The Write Path

The Write Path #47 - "Beyond Potential..." with Kate Kayaian!!!

• Rory Paquette

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Kate Kayaian is an author, speaker, and career strategist for high achievers who want to build lives of impact, purpose, and sustainable success.  A former professional cellist, Kate performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist in venues ranging from Boston’s Jordan Hall to leading European concert halls. She trained at the New England Conservatory of Music and held a fellowship with the New World Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas.  She is the author of Beyond Potential, a practical guide for high performers navigating the next chapter of their professional lives, and the host of Tales from The Lane, a podcast exploring the hidden challenges and unexpected joys of success. As a sought-after speaker, Kate delivers keynotes and workshops on leadership presence, mindset transformation, and redefining what’s possible for high achievers across industries.

Her Website:  https://katekayaian.com/

Her Quarterly Retreat Planning Guide:  https://mailchi.mp/585d0fbc5a61/quarterly-retreat-planning-guide

Welcome to the Write Path Podcast, where being an author, an actual author, still matters. This isn't the place for the Chat GPT experts or the AI buffs to churn out soulless content with no heart.  This is the place where authors share their journeys, explore their creativity, examine the "Why?" behind it all and come together to celebrate each other. This is the podcast for authors, about authors, and by an author, where the truth still counts and words still have power. Join Us!  You have a story to tell!

Contact us on all our social media platforms and email us at thewritepathpodcast@gmail.com  

This is the place where authors know that every page... is a step forward. Let's move forward together, let's move forward today. Listen now.


SPEAKER_00

And welcome back, everyone, to the Right Path Podcast. We're being an author. An actual author still matters. This is the podcast. It's for authors, it's about authors, and it's done by an author. It's where we share our journeys. We explore our creativity. But most importantly, and I love this part of it, folks, it's why I do this. We examine the why behind it all. Our guest today is this woman's magnificent. I spent two minutes with her, and I'm already completely enthralled to hear all the rest of her story. She's a former professional concert cellist. She's a coach, she's a writer, a speaker, she's the president of a not-for-profit arts organization called Bermuda Philharmonic, which we may be able to get into today, too. She's written a fantastic book, which we're going to get to, the podcast that she's doing, where she gets to try out some of her stuff, which you guys all know me. Hey, I'm a you know 10x podcaster right now. Um her podcast, Tales from the Lane, I want you guys to go check out. I've had a chance to listen to it. It's fantastic. But her book, right? Uh one year old this week. So we're celebrating the birthday of this bad boy, uh, author of Beyond Potential, a guide for creatives who want to reassess, redefine, and reignite their careers. Uh, folks, if you're not like red chump at the bit already, then you don't have a heartbeat. So go get some coffee like we have. Wake up and let's get rocking and rolling today. Please welcome to the show Kate Kayan. Did I get it right?

SPEAKER_02

You got it perfectly. Wori, thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. We're gonna have a great conversation today.

SPEAKER_00

I think so too. Thanks for being here. It's uh you have done so much. I mean, even when I'm reading through the intro, I'm like, you know, where do you begin with this lady? Holy cow. Uh I'm gonna turn it over to you and say, hey, Kate, tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, sure. I'll give everybody the sort of reader's digest version because nobody wants a 30-minute bio on a podcast. But I um I grew up in Chicago. I uh started playing the cello at a very young age, four and a half, because I had a crush on a boy. That's a whole other story for another time. Uh and just fell in love with being a cellist, followed that as my main career. I went to the New England Conservatory of Music. I went to all the right festivals. I just, you know, there's a clear path for a classical musician, and I was on it. And I was lucky enough to have this incredible career. I landed back in Boston, um, where I had the bulk of my career, but I got to travel all over the world, play in top concert halls, play with amazing colleagues, and I was just living the dream. I was living the dream that when I was a teenager wanting to be a professional cellist, that's what I was doing. And at some point, sort of late 30s, early 40s, like I'm really doing it. Everything's great, big successful career. I realized that I kind of didn't want to do it anymore. But there was no evidence or example of anybody quitting a classical music career, unless they were injured or having some sort of mental health issues. You didn't just quit. This was a career that you did because you loved it. And you, if you loved it, you did it until you were 100 years old. And um, that was really tough for me. And so I channeled my energy into writing. I started a blog. Uh I went into other creative projects. Meanwhile, I'm still a performing cellist, still traveling the world, uh, realizing that the main difference was this. When I was, you know, throughout my career, high school, college, beyond in my early career, there was nowhere I would have preferred to be at eight o'clock on a Saturday night than on stage playing the cello. And so I got to do that. That was great. Every Saturday night I was on stage playing a concert. And I reached a point when, you know, I'm an adult, I have a family, I have friends who aren't musicians for the maybe the first time in my life. And I didn't realize like people have dinner parties at eight o'clock at night, people go to other events when they're not working at eight o'clock on a Saturday night. And I just sort of realized that my life had evolved, right? I had evolved as a person and that the things that I wanted desperately at an earlier stage in my life were maybe not what I still wanted. And again, no evidence for what to do with this information. Um, so I started my blog at the time, Tales from the Lane, which became the podcast Tales from the Lane. And um yeah, it's just been a really wonderful ride. The pandemic changed everything for me, Rory. That was really a pivotal moment. It shut down every concert. I played a concert on Friday, March 13th, right? Which is the date that everybody sort of has in their head of like the day before lockdown, right? And so I happened to be here in Bermuda where I live, which was rare. I don't perform here a lot, but I had a recital here that night. And I got up on stage and I talked to the audience about how, you know, this was likely the last time that, you know, I was gonna perform, the last time that we were all gonna be able to gather like this and listen to music. I was talking about the power of music and gathering and community. And I got a little teary. And people remember that they're like, oh yeah, you like you were a little emotional talking about that. Like it was really touching that like you were so upset that you weren't gonna be able to perform. And here's the thing, Rory, between you and me and our thousands of listeners today, I was emotional because I was relieved.

SPEAKER_00

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

I was so relieved that I didn't have to do it anymore. That I was being given this break. I had a big, huge two-week concert tour, solo tour on the West Coast planned for for late April, and I knew that that wasn't gonna happen. And you know, I mean the music's learned, I wasn't worried about anything, concerts are booked, it all I have to do is get on the plane and go. I was so relieved that I didn't have to do it, and that finally, because the world, none of my friends, step away this situation, as horrible as it was, was giving me that that opportunity to I called it a sabbatical. I said, Okay, six months, I'm just not gonna perform, they're canceled anyway. Um, and I'm gonna see how I feel at the end of those six months. If I maybe I miss it, maybe this was just maybe I was just burnt out, maybe I just needed a break. And I started writing more. I started a an online cello festival for the top high school and college-aged cellists, all of the top cello masters of the world came online. They were thrilled, nobody had any work, students didn't have anything to do, they were desperate for community, and it was a huge success. Everybody said you could never do that, that will never work. It was a huge success. And so my colleagues, other musicians who also like, you know, most musicians, especially classical musicians, marry other classical musicians, right? Okay, and so both incomes had been wiped out. So they start coming to me like Kate, can you teach me how to create a project, an online project like that? Like, I'm desperate, I need to do something. I had some experience in marketing, some copywriting, some sales. I had it was just random bits that you gather throughout life, as we all do. And and so I started working with my colleagues, and that turned into coaching. I realized that um while I could tell them exactly what to do, it was a lot of the mindset stuff that was um blocking them from doing it. And so the more I studied and the more I um pulled from my own experience, it was able to help them. I got more and more into coaching, I got more and more into writing. And I started to have these ideas for a book because I was saying the same thing to every person I talked to, whether it was a musician or an artist or a painter or a dancer, everybody was kind of going through the same thing at the time. And so I thought, okay, I think there's a book here, but I wasn't quite sure what angle to take with it. And so what I did was I took an idea, say like an idea for a chapter or a concept, and I would do a podcast episode on it. And it'd be sort of half written, half off the cuff. Some of them were like old blog posts that I just sort of spruced up. Uh, and I just used the podcast to work through book material just to see like what did I get comments on? What did people have questions on? What did people write back to me or send me a DM on Instagram or send me an email and say, hey, that like thank you for talking about that. And it really guided me towards how to write this book of what information people needed, what information people are like, oh yeah, totally. Like, yeah, got that. Like, yeah, we all know that. I was like, okay, I don't need to dwell on that. Uh, and things that people were like, oh man, that was super helpful, and thank you so much, and have further questions on. That became a section of the book. And it was incredibly gratifying to go through that process and know as I was writing the book that these ideas had kind of been pre-validated by the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

Interesting. No, I couldn't listen to all the episodes of the podcast, of course. But the uh I know I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_02

I only have 110.

SPEAKER_00

I was just gonna say, but that means you have a lot of episodes, you know. If I can, wow, yeah, you know, you're uh you're just scratching the surface. But with uh when you say you were testing this stuff out, so were you just reading the book or were you discussing the book? Uh what what was the content of the episode that you were putting out there that you were getting feedback on?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, you know, the book hadn't been written at that point. Uh so it was the blogs.

SPEAKER_00

Sorry. Yeah, you were putting out there.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah, so some of them were blogs, right? My blog, The Tales from the Lane, the blog that I had had since 2017, um, had lots of different things. Some of them were lifestyle, some of them were specifically towards like how to practice a tricky passage for an orchestra audition. Like some of them were super nation specific. And I had no idea what I was doing with a blog. But some of them were kind of about this. It's a, you know, the work that I do, I basically what I do is I help people design their lives and their careers so that they're reaching their full potential potential, going beyond their what they thought was their potential. And a lot of that has to do with mindset and you know, negotiating with that imposter syndrome we all have. And some of it is just basic time management and productivity of like how to get your stuff done, right? You want to write a book, you know how to write a book, right? Chances are you know how to write a book. Why aren't you doing it? Part of it is that you keep running out of time. Some of it is that you have your brain is saying terrible things to you about how you're a terrible writer and you have no business writing a book and nobody's gonna read it, and this has been written before, and right, all of those things.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

So my work sort of encompasses my work as a coach and a speaker, encompasses all of that, and but that's a lot of different material, right? So that's what I meant. Like I would take an old blog post about productivity, and I would kind of reshape it towards the lens of like if this was a chapter in my book. Okay, right. If this was gonna be part of a book, how would I frame it? And sometimes I had no idea. I'm like, is this like, should this be in the book? I don't know. And I would just talk about it. Um and and the things that felt right, the things that I knew really landed. I mean, at the end of the day, I didn't, it wasn't a poll. Like my book is not just a poll of which episodes were the most popular, but it did really help shape my ideas and and give me some some feedback into how to structure the book.

SPEAKER_00

That's uh that's a seems like a very effective way to go. It's a unique strategy to grow the podcast, of course, uh grow your engagement, but then also you know, set yourself up in terms of what writing is going to work with folks. But you took a unique tact in that from the beginning you set the stage. This is this is what we're doing. So it isn't just hey, I'm reading it, tell me what you think. You know, and everybody's like, oh, I just heard the story, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. You're actually opening it up and going, so if this was a post, how would you feel? Let me know, here we go. Yeah. That's that's very powerful in the podcasting world to set the stage that way and invite everybody in because it's just clear expectation. So I mean, that's well done.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And I wasn't honestly, I wasn't that obvious about it. I wasn't saying, like, hey guys, I'm working on a book. Here's some material, let me know what you think. It to be perfectly frank and honest and transparent with everybody, it came actually from like, you know, basically just a productivity hack for myself. I had a lot, I have a lot going on, as you said. I do a lot of different things, they are all connected, right? They're all centered around the same hub. Um but so I'm supposed to be writing a podcast episode or releasing a podcast episode, and I'm supposed to be working on my book. Well, what a great way to do both at the same time.

SPEAKER_00

I love this. So you're proof of concept here.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it was just proof of concept. Like if I'm gonna write a, you know, um, as they say, pardon me if you are anti-swearing, but like, you know, writing that shitty first draft.

SPEAKER_00

We're not. It's okay.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so writing that shitty first draft, right? That might as my shitty first draft might as well be a podcast episode. Hopefully it's not actually gonna be terrible. Hopefully it'll be pretty good. But like the first run of it, just put it out there and get feedback. And uh yeah, I mean, if I did it again, which I probably will, actually, I think at this point my audience kind of knows, I think I've said enough times that yes, uh, you were my guinea pigs. I I, you know, the when they read the book, when the people who listened who'd have listened to every, you know, all 110 episodes of Tales from the Lane, if they were to buy Beyond Potential, which I hope you all did, um, they're not gonna read the book and say, I already know all of this because they were all podcast episodes.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_01

Got it. Yep.

SPEAKER_02

I didn't literally take the transcript from a podcast episode and layer them and publish it as a book.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Concepts will feel familiar. Some things will be like, oh yes, I know this because I learned it from Kate on her podcast. But the overall theme of the book is much different. So it's divided into three sections. The first section is reassess, uh, the second one is redefine, and the third is re-ignite. And the whole idea is that, well, it's based on the concept of if you were to meet the version of yourself that actually did all of the things that you wanted to do. Like let's say it's your last day on earth, like you're you're dying, or you've already died, and you meet the version of yourself who actually did all of the things you want to do. You always said you wanted to run a marathon. That person's wearing like the medals from their from their marathon.

SPEAKER_00

This is a sad story. I gotta tell you this is a sad story already. So right?

SPEAKER_02

I mean, everybody that I've said this to has just looked at me and been like, oh my god, that's terrible. And the reason and the reason for that is because we all have those little things. For me, I'm in my final weeks of Invisalign. Because as I'm writing this book and I'm talking about this and I'm thinking about this concept, I'm thinking, you know, that that one tooth has always been really crooked. And if I meet that version of myself and her teeth are straight, I'm gonna be so mad because how easy is it to just fix the damn tooth? Right? And so it's those things, right? So we're setting ourselves up for the very beginning. What does that life look like? And maybe it's you've always wanted to write a book, that half-finished manuscript to that brilliant novel, you know it's brilliant. You don't think anybody else is gonna think it's brilliant, but deep down you know it's brilliant. And it's sitting in a desk drawer or it's sitting in a folder on your desktop. The perfect version of yourself published it. They did it. Maybe they wrote three other books too. They did what they wanted to do, right? So this book, at the end of the book, you'll have the tools to just go out and do those things. You'll have an idea of what they are and how to do them. And the fact that they might change, right? Because who I wanted, what I wanted my future life to be when I was 18 was very different than 48. And that's fine. We talk about that. So the first section of the book, reassess, is to look at all of those old stories that we've heard, that we've been told, that we've been telling ourselves about what we can and cannot do. What we are and are not allowed to do.

SPEAKER_00

If I can, because I want to hear about the other parts, of course, but if I can break in, is the book your story?

SPEAKER_02

My story is woven throughout the book, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because it sounds like this is what you went through, like when you were talking about COVID and how felt related.

SPEAKER_02

100%. 100%. It's you know, I went through this and these are the struggles I had, and there were no resources available to me. So here's a resource for you. You know, I had to I think a lot of us write the book that we're desperate to read.

SPEAKER_00

That's powerful. I like that statement. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

All right. I I love the idea between re-assess, redefine, re-ignite. Um, because I mean, especially for folks who are you know my age, that is something that we're all going through right now. I mean, as soon as I read the title, before I even said it out loud, I was like, oh, I like this. This is like I've been doing this, this is not who I want to be. I need to re-assess.

SPEAKER_02

I need to Yeah, and that's why I have hyphens in there, which don't exist in actual English, right? I put the hyphens there because we have done this before. This is not our first rodeo.

SPEAKER_00

Right. It's very it's bold and it's it's out there. It's like, hey, this is there's a point to this. The re part of it matters. Uh I love that. All right. I I didn't mean to break in, but I mean uh, please do. I want to do that.

SPEAKER_02

You know, I I was um I have a very good friend who actually she was a ballet dancer in um Miami City ballet when I lived down there. So we became friends as artists, and ballet dancers do get to leave their industry and go do other things. She landed in the publishing industry um and then became a writer herself and left. And so I was chatting with her and I was showing her the cover of the book. I was so excited, and she was like, and she had worked as an editor at this publishing house, and she was like, You know, you spell those words wrong, right? And I was like, Yeah, it's on purpose.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Like, yeah, I went to school. I know how to it's on purpose. And she's like, I don't know. I don't know. I think people are gonna be turning, like, they're gonna not know what to think of that. And I was like, Well, I explain it on page one, so you know, as long as they just give me a chance. But it's true. We are this book is talking to people who I mean, I'm not gonna say it's not helpful to an 18-year-old, but an 18-year-old is just assessing and defining and igniting their life for the first time.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And so, yes, there are gonna be a ton of tools in this book that are helpful to anyone, and definitely that 18-year-old at the start of their journey, but I wrote it for the people out there who, whether they are an artist, they are doing their thing and they realize that they've been just playing too small and they're not actually living their career the way they know they could. Right. Um, I've had, you know, uh, musicians who were just at home teaching their students and playing some local gigs, decide that, yeah, you know what, they're gonna they're gonna audition for a bigger orchestra, like a you know, the next level up. And they get those seats, they get those jobs, and they're like, ah, I knew I could do it, right? Why was I playing so small? And it's for the people who haven't done those things and desperately want to. It's a little bit, it has a little bit of artists' way, um, ideas in it. It is also uh, it has a lot of exercises in it. You can, it's the kind of book where you take your time uh and work through it slowly. And so, which was hell, you know, when you release a book and you want the reviews right away, right? And people are like, I'm only halfway through it, you know, two months later. I'm like, oh God, come on. Like, just I love it, it's great. A lot of people, but you know, what you can do is you can read the book, skip the exercises, and get an idea for it, and then go back and do the exercises, which which people have really enjoyed doing. Um But yeah, I think oftentimes when people want to make a big change in their life, they're ready to step things up a little bit, they're ready to to take things to the next level, or ready to just do that thing they've always wanted to do. They skip right to the action. And they skip the first two parts. Right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I've I've never been athletic. I'm not an athletic person, right? That's the story they're telling themselves. And um I'm not somebody who can run well, right? That's defining themselves. Um, but I'm gonna go try to run a marathon. Okay, good luck with that training. I think it's gonna last about a week, right?

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

So if you go back and you assess and reassess and say, like, why do I think I'm not a good athlete? It's like, oh yeah, I had that one gym teacher when I was eight who like told me I was the slowest one in the whole school, right? And ever since then, maybe that person was just in a bad mood, maybe they regretted saying it, maybe they're like, Oh, that wasn't true, I shouldn't have said that, but whatever. And meanwhile, it's affecting your whole life, right? And then to redefine yourself as unathletic or not somebody who can do this, and redefining it of like, I'm someone who can learn how to run. Or even just saying, I, you know what, I went for a run yesterday, therefore it was terrible, it was slow, whatever, but I am a runner. I did it, I am a runner, and you've just redefined yourself. Only when you've reassessed those stories that you've been living according to and rewritten them in a way that serves you much better, and then redefined who you want to be. Who is that version of yourself that you met that did all of the things that you want to do? Define yourself as that person. You just haven't done the things yet, but you're going to. Right? You can see it, you can see what happens when they do it. And so you reassess, you redefine, and then you take action, you re-ignite. And that the third section is all that's where the productivity and the time management, the time blocking, and you know, the differences between different kinds of work styles and workflows, and um, that's where the nitty-gritty comes in.

SPEAKER_00

That's awesome. I mean, these are things that uh for those of us who are going through this right now, we're sort of doing this already. We're not putting a name on it, but we're also not organized with it. You know, so if if you're gonna make a change, you do have to already, you gotta do those two steps. Yeah. We're we're re-reassessing our lives going, I haven't been happy, you know, I'm beat down, I don't make the money I want, you know, I don't want to live here anymore. Right. So we are reassessing, but we're not recognizing that we're reassessing, and we're missing the transition to the next step then also, because all we're doing is that we're gonna be able to.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, and actually, yeah, I a hundred percent. And but even just saying, like, oh, you know what, I'm not making the kind of money that I should be making.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, why not?

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Why not? Why who told you in your life or what thinking is there that like, oh, people who make a lot of money are terrible people? Or I mean, in my family, I grew up in a very wealthy suburb of Chicago because I was not born in a very wealthy suburb of Chicago, but my parents moved there. My mom insisted there's gotta be some house in this area that we can afford to buy because they have the best public school system in America. It was all about the school. And my mom was a librarian. Um, my dad had started in sales, but then worked in a hardware store, had his own small business. They thought, I mean, the things, forgive me, friends, high school friends, but like the things they said about your parents were terrible. The lawyers, the corporate execs, the the CEO of this, the CEO of that beautiful, lovely, wonderful people, but they were terrible in my parents' eyes simply because they had too much money. Who needs that much money?

SPEAKER_00

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02

They don't have their priorities straight.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

All right. So I got to a stage, you know, luckily I figured it out in my 20s and 30s of like, why am I bad with money? Like, why is making money not something that I am like I can be a cellist, I can be an artist, and still go out and make money and be smart about my money choices. Like, oh right, because people who think about money are terrible people, according like, right?

SPEAKER_00

Right, that's your money story in your head that's a money story.

SPEAKER_02

We all have that, right? We all have that, and so we all have money stories, but we all have stories about every aspect of our life. So, yes, we can recognize it, we can catch ourselves in the moment, but I really urge everybody to figure out why. And that's where the exercises in the book come into play. They help you figure out where they come from, how to rewrite them, and move on from there, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I love that part of it. You told me right off the bat that there were actionable steps in the book. Yeah. Um, I think we have but there's a lot of books who go out there and they say, okay, reassess everything. Uh or they'll say, you know, re-re consider, or you know, let's have this talk. But they don't either they don't give you a step to take and you're done with the book going, now what? That's great. I'm motivated, I'm ready to go, but now what do I do?

SPEAKER_02

Now what do I do?

SPEAKER_00

Right? Yeah. And then there's some that say, hey, go do, but they don't do the beginning part. Where it's like, hey, plan the course before you go running. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

This is a hundred percent. This is a hundred percent because of how my own brain works.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

I I need the example and I need the next step. If somebody says, you should go out and figure out what's most important to you, I'm like, oh, right now, coffee? I don't know. What do you mean? What do you mean figure out what's important to me? Somebody says you need to figure out what's most important to you. Is it having a sense of space and freedom, or is it being part of community? Is it and then I'm like, oh, okay, I got it. I I see what we're supposed to be looking for. So giving examples to things is really important to me. And also, I need a next step. So somebody's like, think about what values you hold most important. I'm like, oh, okay, I'll think about it. If somebody's like, and then write them here, and then write this, and then do this, and then tell me one thing you're gonna do this weekend that reflects that value. Oh, I actually have to put this to practice, okay, right? So I have a lot of those things in my book just because that's that's what I need. Again, like I said, we write the book that we need to read.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, oh, for sure. The um we also I believe in something that's close to that. And it's the uh, you know, you want to become the thing you didn't have, you know, when you need it. So you're you're doing both of those things right now. Yeah. One thing that when I started this podcast, one of the things that annoyed me the most was so many folks out there who go, so why'd you write your book? Right? And it's like every podcast seems to ask that question. Um I'm not concerned about that, but at what point uh did you sort of realize that you were operating within this framework? That like this is how things get done, and that you wanted to share it, you know. I mean, this is something that you build, that you're living. Um how'd that realization come about?

SPEAKER_02

Hmm, that's a great question because of course there's never like, oh, it was a Tuesday at six o'clock, right?

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

I think when I realized that I was saying these things over and over again to every client. So as a coach, I work one-on-one with my clients. I do sometimes have a group program that I run called Creative's Leadership Academy, which is sort of like big picture, like budgeting and networking and negotiating, like those kinds of skills. Um, but as a coach, I tend to work one-on-one with my clients. And they're all doing separate, they're on their own path, right? Whether they want to build a project or create a program or make some big change in their life, pivot their career, totally different things. And yet I found my, it was the same issues. It was breaking down the old story or stories and the limiting beliefs and all of that stuff. It was deciding who they wanted to become and live into. And then it was helping them figure out the tools to get it done. It was the three parts of my book. And I was like, wait, I am getting tired of like I can't tell this to every single human being on the earth, but they all everybody needs to hear this. It became my responsibility to help everyone, every human being. Um, I'm joking, of course, but I really did think like, okay, if I want to help more people, I could put this in a book. It does seem to be pretty universal. It worked for me, it's working for all of these hundreds of people. So I think there's something here. Also, I've always been a writer. I was a latchkey kid. I'm 100% Gen X. I got myself up from school by myself. Both of my parents had left for work, got myself dressed, made myself a lunch, went to school, came home, had my key, practiced my cello, did my homework, hung out by myself, watched some like a TV show with my family, whatever, right? I talked to books and I talked to my journal. I didn't understand until I was in my 30s that not every person writes in a journal every single day. It's just not even something that I I never have to decide to do it. I, you know, I just I I can't even imagine how many I have. Those of you who have also journaled your whole life, like what do we do with them? Like, God forbid anybody see them, but like But we keep them all. Somehow we keep them. I'm paying thousands, thousands of dollars for a storage unit in Boston to hold something that I'm gonna burn eventually.

SPEAKER_00

You hope no one ever sees.

SPEAKER_02

And I hope nobody ever sees. Um yeah, totally. So I think the two things came naturally that I've always been a writer. I mean, growing up as a cellist, I wanted nothing more than to be a cellist from a very young age. I mean, of course, I went through that usual 10-11, like, I don't want to practice, my friends are at the mall, I hate this, this is terrible, right? But you grew out of it. Um yeah, if any of you are parents of young musicians, they will grow out of that, I promise. Uh, but I always wanted to be a cellist. And my mom, she was a librarian, had played piano, she loved music, she loved the idea of my being a musician. She had nothing against it. But she would always say, like, well, you know, don't you want to be a writer? And I'd be like, What are you talking about? Well, but you're such a great writer. I'm like, what do you mean I'm a great writer? Like, I write in my journal, which hopefully you are not reading. And and that was, it's never great writing, right? It's like, this is what I have to do today. And I have a crush on Joey. And um, and I couldn't understand. Like, you know, I wrote my English essays, and and she's like, No, you're just really good. Like, you always get an A. I was like, Well, because they just asked me to write this thing. I just write it. It's not hard. Like, what do you mean I'm good at it? I just like it's like telling somebody that they're good at taking the trash out. Like, what does that even mean? So writing has just always been a part of me. Even though I didn't know it. I didn't know it. But that's my that's my just my most natural mode of self-expression is to write. And so when I have these ideas of like, oh, I need to say these things to a larger group of people, my first instinct is to write them down for them, whether that was the blog or the book.

SPEAKER_00

Got it.

SPEAKER_02

Even my keynotes, right? I mean, I love performing. I was a cellist. I loved being on stage, I love talking to the audience, I love that I feel perfectly comfortable being in the spotlight in front of a bunch of people. Um I'm not somebody who can walk out and just talk. Even if I know the topic inside and out, I cannot do that and be have like a coherent structure and an arc. So even my keynotes are written out as if it's an essay, and then I put my own personal spin on it each time, of course. But the process always starts with writing.

SPEAKER_00

Nice. Okay, nice. That's another podcast of mine we have to have you on. So I'm I'm like checking the boxes over here. It's like, all right, we're my goodness. Yeah, you're you're gonna get a bunch of invites when this is over.

SPEAKER_02

So this is great. You're you're gonna be vacationing in Bermuda before you know it. So like we're gonna be old friends, it's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_00

There you go. I love that. All right. Um now this is the this book's very personal. I mean, this is this is your story, and and you're you're structuring it in a way that um you're taking everything that you've discovered, everything you've kind of learned about yourself, uh, the action steps you've taken, and you're you're putting it out there for folks saying, hey, this worked. This is how you apply it to you, you know, have at it. Um when you decided to publish this, was how personal it was? Was that did that go into how you get it published? Did you you know sign up with a publisher? Did you do it yourself?

SPEAKER_02

No, I did like yeah, I did hybrid, so I you know created my own imprint and um self-published that way. Um I wanted it was really important that people that bookstores could buy it, um and that people could get it, you know, somewhere other than the bit the big obvious places. But um uh that was again, I think I'm used to being very transparent and personal. I don't think I overshare uh some things are just sacred. Um but it's interesting, there was uh a woman here in Bermuda who has a book club, and she wanted to read my book. She's a big supporter of mine. She's like, I'm gonna buy copies of my book for all 10 of these women in my book group. And I was like, that's wonderful, thank you. Like taught her, like told her like different ways that they could use it that might work for them. And so they brought me in. And first of all, I find out these are all like CEO executives at or post-retirement. So they've kind of had their big careers and are now just like very wealthy and just enjoying life. And they're like, Well, what do we do with this book? It's like anything you want. But the woman, it was really interesting because half of them are like, Well, I've already lived my life and I'm very happy. Life is exactly what I want it to be, so I don't need this book. Like, okay, great. And the other half were like, Thank God for this book.

SPEAKER_01

That's the highest thing.

SPEAKER_02

I need this book. Yeah, no, it was great. It was really interesting to see a group of women who are friends and kind of in the same um part of life have different experiences with it, which I think is great. I love that. Um but one of the women who had who knows me professionally here, and she said, I learned a lot about you, Kate. And she said it in kind of a like, are you sure you wanted to put all that out there? Like, yes. Yes, yeah. It's like well, I mean, listen, again, there's no dirty laundry in there, and I don't think anybody reading it would care, like, to know my dirty laundry. Like, again, I'm not over-sharing, but she thought it was interesting that I um because she knows my husband and she knows me, and I talked about in one part of the book, I talked about how the difficulty he had in introducing me to people after I had stopped being a cellist. It's part of the idea of the middle section of redefining. And it's like, well, you have to help the people around you redefine you as well. Because he had always said, Oh, this is my wife Kate, she's a cellist.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And so you know, at that point I was a cellist, I wasn't really performing anymore. I he knew I didn't want to be a cellist, but I still had a couple of gigs to do, and I was doing this coaching thing, and I had a podcast or a blog. At that point, he's like, I don't know, wow, what do I say? I'm like, I you can just say this is my wife Kate. Let's start with that. Right? So that's the whole idea of if you're between things, just start with what is true. And what was true was I was his wife, Kate. Great. That's enough for now.

unknown

That's good.

SPEAKER_02

That's enough for now. And I talked about how he had to grieve because he loved seeing me on stage perform. That he loved that. He just thought it was so cool to see me doing this incredible thing, playing my cello on stage, and he had to grieve that he married a cellist. He married a woman who did got up on stage and did this whole thing, and the whole crowd would go wild and applause. And he thought that was really cool. And he had to grieve that his wife didn't do that anymore.

SPEAKER_00

That's a very real thing.

SPEAKER_02

It's a very real thing. And a lot of people would say, Well, he should love you however you like, yes, of course. He never questioned how much he loved me. That was not, it was not a marital issue. It's not a it's not a problem, but you have to you have to accept those things, you have to identify them, and you have to to um to take care of them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Wow, that's you know, again, you're pointing out a lot of things that uh people hear it and they go, Oh, that makes sense, but we don't think of on our own. We're not gonna think of that all by ourselves. And yeah, I can see where people will be like, now wait a minute, let me defend something here because I have to be offended. So let me just you know, and it's like, no, you really don't. This makes sense.

SPEAKER_02

I prefer to think of it as questioning and feedback and you know furthering the discussion, which I am all for, all of those things. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, but that's that's a very real thing. Uh and uh it's amazing that you point that out. It really is. That's uh that's very cool. The okay, so the hybrid publisher, though. Okay, what was that experience like? I mean, it sounds like it went pretty well for you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I it was interesting. I worked with a woman named uh Jennifer Thompson who owns Monkey C Media. Give her a little plug because she was great. And so she she said, I am your book Sherpa. And she had been recommended, I had met her through through another network, and so I had lots of conversations with her and her team, and I really trusted her and felt good about working with her. And so she just had this whole platform, and she would just say, Okay, we need this, okay, we need to set up your ISBN, we need to set up your um Library of Congress number, we have to do this with the cover art, let's do this. And she is the one who designed the book, so it looks amazing.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, right?

SPEAKER_02

So, I mean, I I think that's something that a lot of self-publishing authors struggle with is like, how do I make this book look professional? It's really hard to do with on your own, not impossible, but hard to do. Um, so I didn't have to worry about any of that stuff. She took care of it. I mean, I I had to approve everything, but all of the things I had no idea as a first-time author. Like, do you want your page number in the middle of the bottom or in the bottom right corner or in the top right corner?

SPEAKER_00

Or like right, those are real things too.

SPEAKER_02

Those are real things, and so it was an incredible learning curve, and it was it was great, and I was very grateful to have her sort of pulling me along step by step by step. Um, and it was worth every penny. I mean, I've recouped what I paid her in in book sales, um, which wasn't the point. It was really important for me just to get this book out and to get the book out in a really good way, in a way that I could be proud of.

SPEAKER_00

So that's great. You can show the book too, by the way, because we are video and audio.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. So here we go. This is the book. She's so pretty.

SPEAKER_00

That is beautiful.

SPEAKER_02

I'm very proud of her. And um I talk at the at the end of the book that one thing we always have to do is remember to celebrate, you know, when we have a win, when we complete a project, and I have these necklaces. The first time I did a solo recital tour that I had put together myself, it was in Chicago. And so I got myself this loop, this circle, right? Because of the Chicago the loop, right? The second big project, another big project, you know, then I did a ton of other recitals, but it wasn't the first time. And um, second big project, I put together a huge outdoor concert event, Pops concert here in Bermuda. And it it was a big project, it took a lot, and it was all new. And so I got myself this little triangle, right? Bermuda Triangle. And then when the book came out, the cover is a lotus, and I couldn't figure out what to do. And I asked my um my friend Hannah Emerson, very talented artist, to create this lotus for me, and so I just keep all of them here and I wear them every day. And so whenever I look in the mirror, it reminds me like, yeah, I can. Do those hard things. I did them. And it it feels like I've celebrated myself for doing them. So yeah, I am incredibly proud of the book. I think, like every author, by the time your book comes out, you're already thinking about the second one. Um, but I put those thoughts on hold because I felt like I really am still a year in. I'm still talking about the book and people are still learning about it and using it. Now I'm just getting to the point where people have completed it, finished it, they've done their projects, they're feeling really great about it, and they're like, no, no, no, this book is amazing. This really works. Um, and so I'm just sort of riding that wave right now.

unknown

That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02

And uh yeah, stay tuned to Tales from the Lane if you want to find out what the next book is gonna be about.

SPEAKER_00

There you go. All right. I was gonna put I knew we had to tie it together somewhere. So that's that's it right there. Stick to the podcast for uh for news of the second book when it comes out. So that's true. All right. Um Kate, I've only got one more question for you that I ask all my uh authors who come on here. Before we do that, though, tell everybody the best way to reach you, the best way to contact you, find out more about your work, so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so everything is on my website, katekin.com, k-a-t-e, k-a-y, a-i-a-n.com, and that has you can get the book there, you can order the book, those links are live. You can listen to the podcast, those links are live. Uh, you can learn more about my coaching there uh and sign up to book a free call. I do 30-minute consult calls for anybody who's interested in having the guide, the support, the accountability to do big things in their life. And there are, of course, tons of free resources there as well. So yeah, check that out. And then I hang out on LinkedIn, but mostly on Instagram. So come uh follow me on Instagram. I'm at K, just my first initial, and then K-A-Y-A-I-A-N. And uh, yeah, I'm there all day, every day. We have a good time over on Instagram.

SPEAKER_00

Nice, wonderful. All right, we'll make sure that's stuff in the show notes for everybody. Perfect, perfect. Last question is um you mentioned earlier we do have a lot of aspiring authors who are listening to the show, uh, and of course a lot of current authors as well. But uh for the aspiring author out there, or even the current author who has, you know, really not gotten to where you are in this entire journey yet, what's what's your best piece of advice that you can kind of give to them, uh especially for the aspiring ones who uh who are not where you are yet?

SPEAKER_02

The advice I would give would be to tell your imposter syndrome to take a backseat. Don't expect to get over it, except that it's always gonna be there with you every single day of the process, asking you why you think you're good enough to do this or why you should do it. Uh it's just gonna be there, it's there to protect you. We all know this now. Tell it to get in the backseat of the car. It can come along for the ride, cannot adjust the radio, cannot adjust the temperature, just has to sit there with its headphones on, and you're driving the car, and you just have to take charge and and do it and ignore those thoughts.

SPEAKER_00

Wonderful. I know you'd be able to wrap us up like that. Something very effective. All right. Good deal. Uh, folks, my goodness. Uh, author of Beyond Potential, a guide for creatives who want to reassess, redefine, and reignite their careers. Uh, Kate Kayan. Uh Kate, thank you for being here today. Uh and for sure, just sharing of yourself uh so much too, behind the scenes and where this came from and how important this book really was to you. Uh, I think it's gonna mean a lot to people who are gonna go pick it up. So uh very much uh appreciate all of it and thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_02

Well, thank you so much. It was a great conversation.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks a lot. All right, folks. This has been another fantastic episode of the Right Path Podcast, where uh the truth still matters and words still have power. Folks, this is the place for authors who know, who recognize, who understand that every single step forward is another step towards finding your place on the right path. Until next time.