Find Your Zone of Genius: Todd Palmer on Purpose and Success

Mar 11, 2025

6 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

A lot of CEOs solve their business problems and still end the day drained. Todd Palmer was one of them. He ran a staffing company, Diversified Industrial Staffing, which he exited in 2018, and by the outside world's measure he should have been happy. He was not. Today he coaches CEOs and facilitates EO forums and retreats, and people keep asking where his energy comes from. His answer is on his napkin. Two circles. One is his why, improve lives, which he worked out with Simon Sinek. The other is his personal definition of success, which he credits to Tony Robbins: doing what I want, where I want, with whom I want, as often as I want. Where the two overlap is what Todd calls the zone of genius. Most of the leaders he coaches struggle to find theirs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgXFvzHQFqE

Inspired by Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode 224 with Todd Palmer.

Why a clear purpose changes how a business decides

Once Todd's company found its why, it changed how the business ran. Most recruiting firms put the recruiter at the top of the pyramid. They flipped it. The candidate came first, the company second, and the firm got paid at the bottom.

Improve lives sat at the center of that triangle. If a job did not improve the candidate's life, they did not encourage the candidate to take it. If the candidate did not improve the business, they did not encourage the company to hire. When Todd was out of the office, his team could make placement decisions from that one diagram.

It also answered hard client questions. A client might ask whether Bob, making 25 bucks an hour, would come work for 22. That does not improve Bob's life. Bob has to go home and tell his wife he is leaving a job of five years for a pay cut. Two words carried a lot of complexity, and the team could absorb them because they were easy to draw.

Todd adds a caution about assumptions. Clients thought leaving was always about money. In his experience it was more often culture, environment and whether people felt safe being themselves. And yes, you still have to pay market rates.

How to define success on your own terms

Todd's second circle matters because it is personal. When he sits next to someone on a plane who is having a hard time, he could hand over a business card and quote a fee. Or he can just help. He chooses to help because of the energy it gives him. His joy is the moment the eyes open and someone has a breakthrough.

Todd still wants to earn an income, and he is clear about that. He also knows he is wired to get joy out of other people's success. Years later he gets emails from people he helped once, telling him their life is different now. For Todd, the day does not get any better than that.

How did he know he was in the zone? He worked with a neuroscientist named Danny for 8 years, and they kept tracking one thing. What gives Todd energy, and what drains it. At an EO forum retreat that runs for hours, Todd often has more energy at the end than at the start, because the people with him are getting breakthroughs. Every person's answer is different. The measure is the same. Notice what fills you up.

Three steps to get into your zone of genius

Todd had never been asked how he prepares, and when I asked, he described a process.

Remind yourself you get to do this. Is life happening for you or to you? Todd decides it is happening for him. A delayed flight or a missed connection is out of his control, so he works through it to protect his energy for the people he is there to serve.

Bring intentions, not expectations. He goes in to serve, and he trusts that "the room will give me what it needs." Expectations put him in a reactive place. Intentions let him think. He is less likely to deliver a great experience when he arrives with a script for how it should go.

Be super patient. This is the hardest one for him. When someone is fumbling for an answer, he has to be comfortable with their discomfort. Our instinct is to fix people. Todd stays quiet, asks them to tell him more, and if they say they do not know, he asks them to take a guess. The best moment is when someone says they have never said that before.

What to do when someone in your group says they do not like you

Halfway through a retreat with an EO group in Texas, a woman told Todd she did not like him. She wanted a lecture on how to get unstuck, not personal work, and she said so in front of her peers.

Todd's first thought was what was happening for her. He depersonalized it. His second was how this could happen for him and not to him. He had told the group he was there to serve them, so he had opened the door for her. He took his part in it and got curious. What would you like me to do differently?

Later it came out that she was afraid of her turn. She felt she would be judged. When she finally spoke, she said her biggest stuck was that nobody loved her. They spent an hour and a half on it. When the day closed, she rated the first half a zero and the second half a ten. That moment brought the whole group together.

He tells a similar story about a business owner whose company ran on perfection. Asked how perfection showed up in his marriage, he said not good. It had served his business and hurt his family. As Todd puts it, "we can't read the label of our lives inside of the jar." Someone has to point it out.

Does the outcome follow if you focus on the zone?

Some owners will say this is easy for Todd because he sold his company. You have to focus on the outcome. Todd's answer is his own experience. By being in his zone, the outcome takes care of itself. He makes more money now than when he was CEO of a 10 million dollar company. He says it as a plain fact.

As CEO he wore masks and did things for people he did not want to do, telling himself he had to. Now he gets to. People gravitate toward that.

There is a trade-off he wants named. Every zone of genius has a sacrifice. For Todd it is time away from a home he loves. He can usually be gone five to six days. Once he skipped going home between trips, felt resentful on the road, and decided he would not do that again.

He also had to reframe failure. He once told himself he was a complete failure, after debt and nearly losing his house. Danny told him failure does not exist. What we call failure is learning. Todd still slips sometimes. Now it lasts minutes, not weeks.

How to apply this in your business this week

Todd's own starting point was being sick and tired of ending his days drained. If that sounds familiar, start with noticing.

Draw the two circles. Write your why in one and your personal definition of success in the other. What sits where they overlap?
Track your energy for five days. Which meetings leave you fuller, and which leave you drained?
Before your next big meeting, write down your intention for it. Then cross out any expectations you brought in.
When someone on your team struggles to answer, wait longer than feels comfortable. Ask them to take a guess.
Name the old story you are still telling yourself. The narrative that kept you safe early on may not be keeping you safe now.

As Todd says of his own, "The narrative that kept me safe as a 5 year old wasn't the narrative that was keeping me safe as a 40 year old."