What's up everyone welcome back to another episode of the crazy ones. This is Alex and I'm back with the founders journal episode where I do a short dive into a topic that I'm thinking a lot about as an entrepreneur and that will help you become a better business builder today's episode is focused on two topics I read about both of them in CEO coach Matt Mochari's book the great CEO within the first topic is zone of genius the second topic is an energy audit I talk about

why each of these are so fundamental to an entrepreneur's journey and how they work together to push you in the right direction so let's hop into it what's up everyone I'm Alex Lieberman you know this is Jesse Pooji and this is the crazy ones I do not believe that the most successful entrepreneurs are so much smarter than others and honestly most of the time I don't think they're even harder working than

entrepreneurs who end up failing in their businesses of course there are exceptions but I actually believe that the best entrepreneurs are simply more self-aware than others they know what they love they know what they hate they know what they're great at they know what they're weak at and they spend as much time as humanly possible doing things within their zone of genius zone of genius is this idea coined by gay Hendrix in his book the big leap and the goal for any entrepreneur should be to spend 75 plus percent of

your time within the zone as Hendrix describes there are four zones and what zone you fall in depends on how you're using your talents which are your god-given abilities your strengths which are the things that give you energy and your skills which are your learned abilities the

first zone is the zone of incompetence these are things that other people probably do better than you and therefore you should outsource them if they don't give you joy and if they do give you joy maybe they

should be hobbies and not professional endeavors the second zone is the zone of competence these are the things that you do just fine but others are as good as you if not better and therefore you

should outsource them if they don't give you joy the third zone is the zone of excellence this is the danger zone these are things that you do better than others it is part of your

unique talents but you don't love doing these things now it's dangerous because many people will want you to keep doing these things because if you

do things that you're really good at it's going to help other people and since they will derive benefit from it they're going to want you to keep doing those things but this is an area that you

should look to move away from delegate away from because they don't fill you with energy and the fourth zone the great zone the zone where you should be as much as

humanly possible is the zone of genius and these are things that you are uniquely good at in the world and that you love to do so much so

that time and space likely disappear when you do them this is where you can add the most value to the world and yourself this is where you should be

driving towards spending the most if not all of your time so of course as I was reading the definitions of these four zones in Mochari's book great

CEO within my next reaction was very clearly how do I know what my zone of genius is because you can only spend 75% of your time in your zone of

genius if you know what sits within it and so I went through a two step process to answer that very question and you can do the same

if you either don't know what's in your zone of genius or you haven't revisited this question in a while and you want to do so

so first I asked myself what am I both very talented and skillful at and then I also asked the same exact question

to people that know me well and I was curious if they were going to say the same things as me and so

first I made my list of the things I think I'm really strong at the first is conversationally educating people on topics that I'm interested in

aka creating content or storytelling the second is relationship building and getting people to like me aka persuasion

and the third is creative thinking whether it's business ideas ideas for growing a new business or whether it's content ideas

so that was my list then I asked Jesse my co-host for the crazy ones for his list and he said and I quote

...