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.