Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Episode 944: Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses, with Darren Virassammy

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Identify your strengths and weaknesses for overall improvement. Learn from Darren Virassammy on how to identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Darren Virassammy is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of 34 Strong, a team that believes everyone deserves a great place to work and that any workplace can be great. He believes that once you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, your organization can reach even greater heights. 

A leading expert in the global employee engagement community, the 34 Strong team leverages the Strengths-Based approach to human development to create massive shifts within organizations, both culturally and on the bottom line. He and his team have created sustainable change in small microbusinesses, all the way up to large organizational teams at the FDA, Bank of America, American Licorice, and The California Department of Public Health. 

Recently, Darren has served as keynote for Hitachi Global Women’s Conference, The Rotary World Peace Conference, The Professional Grounds Management Society, and Author Mike Michalowicz Profit Con (where he also closed down the conference by performing a solo bass guitar piece he composed titled Metamorphosis as a tribute to the journey of entrepreneurs) Darren’s 34 Strong Business partner, Brandon Miller is the co-author (with his wife Analyn Miller) of a Strengths-Based Parenting book titled: Play to Their Strengths due out in July of 2019.

identify-your-strengths-and-weaknesses

What you will learn from this episode about identify your strengths and weaknesses:

  • How a transformational moment with his young daughter awoke Darren to his own potential and forced him to reevaluate his life and goals
  • Why Darren’s personal experiences feeling simultaneously engaged and disengaged between two different jobs helped to inform his work today
  • Why Darren chose to name his company 34 Strong after being inspired by Gallup’s Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0
  • Why business owners too often minimize or devalue the power of their own strengths, and why leaning into your top strengths is the key to success
  • How learning to identify your strengths and weaknesses can make yourself even more worthy as a leader
  • Why as much as 70% of an employee’s level of engagement or disengagement is tied to their manager
  • Why 82% of promotions into management roles are based on technical skills and tenure but neglect the importance of talent and training
  • Why playing to your strengths and managing around your weaknesses can help improve engagement across your organization
  • How Darren’s “Grind, Greatness, Genius” cycle can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and determine where to focus your time
  • What key lesson Darren learned from a Grammy award-winning bass musician mentor that can be applied to daily habits within your business
  • Why joining a mastermind group can be a powerful resource to give you a fresh perspective on your business

Resources:

Additional Resources:

 

 

Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success and identify your strengths and weaknesses from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I am Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built, and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team, well, we’ve been doing the same thing. We’ve been building and scaling and really focusing on our free resources section or fact.

 

We’ve turned it into the resources library. So if you’ve been listening to the show for a while now, you know that back in early 2019, we made the commitment that we’re going to double down in many areas of our business. And one of those was, how were we going to be even more helpful throughout 2019 to you Onward Nation?

 

And, well, we’ve extended that commitment into 2020. And so we’ve continued to build out the resources library at PredictiveROI.com. So you can download free practical and tactical guides for everything from how to create your ideal client avatar, how to land your dream clients, and other success strategies that we’ve compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guests.

 

Just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources and whatever you request. Of course it’s always free and we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Darren Virassammy’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s guest, Darren Virassammy. Let me share some additional context because this is going to be one of those conversations Onward Nation that, well, as all of our guest interviews are, that our strive or our goal is to always be helpful and create impact so that you can walk away with several golden nuggets and be able to apply those into your business right away.

 

And that’s exactly what Darren is bringing here. So let’s go through a couple of kinds of framing in some context. Darren is the co-founder and CEO of 34 strong. And that’s the team that believes everyone deserves a great place to work and that any workplace can be great, which is a pretty bold statement. And after having spent some time with Darren, you’ll hear that you totally back set up.

 

The 34 strong team leverages the strength based approach to human development to create massive shifts within organizations, both culturally and on the bottom line. This all started from. As you’ll hear in our conversation, it all started back in 2012. At that moment, he had taken a family vacation. And it can be a simple thing. As you know, your daughter or son laughing and giving you great context as to things that you need to adjust.

 

And so whether that is are we disengaged at work? Is that job actually costing us opportunity? Well, it was at that moment back in 2012, the Darren decided, you know what? I can make a difference. I’m going to do something different. And it was through that moment that 34 strong was launched. And so we’re going to talk about all of the things that we can do better within our organization to improve our culture, to improve our workplace, to make sure that greatness actually flows through every piece of it so that we can actually improve the bottom line and make these massive shifts.

 

The 34 strong believes so strongly. And so Darren and I first connected because of an introduction from our two time Onward Nation alum Mike Micklethwait. So, Mike, if you’re listening, thank you very much, my friend. And so I am so very excited to have this conversation in front of you Onward Nation. So without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Darren.

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Darren’s Career Journey

 

Thank you so much, Stephen. What an honor it is to be here Onward Nation. And thanks again to Mike for making that connection for us. Well, it’s an honor to have you here, sir, because we’re going to talk about something that is so very important. And we all see the, you know, the Gallup study. I think they do it every year about the very high percentage of teammates within a company that are not only disengaged, but actively disengaged.

 

And I know that that is something that just is near and dear to your heart. But what is it like? How do we fix that? So before we dive into that conversation, though, actually take us behind the curtain. Give us some additional context about your past and journey. And then we’ll dive in with the questions. Yeah, absolutely.

 

So it’s interesting, with the whole disengagement and engagement piece, you referenced the moment with my daughter, which I’ll share in just a moment. I was living with Steve, in the space of being in one organization where I had moved into being very disengaged, and at the same time I was working at another organization where I was highly engaged.

 

So I had this insane juxtaposition going on in my own life. I had actually gotten to a point where I had become quite good at something that I didn’t really love. I was in commercial construction. I was a senior project manager at a commercial construction company, and my commute to that office was 100 miles one way. So, the moment came for me in 2012.

 

I was seated on the lanai and on the Big Island of Hawaii. My daughter was four and a half months old and it was the first time my wife, my daughter, and I had the chance to take a trip together. And while she’s seated in my lap, I’m eating a papaya. We had just come in from a morning walk, just me and her and I had just been taking her in.

 

I had realized I was finally getting an opportunity after four and a half months to actually be present with her and to take her all in. And that particular morning, Steve, she was sitting in my lap and I’m having a papaya. And the next thing I know, she looks up and she laughs out loud at me. And that was one of the most amazing and terrifying moments in my life.

 

It was amazing because I saw in little Chiara a little person that had all this potential. I looked at her and I saw nothing but potential. Somebody that would walk, talk, run, play soccer, do karate, have spelling tests, have attitude. Right? All these amazing things that we could look forward to as parents. But then I had to look in those eyes and say, hey, Darren, what happened to your potential?

 

And it took me on this quick tour through both sides of the experiences I was having in the workplace again, leaving early, coming home late, barely getting to take in my daughter and my wife who are two of the most important people in my life, and I’m here on this trip with. But I wasn’t living a life that was making that a reality.

 

And at the same time, I was teaching at a college up here in the Sacramento area where I live, and I was highly engaged. I was seeing my students tap into their potential, become more of who they were. So I came back from that trip, and before I knew it, the college had an opportunity to invite me on board to take on more courses.

 

And I was able to migrate out of that other job that I had had. And go on the path of really looking for making an impact in the workplace world, because I knew how tormented it could be. It’s not just the number that Gallup comes up with. Disengage judgment is a feeling, and it carries us, you know, into places that aren’t very good on a personal level and on the home front, engagement at the same time is something that is a feeling, and we can see it in our work and it shows up at home.

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Culture by Intention or Accident

 

So within a short period of that time, I met my business partner, who’s now the coauthor of the book Play to Their Strengths, Brandon Miller. And we both had this vision of a world that, you know, workplaces can be great and that people can have great experiences at work. They can show up, they can be engaged, but it takes work on that culture.

 

We can either have culture by intention or culture by accident, and they both take a lot of work. But that work is the difference between energy and exhaustion. Wow. Okay, so, as I’m filling out my journal here, if you’re sharing this with us. The question that you asked yourself, I mean, it’s really profound what happened to your potential.

 

Like to ask yourself that question? Wow. It’s really profound, Darren. It’s a gift that a four and a half month old child gave me. And, that same child continues to give me lots of lessons both of my kids do. But it does get us asking, what are we missing and what are the ways? Now, I look at my kids as, hey, what are the things that they’re doing that maybe I should be doing a little bit more of as an adult because we lose our way.

 

We put these boxes around ourselves that end up limiting us more than opening us up. And sometimes they can have those reveals because they haven’t had those boxes put around them yet. And I’m just thankful for that moment. It transformed the lens through which I was looking at the world. So why? Why did you decide on the name 34 Strong? Cool name. 

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: How 34 Strong Came To Be

 

Like on the surface I’m like, okay, I bet there’s a story there. So why is the name 34 strong for the company? There is a story. So we use the Cliftonstrengths tool or the Strengthsfinder 2.0. Many people know it is that name, through the Gallup organization, when we started the company, that was a tool we were heavily utilizing and providing that as an assessment to measure people’s natural talents.

 

When Doctor Darnell Clifton, who is really the father of the whole strengths based approach to human development and that whole whole movement, when he started his research decades ago, he asked the question, what will happen when we focus on what’s right with people instead of fixating on what’s wrong with them? He launched into a decade of research, studied millions of people to identify again what talent isn’t.

 

Talent he defined as are natural patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that could be productively applied. As he went through this cycle, Steve, he ended up identifying and figuring out there were these 34 buckets or these 34 themes of talent that naturally exist in a ranked order for all people. But all of these talents, all of these strengths are created equal.

 

There’s not oh, I have the good ones. You have the bad ones. They’re very, very exclusive combinations that exist. You know, the likelihood of somebody having their themes in the same order as you is one in billions. Out of those 34. So it’s, it’s really, the name came from the fact that 34 strong is the fact that all of these strengths are all strong.

 

We’ve just got to take the time to invest in utilizing them, in developing them and cultivating them. Okay. So I want to tease something out there to make, well, one to make sure that I heard that correctly. So there’s 34, but there’s many different combinations. And I think I may have heard you say like 1 in 1,000,000,000 or something like that or whatever the number was.

 

But really what that says is like oftentimes I think that whether we’re a business owner or somebody working at a business, whatever we think, you know what? What do I have to offer that is so unique when the reality is, is your composition of these 34 strengths? And in the varying degrees of them, it actually is very unique.

 

Right? Completely. That’s exactly what it is like, the actual numbers, the likelihood of somebody having just their top ten in the same order as somebody else is 1 in 6,000,000,000 holy bananas, 1 in 6,000,000,000, 1 in 6,000,000,000. And our top ten are really our dominant areas of talent. And when we get down to like 25 through 34, that’s not necessarily our zone of genius.

 

So shall we say, you know, it’s those top ones that are really the areas that if we invest in those, we can do a lot. And to that point of what you just made, a lot of times as business owners, it’s easy for us to minimize the power of our strength. You know why? Because it comes easy to us.

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Finding Your Zone of Genius

 

So we undervalue how useful that is to so many others. And we’ll say, oh, that’s easy. That’s a piece of cake. Anybody can do that. When you catch yourself making statements like that, when we catch ourselves making statements like that, that’s a chance to pause and say, well, if it’s that easy for me, maybe that’s actually a tell all of my talents because it brings me energy, it creates impact in others.

 

And maybe that’s my zone of genius. Yeah. You know, I’ve heard others say that before, too. And I agree with you. So hearing you say that too is such a great reminder because you’re right, it is easy to discount something this easy. We just make the assumption that everybody can do it. And therefore let’s say that’s a service offering.

 

We devalue it. We don’t charge enough for it. We take it for granted and then all of a sudden we’ve completely commoditized our area of genius, right? Completely, completely. That’s a huge pitfall that so many business owners actually get into. And even in the process of starting a business, when we’re coming out of the gate, we evaluate right out of the gate.

 

And that’s not a pathway in the long term to getting to the levels of impact that we can envision, that we can dream as entrepreneurs. Okay. So I know that this next question is like a really big one. You’re probably going to say, what in the world? Why would you ask me such a big question?

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: The Biggest Mistakes

 

So I know we’re going to see if I love it. I know that we’re going to need to like, slice this apart and all of that. But if we keep zeroing in on the 34, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see organizations making that are then impacting culture? Again, I know that’s a big question, and I know we’re probably going to need to slice and dice it and kind of peel it in a couple of different ways.

 

But I’m really, really interested because you’re on the front lines, your team is on the front lines and would love to get your expert, you know, lens, if you will, on what has worked in the challenges that you’re seeing. Yeah, I’ll take that hat on. So the biggest mistake is there’s four areas, four teams, if you will, that are the hallmark of organizations that create and sustain best managers.

 

The reason we got to start with the manager piece is that up to at least 70% of an employee’s engagement is tied directly to their manager. People don’t quit. Bad organization Steve and Onward Nation, they quit. What? Bad bosses, right? Maybe you’ve been there. I know for sure I have been there. So here’s the biggest mistake that’s made.

 

We promote people into managerial roles strictly based on technical talent and tenure. There’s a Gallup study that was out there that actually identified roughly 82% of promotions to that supervisory role take place as a result of just those two pieces alone. Those are important. I’m not going to minimize the importance of those. What gets missed, however, is the next two teams talent and training, talent being what are their managerial talents?

 

Do they have talents in being able to individualize their approach to each of their team members that they’re connecting with, and understanding that the way that you set expectations for each of the team members that you manage, there’s going to be little variances that you have to make. There’s going to be different needs that they have, and it’s not a one size fits all approach.

 

The other piece is training. The managers are oftentimes trained in a way that’s kind of a kitchen sink approach. Hey, we’ll train them on sales. We’ll train them on communication. We’ll train them on conflict resolution. These are important pieces of the puzzle. But how do you train them on how to engage employees? How do you figure out how to best set expectations for each person?

 

How do you figure out how they like recognition? How do you figure out the nuggets of if they’re even clear on having the right materials and equipment to do their job? Well, that’s a whole series of dialog that also comes into play towards their strengths. So that’s the biggest issue. And the solution that organizations can go towards is really spending time digging into identifying what are the talents that are needed to be successful in managing, and what’s the training that we can go for to really make that a reality?

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: The Ripple Effect

 

Okay, so let me let me go back through that there because I think I have a hole in my notes here. Okay. So when you talked about the four teams, and where they’re looking to create the best, the best managers, so they’re being promoted based on, I think I heard you say technical skills.

 

Yeah. As opposed to they’re missing out on the talent and training. So the fourth TI is the first TI technical skills. Technical and tenure. Those are the two TS technical and tenure. So those are the two with the combination of those two that accounts for 82% of the promotions. And to those managerial pieces, there does need to be some technical knowledge.

 

There does need to be some tenure, because that helps to establish credibility. Our whole thought process is the fact that that’s the stuff that’s naturally happening already in the organizations. But we want a call to arms along the lines of let’s rise and let’s make sure that we can lock arms and be connected to having best bosses, best managers, and making that part of our culture.

 

Let’s lock arms and be a part of that and make that a reality. So then let me reverse that. Then if 82% are ascending in the organization being promoted because of technical skills and tenure, does that mean that only that only eight. Well, I guess you can correct me here because I know I’m not going to say this, right?

 

18% of promotions or 18% of organizations are making those decisions based on talent training. What’s the right way to phrase that? What that’s leading to is the fact that 82% is being promoted based on technical and tenure. What that is equating to in the United States is we have about 35% of our managers are engaged, 35% of our managers are engaged in their workforce.

 

And the other ripple effect of that is about 75% of involuntary, I’m sorry, voluntary resignations are directly tied to the manager. So that’s more of the important story of what the ripple is. So that 82% that’s what it’s leading to. Managers are disengaging in their roles because they’re actually not feeling like I’m even trained to be equipped for success in my role.

 

So I’ll just go do the work as opposed to managing engaging my people and growing this. And that’s leaving a lot on the table in the way of productivity, in the way of turnover, massive costs to businesses all across the globe. Wow. Okay. So I definitely recognize that this is a massive problem. I certainly don’t have the depth of expertise in this area.

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Play Your Strengths and Manage Your Weaknesses

 

As you do, but with that said, I’m also not naive enough to know that there’s like some silver bullet that’s going to fix all of this. So take us through some of the things that you have seen, worked on. Well, I know that these are going to need to be baby steps because this is like a big thing.

 

But what are some of the things from your perspective, again, your lens of being an expert in this space that you have seen organizations do and start to make progress? Well, number one, that’s a really, really important piece there. It’s the start. And being able to make those particular connections there, and we’ve got to start somewhere, play to your strengths and manage around your weaknesses.

 

That is such a huge part of the puzzle. It’s so critical for organizations to come to a place where they’re really trying to identify what’s right with people, catch people doing the things that they’re doing right. And that’s a great place for us to start. We actually have an exercise that I was going to share later with your listeners for Onward Nation.

 

And this works, no matter how large of an organization, no matter how small of an organization, or if you’re a solopreneur or if you’re an army of one, it’s critical to take inventory of this. We have a whole process here, Steve. It’s called grind greatness, genius. And the grind greatness genius cycle helps us and walks us through the process of identifying what are our own grind zones.

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: The Grind, The Greatness, and The Genius

 

What are the things that you just think about having to do, and it gives you pits in your stomach? You need to go see a doctor, right? We all have things just, you know, for some of us, right. We’ve got some entrepreneurs who are great. They’ve got these brilliant ideas. And then you tell them, well, you know, you’ve got to really think about the financial pieces of this.

 

I think, you know, a thing or two about that right in your work that you do. You bet they get pits in their stomach. Right. That might be your grind zone. But we can’t ignore these things as key functions. So we got to look in that mirror. The greatness owns. These are the things that we do well that we’re strong at, that we feel great at, that we feel really good at, and we can make an impact with it.

 

We’ve gotten really strong. The genius zones, though, however, those are the things that when we do them, few can even shine a candle to us. These are oftentimes the things that we’re not even aware of that we do well. These are the things that I would encourage your listeners, if they go through the process of identifying their grind, their greatness, and their genius sounds, to really think about that, you might even undervalue you might even say, that’s not a big deal.

 

Anybody could do that. Or you get frustrated if somebody doesn’t seem to be able to do that. Well, those are usually tells of your genius. If you can take inventory of those things and get an idea of how much time you actually spend in those different areas, that can start moving the needle towards reframing what you’re doing and work how you’re doing in work.

 

And if you have teams opening up the conversation of, oh, maybe we can complement, maybe we can create some partnerships here on the team to better accomplish some of these things that we’re trying to do. That’s an exercise just through us. They can be downloaded on our website at 34strong.com. That’s going to provide that later but came up now.

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: It Starts with The Conversation

 

Well it sounds like perfect timing in the grind, the greatness and the genius. And when you mentioned open up the conversation really that’s what it is isn’t it. It is. It is about being bold, not really the right word, but being confident enough, being transparent enough, being forthcoming enough, like to be able to have maybe these difficult conversations with your team.

 

At first it probably feels difficult, at first it gets better over time, but really it starts with the conversation, doesn’t it? Absolutely. It starts with the conversation. The grind greatness genius zone exercise gets us to a place where if you are in a managerial position, if you’re managing people, you’re kind of working through that.

 

It shows your team that you’re interested in understanding them. You know, the lens of what’s right with them, because you’re not going to fix all of that in one day. You’re not going to fix all of it in two days. But if you start building those habits and you start finding the ways to move things out of some of the grind zone to the greatness into the genius, and let me make this statement as well, Steve.

 

Look, there’s going to be things that we have to do at work as entrepreneurs, as bosses, or as employees that are going to be in the grind zone. It’s not a function of we’re going to eliminate all of that. But if we’re spending 80% of our time in that grind zone and we’re expecting great things to happen, how can you expect great things when you’re focused on weakness, on your areas of weakness?

 

They don’t equate. Right. Those things don’t don’t equate. So it’s not a function of eliminating the grind, but it is a function of reducing it and moving people in the direction where they can contribute more. Because at the end of the day, the final thing I’ll say here is people want to be valued for being valuable, that that occurs on our teams.

 

And that’s for us as well as entrepreneurs and as business owners. I think this is so on point, Darren. And you’re right, it is a business owner when you’re starting off and you might be a solopreneur and then you add a couple of people and then holy bananas, you have a team of five, six, seven and and now everybody’s kind of doing everything.

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: The Seeds of Transformation

 

And then you get to a point where whether it’s because you’ve reached that spot in revenue or you’ve cleared off some debt, you start to see sort of the clearing, you know, past the trees or whatever metaphor you want to use. But you start to get some breathing room and then you get a chance to think more about, you know, wait a minute.

 

This is what I’m really good at, and I’m obviously using layman’s terms here because I don’t have an expertise in the space as you do. But in my leadership team and I, we just recently went through this where the three of us got together during one of our quarterly off sites, and it’s like, well, wait a minute.

 

Katherine happens to be really, really good at operations, and Erik happens to be really, really good at strategy. Stephen happens to be good at biz dev. Why in the world? And we reorganize to focus on those strengths, as opposed to Stephen being really crappy at operations. Right. And we all try to blend it together. So we’ve done a similar, you know, I should say conceptually similarity to what you’re talking about, it has paid huge dividends for us, Darren. 

 

Absolutely. And those are the kinds of things exactly like what I’m talking about, Stephen. It’s this notion of starting by taking the pause and asking what’s right with each person. And here’s another thing. If you gain a lot of value, there’s a reason that you can think of that you complement partnerships with certain people on your team.

 

Tell them that maybe you’re really, really good at executing, getting things done, but you struggle with coming up with different ideas and framing what the future could look like. And you have a partner on your team that you go to that naturally thinks in the lens of, well, what does this look like in two years or five years?

 

And you go to them and you bat those ideas off of them, tell them that and validate that talent in others. This is the seeds of transformation that take place in culture. These are the seeds of culture by intention versus design. You don’t have to go through a mastery of, you know, learning everything about, cliftonstrengths and all those elements too, to be able to start these changes meaningfully in an organization.

 

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Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Most Influential Lesson from a Mentor

 

So you’ve been a great mentor here, and this has been a super, super helpful conversation for Onward Nation business owners. I knew that it would be. So, let me sort of turn the table on you for a second as a mentor. And let me ask you to tell us or share with us what you would consider to be the most influential lesson, Darren, that you ever learned from one of your mentors.

 

Right. Let’s keep this mentorship piece going. But turning the tables. So tell us about the most influential lesson that you ever learned from one of your mentors. And then how that lesson is still paying dividends today helped you become the business owner you are today. I am going to go and present to you, there’s just so many different, different places that I’ve gained mentorship.

 

But I’m going to talk to you about a musician who I have had the privilege to connect with and become friends with over the years. He’s a five time Grammy Award winning bass player. His name is Victor Lamont Wooten. He’s in the band Bela Fleck and the Fleck Tones and he’s done a lot of solo work on his own.

 

So I’m an electric bassist as well. Victor Victor’s work has impacted me since I was a child. I can vividly remember at 15 years old, when I was cobbling together, playing a bass, and learning the first time I actually heard one of his albums, and it stuck with me. And one of the things that is so powerful that I’ve learned from music that I try to even apply in my daily habits and in building the business from my lens, is music is not made by the stream of notes that are played continuously.

 

In fact, if we just played all of the notes that are in a song at the same time, it wouldn’t sound very good. What creates the groove as a bass player and really gets our heads to move, gets our ways to move. It’s actually the space in between. It’s the pauses. It’s the breaks in between when we take the break.

 

Those little spaces are what creates the leaps and the continuation that allows us to flow. So we take that from that lesson that’s been learned from music and from his lens on groove. And regarding the bass and fold that into our business. It can easily feel like for us as business owners, that we have all of these great opportunities and all of these things that are going on, and we jump in and we try to do all of these things all at the same time.

 

And you can think of the most beautiful song that you know, any of your listeners can think of their favorite song and ask themselves, what if that 3 or 4 minute song, every single note that was played in that song was all played in a single second or two seconds and just held? Would you appreciate that song? Would you even like it?

 

No you wouldn’t. It wouldn’t sound good at all. But yet that’s exactly what we try to do in our businesses. All the time. It exhausts us personally, wears us out. So we can’t really build the symphony in the concert that we want to. And our businesses don’t take the traction that we want. So it’s a double edged piece that cuts both ways, not for the better.

 

So it’s that pause that really makes the music, and it’s those little pauses that we have to give yourself permission to take as business owners that allow us to create greatness and really create the impact that we’re going to have. That’s awesome. Great perspective. Thank you for sharing that lesson. So I know that we’re, quickly running out of time.

 

But before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice that you like to share? Anything you think we might have missed on identify your strengths and weaknesses, Darren? And then? And then please tell us the best way to connect with you. 

 

Listen to podcast episodes that will help identify your strengths and weaknesses

 

Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses: Final Advice and How to Connect with Darren

 

Yeah. One of the things I know that has been a hallmark of your show is giving advice, giving just thoughts.

 

Different things that have worked for some of your guests. So one of the things that I will share, there’s two key points that I will share for entrepreneurs. Number one, really play to your strengths, play to your strengths and think about what those are. I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again. The second point and this comes out of the book, Think and Grow Rich, which I encourage every single one of your listeners to read.

 

And then reread and keep rereading it, because that book just keeps speaking to you. But it’s the power of a mastermind group. Surround yourself with other business owners. Surround yourself with other leaders. Even if you’re not a business owner, you’re in a leadership position that are not within your organization to gain some fresh perspectives. It is so true that one plus one does not equal one plus one equals three.

 

And when you compound that in the mastermind, it stretches, you’re thinking, you’re growing, and anything great that’s ever happened in the world from a human started just an idea started as thoughts, and it started growing because we are what we focus on. So those are my key areas that I would suggest. Awesome. And the best way to connect with you Darren.

 

Yeah, you can find me at 34strong.com. You can find me as well on LinkedIn. I think the links will be in the show notes. And there’s lots of information on 34 strong about who we are, what we’re doing and some of those different elements on LinkedIn. We’ve actually started a group as well called The Best Bosses.

 

So I do encourage people that are in those leadership roles to join them. We’re trying to give tactical and practical elements on how to move the needle to become best bosses and really support that cycle. And we also have our best manager academy cycle that you’ll see elements of as well. That’s another place to find me.

 

Okay. Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to Darren’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take what he so generously shared with you, take it and apply it into your business right away and accelerate your results. And Darren, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day.

 

And I am grateful, my friend, that Mike, made the introduction. You said yes and and came on to the show to be our mentor and guide, to help us move our businesses onward. That next level. Thank you so much, my friend. What an honor and a good time. It’s been just having a chat. I can’t believe our time’s up already and we’ve discussed so much about how to identify your strengths and weaknesses.

 

This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Listen to podcast episodes that will help identify your strengths and weaknesses

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