Franklin Taggart's Blog

Today I found myself at home alone for almost four hours, a rarity. I had been kind of excited about it because I've been working on a new song and I had several tasks to catch up on, but I ended up taking the time completely off. I read a Longmire book and played on the floor with our dog, allowing my mind some time without a specific focus or productive goal. I'd been feeling pretty stuck in the songwriting process, writing a lot of drafts but not reaching a level of satisfaction. And I had no motivation to catch up on the task list. The wonderful result of this downtime was that my imagination started coming back online on its own steam later in the day, and I had several ideas for the song and other projects I wrote down to come back to tomorrow. I've learned to recognize when I need downtime like this. It isn't frequent, but I see that I'm not getting the things done that I want, or the quality I desire isn't there. Those are the times when it's good to

You've met Jess Kotzer before in some of my other podcasts talking about automation, self-publishing, and collaboration. We recently had a fun conversation about our entrepreneurial experiences and we decided to push "Record". Topics? ** Following curiosity toward learning ** Navigating the sea of offers ** Reversing the production/consumption ratio ** The day jobs that support our entrepreneurial habits ** Being yourself and your brand ** Following intuition, caring, and curiosity as trusted guides Check out Jess' new website at https://jesskotzer.com and watch her recent YouTube shorts on Airtable automation here: https://www.youtube.com/user/youngyessington Find Franklin's blog at https://franklintaggart.com #entrepreneur #solopreneur #businessowner 

Our human imagination is the most powerful tool we have in life. My coaching work is centered on imagining new opportunities for ourselves. In detailed situations in which we connect with the people we want to associate with, we grow into new capabilities and expressions of ourselves, and we serve in more meaningful ways. It's not just a job we're looking for. I think it's important to think more creatively than just getting a job or finding work. I do know that's important, but I've seen these things taken care of beautifully when people allow themselves the chance to envision the kinds of circumstances they want to live in. As always, I welcome people to use the free Best Next Step coaching session as a good jumping-off point. It's easy to schedule at https://bit.ly/BestNextStepCall. Let's talk and see what you can begin to imagine for yourself. #imagination #vision #opportunity 

I learned how to play the guitar from two books. When I finally took lessons, I learned that I had not learned how to play correctly, and my teacher had to help me unlearn some bad habits. As a guitar teacher, students would bring copies of guitar music they'd found online, and most of the time, the music was wrong. I would have to take the music they'd found, listen to the recording, and make corrections for them so they wouldn't be forming bad habits. People who heard them play couldn't discern when a song was incorrect. They thought it sounded a lot like the original. But as a teacher, I couldn't let them learn the incorrect way to play. I have a coaching client who came to me with a pretty jaded view of coaches after spending $12000 for a program with a well-known coach and ended up being worse off than when she'd started. Even expensive coaching programs can get it wrong; there was no way she could have known this before she invested. The best we can do is

For me, the easy part is creating. If I can get into a groove and stay with the commitment to finish, I can get projects done. The hard part about making a living comes after I'm done creating. The hard part is promoting and selling. Just like so many people I talk to, I have an inner voice that likes to tell me what other people are tired of hearing, and at the top of the list is anything I'm getting ready to promote. This insecurity is the most common obstacle between people and the success they've dreamed of. It's built into a lot of people, especially and including me. Yet another psychological protection that ends up keeping me less than satisfied with the life I'm making. I've worked on this much of my adult life and I've never found a way for those inner voices and impulses to go away. I've only found ways to do the things I need to do in spite of them. If you hear me promoting something I'm offering, I can assure you that behind the sound of

I have a long-held suspicion that for many people, the spiritual path begins in earnest when they reach a place in their lives where they are so dissatisfied with the conventional path that they strike out on their own. For some, this looks like following a dream - in my case a career in music, for others, writing a book, for others starting some kind of a business. The reason I suggest this is the beginning of a spiritual awakening or journey is that these kinds of experiences are especially good for witnessing our own egos at work and seeing the truth about them, then surrendering once this understanding is seen.  In this Coffee Break, I suggest the possibility that starting a business can be the beginning of the spiritual path because everything we know to be true about ourselves gets called into question when we put an idea on the line and then try to make it into something powerful and meaningful. What better way for our sense of self-importance to reach it's end? #spiritualaw

The beginning of this video is a story from Michael Neill about being offered a TV series to showcase his coaching. After a few coaching sessions had been recorded, the idea was canceled because the camera wasn't able to see what was happening beyond a somewhat normal conversation. The transformation wasn't visible. In this Coffee Break I share a few thoughts about why it's difficult to articulate the value of what we do because much of the experience is in the invisible, subjective world of feelings, desires, and thought. The best we can do is describe maybe only a few sides of a multi-faceted jewel. Add to that the evolution of what we do and offer, and the different audiences and contexts we deliver to, and it's any wonder we can talk about it at all. I have a couple of resources if you're struggling to articulate your work into a message that people will understand and act upon. First, there's the Top-Floor Elevator Pitch Bundle, which includes two courses a

When I was in high school, there were two study tracks offered - college prep and vocational. At the beginning of my junior year, I went to the guidance counselor and took a career test that didn't have any creative careers outside of teaching as possible results, so I was told my best bets would be things like driving buses, being a handyman, or trash pickup. The counselor was most certain I wasn't college material. Despite that, I did go to college and graduated with a combined degree in music and business. After graduating, I was clueless about how to pursue the career I wanted, so I started working pretty much wherever I could. Over the next ten years, I held eleven different positions with five different employers ranging from warehouse work, to sales, to group home counselor, to gang intervention coordinator, to curriculum developer and trainer, to victim advocate, to crisis center counselor.  At the same time, I started my first couple of side businesses in music product

Going through my email this morning, I was struck by how many I automatically deleted and the tone in many subject lines that led me to open the email and unsubscribe from their lists. After having a Gmail account for a couple of decades, I know I'm on every spammable list that has ever been made, but these emails were from lists I had once been interested in enough to subscribe to. Here are a few of the things I reacted to: ** Hyper-agitation of pain points. ** False urgency. ** FOMO ** Arrogance disguised as authority. ** The pretense of knowing what I need. Now I get that we've all learned how to attract and define our audience not only with the positive but also with the negative, but I noticed the trend was mainly to the negative and not being completely well(I've had a doozy of a cold), I internalized it more than I usually do. This marketing didn't feel good. I think there are better ways. Referenced in the video: Jess Kotzer - Check out her recent YouTube shorts

Social media captions and hashtags are powerful ways to be found online, but many creative people make common mistakes in how they're used. A musician may be inclined to talk about their composition or recording process and reference the music in their hashtags. [hashtag]musicperformance, [hashtag]Americana, [hashtag]songwriter, [hashtag]originalsong. I suggest the captions and hashtags be more about the audience's story related to the creative work. If I wanted to make my caption and hashtags for my song, Hard to Be a Cowboy, I might want to write it like this: My Uncle Charlie was my [hashtag]boyhoodhero, a real [hashtag]wyomingcowboy who was a [hashtag]familyman, a [hashtag]proudamerican, and a positive [hashtag]malerolemodel. This song is my tribute to him  https://youtu.be/z8JgVaJGETg This caption and hashtags give a glimpse of the story of my Uncle and make it visible to the people who may see it in searches for keywords and included hashtags. #marketingtips #creativebusi

The question of whether social media is the only way to reach your community comes up frequently. I know people who have successful businesses who still don't have an email address or a website. They have a great reputation in their community and depend on a strong referral network to generate business. I know a painter who sets up her easel on the sidewalk in an office park and sells enough artwork to make a very comfortable living, and she's known by almost everyone who passes by her during rush hour. She has a business card with a phone number. There are successful people everywhere who don't use social media at all. The question is, do you have a better way to reach that many people at once? Especially if you need to sell a large volume of products. I think, too, that we need to get away from the idea that marketing should only be done through one channel. I don't get a lot of clients from creating content, Most of my business is referral based. But having the conte

  If you're trying things in your career and business and they're not working as you'd hoped, it may not be the techniques and tools at fault. It may be that they're not connected to a compelling vision. Two of today's conversations were centered on vision and values. Both involved interesting business plans, but a central thread didn't hold them together. Vision and values provide that thread, whether discussing career direction, business strategy, or any other creative pursuit. When people feel stuck at some place in their lives, they've never had or lost touch with a clear vision of their paths. I like the book, Start With Why by Simon Sinek, and I feel like the things he points to help visions form, but the Why by itself isn't enough. It's only the beginning. If you're in a place where you are frustrated with how things are working for you, or you're feeling like you're spinning your wheels, please accept my offer of a free one-hour c

In this Coffee Break, I include a couple of short exercises I give to people who feel like impostors. I think we've started to make Impostor Syndrome more of a diagnosis than it needs to be.  I believe the feelings associated with Impostor Syndrome are normal, and they happen as a part of our trying new things, taking on new roles, and showing up in our social circles in new ways. They're normal psychological protections we have to help us guard against painful relational outcomes like embarrassment, rejection, and abandonment. Real frauds and con artists don't tend to feel this way. They're intentionally defrauding people to get something they want. Embarrassment, rejection, and abandonment are not their concerns. You are not intentionally defrauding or conning people. You're expanding who you are in the world. Like every other feeling, these anxieties and fears will pass. Just don't let them push you away from the thing you were inspired to do. Use the exercis

If you find courses on social media and content marketing from just a few years ago, the most common message was to be pumping out original content on every possible channel as often as you could. At that time, it may have been possible to manage that many channels without much difficulty. There were fewer channels with fewer options on each. Now, there are a dozen content options on each channel, and the communities we found online a few years ago seem to have fragmented into smaller and smaller segments. We feel that to stay ahead of the curve with our marketing and promotions, we have to be online during as many waking hours as possible and automate the rest. In this Coffee Break, I share how I discovered for myself how to be in the right place at the right time after I got burned out trying to be visible everywhere, all the time. For those of us who work in the DIY space, it's becoming more important than ever to find the places where our people are spending time and paying att

There is a place for networking with peers and colleagues. It's a great way to learn new skills and develop capabilities. It's a good place to find mentors. And for some, it may be a good place to find clients, but for most of us, the group of people we need to reach will be somewhere else. In Nashville, I went to a songwriter's open mic almost every night. The writers I met there were mostly at the same level in their careers as I was, just getting started in the professional realm. The writers who were successful were rarely seen at events like this. They still had their peer circles, but they were smaller and less publicly visible. In coaching, I don't see the top eschelon of coaches hanging out in the 20k member Facebook coaching group. That group is facilitated by a coach who coaches coaches. He's building his client list, and he limits every other member from trying to do the same in the group. A big part of success is finding the places where our people congr

The few weeks before Halloween each year seem to be the last time during the year that things can slow down enough to give time for reflection before the holiday frenzy begins. This year, I don't think I was quite ready for this time to arrive. This has been one of my most productive years ever, but it has flown by, and I'm not quite ready to go into the standard end-of-year activities. I've never been one to participate in Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, or Cyber Monday. The hype is too much stimulation, and I prefer to wait until January and February to go into marketing and sales mode. This year, I'm in a different rhythm that I can trace back to the decision to flip the production vs. consumption ratio and put more of my time toward finishing the things I start instead of getting distracted by information, learning, and studying.  I've still got a few projects to finish, and I'm ready to start letting next year's vision bubble up in my imagination

Today was the third day in a row I heard from someone how hard it has been to find customers, clients, or an audience. Most of the time, when I hear this complaint, I start by asking which people they've been spending the most time with. There are usually two responses - either they've not been spending time with people at all, or they've been spending time with others in their profession. Both situations tend toward the problematic. Isolation for solopreneurs, freelancers, and artistic creators is often built into the path. The career, by nature, tends to favor solitude and can be a kind of lonesome existence. Much of the difficulty with these folks is balancing the need for quiet, creative space and the ongoing need to cultivate customer relationships and generate business.  But the group who spend most of their time with people in the same professional pond either have to adapt their services for peers and colleagues or find another pond. This is the situation that's

If you've just met me, you probably don't know that I'm a fanatic about online quizzes, and my software of choice for such things is Interact. In this Coffee Break, I share some of the experimenting I've been doing with quizzes and some of the ways your business or organization could be using them to create valuable, memorable, interactive experiences for your site visitors and social followers. And I also want you to know about the learning you can do about the people who are attracted to what you're doing. All this is in preparation for an upcoming event next week that I will encourage anyone who is even minimally interested in quiz building to attend. The Interact Quiz Mastermind will be happening October 11-13 online, featuring some of the industry's best quiz builders and marketers. Don't wait to sign up. Just go to https://bit.ly/QuizMastermind to learn more and enroll. In addition to the expert instruction, you'll be offered some amazing deals on

My business is almost completely driven by personal referrals. I'm being introduced or making introductions almost daily. Today, I remember when I was introduced, and I wasn't ready for it, resulting in blown opportunities, embarrassment, and a tarnished professional reputation. So the other reason for this topic...I've made introductions and had people come back to me asking me why in the world I thought that would be a good connection. The person who had asked me for the introduction was not ready to meet the person I introduced them to. Embarrassed and tarnished yet again. Your success depends on relationships. Professional relationships depend on things like clarity, intent, and preparedness. I've had people get mad when they ask me to make an intro, and I ask them to do their homework first. I'm just not willing to risk my rep by introducing someone to an esteemed colleague and having them show up unready. Preparedness suggestions within... #introductions #refe

I was asked today how I make these videos and podcasts so quickly. The short answer is that I cut corners. I don't make unique thumbnail images, my editing is light at best, I don't care if I say um or stammer, and I use the same templates daily for videos, images, and descriptions. The tools I use are Camtasia video recording and editing software from Camtasia, Canva Pro templates for graphics, a simple framework for descriptions, and automated distribution through Anchor. My content ideas most often come from conversations I've had within a day or two before and are not scripted or structured. I record the video with Camtasia using a template I made just for the coffee break. The template has front and end graphics, a pre-formatted title and text overlay, and a placeholder where my video will go. Once the video is recorded, I place it in the template, change the title overlay, trim the beginning and end of the recording, and add fades between the video elements. Then I re

Getting ready for my weekly book discussion with a friend Monday morning. We've been reading a couple of good ones. Most recently, we've been reading Originals by Adam Grant and The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. Both are beautifully written. Originals is more in line with my interests, and I enjoy following Adam Grant on social media. His posts are consistently worth reading. The Art of Gathering seems to have timeliness since we're only now more fully coming back together for face-to-face connection. How we learned to gather almost seems like it doesn't quite fit. I'm going to share some affiliate links for the titles mentioned here. Originals: How Non-Conformists Rule the World by Adam Grant https://amzn.to/3SLXRr7 The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker https://amzn.to/3SwEQZv Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring by Alexander Rose https://amzn.to/3C5pbsT The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie https://amz