Gail Taylor left behind a successful career as an investment advisor to go all in with music - in her 50s! Now, as a Canadian songwriter, author, keynote speaker and entrepreneur, she's a passionate advocate for the power of music to inspire change. Her new book, Curve Balls, is coming to shelves soon thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $10K.
In this episode, Gail shares her remarkable story and her tips for using Kickstarter. We talk about her journey from her early years using drugs as a form of escape, to becoming a successful investment advisor and then her pivot to music. She shares the behind the scenes of the Nashville music industry, how she uses music to help others, and the ins and outs of launching a creative project on Kickstarter.
This is a great episode for creatives who...
This episode is brought to you by our Premium Subscriber Community on Patreon and Buzzsprout
For a summary of this episode and all the links mentioned please visit:
Episode151: Creative Canadian: Songwriter and Author Gail Taylor
You can find Gail at gailtaylormusic.com as well as @gailtaylormusic on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and TikTok. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn.
You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.
You can connect with the podcast on:
For a list of all available episodes, please visit:
And She Looked Up Creative Hour Podcast
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
Gail Taylor left behind a successful career as an investment advisor to go all in with music - in her 50s! Now, as a Canadian songwriter, author, keynote speaker and entrepreneur, she's a passionate advocate for the power of music to inspire change. Her new book, Curve Balls, is coming to shelves soon thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $10K.
In this episode, Gail shares her remarkable story and her tips for using Kickstarter. We talk about her journey from her early years using drugs as a form of escape, to becoming a successful investment advisor and then her pivot to music. She shares the behind the scenes of the Nashville music industry, how she uses music to help others, and the ins and outs of launching a creative project on Kickstarter.
This is a great episode for creatives who...
This episode is brought to you by our Premium Subscriber Community on Patreon and Buzzsprout
For a summary of this episode and all the links mentioned please visit:
Episode151: Creative Canadian: Songwriter and Author Gail Taylor
You can find Gail at gailtaylormusic.com as well as @gailtaylormusic on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and TikTok. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn.
You can find Melissa at finelimedesigns.com, finelimeillustrations.com or on Instagram @finelimedesigns.
You can connect with the podcast on:
For a list of all available episodes, please visit:
And She Looked Up Creative Hour Podcast
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
This week's episode of the and she Looked Up podcast is brought to you by our premium subscriber community on Patreon and Buzzsprout. Their ongoing financial support of the show ensures I can continue to bring the podcast to you. Want to help out? Head over to patreoncom forward slash and she looked up. That's patreoncom, forward slash and she looked up. There. You can join the community for free or you can choose to be a premium supporter for $450 a month, and that's in Canadian dollars. Paid supporters get access to a monthly exclusive podcast episode only available to premium subscribers. You can also click the Support the Show link in the episode notes on your podcast player to support us via Buzzsprout, where you will also get access to each month's exclusive premium supporter episode. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all our monthly supporters. They are the engine that keeps the podcast running and they're a pretty cool bunch too. And now let's get on with the show.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the and she Looked Up podcast. Each week we sit down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. I'm your host, melissa Hartfield and, after leaving a 20-year career in corporate retail, I've been happily self-employed for 12 years. I'm a graphic designer, an illustrator and a multi-six figure year entrepreneur in the digital content space. This podcast is for the artists, the makers and the creatives who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the and she Looked Up podcast. As always, I'm your host, melissa, and on today's episode, this is our first creative Canadian woman episode of the new year, and my guest today is songwriter, author, speaker and entrepreneur, gail Taylor. Welcome to the show, gail.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 1:I am really looking forward to our conversation today because you have done a lot of very interesting things and you're doing some very interesting things right now. You have a book coming out this spring which you've funded with Kickstarter, which I don't think we've ever had anybody on the show who's done a Kickstarter. So we'll definitely be talking about that. But you've also just had a really interesting journey, and so, for those of you who may not be familiar with Gail, she is, as I mentioned, a Canadian songwriter, she's a keynote speaker, she's an author and she's an entrepreneur and she's passionate advocate for the power of music to inspire change, which, to this music lover's music loving heart, makes me very happy. So welcome to the show, gail. And first question I ask everybody who comes on the show is did you feel like you were creative when you were a kid?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely not. I was so far from being a creative and I think partly how I defined that was I'm one of six siblings, I have five siblings, so I'm one of six kids. And the others were creative, right, they were artists, they studied fine arts, they one is a puppeteer and like they were all very, very creative people. And so for me, yeah, no, I felt quite the opposite. I thought my brain was only functioning on the opposite half of everybody else.
Speaker 1:Which is really interesting, because you wound up becoming an investment advisor, which I don't think is a field a lot of people would associate with creativity. But what led you to becoming an investment advisor? And then how did you go from there to becoming a songwriter and now an author Like that's a big shift.
Speaker 2:So what happened was I had a little bit of a curveball thrown at me and my childhood. So when I was 12 years old, my father died and my mom was in her mid 30s and she took her six kids and she moved us from a small town in Northern Ontario to Ottawa. And so, going from the little town to the city, losing a parent, 12 years old, I lost it. The city literally swallowed me up. I started experimenting with drugs, with alcohol, with high risk behavior and Melissa. I was literally only 12. And I dropped out of school as soon as I turned 16. And I capped with the mind altering substances for like a decade and a half. And then what happened was one day I woke up and it was like, oh my God, there's got to be more to life than this. I got to find a way to shift, and that was actually the starting point for my personal growth, for learning about peak performance. It was in the 70s.
Speaker 2:The first book I read was Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. I mean, that book is all about finding your passion and finding out what it is that you want. So what does a 20-something year old dysfunctional person want? Money, I decided financial independence. That's what I was going to go for. I wanted to be a millionaire. That was it. I wanted to be a millionaire, so I started studying how to get out of this roller coaster. I was on and I started studying how all those successful people became successful. And so that's what moved me. At first it was real estate, and then it was as a financial advisor. That's what moved me into the industry. And then the whole goal was to build my clients financial independence and my own.
Speaker 2:And then I hired a coach one day because I just wasn't quite there. I was managing about 80 million, I had created the millionaire network, but something was missing. So I hired a coach and he said what are you all about and what's your practice all about? And I said easy, I want to make my clients financially independent. I want to make myself financially independent so that I can retire and go on and do philanthropic work and volunteer work and make the world a better place, because that's what I'm here for. And this guy said to me yeah, that's not how it works. Yeah, don't work until you retire and then go to your passion. You've got to find a way to incorporate your passion into your job, or you might as well sell your practice right now and move on. And so I took his suggestion and we worked together and through a bunch of exercises, I learned about socially responsible investing and it was like, oh my God, this is exactly what I got to do.
Speaker 2:So I decided to shift a traditional practice to a socially responsible practice. And for the listeners out there that haven't worked with socially responsible investing, another word for it is ESG, so E is the environment, so we bought companies that had a neutral to positive effect on the environment and that understood climate change existed. On the social side, we worked with companies that weren't doing sweatshops or hiring thugs to run their company and abuse their employees in developing countries. On the governance side, hey, we wanted diverse boards. We wanted to know that there were women on boards, and so once I did that decision, oh my God, I had to bring it to my clients and they didn't hire me to be a Duke gooder.
Speaker 2:So I was a hair cut, I know. I thought, okay, I'll probably lose about 20% of my practice, right, and maybe go down to about 64 million. Well, the opposite happened. They loved it. They absolutely. Why didn't you bring this to me sooner. I mean, the returns were the same because they were conservative retirement portfolios. So my practice ended up growing and growing and I hit $130 million when I decided to sell it and move into the music business, that's awesome because I think there's a lot of people out there, particularly creatives, who do fine investing.
Speaker 1:I don't want to say scary maybe, but it's not something they're comfortable with necessarily, and they don't necessarily know a lot about socially responsible investing. It's not something you hear a lot about. You're hearing about it more in the last year or two, but prior to that you didn't hear about it very often, so it sounds like you were actually way ahead of that curve?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, absolutely. It had started and there was a movement, but it was a lot in the credit unions.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I worked for Wood Gundy, which was CIBC's brokerage house, so I was in a full-service brokerage house and, you're right, it hadn't hit the mainstream the way it has now. And in Canada we have the Responsible Investment Association out of Toronto. I sat on their board and I worked with a lot of folks. It's funny, because in business they always say find your unique niche. Why should somebody work with you versus somebody else? And my thought was, yeah, I don't want my unique niche to be unique, I want all the advisors in the land. I mean, it would make this world a better place, right? If everybody was using the triple bottom line and caring for not just the shareholder but the stakeholders, right, the employees, the community you're in.
Speaker 1:And so profits still matter, but so does the other components, I think when people realize that the profits are still there, you can do the right thing and still make money. It's a big shift in people's thinking.
Speaker 2:I know, I know, and I think it's so important and I think it's just getting more and more momentum right now. So anyone that's listening that this is a new concept to them. Hey, go Google it and check it out, because it's an amazing option that you have. So then what happened was when I was 58 years old, I started taking piano lessons and I had no music background. I had never studied any instrument, I had never had a lesson, nothing. And so I started taking piano lessons and for two years I loved it. I was starting with the scales, you know, cd, yeah, and I loved it so, so much.
Speaker 2:And then, so after a couple of years, music started flooding back into my life, because, you know, when we're in our teens and our 20s, that's when music is, you know, really in our life. I hadn't even realized that I had eliminated it, because even in the car, instead of listening to music, I was listening to books on finance and economics, and so it started flooding back into my life. So after two years, I thought, okay, I'm going to retire, I'm financially independent. So I was 61. I thought I'm going to retire a little sooner than I had planned, sell my practice and study music full time. So that's what I did and you know, in this day and age, studying music so easy like I was staying with school of music and it was online. It's one of the best universities in the world and I didn't even have to audition, I just had to pay and I qualified to get that level of education. So you know university about bird up private teachers.
Speaker 2:And so two years into that, I thought, ooh, and I wait, I'll backtrack. I was taking bass, guitar lessons, songwriting, ear training, keyboard. I was just, you know, learning the whole industry. So two years later I decided we have met myself as a musician. Now, when I shared that story, right up to that point, folks kept saying, oh my God, that's so inspiring. I'm going to go do bideep, bideep, some dream they had put on the back burner. And, melissa, I heard that so many times over and over again from strangers, people on the airplane. I just got it. So I thought, heck, I'm going to come out of retirement, I'm going to start a business, dale Taylor Music and I'm going to become a keynote speaker and I'm going to use my music to inspire folks to become their best selves. And yeah, that's how I got to where I am here today.
Speaker 1:So I love the fact that you had, like no music training until you were in your fifties. That's awesome. And you went in hard too. You did all. I did eight years of Royal Conservatory piano when I was a kid, so I had to do the ear training and the harmony and the theory and all of it. And one of the best gifts my parents could have given me honestly just the gift of music. To be able to give a kid that when they're young is amazing, and the fact that you went back and did it later, and I know so many people who have done that as well.
Speaker 1:They've picked up a guitar, They've got their grandmother or their aunt's dusty old piano holding photographs in the living room that nobody touches and they just decide hey, you know what, I'm going to give this a try and it just sparks something in them. So that's really cool.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's interesting that you said that about the Royal Conservatory, because that's a lot of the folks that said I'm going to start playing the piano again. Yeah, their parents gave them the lessons. They got to a certain level and then, when they became a teen or in the early 20s, they dropped it. And one of the reasons that they said they dropped it often was classical versus contemporary. Yes, right, they were listening to new music, to pop music, whether it was rock or country or, and so, yeah, I made that shift. I did it up to grade four in the Royal Conservatory and for the next year I shifted a new group called Conservatory Canada, which was contemporary music, and they had to move me back a year because now, all of a sudden, you have to do improv. It's not about the notes on the score anymore. So it was like, ooh, so then I shifted. But yeah, having that background for sure, I appreciate you saying that it was a gift your parents gave you.
Speaker 1:It was. I'm very fortunate. Both my parents are massive music lovers and listen to everything from opera to folk music to rock and roll. Like I, grew up with a very eclectic music education, nice.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:And it runs. I am probably the least gifted musician in my entire extended family and everything, but I still had all that musical background, but yeah, so I think that's amazing that you did that, and I love the idea of using music to inspire change in people. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how you do that, because I think music is something that innately, as humans, we are just drawn to. I mean, you play a piece of music to a baby and they start to move, like it's just built into our DNA.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. I've already got the one year old and the two year old grandson playing little pretend pianos and music into them. I turned out when I was doing all my studies. It turned out I wasn't a natural on the piano. I mean learning at that age. I practice like I can do two to four hours a day. So I'm getting there. I'm at an intermediate level, but it's not something that came as natural to me as songwriting.
Speaker 2:Songwriting turned out to be my super talent and I always say it's because I talk so much and songs are really just stories turned into lyrics. So my songs are all inspirational stories and their stories inspired by something that happened in my life. Right, typically, when you're writing a song, you do write the story. First. You spend five minutes and you write a story and then you turn that story into lyrics. And because you know, I told you on the onset of this call how I started studying personal growth in the 70s. I didn't stop.
Speaker 2:I spent the last 40 years studying personal growth and peak performance and that a lot of the tools that I acquired was what allowed me to get to the level I got to in life and to, you know, create the what I call my best life, and so, though, the songs are all inspirational songs, and so I can, as a keynote speaker, I can share a story and some tools that might help you get through something like, let's say, time management.
Speaker 2:Time management is one of them, and then I play the song on the big screen with the video. Time is on your Side and it's all like really upbeat music so you can get the audience up and dancing. Or, if you can't get them up, get them doing the charity, because that lets them learn more and focus more on what I'm saying. Right, because by getting up like you, you know, if you've studied peak performance, they'll tell you every 20 minutes get up, walk around, get some, get yourself. So doing it with music is just like putting it on steroids and then getting your focus that much back back in place?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. There's something about music that just breaks down a lot of barriers, not just between people but within ourselves. So I mean it's sometimes you just need to turn the music on when you're having a bad day and have like a little dance break in your office or your studio, and yeah, so I love that you use that and, by the way, for everyone listening, if you want to go listen to some of the girls' songs, she has them all on her website, which we will link to in the show notes. And you've done a lot of work with, as you mentioned, recording artists in Nashville and you've had quite a few of your songs recorded, and so tell us a little bit about that process. Like, how did you get your music into the hands of other people once you realized that songwriting was your thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I actually didn't get it in the hands of other people in the traditional sense of it. I produced all my own music. So I ended up in the. When I was going through the education phase, I ended up finding a songwriter teacher out of Nashville and she became a really close friend of mine and we do a lot of our of co-writing together, and so then I also found a studio in Nashville that records for musicians, and so what I did was I hired that studio.
Speaker 2:So what happens is I'll write the song, I'll do my story and I'll usually take a first pass at my lyrics, and then I'll have a session with Mallory and Mallory Trinnell. I'll give her a shout out because she's a Nashville musician with Crimson Calamity, and so Mallory and I will sort of fine tune the words, and then she'll ask me what I want the melody to be, what I want the genre to be, and so also, okay, I want this one to be country or I want this one to be rock. So let's say, I want this one to be country. I want it to be a fast, upbeat sound. So maybe we make the tempo somewhere around 125, 120. And let's go. I might pick a key. It often changes because the vocalist really decides how high or low that song's going to be.
Speaker 2:I like the lower all per voice. I mean, that's my thing, the raspy. I grew up with rock, right.
Speaker 1:The raspy female voice. Yeah, that's a hard one to do too.
Speaker 2:I love it. So then we'll work on it and then we'll make a demo. Once we've got you know she'll start. She's a singer, so she'll start doing with her guitar the melody and I'll be able to say I love it, but instead of going up at this section, go down, or can you make it a little bit faster. So we'll figure something out together, put the chords behind it and then, and then either she'll make the demo with her guitar and her voice or we'll put it on the piano I could do the piano part, or she can and then, once I have this demo, I send it down to my studio that I work with and I'll say okay, here's a song I'd like you to produce, and they charge me a fee. They have their own musicians in house and like a level musicians, these folks like, like the key keyboardist when I'm not playing keyboards on it, and he is. He goes on tour, he plays for Tim McGraw and it's natural, they're all amazing, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the bass guitar goes on tour with Miranda Lambert. Like, these guys are unbelievable and they have vocalists. So I'll go through the vocalists and listen to the different samples and pick the vocalists that I like the best for that particular song. And so then, when it comes to the day to produce it, I'll go on a zoom call with them, I'll have it on my headset so they'll take a pass at it, and then they'll ask me what do you want different? And I mean, they just have to listen to my demo once. That's how good they are. And then I'll just take a run at it and they'll even know okay, you know, when it's time they'll record it on the first try and then they'll say, okay, bass guitar, do you need any changes? Yeah, could you play? I want to read you verse two, because he knows that he hit a note too light or too hard, and so so, yeah, we go through that process and and knock out the knock it out. You know, one time when I was down there recording, one of the guys says, hey, can I add a banjo into this section? And I said, no, it's rock. But yeah, I'm so impressed with them. It's Beard Studio and anyone can hire them.
Speaker 2:So if you have any musicians listening and folks often ask me why I record in Nashville and not Canada I can't afford to record here. Yeah, yeah, I'm hoping I'll get to that stage, but right now it cost me a third of the price to do it in the States, and that's even with the currency exchange. A third of the price for a level musicians and the turn around is about two weeks. So for here I have to pay three times more and it takes three months. Right, it's just my experience here. My research here has been darn. I can't. I can't do it in Canada yet. I'm hoping that'll change and I'm guessing it probably started because I haven't looked into moving back to doing it. You know, north of in our world I haven't looked at it in a few years, so perhaps they should again. But but yeah, that's the process and I have a moniker. So I have a band name and it's called Gail Tia's Charged.
Speaker 1:And I am a little embarrassed to admit how long it took me to pick up on that play on words I was doing my research at dawn on me on Tuesday I think I was like oh, that's very, that's very funny. I like that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, because I am, because I don't sing, I don't do my own vocals. Now I'm talented enough that I can play my own keyboards, but only in the studio, right, I couldn't play live. I'm not there yet. I'm not live musician material, I mean for family bands, stuff like that, but not not this, but and it. But when you record. Keep in mind, when you record in a studio, if one of my songs is too fast for what I'm at, then I can record it at a lower, at a lower pitch, and then we just increase it Speed it up, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just do midi tracks and increase the, the, the, the speed. And so it's so cool what technology can do.
Speaker 1:The behind the scenes process of of creating a piece of music is fascinating to me. Like that was so interesting getting to hear how you do that. And in today's world where you can, you don't even need to be there, you can just be part of it on zoom to see what they're doing. And you know, I watched a documentary on Taylor Swift several months ago and how she just records snippets into her iPhone and sends them to her producer and says, like what about this? Or how about you know? And it's just, we have so many tools at our disposal now to make it a very accessible process for people and I think that's really cool.
Speaker 2:So and that, yeah, that's amazing too, because I mean, before I wouldn't have been able to bring my songs to the world without a label, right, I would have needed to get picked up by a label, I would have needed a mainstream artist to take on the songs. But now there's distribution companies like I use one called DistroKid and I I upload the song to DistroKid with all the information and it goes on Spotify, on Apple, on on every streaming service, and then I do videos with them and put that on YouTube, and so, yeah, I created my own version of a musician and, just like technology allows us to get out there, which is like, I'm fascinated by it, I love it.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting. We had another guest on the show it's probably been about two years now Sharon Marie White, and she. She was a performer in her in her teens and her 20s and then she had a family and she started doing other things and left her music career behind and she went back to it, I believe, in her late 50s as well, and now she tours with her husband during the summer in their RV and she writes all her music and she records and she's she's charted in Canada and she's she's just doing her thing and I think it's, I think it's amazing that she's been able to go back to it and do what she really truly loves. We'll put a link to that episode in the show notes for any of you who are musicians or wanting to go down the path of being a musician, and you can check out that episode as well. So, yeah, very cool.
Speaker 1:Now you have decided to also write a book. You've got a book coming out this spring, so it's called Kerbalz Reinventing Yourself at Any Age, and I believe the pre-order link is live now. Here it's at gailtaylormusiccom slash new book and we will put a link to that in the show notes as well. But what, what made you have the desire to sit down and write a book?
Speaker 2:So it was actually a suggestion to me and I jumped on it. I hired an entertainment lawyer. So once I got into this, started up my business and started going down this track, I started, I hired an entertainment lawyer and on one of the early calls I was having with him and you know, talking about the keynote speeches and what I was doing, I I've been, I've been speaking for like 25, 35 years. I just didn't do it as a career. I did it in finance. I spoke at conferences and to investors all the time. But he said to get the credibility that you want, write a book. And I thought, oh, no problem, I've already written one, this'll be my second one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause what happened was I used to teach a course for the University of Alberta, for the Faculty of Extension, called Introduction to the Financial Markets. It was a night course and when I was teaching that I taught it for about five years I couldn't find anything I wanted to use as a textbook or something that this that my adult students could reference to. I couldn't find anything I liked, so I wrote it. I wrote my own textbook that you could use and, although it's not really available now because it was time sensitive to what was going on in the markets at the time. I wrote it and I self published it and I went through that whole experience. So, to go through this one, I thought, yeah, this'll be awesome.
Speaker 2:So so the book's called curveballs and you know, sometimes you go listen to a motivational speaker or an inspirational speaker and you walk out of there and you think, oh my God, I can take over the world, I am going to go do whatever I dream about doing, and then the next morning when you wake up you're still there, but it's diminished by 50% the next day. It's diminished by 25% the next day. Oh, back to the routines. Well, my book is going to be there to keep you going. Right, it's for the follow through.
Speaker 2:The idea of doing it was oh my God, I can give these folks something that they can use to follow through so that they can continue. I mean, to me that's the biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful people. And you're defining success I'm not by your own definition of success. For me, I really believe that the main reason and the main difference is follow through. Right, if you could get them to follow through. So the book is talks about personal stories and how I got over hurdles and the tools that I used. And then if I wrote a song that was inspired by that story in that chapter, I'm putting a little QR code in right into the book so that you can go on your phone and listen to the song that was inspired by that story. That's great.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing more and more people do that in books. A friend who wrote a cookbook a few years ago put QR codes in that took you to a video tutorial of how to make the recipe and I thought that was really neat.
Speaker 2:So that is really cool, yeah, I know I didn't invent that and I also didn't invent any of the tools that I talk about. I'm not taking credit for, for I, like I said, I've been studying since the 70s. So whether we start doing Napoleon Hill or Tony Robbins or you go through them all, I used all the gurus and I found the overlap to be, towards the end, like I'd still studying, and the overlap is like 70, 80 percent. Everybody's saying the same thing in different words, and so, and, and you know so, my thought is, if I mean, if I could get people, if I could get one person, but if I could get people to shift the context of something that they're struggling with into some, something that gives them a better life, then that's the ultimate for me. You know, that's the absolute ultimate. And so, you know, sharing the tools that actually worked for me and you heard a little bit about my beginning. It's not, you know, I just I would just be so honored if it helped other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, and you've decided to go down the route of self-publishing this, which more and more people are doing. I think it's fantastic that people have that opportunity, but you also decided to do it as a Kickstarter project, which I think is so interesting, because I'm seeing more and more creatives use crowdfunding to launch projects that are near and dear to them, and so maybe we could talk a little bit about that. What was it that made you decide to go down the crowdfunding path with this?
Speaker 2:So it started with one of the courses that I took at Berkeley School of Music, and it was a marketing course. It was a music marketing, and one of the different things that they talked about was all the different ways a musician can get revenue, because you know like, again, your listeners that aren't in the music industry. Their industries are shifting just as much as the music industry with AI, with everything else that's happening in the world right now, and so what used to work doesn't work anymore. Some musicians used to make money from albums and CDs, and that's not happening anymore. Streaming is taking up 90% and the royalties is not something that a musician could live on, unless they're mainstream. Okay. So, yeah, taylor Swift and John Legend, yeah, yeah, but not guilty. And so, learning about all the different avenues that you can go down, and one of them was crowdfunding, and so I started doing some research, and here's some of the things. If you're crowdfunding in any industry. Here's some of the things that I learned that I'll share with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the first thing is that, depending on what platform you use, I used Kickstarter, so with Kickstarter, it's all or none. So whatever you set your limit to, you have to make it or you don't get anything. And so there are others out there, like Indiegogo, and there's other ones out there, reputable platforms, that don't have that. But I used that one because it was recommended to me by the professor, because we had an assignment on doing one, and this was a few years ago, and when I sent the assignment in, I said, hey, at some point in the future I'm making this a real thing, so could you market my assignment like hard and like tell me if there's anything that you recommend I do differently. And he didn't suggest that I stick with the Kickstarter person. But the biggest thing is is most Kickstarter projects are funded by friends and family and colleagues, so don't go out there and start with thinking that strangers are going to just give you this money. Start in terms of do I have a? You know it's crowdfunding. Do you have a crowd?
Speaker 1:Yes, you need a crowd, you gotta have a crowd to do crowdfunding.
Speaker 2:So that was the first thing that I learned, and so I went out. I originally was going to do 25,000 and I brought it down to 10,000 and said, okay, 10,000 is realistic. And then you make all these rewards that people get, and the rewards are basically your product, right? So so you know, for this amount of a pledge, you get a copy of my book. For this amount of a pledge, you get a signed copy and downloads of all my songs. I have a catalog right now of 13 songs and I'm putting out another three or four this year, and so so then, if you do a thousand dollars, then you can have mentoring sessions, like it was all it was all designed to reward. I had keynote speeches in there, I had custom songs in there, but it was basically what I do. So support me and you're basically buying my product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's what it is.
Speaker 2:I think people don't realize that, but yeah yeah, yeah, that's what it is, and so what I did was I made. I have a mailing list and I sent it out to all the mailing list. I did across all my social media hey, I'm doing a Kickstarter, it's going live in three weeks. There's a lot of prep work, Like there's three months easy, if not longer, prep work and then of pre-launching marketing and so, once you get you know, I'm sending emails to my whole email list, to my family, to people I did my MBA with. You know, I'm sending them out to everybody saying hey, I'm going live in a couple of weeks. Would you consider supporting me? I'm giving them all the information you know. Hit me back with how much you're thinking you'd contribute so that by the time I went live, I already knew that I had 65 to 70% of the money, and that's what they tell you. Try to get as much as close to 100% in the first 24 hours if you want strangers to pick you up.
Speaker 2:Right the algorithm and the strangers, yeah, and it kind of worked for me in the sense that I got about 70% funded in the first 24 hours and that did push me into Kickstarter's eyesight. You know, their algorithm made them take a look at me and I got a little email from them saying congratulations, we've picked you as one of the projects that we love and now we'll share you with all our folks and you can use that on your social media, and so that was really really nice that I was able to do that. And then over the coming time period, I ended up getting the other 30%. So I ended up just over 100% in the 45 day time period and I say go 45 days, don't go 30. My recommendation is 45 because, wow, it's a lot of work and you learn as you go along, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've heard that. I've heard it's far more work than people realize Because it's basically you're doing a lot of the marketing upfront before the project, even before you actually write the book, although I know some people have already written or made the thing prior to, but they just need the funding to get it out there into the world.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, a lot of work and the video. When you first do a site, the first thing people see is your video. That's where you have to spend your most time and resources, because it's a video, not good. They're not going any farther. So, yeah, make sure that that really pops. That was the recommendation that I got. Make sure that the video and a lot of crowdfunding projects get like 200%, 3000%. It doesn't always stop at 100%. Perhaps I'll do one in the future that'll go to that, and a lot of physicians will say it's to fund my upcoming album and one year tour. So I did my upcoming book and one year on the speaking circuit and it gave me enough money to hire people to work with us editors and in the whole book gap and then to hire people to work on the promotional of booking speaking gigs for me. So, yeah, that 10,000 is going to go a long way.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you that, like, what you're using the money for, because there's so many different ways that people do use that money. So you're using it to have people help you get out there and get and do more speaking gigs and things like that. And so once the book is ready to go, obviously everybody who was who supported you on Kickstarter will get their copies. And then what is your plan to get it out into the rest of the world? Are you going to sell it at your speaking gigs? Like, is that part of the plan?
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely it'll be at the speaking gigs. It'll probably be on Amazon. It'll be on my website. I'm actually talking about. You commented about publisher. I'm actually talking to a few publishers right now, as well as distributors, and so I'm still in the process of deciding. My store that I have on my website, is a little bit different than the traditional musician store. In fact, instead of doing t-shirts, I did inspirational pendants. Yeah, I saw that. Like I'm actually wearing one right now. Mine says staying young on it which is one of my songs right, so it's all from lyrics of my songs.
Speaker 2:But what I say to folks is, when you're like, your internal dialogue is a big part of your ability to succeed, right, I said follow through is important. Well, your internal dialogues, what lets you follow through? And so when I learned that at early, at an early stage, what I used to do and I still kind of do it sometimes, but right now, if I find myself in my head and I think it was Tony Robbins that says, if you're in your head, you're dead If I find myself in my head thinking limited thoughts, I grab my pendant right, and this is the whole concept behind it Youth it as like a tactile item and I'll grab it and I'll rub it and I'll scratch it and I'll say garbage in garbage out, or staying young. I mean, I stole that garbage in garbage out from an Olympic athlete many years ago.
Speaker 2:That's what she used to say, so I'd be driving to work in my head garbage in, garbage out. It's better when you're alone and people are watching you walk down the mall. Garbage in garbage out. So yeah. So the whole point of this is, you know, rub it and remind yourself to shift context and start thinking about what you want and not what you don't want and what your limits are. So yeah, my pendants and my book are are my two merch products, which is, like I said, a little bit less than the traditional artists would do, but it's me, I love that.
Speaker 1:Actually, I love the pendant as almost like a. Like you said, I am exactly the same. I have two necklaces and a ring that have things inscribed on them that just remind me of what I'm doing. What I'm doing, and I do exactly the same thing. I sit there and I fiddle with them when I'm yeah, so I think oh, that's it right, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:You hear that, yeah, I mean, and even like for the men, I mean I did some of them with the matte finishes and ropes, but, heck, you could put it in your pocket, right, it could be a pocket, it could be in your pocket like a coin or you know, like AA and NA have those chips right, so you know it doesn't have to be around your neck. Some folks that don't wear necklaces will keep it underneath and some will, you know, wear it on top. But yeah, and one of the ones the most popular ones is it says I got this yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:I love that because it's just something about having that physical thing to ground you back to down to reality. You know, it's almost like a fidget spinner in a way, I guess, for people who use those to kind of calm themselves down. But, yeah, so that's really cool. I love that you did In concept, yeah, and I just want to say to everybody listening if you are trying to figure out ways to branch out with different sources of revenue and different promotional avenues, musicians are a great group to watch because they have had to be ahead of the curve that the rest of us are just sort of getting on to for much longer.
Speaker 1:The music industry was one of the very first to kind of get hit by technology and have gone through some radical change, and musicians are incredibly creative at figuring out ways to promote themselves and to earn a living. So I always look to musicians to see what they're doing and figure out how I can adapt that. I think it's a great group to keep an eye on because, yes, things are changing so fast right now for all of us. I've been wanting to do an episode on AI for a while and I just I don't even know where to start, because every time you turn around, it has changed and I feel like anything I do will be out of date in a week or two. So, yeah, musicians are a great group to keep an eye on for that kind of thing For those of you out there looking for other opportunities to earn some extra dollars with your creative work.
Speaker 1:So the one question I wanted to ask you because we deal with this a lot on this podcast Creatives have a lot of mind blocks around money, and so I have to ask you were you nervous when you put this kickstart out there and asked for money? Did that cross your mind at all? Or were you just like, no, I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2:No, I was just. I'm going to do this. But there's part of like that comment that you made about money, and it is interesting because I very much have an abundance mindset. I really don't believe that there's any reason for anybody to limit themselves. And what abundance is in some cases has absolutely nothing to do with money and it has more to do with friendships and family. But in other cases it has a lot to do with money, and in my case it did. I wanted to create wealth and so I went on a journey to create wealth and I really believe that that mindset to be able to say I'm worth it, and there's no reason you don't have to feel guilty for wanting something, you don't have to feel guilty for believing in your own worth. I mean, when I first went down that journey of deciding, I wanted to even be financially independent in the first place. For me, if you make money, you create your best life and you help others that don't have as much create theirs, and so for me, it's all about win-win. It's all about win-win.
Speaker 2:You can ask people for money and they could say, no, right, they're not, you don't have to worry, asking's not. They could say, no, gail, you got enough money. I'm not giving you any of mine. What are you doing? You got twice as much money as me. Why are you asking me for money? That's all good, that's fine. You know it doesn't you have a product, and for you to say I'm going to offer my product to strangers, that's great. Go after strangers to.
Speaker 2:You know, I always think if they're going to benefit from it, then great. If they're not going to benefit from it, no, you know, don't try to sell somebody something they're not going to benefit from it. That doesn't even make sense in my mind. And so so make sure it's a win-win. And I mean that was you know, as a financial advisor, I used to say we're glorified salespeople. That's what we are. Our product is managing your money. Well, we have to talk you into giving us your money to manage, yes, right. So so it's got.
Speaker 2:We're wearing two hats. One hat is being able to properly manage your money, and I always say a salesperson is somebody that can talk you into doing something that you weren't going to otherwise do, but that's in your best interest. That, to me, is a good salesperson, right? So you're opening up a new avenue for you, and if it's going to be a win-win, then come on in. If it's not, don't. And so yeah, I say to everyone ask. There is no shame in asking. There is no. It's empowering and you know you're worth it, You're absolutely worth it. And so go out there and ask and then just receive what comes back to you. That's going to be a win for both of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's important to remember. If you're doing a crowdfunding project because you're not, they are getting something in return for the money they are giving you. They're not just giving you money to do whatever you want with. They're going to get finished product. They're going to get extra things if they choose to do so. But yeah, for so many creatives, that's such a heart mindset to break through.
Speaker 2:Yes, so yeah, absolutely. And I had people that I hadn't even approached, that saw it on social media and would send me a text or an email and say, hey, I saw you're doing a crowdfunding, how can I help, right? So people came to me and said how can I help so people that I was surprised oh, I forgot to put you on my list. So, yeah, there's no. Yeah, yeah, it's a very beneficial way to get a little start.
Speaker 1:It is, and I just want to let people this is something I've been watching for a while. I have seen crowdfunding projects for everything. I've seen artists do small $100 projects to launch an enamel pin out into the world, and then I've seen authors. I think he's a fantasy author, brandon Sanderson. He did a $22 million Kickstarter. That was not his original goal, but that's what it grew to to publish four books, and so there's everything from $100 to millions of dollars and in between you can run a project for so very cool yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'll say something else on that note, though, to be careful about, because I do an interview of a musician that she was going for I think I don't know $35,000 or $50,000 and she ended up with $1.2 million. But she lost money and that's something that you know. And I know other people who their Kickstarter projects blew them up, almost put them in bankruptcy. So here's what you've got to be aware of and be careful of is that you can deliver what it is that you're offering at a value to you and that your rewards aren't going to eat up all the money so that there's none available for the funding of the project. So this example was this when I was listening to this interview I might be a little bit off, but I think I got I'm pretty close she was offering a home concert in your house for $1,000. So that's not bad if you live in the same city with her, but people in Germany were buying it Right. So now, all of a sudden, she's got to travel all over the place, bring her instruments, cover her travel costs. So you have to be really careful and think it through.
Speaker 2:Like I offered my keynote speech at $1,000 off my regular price, but I also had in there that this doesn't include my hotel and my airfare. Because if I hadn't have done that and I learned that from the research I did before starting the project because if I hadn't had done that I'd have been doing keynote speeches, that I would have been paying to do the keynote speech right it would have been at a loss. And so I mean there's not even even saying what I'm saying. Sometimes that's not a horrible thing because you get the exposure right. If that lady, if it cost her $1.22 million to deliver on the $1.2, so it cost her, let's say, an extra $2,000, so she broke even, didn't get to do a project, she got a major, major boost in her fan base and everybody that was going to buy projects going forward right. So there's always two sides of the equation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a marketing tool at the same time as a fundraising tool, really yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and just be careful that you can deliver without it costing you money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'd almost need to do another tier. Instead of $1,000 for a free concert in your home, $1,000 if we live in the same city, $10,000 if you live overseas, or something like that. Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you hit it. I had a lot of tiers. I had four or five different tiers and, yeah, you're right, in different scenarios approach it a different way and make sure, like I limited, you have to set a date for the delivery. So I made 18 months. I'll deliver everything in 18 months because I offered X number of keynote speeches. So if you say I'm going to deliver everything in six months and then you book 20 keynote speeches, you're not going to be able to deliver. You're going to have some angry folks on your hands. So there's a lot to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you definitely need to think it through, but that's some really good advice. Make sure that what you're offering, that you're actually going to be able to deliver on that financially for yourself. So, yeah, some good information there, thank you. So what is next for you for the rest of the year and going forward? Where do you see this going? You've got the book launch coming up. You're obviously doing some keynote speeches as part of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So a lot of the folks asked me when are you gonna retire? And I thought I'm gonna follow Mick Jagger's lead. He'll tell me what age it's time to retire.
Speaker 1:I just saw Keith Richards performing at Willie Nelson's 90th birthday. I think I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that's what I'm gonna throw out. Then there's Keith, then there's Willie, then there's Ringo. Right, I listened to all these guys in interviews. So how do I stay as vibrant as they did and continue on? And on Ringo's 80th birthday, somebody said you know how are you doing it, cause it's drugs are a demanding instrument. And he said well, I stopped putting crap in my mouth years ago and I work out four days a week and I thought, okay, extra size, eat healthy, got it, check, check. Now, keith Richards, we can't go there. That's like that's a whole different ballgame. He's got some genes that the rest of us could only really dream about. But, yeah, I figure I'm gonna do my key notes, probably at a minimum tell him 75. So I got another eight years and the goal right now is to book one a month for the next eight years and travel across Canada and the US and use my book and my music. And I'm writing more songs.
Speaker 2:I had the honor of writing a song with Carolyn Don Johnson. She's a Canadian artist and she just put out some new music and it sounds great. So, yeah, anyone any of your listeners that are Carolyn fans go check out her new music, cause she's back on tour and out there again and I mean I don't think she ever went away. She lives in Nashville, and so yeah, yeah, I had the honor to write a song with her and then I've got a few others that I wrote that are going into my book. So that's the plan Continue to put out a couple of songs every year and share my stories and hopefully help as many folks as I can.
Speaker 2:I mean, covid, it was a real curve ball right. It forced a lot of folks to reinvent themselves. That didn't want to and, you know, wasn't their plan. I mean, we talked about my journey and I made the decision to reinvent myself, but there's a lot of people out there that have to reinvent themselves and it wasn't their choice, and so you know, if I can share tools to make that turn out to be a positive shift in their life and have them say, a couple of years down the road, oh, thank God that happened, yeah, I ended up in a much better place than I was in before, and that's. You know that if I can give that gift, man, that would be the ultimate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. There's so many people. They lose their jobs or whatever unexpectedly and it forces them to make a change, and yet you very often hear from them years later that it was the best thing that ever happened to them. So I know.
Speaker 2:I know, and that's the whole, like the curve balls. Where that came from is for me. I always say it's not the curve balls that life throws at you that matter, it's what you do with them. We're all going to get curve balls. That's life. You can still get a home run with a curve ball. We get curve balls. I mean, that's that it. You know, unless you're not leaving your house and not talking to anybody. But if you're living and you're out there, you're going to see curve balls and you're going to see a lot of them. And you know, just hit them out of the park, that's all. Just take it in, ok. So why is this one coming at me? What am I going to learn from it and where am I going to take it? That's going to. That's going to work.
Speaker 2:My ones had a really, really good assistant Tell me that she was leaving and she had been with me for five years and I said is there anything I could do different to keep you? And she said yeah, you could work less, but we both know you're not going to do that. And so she said you know, the way that I'm wired is. I don't want to have things in my in basket at the end of the day and the way that you're wired is it's always going to be this high and we're just going to work through the priorities. So so I need to move on. And I said, ok, I understand.
Speaker 2:And then I was saying to some that somebody, like a day or two later that, well, I have this really cool opportunity to bring so and so, and, and she overheard me. She overheard me and I said, oh, my God, I didn't mean to minimize the importance you were to me and say that you know, I have an opportunity because you're living. And she laughed and she said, gail, if you didn't turn this into a positive spin, I'd have been shocked. So I was like, oh, feel, but yeah, yeah, I learned how to take these things and say they're coming at me for a reason. Let's let's find out what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. Well. Thank you so much for being here today. This has been really fun talking to you and such a great story, and I love that you are still out there and you're doing. You're doing things that are very transformational, not just for yourself, but for a lot of other people, and I just think that's so cool. So, for those people who are listening, where can they find you online or connect with you Everywhere?
Speaker 2:Everywhere. So I mean all my links. You'll find a link If you go to Gail Taylor Musa dot com and Gail, let's spell G-A-I-L. So if you go to Gail Taylor Musa oh, you mentioned there was going to be a link on.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, we will put links to all of this in the show notes.
Speaker 2:So you'll find my Facebook, my Instagram, my TikTok, my Spotify, my app, it's. All the links are on my site and, yeah, and if anybody wants to just reach out to me, my emails on my site, my phone numbers on the site. You know, if you're looking for a keynote speaker, hey, I would just absolutely love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah that would be awesome if we could make some connections there. As I mentioned, we'll put all the links to this in the show notes, and the last time I checked, which was a few days ago, your Kickstarter was still visible, so we'll put a link to that in the show notes too, if people want to go check out what you're shaking your head, it might be visible as a closed project.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is. You can't Okay.
Speaker 1:But we'll put a link to it, just so people can see what a Kickstarter page looks like and see what a fully funded Kickstarter looks like, and with the proviso that it may come down at some point, so you may not be able to see it, but we'll put the link as it is now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, just so people can. And while you're on Kickstarter, you can check out other projects and see what other people are doing in your own niche.
Speaker 2:So we'll do that, and I hired a consultant to help me with some of those tips I gave you.
Speaker 1:So so hopefully saved you some money in the sense that if you're doing a crowd funder, you can take a bit of what I learned Absolutely, and there's there are lots of creatives out there who've done them, who've also made YouTube videos and things about how they they did there. As a friend of mine, she's actually been on the show, but we didn't talk about this particular project. Her and her partner at the time used Kickstarter to fund the opening of their restaurant, which was very cool and it was successfully funded. And they ran a very successful restaurant on Queen Street in Toronto for several years that was funded through Kickstarter. So so many different things you can do on there, yes, so thank you so much for your time today. This was really great having you on the show and look forward to seeing what you have coming up next, thank you, thanks again. This was great. This was a fun chat. I really enjoyed it. All right, everyone. That is it for this week. We will be back in two more weeks with another brand new episode and we will talk to you all then. Thank you so much for joining us for the.
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