EXPERIENCE 109 | Franklin Taggart - Musician, Podcaster, and Coach for Creatives

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My guest this week was Franklin Taggart, a fellow consultant with the LaMer County Small Business Development Center, and founder of Franklin Taggart Coaching. Franklin was the first podcaster to feature me on his. My story of going from Banker to food trucker to Loco Think Tank Guy was a great fit for his Reset podcast, and I've been blessed by dashes of his wisdom throughout our time together at Larmer. SPDC Franklin was a career musician back east for many years until health challenges made that journey difficult and then impossible. After and during a season of challenge, his skills as a coach and encourager, sprouted and blossomed. And today, Franklin serves a very special niche creative solopreneurs looking to build sustainable enterprises that fit their talents and their lifestyles. This is a very inspiring and philosophical episode with someone I'd call a pragmatic Dreamer, and he is got a smooth, velvety voice. So please enjoy my conversation with Franklin Tiger.

curt:
1:33

Welcome back to Local Experience Podcast. My guest today is Franklin Taggart, and, uh, Franklin and I know each other from a few different routes. Most notably the Small Business Development Center. Yeah. Um, and also Franklin was. I guess one of my early inspirations into podcasting, having me on his show. Uh, I was, it was one of the first, at least one or two podcasts I was on, so yeah. Thanks for that.

frank:
1:56

That's been a few years now, hasn't it? It has,

curt:
1:58

yeah. Quite a few. And why don't you go ahead and tell people what the Franklin is. Did you call you something Franklin? The Franklin

frank:
2:04

What? The Franklin is all about.

curt:
2:07

You can start now if you want.

frank:
2:09

We're recording this late onto Friday afternoon. The Franklin works just fine. Perfect. Um, what I am all about, well, um, last year I retired from a 43 year career in music performance. Oh. And, um, as a, as most musicians do, I had a long series of day jobs from the time I was pretty much old enough to work until now. Yeah. And so a lot of those day jobs have been things like I was a church music salesman. Okay. I was, uh, I worked in recording studios, I did jingles. I, you know, I did all kinds of stuff like

curt:
2:49

that. Whatever you could do to, to make a buck, but still adjacent to the music business really sounds like. Exactly.

frank:
2:56

Yeah. And for about eight years in there, I was doing social services. Like I worked in a crisis center and I worked in a group home and I worked in, um, uh, a domestic violence shelter and all of this stuff. And so I've, my career path is just an absolute nightmare. Its a non-traditional, for sure, but my music career was interrupted, um, in 2000, 2007. Um, I started to get really sick. Mm-hmm. and I had had tendonitis for a couple of years before that. Mm-hmm. and I could not play the guitar without pain. And so I just had to put it aside. I had to, you know, music was not an option. Yeah. And, um, I had been doing it full-time at that point for, I don't know, about eight years. Okay. In the midst of all of that. Um, I had a small son, two years old, and my wife was just starting a business of her own. She had started her business right after our son was born and, uh, we're both self-employed people. Right, right. So I felt the pressure I, without

curt:
4:09

your, what's been your income source?

frank:
4:11

Absolutely. Yeah. Man, it

curt:
4:13

was gone. Yeah. It was just, and her baby needs her at the maximum at that age. Yes. What business had she started?

frank:
4:20

Well, my wife is just a brilliant chef and she's also a great teacher, and so she started teaching a couple of, uh, different diets and, uh, traditional cooking Okay. Techniques. Yeah. And she's still doing that today. It's, you know, almost like a chef and

curt:
4:35

coach together almost. Yeah. Oh

frank:
4:37

yeah. She's like, she's totally. Amazing. Renaissance woman. Yeah. Anybody wants to find out about her? It's Monica Carrado. It's simply being, well, Monica. Monica. Monica is just, I'm sure you'll listen to this one. She's a brilliant, brilliant person, but she was in the midst of getting her own business off the ground. We had this two year old son, and here I was, my organs were shutting down. Oh my gosh. And I was hospitalized over and over and over again over the next few years. Wow. And they couldn't figure out what was going on. Well, I went to a clinic at one point and the doctor said, you know, nobody's ever checked your thyroid. Hmm. And this is like two years into the ordeal. Right. And I'm already a mess. And, and sure enough, it came back that my thyroid was really, really out of balance. Yeah. Was like totally hyper. Hyper. And I had a thing called Graves disease. And when they treated that, all of a sudden the symptoms started to subside. And very gradually over the next few years, the symptoms went away. Enough that I could continue to play music. Yeah. But during that interim time, I mean, your son still wanted to eat the whole time. Oh yeah. That guy. Yeah. Yeah. He was a hungry fellow. still is for that matter. Um, but during that time I had to find ways to make money. Yeah. And, um, it was, it was kind of like the early days of digital, um, digital products. Um, I did some eBooks. I did some online courses. There's still some videos that I'm horribly embarrassed about from my earliest online courses on teaching guitar and doing home recording. Um, I blogged, I had 17 blogs Whoa. On different topics and I

curt:
6:27

That were all, you as a blogger writing about different

frank:
6:29

topics. Yeah. Cuz writing was about the only thing that I could do. Wow. And um, I started my first podcast during that time as well. That was around 2009, 2010. That was OG

curt:
6:43

time. Like that's before Joe Rogan, right?

frank:
6:46

Well, he was, I think he might have been starting about at the same time, but it was, it was a hard thing to do back then because it's like, well,

curt:
6:53

still nobody knows how to make money on it. Really. Well, there are a few people. There are. There are, but I just came back from the pod fest. Oh yeah, man. Yeah. And you know, when they do the, you know, a, a professional at podcasting, you know, that's a pretty, very small ratio. Yeah. You know, maybe 5% or probably something less than that are actually full-time making their money from their podcast.

frank:
7:17

I would, yeah. I would be amazed if at 5%

curt:
7:19

I be more like one or two. Yeah. Well it's not, but it doesn't mean you don't make a little money. You know, if you can make Yeah. A a thousand dollars a month or you know, a couple grand a month as a podcaster and you love it, like it's still totally worth it. But anyway, not to deviate from the story. I wanna hear more. Well,

frank:
7:34

the thing that was really interesting is with those were the kinds of opportunities that I could do without strain and without. Any kind of physical taxing. Well, and

curt:
7:44

your voice is amazing.

frank:
7:45

Well, back then it was a little weak, but I, I still had a lot of opinions and I liked to share them. Well, who doesn't? So podcasting was a great thing, right? So I found that digital world and I just took to it, you know, I loved it and found ways to make money. How? However I could, yeah. I started a cafe press, uh, print on demand shop. Okay. Where I could make t-shirts and tote bags and all kinds of stuff like that. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, So anything, anything that I found I would dry and in the midst of all of, Um, some of the people that I knew in my life, uh, were, I, we lived in the Washington DC area at the time. Oh, okay. And a lot of the folks that I had had for guitar lessons, and a lot of the people in our circles were people who worked in like, bureaucracy over Sure. They were people who worked in associations or organizations or unions. And they, a lot of'em were just really burned out. And they, they would start asking me, like, if I wanted to have a music career, what would that look like? Hmm. And I would just help'em, you know, I would say, well, you know, these are the things that you need to focus on. You need to make sure that there's an audience for what you do, et cetera, et cetera. And by and large, what that turned into, I didn't call it this for a few years, but it turned into a coaching practice. Yeah. Yeah. And I found that, um, that, that was a very rewarding path for me. And, um, and started to, started to take that more seriously. Uh, that became

curt:
9:33

like the first real way You made money, well, consistently, maybe as this, cause you dabbled on a little bit of this, a little bit of that along the way. Or maybe you didn't, probably, you didn't charge enough if you're like most coaches early in your path for

frank:
9:46

about two years. In between the time that I was, uh, doing like all the odd jobs and social services and all that stuff, for about two years I was doing some corporate consulting with a partner. Oh. And he had asked me to just come in and be a process. Hmm. Um, because he thought, you know, I would be able to get him, give him back for that. You know, I would give him good feedback about what I saw happening in the group dynamic and, and I would be able to help him to make decisions about what they needed next, et cetera. And I found that I really liked that too, but I didn't like the business of it. Hmm. I didn't like the business of corporate consulting, that being out on site a lot and Oh yeah. And it was a lot of pressure in terms of trying to find the work. Mm-hmm. it was not necessarily an easy. But during that time, I'd had, uh, one of the people that we kind of used as a mentor, um, had said, you know, you've got a natural kind of thing for coaching. And I just kind of poo-pooed it. I just said, you know, coaching isn't, this isn't what I'm good at, you know, no musician. Yeah. I'm a guitar player. Right. Um, cuz all the chicks love the guitar players, guitar goggles, you know, not, I'm, I'm sorry to use the word chicks. That's really a, a horrible term to use these days and I apologize to anyone who might be offended by that. Yeah. In any case, um, I had, I had remembered that, but

curt:
11:14

that's what. they were when we were that age. And so, oh yeah. Like, I, I don't criticize you necessarily for using that term. No. And you don't, you don't have to apologize for apologizing.

frank:
11:25

for, for one of the things that I'll tell you is that for anyone who's listening, I'm 61 years old and I'm really, you know, I am a child of my time. in any case, well, all

curt:
11:34

of us are all of us are in this context. I think chicks was used as a, as a compliment. Like the beautiful ladies that I wish I could date or whatever. Uh, yeah. Hence forth. Back to the guitar goggles,

frank:
11:47

it was a, it was definitely a rock and roll term. um, What was really funny though, was that I had associated coaching with executive coaching. Sure. And then the, the other, the other end of the continuum was, uh, Anthony Robbins, Tony Robbins, and, and I had actually taken some of his classes. Hmm. Um, I had seen the late night infomercial. Yeah. Signed up for Unlimited Power, read the book and went through the, it was a cassette series at that point. Right. You know, like 15 cassettes and, and was it, did you like that? Was it good? I thought it was great. Yeah. And I learned a lot from it. Yeah. The NLP parts of it were actually pretty useful at that time. Yeah. But those, those were my frames of reference for coaching, and I didn't see what I was doing with people who were looking for, you know, how to start a creative career. I didn't see that as coaching for a very long time until interesting. One of the people that I was working with said, I want to pay you for this. and I said, why do you want to pay me for this? I'm just like, just being a friend, helping. Yeah. And she said, well, because you're coaching me and coaching is a profession and you should be paid for it. And that was really one of those times when I kind of shook my head and said, oh, I don't wanna put that on a business card quite yet. But the, the one moment that I can look back on and say, okay, this is, this is really something to pay attention to. I was in the hospital and I had just had major surgery that morning. Um, I had had a collapsed lung and they had to, you know, repair that. Wow. And so I had As a continuation of your illness? Uh, yeah. I was still in the midst of the illness. Right. When all of this coaching stuff was starting to happen. and I was in the hospital and the guy who was the chaplain was a friend of mine, and he was also a musician. And the thing that I remember very vividly about that night was, I mean, I had a morphine button, right? how bad can it be

curt:
13:53

but, well, it's not, yeah, It's not always a good sign to have a morphine button, you know?

frank:
13:59

Well, at the time I needed it. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's

curt:
14:02

what I'm saying. That's generally hopefully the case.

frank:
14:05

But he stopped by and it was, I don't know, it was probably around midnight and I was awake and he just stopped in and he said, how you doing? I just wanted to check on you. You know, he was doing his hospital chaplain job, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, the conversation turned around and we started talking about his music career and his desire to start transitioning. more into that full-time and as a part of his job and ultimately as a full-time profession. Yeah. Our, our conversation went on for about two and a half hours. at the end of it, I was wired for sound. That's awesome. Wired. So here I was just in this narcotic haze, but at the same time I was crystal clear in my mind and I was wired, and you could see his

curt:
14:49

challenges and opportunities more clearly than he ever had.

frank:
14:53

And we could talk about it like effortlessly. Yeah. And I remember after that conversation was over that I was so energized by it. that I honestly didn't get much more sleep that night, even with the drugs, you know? And that was, that was really the moment when I realized that there was something besides music that I could be good at. Hmm. And I ultimately look back on that, it's kind of the breaking point when I started to recognize that there is a difference that we need to acknowledge between what's a gift and what's a talent. And I had a really strong musical talent, but the gift that came through was something else altogether.

curt:
15:35

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what I just heard there was you describing, to some extent, a moment when you finally felt useful again. Yeah. Um, because I have to think that the amount. body blows your ego took during this season of illness and struggle to Yeah. Sh you know, ha earn half the income for the household or whatever. Right. Like what? Yeah. You know, whatever your relationship, it's a challenge when you're like not feeling vibrant.

frank:
16:04

All the above. Yeah. We were lucky to have family and friends that, that got us through all of the, all of the physical needs that we had. Um, but I think the biggest, the biggest blow was to my identity. Yeah. Because I had really, I wanted to be a musician since the Partridge family was on in 1969 Right. And, uh, and when that was gone Yeah. I really didn't know who I was anymore. Yeah,

curt:
16:32

that's, that's a really remarkable moment to be able to talk about. Yeah. And so like, Where does it go from there? Or should we, should we go there yet? Like, so that's, is that how you would define yourself in a way as, as you're a coach? Yeah. Uh, and, but a a, a broad expanse music is part of it. Right. But it's also become kind of digital space and

frank:
16:57

it's, it's this patchwork quilt that I could have never dreamed Yeah. For myself. And, um, I think more than anything else, I'm an opportunist and I look for the opportunity wherever it shows up and, um, I learn and I respond and I do what I can to be helpful to the folks who are there. Yeah. Um, and that has turned into a really, that's turned into a really rewarding place for me to be. Yeah.

curt:
17:25

Have you, um, would you describe yourself as a systems thinker? Is that kind of a

frank:
17:31

strength of yours? Systems is interesting. I. I'm definitely strategic. Yeah. And when I took the strengths finder, strategic was like my number one for sure. And, um, systems are up there, but more than anything else, I kind of see,

curt:
17:49

I think of systems and strategic as almost the same. They're, they're

frank:
17:52

close to each other for sure. Right. Um, the thing that I think is really interesting is that in conversations with people, I can see possibilities in my imagination and I can describe those possibilities to them in a way that they can understand and it triggers their desires and it gives us, um, it gives us a context to work in. Yeah. And

curt:
18:14

even a shared buy-in as to what we might have to do to get there.

frank:
18:18

Yeah. So that's kind of the way that I think it's like the, my imagination is very fertile. Possibilities show up there and I'm able to somehow articulate them in a way that people get it.

curt:
18:33

Fair enough. And so when did you make a transition to Northern Colorado? Can we, should we, is there a lot of milestones between where we just left and there, or

frank:
18:44

is it getting close? Not a lot. Really. It was, um, I, that hospitalization story happened in 2010. Okay. And my wife wanted to do, um, she wanted to do a conference and she said, let's try, let's try Colorado and just see how it goes. Um, so she did a cooking. Oh, so she was hosting

curt:
19:06

a conference or whatever. She hosted a, so she clearly was, had built her machine into something. Oh yeah, man,

frank:
19:12

she, I mean, she was already well connected when she started her business. Yeah. And there was a worldwide demand for what she does. Yeah. Cool. And so she's got people all over the world. Yeah. It's just crazy. Cool. Um, but she wanted to do a conference. And so my mom lives in Cheyenne. My dad lived in Denver at the time, and we came out here just kind of sight unseen. Yeah. This was in June of 2011. Okay. And I had gotten well enough that, you know, I, I was still in recovery, but I had gotten well enough that I could actually start playing again. And so we loaded up the van and drove across the country from DC to, uh, Cheyenne and stopped along the way. And I did house concerts with friends of mine, along the way. And then she did her conference. We got out here and, Um, one of the things that we were really struggling with at that time was we wanted our son to go to a Waldorf school. Hmm. And the Waldorf schools in Washington DC are wonderful schools, but man, they're expensive. Yeah. It's like going to like a Ivy League

curt:
20:21

university. Yeah. Like got 30,000 plus like free year. It's crazy.

frank:
20:24

Grand year old for kindergarten, of course. Right, right. And so we were just panicking because we wanted him to have that education. The public schools in Maryland were good, but um, we could have done better. Yeah. So we came out here and one of the things that happened was Monica was really well connected, um, in a group called the Western, a Price Foundation. And through that foundation she heard that there was a Waldorf school that was getting ready to open in Fort Collins as a charter school, public school. Yep. And that turned her head. and I already kind of knew that I needed to be closer to home after going through that illness and being so far away from Mm. My roots. Yeah. Yeah. Was tr was it was challenging, man. Yeah. But we, we came out here in June and she did her conference, found out about the school, and we went back to DC and by September, said, you said goodbye to everybody. No crap. And we, we actually moved September 26th. Wow. Yeah.

curt:
21:32

That's amazing. What a cool story.

frank:
21:33

So, and we've been here now 11 years and, um, I don't, I don't know how much longer we may stay. It's like our son has done his whole education here. It's been a great experience for him. Yeah. Yeah. And now he's looking at college, he's looking at a gap year, all that kind of stuff. And where would you move

curt:
21:51

to? I have no idea. Well, that's a fun blank slate

frank:
21:55

kind of place to be too. Yeah. So that's one of the things where I actually like the idea of, I do like the idea of the digital nomad. Yeah. Um, and I, I wouldn't be opposed to spending at least a handful of months doing that to see how it fits.

curt:
22:11

That's what I, uh, yeah. My kind of dream with local think tank and, and the podcast is that like, local think tank should be everywhere. Yeah. And the local experience podcast could be, we could have a class, a motor coach, like podcast studio. Oh, beautiful man. And just where we sell new franchises or whatever, like, I can go down there and blast a bunch of interviews out and hang out for a few weeks Yeah. And then come back home. I love that

frank:
22:37

vision. Yeah. That's

curt:
22:38

awesome. So we'll see. You know, but I, I've got an astrovan right now that you saw in the parking lot is Yeah. Nobody wants to have a podcast in my astrovan

frank:
22:46

with me. Yeah, you probably have to set up an awning or something. Right.

curt:
22:51

The generator in the back. So, um, before we go on to your future too much, and I want to hear more about your journey here, like how your reception was when you got to Northern Colorado and stuff, but let's jump in the time machine and go all the way back. Cause that's all the way back where, like, all the way back to Cheyenne or Denver or where did, where did Young Franklin learn to tie

frank:
23:13

his shoes? Oh man. Um, well I was born in Wyoming and, and we moved around quite a, quite a lot. Um, my dad was just, he was never a rambling man. Well, yeah, he never could quite settle

curt:
23:26

stone. I

frank:
23:27

guess that's the word. I was, yeah. A rolling stone maybe, but I mean, and

curt:
23:30

what kind of industry

frank:
23:31

or work or? He was in education. Oh really? Yeah. Um, and he was a very, very smart man. Got ended up getting his PhD. He got bored quickly. Yes. And he also, he he got disappointed with people. Yeah. Well, people will dis very quickly. Yeah. They, he always was like three steps ahead, everybody else. Yeah. And he didn't have the patience to bring people up along with him. Yeah. Right. So we moved a lot. So I was born in Rawlands, Wyoming. We moved to Lander. No, we moved to Evanston when I was a year old. Okay. Yeah. We moved to Lander when I was two years old. We moved to Provo, Utah to get his master's degree when I was. Three or four. Yeah. And then we moved back to Abston from, that was one of the places that we lived the longest. Um, then we moved to Laramie to get his PhD and then we moved to Greeley for his first job. And then we moved up into the oil patch in Wyoming. So we moved a lot.

curt:
24:29

Interesting, interesting. And really all in pursuit kind of, of your dad's kind of, yeah. Career. And not to say Folleys at all, but it's an unusual thing for such a education minded person to hang around Wyoming the whole time.

frank:
24:43

Well, that was his home stay, you know, I guess that's what you know. And he was well known in the state. Oh. He had been a star athlete in high school. Okay. Yeah. So he had a lot of connections. He'd gone to the University of Wyoming, but, um,

curt:
24:56

how cool, what did, I mean, it's really interesting. It was probably traumatic though. And did you have siblings as well? And was your mom just chasing the littles or did she have a

frank:
25:04

career or, well, that's an interesting story in itself. My, I have three younger sisters. Okay. And, um, my mom was raised in Virginia and they met at a, they met at a camp, a Quaker camp in upstate New York. Oh, is your family Quakers? Nope. Okay. Neither one of them. Okay. Mom's Alion. Dad's

curt:
25:22

Mormon craft the Quaker camp and

frank:
25:23

Oh yeah. Here they are. Well, one of the, one, one of the, my favorite stories is that one of their campers was Bonnie Ra Interesting. He was like eight years old. Right. Yeah. Cool. So one of the things that was fun about, you know, about growing up in Wyoming, Wyoming to me, is the biggest small town in the world. Yeah. And it's a, it's a huge state, but it's like, If I ever wanna meet anybody from Wyoming anywhere in the world, all I have to do is wear my University of Wyoming sweatshirt.

curt:
25:54

Right? Yeah. It's more effective than a Rotary Club pin.

frank:
25:57

You got it, man. Yeah. Anybody who recognizes that will have something to talk about And that has happened to me over and over and over again. I don't doubt it. Right. But, um, so we did move a lot. And I think there's some, there are certainly some, some ways that I was affected by that. But one of the things that I got really comfortable with was making friends easily. And I would always find a group of people. Yeah. And I would always work my way in fairly effort listening. Fun. Fun. Franklin fun. And I would ha you know, it was easy to, to establish rapport. I, I, I never had the gift of gab, but I was always someone that, you know, I was a good listener. Yeah. And people liked that. Yeah. Well, for sure. Um, But I remember, um, when I was 13, I was given a, I, I had begged for a guitar, man. I didn't, I wasn't given a guitar. I begged for a guitar And, um,

curt:
26:55

you begged long enough to finally get a guitar. Two

frank:
26:57

years. Yeah. And they gave it to me for Christmas that year, and the guitar was the first time that I had felt like I knew who I was. And I felt like that I had a place in my peer group. Oh, wow. And so the guitar was my way of connecting with people easily. And it was also the thing that I could be good at. I was not a good athlete. Yeah. And, uh, and in Wyoming, athletics are pretty important, but I was just not ever real talented Yeah. In athletics. And, you know, if you're gonna be good at athletics, you gotta be, you gotta grow up with the team Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. So all the people that got to play were, they had been playing with each other since they were in fourth grade, you know?

curt:
27:39

Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, not everybody. just succeeds there. Yeah. Uh, were you a good student at the same

frank:
27:46

time? I was a horrible student. How come? I was a daydreamer. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't, um, you know, I, I don't know about Ada. ADHD was probably Throw your

curt:
27:54

dad crazy cuz he's like this Mr. Barney pants doing all these things. And you're like, if you would just try Franklin, you would do so much

frank:
28:01

better. You know, though, that wasn't his deal. And what was really interesting with my dad, um, he had been a guidance counselor before he was a principal. Okay. And, um, when he was a guidance counselor, he would give me achievement tests. And so he knew what was going on with my, with my capabilities. He knew that I could do math, but I was slow. Hmm. He knew that I could, you know, he knew that I could write, but comprehension wasn't something that I did easily or quickly. Hmm. Right. I had to read something over and over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. To comprehend it. And most teachers weren't taught to. to teach to that skill set. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I struggled in school. Yeah. And, uh, I would always be, you know, eyes out the window school. Well,

curt:
28:50

yeah, yeah. Fair. You know? Fair. Okay. So, but guitar really became a thing. Oh yeah. Like, right away, like immediately, once you got that guitar, you were like playing three hours a day or an hour a day

frank:
29:04

or whatever. Up until last year, it was the one thing that I did almost every day of my life. Wow. Yeah.

curt:
29:10

But you don't, you don't play at all, even recreationally or,

frank:
29:13

I do play recreationally. I just don't play every day. Yeah. Um, I don't play frequently anymore. Is it hard on your hands or just It's part of it. Yeah. Um, I also, last year I, I decided to retire from performing. Yeah. Um, I had been performing since I was 17 in high school. Yeah. And, uh, I loved performing, but. For the last several years, it had gotten really, really hard to do. And I think part of it is that performing is an athletic thing. It's physical. Oh yeah, for sure. When you get up there and you play for two and a half or three hours, and at the end of the night there's a payment. Yeah, yeah. not just the money in your pocket, but in, in blood, sweat, and tears. Yeah. Yeah. When I started to notice was that it was taking me longer to recover. Mm, mm-hmm. and I just didn't

curt:
29:59

I didn't have it. This isn't the same at all, but, uh, the, the New Year's party we went to this year had a karaoke set up. Oh yeah. and, uh, a bunch of people sang and stuff like that, but like I sang and then I was clearly like the, the big voice in the room that could really sing a lot of different songs and stuff. So now, Like everybody, like Kurt sing another one, Kurt Sing another one, And I'm kind of drunk and I sang like five or six songs. And then I hear my own voice kind of cracking and not capable. And the next day I'm all like forced, you know? Cause I haven't sung in years. Really? You know? Crazy, right? It's wild. It's, it's amazing how much of a physical demand, even singing six karaoke songs. Like when I was 25, that was a piece of cake. But yeah, that was two

frank:
30:46

beers, man. You were

curt:
30:48

crazy. Yeah, for sure. Well, and it, and it, we just, it's just like how our eyesight doesn't really, like, I can't read up close. Very good. It's not as flexible as it used to be. And so the same thing when you stretch your physical abilities in a performance art of some sort, it just doesn't recover the same way. Yeah.

frank:
31:07

So ever since I was sick, I knew that I had some limitations that I had to really work around and work with and, um, over the last few years. It just got to the point where, especially at the end of the night, I've, I've started to develop some pain in my knees and hips. Mm-hmm. and you're, if you're standing for three hours at a time Yeah, yeah. Your knees and your hips are gonna scream. Right. Well,

curt:
31:29

uh, we might find some time where you can do a, a 30 minute in the chair guitar scene for one of our things or something. I'm still open

frank:
31:37

to do this stuff like that. But I decided last year that, you know, what I really wanted to have for a while was one job,

curt:
31:44

Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. You've had more than one job for 43 years Yeah. So, um, it's like, where did that take you? Did you like, get into like a music school after high school then? Were you in a high school band? Like, what was that for

frank:
32:00

you? I had a, I had a high school teacher that I always have to give credit to. His name was Joe Ruly. Okay. And Joe saw something in me that I couldn't see for myself, and he gave me every opportunity that I could have ever wanted. Hey, Joe. All the, all the encouragement I could have ever had, man, still gets me ripped up. But, um, had Joe rudely not been in my life at that time, I don't know where I would've ended up. I probably would've been doing manual labor somewhere. Um, I wasn't planning on going to college until about three weeks before school started. Wow. All of my friends started to leave and I had no idea what I was gonna do, and my parents were good. They were saying, you know, you don't have to decide right now. You could take some time off. You have to Yeah. If you're aware of it, figure that. But as it got closer, I thought, you know, I should just go to school and figure it out as I go. Right. So I went out, you know,

curt:
32:58

somebody's gonna expect me to get a

frank:
32:59

job. Yeah. Right. we were living in Casper, Wyoming at the time and, um, Casper College. Turns out has one of the best music programs for a community college in the whole country. And I went and auditioned and they gave me a scholarship. Hmm. I got a Pell Grant, I got a scholarship. I didn't have to pay for my tuition for three years Wow. And that gave me a lot of experience in music. And it gave me, um, it gave me the confidence that I needed to actually say, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and get a degree in music. And my mom said, y'all always have to have some something to fall back on. So I got a side degree in business. Okay. And, um, I ended up going from Casper out to Indiana to a little school called Anderson. They had a music business program, which was a combined degree. Okay. Perfect. And that was, that was it. It's like I, I look at my life as one long happy accident. You know, I, I never know very far ahead of time where I'm gonna be. Yeah. But I always like where I land.

curt:
34:05

Yeah. You know, you know, I think, uh, I, I talk about life that way sometimes. Like, you can tell when you're going cross current or Oh, yeah. Man, against the flow of what God or the universe or whatever that force in the world is. Uh,

frank:
34:19

we don't have time for all those stories, but I have several

curt:
34:22

Right. I'm sure. I'm sure. So how did you, when did you find your, your wife? How did you make your way to DC What, what did your, like what You get out, out of this master's degree in music and you're doing

frank:
34:36

what? Well, I, that's when I actually took on all of those weird jobs. I couldn't, you know, I had this degree in music and business and I didn't have any idea how to have a music career. So it was all like, I had to learn everything over it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was taking all these day jobs just to pay the bills, you know, while I was doing that. Um, I was married at the time and went through a divorce and after the divorce happened, I recognized that I had really set music aside for a while. Hmm. And I wanted it back. Right. And so I started playing again. Started going out and playing for blues jams and Yeah. And jazz nights and stuff like that. And meeting people in the music community. So were

curt:
35:17

you like lead guitar and vocal, was that your place in the

frank:
35:20

music world or at that time? Mostly just guitar. I didn't really start singing until I was in my thirties. Oh, is that right? Okay. and about, I don't know, I was, after the divorce and after this relationship breakup that I went through, I started writing songs. Oh. Because it was like, that was the way that I could actually get all of this stuff Yeah. Process that was going

curt:
35:39

on. Junk Yeah.

frank:
35:40

Out. And so I just started writing songs and um, do you remember the first song you wrote? Uh, that was a long time ago. That was like when I was,

curt:
35:50

yeah, it was 9 7 9

frank:
35:51

Yeah. I feel ya. When I was on the piano and I just, I, I took the chords that sounded good together and I made something on. Fair enough. Played it for the school talent show. Um.

curt:
36:03

the best songs I've written, I've written in my head in the shower, and they're gone. That's how it's supposed to happen. you know, I let'em go after that. Usually they're still in the ether. I can, maybe I'll get

frank:
36:13

em back someday. you know, I'm, I'm gonna hold that. That can happen for you, man, because it's happened for me. Yeah.

curt:
36:19

I don't doubt it. I don't, I was singing something in here the other day when I was testing the mics and the girls, Alicia and all were like, what was that? Did you just make that up? And I was like, yeah, I just did. You know, it was only two verses but it was pretty good. I love it. I love it. And I don't have to like, turn it into anything more. Like I can actually be very satisfied with letting it just kind of float off and not be part of what I build my life around. And just be blessed by the fact that sometimes little weird songs come to me and I sing them

frank:
36:51

Yeah. Well, I think that's the way it kind of happens. It's like I have songs that I started, you know, 20 years ago and I just finished last year. like it, and they, they come back and it's like, oh, now, now I know why I did this. But, um, so one of the things that happened was that as I started to write songs, one of the side businesses that I had started was a recording service. Okay. Doing jingles, demos, stuff like that. Yeah. And I would just go set up my recording equipment at people's houses listening

curt:
37:25

behind us

frank:
37:27

Yeah.

curt:
37:28

Or whatever, right. Local radio stations when radio was the main way people found people and stuff. It was more about

frank:
37:33

like Rogers Trout Farm,

curt:
37:37

along down to Rogers Trout Farm

frank:
37:42

But the thing that was interesting to me, That, that was, that was interesting. And I liked that kind of work. But the thing that I loved was working in the studio. I, I really enjoyed being in the studio. And I had learned that in college, you know, and

curt:
37:59

had like, not behind the microphone, but more behind the

frank:
38:01

both board, both playing and engineering. I loved it. I, I enjoyed that a lot. So that side business was one that I kind of carried with me all the way along, and I still do it. Not as much as I used to, but I still That's cool. Do a little bit of recording here and there. Um, but I think, you know, at some point I realized, I was burning out in the social services. Mm-hmm. I was getting work in the consulting that paid really, really well. Yeah. And I could work one weekend a month and pay all of my bills And so I just decided, you know, this opportunity probably won't come along again. Yeah. So I'm gonna move to Nashville. That's where I thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life. Hmm. And I loved Nashville, loved the people that I met there. Yeah. Um, about six months in the consulting jobs went away. Right. It was a, um,

curt:
39:02

now Nashville's

39:03

eating

frank:
39:03

your lunch. Oh, it was a downturn. You know, it was an economic downturn. Businesses stopped hiring, consulting. Right. It's. That's what happens when the economy tanks, usually the consultants Right. Uh, find work elsewhere, Right. Well, the only job that I could find in Nashville, I could not find any musical job that paid anywhere.

curt:
39:24

I can't imagine in a downturn there's people buying less music and stuff

frank:
39:27

too. Right? Well, not only that, it's like in Nashville you've got 10 amazing guitar players for every hundred bad ones, Right. And they're all working. I mean, and they're working for very little money. Right? They're lucky to pay. Yeah. They're lucky to make 50 grand a year. And that includes going on the road for two thirds of the year. Right. So the thing that was fun about it though, was that I was around other songwriters and I was around other studios and I was around other people who were producing and recording. Okay. So I, I actually called those two years in Nashville graduate school. Right. Because that was where I learned both, first of all, that Nashville wasn't the place that I needed to be. And second of all, it's where I learned the things that I needed to do to have a career in music.

curt:
40:16

Hmm. Yeah. Because if you could make it fit together in there, in that tough time Yeah.

frank:
40:22

And whatever, but I didn't have a career in music in Nashville. I had a hobby in music in Nashville. Right, right. It was a very passionate hobby. I met a person online, um, who lived in the Washington DC area, and this was back in the AOL

curt:
40:35

days. It must have been like the first, uh, first days of mash.com. Yeah.

frank:
40:39

It was aol man. It was aol. And it was like, it wasn't even match.com. That wasn't

curt:
40:44

even that, that wasn't even a spark in imagination.

frank:
40:46

Nothing. Um, but we met in a chat group on, uh, AOL that was about music and dancing and stuff like that. And she invited me to come up to DC and, and I had no reason to go up there other than that. But in the weekend that I went to visit, Um, I went to, uh, Cajun and Zydeco dance at Glen Echo. Uh, I went to two music parties and met a bunch of musicians and a bunch of people that were, you know, involved in the scene. Yeah, yeah. Went to two concerts of like singer songwriters. Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that.

curt:
41:21

Well, plus the economy economy's good in DC cuz the money's still flowing that way. It, it was

frank:
41:26

grand's still growing. Yeah. I still, I still kick myself that I couldn't afford a house at that time, because that house would've quadrupled in price for sure in the time that I lived there. But, um, so the, the, the icing on the cake, there were two things happened. I got offered a job at a music store and um, this person that I went to visit had just bought a house and needed to have the basement remodeled. And you're like,

curt:
41:51

I couldn't fix that up

frank:
41:52

for you. I had. I had very tenuous carpentry skills,

curt:
41:58

but there was books at the library that told you how to

frank:
42:00

do stuff and there was, there was a tool library that was right across the way from where she lived and, and she was super cute. Well she was, and, and that was good. But chemistry didn't work out.

curt:
42:12

Anyhow. Sorry. I thought that was gonna be your wife. I was jumping ahead of the

frank:
42:15

bus. No, that's not too far down the road though. Um, what's really interesting was that the only job that I could find in Nashville was installing carpet. And we were working at a Motel six with no air conditioning in the middle of summer. Mm-hmm. It was 105 degrees That's really nice. Nice. And the day I remember reaching my lowest point was, it was 105 degrees. There were tornadoes, tornado ripped, right through downtown Nashville that day. And we were in this motel six, no air conditioning. and the fumes in the room were just absolutely off the map. crazy, right?

curt:
42:58

We had to keep the doors, carpet removal, spray glue, dissolver.

frank:
43:04

Oh man. All of it. We had to keep the doors closed. And not only that.

curt:
43:08

Why? Because the guests would complain. Cause the

frank:
43:10

stinks was too, there were no guests. It was closed Okay. There was a pack of stray dogs that was circling the motel all day long. And there weren't knobs on the doors. There were the handles holes. Yeah. So if they, they were able to jack the handle. So we had to deadbolt the doors right that day when the rest of the crew left for lunch, I was a puddle in the middle of the floor going, my life cannot amount to this. And it wasn't long after that that that trip to Washington DC happened. And I saw, I saw an open door, I see the escape hatch and I didn't look back So my wife and I met not long after I moved there, and sadly

curt:
43:58

re remodeled this basement.

frank:
44:01

We weren't even, we didn't even date for four years after that. Um, we just kept running into each other. Oh, that's funny. Right. And we kept going, Hey, there's something about that person. Yeah. Just, you know, file it away. But then four years later we ended up together and, and you're a

curt:
44:19

musician in DC Yeah. Was it quickly that, like you were at the music store and stuff, but then all of a sudden you got connections, you got people that wanna hear you play, you find a bass player and a

frank:
44:29

drummer? It was perfect. I could play anywhere I wanted to up and down the East Coast. Hmm. And, um, and that's what I did for about. Seven, eight years. Um, I would do gigs on Friday and Saturday night. Um, as

curt:
44:42

you or are you with other people?

frank:
44:44

Usually. Usually. Oh wow. I was singing my own stuff. Yeah. And it was like singer songwriter and I had never intended to become that either, but I was teaching guitar lessons and I found that I really, really loved that as well. Yeah. So I was teaching guitar lessons Sunday through Thursday and then playing Yeah. Gigs on Friday and

curt:
45:02

Saturday. I like it. Yeah. And that was your career for most of that time? Un

frank:
45:07

until about eight years till I got sick. Yeah.

curt:
45:10

Interesting. So I guess that seems like we can jump back to where we jumped off a little bit as you show up here in Northern Colorado after the conference and Yeah. Whatever. And you know, it's September of whatever year that was. 2012. 2011. 2011. Yeah. And, uh, how did you. like how was that reception and, and what was Northern Colorado like? Call it some differences and some similarities from what you'd experienced before you knew Wyoming, of course, but it's different.

frank:
45:42

Well, Wyoming I had been away from for a really long time. I'd left in 83. Right. And it was, yeah, almost 30 years. I hardly knew anybody there anymore, other than a few people that had stayed. Yeah.

curt:
45:54

Unless you wore your Wyoming sweatshirt.

frank:
45:57

And my mom is well connected. My mom knows people everywhere in, in the state, so I always had that to fall back on. But I, I knew that I needed to come back here to be closer to my parents. Mm-hmm. And, um, when I had gotten sick, I felt like that I was too far away. And so we moved back here and, um, kind of split the difference. We ended up in Loveland, which was halfway between Cheyenne and Denver. Yeah. And, um, I, I knew that I wanted to do music, but I also knew that coaching was a way Yeah. That I could,

curt:
46:35

you kind of made this discovery recently and Yeah. Got a new space, a new place.

frank:
46:41

So I started doing both and ultimately got a job as a music director at the Unity Church over on Vine Drive. Mm-hmm. I've worked there for six years. Um, and then one of the things that was very interesting is like, it may have been my age, it may have been the style of music that I do. Um, I played some really cool gigs when I first moved here, but I found it really hard to break into the scene. Hmm. Um, and I, I get it. I mean, this scene is not a, it's not a large one. Yeah. Certainly not a large pond. And the same players have been pretty. Pretty dominant in the scene. Yeah. Yeah. For quite a while.

curt:
47:22

Wendy Wu and Leftover Salmon get good gigs, but Oh, they're all good

frank:
47:25

man. And they deserve him. I mean, I don't wanna, I don't wanna take away from those folks. Yeah, they're good,

curt:
47:31

good musicians. But yeah, there's probably too few. It's such a small market that there's not enough ticket buyers to feed that many bands and musicians. Yeah. You know, ultimately, um, the, the thing

frank:
47:43

that I looked at before we moved was I wanted to see how many, how many opportunities there were to play within a hundred mile radius. Mm. And so that included places like Colorado Springs, some of the mountain towns, Laramie and Cheyenne. Right. Right. Freely, Windsor, Denver. You know, it included a, a significant number of venues. And I found ultimately I could, I could do, okay. I could probably play three or four nights a week. Right. And be okay. But the gigs that I wanted were elusive. Yeah. Yeah. And they were the ones that were going to the folks who had been here for the longest and you know, that everybody knew and Yeah. Yeah. I was also an older guy. I was like, you know, approaching 50. Yeah. And those folks were all, at that point, some of'em were in their twenties and thirties, now they're in their fifties. And

curt:
48:37

I can, well, and, and to some extent they're willing to put on a great show. Yeah. For less money than you're willing to do. And they got a band of four, you know, or whatever. like, that's just an example. But like, they're young and hungry and Yeah. You're like, I don't, I have to work that long for that hard, for that little bit of money, you know?

frank:
48:57

Well, I think that was one of the things that was really interesting is when I was in college, I got spoiled because I could play, I could go out and play in a bar when I was in college, even in high school. I shouldn't say that out loud. Um, but I played at a place in Casper called The Sandbar Lounge. Yeah. And, um, The sandbar, they'd pay a kid 75 bucks a night. Right.

curt:
49:19

Plus tips. Yeah. You might make 200 bucks in tips if it was a busy

frank:
49:22

night. And then, yeah. And that was doable. Right. And, and music also was, it was pretty hot, you know? Right. People loved, people, loved live music. Yeah.

curt:
49:33

Well, and in Casper, at that time, it was probably less local stuff happening. You know, now there's a lot more developed scene. And Fort Collins scene was pretty young when I got, I got here in 99. Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. You were right side develop. I smelled it like I, because Fargo, North Dakota, where I came from was a little bit similar that, you know, Minneapolis is not too far away. Yeah. There's some good music scene there. And then like, if you're heading from Minneapolis to Seattle, Like, there ain't very many places to stop before Fargo and not many places after, so you're probably gonna stop there. So a lot of good music

frank:
50:12

came through Fargo. I spent my 19th birthday in a bar in Fargo. Oh. And it was on the, it's not, it, it's, it wasn't on the North Dakota side. Oh.

curt:
50:23

Uh, Kirby's maybe. Or Ralphs. Ralphs. Ralphs was my favorite, one of my favorite bars. Ralphs was the best. It was, uh, like kind of gay bar in the front, pool bar in the back, and then the music in the back. Punk bar in the backpack. So I was in the pool crowd where you could smoke weed way before it was legal.

frank:
50:41

Well, they didn't have punk at the time that I was there. Oh. It was mostly punk bands when I was there. When I was there, they had a three piece band. It was like Rush or triumph. It was one of those. Oh, cool. But. No, it was more like ZZ Top, cuz they were doing Boogie. You know, it was like, oh cool. And I'll never forget that. That night was just amazing.

curt:
50:58

When was this? You were 19. So that was way before my time.

frank:
51:01

It was, it was before the drinking age Yeah. Was 21. And we had to, we had to go back across the state line because it was 19 on one side and it was 21 on the other. That's fine. Right. So anyway,

curt:
51:14

well getting

frank:
51:15

back. Hey, I

curt:
51:16

dyker, uh, North Dakota, Minnesota Yep. Go Kirby's. Go. Uh, Ralph's. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Kirby's was right across the street. That was more the kind of mainstream traditional bar, at least later on down the line.

frank:
51:29

Was it a biker spot? No, more of

curt:
51:32

a, uh, rock and roll kind of, you know, whatever. Midwest kind of Yeah. But a little bit, a little bit edgy, but not like Ralph's, you know? Yeah. Good, good kids didn't go to Ralph's. Really?

frank:
51:47

So the thing that was really funny when I moved to Fort Collins, Or when we moved here, you know, I knew that there were a lot of gigs around and I could always find places to play. Yeah. But by the time we moved here, the thing that I noticed was for the, the average gig was still paying 75 bucks. Right. And this is what I made back in 1979.

curt:
52:08

Right. 30 years later. Yeah.

frank:
52:11

Five, almost 40 years later. Right. It's like, and I'm still making 75 bucks a night and I'm hauling my own gear and I am, you know, I'm playing in places where people are drinking and they don't want to hear music. They just want to talk. Right. And at the end of the night, I would just scratch my head and wonder, is this really what I want to do? Is this really how I wanna spend my time? Because the, the singer songwriter scene where you could go out and sing original songs. Yeah. Yeah. my perception is that, that that scene has shrunk significantly in the last 15 years. Um, yeah. Probably across the country. I think probably there's, there's been a lot of the venues have closed or they've changed. Um, one of the things I think that's really interesting is that the, the crowd aged with the artist Right. And the aging crowd doesn't go out as much.

curt:
53:08

Right. Totally. I'm that way. Yeah. I don't go out. Yeah. I don't go out that much. You know, I, I used to see 20 bands a year. Yeah. Now I see five, maybe six Yeah. Or something like that. And five of'em are at the festival. Right. Well, exactly. I I was gonna say, you know, I've got focal MX coming up and I'll probably see 20 that weekend. Um, but other than that it's a, it's a small batch, you know, it's just not something I target my, yeah. My life on as much.

frank:
53:35

Well, there were, there were two people that I met that actually were probably more helpful than anybody else. one was Greta Cornett. Yeah. Folk Homax. She's, and the other one was Chris Kresky. Chris k, um, dunno who that is. Chris K's a radio guy and, um, he, he produces a show called the Colorado Sound. He was also a sound guy at Oscar Blues. Oh yeah, I know who that is now. Over in, uh, in Longmont. And I went there and played, uh, they had a, an open mic one night. Yeah. I went, I went there and played and he liked what I did and um, I just was able to say, Chris, can you tell me where to play? Yeah. And he gave me a list. So those two folks put me, you know, in some kind of a, yeah, yeah. In some kind of a direction.

curt:
54:18

But That's awesome. I met GRE at a backyard barbecue, probably back in 2003. Oh, seriously. Or something like that. we've kind of circled around each other's radios over the time since. But if you're listening, Greta, you're awesome. Yeah. Um, and so when did you get involved with. like coaching for real and the small business development center and things

frank:
54:40

like that. That's very interesting. Um, I started, I mean, I was coaching in DC before we moved. Okay. And I had a pretty nice group of clients there and really satisfied with the way that it was working. It was a hundred percent, I was not doing any marketing. Yeah. Um, it was a hundred percent word of mouth and people would just, you know, tell other people Yeah. How things were going. What was really funny is that a lot of the people that I worked with early on were union members. Yeah. And I've got a couple of those union members that still send me new clients every year, because they remember how important it was for them. Yeah. Cool. To, to, to go through that process then. Um, you know, it's an interesting. Um, I, I decided when we moved out here that I wanted to do coaching, uh, kind of on equal par with music. I didn't wanna, yeah. I didn't want to, you

curt:
55:32

didn't want squash coaching to focus on music.

frank:
55:35

I didn't want it to be a side hustle. Yeah. You know, I wanted to take it seriously. Yeah. So I started to learn. I just started to really learn the profession. Took a lot of classes and did some, I worked with some coaches of my own that just really set me on a good path. And, um, interestingly enough, I had the job at Unity. I was the music director at Unity. Right? Yeah. Well, Michael O'Connell. Oh. Uh, from sbdc Sure. Who was the director of SBDC here in LaMer. Um, he was on the board Okay. Fair. And we just got to talk and, and you know, he, he knew that that was something that I was doing. Yeah. But I had met, uh, Maryanne, um, Ooh, over in Loveland. Yeah. The

curt:
56:24

previous director

frank:
56:25

there, she was, yeah, she was the director in the Loveland office and I had met her, actually I was a client in the Loveland office before, right? Before anything. Trying figure out your stuff. When we moved. Moved here. Yeah. I went to there. They connected all that. Had a meeting with Robin and with Maryanne and, um, I, I just started going to networking meetings, like all the time. Meeting people. Yeah. Finding jobs where I could, finding opportunities where I could, I would do presentations on social media marketing and things like that because those were things that I had developed some skill in. Yeah. And it was still fairly manageable. Yeah. And still fairly new that people were interested in that. Yeah. And Maryanne asked me if I would be ever be interested in working with creatives through SBDC or through the Loveland office. Mm-hmm. And she talked to Mike about it and Mike said, yeah. Let's ask him to do that. Yeah. So I went ahead and went through the tests and whatever training Sure. Went along with it. Um, and I found that I really liked it a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've been there since March of 2018. Okay.

curt:
57:33

Gosh, that's probably, we got acquainted, not too. Yeah. Were we acquainted through there or?

frank:
57:39

Yeah, I think that's actually where we started. Okay. That's, we started about the same time. Yeah.

curt:
57:44

Well, but I had been involved with the small business development center actually going back to 2009 maybe. I've been, uh Yeah. Volunteering in different things and stuff like that. So, but before Michael Connell's time. Oh really? Wow. Okay. Yeah. So you were there a long time ago. Yeah. And Andrea Grant was Oh yeah. One of the OG OGs and that's how she and I got acquainted. And that's how local think tank. Very cool. Yeah, so she had been a Vistage chair and I knew her through that. And there was at least two or three executive directors before Mike. That's awesome. Uh, mostly short run and, uh, yeah. So, yeah. So anyway. That's interesting. Um, so

frank:
58:23

the parallel line that happened along the way was that I had continued to do all the digital stuff. Mm-hmm. I had continued to have podcasts and blogs and, um, I started a YouTube channel fits and starts for many years. Okay. and then finally started to take that seriously a few years ago. And what's that channel? Franklin Tager Coaching. Okay. Yeah. I have a music channel too, but that one's pretty, uh, pretty lame.

curt:
58:49

So do you imagine coaching for a long

frank:
58:52

time? I'm gonna probably do it for as long as I can work. Yeah. I love the work and I love the people. Yeah. And I love to see the, I love to see the aha moments and the trans transformations happen. Yeah.

curt:
59:06

And so talk to me about like an ideal client for you. Are you kind of one of those coaches that comes in and then leaves him awesome six months later and check you later? Or are you kind of one of those guys that might have multi-year engagements and it just decreases or increases based on the season Um, yeah. Talk to me about like the, some of the stories maybe that you've really made an impact for or those people that write you the best reviews.

frank:
59:30

It's interesting. It's hard for me to, to, to say that I have an ideal client and, and the avatar exercises have been

curt:
59:39

elusive for me. You've got three really different ideal clients or whatever.

frank:
59:45

Yeah. One of the things that's really interesting is I went through a coaching program, um, it was at that time it was called Advanced Client Systems and it was, uh, by a coach named Steve Chandler. Mm-hmm. One of the things that Steve Chandler always talked about was that there's a client in every room. Hmm. And he said, you know, one, one of the things that happens with the ideal client idea is that you start missing cues. And I kind of agree with that. And that's been my experience. It's like through the networking, what I found was if I can set two appointments a week from the networking that I, from one networking meeting, I can set two appointments. That's two conversations that either lead to clients or referrals. And that's been the way that it's worked. Right? Yeah. And I don't necessarily wanna do group programs, and I don't necessarily want to do membership programs, and I don't necessarily want to do anything. You

curt:
1:00:45

stay in the creative of space, especially.

frank:
1:00:47

I love working with creative people. Um, but that's a pretty broad brush man. Right, for sure. And so

curt:
1:00:54

it's, I almost consider myself a creative

frank:
1:00:55

You are, you know, I, I don't hesitate to call you a creative because everything that you've got here, you have conceived and said, this is what I want to do. And that is an act. Creativity, there's no question in my mind about that. Sure. Um, entrepreneurship is absolutely creative. There is nothing non-creative about entrepreneurship. Yeah. Alright. And entrepreneurs are some of the most creative people that I've met. And, and their idea momentum. Yeah. Capacity is just

curt:
1:01:26

crazy. I su I sense that you have a similarity. uh, appreciation of word precision. Yeah. And there's a lot of difference between a business person and an entrepreneur. Oh, absolutely. And, but they're almost used interchangeably in like the, the mainstream or, or whatever, but like, yeah. Uh, how would you differentiate an entrepreneur from a business person?

frank:
1:01:51

I think the business person is the one who's comfortable in the roles that need to be. taken in order for a business to function and sustain itself. Mm-hmm. entrepreneurs don't necessarily fit that category. They don't like that Well, ultimately the business person is the one who comes in after the entrepreneur. Yeah. Yeah. Because the business person in my mind, is somebody who's really good at follow through. They're able to structure things, they're able to create systems, they're able to manage, they're able to do all of those roles. Yeah. That, that entrepreneur may feel. Usually they flail at Well, the entrepreneur is gonna get, you know, probably hives in panic attacks. Yeah. If they have to actually, you know, interest if they have to show up as a manager or if they have to show up as a, you know, uh, anything but, um, a catalyst, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So the thing that I look at with entrepreneurs is that the people that I call entrepreneurs are the people that just absolutely have an idea that they can't let go of until it is something and. it's a a hundred percent creative. Yeah,

curt:
1:02:59

fair enough. Whereas a business person, if they see that they've got three lines of business and one of'em is not making any money, they're like, well, let's let that go. Yeah. See you later. Well,

frank:
1:03:09

the business person has that practical mentality, right? Yeah. Yeah. And the business person also is somebody that can come in and say, um, you know, I, I'll take these doTERRA oils and I'm going to make a business out of it. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to, I'm gonna work the system. Yeah. And I'm gonna use that to make money for myself. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. Big difference. Yeah. Fair

curt:
1:03:27

enough. Yeah. Um, so I guess to get back to that question a little bit, so it, what I think I'm starting to hear is just like clarity and understanding are some of your big principles, right? When you're working with your clients and whatever those diverse, ideal clients

frank:
1:03:47

are. Oh, yeah. Clarity and understanding are probably, um, They're, they're probably core to everything that I do. Yeah. The, there are a couple of things that I look at. The, the, the people that I feel the most compassion for are the people who have deferred their creative dreams to the point that they're suffering. Hmm. And they just, they have to do something about it now. Yeah. Yeah. Or it's gonna be too late Right. Yeah. An example of that is one of the people that I worked with early on, um, actually was a recording client of mine in dc and it was a woman who had just turned 60. Okay. She'd been a songwriter since she had been in her twenties. Yeah. And she Wow. Had wanted to make an album, but she was a, she was very self-conscious about her voice. Oh, wow. And so I took her under my wing and I said, we're gonna make your. And so the thing that was really interesting about that was that probably about 10% of it was production. 80% of it was encouragement and, uh, and getting her through the, the tremors. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other 10% of it was, um, you know, crying Right, right. You know? Yeah. And it was just, it was one of those things where she, huh. She had that dream and it was so potent for her that she'd reached a point in her life, she'd gotten a PhD and another field Wow. And had been a university professor for 40 years.

curt:
1:05:16

Wow. And all kind of misaligned with what she really wanted to do and be the whole time. But like all those efforts, the PhD and everything, it was kind of worth it once you get that album out and released in some ways, I imagine. Anyway.

frank:
1:05:31

It was amazing, man, that, you know, the thing that, that I look back on, those kinds of things happened over and over and over again for me, where I would be in the role of, oh, that's what you wanna do. Yeah, we've got a barn, let's put on a show. You know, that's one of my favorite lines from movie Andy Hardy. Yeah. Mickey Rooney. You know, we've got a barn, let's put it on a show. It's like whenever they would say what they wanted to do, that possibility would become crystaline in my mind and I would see, oh my God, we, this is all we have to do.

curt:
1:06:04

Yeah. And henceforth, frankly, your reset podcast. Yes. The one that I was on, which was, you know, in some ways I think you recognize that within my recent past when we first got acquainted and Yeah, I was fresh out of banking and whatever, and it reminds me of when I went to the Rotary Club right after AC quitting my bank job, and half the club was like, High fives, this is gonna be great. You're gonna love it. And the other half was like, you're an idiot. And how irresponsible of a husband can you be to your wife, you know, for quitting your maker

frank:
1:06:38

job. I don't think you're an idiot at all, man. You had a vision. Right. And it

curt:
1:06:42

would've like, it could've died on the vine, you know? And

frank:
1:06:46

Well, you tried that with the cooking deal, right? fair.

curt:
1:06:50

You did. Well, that's just, well, that was

frank:
1:06:51

another visit. It was like, it was like, oh, I wanna try this. And you tried it and you found that it just didn't quite work out. Yeah. Fair. No, nothing. You know, that's not, that's not a failure as far as I'm concerned. I think that's just, no, I don't think of it as

curt:
1:07:05

that. Okay. Yeah. Next I learned something. Yeah. Lessons expensive. Lessons check.

frank:
1:07:11

Exactly. Right. Expensive lessons. And there have been a few. Yeah. Yeah.

curt:
1:07:16

So, um, what else do you wanna tell us about your like, special sauce and place? I, I've really been intrigued by, um, that, that clarity and purpose and one of these days, have you learned about the, the halos relational intelligence that I've been doing at all? I haven't. Oh, you might. I have to check it out. Get on my website sometime or whatever, but look it up. But I suspect that you're, uh, a brown type and green type. Uh, which, um, do you want the, the 92nd overview? Yeah. It's like, it's, so, it's a little bit like disk or myers-brigg, but simpler, more intuitive and more aligned with what you've already observed based on frankly, you're green and brown types. Um, so I'm a white green. Okay. Uh, white is like full of ideas, uh, principles, values focused, kind of have a hundred great ideas a week, but doesn't always execute much, has a huge inbox, all that kind of stuff. And then green is the social relational. Yeah. So that's the heart type. With the white type, the blue type, you're wearing all blue today, but I don't think you're a blue necessarily. You might have some of that as your developed trait, but that's another conversation. But the blue is the organizer planner.

frank:
1:08:31

That is not

curt:
1:08:33

Right. You wanna call somebody else for that? Sure. Yeah, exactly. So that's the blue type is kind of the logical analytical. The green is here in the heart. The orange is the achiever, entrepreneur, very driven, almost every Olympian. Mm-hmm. has at least that as part of their thing. Entrepreneurs. Most of my local facilitators are at least half orange. Mm-hmm. and many of my members. And then finally is the brown type and the brown type. Like the white type is a kind of a cloud above the rest. Yeah. The brown type is kind of the interwoven and understands all of them. And they always wanna know a little bit more. Yeah. Uh, they wanna get a little deeper, understand a little bit more how the unintended consequences of things might be. All the stuff in that space. And they seem. Super annoying to the oranges cuz they're like, let's just get it done. Yeah. You know, move fast and it doesn't matter the carnage that we cause. So sometimes browns and oranges have challenge with each other, but they can also be very beneficial conflicts in some ways. So my guess is that you're brown, green. It's very interesting. Um, maybe with some orange in the center would be my speculation.

frank:
1:09:39

As you were describing it, you were, you were doing the chakra system maybe? Yeah. Because the. up here. Okay. Is, I mean it's generally and the color codes that you use. Oh, is that the right? Were very similar to the chakra system. That doesn't surprise me. And um, they also somewhat followed the Tibetan system and the Chinese medicine system. So it's like,

curt:
1:10:03

that's kind of what I've been noticing is it was all very intuitive. This is a Brazilian system. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Uh, but Bettina introduced me to it. Oh, very cool. And they're here, they were here in northern Colorado. Yeah. Because the founder of the system who's a white green orange like me, um, found her husband a connection to get them with jbs and moved up here. Cause he's a brown type too. Yeah. And uh, so it was almost a brown blue. So she's systems thinking and organized. Gosh. Which is my gosh, one of the reasons she's so useful to me. Yeah. And fast and smart. That's awesome. She's young so she doesn't know much, but she can learn it real fast and wants to shoot. Yeah, you can't have her, so whatever. I don't want her.

frank:
1:10:43

Yeah, I don't want an employee. I don't want any, I don't want anybody to be a supervised. That's, uh, that's the other thing is like my, my podcast now is called Your Own Best Company.

curt:
1:10:51

Oh yeah, that's right. It's like a solopreneur is

frank:
1:10:53

kinda, well, one of the things that I found, one of the gaps that I found was that, um, there's not a lot of support and encouragement out there for people who actually want to work alone. Yeah. Yeah. And what I discovered in my own process was that, especially when it comes to the creativity, yeah. I really need to have solitude and I honor that. And it's like, for me, solitude has the same level of importance as profit. Right. So one of the things that I looked at was that for me, saw the two as a bottom line. Yeah. And so your own best company came out of that desire to offer some support and encouragement to people Yeah. Who want to be a team of one.

curt:
1:11:35

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and Frank, I was just thinking like local think tank. We have a billers chapter. Yeah. But part of the name of it is you want to be building something. Yeah. Like we don't really want solopreneurs that wanna stay that way forever. Yeah. Um, and that's, it's just as like, there's so many challenges with hiring and keeping and maintaining relationships and things like that, that that's kind of part of what local think tank's mission is. Yeah. But I do applaud you for celebrating and supporting, frankly, a very important demographic. I'm good without a bunch of employees. You know, it's,

frank:
1:12:11

it's been fun to see people come out of the woodwork and say, where have you been? Right. I don't, I'm not

curt:
1:12:16

surprised. Yeah.

frank:
1:12:17

Because there's a lot of pressure, um, from all sides. So you need a va Oh, you need a team. Totally. Oh, you need to hire somebody. Right. You know? Right. And I do, you know, it's not like I do everything on my own. I do have an accountant. Sure. And I would be lost without her. Yeah. Um, and I do have, you know, people that I can turn to for, you

curt:
1:12:39

know. Yeah. If you need a new local design or something, you maybe aren't the best person

frank:
1:12:42

for that. Exactly. Right. But that's just it. It's like I don't have to have an employee to do that. Right.

curt:
1:12:49

um, what's the name of that podcast again? Your Own Best company. Your Own Best Company. Yeah. So check that out. I'm sure it's on Spotify, Google everywhere all the time. Apple all

frank:
1:12:57

the things. Yeah. If you, if you need the easiest place to find it, franklin taggart.com. Okay. Yeah, it's

curt:
1:13:03

there. Very good. Um, we're gonna jump into our closing segment soon. Very good. Um, but I, I wanna go tinkle first, so,

frank:
1:13:11

oh, by all means, we'll come back. Pause,

curt:
1:13:14

All right. And we're back. So, what I was thinking about, cuz I always have my best ideas while I'm standing over a toilet, was like, what things are consistently challenges that make a big difference for your clients in the creative space? Mm-hmm. like, do you have like two or three or four things that, that you see that a lot of people struggle with and once they overcome, boom, things happen easier.

frank:
1:13:42

Well, there's, there's kind of like a laundry list of run of the mill, a ailments that create a people face, Okay. One of them is imposter syndrome. Mm. Um, one of them is, um, blocks like creative blocks. Mm. Mm-hmm. And, um, a lot of times, a lot of times people come to me and they've been in a role for a very long time. Hmm. Like, they've been parents for 18, 20 years, and they know that back when they were younger, that they had dreams that they, there were things that they wanted to do

curt:
1:14:21

and they put them in the warming bin for 20 years,

frank:
1:14:23

they'd put'em off to the side. But what's really interesting is that when they come back to them later on, they just don't have the same. Meaning to them. Hmm. And so they feel kind of at a loss. Right? Yeah. So one of the things I find is most of the folks that I work with are probably 40 and above. Okay. I do work with some people younger than that, but most of the people tend to be in their forties, fifties, and sometimes early sixties. Yeah. And a lot of them are coming into a period of their life where they've got more time freedom. Yep. And they've got, some of them have just recently taken early retirement. Yep. A little financial freedom even. Yep. And they are not sure what they want to do. Yeah. They, they have not, they've not had room to think

curt:
1:15:08

about that I'm to do something with all these songs. Years, yeah, exactly. Or whatever, right?

frank:
1:15:12

Yeah. I have to, you know, I've written all these songs over the last 40 years. What do I do? You know, I wanna make an album. I've always wanted to have a record, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And so the folks that come to me a lot of times are in that situation where they. they've been kind of at everybody else's beck and call for a while. Yeah. And the muscle that they have around their own desire. Yeah. Their own will, their own interests, all of those, those muscles have atrophied Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so one of the things that they come to me for is to start working those muscles out again. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like to start finding, okay, what do

curt:
1:15:55

I actually want? Yeah. What do I need and how do I get it? How do I ask for it? Yeah. Again and again,

frank:
1:16:01

in some cases what matters to me now. Yeah. And it's not an easy path for a lot of folks. It's like they're, and they've, they've got good ideas that, like when they, they may want to have a business, they may want to do music, they want, they may want to do that, but they, they can't settle on any one of them. Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things that I'm very, very keen on is that, um, I think one of the things we've gotten away from in our culture anyway, is the permission to explore. Mm-hmm. It's like, I think that everybody needs to have a gap here, and really explore, you know, the world, what's possible, what, what matters to you, you know? Mm-hmm. So a lot of the work that I do is in helping people to develop those muscles again. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Another thing that I find over and over and over again is, I call it imposter syndrome, and I, I don't even like to give it that name. Yeah. Because that, that kind of attaches a pathology

curt:
1:17:04

to it. kind of. Yeah. It's like you, yes. You are an imposter. The truth, hypothe,

frank:
1:17:10

the truth of the matter is, is that everybody who tries something new goes through a period of self-doubt and self-questioning about that. at some level. Yeah, yeah.

curt:
1:17:21

And so Well, and people that have done things for a long time. Yeah. Right. You know, as like a business, I'm a business founder, right? Yeah. I'm a business leader and, and I know CEOs and presidents that have founded their own company and running'em for 20 years and have a hundred employees, and they feel like an imposter

frank:
1:17:36

too. Exactly. Right. So the thing that's really interesting is that when we come back to that, one of the things that we've gotta look at is I think that that's something that's built into our psychological mechanism. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think it's a part of a larger cycle of creativity and it's, it's a, a part of that cycle where we really wonder if what we have Yeah. Is legitimate, is of value, is important, all of the above. And I think that a lot of people go through that stage as a part of a larger cycle of. Of finding their direction. Well, and I wonder

curt:
1:18:13

if for, especially for those creative types, which a lot of times are those founders and things Yeah. That like embracing the fact that you are this person is almost like handcuffs to not be some other person when I want to be Yeah. Uh, in a way.

frank:
1:18:29

So that's exactly right. And and a lot of them will resist that because it does feel like, oh my God, this is something, no, I'm after it. Yeah. This is serious and this is a, yeah, this is an actual commitment. And it's like, oh, now that I've made a commitment, I'm, I'm bound. Yeah. Do you

curt:
1:18:46

know the, the, the motto we have around here at local thing tank? No. It's, uh, ask of your needs and share of your abundance. Oh, very cool. And that was my personal motto for a couple years before I started Loco. But it's that ask of your needs is so, Deficient. Yeah. In our world, like people don't even take the time to ask themselves what their needs are sometimes. Right. They're just on autopilot. I, I don't

frank:
1:19:09

know that we're allowed to, you know, it feels like that there's a kind of a social permission Hmm. That isn't there for needing Right.

curt:
1:19:19

You know? Right. You could want Yeah. It's a lot easier to ask for your wants, but I don't want to give you your wants. Yeah. That's your business. You can figure out your wants, but if you got needs and I can help. Yeah. I probably would if you just share'em

frank:
1:19:32

if you even know what they are.

curt:
1:19:33

If you know what they are. Yeah. And that's part of defining it, right? That's a clarity. Exactly. That purpose. Um, so we're gonna change the channel and jump over to the faith, family, politics. Cool. So we always talk about faith, family, and politics, uh, as much or as little as you like. And in any order that you choose. Yeah. Um, where would you like to start?

frank:
1:19:55

Well, faith and family are kind of bound for me. Yeah. Fair. Um. Um, my great-great-grandfather was a Mormon pioneer. Okay. And, uh,

curt:
1:20:06

to Wyoming From Utah or from like Ohio or Utah or

frank:
1:20:10

whatever, to Utah. From Ohio originally? Yeah. Yeah. He actually started, um, he was one of the early members of the church, and he knew both Joseph Smith and Brigham. Oh, wow. Okay. He worked for Brigham Young when they made it to Salt Lake. Wow. And he was a part of the Mormon of a battalion. So I was raised, um, Mormon. Okay. And I was, you know, thoroughly indoctrinated and, uh, and I didn't have,

curt:
1:20:34

uh, there was nothing else that you could believe

frank:
1:20:36

largely. Well, what's really funny is that my mother was Episcopalian. Mm-hmm. but she converted to Mormonism. Mm-hmm. when she married my dad. Um, I was baptized in the Episcopal church as an infinite, but I had no connection with that. Yeah. Until much later. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so Mormonism was what I grew up with and it was, I grew up in a Mormon community in Wyoming, largely those

curt:
1:20:57

evanston's in different places. Yeah. Like you kind of like a lot of your friends and stuff, you weren't like looking to be accepted necessarily in these other places because you already had your own community. It was built in, man. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I didn't realize, realize

frank:
1:21:12

that where wherever I went to a Mormon church, uh, there was a built-in

curt:
1:21:14

community. Right, right. And so that was that like your instant friends and stuff to some extent like that was largely because you'd still go to public schools and stuff In most cases, yeah. But still your closest friends were the people from the church? Oh

frank:
1:21:28

yeah. We'd go to Sunday school together. Yeah. Yeah. You'd go to the activities together and our families knew each other. Mm-hmm. and stuff like. Um, when I was 15, I had a real crisis of faith and uh, a lot of it had to do with it that time. Um, people of color were not allowed to hold the priesthood. Right. And I had a real problem with that. And the other thing that I found was that I had a real problem with the way that women were treated within the culture. And it was a very patriarchal, yeah. Yeah. It still is a very patriarchal for org organization and those things for me, were I irreconcilable and so I made the decision when I was probably between 15 and 16. You were a free thinker for sure. I just was a free feeler more than anything else. It just didn't sit right. It didn't Right, right. Feel right to me. Yeah. That there were people who were secondary to others based on their gender or their color. Right. That was creepy,

curt:
1:22:24

man.

frank:
1:22:24

It's, it's creepy to me. So I left that when I was 15 or 16 and, um, largely found alcohol in marijuana not long after that, which was first alcohol, marijuana. Yeah. It was all good. but I also, and music. Yeah, music was central in that at that

curt:
1:22:42

point. Yeah. And, um, was that an outcast thing? Like, is that a public thing where your dad was really upset and da da da da. He

frank:
1:22:50

was going through trouble of his own at that time and it was just so wrapped up in his own drama and trauma that I don't even think he noticed that I left. Oh really? I just stopped going. Yeah. Yeah. And our family was kind of going through a real turmoil at that point, but I knew at that point that it, I just couldn't tolerate that. So I just kind of wandered around for a few years and when I got to college, um, I dated a girl who was a Christian. Okay. And for Christmas, the year that we were dating, she gave me a Bible and I had had a King James version as a Mormon. That was their legitimate version and Right. I'd read all the Book of Mormon and all of that stuff. Yeah. But she gave me a new international version and um, and she in the front of the, uh, things where she signed it. Yeah, yeah. She, she put something about, there was, there was a verse from John the gospel of John. Yeah. For these things are written that you may have life and avid abundantly. Mm. Yeah. And I read the Gospel of John and it was like a light went off. Yeah, it's a good one for sure. And the thing that was compelling, and I say this a lot because um, I don't think what you could call me now is Christian Fair. I still absolutely adore Jesus. Yeah. That's awesome. And I still absolutely feel. and experience a closeness to God because of that and whatever else, who knows? It's a mystery

curt:
1:24:30

So for an outsider looking in, yeah. Uh, especially on the Mormon time and space. Like we think about Mormons as Christians cuz they believe in Jesus and stuff, but obviously Jesus didn't have anywhere near the importance to your life in those earlier times than after you wrote, read the

frank:
1:24:46

book of John. I have, I have a funny story to tell. When I was four actually, when I was younger than this, um, when I was going through that phase of my life, when I had an imaginary friend, Fair, my imaginary friend was Jesus. Okay? And my mom recorded in my baby book that I used to like to flush the toilet and say, bye Jesus. Oh gosh. The thing that's really interesting is that in Mormonism there are different beliefs about Jesus than our. any found anywhere else in Christianity. Okay. And there are some of them that they don't talk about very publicly, but one of them is that Jesus, the brother of Satan, Yeah. Or the brother of Lucifer. And they're both sons of God, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that, you know, is a little awkward. Yeah. And they're, they're both here to establish, you know, es both establish and test the church. Mm-hmm. Right. Interesting. So Mormonism is totally centered on the establishment of the organization, the church itself.

curt:
1:25:57

Yeah. Right. So the, the, the founding fathers and stuff are almost more central to the doctrine. And the organization than Jesus ever was.

frank:
1:26:07

And even the current prophet is central to the doctrine. Right? Because the doctrine is something that can evolve

curt:
1:26:14

and can change. It obviously has because they like had all the hieroglyphics translations that were a pile of bologna and stuff like that. Yeah, it's,

frank:
1:26:23

so one of the things that's really interesting is like, um, the Mormon church I think is an extraordinary organization. Yeah. And I still have a lot of my own, I don't wanna say that my own faith is informed by it, but my own, uh, my own cultural experience is definitely informed by it. My own value of family is still informed by it, and I still have, um, SCDs of admiration for my great-great-grandfather and my great-grand great-grandmother, and the other two wives, um, who went all the way across my great-great-grandfather went all the way to California, first on foot. Wow. Then traversed back from California up to Idaho and then back down to Utah. Wow. And it was like all altogether, it was like 4,000 miles of walking over the course of two years. Wow. And I look at those people and I just admire them because they believed so strongly in what was being given to them. Yeah. And what was being presented to them, that they were willing to uproot their lives and go. Right. So that to me, there's, there's something about that faith that's compelling. My own faith has been through. 72 identity crises and counting and I, I have to say that I've landed on the fact that, um, the experience of God is a mystery to me. And it's one that I can't, I can't articulate it can't wait. Other people can understand, but I can say that whatever experience that you're having, I want you to honor that. Hmm. And I want you to go wherever that takes you. Right. Because I've been given that freedom in my life. Yeah. I've been given that ability. My mom went through her own situation where she rediscovered the Episcopal church after many years of Mormonism and didn't look back. She said it was like coming home. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so, um, I don't ascribe to any orthodoxy. Um, in fact, most of the people that I went to college with at the Christian University that I went to, um, have now become extraordinarily right wing and extraordinarily, um, I I would say that, that they're very close-minded. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sad to see that because when we were in school together, that wasn't the case. Yeah. We were, we were able to have discussions and we, we were able to go anywhere that we wanted with those discussions. And there weren't any, no, there weren't any doors to shut. Yeah. Yeah.

curt:
1:29:18

You know? Well, that's one of the, I mean, the last five or 10 years that's become increasingly difficult. Yeah. Man. One of my most enjoyable things was. to have challenging conversations with people that didn't. And I, cause I don't even know what I believe. Yeah. A lot of times I have two questions, um, that came to mind during that discussion. One is, so there's, there's a phrase, a meme these days floating around that's like, there's a, there's not two kinds of people, Democrats and Republicans. There's actually two kinds. Authoritarians and libertarians. Hmm. Interesting. And, but what I was thinking to myself was one of the main resonances I have with the, with the Mormon church is to the extent that they push back on the federal government. Yeah. And it's overreach. But really it's because in their mind, and they're doxology of sorts. They're the authoritarians. Yeah. The organization of the church. And so they don't really give the federal government a stew to have as much authorities as they have, but they're still not libertarians, Yeah.

frank:
1:30:15

There can't be two authorities. Right.

curt:
1:30:17

Yeah. And that's to some extent, even during the Covid Nation and stuff like that, it was. you know, certain Christian denominations and the Mormons were like the only little fragments of pushback against kind of that national scope. Oh, and the, the super Orthodox crazy Jews in New York. Well, yeah,

frank:
1:30:35

I mean, that's just it. It's like they're extremes in every, in every corner. And you know, quite honestly, I'm not gonna oppose the extreme as long as it doesn't impose on me. Yeah, fair. And that's the thing, it's like you are following that to its very furthest end. Yeah. As

curt:
1:30:52

long as my liberty to, to follow or not follow is still

frank:
1:30:55

in place. Please let me follow mine to my, my furthest end, right? Yeah. Now I'm not talking about relativism here. What I'm talking about is that each individual Yeah. Have

curt:
1:31:04

some values and

frank:
1:31:05

follow them to their end. Each individual here is having their own experience and, you know, whatever is there, whatever that divine thing is or what non thing is. Yeah. It is having its own expression through that person. and who am I to say what is right or wrong about what you're going through? Yeah. Yeah. All I can say is that that intuition that I had about the Mormon church and the, the secondary treatment of women and colored people. Yeah. I hate that word too. Yeah. People of color. But the thing that, the thing that I would look at is like, that bothered me so much that I couldn't live with it. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was like there was something there that was true that I couldn't ignore. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Fair. That's interesting. And yet I know people that are still very, very confident and comfortable in their faith there, and they have to come to their own conclusions. For

curt:
1:32:10

sure. Yeah. Well, and you can still love them and feel like they're great people without having them dev denounce their beliefs or whatever. Um, the other question that really came to mind, um, is like in your worship pastor service at, at Unity Church. Yeah. And to my understanding, unity is kind of like if you're Christian, you can come, if you're Buddhist, you can come if you're whatever. We're kind of a, you know, the Coexist sticker on a church basically, right?

frank:
1:32:38

Yeah. I Unity's an interesting movement in that it has Christian roots. Okay. Um, but it's not specifically Christian and, and each congregation is its own, it's its own mix. There's

curt:
1:32:49

not like one sexual organization, so less, it's less exclusionary. Christian. Is that a way to say that because that's part of the DNA kind of, or what people criticize about Christians generally. Is it They're exclusionary.

frank:
1:33:03

There's one of the things that I heard early on when I, when I took the job there Yeah. Was that Unity isn't a place to get your questions answered. It's a place to get your answers questioned, And I really liked that because it gave me the freedom at that point to say, you know, Yeah. This is a place where I can explore and I can, and I can learn and I can, yeah, I can have a path. Well, and hopefully

curt:
1:33:31

it's not prescribed open discussion, exploring that path. Yeah, exactly. Right. Interesting. So my, I guess my question is like, is there Jesus songs at Unity Church? Because

frank:
1:33:41

I, I sang them Um, there are, you know, and every congregation is different. There are some that sing all the old rugged cross songs, you know? Yeah. It's like, um, In our congregation, what I said was that we had, um, the best of Bill Gaither and Crosby Stills and Nash So it was like we had evangelical music in there as, as much as we had, you know, popular music. Because I think there is, there's a spiritual message to so much, especially music that was popular back in the sixties and seventies when everybody was actually questioning those. Yeah, yeah. Those, those constructs. Right. And

curt:
1:34:20

questioning it look legitimately not as a means of becoming popular or Yeah. Attracting attention, but because I'm struggling with this right here. Exactly. Right,

frank:
1:34:31

right now. Isn't that something? Yeah. Yeah. So my favorite hymn is Ripple by the Grateful Dead. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Yeah.

curt:
1:34:43

You got it, man. Yeah. Um, so I think I'm comfortable. almost comfortable leaving it there. Okay. If you woke up to a dream, um, where Jesus, uh, appeared to you in that dream, right At the end it was like, are you with me? Huh? And you woke up, what would you, what would you say? How could I

frank:
1:35:06

be against you? How, like that, how could I, I mean, I, there, I just don't think there's Absolutely, I don't think there's a way that can exist. Yeah. That is

curt:
1:35:14

against him. I've got plenty of ways to criticize your church. Yeah. Or various churches that have followed you, but Yeah. You Jesus, are pretty cool still

frank:
1:35:22

in my book. There's no question. I mean, I have no question the, that, that time when I was in the gospel of John for the first time with new eyes. Yeah. I fell in love. with that person. Yeah. That's awesome. You know? Thank you, thank you for sharing that, and that that has never gone away no matter what happened with the church.

curt:
1:35:43

Yeah. Fair. Um, let's talk about your family a little bit. Okay. Um, you've mentioned your wife and your son. There was no more children.

frank:
1:35:53

We had a daughter before. Our son was born about two years before, and she died at infants. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, it was rough, but, uh, again, um, grace. Grace in the midst of grief, man. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, um, a wonderful and horrible experience. Yeah. How old's your son now? 17 and climbing fast.

curt:
1:36:14

right. He does eat a lot right now. He eats

frank:
1:36:16

a lot and he's, he's wiser than everybody. of

curt:
1:36:19

course. At least in his own perspective. So we always do a one word description of your kids around here. Uh, you may have heard some of my podcasts in the past. Uh, do you have a word for, for your And what's his name? His name is Bohi.

frank:
1:36:32

Hey, bohi. Um, one word. Uh,

curt:
1:36:41

can't be hungry

frank:
1:36:42

or No, it's not that. Uh, the thing that is really, gosh,

curt:
1:36:49

words are so limited, aren't they?

frank:
1:36:52

Intentionally so by design, right? One word for Bodhi. He's a remarkable young man. Remarkable is the one Yeah. That I'll, I'll go

curt:
1:37:06

to. Remarkable. He remarked is one of the things I like to write.

frank:
1:37:13

He's remarkable in all the best ways. You know, it's like, um, he, he's just, I look at him in Marvel, you know, um, and he's, he's going through all of the stuff that teenagers go through. Yep. And I wouldn't wish it any other way, but, um, but he, he navigates things in a way that he tends to land on his feet. Yeah. And he tends to learn. Yeah. And he tends to, uh, to come out of it without a whole lot of damage to himself and others.

curt:
1:37:53

That's good. Which is good actually. That's a, that's a beautiful way. That's remarkable. I would say that's actually kind of my path through life in a lot of ways, is I bumped a lot against a lot of guardrails and learned a lot of things, but I haven't ever been really sined or damaged too hard, you know, and it's a blessing to be able to say that. Isn't

frank:
1:38:11

it cool? Yeah.

curt:
1:38:12

Life's great, man. Um, faith, family politics. Yeah. Uh, what do you wanna talk about in the political realm? We just had the State of the Union address this week. Do you wanna talk about that? Yeah. Or the Chinese five balloon. That's been all, all in the rage. Politics

frank:
1:38:25

are weird to me. Um, I think politics. Are always the last to catch up with with what really needs to happen happen the world For sure. And I think that's one of the things that it is kind of built into the design is that they have to be slow to respond. Um, kind of like they have to let other things happen first. Yeah. Before, before,

curt:
1:38:48

yeah. Political decisions can't send the firetruck out before the fire.

frank:
1:38:52

I don't have a well defined political stance. Um, I will have to say that I have been in both conservative and liberal and libertarian and, and

curt:
1:39:03

all those circles. All of the circles and comfortable in all those circles. Well,

frank:
1:39:06

I've found value in all of them. And that's the thing that I always want to put forward is like, I think that there are always things that we need to learn from each other. And when we close the door on somebody else because of a

curt:
1:39:19

belief cover our ears because they're stupid, because obviously they believe that.

frank:
1:39:24

I think that's to our peril. Hmm. Agreed. Because quite honestly, um, there are, there are things that are ahead of us that no political I ideology is ready for it. Mm-hmm. It's just there's no way that we can be fully prepared for what's ahead. And I'm gonna Are you saying ominously that? Well, no, I'm not gonna say it ominously because I don't think it's ominous. I think it's just a part of our, of our collective. Yeah. Growth and experience. I have to tell you, this artificial intelligence thing, to me, huge is a huge thing that we don't even begin to have the ability to know what its impact is gonna be both positive and negative. Yeah, I would agree with that. And so

curt:
1:40:10

it seems like almost potentially as big as the internet almost, it's gonna be bigger.

frank:
1:40:14

Yeah, it's gonna be bigger. And the thing that's really interesting is that what AI actually has the potential to do is to. centralized power in one person, right. Or a very few people. And the rest of the people are really not necessary because their labor has been replaced. Yeah. So what do we do with that Yeah. You know, and I don't know that, I don't know that we have the capacity to. conceive

curt:
1:40:47

that right now. So are you saying their labor has been replaced in a physical way or more right now, at least in a, in a theoretical way, like the writers and the whatever need not apply?

frank:
1:40:57

I don't think it's, I think it's becoming less theoretical by the day. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the best examples that we can give is that, you know, you go to any grocery store or department store now and there's a self checkout. Right. And it used to be that when you would go to that same store, there would be two shifts of full-time employees that were working the cash registers. And you would have interactions with them. Yeah. And they were participating in the economy because they were being paid for their labor. Right. Well, what happened when those machines came along and they were, they actually did replace a significant number of those live bodies. Sure. where did those people go in the economy? They had to go somewhere else, and most of them probably didn't have a lot of training or education. And that training in education isn't there for them yet. For what? What's next? Yeah. Yeah. So that has happened already. Hmm. And what we're gonna see next is the scale of that is gonna happen exponentially. And I don't think that there's any way in hell that we can be ready for that. Hmm. I just don't think there is.

curt:
1:42:10

So are you a gang gang? You wanna do universal basic income to,

frank:
1:42:14

I think that's a Band-Aid, and it's a bad band-aid to start with, right? Because I don't think you just create a bunch of laser, whatever. Again, again, what we're looking at is what is the value of currency based on. There isn't a, there isn't a standard of

1:42:30

value

curt:
1:42:30

for currency. It should be a life bars kind of thing. right? Like as long as you're alive, you just get a slow, it's like passing go on Monopoly. You just get some more life bars. I

frank:
1:42:40

don't, that's, those are the questions that I just don't think Yeah. That we have the answers to yet. And I think that that yang idea is one that's going to be a stop got measure that lasts for about a year, right? Before

curt:
1:42:52

it's ineffective. Yeah. Or before we're all broke because this whole society breaks down because people can't stand it. That some people are just sitting around.

frank:
1:43:00

Well, what we've gotta understand is that we're all gonna be sitting around at some point, you know, maybe, maybe what, what, what are our options? We don't know yet what those options are. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I'm just opening my eyes to and it's like, I look at it and I go, wow, I'm really interested to see. I'm, I think right now we're in a very exciting time because AI is actually, um, a great compliment to our own abilities. Sure. It's getting

curt:
1:43:28

smarter right? We're not, we're getting dumber while it's getting smarter in some place. No, I can't. I mean, if you look across the school systems and the depth of thinking like, yeah, you were talking about your wife and how she's kind of a Renaissance woman. I would consider myself a sort of a renaissance man. You know, I garden, I motorcycle, I write poems, I do podcasts, I whatever. There ain't that many of us.

frank:
1:43:54

The thing that's really interesting is that if we're looking at anything that can be repeated, can be replaced. Hmm. So then what has value? What, right. What do we base

curt:
1:44:10

market on? Only original thoughts need apply. And even then you run out of'em pretty soon. Like are the original thoughts? All my original thoughts are basically collaborations of different thoughts that other people have had before me. Yeah. In a lot of ways, you know, I don't have that many original, original thoughts.

frank:
1:44:26

My own, my own inclination at this point is that I think that there are gonna be three large phases that we go through with it. And the phase that we're in right now is the first of'em, and it's the exciting phase where we actually do see it's the

curt:
1:44:43

benefits unlocking

frank:
1:44:44

of value. Oh my God. It's like, just look at the things that people are doing right now with chat G P T that's only been around for a couple of months. Yeah. And how widespread that is already going. Yeah. And the things that they're able to do with that now and they improve day by day by day by day. Yep. Things like writing, advertising, copy, right. Things like, I mean, what if, what if you were. you know, project out a year from now and say, I would love to read a cozy mystery about a fireman in Maine. Right. And chat G p t for sure generates the whole

curt:
1:45:21

experience. Well and like my blog, you've probably read some of my blogs in the years I have. Yeah. Um, I just came up with my title, which is always what I do first. Yeah. And then I write the blog. And like this title is, is All You Need Is Love. And I bet if you put chat GTP on it and said, read all of Kurt's previous blogs and then use the title is All You Need is Love and Make Some Shit Up. It will do that. It would probably be amazing. Better than my shit. It

frank:
1:45:50

will sound like you. Right. And that's the thing that's like, it's like we're getting to the point where we can't tell the difference. Yeah.

curt:
1:45:56

And that that's, I don't have to think at all. I just have to push

frank:
1:45:59

go. That's the touring test. When we can't tell the difference between what computers do and what humans

curt:
1:46:05

do. Yeah. No, I think we process it in some ways. In some

frank:
1:46:08

ways. Oh yeah. Easily. For sure. But that's the thing. It's like this first wave is very exciting. It's like, wow, look at what I can do. Okay. So

curt:
1:46:15

that's first wave. Second wave is

frank:
1:46:17

for a solopreneur. Think about all the power that I have with AI as a super entrepreneur man. It's like for the next little while, I don't know how long, but for the next little while, my possibilities have just exponentially grown. Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's exciting. Wow. Middle, middle stage, all of a sudden. larger and larger segments of the workforce are being removed from the workforce. Right. Be being replaced by machine learning and by tech. And one of the things that we've gotta look at there is what is the critical mass as far as our economies, as far as our markets, as far as the value of anything. I mean, it might

curt:
1:46:57

be good actually, cuz we're having so few babies anymore. It'll be, it'll be a complete collapse. maybe, but maybe that's what we need is a complete collapse of the employment market to match up with our job filling ability as freaking,

frank:
1:47:11

I don't think we're gonna have jobs. I don't think jobs are a part of the far future. Mm-hmm. I think what's gonna be looking, what we're gonna be looking at is human beings that have complete and total time and resource freedom. And either that or

curt:
1:47:30

the matrix. Well yeah, that like one

frank:
1:47:33

of those, dude, that's not outrageous. That's not outrageous, I think. No, not at all. So the thing that I look at more than anything else with AI is that that middle stage is the part where governments are not gonna be able to keep up with the change. Right. The rate of change that happens and the impact that it has on actual people. There's so much

curt:
1:47:51

power, hunger though, within the governments that they're not gonna be able to allow that.

frank:
1:47:55

They're gonna want that. Right. They're gonna want to control that. Right. And so the potential for genocide with ai Oh yeah. Grows exponentially as well. Well, I

curt:
1:48:05

was just learning about the veterinary industry from a, somebody I talked to earlier today. Yeah. Do you know that the Mars organization owns like 70% of all like the dog food and veterinary services companies? Yeah. In the country they're taking, they're holding our dogs hostage. The whole,

frank:
1:48:21

yeah. I mean, that's just it. It's like,

curt:
1:48:22

and it's partly because AI can't take that over and dentistry too. That's why the Mormons are gonna like, it's gonna be the Mars family and the Mormons like being dentists and freaking veterinarians. That's going to succeed against the. Terminator

frank:
1:48:38

Well, I think the third stage. Okay. Getting past go there. Alright. Getting past that middle stage, which, sorry, I got stuck there. You know, if you want to, if, if you want, if you want me to tell you what I think the great tribulation that's talked about in the Bible is gonna be, yeah. Yeah. I think it's that middle

curt:
1:48:51

stage. Okay. Yeah.

frank:
1:48:52

The third stage is going to be when, when it's all integrated and we have adapted to, you know, that kind of thing.

curt:
1:49:05

Yeah. This Neurolink style. I

frank:
1:49:07

have a feeling though, my own intuition is that what we are gonna be about is humans, is that spiritual exploration is gonna be about the only thing that we have left, except for the exploration of space as people. Hmm. they can send probes out.

curt:
1:49:29

Well, why would he even do that? Yeah. Right. Like you, you should be able to power probes to somewhere. You should listen. What use does it have? Right? Well, I guess, but you can leave a library behind or something. I don't know. So, uh, Lex Friedman talked to some dude just a couple days ago for five hours. Yeah. And if you haven't listened to that one yet, it's a good one. Uh, I'll have to check it out. Yeah, it's solid. Leave it us on a kind of a downer here.

frank:
1:49:55

I'm going to,

curt:
1:49:56

I'll, I'll pick us up here. Okay. Right. So your local experience is your crazy experience of your lifetime that you're willing to

frank:
1:50:01

share. Crazy experience of my lifetime. Oh my gosh.

curt:
1:50:05

Crazy good. Crazy bad. Moment day. Oh, Hmm.

frank:
1:50:14

You stumped me, man. You don't have what? My local experience. I have a whole life full of My whole life has been a loco experience.

curt:
1:50:22

it's different than most all

frank:
1:50:24

we'll say with that, it has been absolutely bonkers, man. And I couldn't have ever predicted this and I couldn't have ever planned it. You know, it's, it is that ludicrous. Um, I ha if I were to have to point at one thing, the one thing that I look back on and just say, um, I'm not sure if that's really me, is that I was actually named the consultant of the year for the SPDC in 2020. Oh, I

curt:
1:50:47

remember that. I was, and it's like, you made a lot of

frank:
1:50:50

impact. Well, I made a lot of impact, but it's like

curt:
1:50:56

I'm just this little niche guy. Whatever. I'm

frank:
1:50:58

just, yeah. I'm just a no. Whatever. Dumb ass from Wyoming's. Like Well,

curt:
1:51:01

that's imposter syndrome right there. That'ss. Imposter syndrome. The thing

frank:
1:51:04

that's really interesting though is like, I, I look at it is like, It may be imposter syndrome maybe, but quite honestly, when they, when they said that I was the guy, I went,

curt:
1:51:17

oh, they didn't tell you ahead of time.

frank:
1:51:18

No. That's cool. I didn't know. I had no idea until we were in the Zoom meeting. It was during the pandemic. Right, right. In the zoom meeting. They, they were going and I was, I was doing something else. I was like, you're like what? Doing my phone or filing my nails or something like that. And they said, Franklin Taggart. And I thought, Franklin, what? Have I

curt:
1:51:35

done that here with us? Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Well, I think it was worthy because you've definitely invested in a whole lot of conversations and Yeah, man. Uh, could I ask like, as a curious point, because some people have answered it that way, like what's your perspective on local think tank as somebody that's kind of adjacent Yeah. To, and seen it evolve over all these years. Like, where am I fucking it up? Where, where are we doing good, like,

frank:
1:52:03

Well, I've seen, I've seen your organization grow and evolve over the years, and it's been exciting to see. I mean, your vision has been, you know, your vision has been a really good driver. But I think one of the things that I'm going to hang my hat on, um, first time I met Charlie. Hmm. Charlie talked about the think tank and he said, I wish I would've had that when I started in business. Yeah. And I think that that to me is the strongest testimonial. Charlie had 50 years in retail. Yeah. And he said, I wish I would've had this the first time year I was in business. Yeah. That to me is said enough. Yeah. You know?

curt:
1:52:47

Well, if you listen to this one, Charlie Morris, you're awesome.

frank:
1:52:50

Yeah. I haven't, I haven't seen Charlie in ages. I

curt:
1:52:51

haven't, well, they moved, moved to Arizona, oh. About three years ago. There's an awesome video of the hot rod that he and his son built and they took Oh man. First place in the Good Guy's National Car Show in their, like their third show. Yeah. So

frank:
1:53:05

anyway. Well bless you Charlie. I, I

curt:
1:53:07

miss you. I appreciate that. That's a, that's a good sentiment of like the diversity of people that appeals to Yeah. Yeah. Well thanks Franklin. The Franklin. This has been a lot of fun.

frank:
1:53:19

Kurt has been here. Yeah. I appreciate

curt:
1:53:21

it. We enjoyed it. And uh, if people wanna look you up, they should go to just franklin taggart.com.

frank:
1:53:27

Franklin taggart.com is the easiest way everything's found from there. It's my blog. It's my only blog. And it's the blog. Yeah. And it's got everything else on it about

curt:
1:53:36

me. All right. Well thanks so much. We'll see you next time. Perfect.