Do you believe it’s possible to make money from knowing a little about a lot of different topics and sharing the useful information? Are you the person that could build a business around your love of trivia? Ever wonder how someone who collects so many books and magazines might make money from a side hustle? Each of these likely have the CliftonStrengths theme of Input®.
People with the Input strength are like sponges. Their minds soak up, collect, and store information like a sponge soaks up every ounce of liquid in its path. People with this strength like to collect quotes, stories, anecdotes, or material items. They want to ask questions about everything. They take this information they learn from their questioning and have the uncanny ability to retrieve when needed.
Whatever an Input person is fascinated with, they love to collect, and it’s difficult for them to throw things away. They can feel a sense of chaos because they have so many ideas and material things in their home.
A person with the Input strength loves to ask, “What is my question today?” One person I know literally asks himself a question a day, starting a daily quest to gather all the information, data, and ideas related to the question that he can. Not surprisingly, people with Input strength love the Internet, and they are especially huge fans of Google because it gives them access to thousands of rabbit holes for searching out all the latest information.
Thus, people with Input are a great encyclopedia of information and are usually excellent teammates in Trivial Pursuit. People with Input should create systems for storing information, whether it’s mentally or physically because the sheer quantity of ideas and information can be overwhelming. They typically benefit from someone who has organizing skills to help focus their curiosities into one area, becoming experts instead of Renaissance collectors.
Input individuals could consider how they can monetize their strengths, asking themselves, “How do I turn this strength into a moneymaker? How can this help me create a better business? Advance my career? Maximize my family and love life?”
The key is finding ways to use the information instead of allowing it to grow stagnant. Those with the Input strength must find avenues to share their information. They make great librarians, researchers, legal assistants, and virtual assistants.
Mike Wolfe, created and now stars in the History Channel’s hit TV show “American Pickers” by using what looks like his Input strength.
Wolfe has become a household name by taking what he loves – the world of “picking,” where Mike and his friend Frank Fritz go into people’s homes, barns, sheds all across America and turning it into his livelihood. Today, he’s the top picker in America.
Wolfe, has been picking since age four. His deep love of collecting not only material things but the stories that go along with them is often demonstrated on the show. He loves to take these stories and the knowledge that he has acquired through all his years of picking and shares it with people on the show. Many of the people on the show who they go to pick have been left a huge collection by a loved one who has passed on. Mike loves to go into situations where people need knowledge and use what he has learned during his long career to help the people understand what they have and what it is worth.
Picking does not sound like a glamour’s job, and most of the time, it is not. It is dirty and hot and sweaty. But by pursuing his love of picking Mike Wolfe has parlayed his work of picking into a $4 million net worth.
How do you think you could monetize your Input strength? Could you take you Input strength and pair it with something that you love to create a multimillion dollar net worth? Tell me about your ideas in the comments below.
Not sure about how you could move forward? Want to talk about your action plan? Remember you can schedule your Ask Brent Anything call. Let’s talk about strengths.
