How Consultants or Coaches can Monetize Their Zone of Genius

If you’re a consultant or coach, there’s a question I really want you to sit with:

Is your business actually designed around what you’re best at, what you love doing, and what people truly want to pay you for?

Because those three things do not always naturally align on their own.

A lot of smart, capable professionals build businesses around what they can do instead of what they are uniquely designed to do. And eventually, that disconnect catches up with them. It can lead to burnout, confusion, overworking, or building a business that looks successful on paper but feels completely draining in practice.

That’s why I want to talk about one of my favorite topics in brand positioning and messaging strategy: best-at-strengths.

Not just how to identify them, but how to mine and monetize them in a way that helps you stand out in the consulting and coaching marketplace while creating more fulfillment, flow, and profitability in your business.

What Best-At-Strengths Actually Are

Before we talk about what best-at strengths are, let’s start with what they are not.

Your best-at strengths are not your knowledge base. That’s your expertise. They also are not your skills. Skills are things you use every day to get things done. And they are not simply the activities you can do well or competently.

Your best-at strengths are the things you do that both energize and fulfill you and create noticeable value for other people.

Marcus Buckingham defines strengths as activities you love doing, naturally develop, feel fulfilled doing, and that make you feel strong.

Gay Hendricks describes this as the “zone of genius,” which is different from the zones of competence or excellence. The zone of excellence is especially tricky because it includes things you can do very well but do not actually love, which often leads to burnout over time.

Personally, I think of best-at-strengths as your innate gifts and genius.

The root of the word “genius” means “a divine attendant spirit given at birth.” I really believe your authentic strengths are encoded into who you are. Your expertise may evolve throughout your life, but your deepest strengths tend to remain remarkably consistent. You simply find new ways to express them.

How to Know If Something Is Truly a Best-At Strength

Here’s the key distinction: you have to both love it and excel at it.

If you’re excellent at something but hate doing it, that is not your zone of genius.

If you love doing something but are not particularly strong at it, it may be more of a hobby than a monetizable strength.

A real best-at strength usually has a few characteristics:

• You are instinctively drawn to it

• You learn it relatively easily

• It fills your cup instead of draining you

• You feel strong while doing it

• Other people consistently recognize and value it

• It creates strong results over and over again

One of the reasons strengths are so difficult to identify is because they often feel natural to us. They are so integrated into who we are that we assume everybody can do them.

That is usually not true.

Why It’s So Hard to See Your Own Strengths

One of the biggest reasons we struggle to identify our best-at strengths is negativity bias.

We are trained to focus on weaknesses instead of strengths.

Think about school report cards. You could get all A’s and one B, and everybody focused on the B. In performance reviews, we obsess over “areas of opportunity.” Even our culture often centers around what is wrong with us instead of what is right with us.

Another reason is the pressure to conform.

Many of us came from organizations built around competency models and standardized expectations. We were rewarded for fitting in, not standing out. I remember when I first got to Disney, someone told me the best way to stand out in the culture was to fit in.

That creates a huge problem because over time, we can lose touch with our authentic strengths in favor of developing the strengths we think we are supposed to have.

Then there’s the curse of competence and excellence.

Just because you can do something does not mean you should build your business around it.

I learned this the hard way in my consulting career. I was excellent at the front-end strategic framing and organizational analysis work. But once projects moved deep into implementation and process-heavy management, my energy dropped significantly. I could still do the work, but it drained me.

That distinction matters.

Finally, there’s what I call the “nose to the windowpane syndrome,” or the “you can’t read the label from inside the jar” problem.

We are simply too close to ourselves to fully see our strengths clearly.

Why Taking Your Strengths Seriously Changes Everything

Your best clients are often hiring you for your strengths more than your expertise.

That realization completely changed how I viewed my own business.

When I interviewed a former Disney executive colleague named Brad, I asked him why executives hire consultants and coaches. I expected him to talk about my organizational development expertise.

Instead, he kept describing my ability to frame ideas, organize complexity, and help teams gain clarity.

That conversation changed everything for me because it helped me realize clients are often buying the unique way you think, process, frame, and solve problems.

Your strengths are what create differentiation.

At Disney, all of us internal OD consultants shared nearly identical methodologies, tools, and processes. What differentiated us was our strengths.

Luis was “the professor.”
Gina was “the rebel.”
Bill was “the pragmatist.”
I became “the model lady” because of my tendency to organize and frame ideas.

Same expertise. Different strengths. Different value.

That’s why I believe competition is largely an illusion. There is room for all of us because our strengths shape how we uniquely deliver our expertise.

How to Mine Your Zone of Genius

Before you begin identifying your strengths, you need to understand the difference between real gold and fool’s gold.

Real gold is something you love and excel at. It feels natural to you. You would probably do it for free. People compliment you on it constantly, and you tend to minimize those compliments because the strength feels so obvious to you.

Fool’s gold is something you’re good at but do not love, or something you love but are not naturally strong at.

Once you understand that distinction, start looking for patterns across four major data sources.

1. Your Native Way of Being

Think back to childhood and adolescence.

What activities naturally drew you in?
What made you lose track of time?
What did you master easily?
What did people praise you for?

2. Your Greatest Career Successes

Identify your top five to ten career successes and look for the activities behind those wins.

What role did you consistently play?
What parts energized you the most?
What contribution kept showing up repeatedly?

3. Your Best Recent Workdays

Pay attention to the moments where work feels effortless and energizing.

What activities create flow for you?
What do you instinctively volunteer for?
What work consistently gets recognized by others?

4. Your Patterns of Praise

This one is huge.

Pay attention to compliments you routinely dismiss.

People saying:

• “You’re so good at this”

• “How did you do that?”

• “Thank you so much for helping with this”

Those comments are often clues pointing directly toward your strengths.

The Throughline

The goal is to identify the red thread running through your entire life.

For me, one of those throughlines has always been framing and organizing ideas.

I did it as a child.
I did it in consulting.
I do it now through brand positioning and messaging strategy.

Your throughline may look different.

Maybe you naturally shift people’s perspectives.
Maybe you build consensus between conflicting groups.
Maybe you tell stories that make complex ideas emotionally resonate.
Maybe you instinctively solve problems, build systems, uncover patterns, or create clarity from chaos.

The point is not to copy someone else’s strengths.

The point is to recognize your own.

How to Monetize Your Best-At Strengths

Once you identify your strengths, the next step is building your consulting or coaching business around them intentionally.

That includes:

• Defining the type of partner you are to clients

• Clarifying your differentiators

• Designing offers that leverage your strengths instead of draining you

There are many ways to deliver consulting and coaching:

• One-on-one coaching

• Advisory

• Strategy

• Group programs

• Retreats

• Facilitation

• Productized services

• Done-for-you services

The important thing is choosing delivery models that align with your natural strengths.

The right business model is the one that sits at the intersection of your client’s needs and your deepest joy.

One of my favorite quotes captures this perfectly:

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
— Frederick Buechner

Monetizing Your Zone of Genius

Your best-at strengths are not just about happiness.

They are about impact.
Differentiation.
Flow.
Energy.
Profitability.
And building a business that actually feels aligned with who you are.

So start paying attention.

Pay attention to your best days at work.
Pay attention to the compliments you minimize.
Pay attention to the things that feel natural to you but transformative to others.

Because chances are, the very thing you overlook in yourself may be the exact thing your best clients are searching for.

Next Steps:

1. Pay attention – to your best days at work, to the compliments you below off
2. Take seriously what you uncover
3. And of course, work with me to help you package your strengths, along with your expertise and passion into a brand strategy that positions you for the clients and opportunities you’re ready for. Book a call and let’s chat.