Franklin Taggart, How to Leverage Your Unique Gifts and Put Them Into Action – InnovaBuzz 507
Franklin Taggart, Your Own Best Company
In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Franklin Taggart, a career, business, and life coach for creative people and a professional musician for over forty years. His business is providing unconventional career, business, and life coaching for unconventional people – creators and artists, freelancers, DIY digital explorers, and accidental entrepreneurs.
Franklin leads people to take their creative spiritual gifts seriously and to put them into meaningful action. He also provides guidance and accountability for creative projects from idea to launch and produces and hosts his own podcast and video series called Your Own Best Company.
In our conversation, Franklin talked to me about:
- Attention as our greatest super-power
- Our unique gifts are not our actions or behaviours, but manifest themselves through our actions and behaviour
- The importance of community and finding communities where our gift is the missing link
Jason Van Orden in episode 275 and Michael Roderick in episode 328 introduced us to Franklin.
Listen to the podcast to find out more.
Listen to the Podcast
You don't have to know everything. You only need to know what your next best step is. @FranklinTaggart on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet
Show Notes from this episode with Franklin Taggart, Your Own Best Company
Key points and takeaways from this episode include:
- We all have a unique innate gift that we can express through many activities.
- The gift is not the activity. The gift is carried through the activity.
- One of the signs that tell our gift is in action is when we are as energised by it as the person who’s receiving it.
- Our gifts show up in many ways. And it’s not the thing we do that is the gift. That activity is the conduit for our gift to be delivered.
- Feeling restless doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It’s a natural feeling. What’s important is to look at those feelings as a way for you to initiate a sense of change. The longer you ignore them, the more painful and difficult they become.
- Restlessness is a sign that something is leading you in another direction.
- Give yourself permission to explore. Give yourself the chance to go out into unchartered territory and see what’s there.
- You don’t have to know everything. You only need to know what your next best step is.
- Think about the next level of curiosity that you have right now – what leaps out of you that you really want to delve into? Explore what’s possible and what’s most resonant with you.
- Reconnect with the people in your community. Tap to your people and listen to them. Find out what they need and respond to it.
- One of the biggest mistakes that people make is coming up with ideas outside of their community and bringing those in, which often leads to failure because they haven’t created the idea in the context of a community.
- Start with your community. It’s where you have to create and deliver.
- All of the opportunities that you are looking for are within the communities that you are a part of. You can’t find them anywhere else. You can’t generate those ideas by yourself in a room that isn’t connected to the outside world.
- There are communities all around you. You are already a member of many of them. There are already ample communities for you to serve, and there may be communities that are out there where your gift is the missing link.
- A community is 2 or more people who share something in common.
- Partner with other creatives. Instead of building an audience of one creator, create a scene for many creators to reach a wider audience.
- We don’t have to compete for the same dollar when it comes to creative work. It’s always better to collaborate with other artists to reach a wider audience because we can combine our resources. We can reach more people more efficiently and more effectively as well as create an ongoing demand for the work that we do.
- Get clear on your core values and how they’re serving you. Talk about what matters and what matters after that. Keep asking those questions until you end up with an answer that you can’t go any further with. That’s your core value.
- Talk about who really matters. Talk about causes that really resonate with people. Look for opportunities in those communities where people reflect the values that you hold for them.
- There’s a difference between an activity and a value. Values are a quality of life. The activity is the thing that brings the value forward and manifests the thing.
- Creativity is the automatic response you get from being clear on your core values.
- Your whole life is nothing but how you pay attention. Everything that you do in your life, every experience that you have is all about how you pay attention. You create your life through what you pay attention to.
- Pay attention to the things that enrich you. Pay attention to the thoughts that feed you and the creativity that is around you and in you. Your whole is being created moment by moment by what you are paying attention to.
- Everybody has a unique marketing modality that is built up of their particular communication strengths, their preferences for leadership and persuasion, and their preferences for the arena that they enjoy working in. When you pull all of these things together and focus your marketing using this modality, you’ll find that your marketing is much more effective and requires less output on your part to do what you need to to bring your business and your customers together.
- The whole point of marketing is to bring businesses and customers together and show them that they need each other.
Reconnect with the people in your community. Tap to your people and listen to them. Find out what they need and respond to it. @FranklinTaggart on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet
The Buzz – Our Innovation Round
Here are Franklin’s answers to the questions of our innovation round. Listen to the conversation to get the full scoop.
- #1 thing to be more innovative – Learn how to be receptive. Receptivity shows up in a number of ways and the primary way is listening. Learn how to listen deeply. Attention is our greatest power. The more we can learn how to really attend to people, the better our lives will become.
- Best thing for new ideas – Reading and listening to stories. Feed yourself with creative inputs. Surround yourself with inspiring things.
- Favourite tool for innovation – Attention. Attention is the most constant resource that we have available to ourselves. It’s one that we can accomplish most with.
- Keep project/client on track – Let them go off track.
- Differentiate – Your gift differentiates you because it’s unlike anybody else’s in the world. Your unique qualities show up in this package unlike every other human being.
To Be a Leader
Show up, pay attention, and participate. If you want to have a rich life, these are the 3 things you need to do.
Reach Out
You can reach out and thank Franklin through his website.
Suggested Guest
Franklin suggested we have a conversation with Storytelling Strategist + Marketer, Seth Silvers, Leadership Assessment and Development Expert, Joanie Connell, and relationship-based business strategist, Robbie Samuels. So Seth, Joanie, and Robbie, keep an eye on your inboxes for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz Podcast, courtesy of Franklin Taggart.
Links
- Website – Franklin Taggart
- Podcast – Your Own Best Company
- Marketing Modality
- Twitter – @FranklinTaggart
Schedule your FREE one-hour Best Next Step Call with Franklin here.
Cool Things About Franklin
- He’s a Way Finder. People call him when they’re ready to find the way to be, do, and have all that they want.
- He holds a BA in Music from Anderson University.
- He’s a Small Business Consultant for Larimer SBDC and Loveland SBDC.
Show up, pay attention, and participate. If you want to have a rich life, these are the 3 things you need to do. @FranklinTaggart on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet