Practical Genius (25 page)

Be voracious.
Greed is good when it comes to purposeful consumption of the product of others’ genius.

Shut down.
When you learn to unplug, solutions to problems will take shape in your mind, new ideas will reveal themselves, and you will begin to enjoy greater intuitiveness.

Feed your body first.
You are what you eat. I’m not kidding.

A body in motion.
Big revelation: exercise isn’t about your bod, it’s about your brain.

Sleep.
The world’s most underrated stimulant is sleep. Get a lot of it.

I
genius.
What moves you, moves you toward genius.

Now we play.
It is during the play state that the body, mind, and heart come together harmoniously.

Find your flow.
Joy happens at the place where focus, motivation, and engagement intersect.

FRANCESCA PRADO

It is time to take our journey—our amazing journey of genius growth and discovery—to the transactional level. I know, I know, throughout this exploration, I’ve been very strict about being nontransactional. That’s because it’s important to focus on developing your understanding, expression, and growth of your genius in an authentic, deeply practical way, keeping the transactional off the table so that the truth of who you are can reveal itself without that pesky selling stuff compromising everything you’ve worked so hard to realize. But here we are. You have this asset, this product—your genius. Only an idiot would not be thinking about what to do with that now.

The fact is, I
want
you to market the hell out of it. But I don’t want you to market the hell out of
it.
I want you to market the hell out of exactly who you are, which is to say, not a package but the authentic genius essence of you, not a concept but a true-to-life, fire-breathing, boundary-busting, definition-defying, game-changing tour de force
that makes you wonder what in the world you were doing before you got to this place. So let’s talk about marketing.

I have a confession to make: I spent most of my corporate life as a marketer, and only after resigning from my job as a marketer did I really understand the power of marketing. Yep, I was a global marketer obsessed with the marketing needs of my employer, PR Newswire, but I never gave a thought to the marketing of me.

Why did it take getting off that ride for me to realize the power of marketing myself? I wish I could say I was never afforded the opportunity to learn this, but I was given many opportunities in that job. I chose not to share my whole story, my whole truth, or all my assets because of fear. I had every opportunity to market my values, passions, and soft assets, which were pulling at me 24/7 for a very long time, and instead I stayed quiet, waiting for the right time to present itself. It never came. What came instead was frustration, illness, and regret. Thinking back upon it now, hiding any part of myself in that job was the dumbest professional mistake I ever made.