Everyday Talent Podcast

Are you chasing the never-ending cycle of scaling and growth in your creative business? In the last episode of this series, I’m going to share with you my insights on redefining growth and debunking the myth of scaling in the creative world. Take a step back from the hustle culture and discover a more fulfilling way to grow your creative practice. I will be sharing a unique framework of redefining success for creative practitioners  that can help you find balance and fulfillment in your creative journey. 

Key highlights of this episode

• Why scaling isn't always the right answer for your creative practice [00:03:07]
• Celebrating your milestones [00:06:45]
• Defining growth on your own terms [00:08:02] 
• How to prioritize your values and needs in your business decisions  [00:10:25]
• How to maintain your creative fulfillment [00:15:15]
• The significance of impact in driving your creative journey [00:19:08]
• How to balance creative fulfillment, impact, and profit for a more holistic approach to success.  [00:24:13]

This episode is also available on Youtube. Watch it here:
https://youtu.be/0i6uQBsWYr0

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here https://xiebetty.ck.page/enews

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives to build a dream career that matters to them, their community, and the future. My clients have successfully pivoted their career, made their art, and made happier money. Book a free consultation call here: 

https://practice.do/me/betty-xie/book/coaching-free-consultation

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

We’ve all heard the advice of “You don’t have to do this alone. Ask for help!”But when it comes down to it, what kind of support or help do we actually need when we’re running our own creative practice or business? I’ve got you covered. On today’s episode, we are going to break down 5 types of support you actually need running your solo creative practice or business. 

Key highlights of this episode

• The importance of asking for the right help at the right time when growing your creative practice [02:37:05] 
• Outsourcing work [03:26:00] 
• Coaching and mentorship [03:42:03] 
• Using the right technology and back-end support [04:32:04] 
• Taking care of mental health and wellbeing [06:19:08] 
• Investing in learning and growth [07:39:09] 

This episode is also available on Youtube with graphics. Watch it here:

https://youtu.be/iZyG6Bcs-Ck

If you're an experienced fundraiser in the arts sector or non-profit sector, click the link below to discover your fundraising consulting personality and assess if you're a good fit for the program. And be sure to sign up for the upcoming webinar to learn more about how this program can help you become a successful fundraising consultant.

Find out your fundraising consultant personality

https://bettyxie--thegoodpartnership.thrivecart.com/fractional-fundraiser-academy/63f88e23dbe84/

The Fractional Fundraiser Academy Program

https://bettyxie--thegoodpartnership.thrivecart.com/fractional-fundraiser-academy/

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here https://xiebetty.ck.page/enews

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives to build a dream career that matters to them, their community, and the future. My clients have successfully pivoted their career, made their art, and made happier money. Book a free consultation call here: 

https://practice.do/me/betty-xie/book/coaching-free-consultation

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

It’s been one year since I shifted from an employee to running my creative business full time!

To celebrate this occasion, I am sharing with you the top three lessons I’ve learned in this first year of being a full time self-employed creative running my own business. 

In this episode, we're going to focus on lesson one: how to not fall for the social media trap running your creative practice. As creative, the majority of us use social media to promote our art, services, or products. Through coaching creative practitioners 1:1, I have heard a good dosage of anxiety from my clients that they feel that they are either not doing the right thing or not doing enough on social media. 

I feel that angst first hand, as I had also fallen into the rabbit hole of chasing social media numbers at some point in this past year. Today, I am going to share what I’ve learned and how I eventually honed back in my core strength and built a better relationship with social media.   

Key highlights of this episode

• My own experience with social media and how I fell into the trap of chasing the numbers [00:03:30]
• My mindset shift around social media [00:06:59] 
• How you can also assess your strength and build a better relationship with social media [00:09:45]

This episode is also available on Youtube. Watch it here:

https://youtu.be/vf-BfHqjjhU

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here https://xiebetty.ck.page/enews

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives to build a dream career that matters to them, their community, and the future. My clients have successfully pivoted their career, made their art, and made happier money. Book a free consultation call here: 

https://practice.do/me/betty-xie/book/coaching-free-consultation

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

How do you make a powerful career shift as a mid-career artist?

I am so excited and humbled to bring you this episode featuring one of my amazing clients, Tim Nguyen. In this episode, Tim delves into his journey as a photographer and creative solopreneur. He also shares how coaching helped him make a pivotal shift in his career recently, finding new balance while staying true to his values and purpose.

If you're a mid-career creative looking for inspiration on how to navigate the increasing nuanced complexity in your career, you won't want to miss this episode. Tim's story is both relatable and inspiring, and I know you'll walk away with some incredible insights that will help you on your own journey.

Key highlights of this episode

• Tim’s career trajectory and his take on the pros and cons of being a creative solopreneur. 00:03:32
• Tim’s definition of success and how he came to embrace what’s important to him is not just profit. 00:13:42
• How Tim came to confront with his need to pivot his career ad how coaching has support him in the process 00:20:15
• Tim’s experience of addressing burnout, building a relationship with ADHD, and how his increased sense self-awareness supported him to grow as a person and artist 00:26:26
• Tim’s powerful shift from moving beyond endless negative self-talk  00:39:00 
• Tim’s biggest takeaway from the coaching process 00:43:30 
• What’s in store for Tim in 2023  00:49:16
• Tim’s advice for new creative solopreneurs and mid career artists 00:57:00 

About the Guest

Tim Nguyen is a photographer, videographer and graphic artist based in Calgary, Alberta. He is also a second generation Vietnamese-Canadian. Tim is best known for his performing arts documentation, and is also a mentor, public speaker, digital archivist, ADHD awareness advocate and an embarrassingly mushy cat dad. Tim’s mission is to elevate the profiles of Calgary’s vibrant, diverse artists and production companies through community stewardship and affordability. His world class images are an intersection of photojournalism and cinematography that celebrate the broad cultural impact of theatre and dance. His work championing Calgary’s Performing Arts sector have had him deemed to be a pillar of his community.

Find Tim at: https://timnguyen.co/

Tim’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timnguyen.co/

About Betty

Watch the full interview with video and captions on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/@bettyxcoach

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives like you to grow career, practice and income by embracing exactly who you are. My clients have been able to deepen their craft, make big career moves, and make happier money without overwhelm.

Book a free consultation call here: 

https://practice.do/me/betty-xie/book/coaching-free-consultation

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

How do you find your creative voice? In this episode, I talked to Tendisai Cromwell, an artist, arts advocate, and an arts worker. Tendisai shares how she navigates the challenges of being a multifaceted artist and how she unearths her truth and identity on her nonlinear creative path. She also walks us through her process of working on her debut novel. 

Key highlights of this episode

• Tendisai’s journey as a multifaceted artist and commitment to long creative process
• How motherhood influenced her creative process
• Connection of nature to her creativity and well-being
• The value of taking time and giving space for herself

We are also on YOUTUBE now! Subscribe to our channel and watch the podcast interview on Youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/@bettyxcoach

About the Guest

Tendisai Cromwell is a Toronto-based writer and filmmaker. She previously served as the Executive Director of the Regent Park Film Festival and as the founding Creative Director of New Narrative Films. Her writing has been published in BESIDE Magazine, Santa Ana River Review and elsewhere. Tendisai is currently writing her debut novel. 

Connect with Tendisai via her IG: https://www.instagram.com/tendisai_/

Listen to Tendisai’s podcast  The Story So Far,  a podcast that explores a broad range of artistic expression by Muslim artists in Canada, through the eyes of the artists themselves.

Read Tendisai’s essay: Rituals of Escape (Besides Magazine) 

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives like you to grow career, practice and income by embracing exactly who you are. My clients have been able to deepen their craft, make big career moves, and make happier money without overwhelm.

Book a free consultation call here: 

https://practice.do/me/betty-xie/book/coaching-free-consultation

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

Becoming a creative freelancer can be an exciting career move, except no one has really taught us HOW to do this “job”. More often than not, what you’re doing is very different from another creative freelancer. When people congratulate you with messages like “you’re your own boss now”, you secretly cringe and worry about your next week’s schedule, your next month’s paycheck, and that project that you really want to say no to but are scared. Not to mention, you promised yourself that this would be the year to restart on your personal art project, but half a year has gone by and you’ve made zero progress on that. 

Ouch. If all these hurt a little, I feel you. As a creative entrepreneur myself, I am pretty much also a freelancer, and I coach other creative freelancers on their journey as well. So today, I invited one of my coaching clients, Tara Dorey, to come on the podcast and discuss the life of being a creative freelancer. As an artist, arts educator, and former Executive Director of a small and mighty arts organization, Tara is someone I deeply admire and have been humbled to partner with on her journey to grow her practice. 

Key highlights of this episode

• Tara’s journey on becoming a full-time creative freelancer
• Her take on non-linear growth in creative career
• Tara’s key takeaways from our one-on-one coaching
• Her ritual organizing her week, setting intention, and celebrating mini-milestones 
• The importance of talking more openly about money and money mindset in the arts 

If you’re curious about the final image Tara and I created in our collage, see here.

About the Guest

Tara Dorey is a visual artist with a focus on collaborative and community engaged art making. Her practice includes arts education and facilitation, public art and murals, as well as project management and community engagement, practices that bridge her backgrounds from a Bachelor of Fine Art in Drawing & Painting from OCAD University and a Community Arts Practice Certificate from York University. Currently, Tara is studying a Masters of Education with an Arts in Education emphasis, at OISE, University of Toronto. 

Find Tara at on her website: taradorey.com

Or connect with her on Instagram: @tara.dorey

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives like you to grow career, practice and income by embracing exactly who you are. My clients have been able to deepen their craft, make big career moves, and make happier money without overwhelm.

Book a free consultation call here: 

https://practice.do/me/betty-xie/book/coaching-free-consultation

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

I took one full month off in December to travel and celebrate 2022. I cherish this decision and it was not one that I take lightly—it got me thinking about what freedom means, how we obtain freedom, and how we actively plan for our freedom in our creative career and practice. So to kickoff 2023, I want to lift the curtains and share the behind-the-scenes of making this decision and insights on how we might all obtain more freedom in our creative practice in the new year. 

Key highlights of this episode 

• How to create more space for freedom in your creative practice?
• The irony of desiring freedom and putting freedom on hold
• The key anchors to have freedom in your practice: structure, spontaneity, agency
• The interconnection of micro to macro freedom in your career and practice

Access the FREE planning tool for 2023 here: http://xiebetty.ck.page/planforfreedom2023

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives like you to grow career, practice and income by embracing exactly who you are. My clients have been able to deepen their craft, make big career moves, and make happier money without overwhelm.

Book a free consultation call here

https://practice.do/me/betty-xie/book/coaching-free-consultation

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

It's the end of the year, and I can't think of a better time to reflect on all the things that happened.I'm taking a look back at this year by answering some new year’s reflection questions with my friend Rebecca Hong. We're going to be talking about what we did, what we learned, and what we're looking forward to in 2023. 

Key highlights of this episode 

• The best and the most challenging things that happened this year
• Unexpected joy and obstacle in the past year
• Three words to describe 2022
• Biggest personal change from January to December of this past year
• The one thing that we would like to see growing or flourishing in 2023

For the new year reflection questions we used in the episode, see here: https://www.theartofsimple.net/new-years-eve-reflection-questions/

About the Guest

Rebecca is an arts manager, filmmaker, and artist who currently works in the kids space in television. She focuses on uplifting marginalized voices in film and TV. On the side, she illustrates for clients and for herself. She is the director of Been Here So Long, which premiered at the Reel Asian Film Festival in 2017

Find Rebecca on Instagram

Check out my collaborative art project with Rebecca: AirSignThings (i can’t promise we will be updating often…)

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives like you to grow career, practice and income by embracing exactly who you are. My clients have been able to deepen their craft, make big career moves, and make happier money without overwhelm.

Book a free consultation call here (I am taking call for January 2023 now!) 

https://calendly.com/bettyxcoach/consultation?month=2022-08

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

Are you one of those people when you focus on one thing for too long, your brain tunes out and you look for other signs, signals, and inspiration to reactivate your energy? 

I am willing to bet 50% of us are multi-passionate people. I am, but I had a hard time coming to terms with it earlier in my career, because the “right” way to do the “career thing” seemed to be choosing one path and focus. 

As such, I always identified as “the business brain in a room of artists, and artist in a room of business people” . 

If you’re nodding hard as you read this, I want you to join us on this latest episode on the Everyday Talent Podcast. I had a great conversation with the quintessentially multi-passionate: Ziyan Hossain.

 Ziyan and I met when I was still in my undergrad and he became my mentor. And from day one, he really showed me and embodied the practice of pursuing all of our diverse interests and letting different lanes fuel and inspire each other. 

Key highlights of this episode 

• How Ziyan managed to follow his interest and creativity while working as a business strategist 
• Grounding practices for staying driven and inspired
• How he developed his multifaceted career
• How his background as an artist/creative influenced him to become an innovator and systems thinker
• His take on the socially constructed dichotomy between art and business
• Advice for multifaceted creatives

About the Guest

Ziyan is a design practitioner and artist operating at the intersection of systems thinking, behavioural economics, strategic foresight and human centred design.   He is a co-founder at Method Collective and Acting Managing Director at OCAD U CO, the consultancy and innovation arm of OCAD U, Canada's largest and most comprehensive art and design university.He is currently on the Executive Programming Committee for the Association of Professional Futurists, Steering Committee for the Ideas Project with the Ontario Science Centre/Toronto MOCA and has spent over 5 years on the programming committee of the Reel Asian Film Festival.

He plays guitar, bass, synth,  has performed with a number of renowned artists from Dhaka and Toronto and has worked with major musical equipment manufacturers including Strandberg Guitars and Eventide Audio. The last release by his band Sundecay was critically acclaimed.

He has worked and presented in Toronto, Montreal, Dhaka, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, London, Stockholm, Belgium, and more.

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives like you to grow career, practice and income by embracing exactly who you are. My clients have been able to deepen their craft, make big career moves, and make happier money without overwhelm.

Book a free consultation call here: https://calendly.com/bettyxcoach/consultation?month=2022-08

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.

Since I started coaching, I get lots of people asking me what is coaching? Why are you specifically coaching creatives? What happens during a coaching call? 

So I thought - I really should have an FAQ up! But instead of me sitting here and talking about coaching, I thought it would be fun to invite someone who knows me so well to come on the show and take over the interviewer seat. On today’s episode, I invited my dear friend Jessie Lau, who’s also a creative, to do a fun and pointed Q & A with me about what is it like to work with a coach, and what it is like to work with yours truly. Nothing is off limit, and oh yes, we threw in a couple fun stories there for you. 

Key Highlight: 

• What are the differences between coaching, therapy and consulting?
• Misconceptions about coaching 
• What happens in discovery calls? 
• What happens during a coaching call?
• Coaching structures and framework 

About the Guest: Jessie Lau 

Jessie Lau likes being around creatives and supporting them. She has been a photographer and assistant to artists and small businesses. Now she has an unrelated full-time job and takes photos when her friends need them. She currently hosts a podcast “I am Thinking About You” where she catches up with her friends.

Listen to Jessie’s Podcast:  https://shows.acast.com/i-am-thinking-about-you

Connect with Jessie: @thejessielau

About Betty

Follow me on Instagram @bettyxcoach for more resources and my behind-the-scenes story working as a creative and a coach for creatives

Want more raw reflections on creative practices? Subscribe to my emails here

My 1:1 coaching program is OPEN! I help creatives like you to grow career, practice and income by embracing exactly who you are. My clients have been able to deepen their craft, make big career moves, and make happier money without overwhelm.

Book a free consultation call here: https://calendly.com/bettyxcoach/consultation?month=2022-08

Learn more about the program at xiebetty.com/coaching

The Everyday Talent Podcast is produced by Betty Xie and Benice Detoon.