Franklin Taggart's Virtual Coffee Break

Author of Quiet Marketing, Danielle Gardner is back to talk about some recent insights on the impact of our business practices on our nervous systems. This episode was inspired by a recent interview Dani had with an astrologer in which she talked about ways that the business and marketing techniques she's been taught caused deregulation of her nervous system, leading to heightened stress and uneas...

Did you see The Incredibles? Remember when Frozone couldn't find his supersuit after he got the long-awaited call from Mr. Incredible that their superservices were needed? The suit was the key to his powers. This Coffee Break is inspired by a question that came up in a conversation this morning about favorite Halloween costumes from growing up years. You'll find out my favorite and the impact it h...

Thanks to Brandon Soltwisch and the Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship classes at the University of Northern Colorado for the invitation to speak today. I enjoyed our discussion of target markets and customer avatars, and I hope you found it both fun and helpful. Every time I've presented for college classes I remember the visit to my high school guidance counselor when I was told I wasn't college m...

Between meeting a potential client and inviting them to purchase a service, my client had four stages of free offers. Most people didn't get past the first one, and no one had the patience for all four. The only people who paid her were those who had been referred by other clients. Find out how we changed her strategy in today's Coffee Break. Hints: ** Limit stages between meet and purchase to no...

I've been revisiting Instagram and learning about TikTok in recent weeks. When I joined Instagram, it could only be accessed by phone, and I think I may have been using a flip phone. You took pictures of whatever you were doing, wrote a brief message, and posted. The people who followed you saw it. Simple. I've become a fast fan of TikTok, with the exception of the potential human rights and priva...

My promotions often read like puzzles when I was new to my business. I would make lists of things I did and then let the reader fill in the blanks. All to often, they didn't want to do that and they'd just move along to something else. I later learned that what I was doing was using a passive approach to my messages and offers. A passive approach features messages and offers that are incomplete or...

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...

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...

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...

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 cor...

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 get...

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 th...

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...

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...

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...

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 ab...

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 artwo...

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, whet...

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 nor...

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,...

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 t...

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...

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 si...

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. A...

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...