Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

I was talking with a client yesterday about her feeling about not knowing what is next for her and her art business. She's had a few very successful years but has started to experience a slowing down and a level of dissatisfaction with the work she's doing now that suggests she's ready for a new level of development both as a creator and an entrepreneur. It's tempting at times like this to try to restructure what you're already doing, but I had another direction in mind. I asked her to tell me her core values. As she talked, it became clear to both of us that her values weren't clear to her and that the words she used to talk about her values were more used to impress other people than to represent who she really is. When we took the time to identify and articulate her values more clearly, she started to see that her dissatisfaction was coming from doing work that wasn't in alignment with her values. This gave us a much more solid starting place to work on e...

Thanks to all who attended this morning's masterclass. I enjoyed the discussion in my breakout group very much and have been reflecting on it all day. We were specifically talking about what it is that people are attracted to in the work we do, whether as creative people, in business, or in the causes we support. A few answers presented themselves. First, we are attracted to people we sense have the same values as ours, or at least similar values. The qualities of life we find important tend to be important to them as well. We're also attracted to personality. I shared how many of the clients who find me tend to have a similar personality to mine and how the clients with an opposite personality often find working with me to be a conflicted experience.  Lastly, we just started talking about the quality of life people desire and how it often is a driver in finding our work. They're looking for a difference that our work delivers. Maybe enrichment, enlivenment, fulfillment, or...

We've talked about what you want to be known for and what specialties of yours you want people to remember. In this coffee break, we talk about another important aspect of niching and branding - core values.  Core values, like passion, can be easily misunderstood. I think core values are the qualities and activities that enliven and animate us. They energize and attract. If we act out of alignment with them, we end up drained and burned out.  In identifying these qualities and centering our work on them, we find that our work becomes an expression of deeper gifts and more meaning. An easy way to start to clarify core values is the activity of telling our personal stories. What are the turning points, the deep aha moments, the teachers, and the experiences that shape who we are? These stories reveal the things and people and places and activities that really matter.  #corevalues #storytelling #meaningfulwork