A business has profit centers (the parts of the operation that actually make money, as opposed to the parts that merely cost something).
A person has them too, and they are almost never where the person expects.
We are trained to look for our profit potential in our strengths: the things we do consistently and well. That is a reasonable guess and it is usually wrong. Your consistent strengths are what makes you employable. The place you have the potential to become genuinely valuable (the thing people will pay a premium for) is far more often somewhere you are open.
Why openness pays
An open Center is where you have no fixed way of operating. You take in what is around you, amplify it, and experience it as though it were yours. That is what makes openness uncomfortable, and it is also what makes it commercially valuable.
Because you are not fixed there, you have sampled that terrain in every variation. Someone with a defined Center in the same place has experienced it one way their whole life: reliably, consistently, and narrowly. You have seen it hundreds of ways.
Over a life, that accumulates into something specific: you become able to recognize, instantly and accurately, what is going on for someone else in that area. That recognition is the product. It is why so many people end up making their best living advising on precisely the thing that caused them the most trouble.
The condition is that you must stop identifying with what moves through you. Wisdom in the open Centers only becomes available once you can observe the amplification rather than believe it. Until then, the same openness produces the distortion instead. You pay for it rather than being paid for it.
Asking questions that fit the mechanics
The second half of this is how you get at it, in yourself or in a client.
Most coaching questions assume the client can introspect their way to an answer. For a great many designs, that assumption is simply false. Asking an emotionally defined person what they want right now produces an answer that will not survive the week. Asking an open-Ajna client to state a firm position produces certainty they do not have. Asking a non-Sacral being to consult their gut produces nothing at all, and then embarrassment.
A genetically accurate question is one shaped to how that person is actually built to arrive at truth:
- Emotionally defined: never ask for a decision in the session. Ask what they notice about the same question at different points in their wave.
- Sacral: ask closed questions, and listen for the sound rather than the sentence. The explanation that follows is the mind’s, not the response.
- Splenic: ask once, and take the first, quiet answer. Asking again gets you the mind.
- Open G: do not ask about direction. Ask about environments and people, and let direction fall out of it.
- Advisor (Projector) or other non-Sacral: do not ask what they have energy for. Ask what they see, and who has recognized it.
Asked correctly, the same client who could not answer a question about their career gives you something usable in one sitting. Asked incorrectly, you get their conditioning, articulately expressed, and you build a plan on it.
Putting the two together
Find where the client is open. Ask in the way their mechanics can answer. What comes out is usually a version of the same sentence:
The thing I have struggled with my whole life is the thing I understand better than almost anyone.
That is the profit center. The work after that is figuring out who needs it and what it is worth, which is ordinary business work, and much easier once you know what you are selling.
I’ve spent more than thirty years as an entrepreneur and teach the career and business application of the Human Design System. I help business owners and entrepreneurs market themselves in a way that fits their design, lead their teams to greater efficiency and profitability, and find the work their chart was actually built for.
Common questions
Why does the article say your profit potential usually isn't in your consistent strengths?
Consistent strengths make you employable, but genuine, premium-paid value more often comes from your open Centers, where you've sampled a subject in every variation instead of experiencing it only one fixed way.
What condition has to be met before an open Center's wisdom becomes valuable?
You have to stop identifying with what moves through you. The wisdom only becomes available once you can observe the amplification rather than believe it; otherwise the same openness produces distortion you pay for instead of getting paid for.
What is a genetically accurate question in coaching?
A question shaped to how a person actually arrives at truth, such as never asking an emotionally defined person to decide in the moment, asking Sacral types closed questions and listening for the sound rather than the sentence, and asking Splenic types once and taking the first, quiet answer.
What's the practical formula the article gives for finding a profit center?
Find where the client is open, then ask in the way their mechanics can actually answer. What emerges is usually a version of: the thing I've struggled with my whole life is the thing I understand better than almost anyone.