Develop Your Talents

Here is a bit of a story to illustrate the progression involved to develop your talents, create work you love, and make money. The Gallup Organization was purchased from the Gallup family in the 1980’s and led for many years by Donald Clifton. It has created a business niche in helping people hone their talents and strengths. In Now, Discover Your Strengths, Don Clifton and Marcus Buckingham have distilled decades of Gallup research into these insights that will aid you in making money.

They include this statement from Warren Buffet, billionaire investor and business owner: “ ‘If there is any difference between you and me, it may simply be that I get up every day and have a chance to do what I love to do, every day. If you want to learn anything from me, this is the best advice that I can give you.’ ”

”Whenever you interview people who are truly successful at their chosen professions,” say Clifton and Buckingham, “from teaching to telemarketing, acting to accounting – you discover that the secret to their success lies in their ability to discover their strengths and to organize their life so that these strengths can be applied . . . the key to building a bona fide strength is to identify your dominant talents and then refine them with knowledge and skills.”

“Your natural talents are gifts from God or accidents of birth, depending on the articles of your faith. Either way, you had nothing to do with them. However, you have a great deal to do with fashioning them into strengths. It is your opportunity to take your natural talents and transform them through focus and practice and learning, into consistent near perfect performance.” See the progression!: identify your talents and passions, develop your talents, create work you love, and make money -- lot of it.

An excellent practical guide to help you convert and goal-set your talents into mastery-level strengths and consistent, high-level performance can be found in Me, Inc.: How to Master the Business of Being You, (2007), by SAI Global consultant Scott Ventrella, available through Amazon.com.

The key to develop your talents, create work you love, and make money -- is to focus on strengths.