3 easy steps to discover your Zone of Genius

Hey friends,

If you’ve been with us for a while, you may remember hearing us talk about your Zone of Genius. This is the intersection between the things you’re knowledgable about, the things you enjoy and the things that would be helpful to someone else.

Creating a strong online presence is closely related to finding your Zone of Genius. Knowing exactly what this intersection consists of will help crystalize your content strategy and allow you to develop strong content pillars. So, how do you find your Zone of Genius? Today, we’ll share 3 quick steps that will help you do so.

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Step 1: Define your career goals

Before you even start the process of identifying your Zone of Genius, you need to take a step back and identify your North Star. '

What is your main goal with building an online presence? Maybe you want to switch careers and show potential employers that you have the skills necessary to do the job, even though the exact title doesn’t show up on your resume. Maybe you are trying to get promoted or attract additional offers. Or maybe you’re trying to grow your business or start a side hustle.

No matter what your end goal is, it’s paramount that you have a clear vision of what you’d like to achieve. This is arguably the most important pillar of your content strategy. As Simon Sinek would say, always start with why.

Step 2: Find the intersection that defines your Zone of Genius

Now that your ‘why’ is clear, it’s time to start executing towards it. The first and most important step for doing so is finding your Zone of Genius. This will inform your content strategy and allow you to discover the things that would help you reach your overarching goal.

To find your Zone of Genius, you will need three things:

• a pen

• a piece of paper

• 30 - 60 min of uninterrupted time

Once you’re settled with everything you need, it’s time to create three lists:

• things you’re interested in and enjoy

• things you’re knowledgable about

• things you can teach someone else (these may seem obvious to you but chances are, they will be mind-blowing insights to others)

This exercise should take you 30 - 45 minutes. However, if you need longer, by all means - take your time. Everyone moves at a different pace.

After you’ve created these lists, it’s time to identify the overlap between them. There are multiple ways you can do this, but we recommend drawing an asterisk next to the items that cut across lists. For example, if you’ve developed novel AI models and enjoy doing so, your expertise could certainly be helpful to other people. This is an item that would fall into your Zone of Genius. Mark every such item with an asterisk until you’ve exhausted all items that could fit this criteria.

Last but not least, put all items from the previous step into a completely new list. This is your Zone of Genius. It should be reflected in any and all content you post from now on.

Step 3: Create your content pillars

Your Zone of Genius is one of the most important tools for creating content that showcases your skills, knowledge and interests. Now that you know exactly what it consists of, you can use it to identify your content pillars. These are the overarching topics you will talk about in pursuit of your main goal.

Take a look at your Zone of Genius and pinpoint three to five broad topics. For example, if you’ve built several companies from the ground up, you can talk about startup advice on hiring, fundraising or finding customers. If you’ve helped companies scale revenue, you can share the tactics you used to do so.

Once you have your topics ready, put them in a small list and tape it somewhere you can see it every day. This will be your daily reminder to stick to these topics and share your knowledge about them. Doing this day after day will help you build a strong creative muscle and make creating killer content easier than you ever thought it could be.

And if you ever find yourselves running out of ideas, we have a cheat sheet for you.

With love,

Team Salley

What is Salley?

Salley helps you build habits that allow you to create a strong online presence. With us, you can stay accountable and earn stress alleviating rewards for hitting your content goals.