How To Discover Your Talents And Become An Expert

To become an expert at anything, I believe, we must truly believe that we are talented in that area. We must believe in our God given talents and abilities. More importantly, we must believe in ourselves.

Do you value your life? Then waste not time, for that is the stuff life is made of.   ~Benjamin Franklin [tweet this]

The value of anything that we desire to acquire is determined by how much of our time, our resources and our energy we are willing to invest to acquire it.

If we believe in ourselves, we also value ourselves. We value our God given talents and abilities. We value our life and in turn, others begin to believe in us, value us.

How To Discover Your Talents

We all are unique with our own unique special talents and abilities. There never was another you in this history of the world. There will never be another you again.

You may be talented at painting, singing, meeting new people, persuading others, delegating, storytelling, writing and in any other way. You may not have discovered it yet.  But, if you start paying attention to things you are good at, things that you enjoy doing, you will be able to discover your talents easily. Here are a few questions you may ask yourself:

1. What am I best at doing?
2. What do I love doing so much that I will do it even for no monetary benefit?
3. What do I do that others recognize me as the best person for that job?

It could be anything. Just look for the answer and make a note of it. It may be the one thing that you've never thought of before. But it can prove to be a game changer for you, if you choose.

Or, you may already have recognized your talents. However, it is possible that you haven’t found a way to hone your talents and become an expert. You may not have yet figured out a way to brand yourself to success using your special talents.

Now, let’s discuss how to become an expert once you have discovered your talents, your special abilities.

Define Your Goals Around Your Talents

Having known your talents and abilities, you should now realize that nobody else has the same talents. Nobody else has the same abilities. Therefore, it is your opportunity to make a positive difference in lives of others by employing your talents and abilities.

You are resourceful and therefore, your time and energy must be put to their highest and best use.

With this understanding, the first step for you is to identify how others can benefit from your talents. You now must identify how you are going to serve others, how are you going to better their lives by using your talents and abilities.

Those are truly the goals you should write down. These goals will drive you to take action and to hone your skills.

Strategic Planning To Use Your Talents

Did you realize that the most essential and valuable thing that you have, is your ability to think and act based on your thoughts?

Your ability to earn (which is a function of your education, knowledge, experience and talents), largely depends on how well you execute your plans to achieve your goals.

For example, I began my career working as a software engineer for a large IT firm as soon as I graduated from college.

I made good wages, but I was very envious of the entrepreneurs who made more money, worked at their own hours, drove nicer cars, owned better properties and had much better life-styles.

I wanted to become an entrepreneur from the very beginning of my career. But I just didn’t know how to get going. My future was up to me and  I knew I needed to learn a few things about entrepreneurship. I didn't have a guide and therefore, I wasn't sure how I needed to proceed.

Law of attraction works. A few years later, since I had entrepreneurial spirit, I attended a business orientation seminar where I was exposed to a network marketing business opportunity.

The speaker did a great job. What got me excited was, the ‘mentorship program’ which I was seeking for a long time but never had access to before. I knew I couldn’t go wrong with that kind of mentorship, that kind of people around me. I was impressed and I made a conscious decision to give it a shot. My dream of becoming an entrepreneur came true!

But the path was not free from obstacles. My friends, relatives, colleagues discouraged me. Yet, I believed in my ability to know that I know what I am doing.

However, the initial struggle gave me the confidence and helped me identify my strengths. I learnt that the people who don’t have entrepreneurial spirits can’t possibly buy into my vision.

So, I focused on sharpening the saw. I focused on my personal growth and developing the skills I needed to succeed.

As I discovered my talents and began to gain confidence through applied knowledge, I realized that I needed to brand myself as an entrepreneur. I needed my personal branding in place before others would start to believe in me. I started to work hard and kept on finding new ways to create my personal brand.

That’s exactly when the ‘Aha moment’ came in my career. As my personal branding started to yield the results I was expecting, many entrepreneurs from various industries, job seekers and other small business owners started to ask for help. I realized that many people have the same struggles and I could help.

That is when I decided to start serving others in need of personal branding. I decided to use my skills, my knowledge and my experience to help my fellow entrepreneurs in their personal branding efforts so they could achieve the results they are looking for.

Define Your Mission Statement

Your next step is to create your personal mission statement driven by your personal value system. This is a clear, written description of the person you intend to be in your professional life while you pursue your talents and abilities to serve others.

For example, if you have talents in cooking profession, you might write, “I am the best cook the world has ever seen. I am passionately positive, enthusiastically excited, and immensely involved in serving my customers with the tastiest food possible.”

This statement tells you the kind of person that you’re going to be in your Interactions with the people whose satisfaction will determine your career success.

Start Your Personal Branding As An Expert

With your mission statement in hand and with your goals in alignment with your purpose, you are now ready to take charge of your career and start to build a brand around your name.

If you have been around me for a while, you already know how strongly I believe in Personal Branding.

If there is any challenge standing between you and your success, I believe, it’s your brand value. Today, if people can’t get information about you online, you aren’t credible. If you aren’t credible, no matter how skilled you may be, they are going to be skeptical about your talents and abilities.

Do you really want to take that chance? I don’t.

If, perhaps, you are thinking that building a brand is such a tedious job, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong. It’s easier to build a strong web presence for yourself and brand yourself to success than you think.

Here are my top recommendations for you to start building your personal brand as an expert. If you follow these steps meticulously and consistently, over a period of time, no matter what your passion is, you can have a huge success around it.

1. Create professional profiles on Social Networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest etc. Make sure your details are consistent across the web.
2. Create your AboutMe page. This is almost your online business card today. It’s free and therefore, I encourage you to make use of it.
3. Create your Amazon profile (it is free too) and start writing some product reviews around your area of expertise.
4. Make a list of at least 50 influential people in your niche and start building relationships with them (online/offline – whatever works for you).
5. Start helping people around you solve their problems using your talents and make sure they are extremely satisfied.
6. Take testimonials from people you help. Publish those testimonials on the web (preferably, on your website).
7. If you don’t have a blog, create one as soon as possible. If you don’t know how to do it, Check out my post about creating your own self-hosted WordPress website by yourself.
8. Start sharing your knowledge, your experience and helpful resources on your blog regularly.
9. Become active on Social Networking websites. Start sharing your content and that from other people you follow.

Resource: To add more fuel to your branding strategy, check out this awesome post on how to become famous using rub-off effect by Derek Halpern.

When you start doing these 9 things on a regular basis, you will soon start to notice your brand value going up. You will soon start to notice that people begin to respect your opinions about your niche and some will start reaching out to you to ask for help.

Don’t stop. Just keep on keeping on and soon you will catch the momentum that will make you unstoppable.  

Questions To You

Have you tried these strategies on any aspect of your life? Have you worked on branding yourself in any area of expertise? What did you do to achieve your goals? Or, do you have any questions on this topic that you would like to ask?

Please share your thoughts, experiences or even ask questions in the comments section by clicking here. Thank you kindly!