After growing my consulting business at 20% annually for five years, I realized success isn't about collecting skills—it’s about maximizing the unique strengths you already have. Your "weaknesses" are often just your superpowers in disguise.
Here are the four "superpowers" that became the foundation of my business approach:
The Core: I genuinely listen to the business pain my clients are not saying.
It’s a Business Advantage: Clients trust me with their real problems (not the sanitized version) because they know I care more about the right solution than padding my own bottom line.
The Result: I address root causes, not symptoms. This has led to the deep, referral-based relationships that fuel my sustainable growth.
The Key: Pairing that empathy with strategic, risk-mitigating planning. (Being nice is good; being nice and profitable is better.)
The Core: I refuse to operate in a silo. I see the full picture—business strategy, technical possibilities, and creative alternatives—that specialists miss.
The Advantage: This comprehensive perspective reveals hidden opportunities that simply shouldn't exist but do. While others are focused on their narrow lane, I'm connecting dots across disciplines.
The Benefit: Faster decision-making. When you understand all the moving pieces, you don't need endless meetings. You know what's possible and what's not.
The Core: Where most people get cautious under pressure, I become decisive. Stress actually sharpens my decision-making.
It’s Not Reckless: It’s about embracing uncertainty as a core part of the entrepreneurial process. I don't settle for comfortable; I actively seek opportunities to learn. Failure is just tuition paid toward expertise.
The Mantra: Quick, informed decisions beat perfect plans that never get implemented. While competitors are stuck in "next step" meetings, I’m helping clients move forward.
The Core: My ADHD brain collects random, often obscure, information like a magnet. I remember technical workarounds and unconventional industry strategies.
The Reframe: What others dismiss as scattered thinking, I leverage as pattern recognition. Solutions from totally different industries can revolutionize a client's approach. (e.g., A retail marketing tactic might fix a B2B service problem.)
The Value: Instead of fighting my tendency to wander, I use that mental database of random knowledge to unlock complex problems.
The real insight here isn't to copy my strengths. It's to realize your most valuable assets might be hiding in plain sight.
Your superpowers aren't the skills you learned in business school. They are the traits you take for granted, the quirks you thought were weaknesses, or the weird combination of experiences that shaped your perspective.
The entrepreneurs who scale aren't generalists. They double down on what makes them uniquely valuable and build their entire business model around those specific, differentiating strengths. My 20% growth came from attracting clients who needed exactly those capabilities.
Identifying my superpowers led to a pivotal realization: my company would need 6–8 months to replace me. That insight turned my terrifying career decision into a mathematical problem.
Here’s the breakdown that changed everything:
| Variable | The Cold, Hard Math |
| Timeline Goal | Make enough money in 6–8 months to support my family for 2 years. |
| Pricing Strategy | Use what my company charged clients for my services as my baseline. (Real market validation.) |
| The Safety Net | By calculating my worth, I structured the exit to secure a high-paying, short-term contract that was my safety net. |
Want to make $90,000 annually as a consultant?
Your hourly rate should be your target salary divided by 2, then add three zeros.
$90,000 / 2 = 45. Add three zeros = $45/hour? NO! (This is where people mess up!)
You must account for taxes, business expenses, benefits, and non-billable time. A quick, simple formula: Target Annual Salary / 1,000 = Your Approximate Billable Hourly Rate.
$90,000 / 1,000 = $90/hour (Minimum).
The entrepreneurs who build sustainable businesses don't just rely on passion—they combine their superpowers with cold, hard math.
My 20% growth didn't happen by accident. It happened because I identified what made me uniquely valuable, calculated what that was worth, and built a business model around those specific advantages.
What are your superpowers worth? More importantly, are you charging accordingly?