Franklin Taggart's Blog

In a morning conversation with an online course client, the topic turned to creating a lead magnet to promote her course and to bring people to the enrollment page. She's done PDF ebooks for email opt-ins before, but she doesn't have the time to do anything that elaborate for the course. I showed her a simple checklist I use for my Quiz Quick Start course and how I put it right on my course enrollment page. I also made a Canva template for a checklist that you can use to build your own. You can see my Canva checklist design here: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFG-soc_Vg/view?utm_content=DAFG-soc_Vg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink You can download a blank checklist Canva template here: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFMtCWqng0/MRhNzjG2_SeBG6CJT2MO7w/view?utm_content=DAFMtCWqng0&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink&mode=preview Canva is a product I use every day. I'm also a Canva a

After finishing the three courses I released over the summer, I took Robbie Samuels' advice and took a month off from production. (He talks about this in his wonderful book, Small List, Big Results that you can get here with my Associate's link: https://amzn.to/3xyGkKg ) I've read the book a few times and this was one of the practices he suggested that stood out.  The time off isn't necessarily idle time. It's time to reflect on what I learned and to identify parts of the process that I could improve. One of the things I have become aware of is how long it takes to edit course videos. As I looked back on the three projects, I realized that shooting the videos took very little time. I could record 5 - 6 lesson videos in an hour. Each course had about 30-45 lessons, so my video shoots accounted for between 8 and 9 hours of work. Editing the same 5-6 videos added about 2-3 hours of production time, so looking back over the process, I could have gained around 25 hours

If you're an entrepreneur and you've tried other people's blueprints, you may have found that their steps didn't work for your business. In this topical deep-dive, Erica Holthausen of Catchline Communications and Audrey Holst of Fortitude and Flow return to talk through some of the reasons for this phenomenon. In this episode, we talk about: ** Finding Your Business Fingerprint Instead of Buying Blueprints ** The difference between Aha moments and Uh-Huh moments ** The inner nudge toward transparent pricing ** Finding the business practices that feel best ** Entrepreneurship without training wheels ** Learning to listen to your body's messages Find Audrey at https://fortitudeandflow.com/ and on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/audrey-holst/ Erica is discoverable here:  https://www.catchlinecommunications.com/ and on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericaholthausen/ Franklin Taggart's blog: https://franklintaggart.com and on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.

If you were watching out for the new episode with Erica and Audrey, it will be coming out tomorrow. Today was a mess. Monica needed a ride to a conference in Denver and I thought it was only going to take a couple of hours to get there. It ended up taking almost five hours today. One of the challenges I have in common with most of the solopreneurs and freelancers I work with is the possibility of chaos in my schedule. The Google Calendar looks sweet with all the colored boxes, but life's boxes are not as pretty. It's easy to get thrown off schedule, and recovering from those unexpected turns takes some time. So plan B was to come home and edit and release the E & A show tonight. When I got home, I had a dog to walk and feed, and a kid to pick up, so I'm now on to plan C which is to get a good night's sleep and finish and release the episode tomorrow. You won't want to miss it! #efficiency #solopreneur #freelancer  

I'm not sure why my comment was the one you felt it necessary to reply with a very vocal and highly capitalized opinion, but goodness! I didn't mean to ruin your day by telling someone I liked what they said and how they said it. Dear friends, we've got to get some perspective here. Our preferences and opinions are not universally true and applicable to all other human beings. Relax! I share my opinions pretty liberally here and I'm guessing that mine are too innocuous to draw much enemy fire. That, and I have an extremely small audience who doesn't have time for feedback. But dang! Universal truths could probably be contained in a very thin book, and could easily be challenged until there isn't anything left but a front and back cover. So why do we feel it necessary to put a goat's head on anyone who doesn't agree? I'm starting to wonder if our disagreements are built into the design of the universe for population control. Yours truly, Willing to be

I've built several email lists over the years for various enterprises. My music email list grew to about 3500 people over 20 years. This isn't huge compared to the efforts of others, but it was grown a couple of enrollments at a time when I was playing for small audiences consisting of mostly the same people. My current email list is less than 500 people, and I write only a few emails yearly. Most of my marketing for coaching is face-to-face, and I've not had much to promote through email. I'm not someone who will tell a new business owner that they MUST do anything regarding tools and tactics. I think we need only to concern ourselves with two questions - how will we make and maintain connections with customers, and do our methods work adequately? My social media experience goes back to MySpace. I've experimented with every platform except WhatsApp and Snapchat. None of the social media platforms have been as reliable as email for reaching people I need to stay in

A recurring FAQ in my world is, "Where can I meet the people I need to know? They aren't at the networking meetings I go to." I remember back when I was in corporate sales and consulting that the place to meet new contacts was the country club if you could afford it. I couldn't. There were gym memberships, social clubs, service organizations, and other places, too, but many of those placed limitations on using their meetings and venues for making business contacts. One of the places I've had the most success meeting the right people for the opportunities I seek is through volunteering. I share a few of my favorite volunteer experiences in the coffee break, but if you'd like to come up with a volunteering strategy to further your goals and dreams, schedule an IdeaBurst session with me. This is a one-time 90-minute coaching session in which we'll clarify your goals and find the relationship opportunities to help you succeed. https://bit.ly/IdeaBurst to sche

Thanks to Jess Kotzer and the Self Pub Hub group for giving me a place to share some POV tonight. If you're an author considering self publishing, you should check them out here: https://www.selfpubhub.org/ A couple of insights came to me tonight as we discussed authors' marketing ideas. One was a reminder of something Tom Espinola, the producer of my CD Falling All The Way, told me. He suggested that one of the ingredients for my musical success would be to create a scene for my kind of music in the area. I think this may be one strategy with merit as we continue to navigate the impact of the internet on all things creative. Right now, most of us creatives are working in silos, only looking up to see what other people are doing. I think those of us who learn to leverage the amazing collaboration potential for audience building and promotion will have an advantage. We need to make a scene. More about this in the Coffee Break and insight into how collaborating to make a scene co

This weekend didn't go according to plan, at least my plan. 

 For as long as I can remember, I've heard conversations and opinions centered on a deep concern for the future of the arts. As an artist myself, I've participated in many of these conversations, and there have been times I've been deeply worried about where fine arts, in particular, are headed. But I've recently started to see that worry as misplaced. There are a couple of indicators that fine arts remain alive and well. One of them is the ongoing high visibility arts are finding in the online realm. Maybe it's because I've followed so many artists and arts organizations on my social media, but I'm impressed by both the quality and quantity of artistic expression I see there.  The other indicator I see that encourages me is the accessibility of some of the world's major players in every field of art. People interact with creative artists like author SE Hinton, multi-disciplinary star Isabella Rosselini, Pee Wee Herman, and many others. I remember the th

 I took the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) forty years ago to find that I'm an INFP. Think what you want about that, but I'll just use it as a reference to say that my personality tends to land on the side of high sensitivity, empathy, and intuition. Truth be told, I find most marketing and sales techniques difficult to carry out and sustain for any length of time without ending up feeling completely exhausted and at odds with my own core values. The challenges I've had in all of my career and business efforts are mostly around finding ways to succeed while honoring my strengths and personality traits instead of ignoring them and playing through the pain. For me, the key to succeeding has been to focus on building high-quality, strong relationships with people and delivering service worthy of referral. It has worked, but it took time to figure out and build a system around it. An interesting observation recently is that the people who have been finding their way to my coaching tend to

 As I write this description, the north wind is picking up outside, and our temperatures here are about to plunge about 40 degrees in the next hour.  This is a welcome respite from a Summer that has had more 90+ degree days than any I can remember in my history. For the past two days, my son has been released from school two hours early due to the high heat and lack of functional air conditioning in the schools. It has been a long, hot summer. We'll finally have a noticeable break from the extremes for the next few days. More seasonably cool temperatures are expected, and we may start to see some leaves change color. A welcome respite. It reminds me of the seasons I have in my business and how sometimes the dry spells last longer than is comfortable. We tend to forget that our enterprises happen in an environment that sometimes generates extremes, and we must be prepared for any of them. In the Coffee Break, I reveal my own circumstance of coming out of a period of high creative ac

I've always felt that my intuition and hunches are reliable, but I've been told to be more reasonable and logical in my decision making. Reason and logic are great, but they haven't been as reliable as my intuitive intelligence. In fact, when I've chosen the reasonable path, it's often been a dead end. I still don't know what to make of Human Design. My woo meter is off the scale, but every time I turn around, it's affirming something about me that is eerily true. Trusting my hunches is one of those things. The implications of this realization run wide and deep, explaining why the tools and tactics of other types don't work for me, and how I need to create my own based on my own inner guidance. Sound familiar? If so, https://bit.ly/BestNextStepCall to schedule a conversation and see what your personality has been trying to tell you all along. #humandesign #intuition #hunch 

 Life is a story you tell yourself. Don't like it? Tell a better story. Considering I'm a Wyoming native, it's taken me long enough to find the Longmire series of novels by Craig Johnson. It's nothing crazy, but there were a few decades where I didn't read any fiction until I realized I was becoming a dull boy and signed up for Audible. God knows I don't have the patients to sit down and actually read for pleasure. I recently read the Longmire book called the Western Star. The story was set on a train that was traveling from Cheyenne to Evanston, Wyoming, across the Southern part of the state where I spent many growing up years. The last time I saw my grandfather was in July of 1969 when he dropped my mom, my sisters, and me at the train station in Evanston to take the Union Pacific passenger service to Cheyenne, where my dad was working for the Summer. Gramps had worked on that railroad until retiring just a few years before. Craig johnson's depiction of th

If perfectionism has been something you work with, you've probably heard in recent years that "done is better than perfect." I'm guessing the roots of this motto are from the lean or agile movements. God knows I haven't had a software upgrade in decades that worked as it should from day one. This all started today because the computer I've used as my main video workstation for the past four years has started to sound like a jet engine preparing for takeoff, and the monitor crashes from overheating are becoming more frequent. Planned obsolescence has become so normal that we tolerate less than mediocre products as if there isn't a higher possible bar. SaaS services have been offering similar experiences. Short beta tests that don't address most of the bugs are released into the wild, where people like you and I are the second and remaining phases of development and testing. And I mention several of the Saas subscriptions I use have started charging more

If you're ever in Longmont, CO, stop in at Babette's Artisan Bakery for a breakfast or lunch sandwich, some wood-fired pizza, and don't forget to wrap up a loaf or two of their amazing sourdough bread to take home with you. Find their hours and more about them here: https://www.babettesbakery.com/ We found out about Babette's from some foodie friends who would drive from their home in Genessee, about an hour away, to stock up on their favorite bread and desserts. We've been going there for the past several years, including the pandemic years, and we tell everyone we know about it. Yes, their food is expensive, but we've already spent the money on gas; we'll pay what it takes. It's that good. There's more about Babette's in the Coffee Break today, but I wanted to make the point that if you focus on exceptional work, people will do whatever they must to get it. Make your first priority mastering the craft of what you do, and don't settle for a

All the recent changes in my life have me reflecting on what matters most. Figuring out what I'm doing now that I'm only doing one thing. I want to do it well. I looked back at all I've done for the past 13 years, and the one thread that keeps showing up is helping people start and build strong relationships. This hasn't been limited to one area of my life; it's come up in several. And it's also been the common thread in all of the work I've done with people in my coaching role. Identifying the key relationships they need and then finding ways to cultivate them. Relationships are the context for everything we do as humans, and yet we often do our creating and planning outside of that context. Then we wonder why our efforts fail or don't land quite as we'd hoped.  And the same dynamics at play in our personal relationships also show up in our professional relationships. They go through similar stages, are affected by personality and preferences, and r

What if 96 percent of people looking for a service like yours were ignored by the top-performing competitors in your industry? By now, the easiest to find customers in your industry are finding the companies who can afford the most expensive ads, keywords, and the top of page one on Google. But imagine if you found a closet full of bankers' boxes with people who wanted your service but couldn't access it as easily as the customers your competitors have the resources to reach. Wouldn't it be worth it to find ways to serve them? That's what Scott Schang did. He used blogging as a way to teach people who had been refused mortgages on their first try how to succeed on their second. The sales in his division tripled. Now Scott teaches other mortgage vendors how to reach their customers through content marketing using blogs, videos, and other channels. He's taken his most successful content and packaged it so that other people in his industry can share in the success he&#

Today was a day full of great conversations. A recurring theme today was the question of how audience building has changed for people over the past few years. We also wondered aloud how the pandemic and quarantines have impacted how we attract and gather people to our causes. In my case, my enjoyment of participating in social media has changed pretty drastically in the last few years. It used to be a more enjoyable and manageable activity. Still, it has gotten increasingly sophisticated and demanding, and it's hard to know how to reach people there without just sending them DMs. The number of content options has also made it challenging to know how to reach people. I know I can repurpose TikTok videos as Shorts and Reels, but whatever happened to just posting pictures, and why aren't as many people seeing them? The strange thing is that visits to my blog have increased over the same period. And again, I don't know why. I haven't increased sharing of my posts. In fact,

I use a simple framework to guide my marketing and sales activities. 1. Connect human to human - forget the technique and build a real relationship through your message. 2. Inspire imagination - Help people experience a different possibility in their mind and show how you will help them reach it. 3. Invite people to take the next step toward that outcome. 4. Deliver valuable and memorable experiences - No matter how small your message is, you have an opportunity to make a positive difference. Make it. This framework has served me well, and I recommend it to everyone. In this Coffee Break, I share a recent conversation in which the topic of delivering valuable experiences came up. I've shared the same ideas here. I offer coaching and courses to teach you how to do this. Please get in touch, and let's explore how this framework can help you. #messaging #framework #value 

In the right state of mind, every one of us is susceptible to the suggestions of others. Advertisers have been planting ideas, catchphrases, taglines, mottoes, and anything else they can slip through our mental filters for the length of human history. Every day, we witness how powerful irrational and sometimes dangerous beliefs can be, yet we constantly expose ourselves to them through the inputs we choose. Just today, I heard a well-known senator plant the seed that Americans are ready for civil war. And I know he knows exactly what he's doing. He's made a long political career out of the power of suggestion. If you hear the same messages over and over and over again, at some point, you stop questioning their validity, and they become "true" to you. After several hours of concentrated work this afternoon, I listened to a YouTube video while finishing some reports. About 45 minutes after the video had ended, there was a phrase that kept inserting itself into my awaren