Franklin Taggart – StartUp FoCo Podcast
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 N
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
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.
[…] love Franklin Taggart. He’s so lovely and he’s a great creative resource I think for not only the community […]