You're a Genius
But you don't know it...
I had a recent experience with a good friend that ended badly.
He was asking me how I achieved X. He kept peppering me with questions, and it started to irritate me.
I had a mini-explosive reaction after the nth question. I told him, “Look, you just do it! It’s not rocket science….”
At that moment, I lost a friend.
He said, “Fernando, don’t worry….you’re not going to hear from me again.”
And he meant that literally.
I regretted exploding at him, and I wish I could take it all back (I’ll reach out to him soon, as long as I can get over my own fear of rejection).
In this sad story, there’s an important truth I want you to understand: you have a zone of genius that other people recognize, but you don’t.
And if you can figure out a way to unlock that genius and pour it into a proprietary framework in a systematic way, your business can take off!
Your Hidden Genius
What I learned from this experience, and from the hard knocks of building my business after getting laid off in 2023, is a method that founders and business leaders can use to differentiate themselves in the market.
The word genius is a curious word. We assign it almost mystical qualities. We lionize the “geniuses” of today and recent history: Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Mr. Spock…I think you know what I’m talking about.
But we don’t recognize our own genius. I know I didn’t.
Because we go about our day - doing our work, solving problems, talking to clients or colleagues - and it’s just normal for us.
We got to where we are today by learning, iterating, making mistakes, implementing what we’ve learned.
And when somebody asks us, “How did you do that?” We think that question is funny. We just say, “I don’t know, I just did it.”
And regrettably, sometimes the question annoys us. “How could they not know how to do this? Doesn’t everybody know this?”
Let me share an example from recent experience: out of desperation, I stumbled on a method to promote a client’s 3-day summit. He had zero budget for advertising and PR, and we only had four weeks left to fill the “seats.”
We had recruited some high-profile speakers, including a Mexican senator, and I didn’t want them speaking to crickets.
So in a flash of inspiration, I decided the only way to promote the summit was to interview the speakers and turn their interviews into an AI-powered content cascade.
Each interview turned into a long-form YouTube video; five or six YouTube shorts, reels, and LinkedIn videos; a couple of newsletter articles, and four to five LinkedIn posts.
I posted all the content to my client’s social media channels and newsletter.
The buzz we created attracted people with large audiences who offered to promote the summit for free to their subscribers/members/audience.
And by the time the first day of the summit rolled around, we had a huge turnout!
I thought everybody did this, but people started asking me, “How did you do it?”
In one of those “lightning bolts in the shower” moments, it finally clicked.
The interviews I was doing revealed methodologies, frameworks, models, processes I had never seen before.
These people were geniuses in their own right! But they hadn’t codified their methodologies, frameworks, models, and processes.
And when I ran the movie of my professional life in my head, I realized I had those too!
The AI Unlock
Working with ChatGPT, Claude.ai, and now Claude Cowork, I figured out a way to extract that genius.
I created a category design Custom GPT that turned interview transcripts into categories. This was a genius-extraction GPT.
I then refined it to create a Claude Project, and I eventually used it to create a Claude Cowork skill out of it.
I took five months of interview transcripts with Kenny, a client of mine. I invoked my category design skill, and voilá: Kenny now has a unique framework he’s using to design his own market category!
I did the same thing with a class of students studying entrepreneurship at a university in Mexico. The students are all small business owners.
I had them fill out a JotForm survey with questions like, “Why do clients hire you? What differentiates you from others?” Etc.
During the class, I opened Claude Cowork and pulled up the answers from the JotForm survey.
We read their answers together. And then I picked two businesses to build categories for, right there on the Zoom call.
One was a company that develops study plans for corporations to help employees complete their continuing education programs. Good business.
When I asked the founder what frustrates her clients, she said most companies pay for these programs, but the process is disorganized, and nobody tracks who actually finishes.
The company was founded by psychologists. Their real skill isn’t curriculum - it’s retention. Keeping adults from dropping out.
My Claude skill created a whole framework for their business. Claude created a name for their framework: “Retención Educativa Corporativa” or “Corporate Education Retention.”
Then I did a live demo for the owner of a plant nursery that sells specialized substrates for exotic plants.
Her survey questions revealed that people’s plants die within weeks because nobody teaches them what soil and nutrients to use.
To solve this, the nursery delivers post-sale education and consulting. Their belief? They trust their customers to learn to care for these exotic plants, unlike competitors who just sell and move on.
Claude called it: “Centro de Adopción de Plantas” or “Plant Adoption Center.” You don’t buy a plant here. You adopt one, and they make sure it survives.
The reactions were immediate. The students got it.
After the class ended, I sat down with Claude and did the same exercise for all 13 businesses:
A carnicería (butcher) became “La Despensa de Proteína Familiar” - or “The Family Protein Pantry”
A makeup artist became “Estudio de Belleza Real” or “The Natural Beauty Studio.”
A piñata maker became “El Centro de Tu Fiesta” or “Your Fiesta Center.”
Thirteen businesses. Thirteen categories. Thirteen zones of genius.
This is the unlock I’m seeing with AI: take your human, stream-of-consciousness conversations and musings, ask AI to reveal the patterns, unique approaches, and sudden insights, and then it into a differentiator that can create a whole new category for your business.
I’m starting a webinar series where I explain this framework. The first one is about how cold-outbound is dying, and what’s replacing it. Register for it here. It’s next Tuesday, March 31st, at 12 PM CST.
The second and third ones focus on the Viral Genius Framework and the Category Creation Formula, respectively.
I hope to see you there next Tuesday!