Jul 10
Spot Your Talents/ Part One
I have been a professional talent-spotter for twenty years. My job is to spot what clients may be missing, shine a light on their innate talents and skills and help them package them into a valuable service. At a time when jobs are being slashed and redundancies are rife, there has never been a more vital time to grasp that you can make money from what you know. My message is: Create your own job! Package your innate talents and skills and offer them as a service to others. Is it that easy?
It’s a lot easier than chasing every job alongside thirty, fifty, hundreds of others or moving
home, as the Government suggests. I say: Don’t wait for a job. Don’t wait for money.
Don’t wait for an upturn in the economy. Take back control of your life and make your
talents work for you now!
This is about taking the skills and knowledge you already have, and turning
them into cash. Whether you want to earn some extra money or whether you
want to consider a whole new business, you can do it. You just need to
manage your time and energy into a money-making venture based 100% on the
skills and knowledge you already have. This is exactly what I did over
twenty years ago when I set myself up as a Self-Esteem Consultant - coaching
hadn’t been ‘invented’ then! I’d been brought up to earn money doing what I
could do at the time. I started at twelve – brushing Afghan dogs for fifty
pence a dog! Who knew then that years later entire businesses would be built
on dog grooming, with names like Pugs ‘n Kisses (my local one!).
You don’t need to have studied ‘Business’ or have start-up investment or a complex
business plan to get up and going I’ve never done any of these. You simply have to
harness your potential and begin to identify the opportunities that are out there for
you. Instead of scrimping and saving, let’s focus on making more money by using
more of your potential and skills. There is no one in your way, except, perhaps, you.
The key to making more money is to take the skills you already have and make
a business venture using those skills. It’s that simple. One woman who took
this approach and ran with it is Melissa Spencer, who you may have read
about in my last Newsletter and blogs. I urged Melissa to take her skills
and package them into a service that others would gladly pay for. She did
just that and is well on her way to coming off benefits as a result. I’ve
never met anyone who didn’t already know something or wasn’t already doing
something that could be turned into a venture to make quick cash.
Get Thinking
Your business idea may come from the skills you use at work or from outside
of work. Most of us have skills, many skills, that we often overlook.
1/ What do you currently do/have done at work? What is your skill set? What
are you paid to do or have been paid to do?
2/ What are your hobbies?
3/ What volunteer work do you do? What do you do for free?
4/ What are your chores? What are the regular tasks in your personal life?
5/ What skills have others admired you for? Come on, what are you really
good at?
You may already have a hunch about what you could do. You may find it hard
to focus on one particular skill when there’s so many! The purpose of this
exercise is to spot how many skills you already have. This is enough for
now, enough to get you thinking. The next stage is to choose a skill and
begin to examine how that could make you money. I’ll be focusing on that
next time, but don’t let that hold you back from cracking on!
So, how do you think you could make more cash from your untapped skills and
talents? Share it with us here!
Great blog Fiona! I wholeheartedly agree with you on this. In its most basic form it is a fantastic self-evaluation tool for people who have found themselves being made redundant and are reeling from the unplanned blip in their career. For would-be entrepreneurs, it seems to me to be the best way of developing a business for which you have true passion – my no.1 ingredient for success!
I used to be a life coach (although I think you always are but maybe not consciously using your skills) I started work with my partner and built up a very good blinds and interiors company but we were hit by the recession and a factoring company that pulled the plug on us and left us literally penniless My god did I feel bitter twisted and angry but I have realised that I need to change this energy into positive thinking and use this experience along with the many other life experiences I have got to succeed again so even though I cant afford the course at the mo even at
Firstly I would just like to say, I am so glad I stumbled upon this website. How interesting it all is and just what I need to help me focus at the moment.
I am a single mum, 42, currently work and always have worked in many different kinds of jobs but mainly in admin/PA secretarial work, I have been a self employed legal secretary/self employed beauty therapist/tourist attraction presenter/worked in call centres, chippies and pubs, I’ve worked in Holland and speak fluent Dutch and Australia, the list goes on and on and I was relatively successful at most things – but I have never found “the dream job”. I get bored quickly and have felt lately like I have lost my mojo a bit so will read that thread later! One minute I want to train to be a counsellor, the next I think a financial advisor might be good, the next day a teacher maybe…The next day I will mingle them all together and be a debt counsellor… the world’s my oyster! If I could focus on one thing for more than 5 minutes who knows what I could achieve!
Then, just to steer away from the above I just wanted to share an idea I have had in the back of my mind for a long, long time. I am not sure whether it would ever make me any money and allow me to give up employed work though!
I have always had to do my own DIY (wallpapering/decorating and tiling mainly)I am not bad at it if I say so myself and would love to do something around empowering other women (or men) to realise that they too could do the same and take on projects with people in their own homes. This would benefit people who might already be unemployed or lack the confidence/cash/skills and would serve to improving their own homes and teach them new skills and build self esteem (I know it works because I have previously helped neighbours who were single mums and seen them develop and take on further projects themselves as a result and it made them (and me) feel good.)
My problem is that my target market is actually people who would not have much money, prospects, or self-esteem so how could that make any money for me to pay my bills? Any thoughts?
Lynda,
Focus!
Do you need to make money?
Or do you want to focus on empowering others who don’t have money to pay you and the satisfaction you get from that is payment enough?
If you want to make money and begin to give up employed work, then, the question is – What skills do you have right now that people will pay you for today?
Patsie,
you – clearly – have skills that you could be using today to make you money.
Yes? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Lick your wound, pick yourself up and decide what you can offer people TODAY that would be useful and valuable to them and would require no major investment of cash.
This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I enjoy seeing websites that understand the value of providing a prime resource for free. I truly loved reading your post. Thanks!
The hardest thing is probably to believe in yourself wholeheartedly. I have heaps of qualifications -teach photography to professional level, but only very recently been able to accept that my ability to be successful at this comes from inside me and the total belief that I can do this better than anybody else out there. At the risk of shooting myself in the foot here, I agree with Fiona’s comment on major cash investment. It’s easy to keep chasing after the prize rather than letting it come to you.
I love the ‘just do it’ attitude of this article and the focus on a few key questions to ensure that you think about the things that will move you forward instead of those sneaky self-doubting thoughts that often hold us back. Thanks Fiona!
Fiona’s question “What skills do you have right now that people will pay you for today?” was one of the major contributors of me starting up my businesses.
I had taken my skills for granted, and hadn’t considered that perhaps not everyone is good at organising and administration. I began to realise that perhaps busy people might need a hand with these things – and be willing to pay for my help.
We all have things we can already do that people will pay us for. These skills may not be unique or extraordinary, but can still be money-makers.
House-sitting, dog walking, cleaning. All skills that people will pay for, none of which involve needing to go to college, lots of qualifications or huge bank loans. What about combining the three – offering a house-sitting service for people away on holiday or on business trips; walking, feeding and keeping their pets company, and giving the house a thorough spring clean before the owners return. Fantastic!! No-one in my neighbourhood offers that service, and I would definitely pay for it.
Window cleaning, car washing… I have lived in my house for 6 years and no-one has ever come to my door or put a leaflet through my letterbox offering these skills. Leafleting – surely all small businesses need help with this?
The possibilities for making money are endless, and do not have to be complicated. None of the 4 businesses I am setting up are complicated. Each offers a service to people who do not have the time to do the things themselves – whether that is searching for a fun activity to do with their children, or organising an event.
Will these new businesses pay my mortgage? Only time will tell, but I can say with certainty that I won’t give up my house without a fight.
Hi Fiona
just like the Beatles once said “you’ve really got me going now!!! LOL
When I was unemployed in 2007 for 9 months I signed up for the Newcastle Distance Learning Life Coaching course which is written by you : )) I passed and then also got a fulltime job and went on an NLP begginner’s course.
My sister came to visit me one weekend from Cardiff and she told me all about a workshop she had recently attended. It was held in someone’s house and it was using life coaching and arts to create a ‘future vision board, collage or journal.’ It sounded amazing and I wanted to attend it too!!! My sister being a very encouraging person pointed out the fact that I have a lovely spare clean room which would be great for workshops and I also have a back kitchen room full of arts stuff (left over from my daughter’s A level Art days. She insisted that I could be running a workshop by the next weekend.
So I took up the challenge and decided to put an event on Facebook to all my friends and I invited 8 friends to be my guinee pigs and 7 came in the end.
We had a wonderful day, semi structured yet easy going. I asked people to concentrate on their futures, think of an area of their life which they would like to develop or change and look at their skills and strengths to see how they can move someway towards that goal by the end of the session.
People fed back their future visions/creations (boards,collages and journals) and it felt very good.
I then got nervous about advertising it to other people and have not done one since. However, your blog has made me realise that it is all there and waiting to go ahead and there’s not a lot stopping me, except me!!
So thanks for the reminder and the encouragement and I will book my fisrt paid workshop for when I get back from holiday on the weekend of 9th September : ))
with kind regards Catherine
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