Get Your Mojo Working

Tough Things First

Many entrepreneur’s know when their mojo is working, but some people just do not know how to tap into it. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn offers a surefire way to find your mojo.

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Rob Artigo: Entrepreneurs at their heart are creative, ambitious people. Am I generally right when I say that?

Ray Zinn: Absolutely. You have to have ambition, you’ve got to have the enthusiasm, and you have to have that passion. Passion, passion, passion.

Rob Artigo: Entrepreneurs know when they are on a roll because everything is kind of clicking, and I was looking at Zen of Zinn 3, page 49, and I was reading something that you wrote and it talks about mojo. Let me read this for you. It says, “I got my mojo working. How’s your mojo? Mojo refers to magic or special power. We all have a mojo, but often don’t identify what it is. In my mind, of course, being your mind, mojo is that unique talent each of us has. If you are having difficulty finding your mojo, ask those that know you well. Often these people can help you find it.” This is from, again, page 49 of Zen Zinn 3, and you obviously can pick up that series if you want to, but Ray, let’s talk about mojo. I mean, obviously you had your mojo working when you wrote this.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, so talking to my wife the other day, I wrote 10 or 11 musings the other day, and all at one time, I just went one after another and I was saying to her, “I don’t know how I do this. I really can’t figure out how I am able to just sit down and just start creating all these sayings because I’ve done thousands of them so far.”

And she says, “It’s because of your mojo.” And I said, “Okay, what is my mojo?” She says, “You’re intuitive, you’re perceptive. You can see things that others can’t see, and that’s how you can write about them.” Well, that’s what a book author does. I mean, he can see things that others can’t see, and so it may not be your mojo. Your mojo may be your ability to work with people. Maybe you’re a good salesperson or maybe you’re a good accountant, maybe you’re good with numbers, or you’re great at motivating others.

We all have different talents and there’s no one talent that’s particularly better than another. They’re just kind of what we’re born with as you would our innate ability. This podcast is really to get you to focus on where is your unique talent. As we start out talking about that musing that I wrote in Zen of Zinn 3, you can ask your spouse, your significant other, your mom, your father, friends. They know you and they know what you’re great at and what you’re good at.

It’s good to get that reinforced by someone that knows you. So go to someone that knows you. It might be a professor, it might be classmates, it might be someone else. It might be your preacher, it might be your cousin or your wife or your husband or whoever, but ask them, “What’s my unique talent?” And then go after it and focus on that, tune it to a fine, fairly well as it were to just really work on developing that unique talent. And you’ll find out how much that will benefit you then as you proceed with your career.

Rob Artigo: That just triggered something in my mind about the importance for young people to understand this because oftentimes I think that if you just ask any 18 year olds, “What do you want to do with your life?” “I don’t know. I don’t really know if I’m interested in anything, and then I don’t know if I’m good at anything or I don’t know where my talents lie.”

For young people specifically in this situation, what you just said, it could be the secret sauce to them figuring out what to do with the rest of their lives because they can, if they are free to do so, if they feel like if they have the confidence to do so is to be, I guess it’s humbling to go to somebody and say, “Hey, what do you think about this? What have you seen in me that looks like it’s a value that I can do in the world? Where are my talents?” And those people, like you said, who know them well, are going to say, “I’ve seen you do this and I’ve seen you do that, and I think you’re really good in this area.”

Ray Zinn: I’m going to be meeting in a few days with a number of college students at San Jose State University. They’ll listen to their pitch on what they have an idea for starting a company, and I’ll be great to see how their mojo fits into that because that’s what I look for. When I will go there and I’ll listen to their pitches, I will sense in my mind if they’re going to be successful by how their passion is, how do they feel about this particular business opportunity that they’re pursuing?

It’s called Zen Starter and Zen Starter is a business that I’ve set up at these different universities, five or six universities where Zen Starter will help fund them in their business if their board of directors or the school will give them the go-ahead to do it. We help fund that, and so they learn how to start a business while they’re still in school. And so I get a chance now in a few days to listen to a number of pitches from the students of what they think is a good business.

And what I’m going to be looking at is where’s their passion? In other words, where’s their mojo and do they have that unique talent to pull it off? Everybody would like to be an entrepreneur. Everybody would love to be able to start their own business work for themselves, but not everybody can. Not everybody has that mojo that allows them to go where no one’s gone before, as you would.

Look at successful athletes, and you’ll see that they have a unique talent. Maybe they’re not all running backs or tight ends, maybe they’re guards or tackles or whatever or centers, but they have a unique ability and that’s what allows them to succeed is they have to do it better than the guy next door, so to speak. And it’s the same thing when I go to San Jose State in a few days is to see how successful I believe they can be because I’m an investor in them and what they’re doing through Zen Starter, and I want to see if they have that unique talent to make this business that they want to start successful.

Rob Artigo: Professional athletes tend to start out in their development years as the best players on every team and every sport that they play. They’re that good. But it takes advice and talking to people and understanding where their skills really lie and really stand out to decide which sport and then decide which position. So I love that example about whether you’re going to be a tight end or a receiver or a running back or whatever the case may be. You don’t know. You may want to be a receiver and they’re going, “Nope, you’re going to be a running back. You’re going to do this, or you’re going to be a center because that’s where you’re best suited for.” And then you work in that area. And most of the time, these guys find out that that was a good decision, that they did the right thing because they were most successful, and it takes good coaches to do that sort of thing.

So let’s wrap this conversation up by saying join the conversation at ToughThingsFirst.com. Your questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray Zinn on X, Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course you can pick up Ray’s books Tough Things First and as you’ve mentioned Ray, the Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3. You won’t regret it.

Ray, real quick, I wanted to ask you, I like the Zen of Zinn for how it is a nest of writings that reflect, like you said, you write a ton of these things, but the Zen of Zinn is a special kind of book because it is one where you can pick it up and you can read a few of these things. I’m going to say that it’s not like a fortune cookie. You can read it and get something out of it and then put it into work in your life.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, I’d say opening up a fortune cookie every day.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. That is it. Thanks, Ray. Thanks for a great conversation.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.