It was the early 1960s in Mountain View California, a quirky 4th-grade boy begrudgingly woke up and got ready for another day of school. He despised the traditional classroom setting and frequently misbehaved out of sheer boredom. He’d rather be doing what truly made him feel alive and set his soul on fire—working on electronics with his father in their family garage.

Throughout high school and during college, he continued to feel bored with the classes he was forced to take and was dissatisfied with pursuing an education he had no passion for. He ended up dropping out of college, although he returned to audit a calligraphy class just for fun and ironically fell in love with it.

After leaving the university, he became an employee of a video game company and joined the Homebrew Computer Club. Here, he befriended someone who had a similar passion for technology. In 1976, the two decided to go into business together and their company is now well known worldwide and worth an estimated $750 billion dollars.

The boy in this story is Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple computer. Because he followed what set his soul on fire and used his personal strengths and life experiences, he was able to create a business, career, and life that he loved. The significance of the calligraphy class that he took for fun? If he hadn’t taken that class, our computers may not have the unique and beautiful typography that they do today.

“You’ve got to find what you love. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know it when you find it.” ~Steve Jobs

The takeaway of this story is not to dissuade people from going to college or to say that school isn’t important because, of course, it is. The point is that every single person, including you, has a unique set of attributes that you are born with called your temperament and a unique set of habits, preferences, and environmental factors that if understood correctly can propel you into reaching your true potential in your career.

This week, I had the joy of interviewing Jeanne Patti, a Career & Solopreneur Coach and the Owner and Founder of People Dynamics. She is an expert in understanding temperament and character and is skilled at helping people understand how they are hardwired. She has found that when people truly understand themselves that they are able to have a clear vision of what they want in their careers and have the confidence to know how they are going to attain it.

Understanding yourself and your unique temperament and personality is a crucial, and often overlooked, step in having career success and satisfaction.

The Carnegie Institute of Technology carried out a study that showed that 85% of your personal financial success is due to skills in human engineering, your personality, ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead and only 15% is due to technical knowledge.

So how does this all relate to you?

Let’s say for instance that you are feeling stuck in your career and aren’t sure what your next move should be. Patti said that she noticed a common theme in her many years of experience of working with people who felt stuck and unsatisfied in their current role.

She said, “So many people go into their new roles in the back door. They sit in that back room, hoping that someone will find their value and allow them to grow. As the years pass they haven’t actually learned anything new or done anything to grow and were just hoping that someone would find their value. What they need to start doing instead, is focusing on expertise and growing it for as long as they live. By doing this, no company would ever be able to stop that person’s growth because they keep becoming more and more of an expert in their subject matter.”  In order to become an expert in something, it is critical to first understand what you want to become an expert in, and the first step to knowing what you want to become an expert in is to understand your unique temperament and personality.

Patti concluded our interview with some powerful thoughts:

“Every single person in this world has incredible value and if they take the time to uncover what that personally means for them, they will be able to skyrocket into a career where they will add value, build wealth for themselves, and make a really big difference in this world.”

If you are interested in learning more about what Jeanne Patti does, you can check out her website here.

If you are interested in taking a free online self-assessment tool, you can do that here.

If you are looking for some confidential and expert guidance in your current career, or are looking for a new career, you can reach out to Sandra M. Smith, Owner & Founder of Insight Talent Solutions at or (262) 782-7255.We promise that we aren’t like most recruiters and that we genuinely care about you and your professional goals. Also, we are subject matter experts in all things career-related!


About Insight Talent Solutions

Insight Talent Solutions is a full-service recruitment firm that has successfully been serving the greater Milwaukee, Madison, and Chicago areas for the past ten years.

We offer a comprehensive portfolio of services to fill roles ranging from the board of director to executive and professional level searches. We use a creative, respectful, and engaging approach to enable us to find the best candidates for our clients. We have a genuine passion for people and take time to understand your unique story so that we can help lead you to even greater success.

About the Author

Amy Roesch is the Copywriter at Insight Talent Solutions. She uses her creativity and passion for writing to help develop Insight’s blogs, job descriptions, eBooks, white papers, and more. She enjoys researching current job-related trends to give professionals the tools they need to manage and improve their careers. Connect with Amy on LinkedIn!



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