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How to Grow Your Business By Embracing Your Suck

This article is more than 4 years old.

Often, Allison Tabor’s business coaching clients recognize that there is a problem, but they don’t necessarily know what to do about it. This is what she tells them:

“Embrace your suck and focus on your strengths.”

You can find practical advice like that in Tabor’s soon to be released book, Work Your Assets Off: Stop Working So Hard In Business and In Life.

“Most of us are uncomfortable embracing our weaknesses,” says Tabor. “We tend to deny them, eliminate them or work on them until they are no longer considered weaknesses. In other words, we focus on fixing what is weak.”

Tabor says this “fixing” approach is made easier through the use of technology, which enables us to educate ourselves about almost anything by simply Googling it, watching a YouTube video or taking an online course.

“But this method is fatally flawed,” says Tabor. “While I too appreciate the easy access to information, it doesn't mean that we have suddenly developed an unlimited capacity for learning. Most of us are in constant danger of information overload. When we focus on fixing our weaknesses, we are playing a hand we can never win. We simply cannot be experts at everything.”

Rather than constantly trying to fix ourselves, Tabor advises that we should ask: what do I suck at? Then accept it, manage it, and maneuver through your situation to accommodate for it. That is the secret to leveraging your natural assets and growing a business.

“We do this by developing and leveraging our strengths,” says Tabor. “Focusing on our strengths rather than our shortcomings will pay much greater dividends.”

Here are some questions to ask yourself: Where has my attention been going? Have I found myself focusing on what I think I need to do, rather than what I’m excited about and drawn to do? What pops up as being in natural alignment with my talents?

Tabor says once you recognize and understand your natural talents, your expertise will develop within that particular area or discipline. If you want to develop expertise in certain areas, start with mastering your self-awareness.

I met Tabor when I was speaking at a seminar in San Francisco on marketing with a book. She preaches what she practices.

Prior to her coaching and consulting business, Tabor owned and led a successful structural engineering company with her husband for 23 years. She is certified as a DISC Consultant, One Page Business Plan Specialist and professional coach.

Tabor is always on the grow. She also facilitates for the International Women Presidents’ Organization, leading two peer advisory groups of Bay Area multi-million dollar entrepreneurial women presidents and CEOs. Additionally, she is a group leader for ProVisors, a community of professionals who serve their clients as trusted advisors and share the highest standards of integrity, performance and accountability.

“When I started placing my own attention on what I wanted, liked and was good at, more of those opportunities started to appear,” says Tabor. “Perhaps some of them were there all along and went unnoticed. Seeing opportunities through the lens of alignment was expansive. The more aligned I was, the more gratified and effective I was; my desired results multiplied.”

While she is a big proponent of intentional strategic planning, she also discovered the importance of intentional thinking. She now spreads the message of the value of intentional thinking in her writing, speaking and coaching.