5 Takeaways From My Latest Project

Today is a big day. If you’re reading this in real-time, it’s the beginning of a new year, and my brand new Tales from The Lane Podcast has officially dropped into the world. If you’re a loyal and avid reader of blogs and have no interest in podcasts, fear not–This blog version of TFTL isn’t going anywhere. 

The 3 Episodes that dropped this morning are based on three of my past blog posts: 

Episode 1. Why You Need to Do  Quarterly Retreats

Episode 2: The 3 Myths Holding You Back From Your Dream Career

Episode 3: Turning Your Journaling Dreams into a Successful Reality

Starting next week, the podcast episode and the blog posts will be in alignment. You can choose your favorite way of taking in your TFTL content–or check out both! The podcasts will be a bit more behind-the-scenes/in-depth than the blog posts. 

As far as the iTunes podcast library is concerned, my new little podcast is decidedly NOT a big deal. 

 

But it’s a very big deal to me. 

 

Without putting too much pressure on it, it represents A LOT OF THINGS. 

 

#1 It signifies that I’m ready for big-time growth. 

 

When I started down this entrepreneurial path, my audience was primarily made up of my colleagues from the Boston music freelance world. Then it expanded to musicians all over. Then it expanded to artists of all kinds from all over. But blogs are pretty niche and hard to find, and they are, for some strange reason, even harder to share. 

Podcasts though? Everyone listens to podcasts, and everyone is always looking for new podcasts to add to their library. It’s the one form of content that you can consume while multitasking. It’s hard to watch a YouTube video while you’re cooking, and it’s really not recommended to read blog posts while driving. 

I’m excited to welcome new names to my list and learn new stories, and I’m ready to grow both my reach and the skillsets needed to match that larger reach. 

 

#2: It represents me getting WAY out of my comfort zone. 

 

Friends have been suggesting I start a podcast for a while now, but there was no way that was EVER going to happen. 

Famous last words! 

But when I sat there and questioned it, I realized that what was holding me back was that I was quite content and comfortable writing my weekly blog posts, uploading them to my WordPress site with some photos, and writing a few social media posts to announce them to my lovely little inner-circle of friends and readers. 

I also realized that the reason I am a writer is that I am slightly uncomfortable talking out loud. Not to friends or clients, and not in a big, loud social setting, but a) growing up, I had to have years of speech therapy, and to be honest? I don’t remember there ever being a moment where they said “Great! She’s cured! She can now say her “R”s! Hooray!”  It just kind of faded away. I got busy? Or maybe my next school didn’t offer it? And when I hear myself speaking in those podcast recordings, you’d better believe I hear (and cringe at) every single one. I mean…

Tales from The Lane (fine). WheRe do CReatives ThRive? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WHAT WAS I THINKING? 

And b) I was a latch-key kid. Meaning, I came home from school to an empty house, let myself in with the key under the mat, and hung out by myself until my parents came home around 5:30 or so. After dinner? It was back to my bedroom to practice, do homework, or just be alone with my thoughts. This is when I started writing a journal. It was someone (thing?) to talk to. So in a way, it has always felt more comfortable for me to write about things than to talk about them. 

So the fact that I now talk out loud, with all of my cringy “R’s”, into a microphone, in a quiet room, and release that recording out to the whole world of Apple, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts, for anyone in the world to listen to? 

Definitely out of my Comfort Zone. 

Not to mention the little things: A platform? A host? An RSS feed? Editing? Liscense-Free music?  I had no clue. 

My friend Renée, who has been podcasting for 6 years now, assured me I had everything I needed. But I knew I was still lacking a lot of information. Which leads me to…

 

#3: It represents new skills and more evidence that “I Can Figure it Out When I Need To.”

Some of it took no time at all. Some of it took paying for a short course that would walk me through it. Some of it took Renée sending me loom videos (Bless Her!) showing me how she sets things up. Some of it came down to my hiring out (I felt no need to learn how to edit things when I could pay someone to do it brilliantly from day one) 

But I took it one step at a time, and I figured out each piece until it showed up, all approved and shiny on the Apple app last Friday. 

During my Q1 Retreat last week, I figured out a few other pieces. Systems I could put in place that would simplify and somewhat automate the weekly process. Templates, and SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) all went into my Trello board, ready to be implemented week after week, keeping it from becoming a huge lift every week. 

Because I’d rather put my time and energy into creating great content for you than into a social media graphic. 

Something that comes up in a lot of coaching sessions with clients is a fear that something might go wrong in the middle of a workshop, launch, talk, etc. The hard truth is that things can ALWAYS go wrong. Sometimes it’s something that was out of your control. Sometimes it’s something that you overlooked. But what comes into play is the confidence that you will be able to FIGURE IT OUT. That confidence comes from any past experience you’ve had Figuring Something Out –whether on the fly or, like my podcast, simply when I needed to.

 

#4: It represents public vulnerability

“Done is better than Perfect.” Is a phrase rarely uttered in the arts world. No teacher in the classical music space is ever going to shrug their shoulders and say “meh! Just go out there and play–even if it’s not so good.” 

That may very well be what ends up happening for every one of us, every time, but the culture is one of “You stay up all night and practice until your fingers bleed to make it as perfect as you possibly can.” 

But I had so much resistance to recording these first episodes (by the 3rd one it did feel much easier!) and it was all so new, that I knew that if I wanted to make it perfect, it wouldn’t come out. I’d just keep re-recording everything over and over and over again until I felt utterly depleted and gave up. 

I had to learn to be okay with putting something out that wasn’t perfect. I had to be confident in my knowledge that every single episode would get better. As I get more comfortable, and as I gain more experience doing it, I’ll figure out all of the nuances that I’d never know the first time around. I had to trust that my listeners know that too. 

 

#5: It represents the next chapter in my life. 

 

I stopped teaching at the end of last June–6 months ago–just in time for my mom to make the first of what would come to be many trips to the ER. The next 6 months would mean that any spare time I had between clients and writing would be devoted to her end-of-life care. There was no time for new projects. It wasn’t a moment for growth. It was a moment for family. For her. And that was good and right and important to me. 

But with her passing, comes both a strange adjustment to a life without her in it and a sense of freedom and lightness. Suddenly I am noticing the large bits of white space in my week that teaching had filled up for 30 years. And suddenly, I feel like I can dedicate that time to new projects. I can launch the podcast, I can move forward with the book, and I can get back to the creative page myself. 

This new chapter is about streamlining my focus while expanding my creative output. The blog, the podcast, the book, my coaching, my speaking, my courses. They are all outshoots of one bucket: Helping people create their most fulfilling and authentically aligned lives. This is truly my most authentically aligned and fulfilling life, and the creation and execution of it is something I am extremely proud of. It’s also something that I never want to take for granted. 

So whether you rush off this site and tune into the TFTL podcast or not, I hope you will get something useful from these 5 Takeaways. I hope that this week, you’ll look for opportunities for you to: 

1. Seek growth
2. Get out of your comfort zone
3. Learn new skills
4. Allow yourself to be publicly imperfect
5. Appreciate the chapter you’re in and what it means for you. 

 

Cheers, 

Kate