Community Highlights: Meet Howard & Danielle Taylor of Marriage on Deck

Today we’d like to introduce you to Howard & Danielle Taylor.

Hi Howard & Danielle, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We were both born & raised in the Inland Empire in homes that were impacted by divorce and separation. We experienced the full reality of not having two parents in the home, but through perseverance and hard work, our roads crossed in a Bible Study at Cal State Fullerton. Howard graduated with a dual degree in Radio, TV, Film and interned for shows in Hollywood for a short period until the writer’s strike occurred. At that time, he started working for Marriott & Hilton hotels1 and quickly rose up the ranks to becoming the youngest General Manager for the Hilton brand. Danielle received her degree in Criminal Justice and worked as a Probation Officer for the County and after 12 years, became the Ethics & Compliance Officer for the Department of Behavioral Health.

We have been together since 2001 and got married in 2005. From the moment we got married, other couples (young and old) would ask us for marriage advice. Since we were newly married and hadn’t experienced much life; we felt like we really had nothing to offer them. However, the requests kept coming and we continued to coach couples as a free side gig…never thinking we should actually turn it into a service! We always knew we wanted to be entrepreneurs, so immediately after getting married, we launched a videographer business recording weddings, music videos and different events. After doing that for about two years, we wanted to “level-up” and decided we’d use the money we made to buy a smoothie franchise; which turned out to be the worst business decision ever since it was the beginning of the 2008 great economic recession. Thank God we kept our jobs! After four years, we closed the business and flew to Beijing, China to lick our wounds and recoup our sanity. We pledged we would never start another business, which was super short-lived because we launched several more after that and started investing in real estate.

Sadly, in 2013 our first son passed away. This time of reflection taught us to live with more intention and purpose… however, we still didn’t recognize our purpose as a couple. In 2017, we started noticing that marriages in our family and our close circles were falling apart due to infidelity, drug addictions, mismanagement of expectations, etc. We took it personal that these marriages were getting attacked and decided we would take our marriage coaching serious and launched Marriage on Deck. We started recording marriage & relationship based causal videos on Facebook live to help get the word out and create a pipeline of people who needed our help. After the videos, we started speaking to couples every month through the marriage ministry at our church, contracting our marriage services with smaller churches that didn’t really have the resources or the numbers to launch a full marriage ministry themselves and serving the community through webinars and seminars.

We have been given the opportunity to produce our own show, Marriage on Deck, on the Christian Television Network, publish a curriculum-based workbook, The Fundamentals of Marriage: 8 Essential Practices of Successful Couples; and launch a video-based Bible study series on the global platform, Right Now Media.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Coaching couples has always been a smooth ride. What hasn’t been so smooth is the development and expansion of some of the things we’ve created. For instance, we produce, edit and script our show in-house. We have churned out almost 26, thirty-minute episodes with just ourselves and one videographer…all the while balancing a full-time career, a new baby, a six years old on virtual learning, prioritizing the couples that have hired us, writing our book and creating courses.

Our second major challenge has been expansion/marketing & advertising. It was important for us to figure out how to get beyond our local area and advertise our services on a broader scale, from regional to national and then international. After much deliberation, followed by procrastination, we hired a professional to assist us and it was the best decision we made.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Marriage on Deck?
Marriage on Deck is a global media company focused on providing coaching, classes, resources and additional enrichment material to those who are married, engaged and seriously dating. We also develop and create videos, courses and other resources for churches and companies. We started Marriage on Deck to uplift, inspire and encourage couples to get married and stay married through biblical principles. To date, we’ve served over 4,000 couples with resources on the purpose of marriage, marital roles and how to powerfully navigate as a unit.

We coach couples that are:

* Single/dating individuals who want a plan for how to prepare for marriage

* Engaged couples who need to work out a few kinks prior to the big day or just want assistance in helping create boundaries and manage expectations; as well as,

* Couples on the brink of divorce.

What sets us apart from others in the marriage coaching & counseling space for starters is that our clients get a male and female perspective..not just a male OR a female. Secondly, we focus more on creating effective strategies, developing/managing boundaries and expectations and champion accountability for true change so the couple can move forward in their relationship with peace, purpose and passion. We’re not into psycho-analyzing why people are the way they are or delving into childhood histories to get a glimpse. Our main goal is to help someone realize who they are today, who they can be in the future, what their spouse’ needs are and how to merge those visions.

We are extremely proud of the couples that we’ve been able to impact and help save their marriage. We have worked with some couples who, on the surface, didn’t seem like restoration was an option. But after working with us, their relationship was fully restored and they are still together and actually happy about it. Our mission is to decrease the divorce rate & increase the happy marriage rate. So when we do those two things, we feel like kids in a candy store.

Our offerings include:
Marriage Coaching
*1 on 1
*Group
*Intensives: Marriage Remodel and Confronting & Working through Pornography

Classes-these vary from month to month. Check our website www.marriageondeck.com for more information.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Spending quality time with our two sons as well as each other. Due to the loss of our first son, we sincerely are grateful for every moment get to love on them. We also love vacationing and have traveled to more than 25 countries, which makes us feel like life’s possibilities are endless.

Contact Info:

• Email: hello@marriageondeck.com
• Website: www.marriageondeck.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/marriage_on_deck/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marriageondeck
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpTodU-hOOxp8i2auogYQSg

Image Credits
Celina Ochoa