Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

  As I sit to write this on Christmas Eve, it's 49 degrees and raining here in Colorado. Welcome moisture after an extremely warm and dry Autumn. Christmas Day also has some rain in the forecast, but we still haven't had our first proper snow.  I'm grateful for another year in which I had the joy of trying new things, meeting new people, and finding fun ways to spend time, despite the ongoing challenge we all face with a virus running rampant. I'm lucky to have had only a mild case, which with my health history I count a miracle. I feel lucky to have done all the things I did this year and lucky is one of the best feelings I know. I'm particularly grateful for my family and their well-being. Bodhi is a high school soph this year and he continues to be a source of pride and lightheartedness. He received an academic letter for achieving and holding a 3.5 or higher GPA his freshman year, and he just finished his first semester of sophomore year with a 3.65. He is on th...

  ▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ Are you feeling like technology is putting more distance between you and the people and communities who matter to you? Has all of this virtual reality really delivered the kinds of connection we need to thrive? Is content really something that brings us together, or is it a distraction from real connection? Audrey Holst and I departed from our standard interview format and had a good conversation about these questions and more in this episode of Your Own Best Company. You might have heard Audrey’s recent chat about perfectionism. In her company, Fortitude and Flow, she works with people who have reached a certain level of success and recognition, but who are still living with an uncomfortable level of dissatisfaction with where they have landed. Contact Audrey at fortitudeandflow.com We also talk about returning to real world interactions with new perceptions and insights gained from our time apart, end-of-year rituals, and seasonal traditions. I men...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ Understanding your strong innate talents and those of others has a wealth of benefits for entrepreneurs, businesses, and organizations. From building exceptional teams to better communication to identifying your best opportunities, clarifying and refining personal strengths and talents has both immediate and long-term payoffs. CliftonStrengths™ is a powerful assessment tool that will help you identify and understand your unique combination of strengths and how they can be refined, leveraged, and combined with the strengths of others to lead to improvements in job performance, team cohesion, and reaching goals. In this episode of Your Own Best Company, Gallup certified coach, Dr. Joanie Connell walks us through the simple process of completing the assessment and gives us a look inside a CliftonStrengths™ coaching session. Find Joanie online:  https://flexibleworksolutions.com LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/joanieconnell/ Reinventing Nerds P...

Craig Cannings from Freelance University gave me an opportunity to share some of my story on The Freelance Podclass. We talked a lot about how unexpected life events often turn into opportunities to find new expressions of our gifts. I shared a few lessons learned from choices I made that could have prevented many difficulties. And we talked about getting your business bases covered when life interrupts your normal. Please remember to subscribe and review, and definitely check out the many resources Freelance University offers to freelancers and solopreneurs. Thanks, Craig! Listen, subscribe, review, and share from your favorite podcast app or here:  https://www.freelanceu.com/freeupodcast/overcoming-lifes-disruptions/

  I'm thrilled to be one of the speakers for the upcoming Soulful Entrepreneur Summit on January 24-28, 2022. This online event is the creation of Alison Proffit and Amanda Mundo, two incredible entrepreneurs who are creating a movement of soul-driven creators, coaches, consultants, and business owners who will join together in delivering a powerful impact wherever they live and work. I'll be speaking on Thursday, January 27th at 1PM Mountain Time on one of my favorite topics, Community: The Source of All Opportunity.  Event passes are available now. Limited access passes are free and will allow you to join and participate during the event itself and for a couple of weeks following. All-access passes feature some added benefits and ongoing access to event recordings. Definitely a steal at the full price of $97, but if you order your passes before December 11, you'll save $50. Click on the photo to get yours today or scan this QR code to go right there:  I've also includ...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ When someone asks you how you’re doing, is your automatic response “I’m so busy”? Have you bought into the trending belief that hustle is worthy of a badge of honor while self-care is only permissible for people who don’t want to accomplish as much? Do you ignore your own warning signs that you’re running out of steam just so you can tick another five items from your to-do list? Is being busy all the time really bringing about the quality of life you most desire? Joseph Bennett would like to challenge these ideas and habits. Joseph is the author of the forthcoming, Rest, The Art of Doing Less , a self-healing book that looks at our addiction to busyness. He lives in San Miguel de Allende, México with his husband and some-time business partner Eli Hans and their 3 nearly perfect rescue dogs. Joseph can most often be found in his studio making art with other people's trash, sitting by the backyard pond writing poetry or on the hunt for a great cup of s...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ Is it challenging to stay focused, on task, and productive? From your desk chair do you sometimes wish you had someone to bounce an idea off of, or someone to review something you’ve just created and give you feedback? Or maybe it would be nice just to have another human to check in with throughout the day. In recognizing her own desire for these kinds of connections, Heather Chavin made her first leap into entrepreneurship and created GoGoDone, a virtual connecting and co-working space for a growing variety of remote workers, creatives, and even some who work for corporations and organizations. Since 2019, GoGoDone has grown into a worldwide community of people who offer each other support, accountability, ideas, feedback, and connection around the clock. In this episode, we’ll hear about how different kinds of people seek connection, how each of us has our own set of needs and preferences when it comes to balancing solitude and connection, and the im...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below▼▼▼ Since 2008, Adil Amarsi has helped clients generate over $821 Million in sales directly from his copywriting. Add to that the amount his consulting clients, copywriting mentees, and students have generated and the total is $1.2 Billion. He’s written advertising copy for top marketing agencies in the UK and US, high-performing ads for Tony Robbins, and campaigns that have added millions to his clients’ bottom lines.  He has also developed a copywriting structure called the StorySelling Matrix that incorporates strong brand identity with a message balanced between emotion and logic, finishing with a Call-To-Action that builds anticipation. To learn more about the StorySelling Matrix, access your download here: https://greatestcopywriteralive.com   Now as a mentor to other copywriters and business owners, Adil teamed up with Shiv Shetti  to form the CMMP: The Copywriting Mastery Mentoring Program. Their purpose with this program is to help mentee...

  I recently had a wonderful conversation with my friends, Meridith Grundei and Joseph Bennett on their Are You Waiting for Permission podcast. We covered a lot of territory in our short time together, but there were some lovely nuggets to be found. Some of our topics: ** The important distinction between gifts and talents. ** Your gifts define your purpose. ** There are people here who are waiting to find you because they need your gifts. ** The creativity we imagine doesn't usually include the messy parts. ** A part of becoming masterful at something is the willingness to suck. ** Very often our struggle to master something becomes most difficult right before the breakthrough happens. Thanks, Meridith and Joseph for the fun conversation! You two are lights in my world! Listen here now: Be sure to subscribe and review! You can find Meridith: Meridith Grundei Coaching You can find Joseph: Joseph Bennett the artist/coach extraordinaire

▼▼▼Watch or Listen Below!▼▼▼ Perfectionism is a part of the human experience that has many definitions and is perceived by some to be a positive character trait while others view it as an obstacle to success. It’s a common factor that isn’t related to one personality type over others, isn’t limited to high achievers or low, and can affect people at every level of self-image. If you’ve ever believed that you had to show up a certain way to be accepted or had to have all your circumstances exactly in order before you could start working on something or have hidden something you’ve done after comparing it to the work of others, you’ve experienced perfectionism. Audrey Holst is a coach who guides perfectionists and stressed-out high achievers and performers that are ready to start enjoying and living the life they've worked so hard for. She teaches her clients simple and practical tools of self-discovery to move through old patterns of perfectionism into greater freedom and open-hearte...

  ▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ If you’re using LinkedIn for developing new business connections, you’ll want to meet Tracey Burnett. She helps, coaches, consultants, and other professionals identify their best-suited clients, create compelling messages, optimize their profiles, find their core audience, and develop strategies to build relationships in creative, authentic ways through consistent content creation and interaction. The results her clients experience due to her guidance in their LinkedIn activities keep them coming back.  30 years ago, Tracey Burnett found herself without a job, a home, or a relationship, and decided to go in a direction with her life that she’d never intended to go – entrepreneurship. She saw an opportunity in helping designers find corporate opportunities and dove into the world of coaching, consulting, and self-employment. Over the next two years, she generated $470,000 in revenue and her journey had only started. For the past few years, Tracey...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ Writing for advertising and marketing looks like it should be simple - use words that can be understood by a 10-year-old, keep your sentences short, and lots of exclamation points – what could be so hard about that? But the truth is that even accomplished writers struggle to find the right words, flow,  and structure to promote their books, their products, and their businesses effectively. It turns out that copywriting is a field with many specialties and specific disciplines that you didn’t learn in high school English class.   In this episode, marketing consultant and copywriter Breanna Gunn helps us to understand more about copywriting, some of the specialties within the field, and why we will want to enlist the help of a professional when it’s time to promote what we offer. We’ll hear about the differences between copywriting and other forms of communication. We’ll learn where to find the right copywriters we need. And we’ll explore the...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ From Idea to Product – Quickly – Regan Espinosa In addition to being a home health care occupational therapist and mother of three, Regan Espinosa has written and self-published seven books ranging from a Walking Dead themed devotional book and books for children who stutter. After her father died last year, she added inventor to her list of accomplishments.  An experience of having mementos left at his gravesite being blown by the wind into the cornfields next to the cemetery germinated into the idea for a container that can be placed at the gravesite within which small tributes, cards, letters, and pictures can be stored over time without being exposed to the elements or disturbed by cemetery maintenance. In this episode, Regan tells the story of The Visit Box from concept to prototype to attending a trade show to taking her first round of orders – all in less than a year. Learn more about The Visit Box here: https://thevisitbox.com See Regan's ...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ Google is the first place most people look when they need to find something they’re looking for. Is your business showing up in the searches they are doing for your products, services, or events? In this episode, One Thing Marketing Director, Brittany Murphy shares her top five tips for increasing your visibility on Google. She tells us what kind of content to have on our website, how to make sure it includes keywords and phrases people are searching for, how to format content on your site, how to integrate Google My Business, and much more. Over the last 7 years, Brittany has created over 300 digital marketing strategies for clients locally and nationally. As the Marketing Director, Brittany focuses on helping business owners get their phones to ring with new clients through optimizing their website and online presence. Through her strategies and team at One Thing Marketing, they have helped local businesses increase their revenue by an average of 30% eve...

  ▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ The online education industry has been in an explosive growth cycle for the past two decades and it doesn’t appear to be slowing. Online courses offer small business owners a way to scale and grow their revenue without having to add more time-based services or personnel. Today’s guest, Jason Van Orden helps authors, academics, and speakers turn their expertise into new streams of scalable income such as online courses. He draws from more than seventeen years of experience, including creating multiple successful brands, launching over 60 online courses, teaching more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, earning seven figures in online course sales, and generating 8 million downloads of his podcasts. His mission is to help visionaries with impactful ideas to connect with the people they serve best and the problems they can most uniquely solve. Since 2005, Jason has helped thought leaders to reach a larger audience with their ideas, create new income str...

  ▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ The need for business owners to consistently create marketing and sales content that stands out in an increasingly noisy marketplace reaching the right people with the right message at the right time. Cynthia Trevino teaches life coaches, creatives, and consultants how to get their amazing knowledge out of their heads and onto paper, so they can show up online and share...consistently!  She is a writer who’s been blogging since she had to explain what a blog was,  she’s published a book, and is a master * content re-purposer * She’s 100% a late bloomer, waiting to become an entrepreneur till she was over 50 and after a massive corporate downsizing. She says, “ I'm a master at brainstorming...it's one of few valuable lessons I learned "in corporate.“  Cynthia serves solopreneurs who want to show up online, having their messages and content ready to share so they can start relationships with their audiences of future clients, customers, ...

  ▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ While raising six children and running several businesses, Jillian Lee Antinora started to explore what she wanted for herself. Something of her own that wasn’t tied to family or business. With some time to reflect she began envisioning herself playing music on stage with a guitar. The only thing was, she didn’t play guitar. She signed up for lessons and that was the beginning of realizing her musical vision. In this interview, she tells us how she took each step in the succession from seeing herself onstage to learning guitar,  writing her own songs,  finding sources of encouragement and direction, and ultimately recording her first album, Make My Day. She also reveals how her positive mindset comes into play as she makes her commitment to make her vision a reality. More information about Jillian can be found at https://jillianleeantinroamusic.com Thanks for listening, subscribing, and reviewing!

  ▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ Technology has empowered millions of people worldwide to offer freelance services from anywhere with an internet connection. The past two decades have seen freelance careers explode as companies and organizations have begun contracting with freelancers for everything from graphic design to social media marketing to HR. And changes in the job market related to the COVID pandemic have caused these numbers to expand even more explosively. If you are one this growing number of freelancers, you’ll want to listen to this episode. Craig Cannings is the co-founder of Freelance University with his wife, Kelly. -He’s has had the privilege of helping over 20,000 students in 75 countries realize their dreams of launching a portable, freelance business and lifestyle. He’s also enjoyed the great freedom of working from home and traveling abroad while raising 5 wonderful daughters. Craig’s experience working with freelancers goes back to 2003 when he was building a...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below▼▼▼ Karen Diffey helps ambitious, committed introverts tap into their natural strengths to become inspiring, authentic, and confident leaders. She’s on a mission to help introverted women leaders be the best version of themselves - competent, fulfilled, and happy in work and life. She says “I know how overwhelming it can be not believing what you’re really good at. Revisiting challenging situations and constantly wondering how you could have handled things differently. As confusing as it may seem, there is a path from where you are now to stepping up to achieve your next level goals and I can show you the way.” Her clients describe her as intuitive, insightful, calm, and a guiding light to clarity. She challenges performance risks in a productive and positive way, building resilience and confidence. About herself, she says, “Personally, back in 2014 I was a Finance & Business Director. Outwardly, I was confident and put on a good show. Inwardly, I struggl...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below▼▼▼ Communication Coach, Cindy Skalicky says, “Introverted public speakers are needed and hard to come by. I want to reach people who have an interest in presenting more but who are unsure how to go about this because it makes them nervous. It does not have to be about getting onto a stage, but often early-stage folks don't even want to share a lot about why they are great at what they do because they feel pushy. I want to help them see the value in preparing messaging for those 'elevator pitch' or 'sales pitch' moments so they can stand in their shoes with confidence and attract more clients.” Cindy is an expert in rhetorical theory - or the science of persuasion. Her passion lies in taking a message in and teasing it apart to determine its overall effectiveness and persuasiveness. She helps clients understand the power of persuasion by teaching Aristotle's hidden gem of genius, the rhetorical triangle. Cindy is originally from Chicago;...

  If you're a Larimer County business owner who would like to improve your social media game, I'll be presenting on The Care and Feeding of Your Algorithm at the Marketing Mastery Half Day Bootcamp of National Small Business Week the morning of Sept. 14. Learn how to transform your social media algorithm from a monster to a lap dog. The Bootcamp will also feature LBDC Director Kat Hart presenting on Bare Minimum Digital Marketing, and Brenda Rundback of Shadow Play Films teaching Getting Comfortable in Front of and Behind the Camera. This will be a fun and insightful morning! Registration information here: https://clients.coloradosbdc.org/workshop.aspx?ekey=80410130 Hosted by Loveland Business Development Center  &  Larimer SBDC Check out the whole week's agenda here: https://larimersbdc.org/national-small-business-week/

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Bel;ow▼▼▼ It’s amazing to meet people who feel one hundred percent calm and confident on stage, but who feel timid and uncertain in smaller, unstructured settings. Johanna Walker is a speaking and storytelling coach in Boulder, Colorado. Listen to how she describes her work and the beliefs that drive it:  “I crack open opportunities for people to experience pure, raw truth, then watch them nail their presentations and watch their careers and their lives soar.  I believe everyone has a story that can make a difference in someone's life.  I believe that no matter what message you're trying to convey, you won't get anywhere till you truly connect with your audience.  I believe in the power of bringing your whole body & voice & breath & heart into the room, and speaking from there without apology, even when the idea of it scares the bejeezus out of you.  I believe when you walk right up to your fear and shake its h...

▼▼▼Watch and Listen Below!▼▼▼ Are you ready to toss out complicated overly automated tech and funnels that are expensive and time-consuming to build, never work as well as people told you they would, and honestly make you want to tear your hair out?   My guest in this episode is Cat Stancik, The Lead Boss.  She's going to share a simple and strategic approach to consistently fill your pipeline with highly qualified leads that are ready to buy, so you can hit your revenue targets predictably and spend your time the way you want. Known as the Lead Boss, Cat works with time-crunched Experts and Entrepreneurs, who want to multiply their 6 figures over and over again to scale past 7 and beyond. To download Cat's three-part training, including her one-hour-a-day lead gen strategy, social media swipe file, and close script, visit https://fullybooked.ceo !

▼▼▼Watch or listen below! ▼▼▼ The first few years of starting a business can be a thrill ride of unforeseen circumstances, surprising challenges, and your full range of emotions. For many new business owners, having a trusted guide to help you navigate these equally exhilarating and terrifying experiences is the difference between success and failure. Today’s guest is one such guide. Steve Hoffman (Captain Hoff) is the Captain & CEO of Founders Space, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators. Founders Space was ranked the #1 incubator for overseas startups by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines. He is also a venture investor, serial entrepreneur, and author of several award-winning books. These include “ Make Elephants Fly ” (published by Hachette), “ Surviving a Startup ” (published by HarperCollins), and “ The Five Forces ” (published by BenBella). Hoffman launched Founders Space with the mission to educate and accelerate entrepreneurs. Founders Space has become...

 ▼▼▼Watch or listen below▼▼▼ If you’ve been paying attention over the past year, there has been an explosion of interest in using online assessments, quizzes, personality tests, and other interactive tools as marketing and sales stimulators. Ryan Levesque’s Quiz Funnel webinars drew a huge crowd of people looking to learn how to create quizzes that would get people past the door of their business and become customers. Interact, a company who offers a platform for quiz design and hosting offers dozens of easy to adapt quiz templates so even the least statistics oriented among us can create a compelling and interesting quiz experience for our social media, websites, email, and anywhere you can copy and paste an html code. I invited my friend, Dr. Joanie Connell of Flexible Work Solutions, and the Reinventing Nerds Podcast to be our resident expert on all things assessment. Her depth of experience as an organizational psychologist and consultant will help us understand a few of the be...

  To access the worksheet Diana will be using for this podshop click https://bit.ly/WrongBookWorksheet In 2008, Diana Needham left the corporate world to focus on her own dream business: helping first-time self-published authors become Amazon bestselling authorities in their field. She’s guided hundreds of clients to their personal victories while doing what she loves most: helping people grow, prosper and make a greater impact.   Along the way, Diana became a certified business coach and earned multiple other coaching certifications. For six years, she served as an Action Coach for Pamela Bruner’s Impact X program to help entrepreneurs rocket their online business. And she’s self-published her own two bestsellers: The Authority Mindset and 17 Legal Ways to Double Your Income.   MOST IMPORTANTLY, Diana has helped nearly 80 authors attain Amazon bestseller status and hundreds more achieve top rankings. AND leverage their book beyond launch to prof...

Video and Audio below ↓↓↓ Marketing and selling can both be intimidating activities to new business owners, but they are the lifeblood of your business. Alison Proffit is a Soulful Sales & Profitability Success Coach, helping small businesses approach their sales and pricing strategies from the heart instead of just the head. She’ll work with you on mindset, clarifying offers, up-leveling prices, and how to confidently sell through the art of connection with the support of customized scripting work and role-playing sales conversations. Selling becomes less stressful and abundantly more fun when working with Proffit Coach! Alison attempted to start her own coaching business 4 times. The key word there was "attempted". Each of these attempts failed. Primarily because of a lack of knowledge of what it meant to be a good salesperson. Having worked in the HR field for 15 years and receiving coaching certification, the business ideas were good ones, and the services that she of...

As we go through changes large and small in life, sometimes we’re surprised at our emotional swings, elevated anxiety, clouded thinking, and higher stress. In this episode, leadership consultant and executive coach Cheryl Benedict shares insights from her many years of guiding individuals and organizations through all kinds of transitions. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Wisdom of Transition, and the founder of MORF Consulting.  Learn more about Cheryl and her book at https://TheWisdomOfTransition.com   Your Own Best Company podcast and community is hosted by Franklin Taggart. If you are a one-person creative business owner or are thinking of becoming one, you are invited to join our Facebook group at https://bit.ly/YourOwnBestCompanyFB   Thanks for listening, subscribing, and reviewing!

4 in 10 adults say that public speaking is their greatest terror. And the Association of American Colleges and Universities listed public speaking as the most in-demand job skill that employers need but can’t find in job candidates. Those of us who are self-employed aren’t exactly off the hook either. Strong speaking skills are a necessity for many of us as we work to represent our businesses and attract new clients to our services. Communication skills are fundamental to our success and those who invest in building theirs are ahead of the game. Meridith Grundei helps good speakers become great speakers. As a speaking coach and trainer she’s worked with every kind of individual and organization; from the woman executive who needs to deliver a high-impact report to her board of directors, to small nonprofit agencies, to teams within the most well-known Fortune 500 companies. Meridith brings her decades of storytelling, stage performance, professional directing, and education to help vis...