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Midlife Transformation: Pursuing Passion in a New Career · Create The Best Me

• 0:00
  If you find yourself negative the tool I use, I used to just use the words garbage in, garbage out.
• 0:06
  If I found myself thinking negative I'd say garbage in, garbage out.
• 0:10
  And I would change to something POSITIVE.
• 0:13
  So be your own wings and then start thinking about the things that you want.
• 0:18
  Your day to be what are you trying to manifest?
• 0:21
  because the SHOW is about creating the best version of yourself, whatever that is.
• 0:27
  I made this decision when I get home from work, I would walk in the house and I'd look at my husband and I'd say, honey, I'm home and I had a good day.
• 0:36
  Pour me a cold one.
• 0:37
  And Oh, by the way, a little Shania Twain.
• 0:41
  Hello and welcome beautiful souls to another empowering episode of Create the Best Me.
• 0:51
  The show that is dedicated to motivating and inspiring women in midlife I am your host, Carmen Hecox, and I am thrilled to bring you an incredible story today that embodies the essence of transformation, resilience, and the unwavering belief in oneself.
• 1:10
  Our guest is none other than the remarkable Gail Taylor.
• 1:15
  A Canadian songwriter, keynote speaker, author, and true advocate of the transformative power of music in our lives.
• 1:24
  Gail has a catalog of 13 published songs, each carrying a unique message drawn from her own life experiences.
• 1:34
  Gail's journey is an incredible reinvention, and she is here to share her story, her wisdom, and her upcoming book, "Curveballs," personal stories and tools to inspire folks to take action in designing their own lives.
• 1:53
  It's a testament to the fact that midlife isn't a pause.
• 1:58
  It's a pivot toward a more extraordinary future.
• 2:02
  Get ready to be inspired, motivated, and empowered as we dive into Gail's journey and discover how she harnessed her passion for music to create her best self and inspire change in others.
• 2:18
  But before we dive in, don't forget to hit subscribe.
• 2:22
  And if you're feeling inspired, leave us a glowing review Your support helps us reach more incredible women on their midlife journey.
• 2:32
  Now let's get started.
• 2:34
  Gail Taylor, welcome to Create the Best Me.
• 2:37
  I am ecstatic to have you on the show.
• 2:41
  Oh, thank you.
• 2:42
  I'm ecstatic to be here.
• 2:44
  This is really nice.
• 2:45
  Thanks.
• 2:46
  Can you briefly tell the audience who's Gail Taylor?
• 2:51
  Yeah.
• 2:51
  I'm a songwriter, a keynote speaker, and soon to be author of my second book.
• 2:58
  I'm penning a book called Curveballs.
• 3:01
  And I'll basically tell you how I got here to where I am right now.
• 3:06
  At the age of 58, I started taking piano lessons and I was a financial advisor for 25 years.
• 3:14
  I loved my job.
• 3:15
  I was good at it.
• 3:17
  And then I decided to take piano lessons.
• 3:19
  I had no background in music at all.
• 3:21
  So I'm literally taking scales starting from scratch.
• 3:25
  And music came flooding back into my life.
• 3:28
  And it was like, whoa.
• 3:30
  So two years into it, I thought, you know what?
• 3:32
  I'm going to retire a little bit sooner than I had planned.
• 3:36
  And I think I'm going to study music full-time.
• 3:40
  And so I did that.
• 3:41
  I retired at the age of 61.
• 3:43
  And I started studying, bass, guitar, keyboard, songwriting, ear training, and great places like Berkeley school of music online.
• 3:54
  And so I did that for about two years.
• 3:56
  And then I thought, Hmm, maybe I'll reinvent myself as a musician.
• 4:00
  When I shared that story to that point with folks, I kept getting the same reaction.
• 4:06
  I kept getting, oh my God, that's so inspiring.
• 4:09
  I'm going to go do bedeep, bedeep.
• 4:11
  Something they had put on the back burner.
• 4:13
  Hey, sometimes it was take piano lessons or learn a second language.
• 4:17
  But honest to God, I kept hearing it over and over again.
• 4:21
  Even from strangers on the airplane.
• 4:24
  Yes, I talked to the person in the seat beside me.
• 4:27
  And so I thought, wait a minute, I'm going to come out of retirement.
• 4:31
  I'm going to start a business, Gail Taylor Music.
• 4:35
  And I'm going to reinvent myself as a keynote speaker and help folks become their best selves.
• 4:41
  And so when I get up on stage, I can use my songwriting and all my songs and the videos as part of the performance.
• 4:50
  I've been studying personal growth since the seventies.
• 4:54
  So I got 40 years of personal growth and peak performance.
• 4:58
  Yeah, so that's who Gail And that's why you're on the show, because the show is about creating the best version of yourself, whatever that is.
• 5:06
  What inspired you to seek music?
• 5:10
  It just oh my God, it fell into my lap.
• 5:13
  Because, as I said, when music started flooding back into my life, I just find music healing.
• 5:19
  I find it empowering.
• 5:21
  And then when I started taking the songwriting course, it turned out that was my superpower.
• 5:26
  I was just naturally that.
• 5:28
  Piano, not so natural lots and lots of hours of practice, but with the songwriting it came more natural to me.
• 5:35
  I figure it's because I talk so much, and songs are just stories turned into lyrics.
• 5:41
  And yeah, that's what, put me in that direction, and I just find it so much fun.
• 5:47
  And I believe that you should be doing something you're passionate about, right?
• 5:50
  I think that everybody should be doing something each day that empowers them.
• 5:56
  You've been married, I think you said 33 years.
• 5:59
  Is that correct?
• 6:00
  What did your husband think when you said, I'm going to do this?
• 6:05
  Well, so when I made the decision to retire, it was okay.
• 6:09
  He had already been retired for several years and we were already financially independent.
• 6:14
  So that part worked great, but he started teasing me and telling our friends, oh, she's going to get under my foot.
• 6:24
  And so after he did this three or four times, I thought, now might be a good time to tell you that I'm planning on studying music full-time.
• 6:32
  And his reaction was, okay, but don't go away.
• 6:37
  Don't get accepted in some university that's not in Edmonton and leave.
• 6:42
  Find a way to study it full-time in Edmonton.
• 6:45
  And I said, no problem.
• 6:47
  And I did I built a music studio in my basement.
• 6:50
  You're in my music studio right now.
• 6:53
  And so You know, I come down here at six in the morning and I go back upstairs at four o'clock.
• 6:58
  And I spend my evenings and my weekends with him and the grandkids and yeah, he's all good with it.
• 7:06
  I like this that I read in your, media kit.
• 7:09
  It says, Gail has Tony Robbins hustle and Dolly Parton's grit.
• 7:15
  Tell me a little bit more about that.
• 7:17
  Yeah.
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  Because of the public speaking part, he's an amazing trainer.
• 7:21
  Although I promote myself as an inspirational or motivational speaker, He prefers to be called a trainer.
• 7:30
  And I do have a lot of tools.
• 7:32
  Like I tell personal stories, but I also use a lot of tools.
• 7:36
  But I've been speaking on stage for over 30 years.
• 7:39
  The topic just happened to be finance.
• 7:42
  And so, to follow down, I've done training, I've read everybody.
• 7:47
  I've read Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale and Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey.
• 7:53
  And like I said, I've been studying it for 40 years.
• 7:56
  But to be able to put out the energy and the care and work with, the group of people that are in front of me.
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  That's what I'm calling the Tony Robbins hustle.
• 8:09
  And then I bring my music and my philanthropic, personality into the mix.
• 8:16
  And that's my Dolly Parton.
• 8:18
  The fun side.
• 8:19
  Yep, absolutely.
• 8:21
  Yeah, me too.
• 8:21
  I think she's adorable.
• 8:23
  And I remember you mentioned that, this is your second book that you're actually, putting together.
• 8:28
  Is that correct?
• 8:29
  Yes, I wrote a book, I think I released it in 2000.
• 8:33
  I was teaching a course for the University of Alberta for the Faculty of Extension.
• 8:39
  And it was a course called Introduction to the Financial Markets.
• 8:43
  And I couldn't find a textbook that I like, so I wrote one.
• 8:46
  So that was my first book and it was time sensitive because it dealt with the markets at the time and so I knew it was going to be on the shelves for three to five years, which was the timing that I was teaching.
• 8:58
  And it was in all the bookstores and it was neat, going to the airport and finding my book in the airport bookstore.
• 9:05
  So that was my first one.
• 9:06
  And I hired an entertainment lawyer to work with me on this new chapter of my life and reinventing myself.
• 9:13
  And he recommended, he said, for your keynote speeches, adding credibility, it would be a good idea to pen a book.
• 9:19
  And I thought, Oh, no problem; I got this.
• 9:22
  And so I've been working on it for a bit.
• 9:24
  It's going to come out in the spring.
• 9:27
  And what I really like about you is that I remember, we had briefly spoke before getting on, you mentioned that, your mom was a very, strong role model in your life because your father passed away when you were young.
• 9:41
  You're a family of six siblings and your mom had to take on that role of being mom and dad and head of household.
• 9:49
  Do you think that you received that, go getter type of, personality from your mom?
• 9:56
  I think I receive the strength behind it, right?
• 10:01
  I think I got a little bit of my mom and my dad in me.
• 10:04
  But there is no question that my mom gave me the strength behind, like we talked, we mentioned already, the name of the book is Curveballs and it's when all the things, it's not the curveballs that life throws at you because it's gonna keep throwing them at you, that's just part of life, it's how you deal with them.
• 10:22
  And it's her that gave me the ability to work through a lot of things.
• 10:28
  Yeah, as you said, she was in her mid thirties, right?
• 10:31
  She was in her mid thirties when my dad died.
• 10:33
  She became a single mom.
• 10:35
  She moved us from the country to the city.
• 10:37
  And she told me years later that the reason for was so that she could get a job and keep us off welfare and keep us together.
• 10:46
  And so she did that.
• 10:48
  And yeah, she's 93.
• 10:50
  She's still amazing.
• 10:52
  Let's go back into your management years.
• 10:54
  Cause I remember you said that you managed people.
• 10:57
  How did you work with people?
• 10:59
  Cause we all deal with managing someone who perhaps feels that the task that you put before them is challenging and they just can't do it.
• 11:08
  Did you ever encounter that when you were managing people, like maybe your assistant and stuff?
• 11:13
  And how did you deal with that?
• 11:14
  I did, I did come across that and I normally had a team, so I had a few assistants, associates, in my practice.
• 11:23
  And sometimes, and actually I had a manager, the manager of the manager who taught me this sometimes when you have a staff member that can't do the tasks that you're giving them, sometimes it's because they're in the wrong role.
• 11:39
  And they're miserable.
• 11:41
  So, for you to be able to either move them to a different role, or help them make the decision to go find another role because, I'm a big advocate is that we spend half our lives at work, half our waking life.
• 11:56
  So if we break our life in to work, home and sleep, that's half of our waking life.
• 12:01
  And so I always believe that everybody should be in a role that they like, that they're passionate about.
• 12:08
  And so when I've had people that weren't in that situation, I've worked with them to, hey, let's move you to a different role.
• 12:15
  Let's figure out what's going to work for you.
• 12:18
  Sometimes it's just training.
• 12:20
  You just need more training.
• 12:22
  You need more direction.
• 12:23
  They need more direction from me.
• 12:26
  But just sitting down and working with them for me was always the best strategy.
• 12:32
  And I asked that question because when I think about Gail Taylor, I think about resilience.
• 12:37
  I think about a woman who the word, I can't, does not exist.
• 12:42
  Or you can't do that.
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  You're like, watch me.
• 12:46
  Exactly, in fact, it's motivation.
• 12:49
  Tell me I can't and oh, oh, there she goes again.
• 12:53
  Yeah.
• 12:53
  So that's why I brought that up because, I have a feeling that this is not something that you adopted when you decided that you wanted to learn music.
• 13:01
  I think it's something that you've always had that within you.
• 13:05
  And I know that sometimes it can be a little challenging when you are around people that use the word, I can't.
• 13:12
  Right, well, and part of that I can't is limiting beliefs, right?
• 13:17
  And in the speeches that I do, one is called Empowering Women and another one's called Leveling Up.
• 13:24
  And one of the tools that I talk about a lot is your internal dialogue.
• 13:30
  Your internal dialogue is so important and developing a dialogue that then goes down to your subconscious mind and tells your subconscious mind what reality is.
• 13:42
  Sometimes it's not even reality yet.
• 13:45
  You're just kind of tricking your subconscious mind.
• 13:48
  So, like I trained and ran a marathon for my 50th birthday and I hadn't been exercising.
• 13:54
  So I thought, okay, I got to get back in shape.
• 13:56
  What am I going to do?
• 13:57
  I might as well run a marathon.
• 13:59
  And so I trained over 15 months and I ran the New York marathon.
• 14:03
  But when I started that journey, it was like one mile, two mile.
• 14:08
  But my internal dialogue was, oh, I'm going to train and run the New York marathon.
• 14:13
  I'm a marathon runner now.
• 14:15
  And I started that dialogue day one., It's positive thinking.
• 14:19
  Internal dialogue is positive thinking, but it's also control thinking.
• 14:24
  If you find yourself negative, how could I possibly run a marathon I don't even know how to jog.
• 14:30
  Then you find a way to get out of your head.
• 14:32
  And the tool I use, I used to just use the words garbage in, garbage out.
• 14:37
  If I found myself thinking negative, I'd say garbage in, garbage out.
• 14:42
  And I would change to something positive.
• 14:44
  Now I use my pendants I actually have a line of pendants that I sell Instead of, as a musician, I thought instead of doing t shirts and stuff, I do something that goes with the inspirational, tools.
• 14:57
  So you just scratch it.
• 14:58
  If you find yourself in the head, you scratch it and say the mantra.
• 15:02
  This one says, be your own wings.
• 15:04
  Say the mantra that's on there.
• 15:05
  So be your own wings and then start thinking about the things that you want your day to be what are you trying to manifest?
• 15:13
  And yeah, that's a really huge one.
• 15:16
  And it doesn't happen overnight.
• 15:19
  No, not at all.
• 15:20
  Yeah.
• 15:20
  How is your relationship with your kids?
• 15:22
  Did you raise your children to also adopt this, I can, mentality?
• 15:28
  I think so.
• 15:29
  I have an amazing relationship with both of my kids.
• 15:32
  We had a lot of addiction in our family, including myself and my son.
• 15:38
  And so we went through a lot of years of studying, and learning and understanding, in my case, understanding things like, enabling and codependency, and henceforth, one of my speech is about empowering folks who have loved ones in active addiction.
• 15:57
  So I did have years of my parenting that would definitely fall in the world of dysfunction.
• 16:04
  In the early years, my fault, in the later years, his journey.
• 16:10
  And, I share it, I share a lot.
• 16:13
  I share a lot of the details of what happened with his permission.
• 16:16
  He's been in recovery now for a number of years and, he's amazing.
• 16:21
  He's got a job and a company truck and a wife and kids.
• 16:25
  And my daughter and her kids live here in Edmonton and she followed down my path and became a financial advisor.
• 16:32
  So I'm very lucky to have these two kids and five grandchildren in my day to day existence.
• 16:39
  fun grandma.
• 16:40
  I think so.
• 16:41
  When they go home from having time with me, they go right to sleep.
• 16:47
  Tell me you crashed too.
• 16:49
  I don't know.
• 16:49
  Maybe not quite when they leave.
• 16:51
  Eventually I'm a sleeper.
• 16:53
  That's another tool that I always talk about is, I wrote this guide about, five tools to live your best life.
• 17:01
  And one of the tools I say is your foundation.
• 17:04
  And your foundation is eating, exercising, and sleeping.
• 17:09
  And if you can get those three things under control.
• 17:13
  And again, it's work.
• 17:14
  It's definitely work.
• 17:16
  But if you can, eat healthy, exercise regularly and sleep eight hours a night, you're laughing.
• 17:22
  It's like huge how much it opens up your brain cells, how much it gives you energy.
• 17:29
  It's, a big part of peak performance.
• 17:32
  It's the machine.
• 17:33
  It's like your car.
• 17:33
  You got to do oil changes.
• 17:35
  This is your car you got to exercise it and you got to put the right kind of gasoline And Gail, share with the audience.
• 17:42
  Cause I know you and I talked about, the feeling that a person brings home when they get home.
• 17:47
  I talked about when I got home, I felt overwhelmed and I needed to, unwind in the shower before anyone could talk to me.
• 17:54
  Tell the audience about your attitude that you brought home.
• 17:58
  Yeah.
• 17:58
  Yeah.
• 17:59
  Okay, and I loved yours too.
• 18:01
  And I think, yeah, that's it everybody needs their own strategy.
• 18:04
  So I work 10 hours a day as a financial advisor, some days were harder than others, even though I love my job.
• 18:11
  If the market's crashing and you're holding hands with clients on the phone all day, it can be, draining.
• 18:19
  And so I had this thing where I was never, ever going to give my husband leftovers.
• 18:24
  That wasn't fair.
• 18:26
  We talked about half your life is at your job the other half is not.
• 18:30
  And I wasn't going to make the second half of the day leftovers.
• 18:34
  So I made this decision when I get home from work, I would walk in the house and I'd look at my husband and I'd say, honey, I'm home and I had a good day pour me a cold one.
• 18:45
  And oh, by the way, a little Shania Twain.
• 18:49
  And he would just laugh and I would laugh and that would set the stage for our evening.
• 18:55
  And it worked perfectly.
• 18:57
  Now, in my case, the cold one was more often than not a non alcoholic beer, but that worked perfectly.
• 19:03
  It just worked And let's add here, this was regardless of what your day went like.
• 19:09
  This was the attitude you brought into your doorway to share with your husband.
• 19:14
  Yes Yes.
• 19:16
  Absolutely.
• 19:17
  And, I remember one time like I said, studying this personal growth, I remember one time somebody said, say you're in a bad mood, right?
• 19:24
  You had a hard day, your mood's bad, and then the doorbell rings, and you open it, and it's your favorite celebrity in the world.
• 19:35
  So, when I did this, in my case, at the time, I think it was Mick Jagger.
• 19:40
  So I opened the door, this 20 years ago, and there's Mick Jagger.
• 19:44
  Are you still in a bad mood?
• 19:47
  Or all of a sudden, you're there, come on in.
• 19:50
  Like that context, shift is not that hard to do.
• 19:55
  You just have to be prepared to do it.
• 19:58
  It's all about mind shift, shifting your mind What advice would you give a woman in midlife who.
• 20:06
  is kind of stuck.
• 20:07
  She's just okay, 10 years from now, I'm going to retire.
• 20:10
  And she just can't see the next phase after retirement.
• 20:15
  So I believe that you can reinvent yourself at any age.
• 20:19
  I wrote this song called " Staying Young." And I think you could reinvent yourself at any stage.
• 20:30
  And I don't think you necessarily have to leave the role that you're in.
• 20:36
  So if you've got 10 years left, like when I had 10 years before I retired, I like my job, but there's something missing.
• 20:43
  So I hired a business coach and the business coach said, okay, what do you get?
• 20:48
  What's Gail Taylor all about?
• 20:49
  What's your practice all about?
• 20:51
  And I said, oh, that's easy.
• 20:53
  I want to make my clients financially independent.
• 20:56
  I want to make myself financially independent so that I can stop working and go do philanthropic work and volunteer work and make the world a better place.
• 21:05
  And he said, yeah, that's not how it works.
• 21:08
  You don't wait till you retire to incorporate your passion or your purpose in life.
• 21:14
  I don't care if you're enjoying your job.
• 21:17
  You're going to have to sell your practice if we can't figure out how to do that.
• 21:21
  And so I worked with him through some exercises and I stumbled onto or found socially responsible investing.
• 21:29
  I didn't even know what it was.
• 21:31
  Socially responsible investing is when you take into consideration the triple bottom line.
• 21:38
  So you're looking at the environment.
• 21:40
  You're not buying companies that are abusing the environment.
• 21:44
  So you're using companies that like, I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada so we still bought oil companies, but we bought the ones that were using alternative energy.
• 21:54
  And when this came on my plate, I thought, okay, I'm going to shift a traditional practice to a responsible practice, probably take a haircut and lose 20 percent of my income.
• 22:05
  I figured at the time I was managing 80 million and I'd go down to maybe 60 something, I figured 20%.
• 22:12
  So that was going to affect my income.
• 22:14
  But I thought, no, this is okay.
• 22:15
  Well, the opposite happened, the clients were like, this is great.
• 22:19
  Why didn't you bring this to us sooner?
• 22:21
  Because it was a conservative practice they were going to get the same returns anyway.
• 22:26
  So it was great I was able to shift, get my passion in there, work the last 10 years.
• 22:33
  By the time I did retire and sell my practice, I was managing a hundred and thirty million.
• 22:38
  So it just continued to grow.
• 22:41
  So when I'm giving this advice, I'm saying you don't necessarily have to leave your job you just have to figure out, am I with the right company in this job?
• 22:51
  Or is there a way that I could shift the position so that I'm not just watching the clock for the 10 years to go by, right?
• 23:01
  And then once the 10 years goes by and you get into that next stage in your life, then I say find your passion.
• 23:09
  Maybe it is going to be that second language or piano lessons or singing or golf.
• 23:16
  It doesn't matter.
• 23:17
  It doesn't matter what it is.
• 23:19
  Find something that, makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.
• 23:23
  I go to bed at night and I sleep eight hours because that's part of my health strategy.
• 23:29
  If I could stay up 24 hours a day, I would, right?
• 23:33
  But you need that eight hours sleep.
• 23:36
  But you, started seeking that passion before the 10 year mark.
• 23:42
  Yes, oh, absolutely.
• 23:43
  I started very early.
• 23:45
  When I started in the seventies, the first book I read was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
• 23:51
  And I'm guessing half your audience read it.
• 23:53
  It's still in the bookstores today.
• 23:56
  And so I started right off the bat seeking what it was that I wanted.
• 24:01
  And for me, I was in my twenties and I was dysfunctional.
• 24:05
  So I wanted money.
• 24:07
  I wanted the sports car.
• 24:08
  I wanted the nice car.
• 24:11
  So that's originally what I went after.
• 24:13
  And I got it, but I made sure that the journey that I was going on, it's the journey, right?
• 24:19
  You're here you want to get here.
• 24:22
  In between's the gap.
• 24:23
  So you got to figure out what you, need to do to get from here to here.
• 24:27
  But that journey is just as important, if not more important than the outcome.
• 24:32
  Now there are exceptions, right?
• 24:34
  You have people like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
• 24:39
  Their purpose and their focus was on freeing people.
• 24:43
  Their journey was going to be a struggle.
• 24:45
  So, when I talk the way that I do, I understand that everybody's circumstances is different and you have to assess where yours fits in to this.
• 24:57
  Did you have a mentor that, helped you fill in the gaps?
• 25:00
  Because sometimes you can feel like I'm here and this is where I want to be.
• 25:05
  It seems like it's almost planets away and sometimes it seems like unattainable.
• 25:11
  And some people will give up because it just seems like you're here, and you want to get here, but you can't even see here.
• 25:18
  So did you have someone that guided you?
• 25:21
  How did you connect the dots to create these stepping stones to get you to the end result?
• 25:28
  Yeah, so unattainable's not in my vocabulary.
• 25:32
  And we all have different personality profiles.
• 25:37
  And so I hear what you're saying is that for some folks it's even defining what they want 5 or 10 years down the road is challenging.
• 25:46
  But I say that's a huge exercise to do.
• 25:50
  Like, where do you want to be in 5 years from now?
• 25:53
  Or where do you want to be in 10 years from now?
• 25:55
  Figure that out.
• 25:57
  Because if you can figure that out then building a roadmap to get there is the easy part.
• 26:04
  And yes, I've always had a lot of mentors and I've always created mentors.
• 26:10
  And I've always bought into the, you are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with.
• 26:17
  And so if that's the case, and I even think somebody mentioned it, I think even on one of your podcasts that I listened to.
• 26:24
  And so if that's the case, who's the five people you're spending the most of your time with?
• 26:30
  So sometimes what I'll do is I'll say, oh, I need to get me a little bit of Paul McCartney's insights or Oprah Winfrey.
• 26:37
  So in my studio, I have a couple of big monitors I'll throw YouTube on and I'll throw Oprah Winfrey doing a two hour interview or I'll throw Paul McCartney doing an interview and I'll say I'm spending the afternoon with Paul.
• 26:51
  Just because they're doing it they're going after their dreams they've created their dreams.
• 26:57
  And all of the steps that they take if you take a whole A bunch of people that created and designed the life they want, whether it's corporate people, billionaires, or whether it's, celebrities, or whether it's people that their goal was, in nursing or teaching, it really doesn't matter.
• 27:17
  If you take people that created the life they wanted and ask them, what five tools they use the most and then cross reference, they're all going to be the same.
• 27:28
  Or there's going to be so much overlap that you're going to be able to say, okay, this is what I want to do.
• 27:34
  So yeah, I really believe in creating mentors and even if you don't know them.
• 27:41
  I like that.
• 27:42
  Yeah.
• 27:43
  Or be creative.
• 27:44
  Like when I first started in the financial industry, they gave some training, but not as much as I needed being a neophyte.
• 27:51
  So I went to one of the top advisors in the firm.
• 27:55
  In our office, and I said, would you please be my mentor for one year?
• 27:59
  And I said, here's what I'm asking you.
• 28:01
  I'm not going to drive you crazy or anything.
• 28:04
  I'm just going to drop in your office, once every couple of days with a question, because I'm not quite sure.
• 28:11
  What's the right way to handle this?
• 28:13
  And because you've got 25 years experience in the business, and I respect the type of practice you have, you're going to be able to answer my question in three minutes.
• 28:23
  And so this guy said, yeah, sure.
• 28:25
  And so I had the benefit of his expertise for the first year I was in the business.
• 28:31
  And I believe in that.
• 28:33
  I believe in creating mentors for you.
• 28:36
  People love giving back.
• 28:38
  They love giving back.
• 28:39
  I'm sure he was just as happy to do it as I was to have him.
• 28:43
  And that was a different time period.
• 28:45
  Because at that time, here you were this woman in a man's occupation.
• 28:51
  And so that's, I think that's very humbling that you were brave enough to go to a male and say, Will you be my mentor?
• 29:00
  Well, yeah, that was in 1993.
• 29:02
  And actually, funny you said that because it hasn't changed.
• 29:06
  It's still a male dominated and only 10 to 15 percent I think of financial advisors are women in the major brokerage houses are I think about when you told me what you did, I thought about the show Billions.
• 29:20
  And on that show you only have, one woman who's a trader, a financial trader.
• 29:25
  And so I'm like, oh my gosh, that's Gail.
• 29:28
  That one woman in that room with all those men.
• 29:31
  And that story takes place in today's world, but your story took place 20 some years ago, 20, 30 years ago.
• 29:39
  Right.
• 29:40
  Yeah.
• 29:41
  Yeah.
• 29:41
  Yeah.
• 29:41
  No, it didn't change.
• 29:43
  I know like for myself, cause I have older children.
• 29:46
  I used to always tell my children, surround yourself by people that have knowledge and skills that you're looking for.
• 29:54
  People that are smarter than you, people that are go getters that say, yes, you can, yes, you can.
• 30:00
  Surround yourself by those people because if you're around those people all the time, you tend to act like them.
• 30:07
  You tend to become like them.
• 30:09
  That, energy is infectious.
• 30:11
  I mean it's something I've always done.
• 30:13
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:14
  I used to say, hot yeah, I used to say that too, when I hired people, I always, you would hire people that were smarter than me.
• 30:21
  So your book is about your life.
• 30:24
  So it's like a memoir, motivational memoir.
• 30:27
  Is that Yeah.
• 30:29
  Yeah, it is.
• 30:30
  The whole point of the book is to help people become their best selves.
• 30:34
  And so what I did was I took the 40 years of studying the industry of peak performance and personal growth, and I took all my personal stories and I incorporated them into this book so that people are, hearing firsthand how this worked for me.
• 30:54
  What curveball life threw at me and what tools I was able to use to work through it.
• 31:01
  Everybody's different, but I figured most of these tools, if they work for me, they should work for pretty much anybody.
• 31:08
  Again, there's, I think four different personality profiles, and knowing which one you're in helps you with how you process stuff versus how I process stuff.
• 31:20
  But that's what this book is all about is, yeah, helping people create their best lives.
• 31:25
  Helping people understand why it's so important to design your life and not let it be designed for you.
• 31:32
  Because it will, the universe will take care of that if you don't want to.
• 31:36
  And so you record in Nashville.
• 31:37
  Do you sing or do you, record with other artists?
• 31:41
  I record with other artists.
• 31:43
  I don't sing.
• 31:44
  During that two years of studying, I did take two years of local lessons, but I realized that I'm not a natural.
• 31:52
  And if I want to sing, it's going to be, two hours of practice a day.
• 31:58
  And so I decided, nope, I'm going to practice the piano for the two hours a day and become a really good keyboardist and the songwriting.
• 32:06
  So what I do, I love this modern age of technology.
• 32:09
  I don't need a label.
• 32:11
  I write my own songs and then I actually have somebody that I do co-writing with, and then I write the song and then I do a demo.
• 32:20
  And we sent the demo down to Nashville.
• 32:24
  She actually lives in Nashville, but I have a different studio that I work with in Nashville and I'll say, okay, here's my demo.
• 32:31
  I want you guys to record it.
• 32:33
  And so I hire the vocalist and all the musicians.
• 32:36
  I'll tell them what genre I want it to be, how fast I want it to be.
• 32:39
  I'll give them all the chords and when they do it, I'm on with them usually on a Zoom call and I have it on my headset.
• 32:46
  So if there's something I'm not liking the direction or, one time they asked, can I put a banjo in here?
• 32:52
  And I said, no, it's a pop rock song.
• 32:55
  No banjos in this one.
• 32:57
  But by having access to these A level musicians, it's amazing.
• 33:01
  Like when I'm not on the keyboard, my keyboardist, he's a keyboardist for Tim McGraw.
• 33:07
  And the bass player goes on tour with Miranda Lambert.
• 33:11
  These are amazing musicians.
• 33:13
  And so once they punch my song out for me, sometimes I do my own keyboards, and sometimes I don't.
• 33:19
  Then I take the song and I work with somebody else to do a lyric video.
• 33:24
  And then the lyric video, once I've got it done, then I use a distribution company.
• 33:31
  So I actually use DistroKid and so I upload everything to them and they put it on Spotify, Apple, all the streaming sites.
• 33:39
  So you have access to all my music on all the streaming sites.
• 33:42
  The videos are on YouTube and my YouTube channel, and I don't need a label.
• 33:46
  It's all just done by my own creativity and the team that I created around me.
• 33:52
  So isn't that awesome that, for creatives to have to not be able to have their, product shared with the world, unless a label picks them up, that time's gone.
• 34:05
  There's such a thing called Indie artists.
• 34:07
  And so I'm one of What fascinates me about what you just said is that; when we started our conversation, you mentioned that at the age of 58, you decided to learn music.
• 34:19
  And here you are now writing music with these A listed, musicians.
• 34:26
  And it's being published and recorded.
• 34:29
  It's available for people to listen.
• 34:32
  It has been an amazing 10 year journey and the next 10 and 20 years are going to be just as fun.
• 34:38
  I've been really, honored that I've been able to create all the right directions and be able to bring everything to life the way I have.
• 34:46
  And I have a stage name.
• 34:48
  My stage name is Gail T.
• 34:52
  As charged.
• 34:54
  Oh, I love it.
• 34:55
  it's just, it's so fascinating to think that.
• 34:58
  If you can dream it, you can make it happen.
• 35:01
  And you did that.
• 35:02
  I so believe that.
• 35:04
  I so believe that.
• 35:06
  And that's exactly it, right?
• 35:07
  It's the dream.
• 35:08
  It's the belief.
• 35:09
  If you believe it, you can do it.
• 35:11
  If you believe you can't do it, you can't do And people can't say, Gail, you were able to do it because, you had this connection or, you had this famous person you knew or yadda, yadda, yadda.
• 35:22
  You went from finance into music.
• 35:24
  They don't even go together.
• 35:26
  I went from being a high school dropout to having an MBA and an analyst designation.
• 35:32
  So I totally believe that everybody that's listening to this, can create whatever it is that they want to create.
• 35:39
  I totally believe that.
• 35:42
  I got another book for you, once you're done with Curveball, Okay.
• 35:46
  You need to create a how to book doing what you just did.
• 35:50
  Okay.
• 35:51
  I think Curveball might have a little bit of that in it.
• 35:53
  I think that what you did within these 10 years of learning how to play music to, creating music, producing music, going into this indie platform is something that a lot of people might want to consider.
• 36:05
  Right thanks.
• 36:07
  Gail, where can people learn more about you?
• 36:10
  I have a website.
• 36:12
  So my website is www.
• 36:16
  gailtaylormusic.
• 36:17
  com and it's G A I L T A Y L O R, gailtaylormusic.
• 36:25
  com.
• 36:26
  And then if you go to my website, you can find all my platforms there.
• 36:30
  So whether it's, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, Apple, all over the place.
• 36:37
  And if you want to watch my videos and my songs, there's a YouTube channel.
• 36:41
  So, yeah, you can pretty much link to everything from Gail Taylor music website Gail what piece of advice would you give a woman who is trying to discover her passion?
• 36:54
  Don't settle, right?
• 36:55
  That's my advice.
• 36:56
  Don't settle.
• 36:57
  If you want to discover your passion, then continue to go for it.
• 37:02
  I remember in the 70s, or maybe it was the 80s, they used to have in the offices, they always had these motivational posters up on the walls.
• 37:11
  And one of them had something to do with, when you're about to give up, your success was right around the corner.
• 37:18
  So just be really careful that you don't, decide, okay, no, I'm giving up.
• 37:23
  Don't give up.
• 37:24
  Don't settle.
• 37:25
  Don't give up trying to find what it is that you want, because it's out there.
• 37:30
  It's out there.
• 37:31
  And once you find it, It's a game changer.
• 37:35
  And if what's holding you back is self-confidence, because that is a challenge for a lot of folks, a lot of women, but it's a challenge for a lot of folks is self-confidence.
• 37:46
  Then I say, read the books and study the art of getting past that.
• 37:51
  The art of building your self-esteem.
• 37:54
  Because once you get self-confidence, life becomes magical.
• 37:59
  I think another thing is believe in yourself.
• 38:02
  There's nothing out there that you possibly can't achieve.
• 38:07
  And ambition's not a four letter word.
• 38:09
  It's okay.
• 38:11
  That's another thing I've come across.
• 38:13
  A lot of women thinking they've been told that they're not supposed to be ambitious.
• 38:17
  They're not supposed to go after, their dreams or wealth or what.
• 38:22
  Yeah, no, that's, that was misinformation.
• 38:25
  Thank you so much for coming on, Gail.
• 38:28
  I look forward to reading your book when it comes out, and I wish you the best.
• 38:34
  It'll come out this spring.
• 38:36
  And actually, if any of your listeners want to pre order, but you could go on my website to my store, and there's a place that says, I'm interested in the pre order of Gail's book, and so all you have to do is give me your name and your email address, and then when the book's released, you're going to get an email letting you know.
• 38:54
  So yeah, if anyone listening was, resonated with my story and wants to go do that would Great.
• 38:59
  I will make sure to include all your information and links to your website, so that people can either listen to your music or sign up to be the first one to find out when your book is released.
• 39:11
  That is awesome.
• 39:13
  Thank you so much.
• 39:15
  Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of Create the Best Me.
• 39:20
  I hope you found Gail's story as inspiring as I did.
• 39:24
  Remember, midlife is not a time to pause it's a time to pivot and create the best version of yourself.
• 39:32
  If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share with your friends and family members who could use A dose of inspiration.
• 39:40
  And please don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform.
• 39:45
  Your feedback and support means the world to us.
• 39:49
  Gail's information and today's transcript can be found at createthebestme.com/ep057 Remember you have the power to rewrite your own story just like Gail did.
• 40:05
  Take today's lessons from today's episode and apply it to your own life.
• 40:10
  Don't settle for less.
• 40:12
  Become the woman you've always wanted to be.
• 40:15
  Stay tuned for our next episode where we will continue to explore new ways to create the best version of ourselves.
• 40:23
  Until then, keep dreaming big, take care of yourself, and remember, you are beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself.
• 40:34
  Thank you for watching.
• 40:35
  Catch you next week.
• 40:36
  Bye for now.