Episode Summary

Jenna shares three tips to discover what your secret sauce is and explains how it can be distinct from your passion.

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Show Notes

Your secret sauce, that thing you do so well and that comes easily to you, is often overlooked. Business books tell you to figure out what sets you apart and capitalize on that, but you don’t recognize it for yourself because you are too close to it, making it hard to put your finger on it.

Today, I give you 3 powerful tips to help you unveil your secret sauce. Your secret sauce is made up of two things: your personal secret sauce and your offer’s secret sauce, often called USP (Unique Service Proposition). Seeing yourself objectively can be challenging, so I share questions and examples to guide your reflection.

Your secret sauce can be distinct from your passion or what lights you up and I help you discover which to focus on. Tune in to learn how to stop your brain from keeping this information hidden and instead open your mind so your fear of failure doesn’t come in the way of finding your zone of genius.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• Questions to help you examine different facets of your life and interests, with a specific focus on the similarities and roots of those things.

• What makes your secret sauce.

• How the belief that you don’t have a secret sauce keeps you from seeing it.

• How the fear of failure gets in the way of getting clear on what your secret sauce is.

• A real-life example of how turning my passion into a business sucked the joy out of it.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

Your secret sauce is something that will be wildly helpful and valuable to your future clients, and they need to know about it. But what if you're not sure exactly what yours really is, or if you even have one? Get ready, I've helped hundreds of women discover their secret sauce, and I'm here to help you too.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to The Uncommon Way. Today, we are talking about the highly coveted but often elusive secret sauce, that thing you do so well, much better than most people. That's totally you, and usually comes rather easily to you. Or at least, it's something you can't really stop yourself from doing.

I say “elusive” because often we don't recognize it for ourselves. And there's some pressure to do so because all the business books tell you ‘figure out what sets you apart and capitalize on that.’ With good reason.

Think about what happens if you don't. You may have wishy washy messaging that calls to nobody. You might be tentative in your sales. You might not fully stand out like you should. You may be overworking because you're not really sure what you do, so you're doing all the things. Maybe you're struggling with your niche, because you're not sure exactly what you're offering. It can play out in many ways.

And so. while I'd love to be able to tell you, “No, don't worry about it,” I actually think this is something you should give consideration to. We don't want all that for you. We want something different and much easier and more rewarding.

So today, I'll be giving you three concise but powerful tips to help you uncover your secret sauce. As always, it'll be one tactical to-do, one mindset tip, and one that has more to do with energetics. By the end, you will know how your zone of genius, or a secret sauce, can be distinct from your passion, or what lights you up, and which of those to focus on.

You'll know which thought pattern will make the entire identification process feel less like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up the hill, and more like the systematic brain hack that it should be. And I'm going to share how to counteract your brain's tendency to keep this info hidden rather than surfacing it for you.

But first, I have some important disclaimers, which are, as it relates to business, I consider your secret sauce to be made up of two things. There's your personal secret sauce, and then there's your offer’s secret sauce, which is often called a USP, or Unique Service Proposition.

Now, we're going to save the USP part for a future episode, since when people are looking for info regarding their secret sauce, they typically mean their personal secret sauce. Your personal secret sauce is made up of more than just that thing you do or provide that is so unique and special. It's also your personality and perspectives and strengths, etc.

But in this episode, we're going to be focusing on the thing you do, because again, it's what's of primary interest to people who are searching for their secret sauce. So, let's dive in with a really tactical to-do. You have got to hack a part of your brain into perceiving as if you were objectively doing a holistic, methodical inventory that will make your secret sauce apparent.

Now, it's challenging for us to see ourselves objectively. But if we could, our secret sauce would be much more recognizable. It's the same kind of thing that makes it easier for us to see what someone else should do, or the pitfall they're walking into, or their secret sauce.

Okay, how do you do that for yourself? Honestly, some people choose to outsource it. Some people choose to work with a coach who has a track record of helping people do this; who can be objective to them and help them see what they don't see.

But you could also poll people who you know in different environments about what they see, and then aggregate that data and look for common ground that resonates with you. You could also walk yourself through some sort of framework or series of questions that has you examining different parts of your life, your interests, and your successes, with a focus on the similarities or the root of all of those things.

Questions like: What was it that made that so easy for me? Why did they think that was so helpful? As you're doing this, of course, pretend you're someone else. Pretend you're someone else answering those questions. Some kind of watcher who has access to your mind, but isn't in it.

This is exactly what we do in Module 3 of the Clarity Accelerator. For us, it helps us connect the dots between the work we're here to do in the world and the people who will most appreciate it.

Now, if a part of you is wondering, “Wait, wait. Shouldn't I be looking for the thing that lights me up the most, that I feel super excited about?” The problem is, if you're like me, you probably have many things that you're passionate about, for a while. Or some, it maybe lasts for a lifetime but when you bring a business angle to them, it kills the joy.

Looking for my passion in this way is the exact line of thinking that had me creating a travel blog in my 30s. Because I thought, “Nothing lights me up like travel. Nobody finds the cool off the beaten track places that I do or sees what makes a specific place so special.”

But guess what? Turning my travels into a business sucked all the joy out of it. It was really hard for me to be in the moment and soak it all up, which is what I loved, when I was constantly documenting and photographing and trying to motivate myself to just go see one more thing.

Now that I look back, my secret sauce was shining through. The same eye that helped me pull out exactly what was so unique and different about a place, that's the same talent that lets me see it so easily in people and helps me zero in on the gold. It's part intuitive and part analytical.

So, focusing on my passion and using that to help me uncover my secret sauce was a long work around. Doing some deeper analysis would have gotten me there more quickly.

Okay, before we move on, speaking of secret sauce, which always makes me think of my amazing clients of course, I wanted to share something that someone shared with me lately about why they decided to join the Clarity Accelerator, which is my hybrid mastermind/one-to-one coaching offer.

I hope this will really be inspirational and thought provoking for you, because I love this stuff. I love hearing other women's thoughts about why they decided to do something; it usually helps me clarify my own decisions.

So, my client said, “I want to model for my daughters that a higher version of ourselves is just on the other side of fear or risk. It's time to jump off cliffs. I enjoy a good challenge, so bring it!” I love that. I literally threw my head back and laughed when I read that line.

Here's another, “When I get clear on a thought or idea watch out, because there is no stopping. Having clarity is going to allow me to call in exactly what is needed to drive inspiration and aligned action.”

Finally, “I know I'm capable, but I also know I have blind spots. I don't know what I don't know. And I don't want to be wavering and waffling over the ‘what ifs’ all along the way. I'm here for a smart start, because it's time for me to show up and make a difference.”

Don't those get you going? Doesn't it make you want to just call your imaginary assistant and be like, “Clear the calendar. I'm rolling up my sleeves, and I've got some work to do.” So, thank you, my friend; you know who you are; for allowing me to share that with everyone. It was so good.

Okay, let's talk mindset, shall we? Specifically, I want to give you one super helpful mindset tip regarding discovering your secret sauce. That is, that it is already there, my friend. You are just too close to see it. But that doesn't mean that it's not there. I'll tell you in a sec why this is so important.

But just to give you a personal example about when I was struggling with clarity of what I wanted to do with my life. I had an epiphany one day, where I realized that, “Wait a minute, if we're able to connect the dots in hindsight, if it's always been there and we just weren't quite able to see it, that means that right now those same dots are right here in front of me. I just need a different lens.”

Why this is important, is because if you are trying to access a solution from a state of either ‘maybe I don't have a secret sauce,’ or ‘this just feels impossible,’ then your ability to access it, access the truth, and the solutions you come up with in order to access the truth, will not be effective.

It can start to feel, like I said earlier, Sisyphus rolling that boulder up the hill. Whereas, if you're trying to solve the problem from the place of ‘oh, it's definitely here. I just need to maybe go out and get some exercise. Maybe gather some new data from some other people, see if that sparks anything for me. But it's right here. It's right on the tip of my tongue, I just need to find it.’ Then, you will drastically reduce your timeline to your solution.

I get to see this over and over. But just to share some stories that will help you build evidence for yourself. I remember once, this happened in the span of a single week, I had two clients that weren't really sure. Specifically, they wanted to create an offer, but they just weren't sure what they really offered. Which is another way of saying, “I don't really know what my secret sauce is, and what's special about me.”

I remember there was this one person who felt like she was stuck between doing courses on how to market yourself on LinkedIn, or if she should do high-end art consulting. As she was telling me about this, she was just lazing on this beautiful sofa with all of this amazing art surrounding her. I mean, in my memory, it was just dripping from her body.

But she's sitting there looking at me on Zoom, having this serious conversation, and I just took a snapshot of her in that exact moment and sent it to her. I said, “Try to see what this is like from an outside perspective.” It was so obvious.

Now, this is something that you either will or will not resonate with. There are some people that would feel much safer doing a LinkedIn course, and that's all they ever want to do. But my people actually want to uncover their thing and do something that they will really, really love, and find people who will really, really love them doing it.

In the same week, I was talking with a coach who also wasn't quite sure, and yet this woman would just bounce around in front of the camera. Sometimes in her underwear, or breastfeeding; she seemed to have no inhibitions. She was just this ball of vitality.

I said the word “inhibitions” there, and that's kind of giving you future forecasting into how perfectly that fit for her, to help women that were feeling more inhibited. Because it was just something that she did very naturally and automatically, and that she actually spoke passionately about too; if she could hear her language, if she could hear her words from the outside.

Again, when you're seeing it all the time, when you're around it all the time, it doesn't stand out for you like it does for other people. Specifically, when you're in the mindset of ‘I don't really know what I do. I don't have anything extra special.’ And/or ‘I don't know if this is special enough to be marketable,’ you're going to arrive at different results.

All right, are you ready for the energetics piece? Energetically, you need to be moving into, ‘I'm ready’ energy. So much that holds us back, just like when I was looking for clarity around what to do with my life, so much of what holds us back is internal.

It's not just that we're too close to it, it's that if discovering our secret sauce means that we are then going to have to own it, declare it, and step into it, why would any smart brain ever do that? Especially for women. It goes against so much of our conditioning, right?

“That's not humble. People will have thoughts about that. And then, what if you do declare it and you sell people on it, and then can't really deliver? Or you're actually kind of mediocre; the thing that you were saying was such a wonderful secret sauce? I mean, you're good at it, but you're not great. I mean, really what is worse than failure or mediocrity? No, it's so much better to just keep saying you can't figure it out.”

My friend, I am only saying this because I have been there. I can so clearly see, in hindsight, that what was keeping me from getting clear was my fear of failure. I've seen it over and over again with clients, in different ways; maybe secret sauce, maybe something else.

Very frequently there's one piece of resistance that's kind of in the background there. But it's powerful enough to keep us right where we are, rather than moving forward. But you are ready. You have to move into ‘I'm ready,’ because now is your time to create this leap, this huge uplevel in your life.

I was on a discovery call just recently with somebody, and we were talking about how she has this plan for the next few months, she knows exactly what she wants to do, and that if she came on board in the Clarity Accelerator, I would definitely be able to help her tighten up some of her messaging and to incrementally increase her results.

But here's the thing. During our call, we talked about her grand vision. After we got off the call, I wrote her a note. I said, “You know what? I think it is best that we wait until afterwards to begin.” We had talked about this on the call too, so it wasn't out of the blue that I said this.

But I had this strong premonition that the real reason she was coming to me, for that grander vision, is, in fact, that she is ready for that. And that will require an overhaul of her positioning, and her really stepping into that self, that woman.

Which would impact what she's planning to do for the next few months, and I don't think she'd want to do it anymore. I think she would be so called to the other. And if she really believed she could step into it she would be doing it, if she believed it would be successful.

So I told her, “You know what? Let's wait.” Because most people that come to me, this is what they truly want. Beyond even the messaging or the sales or clarity on their offer; those things are just tools for creating their greater transformation, their next big leap into a land that seems a little daunting.

I was just talking about how if they really believed, if they could see the future, how that might change their current actions. And it's fascinating, because my son is in the process of being diagnosed with ADHD. And so, I am learning so much about the brain, just being a mom who's researching this topic.

Of course, I already considered myself quite an expert on the brain when it comes to the subjects of personal change. But now I'm seeing the correlation between future forecasting… it's called being able to put ourselves in the future, and therefore use that knowledge and belief to change our current actions in the present… and how extremely difficult that is for my son, already knowing that it's difficult for humans.

The book Freakonomics is basically about this subject, but now I really know how it works in the brain. And I also know that we are so lucky to have the type of consciousness we do, as humans, where we can stop ourselves, we can use a different part of the brain to access the information that will best serve us, and to follow through with goals and commitments and ways of being that will most serve us.

We do have the ability to override the part of our brain that might otherwise keep us stuck. And so, if you feel yourself holding back, definitely get help. That could be just shaking things up, it could be getting into a great peer group, mastermind group, it could be working with a coach. Because there's just too many downsides to not moving forward.

When I walk clients through this, they are almost always amazed to see all of the tiny, little, micro ways that our current situation is affecting us, in terms of our energy. In terms of our future earning potential; which we're not going to be earning next year, because we're going to be waiting a year to finally start taking the steps we need to take. Therefore, five years won't be earning what we would be earning five years from now, if we started now.

How it affects our emotions, how it affects our relationships, how it affects all these tiny, little details. But that, of course, is not what our brain wants us to concentrate on when we're in the place of potentially avoiding a dangerous situation. No, our brain wants us to focus on, “What's one more month? I'll just put this away for a while and come back to it a little later. I'm doing okay right now, I can just kind of continue along as I'm doing.”

But once you hear “the call,” you're not going to not hear “the call.” They'll just stay there knocking at the door until you uncover or move into whatever is next for you.

All right, that is it for today. I am so excited for you to gain more clarity about your secret sauce, and then use it to call in your right people. All right, my friends, you know who you are, and each day you are stepping further into what you are here to create.

Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.

Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.

Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.

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