Franklin Taggart's Blog

  We spend thousands of dollars on workshops and workbooks and courses and worksheets that don't deliver the results we'd hoped for. Why? I think a big part of it is our habit of shifting into a manner of communicating that seems more businessy. That sounds like the stuff we learned in our writing class about writing business letters - formal, stuffy, boring. I'm on a mission to change that. I want the formulas and avatar worksheets to take a backseat to actual talking and writing with each other. We need real people to give us feedback and to tell us how they are reacting to what we write and say. We've got to get out of our heads and into the real world. There are so many ways we can improve our communication. And we won't ever be finished unless we just stop trying. We can always be better connectors. Mentioned in this spew is the upcoming Boost Your Business Bundle. It'll be released June 13-17 but you'll want to pay attention before then for some big an

I'd like to have a word with you. What I'd like to say is... Listen to this idea! I want to feel more optimistic. The way we speak and write about life and people and work and everything else really matter. Words are conduits of energy and they create our experiences. We do need to consider what we say. You are a gift to me and I am blessed by your presence. Thank you. #wordsmatter #wordsshapeexperiences #wordsbringworldstogether

It's been an exciting weekend with birthday celebrations, Dr. Strange, and a Sunday afternoon band rehearsal. My voice is scratchy and my heart is full, and I don't have much in the way of focus, so I'm going to turn on the camera and see what happens. First, a thank you for the kind birthday wishes! I'm delighted to still be alive and in possession of some of my better faculties. It meant a lot to receive so many kind notes yesterday. I've been working a lot on low-cost marketing courses. I hear from people every week who are thrown by the expense of marketing their businesses, finding the expenditure of time, energy, and money to be more than they'd anticipated, and in some cases more than they can handle. I teach simple systems that rely on low-cost tools. The main point I want to talk about in this video is that it's difficult to pay your way out of the aspects of marketing you don't want to do for yourself. Yes, you can hire people to do things for

I'm not sure how I got here but here I am. 60 today. I didn't expect to make it this far but I'm glad I have.  So many memories and so much more to look forward to. Life has been, is, and will be good! Thanks for your friendship, time, and attention. Those are the greatest gifts! As I've heard many people say, another day above ground is a bonus! #happybirthdaytome #celebrating #somuchmorelivingtodo

▼Watch and Listen Below!▼ As an Executive Assistant and a Virtual Assistant, Linda Eskridge realized that much of her responsibility was finding unique and meaningful gifts for the people she worked for to give to prospects, customers, and clients. They wanted more of a personal touch than sending the common branded notepads, pens, and t-shirts. Through these experiences, she had the idea that offering her services as a gifting consultant might actually have a place and Couture Business Gifting was born. Linda is hired by busy entrepreneurs, executives, and yes, their assistants in the process of research, acquisition, packaging, and delivery of gifts that build strong relationships between her clients and their customers. In this episode, she lets us know: ** The importance of building good relationships with customers. ** Research to find the interests and passions of the gift recipients. ** Creating a progressive gifting strategy. ** Remembering to include the gatekeepers. And more.

We're getting ready to celebrate my friend, Lynn Kincanon who has been named Loveland Poet Laureate for 2022-2024. Lynn is an amazing poet and this award is well deserved. One of the things I admire about Lynn is her commitment to practicing her poetry craft daily. And to take it a step further, she posts these daily poems on her Facebook page for all the world to see. It's one of the few things that make Facebook worth the time. One of the things I love about reading her daily poems is that we get to see her process of development. Her abilities are gaining both subtlety and strength as she stays true to her practice. There is something to be said for writing no matter what, or playing, or throwing, or making videos... When we practice something every day, we have a chance to become more proficient, and sometimes the activity itself can become a transcendent experience, where we lose the sense of who we are as the creating just happens. You can follow Loveland Poet Laureate on

My friend, Meridith did a TikTok video yesterday asking some good questions about vulnerability. Apologies to her first for my flippant attempts to be humorous. They failed. And her questions did get me thinking. Every few months, the culture at large adopts one of these human qualities as a temporary mascot. Books are written. TED talks are given. Podcasts and videos abound. Just in the past few years, we've seen vulnerability, empathy, transparency, authenticity, and the old chestnut, passion become holy grail material in our pursuit of greater and greater levels of self-development. We've been told that for people to know like and trust us, we have to be these things, and there may be some truth to that. But at some point, it becomes an emotional manipulation and loses every ounce of virtue. I have more thoughts about this in the video, but stick around until the end and I'll talk about going off the diving board. Follow Meridith on TikTok. Here's yesterday's vid