Episode 1049: Is Talent Enough?

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1049 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Kyle Sullivan: I'm Carl Sullivan. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, talent, and treasures, to live out your calling, having the ability to find and live your championship run is key.

[00:00:23] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.

[00:00:30] Scott Maderer: and that dream of being able to do that is so seductive that oftentimes it keeps you from doing the work. And the truth is talent is never enough by itself without the hard work, the dedication, the patience, and the perseverance tobacco. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship pod.

[00:00:57] If you truly desire to become the [00:01:00] person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true column. In the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:18] In today's episode about developing your influence through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about what talent really is. I also share why just being talented is never enough. And I also talk about why there's more to success than talent. You've heard me talk about developing your talent and one of the best ways to do that is through books.

[00:01:41] But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 [00:02:00] titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via.

[00:02:07] That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. What is talent anyway, it's described in the dictionary as a natural aptitude or skill, the idea behind it is it's those things that you just can do, or you're better at naturally than other people.

[00:02:35] We usually talk about things like athletes. Gifted or talented athletes, or we'll talk about somebody having a musical talent or a mathematical talent. And the truth is talent is something that is real. We do have natural bins or natural aptitudes or natural things that we are better at than some other people.

[00:02:59] And [00:03:00] just conversely, we have things that we're less talented in than other. But the interesting thing is over the years, as I've looked at it, I've discovered that in some ways, talent is never really enough. I have a number of friends who are musicians, singer, songwriters, or otherwise play music, and they usually have a talent.

[00:03:29] For music for lyrics, for writing music. This is something that they've been doing and able to do from a very young age, and they've always enjoyed it and had a gift to it. And the interesting thing is though with all of these talented people, because trust me, if you go to Nashville or New York and you throw a rock, you're going to hit somebody with musical talent.

[00:03:52] I live close to Austin. The same thing happens there. You can walk down sixth street and you can. Hundreds [00:04:00] of people that have a natural talent when it comes to singing or songwriting or music. And yet we all know many, a starving, talented person. We know people that aren't able to take that talent and turn it into something that would be.

[00:04:19] Success it's almost a joke of the talented musician or the talented actor or writer or whatever who's working in a job that has nothing to do with. The truth is talent is something that we are given, but it's up to us to actually develop that talent. It's up to us to do the work that it takes to take that talent to the next level.

[00:04:46] You take someone like a Michael Jordan, who people would say is one of the most naturally gifted athletes in many ways. And yet he really talks about when he talks about how he got where he is. He talks about all of the hard [00:05:00] work that. This is somebody who went out and practice the same thing over and over again, despite the fact that he had some natural talent to start with.

[00:05:10] And in fact, it's that actually got him to be the world-class athlete, that he is not just the talent he was born with. There's work involved in understanding it and develop. You also have to recognize that in many ways, that talent that you have, if you want to turn it into a business, you actually have to have that mindset of you're running a business.

[00:05:35] How am I going to turn this into something? If I want to now, let me also be clear that you can have a talent that you're never going to monetize. That it's just something you do for joy or as a hobby or in some other way. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to turn it into something that actually becomes what you do.

[00:05:57] You have to take the approach of what am [00:06:00] I going to do to run this like a business. And you've got to learn that skill as well. The ethic of actually getting up and doing the hard work as opposed to luck and talent, which are definitely involved in success, but those are never enough for success. You.

[00:06:20] And I both know hundreds of talented people who aren't really successful. And by the way I am defining success here is not necessarily making millions of dollars. It's not necessarily being a Grammy winning artists. It's simply are they able to do this in a way that feeds them and gives them what they call success?

[00:06:39] Feed here, not in terms of eating food and paying for food on the table, but feeds their spirit, their soul, their heart. Is it something that becomes. Living out their calling and allows them to do it in that way. So the talent is important because it gives you a head start, but you still got to run the race.[00:07:00]

[00:07:00] You still got to keep moving. Talent can take you so far, but hard work is what gets you over the finish line. The truth is. That at the end of the day, talent can be cultivated if he can be grown. If you have passion, if you have motivation, if you have patience and you have practice, and it's through that nurturing of the talent that hard work of doing that, that the talent is really able to become realized how many of what talents you have?

[00:07:34] How many of you know that if I want to take that talent and turn it into something that gives me the success, the way I define success, I've got to actually do the hard work. See, I think sometimes we love to listen to the myth of the naturally talented person that just instantaneously achieved success and is an overnight success.

[00:07:56] Because if that mythology is true, [00:08:00] a it could always happen to us and B we can achieve our goals without actually having to do any work. And that dream of being able to do that is so seductive that oftentimes it keeps you from doing the work. And the truth is talent is never enough by itself without the hard work, the dedication, the patience, and the perseverance to back it up.

[00:08:28] Thanks for listening.

[00:08:30] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your call. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up for our five week series on the [00:09:00] stewardship of talent.

[00:09:01] Or if you're in the us, you can text 4, 4, 2, 2, 2 talent tips. That's talent tips to 4 4 2, 2, 2, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.