Franklin Taggart's Blog

As a solopreneur consultant, Reuben Swartz found that the learning curve and the frustration he experienced trying to adapt off-the-shelf enterprise customer relationship management software made his marketing and selling experience much less than enjoyable. As he started to put together tools of his own to track and manage his customer relationships, he started to look forward to his sales calls, and the friction he'd experienced with the larger software packages dissolved. As he showed people his new systems, he discovered there was a product opportunity there, and Mimiran was born. Mimiran is the "Anti-CRM" designed specifically for solopreneurs that will help you track your sales process and make your customer contacts easier to manage and much more enjoyable. It also allows relationship-based solopreneurs to prioritize conversations that lead to long-term connections and opportunities. In this episode, we talk about: ** The foundation of any relationship-based busine

I had an email exchange with a good friend today on the topic of "enough." She wondered if the concept of enough could be applied to things like to-do lists, marketing activities, networking, and other aspects of career and business.  While we may feel overwhelmed by these things, I have started to view these as evidence of abundance instead of as a nuisance or obstacle. Honestly, if they weren't tending this garden, there wouldn't be this much growth.  I grew up with a grandmother who canned vegetables and fruit every year. I remember some years seeing hundreds of jars of beets, tomatoes, green beans, apricots, peaches, cherries, and more in the canning kitchen in the basement of my Great Aunt's hotel. We would go around to all of our farming relative's places and pick up bushel after bushel of produce and take back to Granny in the canning kitchen. Over the course of the next several weeks, she would methodically prepare and can hundreds of jars. After all t

Sometimes I review copy and messaging for people's social media, email campaigns, and sales pages to see where they make strong connections and where they don't. One place I see them struggle sometimes is when they're offering a program to people who have already surpassed the place where the offering was necessary, and they have a new set of needs and challenges. As a result of this, the messaging isn't appropriate or appealing to the audience in their new circumstances. Another place I see this phenomenon is when a creative artist like a musician starts to reach a new level of expression that no longer appeals to the venues where they've experienced their initial opportunities and success. Those of us who've been around the block a few times may recognize the cycles of learning and growing as we've been through it enough to notice. But for some people it the early stages of their work and business, it may be a pretty scary circumstance. The things that the

Interact Quizzes has an incredible staff. It's small but mighty, and they're making a big dent in the burgeoning demand for great quiz software. I interviewed Jessmyn Solana a few months back and totally enjoyed the conversation and her energy and insights. This morning Jessmyn and the other interact folks released a podcast interview with yours truly. It was fun to share part of my story and be in the guest chair. I'd love for you to listen here. It's one of the best versions of my backstory that I've shared. Thanks, Jessmyn, for the excellent interview!

I've interviewed over 150 podcast guests and been a guest on a few dozen. Most of the people I've interviewed have been stellar, but occasionally I have people on the show who don't turn out so great. This episode answers the FAQ - How can I be a great podcast guest? I keep forgetting that common sense isn't common, so some of these things will seem like 'duh' moments for some of you. If that's the case, you are probably already a good guest. Here are some nugs: ** Do your research and make it thorough. ** Present yourself in the best, most positive way. No slackers. ** Don't waste the host's time. ** Follow the submission guidelines to the letter. More in the video. Thanks to Interact Quizzes, Jessmyn Solana and the Creator Stories Podcast for the opportunity to be your guest! Want to watch? Go here: https://youtu.be/NFGb7WuD1IE Want to join Cat Stancik's Lead Boss Mixer? Podcast host and guest speed networking coming up the second Friday in Dec

Several years ago, I offered a workshop called Why People Don't Buy. I may resurrect it because I'm hearing that question quite a bit from some people I know. Some reasons are obvious - not the right time, not enough money, someone else sells it for less - but the reasons I really wanted to explore were the ones from people who had engaged with the message long enough to get to the point of sale but then bailed. Ten minutes isn't enough to give a comprehensive answer to the question, but I was able to pull a few of the top reasons people don't buy once they reach the sales page and share them here.  The biggest reason for a low number of purchases is that the page isn't reaching the right people. For many people, the front-end marketing was non-existent or thrown together as the last-minute detail they should have put more time and thought into. They skipped the SEO, didn't post on social, or didn't give people enough of a reason to go any further. Other rea

If you want to save a ton of money as an entrepreneur, I have one suggestion. Learn how to sell. Don't just read the book. Practice selling. Practice until you feel as natural in a sales role as when you're having a casual conversation with a friend. Why? Because many of the people I've coached have spent tens of thousands of dollars on things they think will do the selling for them, but those things don't do the job. In essence, they've paid to avoid the thing they're intimidated by or afraid of. These wastes of money could have been avoided by confronting their fear and learning how to feel confident in selling. If you're struggling with telling people about the things you are offering and why they need to buy them, let's have a session. It's easy to set up. Click https://bit.ly/BestNextStepCall and schedule your free one-hour coaching session now. It will make and save you a ton of cash. #marketing #sales #confidence 

Anyone who's followed me for a long time knows I teach people how to market their business by delivering valuable and memorable experiences. Last week, I welcomed Cat Stancik back to Your Own Best Company for a discussion of something she's been developing called Fireworks Experiences. After our interview, I attended her Fireworks Experience Workshop. This two-hour crash course will help you identify the kind of Firework Experience that fits your strengths and your client's focus. In one part of the workshop, Cat helped me clarify a new front-end marketing strategy I've been working on that made my idea many times better than it had originally been. I've already seen some exciting results. Here are some of our talking points: ** What is a Fireworks Experience? ** How Fireworks Experiences make better buyers. ** How Cat creates safe spaces where sales can happen more easily. ** Five types of buyers. ** Gaining the confidence to go off-script. We also shared our mutua

A morning phone call scuttles all but one of my plans today. I had a good time this morning on the Are You Waiting for Permission Pod-a-Thon with Meridith Grundei and Joseph Bennett. They made it the full twelve hours. It's the longest podcast episode I've ever been a part of, but I on;y had to show up for a small part of it. While I was on the podcast, my wife got a call about a family emergency that required an unanticipated trip to the Denver airport and back for me. My plans to finish editing and release the latest Your Own Best Company episode with Cat Stancik are going to wait another day. You will definitely want to hear that one. On my way back from the airport, I listened to three of my favorite podcasters. I thought I'd share my recommendation with you here. She Built This with Emily Aborn is a great show featuring interviews with women who have successfully built businesses and career paths they are loving. Emily is a wonderful interviewer, and her guests are top

The team is back together for a deep dive into the topic of deep work. The trigger for this conversation is this article Audrey found citing a study that suggested quiet quitting is directly related to the difficulty people have getting their work done. https://www.fastcompany.com/90801721/this-one-overlooked-factor-is-contributing-more-to-burnout-than-any-other This special Thanksgiving Day edition of Your Own Best Company brings Audrey Holst and Erica Holthausen back together around the virtual roundtable to explore our insights, understanding, and experience of the practice of deep work. Here are some of our stopping points: ** Finding your deep work rhythm. ** Booking time with yourself. ** Learning your own work patterns. ** The necessity of deep rest for the purpose of deep work. ** Making space for car problems and hurricanes. and more! Want to find Erica? https://catchlinecommunications.com Audrey? https://fortitudeandflow.com And we're all on LinkedIn, too. Happy Thanksgiv

Black Friday is one of the worst ideas ever to flow from the mind of humanity. Fill large buildings to capacity with humans who are experiencing various levels of FOMO, scarcity, the urgency of impending holidays, etc. Then offer extreme deals on limited supplies and watch them fight about it. And if you really want to make it happen, start a day early on a holiday that everyone used to take off to be with family or volunteer at the mission. This just doesn't seem like a good idea. And yet, Americans have begun to treat it with more reverence and anticipation than Christmas and Easter and all the lesser holy days. Black Friday has become, for me, a good excuse to stay home and do fun things. Write songs, watch movies with the family, and purposely avoid spending any money anywhere. This year will be different. My friends Joseph Bennett and Meridith Grundei are offering a more colorful Friday experience with their first-ever Pod-a-Thon. From 10 AM-10 PM EST on Friday, Meridith and J

I can tell when I'm in a self-protecting frame of mind when my first reaction to ideas and opportunities is the list of reasons why I can't. I'm too old, it's too expensive, I can't afford it, it'll never work, etc. ad nauseum. I'm not one of the people who suggest that ego is a bad thing. It's just a self-preservation mechanism that we all have. Its size is commensurate to the wounding it's trying to heal or prevent. Not bad. But we're creatures designed for growth and expansion, so there's a natural tension between the life force urging us into a greater expression of ourselves and the coping mechanism that's developed to keep us from harm and total abandonment. This tension has to be resolved in times when we're considering bigger options for ourselves than we've allowed ourselves to have before. I've said before I'm a fan of lists. To people who have an automatic impulse to find reasons why they can't I prescribe m

I know many people who have experienced significant losses this year. Jobs ending, loved ones dying, moving to new locations, leaving old situations behind. Sometimes when we are going through the grieving process, it's hard to access a sense of gratitude. In one conversation this morning, I was reminded of an observation I've made in my own experiences of grief that gratitude may be one of the stages of grieving we need to consider.  In her groundbreaking research, Dr. Kubler Ross identified several emotional stages of grief - shock, denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance- and saw that these emotional adjustments are common to humans adapting to change. In her case, she was studying grief associated with death, but we've come to understand that grieving occurs with most transitional experiences. If you're struggling to access your own sense of gratitude, try taking some time to reflect on what you miss about the person, place, or thing now gone. Such reflection may

Do you want your plan to determine your lifestyle or your lifestyle to determine your plan? Much of my work is focused on strategy and planning for career direction, business and marketing decisions, and some other transitional times. People often want to dive into the safety and structure that planning provides before they can answer a more basic question. How do you want to spend your time? Michael Hyatt has a great template to help people imagine their perfect week. I like to start with a starter timeframe of a day. What does your best day look like? As people work out these details, we're given a context and framework within which their best plans can take shape. Often, if people jump into the planning before considering their lifestyle desires, they set themselves up for a more challenging experience with a higher likelihood of failure. I've found that imagining how you want your days to unfold is an exercise that skips the challenge and failure. Since this is the end of t

Fill in the blank; Life is happening __________ me. Changing one word in that blank can change our entire experience. At various times in my life I've felt like life was happening to me, though me, for me, and in me. In each one of those times, I had wildly different worldviews accompanied by wildly different experiences.  The movement from victimhood to freedom was one of several stages in which my mindset shifted, usually after a long period of struggle, difficulty, and surrender. These shifts have been on my mind recently as several clients have been in the process of releasing old patterns and fixations. #mindset #worldview #lifeexperience 

In our last visit with author and publisher Teresa Funke, we heard about her life and pandemic imposed sabbatical and how she knew her path was changing, but she wasn't sure how. In this episode, we find that she's reached a new place with very few conclusions but a new appreciation for not knowing yet what's ahead and being OK with it. Many creatives are entering a time of questioning and reflection, like Teresa. In this conversation, we hear from Teresa on the themes of: ** Knowing when the sabbatical has ended. ** The deeper questions that accompany stopping. ** Releasing old ways of doing things. ** Getting excited before new possibilities appear. ** Encouragement for the low times. and a practical way Teresa and her husband have found to make great literature available and accessible to kids who may not otherwise be exposed to it. Find Teresa at: https://burstsofbrilliance.com https://www.teresafunke.com/ And order her latest book, Bursts of Brilliance for a Creative L

My son got his driver's license this morning and drove himself solo to school for the first time. We've been hearing all day that snow was coming, and there was a dusting by noon that didn't add any challenges. Even an hour before school got out, roads were clear, and all appeared to be well. In that last hour, the snow finally started to fall, and the roads covered over quickly and became very icy. Bodhi had never driven on snow before this, so he was pretty nervous. He got to a place where he could pull into a parking lot and called us to ask what he should do. We talked over a couple of alternate routes, and he chose the one he felt the safest driving on and slowly made it the rest of the way home. There were so many other ways he could have reacted to these unexpected conditions. He could have just kept going on the busier street where he felt less safe. He could have asked us to come and bring him home. He could have chosen one of the routes we didn't talk about. I

My friend Teresa forwarded an email she received from Andrew Simonet, an amazing resource for professional artists ( Blog here: https://www.artistsu.org/blog ) He was taking a pretty bold stance against a marketing professional who had addressed a gathering of artists and told them that their main problem was one of branding. I share his consternation about this.  I've been the guy with the PowerPoint, telling the artists how they need to market themselves. And I've been the guy trying to land another gig, get another ten names on the mailing list, and sell another CD so I can put enough gas in the car to get home. Ultimately, his point was that the people who bring these business world solutions to artists and other creative people aren't doing so with a complete understanding of the people they're addressing. And the brilliant point he made was that artists don't need to be fixed; they need partners. This gave me much to reflect on and talk about. #artbusiness #a

I've talked about shifting attention before and mentioned the limitations of my faith in self-assessments. The theme is back today as I remembered a presentation I gave last year called Changing Your mind About Marketing. That talk was inspired by my experience of creating a different experience of marketing and selling by changing my thinking about those activities. And changing my thinking didn't require repeated affirmations or years of meditation. It was simply a shift in attention. I stopped paying attention to my thinking, and my thinking automatically changed. The more recent inspiration for this topic was in two recent conversations with friends who had recently taken self-assessment tests like the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs. One of the challenges associated with these tests is that we convince ourselves that they reveal permanent truths about who we are when they actually reveal generalizations about our preferences. We're not limited to the experiences that the tes

While searching for enriching activities for her children and family, Yat-Yee Chong discovered the martial art, Tae Kwon Do. While her family eventually left the practice behind, Yat-Yee found that she had both an aptitude and an attraction to the sport. In 2020, after multiple black belts and a 2015 World Championship win, Mrs. Chong has taken her passion for Tae Kwon Do and opened her own studio. Yat-Yee opened Axon Martial Arts Academy in Loveland, Colorado with the vision of teaching individuals and families this martial art she has mastered. Starting from shared spaces with dance studios and gyms, Yat-Yee began offering classes a few times each week, fitting them in between the schedules of the programs she shared facilities with. Last Saturday, she reached a milestone in her business with the grand opening of her new space on Loveland's North side. This Coffee Break celebrates Yat-Yee and her vision, persistence, and grit. If you live in Northern Colorado and are looking for

In this "Best of" clip from Your Own Best Company, Silver Paw Studio Pet Photographer Monique Eckes shares her idea for a book-centered marketing project called NoCo for Doggos. This week, we share the excitement of the book's release and send congrats to Monique for yet another vision realized. If you are a pet photographer or would like to take better pictures of your pets, see Monique's Pro Pet Photog YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/SilverPawStudioFortCollins If you're in Northern Colorado and you'd like to book a session with Monique for your pet, please visit https://silverpawstudio.com And if you'd like to watch the whole interview with Monique for more creative inspiration, go here: https://youtu.be/4R_xVSWfOx0 #petphotography #professionalphotographer #northerncolorado