Episode 373

Hello and welcome to Unshakeable With Human Design, everybody. I’m your host, Nicole Laino, and we’re here today together, just the two of us to talk about monetizing your genius with human design. So I wanna start by saying that I wasn’t always good at this stuff. The stuff that I teach now, most of what I teach, if not all of it, is because I climbed the mountain.

That is me. There’s a great book. By brand we, that’s called the Mountain is you. And that is absolutely the truth that I have found. And I went on a quest somewhere along the line, maybe my entire life, where I was trying to figure out how to tap into what made me great. You know, that I, I had this inkling that I had a purpose, I had this feeling deep inside of me where I’m like, I have gifts.

I know I’m good at things, but it always felt like the world kind of got in the way of those good things getting out or people weren’t seeing them. I feel invisible. I feel like nobody really gets me. I feel like when I go to do things, it’s just, I don’t know. It’s not working the way that I feel like it should.

So I had these gifts and I either felt like they weren’t being seen or I wasn’t able to harness them. My life really changed when I really understood what my gifts were, because having that idea that they’re there is very different than being intimately connected to them. And that’s what I wanna break down in today’s episode because I think that so many people are.

Taken in by titles like this episode, you know, how to Monetize Your Genius and I, I, what I really wanna get to is beyond the hyperbolic sales information and languages that’s out there, which is basically saying that like, oh, well, you know, we’ll tell you what your formula is and then you’ll be magnetic and then you’ll be a millionaire.

That’s not what I see. I see plenty of people who are starting to tap into their genius and I start to see them really change their lives. But I wanna talk about the bridge between those two things of really discovering what your genius is and then being able to monetize it. ’cause that is the journey that I have been on, and it’s kind of at the heart of what today’s episode is, is that if you’re selling services, if you’re selling coaching, if you’re selling something, that is where you are, the personal brand.

Then your story is intimately and intricately woven into the fabric of your business and what you do. It is your message. We’ve heard that term, right? Your mess is your message. Well, I’m gonna show you how you can use human design to kind of decode some of this. How you can start to see what your mess is, but your message can only come if you clean up that mess.

So we’re gonna talk about that. I’m gonna break that down. I’m gonna show you kind of the breakdown that I use to approach human design, to approach business from a human design perspective, how I work with my clients on helping them. Really step into and own their genius and where this all comes from.

All right. Before we kick off the episode, I do wanna call out. We are starting our Authority Accelerator Masterclass. That starts on May 12th. So please, if you’ve never attended this, or if you have, and we’ve actually rewritten this entire masterclass, so if you have come before, come again, because I am in a very different place than I was pre in previous versions, and I’m always bringing the most updated knowledge that I have.

The most updated energy that I have the most, you know, this new perspective that I have, which is always evolving ’cause I’m always evolving. I’m working with different people, I’m working in different ways, I’m learning different things. So I’m always incorporating that and bringing you that it is, you know me today.

It is a reason that this is in a recorded masterclass. It’s something I teach live every single time. So it’s different every single time and we’ve drastically changed it since last year for sure. If you haven’t taken it since last year, you should take it again ’cause it’s so value packed. All you have to do to register is go to Nicole Laino dot com slash masterclass.

We will register you right there on the website. Or if you prefer DMing me DM ME masterclass on Instagram, I’m at Nicole Laino official. Just DM me the word masterclass and we will register you right there in the dms. Super simple. I hope to see you there. Now, let’s get to this episode, shall we? Let’s talk about Genius.

First of all, I don’t know if you’ve read the book, the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. This is a really amazing book for so many reasons, but the reason that I’m gonna kind of bring into this right now, and if you haven’t read that book, I highly recommend it. It’s one of my favorite books. I think it’s one of the most concise and useful self-help books, simply because it isn’t giving you a very cookie cutter.

Kind of, it’s not giving you advice, it’s giving you a framework to start to understand yourself, which is really, I think the secret to actually seeing results from personal development work or self exploratory work is when you’re actually using it to learn about yourself and you’re growing from that process versus being like, this is what this person said is the thing that I have to do, so I’m gonna go do it.

That’s conditioning in a lot of ways. So if you happen to buy a book. That is written by somebody a lot like you, then that book will work. But the problem is, is that sometimes we buy books by people who had lots of success doing something that is so not our way, that we take that advice as gospel ’cause they got the result and it doesn’t work for us.

And then we end up feeling like a bigger failure. It’s not just my PSA on personal development stuff. And why. Human design is such a valuable framework because it’s a framework for understanding yourself. It’s a framework for finding your way, not for just adopting something because somebody said so.

And that’s so important now, even more so than ever before. But the book, the Big Leap, one of my favorite books in the Self-Help Personal Development space. But what I wanna talk about today is that book introduced this concept of the zone of genius. And the talk you through some exercises and helping you find your zone of genius, which are very useful.

I really think the concept are better than the exercises necessarily, because the exercises have to do with really looking back at your life and saying, you know, what were you always good at? What always came easily to you? It doesn’t really account for the fact that a lot of times we are traumatized out of those things that were great for us or we don’t have enough nuance around the thing that.

We’re so good at usually, a lot of times we’ll say like, oh, well I’m good at things, but I can’t make money at those things. So it can’t be valuable to people, and I think human design starts to bridge that gap a little bit and helps us understand our genius in a different way. It also goes back to our nature.

So before someone either validated our genius by telling us, yeah, you’re really great at that. Recognized it in us. Or we stopped thinking that it was valuable to other people or that we could do something with it. So we just let it fall by the wayside. But we can let go of the things that we’re really good at, we can miss them.

What I find is that most people, I. Take for granted what they’re really great at that even going through an exercise like they have in that book of trying to go back and recognizing yourself and recognizing your genius throughout your life. A lot of people can’t do it. They can’t put their finger on it or they’re, they’re just looking at their life from such a perspective that they miss everything that’s good about them or they miss the gold.

Because your genius might be some themes that maybe people don’t see as terribly valuable. I have one former client is coming up in my mind where she’s an emotional authority and she was surrounded by all people who did not have defined emotional centers, so all open, and they made her feel very, very guilty for having emotions.

So she learned to suppress them. So she actually learned to suppress her most wise voice, and she had a lot of activations in that center as well that actually lead to part of her genius. Part of what is, what does make her special, what does make her kind of awesome, and that other people might find value in, just happened to not be the people that she grew up around.

So she developed this huge condition sort of state around it, and a condition sort of mindset. Around something that is a gift. So do you see how just thinking about things and journaling on it or answering a bunch of questions in a workbook probably isn’t necessarily getting you there? Not just from a, like think back to the things that make you a genius, but here’s what human design does.

That chart gives you what is not what anybody thought about it. Not what you even think about it. Just here’s what is. Now let’s narrow it down to a couple really, really important things in your chart where you can start to understand and appreciate yourself for who you are for the magic that is you.

So human design, like this is why it’s such a game changer for understanding your genius. Let me just talk about, take one step back for one second to back to the big leap to really explain what the zone of Genius is and why it’s so important and why in this book. What his thesis is, and I agree with it, is that when you’re working in, you know, there’s different zones that we work in and there is the, his thesis is that when you are working in anything outside of your zone of genius, it takes more time.

You have a harder time finding success. You usually don’t enjoy your life. There’s all of these things that are holding you back from your real potential, and the main thing is that you’re not working and living in your zone of genius enough of the time. Now, the other zones that you can be in are the zone of incompetence, which is like, I don’t know anything about this.

That’s like at the bottom. Usually we don’t go there. We don’t do things that we think we suck at. We don’t try to anyway very often or continue doing those things. Then we have a zone of competence, which is like, yeah, I can get by in that. Then there’s the zone of excellence, which is where most of us stay, but it’s a lot harder there to be differentiated because we don’t stand out from the crowd.

We don’t typically love what we’re doing there. It’s fine, but it’s not great. It feels like something’s missing. We just, it takes us longer. It’s a little bit harder. It doesn’t feel like we’re facing resistance. It doesn’t feel like we are in flow all of the time when we are in that zone of excellence.

But then there’s this zone of genius, which is just this sweet spot of like the stars align and everything is working and people are coming to you, and the work is easy, and this is where you can charge more because the value is there. And this is where you can charge more as well, because it doesn’t take you as much effort to do the things that are truly in your zone of genius.

This is that space where it feels like you’re not working. So you can show up big for that. You sell big for that because you’re like, I can deliver this. I know I can. ’cause this is my thing. If people come to me for not just human design, there’s a certain type of person. If somebody comes to me and they say, I’ve got a lot to let go of, I’ve got a lot to understand about myself.

I’m really confused. I know human design holds something for me. I really wanna figure out how I move through this world, and I have some stuff that I know where I’m holding myself back. These are parts of my zone of genius. These are both skills I have developed and also actual talents that I have.

Innately, they are what I’m here for. So when someone comes to that, I look at them and I say, if that’s what you’re looking for, I can help. I broadcast that out. I tell people that. I say it on this show. I put it out in my content, so those people are finding me and the level of confidence that I have that I can help them, and the level of enjoyment that I have when I help them.

Very, very high. I got a DM the other day from somebody like they’re looking to make a change in their business and they want to do it. They know that there’s something out of alignment with the way that they are working right now. It’s not working anymore. It doesn’t feel right anymore. This is someone with a big audience, a really like power player in the industry.

She found me through this podcast. She was like, I have to work with you. And I got a, you know, this great long DM from her voice memo and she rattled off all of these things and she’s like, and this is why I think I need to work with you. And she bought right there, and we’re gonna work with each other.

I’m gonna work with her privately. That happens when you’re in your zone of genius, people come to you for that thing, you become the person. Then if you desire to be the person for something, you’ve gotta know what that thing is and it has to be pretty darn specific. You’re going to find that you’re in that zone of excellence.

You’re not really stepping up into that. But let’s talk a little bit about human design. You know, I wanted to mention and explain what Zone of Genius is so that we were all clear about that, so you understand what I’m talking about and why it’s so important. Why being in that sweet spot of life makes everything in your life feel and have an experience of.

Joy and feel better, right? So why human design is what I have found to be the best tool, bar none out there for doing this, is that you actually see how the pieces of you fit together to make this masterpiece that’s you. And you really do have to look at yourself that way. I’m a masterpiece because that’s you really claiming the fact that you do have a genius.

You do have a purpose on this earth. There is some reason that you were here, that you were put here, and it’s to help in some way to offer yourself and your gifts in some way, whatever way that might be. It might be through a corporate job. It might be through working with kids. It might be being a mom.

It doesn’t have to be services no matter what you are doing. Understanding your zone of genius is crucial. I. We all want to live more in flow, right? We all want to be celebrated for who we are and to wake up every day and go do something that feels worthy of our energy and our time time’s all we get, right?

We certainly don’t wanna spend it on something that feels like a waste of it. That’s where misery comes from. So human design gives us this framework to start discovering your purpose and seeing what makes you special. It gets you exploring not just your gifts, but your shadows. This is what, this is where the, the magic is, and this is what people usually miss.

So this is the shadows. When you understand your shadows, you understand your struggles. This is the mess, the message, your message. Well, the mess is the shadows. The mess is the struggle. The mess is the thing that’s always coming up for you. The dragon, you keep having to slay. You become an expert in that theme, but you have to slay the dragon first.

A lot of people are like, okay, the mess is my message, but there’s still a mess and they’re trying to make it their message and they’re wondering why it doesn’t work. Well, you’re not a genius at this yet. You’ve got work to do. There might be tweaking to do, and it’s not just one thing in your chart. It’s starting to.

Really, you might’ve heard me use this analogy on this show before where I look at everything on the chart, like a dial, like a little something that you can adjust. And when we adjust it, it’s almost like a soundboard in a music studio, in a recording studio. They get to tweak the mix so that the sound of the song sounds the way they want it to.

Well, all of your gifts and shadows are dials turned down there in shadow, turned up there in gifts. If we keep turning them up and messing with specific parts of your song, you start to sound the way that you start to sound the way you were always meant to sound. And that’s not just powerful, but it’s life changing, right?

Because that’s kind of what we wanna do. All we wanna do is live our potential. What’s your song supposed to sound like? Most of us never find out ’cause we’re so caught up in what song everybody else wants to hear. We have to come back to ourselves. So this idea of really being able to pay attention and notice where are you in shadow?

Where do you have struggle? Where did you have a tough time? Where’s your mess that when you clean it up gets to be your message. Human design can actually start to show you the places that that can be showing up. What are the themes for you? What are your talents? So. The other thing is understanding that these activations, these things that I’m talking about, these shadows, these particular gifts, so they might be gates, they can be channels, they can be certain centers.

You know, I’ll talk about my method for helping you fine tune your design so that you understand your genius. But these activations are so authentic to you because they’re yours, because they are yours. People are getting it from you already. They’re just not getting the right thing, so they’re not seeing you the way that you wanna be seen.

When you start to play with your design, when you start to work with it, you start to bump up against yourself. You start to find where you’re blocked. You start to, and I always say to my clients, I cannot guarantee you. In fact, I can guarantee the opposite. I can’t guarantee you that you will not run into a wall.

What I can guarantee you is that I will be there and I will help you kick down that wall when you find it. I might be able to point out, in fact, I most likely will be able to point out the wall that you can’t see ’cause you’re so used to running into it that it almost feels like it should be there. But this energy that you have when you start fine tuning it and starts becoming your gifts, people start coming to you for that.

’cause it’s so authentic for you. People are like, I believe that from her. I get that. She says that, and I believe that from her. And it sounds different coming from you too. When I talk about certain things, when I talk about making commitments as yourself, when I talk about strategy and authority, when I talk about human design, which is something that I have figured out, how it fits into my genius, when I talk about it, people respond.

People get that I have a real expertise in this. That’s my one line. I have a channel of talent. I’ve developed a talent with this. I’ve gotten really resourceful with the knowledge that I have here. Not just in what it means, but what you do with it, which quite frankly is what’s missing from most people’s programs who are teaching this stuff.

They can tell you what it is, but they cannot tell you what to do with it. That is where they and I part ways, ’cause I can actually tell you what to do with this. It isn’t just information. This is a living, breathing thing. This is your, this is your framework for figuring out how you operate in your zone of genius.

Now, I use eight elements of the human design chart to tap into your genius to really understand. What your genius is and how to work with it so that it can become your message. I call it the authority matrix, and this is something that I teach. This tells you what your talents are, what your innate gifts are.

It tells you what your geniuses and ultimately what people will see you as an authority for and how you can dig into that yourself because the chart ultimately shows you how you navigate life. It starts to show you that when you stop living in your shadows, those gifts start showing up maybe where you didn’t even recognize that they were, maybe you didn’t even know you had them.

And they can sometimes show up to be your greatest gifts, the things that people have been waiting for from you all along. So it’s a formula, but it’s never predictable because it’s always you plus the chart. It isn’t just what we see in the chart. Well, what’s your experience with that? What does that mean to you?

What’s your journey been with that? And when you start to see that light bulbs start going off, you start to shine a whole lot brighter and people are drawn to you for those things. So if you wanna learn about the authority matrix, I will be teaching that for an entire session inside the authority matrix.

Uh, inside the Authority Accelerator Masterclass, excuse me, the Authority Accelerator Masterclass is starting on May 12th, this latest round. This will be the last one for several months. So please come. And again, if you’ve come, come in in like the last year, please come again. ’cause we rewrote the whole darn thing and it is so much better.

We got such amazing feedback from the last time that we ran it, which was the first time with this brand new version. I retweak it every time, but it’s radically different from last year. So if you came last year, please come again. All you have to do to register is DM me the word masterclass on Instagram.

I’m at Nicole Laino official, or go to Nicole Laino dot com slash masterclass and we will register you on the website. That’s how you would prefer to do it, so I hope that you feel empowered to go discover your genius because the way that you monetize your genius, the way that you really start to make it a part of whether it’s your business or it’s just a way that you show up in your corporate job.

We have clients right now that are from all walks of life doing all different things. We have a lot of people who are in like mid pivot, where they have a business that they are building and maybe they have a job or something like that that they do. But what’s really interesting is as they’ve discovered their zone of genius, as they activate themselves, suddenly they’re getting raises at work.

Suddenly they’re getting job offers that are way more aligned with what they want to be seen for and who they are and what their genius is that are on their terms. We have one client in particular that comes to mind where she’s just really started to dictate what she is available for and what she wants to be seen for and what her path is gonna look like.

And she’s getting it. She’s getting these. Great job offers where those are keeping her sustained while she builds this other business. And people are coming to her exactly like what she’s prescribed exactly for her zone of genius and nothing else. So she’s not resentful of her job anymore because she’s gotta do 10 things that she doesn’t love and only one thing that really turns her on.

No. Instead now she’s gotten to narrow her scope where she’s doing only the part that lights her up, only the part that she’s truly in for, and they’re paying her a lot more money. It’s very exciting. I. And it’s always so unexpected. So please come to the masterclass if you wanna hear more about that, and I hope to see you there.

I’m gonna leave it here with this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, in order to have an unshakeable business, you must first become an unshakeable human. So thanks for letting us help you become unshakeable with human design, everybody. We’ll see you next time.