From Finance to Full-Time Creativity with Gail Taylor: Episode 68

Gail Taylor’s inspiring journey from financial advisor to musician illustrates the power of personal reinvention. She emphasizes self-acceptance, dealing with nerves, overcoming life challenges, and maintaining a positive mindset to navigate a fulfilling life journey.

-Discusses the significance of pursuing passions regardless of age

-Highlights the joy of learning music and its impact on well-being

-Shares methods to handle life’s curveballs and find resilience

-Encourages finding passion and purpose in everyday life

-Reiterates the importance of self-acceptance in one’s journey

You can find Gail’s inspiring book on Amazon and other retailers!

Connect with  Gail:

Instagram: @gailtaylormusic

Facebook: @gailtaylormusic

LinkedIn: @gailtaylor1

Website: www.gailtaylormusic.com

Aideen Ni Riada: 0:02

Welcome to the Resonate podcast with Aideen. I’m Aideen Ni Riada and my guest today is author Gail Taylor. You’re very welcome, Gail, thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s so wonderful to interview you. I know you’ve got a lot to talk about, a lot of encouraging things to say to our listeners, but let me introduce you and tell people a little about who you are before we get started. From a successful career as an investment advisor at age 65, Gail Taylor embarked on a second act, becoming a songwriter, author, motivational speaker and philanthropist. Gail recently released her second book, curveballs Unlocking your Potential Through Personal Growth and Inspirational Music. Gail, please tell us a little bit about how you embarked on this reinvention, the second act, starting as a musician after working in finance. How did this happen?

Gail Taylor: 1:00

Yeah. So what happened was I was a financial advisor for 25 years and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. But then, when I was 58 years old, I started taking piano lessons and I had no background in music. I mean, you know music. I was doing the scales, I was starting from scratch and I just loved it. I absolutely loved it. I absolutely loved it.

Gail Taylor: 1:24

And music started flooding back into my life in the sense of listening to it, because I had stopped listening to it without even realizing it. I was listening to finance books on my way to work. So I decided you know what? I’m going to retire a little sooner than planned, sell my practice and study music full-time. So I did that at age 61, and I had private teachers. I studied through Berkeley Berkeley School of Music because it was online, you didn’t have to audition. Good thing, I was taking piano, keyboard, bass, guitar, songwriting, ear training and after a couple of years of that, I thought, whoa, I’m going to reinvent myself as a musician. And, Aideen, when I shared that story to folks, I kept getting oh Gail, that’s so inspiring, I’m going to go do something. They put on the back burner and I thought, whoa, never mind becoming a musician. Forget that I’m going to become. I’m going to start a business, Gail Taylor Music. Become a keynote speaker and use my music and my stories to help folks become their best selves. So that’s how.

Aideen Ni Riada: 2:38

I got here. That’s absolutely amazing and you did an amazing job of putting that whole story into one short little segment, Gail, I really love it, because I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I started my business as teaching singing to adults and my whole thing was helping people to learn how to sing, even if they never had been singing before. And you know, a lot of people do have unfulfilled dreams from their childhood, from you know, their deepest desire within them, and creativity is one of those things that sometimes gets a little bit, you know, pushed aside and it’s not really that encouraged. Not all parents are really that keen to encourage their kids to do anything with creative pursuits, with music or singing, and we can get discouraged very quickly. So tell us a little bit about you know, where did music, where did you lose that track like? You must have had some interest in music earlier on did you only as a fan, right?

Gail Taylor: 3:46

so I grew up in the 70s, 60s and 70s so I loved rock and roll and I went to every concert that there was. I went to see the stones Alice Cooper, def Leppard, led Zeppelin like I was at every concert. So, yes, I did love, love music, but I had no, no training and no knowledge. And singing was one of the things that I took singing lessons and it’s interesting what you just shared, because my singing teacher, same as you, was teaching adults that it was new to them and then, when it came recital time, they didn’t want to go on stage.

Gail Taylor: 4:28

But what happened was and this is what I talk about in curveballs, you know developing your self-confidence and being able to get up on that stage and enjoy yourself at whatever level you’re at. You don’t have to be at the level of the top student or at the level of the teacher, you’re at your level. And so I’d get up on stage and I’d do songs like Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis Presley, and then the next thing, you know, her other adult students were saying okay, I think I could do this. Gail’s up there having fun, I could do it. So, really, yeah, the answer to your question is you know, it’s just self-confidence, trying it out and finding out that it’s fun.

Aideen Ni Riada: 5:15

I love it. Yeah, I mean, one of the key things I used to do with my students was an eight week course and there was always a concert at the end and most of the students always performed. Because that was my business, was like I was, you know, studied psychology and I was bringing out confidence in people. But the the thing that I think a lot of adults forget is that you don’t have to be you know good at something. Quickly, you know, and as children we’re, we’re willing to make mistakes. We’re willing to kind of get into the sandbox and make a crappy sandcastle and have fun doing it until we make a better one. But sometimes we’re very overly critical as adults. How did you overcome that yourself? You know, what was it that made it easier for you to take steps into, you know, that scary place of wow, I’m trying, but it’s not good yet.

Gail Taylor: 6:10

I’d say it was about accepting where I was at, not not like. Sometimes we get in our heads and we think, okay, this is my goal, I want to be at that level. Well, you’re not at that level. So enjoy the journey, accept the level that you’re at right now and play at that level. And you know I think that’s part of where the challenge comes from is that you’re not going to get up even for a recital. You’re not going to get up and play better than you’ve ever, ever played before. In fact, I had a teacher once say to me ever played before. In fact, I had a teacher once say to me you’re probably going to play at about 70%. So if you think of, you know you’re playing all alone in your music studio in my case it’s a music studio. If you’re playing all alone, whatever your 100% is, when you get up on stage it’ll probably be about 70% of that because of the nerves and just being aware of that and comfortable with it. And you know, cut yourself some slack.

Aideen Ni Riada: 7:11

And I think it’s really important that people understand that, even when you become a success at something, or when you’re seen as a success like I mean, I’m a singer and I perform and I have my YouTube stuff and you’re an author, for instance, so people will look at either of us and they’ll be like, okay, well, they might not get nerves anymore, but the truth is, all of us are comparing ourselves to a future version of ourselves that we aspire to become and, unfortunately, if we don’t accept where we’re currently at, we won’t take the necessary steps to move into that greater competency and that greater ability.

Gail Taylor: 7:51

Oh yeah, Nerves are a good thing. I mean, if you didn’t have any nerves, you might get up on stage, whether you’re singing or, in my case, talking or and be a little bit boring, Right, Because the nerves gives you adrenaline. I mean, Jerry Seinfeld was doing his career for years and he said I still get nervous every time. He said I get imposter syndrome when I’m going on stage. I think, oh my God, I’m not funny, why am I going out there? And then he says after I tell a joke and they laugh I find myself in the zone it’s the same for all of us, right?

Gail Taylor: 8:27

So don’t try to not have the butterflies in your stomach or the nerves. Don’t try. You’re not striving to get rid of them.

Aideen Ni Riada: 8:35

You’re just going to turn them from that nervousness into excitement and you’re going to just channel it in your performance excitement and and you’re going to just channel it in your performance, and it’s important, I think, to recognize that internally in our nervous system feels nervousness and excitement, very similarly like butterflies in the stomach, sweaty palms, maybe your breathing changes. So it’s interesting that you can interpret those feelings as I’m too nervous to do this or just I’m really excited to do it.

Gail Taylor: 9:06

Right, right. And then that brings us to the preparation. Right. What are the five Ps? Proper preparation prevents poor performance. That was Snoop Dogg’s five Ps, if you are. I mean, there’s people that are so prepared and then they’re nervous. They get up on stage, they almost have an out-of-body experience, but they still did their piece and they did a great job because they were so prepared. It was rote.

Aideen Ni Riada: 9:37

Yes, yeah, it becomes an automatic thing, like being able to drive the car to work. You know, your body just knows how to do it. Yeah, this is such an interesting topic. Able to drive the car to work. You know you, your body just knows how to do it. Um, yeah, this is such an interesting topic, and so you know, there’s always these. You know there’s obstacles on our path to everything that we want to do. It’s, you know, especially if it’s if we’re leveling up or we’re transforming or changing or stepping into a new version of ourselves. And I know that your new book, curveballs, speaks to the idea that you know things come at us, but you know it’s we have to somehow see them in a way that helps us move forward. So what is it you recommend people do with the curveballs in life?

Gail Taylor: 10:23

Yeah, so, whether it’s a curveball or challenges wherever it comes from. So for me, there’s so many different ways you’re going to handle it, depending on what it is. So the way the book’s designed is, I actually tell a personal story. It’s a curveball that life threw at me, and there were a lot of them from you know the death of a parent when I was young, to addiction, to a child in addiction, like there were. Life threw me lots of curveballs, and so there’s a story about a curveball and then the tools that I use to work my way through it. I studied personal growth and peak performance for 40 years, so there’s lots of different tools to be used, depending on the curveball. And then this is cool At the end of every chapter there’s a QR code so you could put your phone over it and it’ll take you to YouTube to watch a lyric video of the song that I wrote that was inspired by that story. Wow, so so, yeah, I literally put a soundtrack in my book. Right, I put a soundtrack in my book. It’s awesome.

Aideen Ni Riada: 11:38

And I, I, actually I read your book, I read most of it. I read your book, I read most of it. I did, I did kind of I jumped a little bit around, but I, I, I think it’s a very thorough book in that it kind it’s almost like you could write two or three books out of that one book, cause you covered so much about your life and so many different strategies, even talk about financial strategies, which, of course, your background is finance. So I was curious.

Gail Taylor: 12:03

I couldn’t leave that out.

Aideen Ni Riada: 12:04

You couldn’t leave it out. And then you know it’s so cool being able to just use the phone and check out the YouTube videos, so it’s amazing. You know, in the end, I believe that each of us connects with certain people more than other people can Like, as in I could say some amazing wisdom, right, and then you’ll come on and you might say something very similar, but the person who gets it from Gail, that needs it from Gail, is going to have it sink in, and I feel like you’re important because you say it in your way and each person listening to the podcast has other things that they have, that they’re wise about, that they understand, and we need to be careful that we value the things we know, we value the journey we’ve been on, and what would you say to people that feel like their journey isn’t important?

Gail Taylor: 13:06

oh, there’s no such thing. Everybody’s journey is equally important and how you move it in the direction that you want it to be in, I mean that’s the first step. Like what do you want it to be in? I mean that’s the first step, like what do you want? And then use your imagination.

Gail Taylor: 13:19

I mean, look at you know we’re talking about me and music and I have a catalog of 18 songs and they’re on Spotify and Apple and YouTube, and I’m not even a musician. I’m not your traditional musician. What I do is I write the song, I co-write with a friend, we do a demo, I hire a music studio down in Nashville and they record it for me. I hire a vocalist. So you know, technology right now is so amazing that I don’t have to send my song to a record label or to an existing artist and if they don’t like it, it sits in a file. I can bring it to life myself and that’s how I answer your question is. You know, think out of the box. Just wherever you are on your journey is where you’re supposed to be. Just look at where do you want to go and start creating it.

Aideen Ni Riada: 14:18

I love this. Guys, listen to this carefully. Wherever you are right now, it’s where you’re supposed to be. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be right now and that is just the most important thing. If we can accept that we’re exactly where we’re meant to be, we will be practical, pragmatic, we will take it on and we’ll stop having that. You know, monkey mind, you know complaining about circumstances, because in the end, I think we are all dealing with circumstances and they circumstances of our lives can. Sometimes, you know, they’re like a roadblock, they’re like a brick wall in front of us. You mentioned earlier, before we started, that it’s not so much the curve ball that comes your way, it’s how you handle that. Would you like to speak a little more to that point for our listeners sake, in case they feel that they are hitting a brick wall in life?

Gail Taylor: 15:19

yeah, because and I say that you know, I stole this from someone else on a podcast I come from a place of healed scars and not open wounds, and I think that’s what the curveball is. The curveball is the open wound and, yes, you can get past it. Yes, you will get past it if you want to and if you choose to do whatever it is. You know it’s not easy, it’s work. A big, big piece of this is your internal dialogue. What are you telling yourself? Right, negative thinking is not going to work. And so make sure, like I have a little trick and I talk about this in the book if you’re telling yourself, oh yeah, but I’m traumatized because of this, that and the other thing, and so I’ll never be able to garbage in garbage. That’s what I use as my mantra garbage in, garbage out. And then I reframe it and say, wow, I just experienced the real curveball. I wonder what I could do with it to create the journey I want to create, reframe it.

Gail Taylor: 16:31

However, you want Now reframing yourself. Like Tony Robbins said if you’re in your head, you’re dead. Now reframing yourself, like Tony Robbins said if you’re in your head, you’re dead. Reframing yourself isn’t something you’re going to do overnight. This isn’t a New Year’s resolution, it might. You know. If you’re very commonly self-sabotaging, then it might take you 18 months to retrain your brain. Maybe it’ll take you three months. It’s going to take everybody a different amount of time, but look at it as that.

Gail Taylor: 17:02

Catch yourself. Every time you find yourself saying a negative thought, catch it. Find your own mantra Garbage in, garbage out. Sometimes I yell it garbage in, garbage out. And I still do it to this day day. I’ve been doing this for like 40 years and I still do it. I still catch myself. Wait a minute, and so that’s what I do. I learn about your internal dialogue, the power of positive thinking. There’s so many resources. There’s so many books. There’s so many. Go to YouTube university. Oh yeah. All you have to do is google positive thinking and you’ll find something will come up for no cost absolutely, and it’s so readily available.

Aideen Ni Riada: 17:47

But a lot of people think that if they’ve been working on themselves for a while, that those negative thoughts should disappear yeah, you have to train your brain to stop doing it.

Gail Taylor: 17:59

They don’t, you can’t, will them away. It’s I almost call it, uh, self-hypnosis right, you’re training your brain, and then your subconscious mind, to create the life you want to create and not the one that was thrown at you through external forces and that you know. Think about it. If you’re learning how to play a new instrument, if you’re learning how to sing, if you’re learning how to play the guitar, if you’re learning a new language, if you’re training for a marathon, all these things take work, and it’s the same if you’re training your brain to give you the life that you want, give you your best life. I mean, if I could do it, anybody could do it.

Aideen Ni Riada: 18:44

Yay, you know, I think, when you know kids need a lot of, you know, support and encouragement, and apparently you have to say seven things that are positive to every one negative thing. And one of the things I feel like I’ve had to do for myself is almost self-parent and to understand that, yeah, I might have a bad day, but it’s my job then to also give myself a pat on the back or, you know, encourage myself. And you know, in my mind I’m saying, yeah, you know, but maybe it is possible, or I don’t know how it’s going to work out, but I am, I have faith that it will, you know. So you, I think, listeners, if you’re listening right now and you’re and you are telling yourself good things, keep doing that, because we need that positive reinforcement and we don’t always get it from the people around us. Gail, what would you say to people who feel like they’re being inundated by negativity all the time?

Gail Taylor: 19:42

I think that they’re being. I think it’s. Oh, this is so. This is a perfect question for me, because I get that all the time from folks with social media. Oh, I got to stay away from social media. It’s so negative and it brings down my mood and I’m there Whoa, wait a minute. My social media is makes me laugh and smile and I get all these positive comments and you know, it’s just so. It’s the algorithm, it’s what you engage in. So if you’re engaging in posts and reels that are all up living and about making the world a better place, then guess what? That’s what the algorithm is going to feed back to you. So just be careful that you’re not engaging in the negativeness that you’re trying to get rid of, because I don’t get it, folks. I don’t get it at all.

Aideen Ni Riada: 20:36

And I have a similar experience myself in that, well, I don’t spend a ton of time on social media, but it is generally stuff that I want to see. Now, don’t forget, guys, that you can unfollow, you can say hide the post. Make sure that you do that kind of thing and don’t comment on anything that you don’t want to be seeing more of. You know, sometimes we get caught in this, oh no, this, you know, post I don’t like. I better say something, like you know, to offset the negativity. But actually that will bring more of that kind of post into your feed as well. Exactly, that’s really great advice. Thank you so much, Gail. Gail, did you have a lot of support along your journey, or did you find that people misunderstood what you were doing as well?

Gail Taylor: 21:25

I had both. I had both. I was a little bit of a misfit, but part of it was because my dad died when I was 12 and I dealt with it with drugs and alcohol. So I was in active addiction for a lot of years and, and you know, back to the comment that you just made about, uh, having a bad day One of my theories is don’t have too many of those bad days.

Gail Taylor: 21:50

Make sure that you take whatever it is you do for a living and line it up with passion and purpose. It’s not that hard to do. It’s really important to have a job that you like so that at the end of the day, when you go home, you’re walking in the house to your family with a smile on your face and a giggle right, honey, I’m home and I had a good day, and I think it’s so, so, so important. In our society we settle a lot and I say don’t settle. Find a job that you love, and there’s not limited jobs out there, because if you sit down and say, okay, you know I love animals, then you could go work at a vet or you could, you know you could find a job that lines up with being with animals.

Gail Taylor: 22:39

One of the examples of this that I give in my book and you probably remember this is my son, because he works in pest control and he loves his job. And I’m there how could you love your job? And he said, mom, I knock on the door and the person that answers is really stressed out and they’re all upset because something’s invading their home it’s cockroaches or bed bugs or something and I explain to them hey, don’t worry, you’re going to go out for four hours, this is what I’m going to do, how I’m going to treat your home, and when you come home you’ll have your home back and your peace of mind.

Gail Taylor: 23:17

And you know, I listened to him share that, and I mean that job would be my worst nightmare you know, I don’t want to be anywhere near cockroaches or bed bugs, but he loves it and that’s the point I’m trying to make find something to do that gives you your purpose and passion. And know, when I was growing up I didn’t have. You know my mom have struggled. She had six kids and my dad died when she was in her 30s. So you know she was working to keep us together and off of welfare. So you know smiling at us and saying, good girl, what wasn’t? You know it wasn’t in her wheelhouse, but she was a positive person, she was an amazing person. It was just the curveball.

Aideen Ni Riada: 24:02

Yeah, and I think life, Life isn’t a simple thing. It is a series of lessons, I guess, and it took me a long time to realize that. Actually, I had a lot of anger about my own life and I didn’t have a lot of really terrible things happening. But I also had this wish to sing, and I didn’t get my chance to do that until a little bit later in life as well. I didn’t when I was in my twenties.

Aideen Ni Riada: 24:28

Someone asked me what’s your dream? And I said well, my dream is to be a singer, but I can’t do that. And luckily, I had just been at a training, mind training, kind of NLP, um, you know, training workshop and I understood that I was telling myself I can’t do that. So therefore, if my brain could at least come around to I can do that, I’d have a chance and it was an. It has been an amazing journey and now I help other people to fulfill their dreams with my work. So it’s a great privilege to come out the other end, um, and know that your journey can be something you’ll share, to support and inspire others.

Gail Taylor: 25:09

Yeah, yeah, and your NLP. For those that don’t know, it’s neuro-linguistic programming and it fits into that training your brain category. A hundred percent.

Aideen Ni Riada: 25:22

Yes, I know. I think that there’s a huge power in words. So when we say I can become a singer or I’m willing to try to become a singer, the way we put it, like the words that we use, will really they affect how we respond. So we need to find ways to use our words that will be more supportive. Instead of I. Actually, what I like to say is it helpful or unhelpful? So if a phrase or a word is helpful to me, great. If it’s not helpful, find it more helpful one, because life is too short to go around struggling with the words we’re saying in our heads yeah, yeah.

Gail Taylor: 26:03

And in the genre of peak performance they often say tell yourself you already have what it is that you want, so that you’re not always in the journey of going after it. Right, I’m going to be a badi badi. Well, if your subconscious mind gets the message that you’re going to be, you’re always going to be, it’s like tomorrow never comes. So maybe I am right. I am a badip, badip. And then each day you’re doing something to bring that more to the front. Absolutely.

Aideen Ni Riada: 26:40

There’s a fantastic book called Creative Visualization by Shakti Gowen. I highly recommend that one, but of course I also highly recommend Gail’s book Curveballs. And how much better it is to kind of to buy a book from someone, that you’ve heard them in conversation and it’s such a pleasure to get to know you, Gail. Is there anything else that you would like to tell our listeners about that I might not think to ask you about?

Gail Taylor: 27:09

Yeah, never give up, never give up. And if you, you know you might need to do a full reinvention of yourself, you might just need to tweak something that you already have. But my, my biggest message is you got this, and so just message is you got this and so just you know, one day at a time, and learn what it is that you have to implement in order to make that dream come true. And I don’t care if you’re 30 years old or 70 years old, you still go for it absolutely.

Aideen Ni Riada: 27:48

Tell us a little bit before we finish up. Tell us a tiny bit about the publishing journey, because you mentioned that this is your second book. What was it that helped you to put out your first book and then this book? How have you managed to manifest this as part of your journey?

Gail Taylor: 28:07

Yeah, so I self-published both of them. The first one was around the year 2000. I was teaching a course at the University of Alberta called Introduction to the Financial Markets and I couldn’t find something I wanted to use as a reference or a textbook, so I wrote one. So that’s how the first one came about, and I literally went to the bookstore and bought a book on how to write a book and it told me all the different pieces Do you want to be the writer? Do you want to be the author? Do you want to be the writer?

Gail Taylor: 28:43

Now, I had no idea that this could be two different people, but that’s when I learned about ghostwriting. I mean, I just assumed that you know, an autobiography by Frank Sinatra meant Frank Sinatra wrote a book. But no, frank Sinatra told his story to a ghostwriter who wrote it. And so I learned so much by doing that. And then, this time around, when I started up my business and I hired an entertainment lawyer and he said what do you want to do? And I said keynotes. And he said what do you want to do?

Gail Taylor: 29:11

And I said keynotes. And he said, oh, then write a book for your credibility. And I thought, oh perfect, I got, I have no problem with that idea. So that’s why it took me about a year to write it. And I did self-publish it because I needed a hundred percent control. So I didn’t, I didn’t even approach any publishers, I just self-published it and that way I was able to, and then I just hired a distribution arm. So it’s on Amazon or Barnes and Nobles anywhere you can buy a book, you can find this one wonderful.

Aideen Ni Riada: 29:44

Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you here on the Resonate podcast with me. I have a number of episodes with people similar to you an amazing guitarist called Pat Koldrick, who started back to guitar in his 50s and suddenly made a huge wave with his music, and it’s a big value of mine that it’s never too late to start something that you really love, so I’m absolutely delighted that you were able to come on the show today. Is there any final words you want to leave with our listeners?

Gail Taylor: 30:19

No, just that, I’m honored to have been here and yeah, yeah, I’m really enjoying. You’re good at your job.

Aideen Ni Riada: 30:28

I’m a good talker. It’s the Irish in me. Thank you so much, Gail, and you’ll be able to find Gail’s book, as she said, on Amazon and regular bookstores as well, and you’ll find some information about her in the show notes of today’s episode. I would encourage you to look Gail up and check out her YouTube channel for her music as well, and remember that you have something that you can share with all of us, and please keep going on your journey to full self-expression, because we all need to see what you have to offer too. Thank you so much for listening. This is the Resonate Podcast with Aideen. Goodbye.