This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Unlocking Your Hidden Genius: How to Harness Your Innate Talents with Betsy Wills & Alex Ellison | Ep. 289

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Did you know there’s an actual science to uncovering your hidden genius? It’s not about filling out a “dream job” worksheet—it’s about understanding how your brain is wired, identifying your natural aptitudes, and using them to thrive. This isn’t just a self-discovery exercise. It’s a game-changer for your career, your relationships, and how you show up in the world. Betsy Wills and Alex Ellison are redefining how we approach career discovery, proving that finding the right path isn’t just about landing a job—it’s about creating a life that aligns with who you actually are. ✅ Betsy Wills – Cofounder of YouScience, a groundbreaking psychometric assessment platform reshaping how we understand our talents. She’s also the Director of Marketing & Branding at Diversified Trust and a frequent lecturer at Vanderbilt University and NYU’s Stern School of Business. ✅ Alex Ellison – Founder of Throughline Guidance, a global college and career counseling practice. She’s a sought-after writer, speaker, and expert in college readiness and career development. ✅ Together, they co-authored Your Hidden Genius: The Science-Backed Strategy to Uncovering and Harnessing Your Innate Talents. Discovering your hidden genius isn’t just about career success—it’s about tapping into what makes you, you. Connect with Betsy & Alex:  Website (Free Downloads): www.yourhiddengenius.com Book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/your-hidden-genius-elizabeth-m-willsalexandra-ellison Related Podcast Episodes: How To Be You, But Better with Olga Khazan | 288 Finding Purpose Through Human Design with Emma Dunwoody | 228 195 / Finding (And Using) Your Voice with Amy Green Smith Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and what it feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. With the new definition being whatever feels true and real and right for you. You are the decider. And while woman's work can mean literally anything, it definitely includes your work, like what you do for a living,

which sounds like it should be an easy thing to figure out, but for many of us, we're still operating under the career advice we got in high school. You know, the do what you love or follow your passion advice we heard from adults who didn't seem to be following their own advice most of the time. Yeah, I'm not saying that this is terrible advice, but I am saying it's very incomplete. They're cute ideas, but for most of us, those platitudes haven't exactly led us to career bliss. those platitudes haven't exactly led us to career bliss. Instead, we're trying to survive jobs we don't hate or

can barely tolerate while doing work that leaves us wondering, why am I here? And questioning what we're actually good at and better yet, questioning how we can get paid well while building a career and a life that we actually enjoy. And here's the kicker, we may have been given very incomplete messaging to this whole career planning thing, which sucks, because it's a pretty important life altering thing, right? Because it's not just about passion or personality, it's about so much more, including what our

guests call your hidden genius. That untapped part of you that's not always obvious but holds the key to your next big move. And if you're thinking, I don't even know if I have a hidden genius, don't worry, you're not alone. Most of us don't because let's be honest, nobody ever taught us how to find it while they were shouting their feel-good platitudes at us. So here's the good news. There is actually a science to uncovering our hidden genius.

It's not some pick your dream job worksheet. It's about understanding how your brain is wired, identifying what our guests call your aptitudes, and leaning into them. It's not just a feel-good exercise. It's a game changer for your career, your relationships, and your life. And that's where our guests come in today. Betsy Wills and Alex Ellison are not only redefining how we approach our careers, but they're also making it clear that this isn't just about getting the right job.

It's about creating a life that aligns exactly with who you are. Betsy is the co-founder of YouthScience, a cutting edge psychometric assessment platform that's changing how we understand ourselves. She's also the director of marketing and branding at Diversified Trust and a regular guest lecturer at Vanderbilt and New York Stern School of Business. Alex is the founder of Throughline Guidance, a college and career counseling practice

with a global footprint. She writes and lectures extensively on the subject of careers and college readiness Line Guidance, a college and career counseling practice with a global footprint. She writes and lectures extensively on the subject of careers and college readiness. And both of our guests have been featured TEDx speakers. Together, they've co-authored the book, Your Hidden Genius, the science-backed strategy to uncovering and harnessing your innate talents. And I'm so excited to have both of you here today. So Betsy, Alex, thank you for being here.

And I wanna start by talking about something I found in your book that says, if your hidden genius were an actual rope, it would be a braided one with three strands. The most critical and previously elusive of these is your aptitude profile. I think the other strands are your interest and personality and those play a key role, but I want to hone in on this aptitude profile.

What is that and how do we discover our own? Oh, thank you so much for having us, Nicole. I love that you're all about the no-noz nonsense approach. You need to get in the driver's seat and you better hurry up and get in that driver's seat or else life's gonna pass you by. And that's really what motivated Betsy and I to write this and to really expose people to this hidden element of themselves, which we call aptitudes.

It's the thing that we were noticing people just weren't talking a whole lot about. And it's also the piece that it takes a little more time. It's a little harder to mind for. So the important thing to know is aptitudes are these pre-baked elements of us that really have to be assessed in order to be identified. So we can't just take a self-report survey,

as much as I love all the fun online BuzzFeed surveys that are out there that tell us all about ourselves in fun ways. We cannot understand our aptitudes that way. Unfortunately, we have our own bias against ourselves. And so if you ask me, what is it that you like to do or what is it that you think you're good at, I'm probably not going to give you an incredibly reliable answer. And so aptitudes can only be tested through psychometrics. And so we have a series of exercises that we invite readers

to go through, through the assessment that comes to you for free when you purchase the book. And these exercises are timed brain games. And they're going to tell you things like, are you more of a spatial visualizer or more of an abstract relational thinker? Are you someone who understands ideas sequentially? Or are you someone who understands things more procedurally or more in terms of a process? Do you come up with a lot of ideas on

the fly or are you sort of a one idea and get it done kind of person? So these are aptitudes and they are not going to tell you if you're going to be the next you know amazing basket weaver or you know the next CEO of a tech startup, but they are the seeds of your skills. And so with these foundational with this foundational knowledge you can build and hone and then develop more intricate skills. So I hope that's a clear answer but that's sort of the simple answer. What are aptitudes and why they're important? It is a clear answer and it's just different than anything that I've heard up to this point.

So I'm going to ask this question more for further clarification, not because it wasn't explained clearly, but what are the difference then between aptitudes and skills or aptitudes and? Personality. Yeah, personality. Okay. So this is why this has been an exciting book to bring to the world because about in 2010, I co-founded a company called YouScience. And YouScience is, think of it as career guidance 3.0. Okay, it's similar to, you know, in the 1880s, we'd give people leeches and, you know, a witch doctor would come in and diagnose you

and now we have an MRI, okay? It's similar in the sense that it's an actual sensor of your aptitudes. Now, these have been around since the 1920s, okay? But they were very expensive because you had to administer the assessments one by one in an analog way. But the company we started raised about,

I mean, an absurd amount of money because it took a lot of money to bring this analog expensive assessment that might be $1,000 to take into an online environment. And now we basically democratized it so everyone can access it. So most people have never heard of this because it wasn't available to them before. But thankfully now these are being used in 25% of all US high schools, almost 600 universities and colleges, and millions of individuals. So we've

had, I think, three million people now take this assessment and you can access it online instead of going to a center to get it done. So people are like, well, why haven't I heard of this before? It wasn't a plot. It was really just a limitation of technology. So we're here giving good news to everyone. Okay, great. And then can you kind of help separate the aptitude from a skill or a personality? So if you think about it like, oh, I was thinking of like the example of writing a book

since we just spent several years doing that. So, you might, for example, understand how to sequence ideas and take a lot of, Betsy and I interviewed over 80 people for this book. So that's great, you've got all this data, but to be able to then organize that information sequentially, that's an aptitude. But to write and communicate in an engaging way,

we hope that we did that, but that's a skill, right? So that kind of engaging, stylistic writing, that's a skill. We talk about Michael Phelps, this is a good analogy. He's got naturally long arms. You could equate that to, that's not an aptitude having long arms, but that's sort of the, that's compared to what we're talking about with aptitudes.

But you've still got to put the hours in the pool. You've still got to develop that skill. So again, we think of aptitudes as like the foundation of the house, and then the skills are the walls. So what's unique about aptitudes are that they, they start emerging in all of us when we're about two years old. But there's over 52 that we can measure. Most people don't realize that. And so spatial ability, for example, comes out very young, but things like inductive reasoning, sequential reasoning,

some other things don't really emerge in all of us till we're about 15, 16 years old. But by the time we've gone through puberty, they are fixed, okay? They don't change. So they are like reliable jewels in a jewel box that you can keep coming back to. But like anything that you do, they require practice and learning to develop.

So you can have all the aptitude in the world to be the greatest architect in the world, but if you don't go to school and get the learning, you're not going to be that. It will be unrealized, if you will, or untapped. That's starting to come together in my brain. And you said earlier that you're allowing people to do this aptitude assessment in high school and college and there's more access. And I think it's pretty easy for our brains to default to see how this is super helpful when it comes to career planning at a young age. I know I wish I would have had something like this. Right. But the vast majority of our listeners are not in that early stage of career planning.

So how does this help us in our overall career decisions, career happiness, or what you call career wellness? Well, this is exactly why we wrote the book. In my case, Nicole, I took my first aptitude assessment, you only need one, when I was 32. And it changed everything for me. I had been marching along, I had two children, I was very happy. But when I went to do this, it gave me a complete 180 of realization that I could have agency over my career, my own life, and my avocations. And so it was the beginning of a journey to build a full life for me, this understanding of where my innate abilities are.

And do you find that we enjoy our work and our life more when we're playing to those strengths or those aptitudes? Or does it become easier? I mean, it seems sort of obvious that this is important information and it would have an impact on our career, but I guess I'm asking, what are you seeing come from people understanding their aptitudes and being able to apply that to their career, their avocations, their hobbies, all the things? Well, first of all, it's the recognition of why certain things are really frustrating for you.

So I took this assessment when I was 25. So I had just started my career and already I was noticing that certain things were very frustrating or difficult for me. And rather than feel like I was the problem or that I didn't have the ability to work in that role, I now had a language, a vocabulary to say, oh, I'm what's called a concentrated focuser.

That's why idea generation meetings in the boardroom that lasts three hours make me crazy. And so then I could not ignore or avoid those situations, but advocate for myself and have more agency and say, look, I'm the kind of person who likes to implement and execute on ideas. How can I do more of that? And then also I could then raise my hand and volunteer to do the kinds of work that really like inspired me and lit me up and energized me. So the first step is understanding these aptitudes, then having the vocabulary to describe what you need, what you want and how you thrive at work

and to be able to ask for those opportunities and find those opportunities. So the other part of this is actually the truth, which is no one job is going to meet all of your aptitudes. Okay. So building a full life, it is possible and it's possible when you use your full suite of aptitudes that you have at your disposal. So uncovering these, a lot of times what we find is people's depression or unhappiness

at work is really an unmet aptitude. So that realization can change everything for someone and they don't necessarily have to throw the baby out with the bath water, quit their job, put their job on the witness stand, you're the problem. They can actually make small tweaks and changes to the point of like taking a ceramics class on the weekend to fulfill a spatial itch that they're not utilizing. So there's so many outcomes that can come from this, like Alex said about advocating for yourself

within your job, but also filling in those gaps that maybe have been missing and not honored. So I'm so glad that you said that because I think that that is true in relationship and in career. There is no one person and there is no one job that's going to meet all of your needs or check all of the boxes, right? And it's our responsibility to get our needs met and to find and create the ways and even

just outside of those two things, that one relationship or that one career. Let's say any one of us takes the assessment, we discover our aptitudes, and we begin to recognize why we may not be thriving at work or why we may have the scary Mondays and all of that. For many of us, the decision to just walk away and find another career might not be available, might not be the smartest decision. So once we get this information, any recommendations, and I know your book helps with this too, but any recommendations of how to begin to leverage and utilize it in our very current

lives, jobs, and situations? Well, I would say the first step is, I was kind of saying earlier, is the recognition leverage and utilize it in our very current lives, jobs, and situations? Well, I would say the first step is, I was kind of saying earlier, is the recognition of what is frustrating to you and why, and what lights you up and why. That I think just that awareness can help you get through some of the mundane or frustrating parts of your job, not to abandon them completely, but to just recognize and have some grace for you with yourself. Like, this is not me, this is, or this is me, but it's nothing I can change or

should change. Um, that this is just an unmet aptitude. I can't totally ditch my job right now, but this is something I have recognized recognition around. Hopefully in the future, I can do less of this type of work that drains me and more of the type of work that fulfills me. Then I think it's making small tweaks. We all know that if you're well into your career, you're probably not going to just jump ship. You may not have the economic situation to be able to do that. But for example, if you are someone who has this aptitude

for spatial reasoning, maybe you stand up and say, you know what, I want to be in more of those design meetings. You know, in the past, I haven't let myself into those thinking that wasn't something I had a place in, but I want to be in more of those design meetings. In the past, I haven't let myself into those thinking that wasn't something I had a place in, but I want to be in more of those design meetings. Or I really want to write the newsletter. Can I take a crack at that? I really want to do more client-facing work. I've realized that energizes me. Can I have an opportunity to do more of that?" So it's these subtle little tweaks that really can make a big difference. And having something to back that up, right? Like I took this assessment and I'm aware now that these are my aptitudes.

Let's try to play to those strengths as opposed to like going into your room and being like, hey, I think I would enjoy being with clients more. Let's give it a try, right? I think there sometimes is some comfort when we go to ask for opportunities like this to have something to back it up. And there is also, I think, maybe more openness if there is feeling like something that's reinforcing this decision. Well, and then let's talk about your personal life and even your life if you're a parent. Understanding this information changes your relationship because you have a new vocabulary to Alex's point about how you talk about something.

So things, my husband and I, he has perfect pitch. That is one of his aptitudes, okay? And living with that, Nicole, is a nightmare, okay? It's effing nightmare because all he sees is what's off. Okay? That is the gift of someone with perfect pitch. It's not just sound. It's this doesn't taste right.

That's crooked. Why is the house so messy when you have one wine glass sitting by the counter and everything else is spotless and his eye would go straight to that. Okay? And when we realized this, all of a sudden it became a different conversation. Now,

that didn't give him license to critique everything every five seconds in front of me, but we could now say, okay, I understand that's really what you see first is what's off. Okay? Now, his job, Nicole, is he's a high-end restoration contractor. Okay, that man can make a punch list, like nobody's business. So you can see how something that could, I call it aptitudes gone wild, something where you've got this wonderful gift, but you're sort of misusing it

or applying it in the wrong way. That's the self-awareness that comes with understanding, okay, this is what's happening. Where do I want to put this so that it can flourish? Where do I need to control this so that the challenges that come with it are not magnified all over my workplace? So that's the neat thing about aptitudes. They're neither good or bad. They just are. It's a great example. I love that. And also the opening for discussion that happens when you begin to understand other people's aptitudes and you can kind of talk about how to leverage those and also how they might be getting in the way or being annoying, right?

Right. Right. And they do. I mean, Alex and I talk about the writing of the book. Okay. So she mentioned that one of the attitudes is called idea rate. Okay. So this is literally a measure which everybody takes in the assessment of how consistent and frequently you generate ideas. I have no doubt, Nicole, that you have this. Okay.

Teachers have this, podcast leaders, journalists, trainers, corporate trainers, marketers. You don't want your surgeon to have this. It's not good or bad. It just is. So sometimes the lack of an aptitude is what actually unlocks your opportunity. So again, knowing what they are is so important. Now I have a rapid flow of ideas. I have to have a glass of wine at night to shut this baby off, okay? Alex, on the other hand, it's a slow drip. So both of us are writing a book.

You would think you'd have to have a lot of this to write books, but it was such a great pairing to work with someone who has a slower drip, who's really focused on implementing ideas because she would like rein me in. And I'm gonna stop talking because a lot of times people with this aptitude interrupt people, so I'm gonna let her have the floor.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, you know, this is what I was talking about when I was early in my career and I would get so burned out in brainstorming meetings. To me, it's like nails on a chalkboard when someone says, let's go back to the drawing board or let's put a pin in it and talk about

it later or reconsider this. I love to see things get done. I love to get to work. I love to implement. It's why I have my own business. I like to move really quickly. But the downside to that, the Achilles heel that I have to manage is being too rash and jumping into things without full consideration. And so to work with an idea generator like Betsy, who comes up with a lot of alternate ideas and opposing ideas and almost, you know, sometimes we'll play devil's advocate and say, have we considered this though? Have we thought about it this way? As frustrating as that can be for a concentrated focuser like me, it ultimately leads to a better

book. And I would I would say that I, you know, would sometimes rein Betsy in and help us like get things on paper, just so we can move forward. So there's this real back and forth that happens. And that's what I love about this. Unlike any other like test or assessment that you would take, there's no pass, fail, good, bad. It's like you use this in this context and this in this context. Okay, friends, before I ask my next question,

let me just let you know that life just keeps on lifing in the middle of a recording. Unfortunately, Alex, I think had a technology issue and had to bounce out, so we're gonna keep going. Betsy, I guess my next question, I kicked off our episode by talking about some incomplete advice that we've gotten. I think one of the things that we hear a lot about in our career is our development plans and working through our weaknesses, all of that. When it comes to aptitudes, are we focusing on our strengths more?

Yeah, no. So high schools for the last 60 years have used interest assessments, which are like a boomerang, sort of, where you tell the survey something and it comes back and tells you what the survey said that you told it. That's the way they work. So those are helpful, but your interests change over time. And what's fascinating with 3 million people that you science has assessed so far is that what we've uncovered with the data is that women actually have been getting very poor advice on average. Women are, I call it career malpractice, because using interest surveys, all of us know we were socialized in so many ways as women. All well-meaning, it's not a plot, but we're television, our parents,

we get messages very young, whether we try to or not. And so people tend to answer those interest questions a certain way, and it leads a huge majority of people into traditional female jobs. But when we look at their aptitude scores, now that we've had 3 million people who have done it, it turns out that women are far more adept in areas that are STEM fields, computer science for instance, manufacturing, construction, all kinds of things that they just don't consider

before they embark on either technical school or school. So what we're focused on are innate abilities, the inborn abilities that can be developed, and when people find their scores out, we have films of people getting their scores on the computer and they women literally lifting up almost two inches off their seat, you know, their head goes back like, wow, what do you mean? I could be a, you know, architect or a, you know, nuclear engineer. That's one of the suggestions for me. I never thought about that. I hate math or they, you know, they think that because they've been conditioned. So we are focused on, I guess you would say, strengths, but it's much more about the potential that you have to build on the aptitudes and build skills

from there. I love the word potential. I mean, I just lifted up in my seat a couple inches. So where does knowing or not knowing our aptitudes impact burnout? And the reason I ask is because I hear from so many women that they're experiencing burnout in today's day and age, not just because of our careers, but because of the never ending to-do list. Yeah. Yeah.

So how does that help? Okay, so usually burnout, well, it could be many things, obviously. Your life is too busy, you're overwhelmed, that kind of thing. But within the job context, it's normally because you are overtaxing an aptitude that you are not as strong in. And the converse of that is almost as important.

And we call that boredom. And boredom comes from when you're being mal-employed or doing a job that is not tapping into this full suite of aptitudes for you. So burnout is so, it's just an epidemic now. And I think, you know, things like remote work can contribute to that depending on how you're wired. But, you know, what to do about it is again,

a recognition of what gives you that energy and zeal for what you're doing, and then what is not being tapped. Because that can be an extreme culprit in the situation. I wanted to ask the question why you feel science is so important when it comes to understanding our aptitudes as well as how we apply that in our lives and our careers. And the reason I ask is because you mentioned this earlier, I think we've been inundated with opinions, the shoulds and the supposed tos and what people think we're good at or not good at or where we might find ourselves or not find ourselves.

Why was it so important for you for this to be a science-backed approach? Well, because unlike every other assessment out there, which are self-report, anything that asks you on a scale of one to five, I'm this, science can now unlock this information. It's, you know, this is like the MRI machine compared to, you know to a doctor sitting you down and

you telling the doctor you have breast cancer. He would never accept that. He would do tests. And so that's the whole thing. We want to give people real information about where the potential lies. And then it's up to you to take it to the next level. But it is so motivating to have it confirmed and congratulated in That is so motivating to have it confirmed and, you know, congratulated in you, like, yes, you have the potential to do these things, now go do it. That's motivating.

And when people take the aptitude test, they know they can't game it. When you're in the middle of this, you won't even know what we're actually assessing. So when you get your scores, it's like this huge Christmas present all wrapped up with a bow. It's wonderful.

Okay. And then my last question is around, once we know our aptitudes, there's still work to be done, right? There's still opportunity to use and leverage and develop or let it atrophy. You use the Michael Phelps example. It's like, yes, he may have the aptitude to be a swimmer, but he still needs to practice and get coaching and all of that. So where does, once we've uncovered and discovered our aptitudes, where does hard work, self-development, coaching, like where do things like that come into play? Well, again, knowing your aptitudes is motivating,

but what you get when you take the assessment is this whole online kind of career center that you can access any time of the day. And it comes with all kinds of tools and our website as well, but all kinds of tools for writing your resume, for how you talk about yourself, for interview skills, that kind of thing.

But also it points to here's the certifications you might want to consider doing if you considered this job. You know, so it not only helps you take the tyranny of choice of all the options out there that you might pivot to, narrows it down for you, then you can explore, then you can see what are the tools I'm gonna need to get there. So, but I do have an down for you, then you can explore, then you can see what are the tools I'm gonna need to get there. So, but I do have an exercise for you

kind of to sum this up if it's okay. Yeah, please. And I'd ask all your listeners to do this as well, but take out a pen and write your name down. Okay, now I want you to switch hands, Nicole, and write it with your non-dominant hand. It's awful. Okay.

So uncomfortable and does not look like my name, but yeah. Right, okay. Now what if at some point you were in a terrible accident and your dominant hand was injured so much that you had to use your non-dominant hand? Well, after a while you would get better at writing because you'd be using it all the time. But Nicole, you're never gonna be a calligrapher, okay?

So if you can think of an aptitude as that thing that comes naturally and easily to you, and the other as you're on the struggle bus, get off the struggle bus, okay? Stop using your non-dominant hand constantly when you've got a perfectly natural one to use. So that's sort of how I like to kind of level set people on what this is and what it's not.

So, you know, you really can't fool yourself into working with your non-dominant hand, but we can do anything with practice. Right. Right. Exactly. If given the choice. If I had to, we would do what we all do, which is we figure it out.

But in the absence of having to, why make things harder than they need to be? Exactly. So I know I personally am going to right away do my own aptitude assessment. I just want to make sure I'm sending people to the right best places. So the book is Your Hidden Genius,

which is available on Amazon or wherever it is that you buy books. Go to your local bookstore, let's keep them in business. Once we have the book, there's a place for us to do our assessment, correct? Right, everyone gets a unique code, which will be found on the back of the book, under a sticker.

And that code, you go to yourhiddengenius.com and redeem it. And then you're off and running into this wonderful online world that I think you're going to find very valuable. Incredible. I am so excited to uncover and discover my own aptitudes. And I could not thank you and Alex enough for doing this work and bringing it to the masses and making it accessible to all of us. So thank you for being here and thank you for that. Thank you so much for having us and we'll miss Alex because she's somehow in the wilds of the

internet I guess trying to get back on but she sends her love. Okay sounds good. All right, let me close us out by sharing what are a few of my big takeaways. Uncovering your hidden genius isn't just about finding a career you love, it's about uncovering what makes you you. It's about discovering what makes you tick, what you're naturally wired to do, and leaning into it without bending to someone else's definition of success or opinions about what you should and shouldn't be doing. When we align our lives and our careers with our own unique aptitudes, something incredible happens.

We stop surviving and tolerating and we start thriving and enjoying. Because let's be clear, the world doesn't need more people just doing jobs. It needs people bringing their genius, their talents, and their authentic selves to the table. Understanding our aptitudes isn't just a tool for career wellness, it's a way to uncover and share our hidden genius with the world. And doing that is not just important, it's also what it means to be doing women's work.