Should You Improve Weaknesses or Strengths?

Should You Improve Weaknesses or Strengths?

Sean: Hello! Good evening, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. So we have a couple of questions tonight, very, very interesting questions. But before we go there, if you are watching and you’re not yet on the Discord channel, please do join us there. You could check out the link on the scrolling banner down below: from.sean.si/discord. And we’re also on TikTok. Because of Marvin Germo and Antonette Aquino, we’re on TikTok now. 

So I have Niño and I’ll be inviting him on-stage. Hey, Niño! Are you there? Can you hear me? All right, go ahead, ask your question.

Niño: To achieve better growth, do I need to find my weaknesses and improve on them? Or would it be better to capitalize on my strengths?

Sean: That’s a very good question. First, weaknesses would be really hard to find because usually you’re blinded by weaknesses. So for me, one of my weaknesses would be when I speak, it’s too sharp, it turns people off, and that is something that I really wasn’t aware of. A lot of weaknesses catch us blindsided. That’s why we need other people to really help us out and tell us, “Hey, you need improvements here.” So it’s quite difficult for us to find weaknesses, much less improve on them.

But you know, for strengths, it’s a lot easier for you to find out about that. So I’m not really promoting this particular tool, but one tool that really helped me out as well as my wife, my team, is Gallup Strengthsfinder. You could take that test. I think it’s somewhere between Php 800.00 to Php 1,000.00. I might be wrong. I’m not sure. But that will help you to realize your strengths and understand them in terms of what you usually use when you’re trying to solve problems and when you’re working and when you need something accomplished.

So that has helped me and my team understand each other in a way that, “Oh! This person doesn’t like doing this, because their strength isn’t in that area and they find it a drudgery to be able to achieve certain things that need to be done there.” So that’s my take on that. It’s better to find out your strengths and capitalize on them. I hope that answers your question, Niño.

Want to move on to your next one?

Niño: The next is: In either choosing a business or a career path, which do you think you should anchor it on: your passion or your skill set??

Sean: In my opinion, business or career path, if you only had two choices, passion or skill set, I would go for skillset. Because if you’re so passionate about something but you’re not really great at it, that’s going to take you a while to get paid well and to really enjoy the team, enjoy the work and enjoy the job. So I’d go for a skillset. You’re really good at it and you have to learn to love it.

Here’s the truth. You’re not really going to love 100% of what you do. That’s why we call it work and not play. A lot of people think, “I should love my work, so I don’t have to work every single day of my life. You know, it’s fun for me because I love my job.” You’re going to learn to love it up to 50%. And if you love 70%, 80% of it, fantastic, great for you, but it will never be a 100%.

Even for me as CEO of SEO Hacker, I’ve been doing it over a decade now. I don’t love 100% of my job. There are parts of my job that I don’t like. It’s really like that. Work is like that. There are some parts that you’re not going to like. I wouldn’t focus too much on passion. I know a lot of people, a lot of speakers would say, “Focus on your passion. Focus on your passion.” But if I’m going to choose between skill set and passion, I’m going to choose skill set.

So when I was starting out I knew I love writing and I’m really good at it. So that’s great because I have both. But I’m also quite good in logic and understanding how code works. I can’t build code. I can’t write code that well, but I understand how it works when I read it. So I pursued SEO.

One facet that I loved about SEO is the writing. I’m not really that great when it comes to marketing. When I started out, I’m not really that great when it came to programming. So I’d say maybe 20% to 30% of the job I was passionate about. The rest I was not passionate about.

I was not passionate about legal matters. I’m definitely not passionate about sales during that time. I’m an introvert, so I’m not really good at sales. I’m not great at drafting contracts and proposals. I didn’t like a lot of things about the job, but I did have the skill set to take me to the next level. So yeah, my answer: there is going to be a skill set. I hope that helps.

We have a question from Sara: Do you have a personal development plan?

I do. It’s not 100% clear though, but I do. What’s more important for me is the business plan. So in the business, we’re in the stage where we’re professionalizing. Meaning, we’re opening roles for assistant vice-president and vice-president as well, like VP of sales, VP of marketing, and VP of operations. There’s a lot. I’m not sure 100% yet on exactly what kind of VP roles we’re going to get.

Our execom is a family business right now. It’s me, my wife, my brother and my sister in the execom. And we want to professionalize it, where people can be part of the execom, and then the execom now is going to move up to the board of directors. So the plan for the business is crystal clear. That is the way to go.

And my personal development is bridging that gap. So we’ve never done this. And because we’ve never done this, I need mentors. And so I have mentors telling me what to do to get from family business to a professionalized business, which is really really important to future proof the company and make sure it’s running even without me.

I’m not saying that I’m retiring. I’m not. I believe I’m still going to be working until 40 or 45, maybe even 50, because I want to serve my people. Even if I don’t have to, I want to. That’s me, being CEO. God put me here. I believe it’s a calling, it’s an appointment and I’m still going to be doing it. But yeah, so my growth plan is like that, based on where the business is going. Where do I need to grow?

So I’m listening to a lot of podcasts as well about executive hiring, because it’s different – hiring executives, hiring AVP roles, VP roles. One podcast that I listened to said that it could take up to three years for you to hire a vice president role. And it would take for your current leadership and executive team to go and meet this person, have dinner at home with them and really get to know this person before you hire them.

Because that executive is just going to change the chemistry of the entire company because they’re going to be someone in a leadership and authority position and you don’t want just about anyone in that position. You want to really get to know that person.

So my growth plan and my growth development is really towards that right now. As for books, I haven’t really been able to find books about executive hiring, so I’m still reading what I’m reading right now and that’s the 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, the Change Your World, which is a new book by John Maxwell and Principles by Ray Dalio. Yes, I haven’t finished reading that book yet. It’s a very thick, very long book, and I haven’t finished it yet.