Unlock Your Genius Zone

4 Steps to Unlock Your Genius Zone | Ep. 64

• Ine-Wilme Coetzee • Episode 64

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What if the thing you're downplaying is actually your key to business breakthrough? In this deeply personal episode, I share the story of how a $240 cello performance led to someone else making $150,000 - and how it completely shifted my understanding of value and pricing.

For 20 years, I'd been "throwing my gifts in the mud," undervaluing what I brought to the table. It took this shocking experience to help me discover what Gay Hendricks calls the "Zone of Genius" - and why most entrepreneurs are stuck working in the wrong zone entirely.

The good news is this: When you discover your genius zone, and you go ALL IN, then money actually starts to become a byproduct of the work you do. So thrilled for you to discover this!

Key Topics Covered:

  • The neuroscience of why we torture ourselves when we don't act on ideas
  • The difference between Zone of Genius, Excellence, Competence, and Incompetence
  • Why energy-giving vs energy-draining work is the key indicator of your true zone
  • How money becomes a natural byproduct when you work in your Zone of Genius
  • The 80/20 principle applied to your business zones
  • Why most successful people are actually working in their Zone of Excellence (and burning out)
  • How to identify what you've been undervaluing in your own business

Resources Mentioned:

  • "The Big Leap" (Book) by Gay Hendricks (creator of the 4 quadrants discussed in this episode)
  • Free Zone of Genius Strategy Calls (limited to 20 per month) - https://www.innervoiceinstituteofmusic.com/discoverycall

Connect with Ine:

Podcast intro music: J.S. Bach Cello Suites, Suite No. 3 in C major, Prelude 
Musician: Mari Coetzee 

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Speaker 1:

a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That is what somebody made because of a cello performance that I charged only two hundred and forty dollars for For two decades of playing the cello. I had no idea what the real power of it was until this day, and if you have ever felt like you've been undervaluing your offers and what do you bring to the table literally what you offer people If you've ever wondered why some people it just seems like they effortlessly attract the most perfect customers you are going to find out why you are struggling to get noticed and actually the beliefs behind it. That's going to change everything for you when you hear this story. I'm going to share with you a story that's not just about music. It's really about discovering what I am the author of a book called the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, called your Genius Zone, and if you're listening to this channel, you know it's called Unlocking your Genius Zone. So this is going to be a pivotal video for the channel so that you can start unlocking that special zone of genius that actually allows money to be a byproduct for both you and the people around you. This is going to be very interesting for you to hear. If you've ever doubted yourselves.

Speaker 1:

Let's dive in to the story of how only the sound of the cello sold a $150,000 offer. You ready? It was November 2023. I had a let's see a seven month old baby and I saw an ad for a conference, a conference that coaches I'd worked with in the past were hosting, and I decided it was a brilliant idea for me to get a ticket to this. It was going to be the following June, june 2024. And I decided it was a brilliant idea for me to get a ticket to this. It was going to be the following June, june 2024. And after getting the ticket, I was very excited. I knew, okay, I'm going to be able to get to go.

Speaker 1:

But in January, my brain decided to have this idea, an idea that literally made my palms sweat, my heart race and usually that is an indication that it's in your genius zone usually and I always wanted to play the cello at business conferences. So I thought to myself well, I know these women who are hosting this conference. I'm going to reach out to them, send them a voice message on Instagram and see if I could book a gig playing cello at the conference. So, needless to say, five months passed by. It's now May, middle of May 2024. It's only a month before the conference is happening and I have not sent a message yet.

Speaker 1:

So one day I'm like you miss every shot you don't take. And how Canadian of me to quote Wayne Gretzky for that you miss every shot you don't take. And I thought, well, I will take my shot. I have nothing to lose, I'm still going, I still have a great relationship with these two coaches and I was torturing myself by not taking action for those five months.

Speaker 1:

Did you know that when you have an idea and you don't take action on it, your brain, it literally feels pain, the neurons experience pain. You are torturing yourself by not taking action because of the disconnect between what you imagine a perceived reality could be versus where you are now. There's a lot of tension between those two things. But the second we take action, we take the very first step, we start eliminating some of that tension and we actually open ourselves up to creativity. So I decided, okay, I'm going to take that very first step. I sent them this voice message and within minutes one of them responds and says Ina, this is so exciting, let me talk to the other coach who was hosting the conference, and they would get back to me and after sending them a clip of me playing, with the blessing, that beautiful, beautiful song, they booked the gig. They said we're good to go.

Speaker 1:

So that was only part one. That was like the first limiting belief that I had to overcome that I couldn't sell to somebody of that caliber. I was holding myself back. In fact, I'd put them on a pedestal, and the reality was is that I had something to offer that two decades of preparation had prepared me for, and it all came together in the next couple of months.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now the caveat in this entire process of booking the gig, getting the gig, I completely sold myself short on the performance fee. I don't know if you've ever done this before. You underprice and then afterwards you're always wondering if they just bought because it was so low. I don't want you to be in that situation. There's actually a way you can get out of it. It's one of the things you're going to learn in this video today. And I'd honestly thought well, it's going to be like a five minute performance. Why should I charge more than I would for an hour wedding? It's a different environment, sure. So they paid right away, without negotiation.

Speaker 1:

I hop on the plane, I perform and immediately afterwards I actually get approached by Myron Golden and his team and we form a connection because of the music. Myron Golden is a guitarist and we formed a connection just based on the music itself. That should have been a sign to me that there was something special here, there was something powerful, but I left the conference hall that day in June feeling I had still probably overpriced. A few months later I come back to that same conference hall, same location, same stage where the performance happened, and it's for a sales training, a three-day intensive. And on day three of this experience, one of these coaches' clients, their highest ticket paying client approaches me while I'm on stage and my friend was actually standing right there filming me talking on stage preparing for something. And she catches this moment. Here's the clip that she caught and you know that the frequency of the cello has helped you tell that story, and that's the picture that you want to see, isn't it Beautiful? Do you want to say something? Jackie wants to say something.

Speaker 2:

I am Okay. So I was. This is at Summit. I was so nervous I was like the arena it's for me, but I don't know. And luckily I came in early one morning and you were practicing to play later and I literally signed up for the arena because the cello calmed my nerves and I was like I can do this, like it was this beautiful, perfect moment, wow. So thank you, thank you in, thank you Ina and Jackie.

Speaker 1:

The interesting thing is, this performance had the power to create a 614X return on investment for these two coaches. They made a $8,000 and $50,000 sale that day that I performed the cello. Jackie attributed the sale to the sound of the cello, making her feel so grounded she knew it was for her. It was in that moment that I finally understood the power of the sound of the cello and since then I now price my services at $10,000 per package. This is the average. Now why do you think that I got paid that little? It was because I had priced it at such. It was all on me. And the craziest thing is that abundance came anyways.

Speaker 1:

Abundance was a natural result of working in my genius zone, creating a buying environment through the sound of the cello. It is part of my genius zone, communicating through emotion in this way, and it ended up being a by-product. The money ended up being a byproduct of working there. So the moral of the story is this the experience that Jackie had had had been her experience for months. I just wasn't aware of it. I'd been throwing the gifting I'd been given in the mud because I didn't believe I was good enough. I didn't think I was a good enough cellist to charge more.

Speaker 1:

But now I know it is not just about the music, it is about the innate gifting that I have in communicating the cello in a very specific way.

Speaker 1:

There is nothing that can replace it, and that is how I want you to feel and know confidently about your own offers that there really is a way that your unique secret sauce, the thing that makes you special, your genius zone, is irreplaceable. That, yes, you could train somebody but you can charge top, top prices for your genius zone offers. There really is a way. In fact, for the rest of this video, I'm going to tell you my four-part framework that I learned from that book, the Big Leap, because this is powerful stuff, this is transformative and it has allowed me to pivot into a business that I feel aligned to. I was stuck in a business for two and a half years where I thought I was working in my gifting when in fact I was just working in a zone of excellence, something I was very good at, but it didn't challenge me the way that my business does now. So let's dive into the four part framework and at the very end I have a very, very special invitation for you.

Speaker 1:

In fact, it is something I have never invited people to on this YouTube channel. Okay, so we have four parts to this zone of genius framework. It is split into a quadrant, so I'm going to put zone of genius here. I'm going to put zone of excellence here, then we have zone of competence and then a very funny name one of my favorites to avoid at all costs is the zone of incompetence. Now I'm going to go through each of these areas so that you understand really what to watch out for, what is a liability in your business and what will actually make money a by-product for you. So you're a zone of genius. It is when you feel the sense of awe about a topic, an area, something that you're researching Meantime, where you feel this childlike delight every single time you work in this area. It's something that lights you up. You're uniquely able to do it and you can make tremendous amounts of money with it if you give it a chance and if you can package it in a way where people experience a transformation. That is the key. That is your zone of genius. The key characteristic here is that it is energy giving. So, for instance, me creating this YouTube video is in my zone of genius. It gives me energy to present frameworks, to teach to influence. It is truly something that I enjoy. It is energy giving. That is the key. That is how you'll know if it is in your zone of genius. Okay, your zone of excellence. I like to call this sometimes your comfort zone. Your zone of excellence is number one draining. That is the key difference between zone of genius and zone of excellence. Maybe it has given you joy in the past, but you've kind of outgrown it. You know that you have potential for something bigger. And the other key thing is your zone of excellence has been a safe place for you. It is something that has made you money in the past.

Speaker 1:

For me, my zone of excellence was my 14 year cello teaching career. I'd been teaching the cello for so long and created these formulas where I could literally teach it in my sleep. In fact, one day I was, I think, 12 days postpartum. I was in the newborn fog and my substitute teacher all of a sudden had an emergency. She couldn't make the lesson, so I had to fill in. Luckily, my son was napping, but still I could teach it on four hours of sleep for 12 days, 12 days of four hours of sleep. So moms who have little kids, you understand the struggle, but it's something that I could do in my sleep. That is the point. But it was energy draining and I had been trying to sell this with the lack of energy adding enthusiasm in every way I knew possible for two and a half years straight until I got to the breaking point, which actually next week's video is going to be all about this. So make sure you subscribe and wait for part two, because it's going to be a good one.

Speaker 1:

So the main thing that I found very difficult about the zone of excellence is I couldn't show up for my family in the way that I wanted to after and I have several clients in this situation where they are. There's one woman. She is in a 20 year teaching career and she is so drained after her day of work, but she's staying in it because she hasn't figured out a different option yet. That's why I'm working with her. That is why she's in the program is to create this kind of freedom for herself where she can actually work in her genius zone, not in her zone of excellence. So summarize so far, zone of genius is it is energy giving. Zone of excellence, it is more like a comfort zone and it is energy draining. Okay, zone of competence is next.

Speaker 1:

Your zone of competence are things that kind of just has to happen. It's something like cooking, cleaning, scheduling out content. It just has to happen. But it's not something you're particularly very gifted at. It's something that is actually quite easy to delegate. That's where I started. When I hired my assistant last August, I just started delegating from the zone of competence things that I had figured out over the years, like Kajabi, like posting content, that sort of thing, graphic design. She took over some of that. I was decent at it, but it was very energy draining, so she was phenomenal at it. I found somebody whose genius zone was actually my zone of competence, and that is kind of how to hire is finding the people who have a genius zone in your other three quadrants.

Speaker 1:

Okay, zone of incompetence it's kind of a funny word, but the key indicator of this is it's actually a liability. It costs you more money to do yourself than it would to actually delegate it. Imagine you had to go clean the gutters on your roof. It might take you an entire afternoon without the right equipment and maybe you even fall off the roof and you have a massive medical bill. That is a zone of incompetence that truly drains you of time, money, energy resources, freedom all the things we need to avoid zone of incompetence items at all costs. Because, number one, you could have been making money in that time.

Speaker 1:

Working in your zone of genius, where money is a byproduct, or even in your zone of excellence, for that matter, something that is sustainable in the end of the day costs more money to try to save money. And when I finally learned this principle in my business, a lot of things changed, but that's a story for a different day. Okay, so quick framework recap we have our zone of genius for a different day. Okay, so quick framework recap. We have our zone of genius excellence, competence and incompetence.

Speaker 1:

Now your job, right now, your homework for this video, is to actually write down what falls in these areas for you, based on the descriptions that I gave, and once you identify what your zone of genius is, it becomes the 20% that brings you into abundance. This is based on the Pareto's principle 20% of your effort and energy put into anything is going to produce 80% of your results. It happens every single time, hands down, in every single industry, in every single position, 20% of your effort equals 80% of your results. If that's true, then the opposite is also true 80% of your efforts goes into 20% of your results. That, my friend, is what these three areas do. The excellence, competence and incompetence usually produces only 20% of what you are truly capable of.

Speaker 1:

Genius zone work, which actually takes only 20% of the time you've been working. It creates the 80% that you were looking for, that 80% results that truly gives you freedom, and that is really what you want been working. It creates the 80% that you were looking for, that 80% results. That truly gives you freedom, and that is really what you want, isn't it? So here is my question for you, and I really want you to think about this what is your area of gifting that you are currently throwing in the mud because you don't believe you're good enough or have the right certification or whatever?

Speaker 1:

The limiting belief in your mind is what are you throwing in the mud? Did you know that that very thing might be your key to success? Maybe you are a natural connector, but you feel like networking isn't a real skill. Maybe you are incredible at simplifying the most complex concept, but you think everybody can do that? Maybe you have this uncanny ability to find exactly what somebody's childhood trauma was and connect it to what's keeping them stuck in their adult life. But do you think that's just something that I do for my friends and my family? That is where your freedom lies, in those areas that makes your heart race when you think of it, when you imagine studying these areas deeper, you feel the sense of awe, and I have a way for you to actually be coached on this very area.

Speaker 1:

This brings me to the final thing that I have for you today. Now, usually, if somebody wants to figure out their zone of genius, they have to go through my programs, join one of my mastermind groups or wait even months for an opening. But I'm so passionate about this message that I am offering one-on-one strategy calls for free. The link is in the description box, and there's gonna be limited spots available only 20 a month and this is going to help give you a clear action plan on how to use your zone of genius for the offer that's on your heart. Usually, if you have an idea for a business or an offer or something that can make you money, there's fear pointing you towards your zone of excellence and there's inspiration pointing you to your zone of genius, I can help you figure out which one it is and if the idea that you are thinking of is even viable, if it is what I call a million dollar idea. So go ahead and book one of those spots before it fills up. It is first come, first serve, and I cannot wait to see you. The last thing that I want for you is that you go through another month, another year, another decade without working in your zone of genius.

Speaker 1:

In fact, in the book that I keep referencing today, the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, he tells a story of a man who was working in a zone of excellence, for I think it was three decades. He had a job in his zone of excellence and after three decades of this, he started experiencing headaches and heart palpitations. Now he did not have a history of heart disease. He had all of the signs of a possible heart attack in the next five years. The one shift he made. Now he was perfectly healthy in all the other areas of his life he was eating well, he was exercising well, he had good family relationships All the things that generally are signs towards a heart attack. He spoke to this author and they figured out that really the root cause of his symptoms and of this impending heart attack was working in a zone of excellence. He changed one thing he changed what he was doing, and then all of excellence. He changed one thing he changed what he was doing and then all of the symptoms went away.

Speaker 1:

It's incredible, absolutely incredible, the power of working in your genius zone, and that is why I'm so passionate about this. I hope you can hear it in my voice, because there really is a way that you can live in abundance, that you can live in freedom and you can be jumping with joy at the end of every day because your work is so energy giving. This is possible for you, my friend. So book that call. Book it right now. It won't be free for very long.

Speaker 1:

So go ahead and book a spot, and I cannot wait to see you on Zoom where we can chat about your genius zone. And if this resonated with you, there are thousands of entrepreneurs who need to hear this message and be empowered to take action in their genius zone. So send it to two people. I'm sure you can think of two people that could benefit from this message and hit the subscribe button as well yourself, because next week I'm actually going to be sharing a story of how I reached rock bottom as an entrepreneur after seven years of trying three different businesses and way too many strategies. It is a story of going from 42 cents an hour for years on end to actually creating 10 K months consistently. So you're going to want to, you're going to want to hear that story, so hit the subscribe button and I will see you next week for that story.