A public speaker, a gifted career coach, and a passionate advocate for service-based entrepreneurs, Chrysta Bairre‘s efforts have created connections and opportunities that span throughout Northern Colorado.

Chrysta will be presenting FIVE sessions at Techstars Startup Week Fort Collins:

• Business Beyond Privilege on Monday February 25th, 12:00pm-1:00pm @ Downtown Artery Gallery

• She Leads Social on Tuesday February 26th, 3:00pm-5:00pm @ Cohere Coworking

• How To Fire Clients and Say No In Business on Wednesday February 27th, 9:00am-10:00am @ Innosphere

• Breaking the Silence: Mental Health and Entrepreneurship on Wednesday February 27th, 11:00am-12:00pm @ Innosphere

• Price Your Service Right on Thursday February 28th, 11:00am-12:00pm @ Downtown Artery Performance Venue

Let’s get to know Chrysta!

I’m Chrysta Bairre and I’m excited to be a repeat speaker at Fort Collins Startup Week.

This will be my third year speaking at Fort Collins Startup Week. I hate the whole elevator pitch thing. So, instead of boring you with that, what I’m going to tell you is something that I’ve done in the last week that I’m proud of.

This is a question that I ask of everyone answers at the beginning of every meeting that we have for She Leads, the women’s leadership group that I run here in Fort Collins.

Last night, I spoke to a room of over 100 people in Denver about imposter syndrome, and it was an amazing night. It was at General Assembly, and the event was put on in collaboration with Denver Women in Tech and Ladies Who UX Denver. I was blown away by how many people were in the room and the responses that I’ve gotten, and I’m still getting tagged in people’s Instagram posts today. People are talking about the things that I talked about last night. There’s been several people who have posted stories of their takeaways from the event, and it’s just something that I’m super proud of and felt like that was better than saying a really canned, here’s my elevator pitch so that you know who I am.

Do you get a lot of pushback when you reject people’s elevator pitches?

I don’t actually get a lot of pushback. Most people are caught off-guard, so that counteracts the pushback. People tell me usually that they find it really refreshing, actually.

She Leads has become a major force in Fort Collins.

I created She Leads to be the group that I’ve been looking for, for many years, in my professional career. Wanting to come together in community and collaborate with a variety of women from across different professions in a supportive and introvert-friendly environment, where it wasn’t about … Some traditional networking groups really have the energy of let’s do business with each other, or it’s a very transactional relationship. As an introvert, that’s something that has always been challenging for me.

My very first She Leads event, I thought to myself, “I’m going to be really happy if five people show up to this event.”

The day before the event, there were 35 RSVPs, and more than half of them were people that I did not personally know. The day of the event, we had about 23 people show up, and what it said to me is that there were a lot of people actually wanting this type of environment where it was about connection and building community as opposed to just this more hard-core pitch-focused networking.

Most of the women that are coming to She Leads on a regular basis are really coming for the connections, and it’s not necessarily about creating future business transactions. It’s a space where we get really filled up personally and professionally so that when we’re out there doing the amazing work that we’re doing in the world, we’re able to do it with a little bit more support and grace and ease and confidence.

A lot of your efforts are aimed at elevating female business owners. Is that a major trend that you see in Fort Collins in particular or beyond?

A lot of my efforts are focused on that, and I haven’t really seen it as that much of a trend.

I was involved with the Larimer County Women of the Year, and I was a participant as well as a facilitator. There are a few programs out there that are doing this type of work, but I don’t think it’s really widespread. I don’t know that this work is as accessible to all women as I would really like it to be, and that’s absolutely something that I’m hoping to shift and change with She Leads.

I absolutely encourage anyone who has an idea for a group or a program that supports professional women to take that idea and see it through to fruition because there’s a lot of room in the Fort Collins area for more than one group that is supporting women in this way.

You’ve focused a lot on public speaking. Is that something that you see has helped push the message forward for some of your other efforts as well?

I really want to help others grow personally and professionally and be better versions of themselves. I want to help people work happier and get paid a lot more money, and one of the easiest ways for me to reach people with that message is to do speaking.

What are some of the primary ways that you go about doing that?

A lot of times when people think about making more money or being in a better position career wise, they think about, “Well, I need to find the right job first of all,” so they think it’s their external situation that is going to really impact those two factors.

Oftentimes, in the work that I do with people, it’s less about the external situation and much more about our internal situation. It’s absolutely about how we’re showing up in the world, how we’re showing up at work, how much do you value yourself, and how are you communicating that with others?

Not just communicating it in a job interview or in a sales conversation, but how are you communicating what your value is day-to-day in everyday interactions that you’re having through your work?

When you can shift that, when you know that what you’re providing is worth something, and then you can communicate that more effectively, other people see you as more valuable. It’s a lot easier for them to want to pay you more.

You’re not just talking about crossing the Ts and dotting the Is. You’re talking a lot about situational awareness and attitude and approach when you come to a communication or a meeting?

Absolutely, yeah. It’s how do you say, “No,” when it’s appropriate? Or are you saying, “Yes,” to things that you shouldn’t be saying, “Yes,” to? And what happens when you say “Yes” too much is you’re letting other people down or yourself down because you have way too much on your plate.

If you’re an entrepreneur let’s say, are you firing clients that are just terrible to work with?

I cover that in one of my sessions at Fort Collins Startup Week. It’s a pretty vulnerable thing to think about firing a client, even if that client is making you absolutely miserable, and you’re not making very much money from it.

In terms of a 9:00 to 5:00 career, it seems like these are issues that directly feed into the gender pay gap.

Absolutely, these issues do feed into the gender pay gap. One thing that surprises me is how often I speak in rooms where there’s both men and women and that I hear from men that they experience these things as well as women. The impact on men is a little bit different. It’s shows up differently for them.

Last night when I spoke in Denver at General Assembly, this event was put on by Denver Women in Tech and Ladies Who UX Denver. So, I was expecting a primarily female audience, but in fact, it was about 50/50.

Everyone was there because of the topic. It was imposter syndrome, and every person in that room could identify and felt like they were some version of an imposter professionally. Across genders, it was a similar issue. It just shows up a little bit differently.

What do you think is the best way for a startup to combat imposter syndrom from day one?

The more that you are doing the work that you want to be doing in the world, the better and better you’re going to get at it, and the getting started piece is huge.

Particularly for entrepreneurs, and I put myself in this category years ago, who treat their business as a hobby business. You flirt on the edge of actually having a business, but you’re not really treating your business like a business. The focus and the clarity is not there, and so getting started is a huge piece of that, for sure.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for startups in Fort Collins or Northern Colorado?

A voice that I’ve really been trying to elevate in the Fort Collins community is the voice of the service-based entrepreneur. I’ve observed that there’s a lot more support in our community for tech and science businesses and for retail and brick and mortar type businesses, but there’s a lot less support for service-based businesses.

Interestingly enough, service-based businesses tend to be primarily female- and women-owned. So, when women go into business, it’s usually in a service. Or, they’re doing some kind of maker business, but they’re doing it on a small scale.

A lot of the resources that you’ll find, for example, through Innosphere or through the SBDC are really focused on or, I believe, benefit more those type of brick and mortar businesses or the tech businesses or the science-based businesses rather than the independent service provider. I feel really strongly about providing more resources to service-based businesses, which by extension elevates women entrepreneurs since that space is predominantly women.

When it comes to resources, who’s doing the best job providing for those service-based businesses like you’ve said?

If it was anyone, I would say you’d find it at Fort Collins Startup Week.

I would absolutely love to see more organizations being mindful in the services that they’re providing, that they are supporting a more wide range of entrepreneurs and businesses rather than maybe just the traditional ones.

Speaking of Fort Collins Startup Week, what are you most excited about?

I am most excited this year for the theme, which is diversity and inclusion. I got so excited when I saw that that was going to be the theme for this year because I feel like these are important conversations that we need to be having if we really want to elevate entrepreneurs in Northern Colorado across the board.

When we create a space for diversity and inclusion, we do a much better job of giving those people an opportunity to be heard and inviting others to the table that maybe aren’t speaking up for themselves right now.

If you could tell a startup business owner one thing, what would you tell them?

I would tell them, “Don’t do it alone.” I am a firm believer that none of us really do an effective job totally in a vacuum, and so find those resources and find the support that you can. They are out there, and it might be in places that you wouldn’t immediately think of going to.

I once heard from a female entrepreneur that her experience as a business owner was that she didn’t think that there were many female entrepreneurs in Northern Colorado, and I said, “That’s absolutely not true. I could name off probably 50 of them for you right now.”

If you’re not finding them in the rooms that you’re going to or in the spaces that you’re in, the resources that you need, keep looking. Keep asking and keep being curious, and if it doesn’t exist, go out and create it because if there’s a need for it, people will show up.

Have you seen any cool projects come out as a result of that?

Yeah, absolutely. Define the Line. Define the Line is a comic book form of sexual harassment training for the workplace, and Tina and Nikki have just done an amazing job of putting this together. I just am such a huge advocate for this project that they have. I was one of the early supporters of the project. In fact, I’m a character in the comic book.

Having experienced the training that Tina and Nikki are doing to support Define the Line, it’s just so incredible. Anytime there’s an opening for me to tell someone about Define the Line, I tell them about it.

Define the Line was drawn and illustrated by Moriah Hummer, a local Fort Collins artist, who is behind Flat Track Furies.

So, Chrysta, what’s next for you? What are you most excited about in Fort Collins and Northern Colorado?

I am working on releasing my first book, which will be coming out in May.

What I’m most excited for what’s coming up and what’s happening in Northern Colorado is I really do believe that we’re seeing more and more spaces where there is more diversity and inclusion happening. It’s happening slowly, but it’s happening surely. There’s some cool stuff going on here if you know where to look, and I’m hoping that some of those programs become more well-known and more accessible.

Give us some examples.

Dr. Cori Wong at CSU has released a course on feminist friendship and you can take that course through CSU-Global. She did a presentation at She Leads about it. She also did a TED Talk at TEDxCSU around feminist friendship.

It’s about having the discussion on how we can better support each other as women and not just speak for ourselves in the space of advocating for women but also speak for women who are different than ourselves when we’re advocating for other women.

There’s also the Women’s Foundation of Colorado has a Northern Colorado little branch that often has events that meet and discuss pay equity issues.

They discuss the state of what politically is impacting women in Colorado, and there’s a lot of opportunities there as well to get engaged and be involved in some of these conversations.

Do you find that access and inclusion works better in a community where we actively make that a goal and explicitly state it as opposed to assume or take for granted that, yes, of course, that’s the goal because why wouldn’t we want to have more access, more inclusion, more diversity?

It absolutely matters that it’s spoken out loud and that it’s intentional.

What happens is sometimes we assume that we’re supporting people who have less access and inclusion when maybe we’re not really.

How we know that we’re supporting them is I’m listening. But in order for us to listen, we have to first shut up ourselves, and sometimes, it looks like we really do have to invite those conversations.

We really do have to challenge ourselves to think differently about issues that we may believe we understand how it impacts people who have less access and inclusion. When we create space to have those conversations and to actually listen, oftentimes, I think we can find out, “Oh. I had it wrong. I didn’t understand how this impacts you as well as I did.”

Just hearing from one person isn’t enough because it impacts us all differently. Pay equity issues, for example, we’ve talked about that a couple times. It impacts all women, but it impacts women of color differently. And even among different races, you find that it’s wildly different. Having those conversations and listening and creating an opportunity for people to have those conversations and to listen is really important.

Marj Hahne has a degree in engineering, an MFA, and she’s a copy-editor “by income”. But, most importantly: she’s a poet, and a bad-ass entrepreneur in her own right. Alongside Kathleen Willard, Marj brought together Ray Martinez, Leslee Becker, and Vauhini Vara to discuss creating literary art in Fort Collins. You can check out the panel 4PM Wednesday, February 27th at The Forge Publick House.

Let’s get to know more about Marj!

Hi, I am Marj Hahne, a local poet/writer/writing teacher. I moved to Fort Collins in mid-October from Boulder County. I’ve lived in Colorado on the Front Range since 2006.

My partner, who is co-facilitating our events for Artup Week, Kathleen Willard is also a local poet in Fort Collins.

We’re co-creating an organization called Paragraph to bring hybrid literary arts events to Fort Collins and beyond. We both have a lot of experience and years creating community events around literature and science. Our goal is to find out how many lenses can we put on literature to create conversations that feel hospitable to non-writers. We writers are usually only talking to each other. So, that’s our commitment. We wanna re-engage folks in literature. I personally am heartbroken that our English teachers destroyed poetry for most folks. So, that’s my agenda.

When you say “hybrid literary arts,” do you mean different types of literature?

I mean: how can I have a conversation about the literary arts and science or the literary arts and food, together?

When I lived in Boulder County, I paired beers with poems and spirits with poems. I had poem pairings and it was sort of synesthetic.

How do I talk about a beer in the same way I might talk about a poem? How are these sensuously the same, sensually similar? And, that’s actually one of our events for Artup Week.

We’re having a post-panel mingle where we’re gonna have entrepreneurs who are creatives like artists, we are very similarly minded.

How can I refresh my concept of my business story by thinking about it like a poem, like a painting, and like a beer? So, we’re doing that after a panel featuring writers of diversity who live and work in Fort Collins.

Do you find that in your events, that people have some sort of impediment to the poetry component? In your business, do you experience that same aversion?

Whoever’s showing up at poetry events have already bought in. If they didn’t buy in, if they came with a friend, something about it turned them around.

I used to do a literary series in Boulder called Atomic Circus. We had a water panel and we had a poet (a lawyer from Denver) who wrote about the Colorado Rivers. I had a guy who made business and home water testing devices. I had an underwater photographer and a woman who was a hydrotherapist. So, it wasn’t all writing related, but one of the panelists was a writer.

That’s what I mean when I say “hybrid.” That’s my sneaky way of getting non-writers or people who think they’re not artistic to show up and engage in the arts in a way that is meaningful. I wanna be an ambassador for the arts. People get that theoretically, the arts are important in our culture, and where the money goes doesn’t support that. They already have a pre-conceived notion of what poetry is, so we’re wanting to stealthily seduce them.

Do you find that interdisciplinary approach is vital to your business interests?

It is. Because I have an engineering degree, I relate to a pragmatic way of being in the world. I don’t think it’s separate. I don’t think these are distinct domains. I think it’s all one, big humanity.

What are some of the unique challenges of being a poet in Northern Colorado?

It’s not specific to Northern Colorado. Northern Colorado has a vibrant literary scene. Truly, truly my favorite that I’ve experienced while living in Colorado.

Poetry isn’t a money maker, not even for a publisher, unless it’s a poet laureate type or the big folks who make it, a Billy Collins, a Mya Angelou.

Most of us are making a living by teaching or doing something else, and writing is our, well, we don’t wanna call it our avocation. We feel more strongly about it than that, but it’s not something we put on our tax returns, you know?

It presents a lot of different challenges in terms of time that you can dedicate and how you can proceed in terms of business planning. What are some of the ways that you adapt to that sort of unique challenge?

I’m a copy editor by income, so I have a lot of authors approaching me ’cause they’re wanting to self-publish.

I have them think broadly about who their audience is and what the platform is. If someone has a comedic instinct and they seem to be theatrical and they don’t really wanna sit alone in a room, write a book, and not know who bought the book, I say, “You’re comedic. Why don’t you create a one-man show, and then let people buy your book and take it home ’cause they wanna take a piece of you home, like a postcard?”

That becomes a different way of monetizing ourselves as writers, as crafters of language and presenters of language. That’s what I’m considering, how do I use poetry as a way of talking about something else? And, so I’m developing myself as a public speaker. I’ve done a lay sermon at a Unitarian church. I’m just being sneaky that way and I feel alive when I do it, which is how I know it’s what there is to do for me as a poet.

You have an MFA. You have an engineering degree. You’re a copy editor. It sounds like you’re a multipotentialite. You have a lot of different skillsets to draw on. Is that vital for survival as an artist?

It’s vital for me. Some folks are just completely single focused, they succeed on that merit. That has not been my case.

When I heard the notion of 10,000 hours from Malcolm Gladwell, I said, “I don’t wanna work on poems for that many hours in my life. I wanna do other things.”

I know that about myself. That’s the first thing an artist has to do is tell the truth about who they are, who they wanna be as an artist, and then how do you create that world to serve what you know is true about yourself? It’s doable. Artists are start-ups.

You’ve talked a little bit about the integration of technology with the artistic process. What are some of your favorite ways to integrate technology into your process?

I have to confess that I’m a little bit of a dinosaur with tech, even though I have an engineering degree.

I’ve been writing poems to the elements in the periodic table of elements. So, there’s the science, right? Yes, I do my research on the element, but much more so it’s a doorway into my own life.

There’s another poet named Jena Osman who has done the same thing. Very different, her poems, but she set up a periodic table of elements online and you can click on the element and it links to a window for you to read the poem. So, in that sense, poets are getting really creative about how to present their work.

We’re also seeing the application of art and poetry and music and design in a lot of different fields as well. Can you talk about going the other direction and helping businesses, small businesses, start-ups, other entrepreneurial types understand the creative process through art or through poetry?

Businesses are now hanging art on their walls. They know that to create a climate of humanity, of creativity. Any environment needs creativity no matter what you do.

We’re all being creative in how we interact with people. So, the arts create a more humane, enjoyable work environment, and businesses are seeing that, hanging art on the walls, etc.

I absolutely would love that businesses hire a poet to do a staff meeting where they get the staff writing poems. That we have to shut off our personal self to show up in our office, it just never made sense to me. We are a whole person. We are better at what we do when our whole self shows up to do it. Businesses would do right to let artists come in and do in-services.

I think that you’re absolutely on the right track. I, myself, write weaponized haiku whenever I have to deliver harsh feedback.

Excellent!

It’s along that same track, you’ve touched on a few things that sound a little bit like impostor syndrome. What do you think are some of the best ways to get around that impostor syndrome?

I love that question. I’m gonna answer it by way of my having gotten an MFA at 50. That was a lot of money to go into debt for, and what I got out of it is that there’s something about declaring to yourself who you are and who you’re gonna be.

That is the woman who applied at 47 to grad school. All of the time before that fearing being an impostor, being found out, not a good enough writer, I should be writing every day. This is what writers do, they write every day. All of that changed during my three-year program.

So, at the end of it, did I become a better poet? I think so. I know so. What I became better was clearer about my identity as a writer. Period, the end.

I know who I am. I know who I’m not. I know what I’m willing to do as a writer. I know what I’m not willing to do as a writer. So, my identity’s shifted. And, now I don’t have the noise about, “Oh, I should be writing every day.” I just do what a writer does.

There’s this notion of be, do, have. If you be the writer in your identity, if down to the cells you know, you will do what a writer does. Then you will have what a writer earns, which is a book or poems or maybe a whole career. But, I’m clear about it, that impostor syndrome goes away the minute you declare on the cellular level who you are.

What are you most excited about in terms of Startup Week?

Meeting new people. I’m new up here. I know that my peeps are the start-ups, are the creative folks because they get stuff done. That’s how I say it. They get stuff done.

I love Fort Collins because it seems like the city very much is supportive of the people. It walks its talk, “Yeah, we’re an arts town,” and you sure act like one, Fort Collins.

Who’s absolutely doing the best work in Northern Colorado and Fort Collins?

I love FoCo Café. I went to a fundraiser when I first moved here. I love the Museum of Art. I am really enjoying a community of entrepreneurial women called She Leads, led by Chrysta Bairre, and they actually have some events during Startup Week.

My poetry critique group meets at Wolverine Farm Letter & Publick House, and that is a beautiful space for the literary arts. I’ve had a good time with The Lyric Theater. They had a brewmaster film with a panel of the breweries. The brewery people are wonderful with the music.

As far as our panel, our speakers have done fantastic work. We have CSU English Department professor, Leslee Becker. Ray Martinez, who was a Fort Collins cop for many years in the police department, a three-time mayor, and now a city councilman. And, we have Vauhini Vara who is newish to Fort Collins, and she’s a prominent national journalist, so we scored.

We got three folks, three walks of literary life, and the Forge is putting together a special flight of beer for our start-up people to use to inquire into their start-up story. And, Kathleen and I will be providing artwork and poetry. Not our own, by national poets. Just the creative process even of causing this thing turned out to be a panel that feels richer than our original intention.

What is the creative process like for you?

What’s true for me is that I have to find the first line. A first line has a certain rhythm and musicality and a way of saying, diction. It’ll interest me because it somehow is related to whatever existential grappling is going on. And, it’ll have metaphorical possibility. There’ll be something that shows up in my world that has struck me, upset me, whatever. It could be a national issue, or a local issue, or a personal issue. And, somehow that incident, I can work into being a metaphor for a larger existential grappling, a larger concern. And, I meander my way into it. I can’t do it if I don’t find the first line.

Tell us about your Startup Week events.

Kathleen Willard and my two Artup events are Wednesday, Feb 27th. 4:00 to 5:00 is the panel, and 5:00 to 7:00 is the mingle.

Where can we find out more about you and your work?

My website is www.marjhahne.com

Mike Baron is an Eisner award-winning author right in our own back yard. If you’re a fan of The Punisher and Star Wars, Mike is someone you’re gonna want to get to know. His insights into the business side of writing are both timely and carry the weight of years of doing the work.

Mike’s panel at Techstars Startup Week Fort Collins is: How to Make a Comic Book on Wednesday February 27th, 4:00pm-5:00pm @ Downtown Artery Gallery

Hi, Mike! Tell us about yourself.

I’ve been a comic writer all my life. In 1981, I created Nexus with the artist Steve Rude for which we won every industry award. Nexus is about a cosmic adventure 500 years in the future. A year later, I created Badger which is about a hero with multiple personalities, one of whom is a costumed crime fighter. Badger’s only superpower is his ability to talk to animals. I have also written The Punisher, Flash, Deadman, and Star Wars among many other titles.

You also recently published another comic of your own, Q Ball, right?

Yes. We crowdfunded Q Ball. It’s mostly a Colorado production. I’m working with an amazing artist in Denver, Barry McClain Jr. Even though we kickstarted the first issue, we were picked up immediately by Antarctic which will publish Q Ball later this year. It’s a five issue series.

Who is doing the best working comics in Northern Colorado?

I’ve often worked with Lee Oakes who lives here in Fort Collins, he’s an amazing artist. Zach Howard, from Denver, is also an amazing artist. He’s working on The Cape with Joe Hill from IDW. Roger McKenzie, the great Marvel artist who’s famous for his work on Daredevil, also lives in Denver. Ozzy Longoria is putting out a horror anthology. Ozzy’s a very talented artist. There’s a lot of talent here.

In fact, we have a meetup group the first Saturday of every month at Griffin’s. It’s headed by Ron Fortier. Ron’s a well-known comic book writer who wrote The Green Hornet for Now and has a ton of his own books out. So there’s a lot of talent up here. I’m always amazed but not surprised when I run into more.

What would you say are the biggest challenges in either comic writing or artistry in Colorado?

Everybody has a personal challenge to do their best work. It’s difficult to break into the system. If you want to work for Marvel or DC, there are all sorts of hoops you have to jump through, but I tell people from personal experience that the best way to get a job with a major publisher is to put out your own comic, and bear in mind that you only get one chance to make a first impression. Do something outstanding, they will notice it and give you work.

What are you most looking forward to during Startup Week?

Meeting new people, delivering my speech coherently.

Do you teach often?

I haven’t taught since last summer, but I did offer a course in novel writing and it was very successful, and I have plans to launch a YouTube channel on how to write with my friend Ray Harvey who also is from Fort Collins and Ray’s an accomplished novelist as well.

I have 11 novels out, four of them are in the Bad Road Rising series featuring my biker hero Josh Pratt. He’s a reformed motorcycle hoodlum who went to prison, found God, and came out determined to do good works but the only work he could get was delivering summons for sleazy lawyers. But people keep coming to him with their problems because he straddles that gray area of the law with one foot in legality and one foot outside the law and he knows how to get things done.

Do you find that people are seeking out original fiction and off the beaten path?

Not yet. But it’s just a matter of getting the word out, because I can speak with confidence that my stuff is world-class and I’m on a tiny publisher, Liberty Island Press. There are one million novels published a year. That’s no exaggeration. Of course, most of them are self-published and they’re just crowding up the shelves. I don’t want to speak ill of my fellow writers, but a lot of them just aren’t professional quality, especially the self-published ones. And they’re all out there fighting for space and elbowing for room.

I know there are terrific writers, just great writers out there, that can barely make a living at it. There’s a guy named Ron Faust. There are so many great writers from the ’70s or ’80s that have disappeared. But I have friends who write and they write really well and they’re just struggling for shelf space. Barnes and Noble is the only mass chain left. We used to have B. Dalton and Waldenbooks and Borders. This is all due to changes in technology because most book sales these days are digital. And I can understand that, especially if you’re traveling a lot.

The physical book has been left behind, and a store like Barnes and Noble can’t afford to have books sitting on their shelf that don’t sell. They’re very picky about what they put on their shelves, and it’s all dictated by the best seller list. If you go into a Barnes and Noble, you’ll see that they now heavily feature toys and other objects that aren’t books at all. Toys and puzzles and miniature figurines that now make up a lot of their sales. On the other hand, many independent bookstores are thriving.

That same pattern’s repeating in the comic book industry?

The comic industry is in free-fall. They don’t know what to do. One of the unspoken problems is that video games have created a generation of kids that aren’t all that eager to read comics, and my opinion is that the average $4 or $5 comic really can’t compete with a really good video game in terms of value for your dollar. The video game is simply more engrossing.

This doesn’t have to be the case. But in my opinion, most of the comics being written today aren’t very entertaining. The writers don’t know how tell a story. They have a number of talking points which they shoehorn in and that’s the book. But the whole goal in the type of fiction that I do and that my friends do is to grab the reader by the throat and drag them into the narrative so that they no longer feel they’re experiencing an artifice, but are totally absorbed in the adventure, and a good book, a movie, or a comic can do that. Comics can still do that.

Is there any one artist or author who we should be absolutely paying attention to as a rising star in Fort Collins or Northern Colorado or beyond?

In terms of art, Zane DeGaine is doing some amazing work. One comic that’s never failed to deliver is Straight Bullets by David Lapham. It’s been around for at least 20 years, but those stories are absolutely gripping. They’re very well-written, but grim.

If you could tell the local Northern Colorado business community one thing, what would it be?

Comics are a terrific medium for getting your message across. Lee Oaks and I did a three-issue series for Popeyes Chicken. It’s just a good story – kid-centric and kid-friendly. It doesn’t lay on the “buy Popeyes Chicken” too heavily. There’s also SimplyHR here in town that has put out their own comic on sexual harassment called Define The Line.

The United States military has always used comic to explain things, and Will Eisner, the famous creator of the Spirit, did a number of comics for the United States Army which covers things like how to clean your weapon, how to set up a bivouac, and they still use comics.

I have boxes of educational comics in my basement from insurance companies and finance companies explaining what they do in an entertaining manner. It’s not easy to make insurance and finance entertaining, but this is one way to do it. People read comics and understand comics. You see a story in pictures, you just want to pick it up and follow it. There’s such a wide range of material.

Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred has been turned into a graphic novel and it’s very well done. Also look at the huge body of autobiographical works that are appearing as graphic novels now. These are outside the traditional comic market. They’re not about super heroes. They’re about private lives. I have one by Bill Griffith called Invisible Ink which is about his mother’s affair with a famous cartoonist, and it’s all very personal, but it’s absolutely gripping because it’s real. He recreates who they were and what they said. He’s a very good artist too. Bill Griffith is the creator of Zippy the Pinhead, which was a syndicated strip in the Bay Area for many years. But you look at the work of R. Crumb or Spain Rodriguez, it’s autobiographical and it’s very powerful.

Mike, where can we find out more about you and your work?

Follow me on Twitter @bloodyredbaron and my website is BloodyRedBaron.net. All my books are on Amazon including thousands of graphics novels on which I’ve worked, including Star Wars, Deadman, Batman, and The Punisher.

Nikki Lachar and Tina Todd, co-founders of simplyHR, are shaking up the world of sexual harassment training. Crowdfunding Define The Line, their comic book-based team training tool, to the tune of $10,000, the comic book is taking root nationwide.

Nikki’s panels are:

• Define the Line: How to create civility in the workplace on Monday February 25th, 11:00am-12:00pm @ Downtown Artery Performance Venue
• Supporting women in the workplace on Tuesday February 26th, 2:00pm-3:00pm @ Downtown Artery Performance Venue, and
• Crazy Sh%# employees do and what you can do about it 2.0 on Wednesday February 27th, 12:00pm-1:00pm @ Downtown Artery Performance Venue

Let’s get to know Nikki!

Nikki, introduce yourself!

Hi, I’m Nikki Lachar, I’m the co-founder of simplyHR and Define the Line. simplyHR is an HR consulting firm that’s been in operations for the last three years. Our latest project is Define the Line and we’re revolutionizing sexual harassment training for our workplaces.

You just recently published a comic book.

Define the Line is our first comic book. It is a training tool for organizations to use and we’re kind of taking a different approach to sexual harassment training with the comic book format. We think it’s worth taking a look at how we train and educate employees on workplace harassment and how to respond to situations when people are inappropriate.

Have you heard back from businesses that they found that this is applicable for them?

Yes. We finished the project at the end of December, and within now the first month of 2019, we have seen exponential growth. We’re seeing companies nationwide reaching out to us, so whatever we’re doing is working because it is growing. We are taking a look at how we’re going to kind of tackle that growth as it comes on.

You Kickstarted the whole comic book?

Yes, we did a Kickstarter campaign, and we successfully raised over $10,000 for the project, which was phenomenal because there was no other way that we as a small business could have done the project.

Having that community behind the project supporting us and saying this was a good idea really gave us the fuel to go after it. Now we’re seeing growth after the Kickstarter campaign wrapped up and the response from sending out the comic books to our backers.

It’s available for purchase as well, right?

Right. We have an online store, so you can go right onto DefineTheLineComic.com and purchase it there. We also have services like on-site training for our clients as well.

What is the biggest challenge for small businesses looking at HR issues today?

Employees that are unpredictable. Navigating complex situations with employees when they come up, understanding what kind of laws or regulations can impact our decision as business owners, and understanding risk levels when we’re making those decisions.

When it comes to Techstars Startup Week Fort Collins, what are you most excited about?

So many things. We’re kind of dipping our pinky toe into what VC funding and angel investors could look like, especially for Define the Line. We’re really excited that there is a track specifically for funding. We’re going to be at every single one of those sessions so we can get as much good advice as we can from those in our community.

What would you say to a small business owner or a startup founder who says, “I don’t need to focus on HR right now?”

There are a lot of things that you’re risking if you go that direction. Setting up a business the right way the first time is much easier than after growth, trying to backdate, or back look at things that happened in the past and document what we did before.

A small business owner can really take a look at how they hire their first employee, and how to do that correctly from a compliance standpoint. Also, how are they going to create a culture for their team moving forward? HR is really important for those small business owners even when the business is really small.

What would you say to an evil corporation that wanted to set up a really horrible company culture?

Maybe they shouldn’t have a business.

Just kidding. But everybody’s culture is different. So, something that I personally think sounds evil might not be evil for other people if they’re fine with how it’s set up. It would just really depend on what this mean, evil corporation is trying to do.

Have you noticed that different HR issues come up across different kinds of startups, or are they pretty universal?

We see a lot of common themes and trends. We’re in the space of compliance, so the rules and regulations that impact one industry, impact all industries for us. There are industries where we’re seeing some difficulty as far as retaining a female workforce, but for the most part it’s very similar. You’d be surprised.

What is the single craziest HR issue that you’ve encountered so far?

There was an employee who asked for some time off because her pet had passed away. When I spoke to the employer, they let the employee have some time, but then they never returned. A year later, the employee informed the company that they were ready to come back to work. Essentially they needed a year off after the loss of the pet, which seemed a little crazy. I mean, I love my dog, but I could probably go back to work before a year is up.

You hear stories about emotional support animals, how do you handle some of the crazy employee requests that are reasonable from a certain view, but might be totally unreasonable from a startup?

Oh my gosh, we get so many things, like employees that want unlimited time off or PTO. And we have employees that are demanding that their wages be increased by astronomical amounts. It’s really about being consistent in those practices. We might say yes to an employee who is a great worker and they’re asking for their emotional support pet, but we’re not really thinking long-term.

If we said yes, and now five years later we’ve grown to a team of a hundred employees, do we let everybody bring their pet in? Is that the culture that we want to have? Is that how we want to structure our business moving forward? You can change things as time progresses, but making one decision early on, you could accidentally offer quite a lot of benefits that you might regret if things get out of hand.

Tell us about your panel at Startup Week.

We have a phenomenal panel of experts talking about how we keep women in the workforce. We’re focusing on unconscious bias. We’re looking at empowering individuals, women specifically, and also looking at parental leave, and how that works to support women. When they do leave to have a child, or they’re looking for that next step or that promotion, how do we make sure we’re retaining that workforce, and not seeing a big dip where they kind of fall off the earth before they come back a few years later? Also, how do we support that transition as well.

Where we can find out more about you and your business?

SimplyHRPartners.com and DefineTheLineComic.com, and we’re on social media at Define the Line Comic. You can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

To a newbie business just getting started out, what would be your best advice?

Seek out experts or people that have gone through what you are about to put yourself through. Leaning on individuals who have successful businesses, who are even just a year ahead of you as far as starting a similar business, can give you such great insight and inspiration and support as you’re starting a new business.

You’re going to end up doing things that you didn’t realize you would need to know how to do and you’re gonna have lots of questions. The sooner you can start making those connections and meeting with people, the better.

Franklin Taggart is a creative coach, podcaster, advisor for the Loveland Business Development Center, and he’s one heck of a musician.

He’ll be presenting 3 panels at Techstars Startup Week Fort Collins:

• Podcasting for Marketing, Sales and Customer Service on Tuesday, February 26th, 2:00pm-2:45pm @ The Innosphere,
• 5 Online Income Opportunities for Creative Businesses on Wednesday February 27th, 4:00pm-5:00pm @ CCC Gallery, and 
• Booking Yourself as a Podcast Guest on Friday March 1st, 12:00pm-1:00pm @ The Articulate

Here’s what he had to say for the StartUp FoCo Podcast:

Tell us about yourself, Franklin!

My name is Franklin Taggart and I am a coach and consultant. I work primarily with the creative folks in the world helping them get their business world together. I do a lot of work with marketing, content marketing, podcasting, blogging, some affiliate marketing, and business setup as well, including business planning.

And you’re also a musician?

That’s been my longest love affair. This is my 40th year as a professional musician.

So, you know all about getting paid and the business of music?

I get paid most of the time.

What genre do you play?

What I would categorize my music as is mostly folk and country, with a bit of Americana, Blues, Bluegrass Jazz, and the occasional classic rock song.

What are you seeing as the biggest challenges in the Northern Colorado creative community?

Northern Colorado has a lot of support for creative industries, but the biggest challenge that we face right now is the increase in the cost of housing, and the availability of low-cost housing, and low-cost studio and performance space. That seems to be the challenge of the day for most of the folks that I work with. I would include myself in that, too. We were lucky to have a decent landlord who let us have the same rate for a very long time. We’re grateful for that. As I look at how housing prices are changing around here, I don’t know how much longer that artists are going to be able to manage to pay the rent. That’s the biggest thing that I see.

There’s a lot of collaboration going on. I know of a lot of artists’ collectives that have popped up around, there is an artist collective in Loveland and there’s an artists’ community called the Hotdish Artist Community in Fort Collins and they’re doing some really cool grassroots things. For my money, the grassroots is really where the most important work happens in the creative scene.

When the grassroots is subverted or bypassed, the scene loses something. One of the things that I’m concerned about for music is the grassroots has seen a real shakeup in the last few years. Some gigs that were here even three years ago are gone now and a lot of that has to do with a lot of the grassroots organization that we had in the music community. I don’t see it at the same level as we once did.

If you could tell a Northern Colorado creative one thing, what would it be?

It’s really an important time for you to pay attention to your marketing. Creatives in the past have had a reliable infrastructure. In the publishing world for authors, there was a pecking order and there was a process that you went through to get published and once you were published the marketing and all of that thing fell onto the publisher’s lap.

rtists always had to have some level of marketing, but now more than ever, marketing has a central role for every creative. I’m finding more and more often my services in the marketing area are more in demand all the time.

You started a podcast around that. What was that experience like?

I’ve done podcasting on and off since 2008. Podcasting is still a growing market. YouTube has said their number of new subscribers and new users has plateaued, but in podcasting the number of new subscribers and new users is still on a very steep incline. Podcasting right now is a really fine way for people to get themselves visible in the market that they want to reach.

More expensive housing creates a commuter community where you live outside the city where you work and play. As you’re commuting, podcasts are a great way to catch up on the local art scene.

There’s so much opportunity. For my money, podcasting is the more intimate of all the different media. People have a tendency to listen to podcasts when they’re doing other things during the day, but that is when their attention is actually available. They’re not distracted. I listen to podcasts when I walk the dog. My mind is totally available at that point. I can digest the material that I’m hearing. That’s my favorite time to listen. Podcasting is a good way to get your message deep into the psyche of whoever’s listening.

What are you most excited for about Techstars Startup Week Fort Collins and ARTup week in particular?

It is an amazing opportunity for small businesses of any kind to get resources, tools, and connections. The networking opportunities alone are worth being there. What I love most is that we never see this much talent in the same place at the same time ever outside of this week. There’s just no other event like it. The value of it can’t even begin to be expressed in words. It just has to be experienced – people just need to show up.

Where can we find out more about you and your work, Franklin?

My website is FranklinTaggart.com. I have a podcast called the Reset Podcast. I also do a weekly inspiring newsletter called Inbox Encouragement.