Latest / Crafted Connections / EP 63: SOLO - Great Stories Dig into the Unknown

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EP 63: SOLO - Great Stories Dig into the Unknown · Crafted Connections

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back to Crafted Connections.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I am Caitlin Calhoun, and I'm here to talk to you about storytelling in your marketing, in your life, in your, you know, visibility journey, what have you.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I bring people onto the podcast that I know through my network and I share their story.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I will also share solo episodes.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And today is just that a solo episode.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it all surfaces and all comes from my deep belief that everyone's story is important.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone has interesting stories and storytelling builds connection and then connection builds community.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are at Crafted Connections.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: It all adds up, right?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: See what I did there?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: See what I did there?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So today, today, today, today, we've got a solo episode for you, and it is all about not letting perfectionism get in the way of you telling your story.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to bring this up, which is something that I have said in the past, but at this point, I think I'm on like episode 63.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's okay if you've never heard it before, because I don't say it that often.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I see this as you telling your story one-on-one, you telling your story through socials, whatever way you tell your story, it's important in human connection.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's important in the relationships we build.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And even when it comes to like one-on-one, we will be perfectionists about showing up.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it may be like an over spoken about topic, but I have been struggle busing with it for the last couple months, maybe, maybe a few years, uh, specifically in relation to how my partner Phil and I have lived on our boat in the summers of the last few years.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna dig into that example in a second, but I I want to speak to you why this is important.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: When you hold back because you're trying to be perfect, you're trying to have this clean, cut, tied up with a perfect bow story, you miss out on connections.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: You miss out on opportunities, you miss out on things that you are meant to experience.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Own who you are, own where you are, and know that like you're in process.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be in process when you get the thing that you want to have before you put yourself out there.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be in process now, you're gonna be in process then.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So why not start to dip your toe or share in a way that that feels good to you?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we we sometimes we hold ourselves back from that because we're we're afraid that it's not gonna look good, but we underestimate ourselves so so much.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that is why it's so important for me to dig into this today.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna give you this example of my own sharing of a story.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, y'all.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know I love telling stories, gathering stories, and finding a way to help people connect their story with the people that will get it.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what my story strategy sessions are all about.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So over at Calhoun Creative Consulting, my strategic storytelling firm, we do one-on-one and or facilitated workshops in relation to really honing in the strategy around your story.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit of messaging meets content creation, meets storytelling, and then how do we put that out in the world?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: How do we show up regularly?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bit of mindset work around it, right?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: To actually tell your story.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're launching something new or trying to rework your brand or just feeling a little foggy on how to communicate with your people, this is how to get clear.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: We'll dig into things like your narrative, how to uncover what matters most, maybe map out a few content pillars while we're at it.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: You'll also get a recording of our session so you can revisit the conversation anytime you like.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's shape a story that actually feels like you.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So book yours today.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: There is a link in the show notes.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And hey, while you're at it, use the code podcast, all caps, P-O-D-C-A-S-T for 25% off your session.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would be honored to spend time with you and suss out your story.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive back into the episode, shall we?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So Phil and I decided to sell our stuff and move on to a boat in 2024.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was so, so excited to YouTube this and document it because, you know, I've got this whole background of video production and being a documentary filmmaker.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, ooh, I crush it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at that point it was seven years of video production commercial work under my belt.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be the best on YouTube, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's okay because uh there's also like a lot of really great stuff on YouTube, and it's not about competition, you know.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always working on that side of myself.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: But that was one of the first things I came up against when we started the YouTube back in 2024.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hitting publish when I'm so used to rounds of client edits.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was quite a shock for me.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And sharing our lives that publicly I have produced, directed, edited beautiful, emotional, vulnerable stories that were other people's stories.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a little bit challenging to put your own story in a visual storytelling form, it not be as clean as you're used to cutting and hitting publish.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, the things were going really well as far as like the numbers on YouTube, the metrics, all that stuff was doing really well.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: We we ended up publishing about 20 videos that summer, nine of which were long form, and uh she can do the math real quick, 11 of which were the short quickies, short little quick, quick cuts for YouTube shorts.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And people were enjoying them.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was really a lovely experience.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And this narrative that we set out with.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Phil and I had sold our house to move onto this boat with the idea of doing this thing called America's Great Loop.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not familiar, it is you go through all the Great Lakes, through Chicago, through the Illinois River, down into the Mississippi River.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It pops you off into the Gulf, and then you go around Florida and up the intercoastal waterways.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a super cool nautical journey that Phil and I are so, so excited to do one day.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we very much expected to take off in fall of 2024.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are posting videos about us prepping for it and buying our boat and purging our house.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a whole fun thing, and I had the whole vision.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: But then come to find out, fall of 2024, we really didn't have the funds for it, and we definitely did not have the skill for it because we're out here trying a whole new skill, trying to learn it in a few months and take off before the weather gets cold.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm proud of us for trying, and it was very, very heartbreaking for things to not play out the way that we wanted them to.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we put the thing on pause and we leaned into slowing down a bit, enjoying ourselves.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, for the foreseeable future, next 18 months, we will we will take our time.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: We will move back onto the boat this summer, but not expect ourselves to leave again.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: We will rent a place near the boat and we will work on the boat and maybe we'll leave after that, and maybe we'll do this, and maybe we'll do that.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And fast forward after a year and a half, two years of questions, I still find myself with a lot of questions, all the while holding off on digging back into the YouTube because when we decide not to go in the loop, we stopped the YouTube, we put it on pause.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: That same part of myself that wants videos to be perfect when I hit publish was struggling to decide when to start it up again, what to share, how to share.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I truly, truly expected or wanted to restart the YouTube with a we're back on track, we're doing the loop announcement.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not how it's gonna happen.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've been feeling very called to reboot the YouTube in relation to the boat for gosh, maybe the last eight months.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime I'm daydreaming about like what should I what should I be like moving towards next?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's been like a whisper of YouTube, YouTube, YouTube.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all good and great.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I I listened to that voice.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love that voice.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad I have that voice telling me intuitive things of that nature.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I kept saying to myself, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: But let's get us to the point where we're we're going on the loop again.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get us to the point where like things are good and we look like we're great boat operators, so that you know, people people believe that you know we should be, we should be doing this.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as we were preparing to move back onto the boat this summer, so we're talking like the April-ish timeline, I was feeling myself a depressy city, feeling this transitional slump after being like, okay, we're gonna go rent a place in 2024 fall, and then we'll get back on the boat and we'll do it again.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Realizing, okay, maybe we're not ready yet spring of 2025, so we're gonna move into a rental fall of 2025, and then maybe summer of 2026, we'll do it.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe fall of 206 26, and then maybe spring of 2027, and then fall of 2027, and it's like I just saw I started I don't know if I started worrying about my life being on hold, but I knew that we weren't leaving this summer for the loop, and I knew I wanted to start producing videos on the boat again.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I talked to a few friends of mine who are excellent storytellers, and not all of them do storytelling in the video space, but they all have storytelling in the work that they do.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I was confiding in them about this.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of the feedback kept coming back, is like it's not about it being perfect.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And one friend in particular had a great quote, and she said that good storytelling has a strong driving question.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, ooh, dang, that's good.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: That is so good because there are a lot of questions.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have a large big question of when the F are we gonna be able to take off on the loop?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: When are we gonna feel good about it?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: When are we gonna be nourished?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when are we gonna have that perfect balance of it's a little bit of a risk, but we also have a foundation and and uh a capacity to do so where it is safe physically, financially, emotionally to take off?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that big, big question, right, that can drive, like frankly, an entire YouTube channel.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then little questions like why is our boat leaning?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: How do we fix our AC and heating system?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: What flooring do we want for the cabin?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we want to go on short little trips?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Who can we connect with in the boating community that could be great boating friends for us?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like all sorts of like macro micro questions that get to be involved in this creative process.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I've been like leaning into.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I wanted to share the message of when you're sharing your story, what it whatever capacity that looks like.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because even those one-on-one conversations with my friends where I was like, I want to like dig into the YouTube, I want to share that story, share our experiences, but I feel like a dum-dum because we said we were gonna do this, and I don't feel ready for that.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was very hard to say, even to some of my closest friends.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to come off as some sort of like failure, negative Nelly, doesn't know what she's doing, stop talking about your stories all the time.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I didn't want to come off as that, and that is not how it was received.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it actually deepened my connection with those folks because I was vulnerable.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: They came back with advice, and it feels good to give somebody advice.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, I'm so excited.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am currently editing an episode, trying to release it this Friday, but we'll see.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this episode's gonna go a lot more in depth about everything I just shared with you in relation to the timeline and the experience over our last year or two.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We've kind of got a part one, part two on the in-between shutting down the YouTube and where we're going next, or what we're exploring next, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't know where we're going next.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really fun.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to present it here on the podcast because it's fun to share like the in real time, almost behind the scenes of the storytelling that I'm exploring.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the folks that listen to the Crafted Connections podcast like to reflect.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: They like to look at their own experiences and think about sharing and creating and developing things uh to be shared.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So as I'm digging back into the YouTube, I'm really putting myself out there for more connection and sharing my learnings with people.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope you will do the same.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about where are you holding back sharing your story because of fear that you look like you don't have it together.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Dig into that and start building connections with raw materials that you do have.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I will see you out there.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Please let me know if you want to confide in each other about this.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to hear what you're thinking.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is not so easy to show up with the raw stuff and kind of sift through it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Last week's episode was with my good pal Tajil, and she talked about sitting with your lemons.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is in reference to the phrase, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was so interesting.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, go through each lemon and take the time, right?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you've got these raw materials, these lemons, this unknown situation.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Take the time to move through that stuff, process it, digest it, and then you'll have some pretty flip and delicious lemonade.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm hoping that this last 18 months to two years of processing a lot and moving through things and taking my time re-entering my YouTube creations and our documentation of adventures, I hope that it results in some delicious lemonade.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening this week.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Always happy to jump in with a solo.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got a fun guest next week.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So tune in, talk to you then, and I hope that you put yourself out there, get a little vulnerable with someone, and make it a lemony fresh wheat while you're at it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Crafted Connections is lovingly produced by Calhoun Creative Consulting, a strategic storytelling firm dedicated to helping people and brands tell their stories in a way that resonates.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and connect with us on Instagram at Crafted Connections Bot.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Keep creating, keep connecting, and telling me it again.