Hearing your ideas, words and teachings come out of someone else’s mouth is an interesting experience.
That’s exactly what happened earlier this week, as my friend and client, Taki Moore, ran a new workshop.
It was called, Prolific & Dangerous.
And it’s where Taki packaged the biggest insights and lessons he’d taken from our work together and brought them to his audience, along with his particular brand of magic.
I was live in attendance. I also helped him as a creative partner for the workshop and campaign.
That’s not me taking any credit for Taki’s brilliance (the workshop was epic). Just know that I was aware and involved.
I share this because since Taki announced the workshop, a bunch of folks have written, asking how I felt about ‘Taki teaching/taking my ideas.’
This post shares my perspective on the topic, with 6 specific insights.
1. Great clients improve your ideas.
In my experience, good clients will take your ideas and use them to get results.
Great clients take your ideas and teach you something new about those ideas as they bring them into reality through action.
The best clients take your ideas and merge them with their own ideas, creating beautiful idea babies.
Taki falls firmly in that category.
As he’s implemented and integrated the ideas from inside the World of Creative Motherf*ckery, it’s been an orgy of Idea Sex.
In fact, watching him deliver training gave me several fresh and deeper insights into my own work.
So, if you’ve been wondering: No. I’m not worried about Taki taking my ideas/giving me credit, etc.
In reality: getting Taki on Team Humanity is the biggest ‘influence’ win for the World of Creative Motherf*ckery so far.
And having Taki spreading the ideas of Creative Motherf*ckery, Art+Biz etc, is one of the best things that could have happened to them.
The reason being:
2. Ideas are energy. And they move through people.
There’s a wonderful expression from the Irish poet, Brendan Kennelly.
“All songs are living ghosts. And long for a living voice.”
It speaks to the idea that songs, words, and music already exist in the world. They simply move through people, animating them into life.
This idea is as old as time.
I find ideas contained with your writing, products, and philosophy are the same thing. They exist out in the world and when you create effectively, they move through you.
This is what I mean, when I share the foundational principle of How To Write Like A Motherf*cker.
‘Ideas Are Energy.’
Take 10 ideas. Take 10 people. Ask the 10 people to evaluate those 10 ideas.
Each idea will energize those 10 people in different ways.
This explains why most people write uninteresting, low-energy drivel. They’re entirely focused on what they ‘should’ write in order to ‘get people to buy.’
Zero focus on what fires them up.
The ideas I shared within my work fired Taki up like crazy. So much so that he felt called to teach them to his people.
Scarcity thinking causes people to get protective of their ideas. As if they own them.
Once you realize that the ideas aren’t yours — and that’re just moving through you, you start to have a different relationship to them.
Granted, this is completely different to having someone rip off your work and reciting it to others, for pure financial gain.
But that’s not what Taki did.
He’s worked closely alongside me for 18 months. In that time, he’s absorbed some of my ideas, rejected others. He’s made it work for him, as he interpreted the ideas for himself.
The training he delivered was his own interpretation, merged with some of his other ideas, which he felt his people needed to hear.
The ideas worked through me, into Taki, and now they’re out in his audience, influencing other people.
That’s how this game works.
3. Taki’s expression of Creative Motherf*ckery is ‘Prolific and Dangerous’
More on the concept of ideas moving through people.
When an idea genuinely moves through someone, it doesn’t just get repeated or recited.
It gets re-interpreted. Re-expressed.
For Taki, Creative Motherf*ckery is about being Prolific and Dangerous.
The prolific part needs little explanation. Winners are always prolific.
The part that’s interesting to me is the second half.
Dangerous.
When we were jamming on the idea and name for the workshop and campaign etc, I asked Taki about his choice of ‘Dangerous.’
He said “It’s less about that specific word and more about what it’s not. The point is to avoid being safe. Everyone’s playing it safe. That’s why they don’t stand out.”
Amen.
This gets to to the heart of what it means to create from The Edge.
People hear ‘be edgy’ and they think it means hot takes on politics, or cursing, or calling someone out.
This misses the point entirely.
The world of Business is all about doing what works and repeating it. This is smart and essential for predictability and profitability.
With Art, creativity and communications, it’s literally the worst thing imaginable.
“The same old, same old” doesn’t get attention. Plus, it’s boring to read.
100% recital.
0% fresh expression.
This is why it’s so critical to integrate Art into your business writing and creativity.
Artists operate on “The Edge” – the universe of ideas that exist on the edge of human conciousness.
Their job is to engage with, identify, and bring some of those ideas into reality.
From the unknown and unobserved to the known and observed.
Done correctly, these ideas that you bring from the edge don’t fit into the ‘standard’, normal and expected.
That’s what gives them a fresh ‘edgy’ energy.
This is why Artists are the vanguard of innovation and cultural change.
It’s also why breakthroughs never happens within a formalized, regimented business structure.
Once you start Writing (and Creating) Like a Motherf*cker, these ideas will start to find you.
The challenge: they don’t always come to you at the right time. You won’t always know what to do with them in the moment.
The benefit: your work is infinitely more interesting, exciting and impactful. For both you and your followers.
4. Being ‘Dangerous’ requires Courage.
For Taki, an essential component of the workshop was the idea of Conviction.
Saying something with a bold intent and meaning it.
This brought me to my next big observation:
The Courage of the Artist, and how critical it is.
Once exciting and ‘dangerous’ ideas start to find you, that’s just the beginning.
The second half of the equation is summoning the testicular fortitude to run with them.
Case in point: During the workshop, Taki asked attendees to rank themselves on a scale of 1-10 for how safe they’ve been playing it. 10 = super edge risky.
The chat was a river of 1s with a littering of 2s and 3s.
The highest someone said was 4. And they even added a comment that only happened on a good day.
Frankly, shocking. I expected people to score themselves low, just with a much larger spread. I’d have predicted the average to be a 3-4.
Seeing so many 1s was eye opening.
Just goes to show how much opportunity there is to stand out.
Guts and conviction is all that’s required to stand out from a sea of safeness.
It will also mark you as being unpredictable.
People will never know what you’re going to say (or do) next.
That makes you worth following.
5. Observing people Write Like Mofos hit different from the sidelines.
I’ve run a bunch of workshops to help people Write Like a Motherf*cker.
One particular exercise I teach is the technique called ‘Splurging.’
It’s about tapping into The Frequency, and allowing you to experience what it’s like to have ideas flow through you freely with no judgement.
For many, they’ve never experienced anything like it.
It can be overwhelming and emotional. People are regularly brought to tears by the experience.
Once they feel what it’s like to create this way, it’s a massive breakthrough.
Taki explained that he wanted to take people through that technique on the workshop. I said go for it.
Being in the crowd and not participating or facilitating meant I could sit back and watch as a pure observer.
It was an amazing experience.
I got to see people’s faces, live, as they had the breakthrough.
I also got to spend more time reading the comments, feeling their energy as everyone started having deep insights.
It was high energy. Folks got emotional.
For many, they couldn’t believe how easy it was to break free of their creative stagnation.
Even more interesting was seeing how the moment affected Taki.
He started buzzing at a higher level off the creative energy that got released.
The workshop was already incredible up to that point. But after that, it really kicked into another gear.
6. Sometimes the ‘Who’ delivering an Idea matters most
Reading the attendee list, there were a bunch of recognizable names from inside the coaching industry.
Taki Moore is Taki MF’in Moore, after all.
When Taki says something, people pay attention.
A number of the attendees are also in my network. On my email list, connected on socials.
I’m certain they’ve seen my writings and offers about this stuff over the last while.
And yet, as soon as Taki expresses these ideas and started stressing their importance, that’s when people started to listen.
What’s interesting is I get the sense that with some individuals, I could repeat myself until I’m blue in the face, and some people would never have listened.
Simply because I’m me and I don’t (yet) have the profile or authority of Taki.
But, once a trusted source does start expressing those ideas, that’s when people start to take them seriously.
That’s just how the game works.
The source often matters more than the ideas.
Hence why I’m not worried or concerned about Taki sharing the ideas.
By having someone of Taki’s profile and stature share them, it gets them out and into the minds of people I couldn’t currently reach.
More than that: it gets so many more people to take them seriously.
A huge win for Team Humanity.
And as ideas get spread, energy always flows back to the original source. I know this is only a good thing and the world of Creative MF-ery.
So, there we go. My thoughts wrapped up in 6 insights.
If you’ve been watching from the sidelines and seeing Taki’s execution, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
What did you notice about how he expressed the ideas?
What resonated with you with the way he expressed them?