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 my voice, there is an internal impulse to stop talking and leave the conversation. Yes, even on this recording, that happened.

Just like anything else, talking about what we offer takes practice. And like every level of athlete, even the pros still get jitters sometimes, but they know how to do the job despite the jitters. If you're struggling with this, please take me up on the free coaching call I offer at https://bit/ly/BestNextStepCall

#impostor #selfsabotage #insecurity 

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?

#spiritualawakening #spiritualjourney #consciousness 

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 and a targeted coaching session. Find out about that here: https://franklin-taggart-coaching.teachable.com/p/top-floor-elevator-pitch-bundle

The second is a free one-hour coaching session called Your Best Next Step. It's easy to schedule here: https://bit/ly/BestNextStepCall

Let's get your message clear and out into the world where it can make the difference you want it to.

#communication #messaging #marketing 

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 production and tried to figure out how I could realize my musical dreams. It was no wonder the career test and guidance counselor couldn't tell me what to do. My path has been largely unpredictable, taking me from one opportunity to another, creating a unique skill set and pool of experience to draw from. The only map I can have is the one I draw after the fact.

I'm here to help people in similar circumstances. I assure you you're still sane when everyone else calls you crazy. I'll challenge the belief that an unconventional career path is less valid than a traditional one in which the steps are laid out and clear from beginning to end.  And I'll advocate for your hunches and encourage you to follow them. At a minimum, they will lead you to significant learning. 

If you'd like me to be a part of your support network as you clear the brush from in front of you, set up a call at https://bit.ly/BestNextStepCall.

#creativecareer #artcareer #entrepreneur 

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 with the negative, but I noticed the trend was mostly to the negative, and not being completely well, 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 on Airtable automation.

https://www.youtube.com/user/youngyessington

Cat Stancik - The Lead Boss will be on soon talking about buying styles.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0hgzJGOjBmMgRbL_yODnPA

Danielle Gardner - The brilliant author of Quiet Marketing who is doing groundbreaking work based on her growing understanding of Human Design.

https://www.youtube.com/c/DanielleGardnerTV

#marketing #highlysensitivepeople #funnelmarketing

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 #creativebusiness #audience 

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 content gives people a way to get to know me before we ever meet. And social media is one channel among many where that happens.

I also don't believe you need to follow every trend that comes along unless you want to. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Be very clear about your goals and evaluate your marketing activities by whether your goals are being met and exceeded. If social media works for you, keep doing it.

#socialmedia #marketing #strategy

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 either never had or have 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 coaching session called Best Next Step. Schedule here: https://bit.ly/BestNextStepCall

#vision #values #stuck 

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 exercises in the video to accept that you are entering a new layer of risk and that your feelings reflect what you perceive to be at stake. Whatever you're about to do is very important to you. The nerves are OK.

And if you want to talk through this, I offer a free one-hour call to first-time contacts that you can easily schedule at https://bit.ly/BestNextStepCall

#impostor #insecurity #anxiety 

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 attention and finding ways to reach them where they are, then invite them to our world.

There's no pat answer, but the strategy we use to find and reach people may need to change as often as the algorithms do, and that's pretty much every day. I encourage all of us, including myself, to keep our processes and practices simple and direct and try to minimize friction for our friends and followers as much as possible.

Want to explore creative options for finding, reaching, and building new client relationships? Start by scheduling a free, one-hour session at https://bit.ly/BestNextStepCall

#visibility #socialmediamarketing #solopreneur