and emotional impact this is having on someone’s workplace environment, how can it be expected that problems will be uncovered and corrected when they arise?  How can companies expect engaged, productive employees when the company is not meeting the primary of the employee?

Getting your employees what they need to do their work is vital in demonstrating to employees that they are important and their work is valued. By showing that the company is supporting them in what they are asked to do creates a connection between the company and the employee. This connection is what creates an engaged employee.  The importance of keeping your employees emotionally engaged in your organization should be a constant on a company’s horizon.  Great managers keep this awareness by helping employees see how their requests for materials and equipment connect to important outcomes.

Where do you think the answer lies?  Is it the employee’s responsibility to make sure their primary needs at work are met?  How can an employer keep the conversation open with current workers to make their needs are met?  Please share your experiences or thoughts below .

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