Latest / Beyond Expertise / COVID Closed the Stage and Opened a New Career with Kate Kayaian

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COVID Closed the Stage and Opened a New Career with Kate Kayaian · Beyond Expertise

0:01
Eric Dickmann: Welcome to Beyond Expertise, a podcast about identity reinvention for professionals ready to explore who they are beyond their titles and careers.
0:11
Eric Dickmann: I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
0:13
Eric Dickmann: Today, I'm excited to welcome Kate Kayin to the program.
0:17
Eric Dickmann: Kate began her professional life as a concert cellist, performing at the highest levels of classical music in a world built around discipline, achievement, and relentless pursuit of mastery.
0:29
Eric Dickmann: But over time, even a dream career began raising deeper questions about identity, fulfillment, and what success actually was costing her.
0:38
Eric Dickmann: Today, Kate works with high achievers navigating reinvention, purpose, and life beyond the identities they once built everything around.
0:47
Eric Dickmann: Kate, welcome to the podcast.
0:48
Eric Dickmann: I'm so glad to have you on the show today.
0:50
Kate Kayaian: I'm thrilled to be here, Eric.
0:51
Kate Kayaian: Thanks for having me.
0:53
Eric Dickmann: One of the things that I like to do with, this show is I like to turn back the clock a little bit and go way back in time.
1:00
Eric Dickmann: And so if you think about your early years when you first started and had the gift of music and really began to develop a passion for that, and then you decided to make that move and do it professionally, did you feel that it was a calling, that it was something that you really wanted to do?
1:20
Eric Dickmann: Or did you go down that path because you had a skill and it just seemed like the thing to do?
1:26
Kate Kayaian: Yeah, you know, this is such an interesting question, and I don't think it's one that I've ever been asked before,
1:31
Eric Dickmann: Oh, well, that's good.
1:32
Kate Kayaian: it.
1:32
Kate Kayaian: I love it.
1:33
Kate Kayaian: Right off the bat, I mean, I can tell you I started playing the cello when I was four and a half years old, right?
1:40
Kate Kayaian: And I started playing the cello because I had a crush on an eight-year-old boy who played the cello, and I, I knew at that point in my life, I was old enough to understand that, um, we could only get married if we played the same instrument.
1:56
Kate Kayaian: So, so I chose cello, and, uh, he then moved away really quickly.
2:02
Kate Kayaian: He moved to, to Colorado.
2:03
Kate Kayaian: Um,
2:04
Eric Dickmann: no.
2:05
Kate Kayaian: but he is still a professional cellist, and I am still a, uh, you know, a professional musician in my own right.
2:10
Kate Kayaian: But here's the thing.
2:12
Kate Kayaian: I loved it.
2:13
Kate Kayaian: I was really lucky.
2:15
Kate Kayaian: I grew up outside of Chicago where there happens to be this incredible music school, just a community music school, right?
2:21
Kate Kayaian: They, they have them all over the world, just your local place where you go and have lessons of any instruments.
2:29
Kate Kayaian: And mine happened to have, like, two of the top cello teachers in the country, and it was just luck, right?
2:36
Kate Kayaian: And so I had these great teachers and this great community.
2:39
Kate Kayaian: There were lots of cellos around, and so I had a lot of friends, and I played chamber music, and I played in orchestras, and I went to summer c- music camps.
2:47
Kate Kayaian: And it got to the point, of course, you know, 10, 11, 12, I don't wanna practice.
2:55
Kate Kayaian: None of my school friends are doing this.
2:56
Kate Kayaian: I wanted to quit every day of my life, right?
2:59
Kate Kayaian: My mother was terrible for forcing me to play this instrument.
3:03
Kate Kayaian: Um, but I eventually, like all kids do, I got through that moment.
3:07
Kate Kayaian: And when it came time to choosing my career, there wasn't any other option.
3:14
Kate Kayaian: I mean, I, I was a cellist.
3:16
Kate Kayaian: It was my entire identity.
3:18
Kate Kayaian: It was how anybody introduced me, right?
3:21
Kate Kayaian: "This is my friend Kate.
3:22
Kate Kayaian: She's a cellist.
3:23
Kate Kayaian: This is my daughter, Kate.
3:24
Kate Kayaian: She plays the cello.
3:25
Kate Kayaian: This is my student, Kate," right?
3:27
Kate Kayaian: "She's a cellist." It was how everybody knew me.
3:32
Kate Kayaian: It's what I did every weekend.
3:33
Kate Kayaian: It's what I did every day.
3:34
Kate Kayaian: Talent shows, I was playing the cello.
3:36
Kate Kayaian: Even in a rock band, I was the cellist in the rock band.
3:40
Kate Kayaian: And Again, growing up outside of Chicago in this place where there happened to be a really strong classical music training, a lot of my friends' parents were professional musicians, right?
3:52
Kate Kayaian: So they played in the Chicago Symphony or they were in string quartets.
3:56
Kate Kayaian: So I never had this model of, like, a struggling artist.
4:01
Eric Dickmann: Hmm.
4:02
Kate Kayaian: The only examples I saw of professional musicians were people who were at the top of their industry, making a great living, playing in beautiful houses, traveling the world.
4:13
Kate Kayaian: Like, you know, I went to my friend's house for dinner and like,"Oh, Yo-Yo Ma's coming for dinner," right?
4:17
Kate Kayaian: 'Cause he's in town.
4:18
Kate Kayaian: It, it was just a...
4:19
Kate Kayaian: You know, looking back, it's surreal.
4:22
Kate Kayaian: At the time, it was just normal.
4:23
Kate Kayaian: As kids, we don't know that things are different anywhere else, right?
4:28
Kate Kayaian: And so here I had this talent.
4:30
Kate Kayaian: I was good at it.
4:31
Kate Kayaian: People told me I had all of this potential, like,"You have the potential to be a really great cellist, Kate." And everything pointed towards going into music.
4:41
Kate Kayaian: There was no reason not to,
4:43
Eric Dickmann: So that's the direction you went.
4:44
Kate Kayaian: yeah, even my parents were like,"Great," like,"This seems like a really lucrative career path," right?
4:51
Eric Dickmann: yes.
4:52
Kate Kayaian: Um, and so I did it.
4:53
Kate Kayaian: And then again, I got into New England Conservatory of Music on a scholarship, um, and I had an incredible experience there.
5:01
Kate Kayaian: I went to the top festival.
5:02
Kate Kayaian: Like, everything just kind of door after door opened for me.
5:07
Kate Kayaian: I worked my butt off, right?
5:08
Kate Kayaian: Let's not, let's-- like, I worked my, I worked for it.
5:12
Kate Kayaian: But I had these opportunities, and so you just kind of go down that path.
5:16
Kate Kayaian: Like, if you love it and everybody's telling you that that's who you are and what you do, that's your entire identity.
5:23
Kate Kayaian: All of my friends were musicians.
5:25
Kate Kayaian: All of my friends' parents were musicians.
5:27
Kate Kayaian: All of our boyfriends and girlfriends were musicians, right?
5:30
Kate Kayaian: It was just this little bubble that was comfortable and familiar and wonderful.
5:36
Kate Kayaian: I got to, to see the world because of it.
5:39
Eric Dickmann: Yeah, I was gonna ask, were you really comfortable in that identity, or over time did you start to feel boxed in by it?
5:46
Kate Kayaian: Well, eventually I did.
5:49
Kate Kayaian: I was completely comfortable.
5:50
Kate Kayaian: I mean, listen, it, I was living the life, right?
5:52
Kate Kayaian: This is great.
5:53
Kate Kayaian: I'm on, like, I get called.
5:55
Kate Kayaian: You know, rock stars, they go on tour, and they don't bring their string players or their musicians with them.
6:01
Kate Kayaian: They're hired in each individual city.
6:02
Kate Kayaian: I was always the cellist that was hired to play.
6:05
Kate Kayaian: Um, so I got to hang out.
6:07
Kate Kayaian: I shared a pizza with Jay-Z backstage one day.
6:09
Kate Kayaian: Like, this is not a normal life.
6:12
Kate Kayaian: Um, so, but I loved it.
6:15
Kate Kayaian: And it wasn't until late 30s, early 40s that I started to feel like maybe there was something else out there that I could do And maybe it was because I had been doing it so long, but I just, I was curious.
6:34
Kate Kayaian: There was part of me growing up that loved to write stories, and I loved to write.
6:39
Kate Kayaian: I wrote in a journal every day of my life.
6:42
Kate Kayaian: It was like my best friend, me and that journal.
6:45
Kate Kayaian: Um, I also was really curious about life as a businesswoman, like the corporate life.
6:53
Kate Kayaian: Like, there was something intriguing to me about, like, putting on a power suit and, like, going to an office and, like, kicking butt, running a company, being an entrepreneur.
7:01
Kate Kayaian: Something, right?
7:03
Kate Kayaian: Um, so there was always just this little flicker of curiosity.
7:07
Kate Kayaian: When I got to my, my late 30s, early 40s, I'm having to miss out on a lot of things, like family reunions or friends' weddings, cousins' weddings, you know, all of these things that happen on the weekend,'cause guess what?
7:22
Kate Kayaian: That's when concerts happen.
7:24
Eric Dickmann: Yeah, I never thought about that, but a lot of that kind of a career would interfere with some traditional social life activities.
7:33
Eric Dickmann: And I'm also curious, you know, you said you were kind of thinking about being a businesswoman and potentially doing some writing.
7:39
Eric Dickmann: And, you know, I think for a lot of our audience, they probably have been in the business world.
7:43
Eric Dickmann: They haven't been in a creative profession like you.
7:46
Eric Dickmann: So when someone's in a creative profession, how do you start to measure success?
7:52
Eric Dickmann: You know, when you're in the business world, you're a manager, then you're a senior manager, then you're a vice president, then you're executive vice president.
7:58
Eric Dickmann: So in your world as a musician, how did you start to see yourself progressing and embrace those titles as part of your identity?
8:08
Kate Kayaian: it's, it's another interesting question.
8:11
Kate Kayaian: You know, in the...
8:14
Kate Kayaian: There are different paths you can take, at least as a classical musician.
8:18
Kate Kayaian: You can audition and get into a big orchestra, right?
8:22
Kate Kayaian: Like the Chicago Symphony, and that is a full-time job, and you go to rehearsals during the day, you play concerts at night, you have all of these things.
8:28
Kate Kayaian: That's your full-time job, and it's, like, to get into one of those top 10 orchestras is- really difficult.
8:36
Kate Kayaian: Really difficult.
8:37
Kate Kayaian: There are tenured positions.
8:38
Kate Kayaian: There are only 10 cellists, 12 cellists.
8:41
Kate Kayaian: Um, but that's one path.
8:42
Kate Kayaian: Another path is to maybe be in a string quartet, right?
8:45
Kate Kayaian: And you are affiliated with the university.
8:47
Kate Kayaian: You travel with the group.
8:48
Kate Kayaian: You record.
8:49
Kate Kayaian: Yeah, okay, you have that.
8:50
Kate Kayaian: You could be a soloist.
8:51
Kate Kayaian: You could be the person up in front playing, like Yo-Yo Ma, playing the concerto in front of the orchestra, and every week you're in a different city.
8:59
Kate Kayaian: Um, or you can be a freelancer.
9:01
Kate Kayaian: So you can base yourself in a city, and you can do, like, play with lots of different groups, and you play some concertos with orchestras.
9:09
Kate Kayaian: You play some chamber music.
9:10
Kate Kayaian: You basically do a little bit of everything.
9:13
Kate Kayaian: And that's what appealed to me.
9:14
Kate Kayaian: I was fortunate enough to win a fellowship in the New World Symphony, started by Michael Tilson Thomas, we all lived in Miami Beach.
9:22
Kate Kayaian: Our housing was paid for.
9:23
Kate Kayaian: We got a stipend.
9:24
Kate Kayaian: We got to work with, like, the world's top conductors and musicians.
9:28
Kate Kayaian: And the most important thing I learned from that experience, as much as I loved it, I loved every day of my life there.
9:36
Kate Kayaian: The number one thing I learned was that I did not want to be in an orchestra.
9:40
Eric Dickmann: Okay.
9:41
Kate Kayaian: I didn't want an orchestra job.
9:43
Kate Kayaian: I didn't want to go to the same place day in and day out with the same people.
9:49
Kate Kayaian: And again, when you're in an orchestra, it's the conductor that's making the decisions, right?
9:53
Kate Kayaian: You just play what's on the page, and you play it the way the conductor wants.
9:55
Kate Kayaian: So I didn't like not having my own creative take on things.
10:00
Kate Kayaian: Um, so after that three-year fellowship finished, I moved back to Boston, where I had gone to school and I had a lot of connections.
10:08
Kate Kayaian: And I said,"Well, I'm just gonna freelance and do a little bit of this, a little bit of that." you know, I had a lot of connections.
10:13
Kate Kayaian: I had worked really hard.
10:15
Kate Kayaian: I had gone to school there.
10:16
Kate Kayaian: So, you know, I did pretty well
10:18
Eric Dickmann: Yeah.
10:19
Eric Dickmann: Well, and it's interesting what you're saying as well because you hit upon a couple things, the interest in being potentially an author, the interest in the business world, the desire to have flexibility and control.
10:31
Eric Dickmann: So it sounds like at this point in your career, maybe you're getting the itch for something else, maybe some sort of a change.
10:38
Kate Kayaian: Yeah, and it's inter- it's interesting that you use the word interested in being an author and interested in being an entrepreneur.
10:44
Kate Kayaian: I would never have used that word.
10:46
Eric Dickmann: Okay.
10:47
Kate Kayaian: was like a fantasy of mine.
10:49
Kate Kayaian: It would be like, you know, the, the corporate executive who's like,"What would it be like to just, like, burn this all to the ground and buy a farm in Vermont and just, like, be a farmer," right?
11:01
Kate Kayaian: Like, I wouldn't say that that person is interested in being a farmer.
11:04
Kate Kayaian: It's just sort of a fantasy.
11:06
Kate Kayaian: And that's how it felt, because it was so disconnected from my identity as a cellist.
11:13
Kate Kayaian: It was just like,"Yeah, yeah, I write." And if something needed to be written, somebody needed program notes or something, or somebody...
11:19
Kate Kayaian: Like, they would come to me and say like,"Hey, can you write this?" Or,"Can you proofread it?
11:22
Kate Kayaian: Can you tweak it?" I was like,"Yeah, yeah, sure.
11:24
Kate Kayaian: That's easy for me," right?
11:26
Kate Kayaian: Um, I was always having these sort of entrepreneurial ideas, even within music.
11:34
Kate Kayaian: I mean, even when I was a kid, I remember there was a summer camp that came up last minute.
11:37
Kate Kayaian: My parents really didn't have much money, so they scrimped and saved and did what they could.
11:42
Kate Kayaian: Last minute opportunity, and they were like,"No, we can't afford it.
11:45
Kate Kayaian: We don't have the money.
11:46
Kate Kayaian: We didn't budget for it." And I was so mad that I wasn't gonna spend the week with my friends at this camp, that I decided to start my own camp, right?
11:55
Kate Kayaian: So I put out flyers to all of my neighbors.
11:58
Kate Kayaian: It wasn't a music camp, but I had lots of little kids in my neighborhood, and, um, they could bring their kids over Tuesdays and Thursdays for two hours.
12:06
Kate Kayaian: I was gonna read them stories, and we were gonna make puppets and drink lemonade.
12:10
Kate Kayaian: It was called Story Time and Puppet Time.
12:13
Kate Kayaian: Eric, I made so much money that summer, I could have paid for the, for the camp.
12:19
Eric Dickmann: Oh, interesting.
12:20
Kate Kayaian: I was 11.
12:22
Kate Kayaian: Right?
12:23
Kate Kayaian: So, so all throughout my career, there were, like in hindsight, there were clues.
12:29
Kate Kayaian: There were definitely clues.
12:30
Kate Kayaian: Um, it- I would tell you that until this point in my 30s and early 40s, there was nowhere else I would've wanted to be at 8, 8:00 PM on a Saturday night than on stage.
12:44
Eric Dickmann: Okay.
12:45
Kate Kayaian: That was like,"Well, why, why would I wanna be anywhere else?
12:48
Kate Kayaian: This is where it's all happening," right?
12:50
Kate Kayaian: Suddenly that shifted, and there were other places I wanted to be.
12:55
Kate Kayaian: I think I...
12:55
Kate Kayaian: It was a combination of I worked, I did some part-time work at a school, and so I therefore had colleagues who were not professional musicians, and they would have a dinner party and invite me to a dinner party on Saturday night.
13:06
Kate Kayaian: I'd say,"Well, that sounds really fun, but I can't, I have a concert."
13:10
Eric Dickmann: Mm.
13:10
Kate Kayaian: they'd wanna go on a girls' trip for a weekend, and I had to say no'cause I had concerts.
13:16
Kate Kayaian: And I started to think like,"Well, do I wanna be missing out on these other things for the rest of my life?
13:24
Eric Dickmann: Mm-hmm.
13:24
Kate Kayaian: Is what I'm doing as a cellist so important to the world that it's a sacrifice that's worth making?" And I realized that it wasn't.
13:37
Eric Dickmann: Mm.
13:37
Kate Kayaian: You can t- I mean, music is so important, absolutely, and it does so much for the soul.
13:44
Kate Kayaian: But I really suddenly started to feel like the work that I was doing, I played in these orchestras because they paid the bills.
13:52
Kate Kayaian: I did some teaching'cause I love working with students.
13:56
Kate Kayaian: Um, I played solos, concertos, and chamber music because it fed my ego Right?
14:04
Kate Kayaian: I got to wear a beautiful dress.
14:06
Kate Kayaian: I got to play the Jesus out of my instrument, do something that most people in the world cannot do, get flowers afterwards, fancy parties, fancy dinners.
14:18
Kate Kayaian: And yes, I loved to communicate with the audience through my instrument.
14:22
Kate Kayaian: But when I really got honest with myself, I was like,"This is just...
14:26
Kate Kayaian: I wanna play bigger concerts and better concerts so that people think I'm cooler."
14:31
Eric Dickmann: Mm-hmm.
14:32
Kate Kayaian: I wanted people to think that I was this ama- I wanted to be the best, right?
14:37
Kate Kayaian: And I was like,"I don't really feel like I need to be pursuing that for the next 20, 30 years."
14:44
Eric Dickmann: Was there a specific thing, an event that happened in your life that really caused you to have this kind of self-reflection?
14:53
Eric Dickmann: So you had these dreams, fantasies about other things that you can do, and now it sounds like you're getting into a very self-reflective mode where you're actually thinking about turning these fantasies into some sort of a reality.
15:06
Eric Dickmann: What was the moment that or moments that really pushed you in that direction?
15:10
Kate Kayaian: Well, the moment that really, really, you know, put the nail in the coffin for my performance career was COVID.
15:19
Eric Dickmann: Hmm.
15:20
Eric Dickmann: That old thing.
15:21
Kate Kayaian: thing.
15:22
Kate Kayaian: You know, I had this big two-week tour planned for the West Coast.
15:26
Kate Kayaian: Um, it was planned for mid, mid-April 2020.
15:29
Kate Kayaian: It was music I had been playing.
15:32
Kate Kayaian: You know, there was no problem.
15:33
Kate Kayaian: I was not nervous.
15:34
Kate Kayaian: I was not worried about this tour.
15:36
Kate Kayaian: Everything, it sh- you know, I was kinda looking forward to it.
15:40
Kate Kayaian: Um, I played a concert on March 13th, 2020.
15:45
Kate Kayaian: I happened to be home in Bermuda, so thank God I was here.
15:48
Kate Kayaian: We knew lockdown, lockdown had been announced starting the next morning, and I got up on stage and I talked about how this was gonna be the last time, you know, in a long while that we'd be able to gather like this.
16:00
Kate Kayaian: And, you know, I got a little emotional.
16:03
Kate Kayaian: People remember that, like,"You seemed, like, really shaken up about it." And Eric, the thing is that I, I wasn't shaken up and emotional because I was so upset about all of my, my entire career being canceled.
16:18
Kate Kayaian: I was relieved.
16:20
Eric Dickmann: Hmm.
16:21
Kate Kayaian: I was filled with this relief of like,"I don't have to do this.
16:26
Kate Kayaian: I don't have to go on that tour."
16:29
Eric Dickmann: Were you surprised you felt that way?
16:31
Kate Kayaian: Oh, yeah.
16:32
Eric Dickmann: I bet.
16:32
Kate Kayaian: Yeah.
16:34
Kate Kayaian: And so I had been toying with the idea.
16:37
Kate Kayaian: I had, you know, like every once in a while I'd be like,"Ah, I think I've had enough.
16:40
Kate Kayaian: Like, I think I wanna stop performing." And I confided in a couple of my close colleagues, trusted friends, and I expected both of them to be, like, full of support of like,"Listen, you're so talented in many ways.
16:51
Kate Kayaian: You can do anything, Kate." And they were like,"You cannot quit.
16:54
Eric Dickmann: Oh,
16:55
Kate Kayaian: not allowed." And so when COVID hit and, like, my concerts were just taken away, I was like,"Okay, you know what?
17:01
Kate Kayaian: This is-" Listen, COVID was horrible for so many reasons and so many people.
17:06
Kate Kayaian: I don't wanna belittle it.
17:08
Kate Kayaian: But it, the aspect of it giving me a, a sabbatical, a forced sabbatical, was a gift.
17:16
Kate Kayaian: And I said,"Okay, you know what?
17:17
Kate Kayaian: I'm gonna, you know, I have at least six months where nobody's gonna bat an eyelash if I'm not playing, because nobody is.
17:27
Kate Kayaian: Um, and I'm just gonna see how I feel."
17:31
Eric Dickmann: So you didn't feel a lot of pressure to make an immediate change.
17:34
Eric Dickmann: You took the six months.
17:37
Kate Kayaian: I took the six months.
17:39
Kate Kayaian: But w- was, it was about 10 days before that entrepreneurial spark was lit, and I read an article, I think it was in the Washington Post, that talked about the, um, how summer camps were gonna be canceled.
17:52
Eric Dickmann: Mm.
17:53
Kate Kayaian: Like, just normal summer camps.
17:55
Kate Kayaian: And I thought,"Ah, music festivals are gonna be canceled too." And because I had traveled so much, uh, and was living at that time part half Boston, half Bermuda, my students had been having lessons on Zoom all the time, If I was in Bermuda, my Boston students had lessons on Zoom, and vice versa.
18:16
Kate Kayaian: And so I was very used to the platform.
18:18
Kate Kayaian: My students were really used to the platform.
18:20
Kate Kayaian: I was comfortable with it.
18:22
Kate Kayaian: I had worked in an admissions office.
18:24
Kate Kayaian: This is, like, you know, we all have these random things that we do.
18:28
Kate Kayaian: And so I knew a lot about admissions and I knew the software.
18:31
Kate Kayaian: I, I knew how that all worked.
18:34
Kate Kayaian: I had taught at, and I had been an administrator at a lot of music festivals, and I thought,"I could do an online music festival."
18:43
Eric Dickmann: Mm, interesting.
18:45
Kate Kayaian: And I talked to a couple friends, and they were like,"No, that'll never work.
18:47
Kate Kayaian: Everybody hates Zoom.
18:48
Kate Kayaian: Everybody's just ready to, like, take the summer off and, like, wait till this is over." I was like,"I don't think so.
18:55
Kate Kayaian: I think these students, these advanced high school and college, like, talented musicians need something, and they're gonna want something.
19:03
Kate Kayaian: And the best cellists in the world have no concerts and no income.
19:09
Kate Kayaian: So if I offer them something to do, I think they're gonna jump at it." And it was a huge success.
19:16
Kate Kayaian: Huge, enormous success.
19:17
Kate Kayaian: Now, uh, like in the next five years, there were about 20 other online festivals that, that popped up.
19:24
Kate Kayaian: Most of them called me and asked me for coaching advice, consultation advice.
19:28
Kate Kayaian: So immediately I felt like, oh, I was able to use these other skills that I have, these non-cello playing skills, and use the experience and everything that I've learned from being a cellist to do something that's really helpful.
19:45
Kate Kayaian: It was not ego-based at all.
19:46
Kate Kayaian: It was like, there's a need here in this community, and I think I have the skills required to fill that need.
19:55
Eric Dickmann: Funny even that you're pulling forward a skill that you had as a child, right?
19:59
Eric Dickmann: When you were running those summer camps, how it all comes together in a moment and you seize the opportunity.
20:04
Eric Dickmann: That's, that's great.
20:06
Kate Kayaian: Yeah, and I had forgotten about that summer camp story until somebody asked me, they're like,"Oh, so was, you know, Virtual Summer Cello Festival, was that your first summer festival?" And I was like,"Actually, no." And it all came flooding back.
20:20
Kate Kayaian: And, um, I started coaching, uh, my musician colleagues on how they could create online programs to, to generate an income during COVID because everybody's work was canceled.
20:33
Kate Kayaian: A lot of musicians, if you think about it, a lot of musicians are married to musicians, so it was, like, not just one person, not just one income that was wiped out, it was entire households.
20:44
Eric Dickmann: And you did this as a paid coaching program?
20:46
Kate Kayaian: did it as a paid coaching program.
20:48
Kate Kayaian: Yeah, I created it.
20:49
Kate Kayaian: It was called Profit Pivot, and I ran it.
20:51
Kate Kayaian: It was a three-month program.
20:53
Kate Kayaian: I ran it four times in that first year, um, and three times in the next year.
20:58
Kate Kayaian: And then I had all of these colleagues and musicians who had put together programs that were helping larger groups of people, and they had never done anything like that, and so they wanted to know what was next.
21:11
Kate Kayaian: So I created a group program called Creatives Leadership Academy that was sort of next level leadership skills, um, which was really rewarding.
21:20
Kate Kayaian: And through it all, of course, I don't know how much coaching you do, but, like, you can tell somebody the 10 steps that they need to take to be successful at something.
21:29
Kate Kayaian: That doesn't guarantee they're going to do them.
21:33
Kate Kayaian: Uh, we all have imposter syndrome and resistance and things like that, so I learned very quickly that if I was gonna do this work, I needed to, you know, get trained as a coach in coaching skills.
21:45
Kate Kayaian: Uh, which I just did it'cause I felt like I needed to, and I fell in love with it.
21:50
Kate Kayaian: I just found it incredibly rewarding in every aspect of my life.
21:55
Eric Dickmann: Did you Find it hard to build that coaching practice?
21:58
Eric Dickmann: Um, or did it just happen organically because you were doing these tangential activities and it just opened up an easy conversation to say,"Well, by the way, I also offer this coaching service if you want something more one-on-one or if you need help with that." Did, did it just- Organically build?
22:15
Kate Kayaian: It did.
22:16
Kate Kayaian: It did.
22:17
Kate Kayaian: I mean, there's a certain amount of outreach that needs to go into it, but it started just with my, the classical musicians around, and then it sort of widened to creatives in general, and now I work with, you know, I would say 70% creatives and 30%, you know, I've got executives that are working with me on just that idea of You hit a certain point in your life and you want to do something different, and that can be a really tricky point to navigate.
22:48
Kate Kayaian: I call it the portal, right?
22:50
Kate Kayaian: Like we, eventually we kind of hit a plateau.
22:52
Kate Kayaian: No matter how successful you have been at something, you just hit this plateau of you're like,"I don't really want my boss's job." Like,"I don't wanna do this more.
23:02
Kate Kayaian: I'm not interested in the next level, but I'm also not interested in just doing this for the next 30 years, 20 years, 10 years," whatever it is.
23:13
Kate Kayaian: And fighting through that identity shift and like, why am I having so much trouble figuring this out or allowing myself to do this?
23:23
Kate Kayaian: And that was what I found most of my work was centering on after a while.
23:28
Kate Kayaian: And, uh, so I wrote the book, Beyond Potential, which really, um, tackles that question and tackles that, that point in a person's life.
23:39
Eric Dickmann: Did you find that almost therapeutic to write it down and to get these ideas on paper?
23:44
Kate Kayaian: Absolutely.
23:45
Kate Kayaian: It was the book that I needed way back when, right?
23:48
Kate Kayaian: It was the book that I needed 10 years prior, um, and didn't exist.
23:54
Kate Kayaian: I couldn't find any examples of people who were really successful, right?
23:59
Kate Kayaian: You could have, you have examples of people who hit some crisis point and they have to shift.
24:05
Kate Kayaian: They have to make a change, and I feel for those people.
24:08
Kate Kayaian: But I couldn't find any examples of people who were just, like, hugely exis- successful and just decided to go do something else.
24:16
Kate Kayaian: You see examples of movie stars who just decide to stop, but also they have, like, millions of dollars in the bank.
24:23
Kate Kayaian: Like, they just don't have to work anymore.
24:25
Kate Kayaian: Like, that's a different situation altogether, um, at least for some of them.
24:31
Kate Kayaian: Uh, this was something different.
24:32
Kate Kayaian: This was like, I wanna shift careers.
24:36
Kate Kayaian: Um, or people who have hit retirement, they're stopping their, their job job, but they want to do something significant and meaningful, um, for the next number of years, so figuring that out.
24:49
Eric Dickmann: To add value in a different way.
24:51
Eric Dickmann: I think, you know, in conversations that I have with people so often, it's that all of their identity is wrapped up in that corporate structure, you know, moving up that ladder, and the value that they're giving is not really Aligned with their values, right?
25:05
Eric Dickmann: It's whatever the corporation needs or the business needs what it sounds like is almost like a flower blooming in a way that, uh, you- different things just started to, to happen, and a bud appeared here, and a bud appeared there, and all of a
25:18
Kate Kayaian: right?
25:18
Kate Kayaian: It's a lotus flower, right?
25:19
Kate Kayaian: I mean, it is exactly.
25:21
Kate Kayaian: Um, that's what it's all about.
25:24
Kate Kayaian: And so the book is in three parts, right?
25:26
Kate Kayaian: Because I think a lot of people make this decision of like,"Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna change.
25:32
Kate Kayaian: I'm gonna go do this." And then they try to just launch right into it, and then they f- they don't do it, they give up, they fail, whatever.
25:39
Kate Kayaian: And so the whole first part of my book is, uh, reassessing, right?
25:45
Kate Kayaian: So it's, uh, the full title is Beyond Potential: A Guide for Creatives Who Want to Reassess, Redefine, and Reignite Their Careers.
25:53
Kate Kayaian: And of course, it's not just for creatives, but, um...
25:56
Kate Kayaian: And so the reassessing part is like, what am I doing?
26:01
Kate Kayaian: Why am I doing this?
26:03
Kate Kayaian: How did I get here?
26:05
Kate Kayaian: And most importantly, what are the stories that have been keeping me here,
26:09
Eric Dickmann: Yes.
26:10
Kate Kayaian: right?
26:10
Kate Kayaian: So the s- one of the stories that I had been telling myself for years was, playing the cello is the only thing I know how to do,
26:18
Eric Dickmann: Right.
26:18
Eric Dickmann: That's where your expertise was, right?
26:20
Eric Dickmann: That's what you were really good at.
26:21
Kate Kayaian: Yeah.
26:22
Kate Kayaian: In, in fact, even one of my cello teachers, who I was, I'm, I'm still very close to to this day, like, you know, I'm a full-on adult with a career, and I told him, I said,"I think I don't wanna perform anymore." He goes,"But you don't know how to do anything else." I was like,"Well..." You know, eventually I figured out that that was not true.
26:41
Kate Kayaian: Um, but reassessing those stories, are you in this job because some parent told you that this was the only job worth having, that this was a very important job to have?
26:53
Kate Kayaian: Um, did some teacher tell you that you were particularly good at this thing, and that's why you have degrees in it?
27:00
Kate Kayaian: Um, where did those stories come from?
27:02
Kate Kayaian: And are you at a point where you're able to either rewrite those stories or just write a new story of like,"Yeah, I'm really good at the cello.
27:15
Kate Kayaian: I've spent most of my life playing the cello, and yet I have had these other experiences and have learned other skills." Or rewriting a story of,"Yes, the only thing I know how to do today is play the cello, but I'm very good at learning how to do new things, so I can figure it out." Right?
27:32
Eric Dickmann: That's why we call this podcast Beyond Expertise, really, bec- it's not meant to say that we, we set aside that expertise that we've developed over years, but as you were telling your story, you talked about the little fantasies that came up over time, and that at this moment of an, you know, reflection during COVID where you started to think about what's next, you kind of pulled all those things out and added to the expertise that you developed as a musician and said,"How could I add value in different ways?" That's the story that I love to hear because there is a lot beyond those traditional roles that we may have been playing earlier in our careers.
28:10
Kate Kayaian: Mm-hmm.
28:11
Kate Kayaian: Absolutely.
28:12
Kate Kayaian: Absolutely.
28:12
Kate Kayaian: And that's, you know, similarly, my book is titled Beyond Potential, because I think the idea of our potential often comes from external forces or- It comes from a previous version of ourselves.
28:29
Eric Dickmann: Yes.
28:30
Kate Kayaian: And to go beyond those, like, predefined definitions of them, like what, what else?
28:36
Kate Kayaian: As you said, what else?
28:39
Kate Kayaian: What else is out there?
28:40
Kate Kayaian: So I think it's a, it's a beautiful concept, and I'm just really grateful that I had the time and space to, to navigate my way through it.
28:51
Kate Kayaian: It took a lot of...
28:54
Kate Kayaian: Oh my gosh, read every book that I could that was even close to, to helping me do it, and working through it and thinking through it, and so many mistakes and so many things that were really difficult for me to navigate, like my husband not knowing how to introduce me at a party anymore,
29:14
Eric Dickmann: Yeah.
29:16
Kate Kayaian: right?
29:16
Eric Dickmann: funny?
29:16
Eric Dickmann: It sounds so simple, but when your identity is locked into something that you do as opposed to really more fully reflective of who you are as a person and what you have to offer, it becomes a little tough.
29:28
Kate Kayaian: Yeah.
29:29
Kate Kayaian: I mean, everybody thinks cellists are cool, right?
29:34
Eric Dickmann: The life of the party.
29:36
Kate Kayaian: mean, I mean, I'll tell you, I live in Bermuda, right, where everybody's an accountant or a, or in reinsurance, right?
29:41
Kate Kayaian: So you meet somebody at a party and they're like,"Oh, what do you do?" And they're like,"Oh, I'm in reinsurance.""Oh, okay, which company?" You know.
29:47
Kate Kayaian: "Oh, I'm a cellist." Whoa.
29:49
Kate Kayaian: It's like everybody stops.
29:51
Kate Kayaian: Here's somebody who does something different.
29:53
Kate Kayaian: Um, and so not only would it just roll off his tongue, like that was who he met, like he met a cellist and he married a cellist, and he was used to just saying,"This is my wife, Kate.
30:05
Kate Kayaian: She's a cellist," and getting that reaction of like,"Wow, your wife must be really cool, therefore you must be really cool if she married you," right?
30:15
Kate Kayaian: And he had to navigate that.
30:18
Kate Kayaian: I had to let him navigate that without getting mad at him, right?
30:22
Kate Kayaian: And those are some of the, the smaller issues that come up that I write about in the book of how do you w- as you're redefining yourself, as you're, you know, I call it we, we hit that plateau, right?
30:38
Kate Kayaian: We're like,"Okay, I don't think I wanna keep doing something," and then this portal appears, right?
30:42
Kate Kayaian: Magic.
30:44
Kate Kayaian: And you can just ignore that door, ignore that portal, portal, and just keep doing what you're doing for the rest of time, or you can step through the portal and make those changes and do something different.
30:57
Kate Kayaian: As you're stepping through that portal, it involves having to redefine yourself and reintroduce yourself, and it also involves having to help the other people around you to understand what that feels like for you and what you're going through.
31:13
Eric Dickmann: do you have a definition now that, that you like?
31:17
Eric Dickmann: An entrepreneur, a podcaster, an author, a coach?
31:21
Kate Kayaian: I would say, you know, the,
31:23
Eric Dickmann: the above?
31:24
Kate Kayaian: The trifecta with a random fourth.
31:26
Kate Kayaian: You know, I am a, a coach, author, and speaker, of course.
31:31
Kate Kayaian: Um, and I'm also the president and music director of the Bermuda Philharmonic, which I do just as a volunteer basis, a way to give back to the community, because that's a really meaningful way that I feel like I am contributing to the overall community.
31:48
Kate Kayaian: That's, like, absolutely not ego-based.
31:50
Kate Kayaian: It's just work that I do for free.
31:53
Kate Kayaian: Um, it's my side gig.
31:56
Kate Kayaian: But yeah, in terms of the work that I do, I'm a coach and I'm an author and I'm a speaker,
32:04
Eric Dickmann: That's great.
32:05
Kate Kayaian: that feels...
32:05
Kate Kayaian: It felt really
32:07
Eric Dickmann: Feels authentic?
32:09
Kate Kayaian: it's hard to introduce yourself as an author when your first thing hasn't been published
32:14
Eric Dickmann: Sure.
32:15
Kate Kayaian: right?
32:16
Kate Kayaian: 'Cause everybody's first question is like,"Oh, what have you written?
32:18
Kate Kayaian: Can I read it?
32:19
Eric Dickmann: Yes.
32:20
Kate Kayaian: What's the title?" You're like,"Well, I haven't really published anything yet." They're like,"Oh, so you're not an author.
32:27
Kate Kayaian: You're not a writer." So navigating those waters can be a little tricky.
32:31
Kate Kayaian: Um, that's all...
32:33
Kate Kayaian: You know, we talk about that a lot in the second part of the book, the redefine.
32:37
Kate Kayaian: And then the reignite is really just, like, how do you, how do you create a timeline?
32:43
Kate Kayaian: How do you create a roadmap to make these changes?
32:47
Kate Kayaian: How, how do you handle the idea of like, well, I don't...
32:49
Kate Kayaian: I know that I don't wanna do this anymore, but I don't know what I wanna do.
32:54
Eric Dickmann: I think that's a key piece because I think a lot of people don't-- or they know what they don't wanna do, but as you say, they really don't know what they wanna do, and it takes that introspection to really see those little signals,"I like this, I like this, I toyed with this once."
33:10
Kate Kayaian: Yeah,
33:11
Eric Dickmann: and how does it all come together in maybe something that could be really meaningful to
33:15
Kate Kayaian: absolutely.
33:16
Kate Kayaian: I mean, there are two things to that.
33:18
Kate Kayaian: I would agree with you.
33:18
Kate Kayaian: You just try things, right?
33:20
Kate Kayaian: Some of it is er- uh, experimental, right?
33:23
Kate Kayaian: Anne Laure Le Cunff's book,"Tiny Experiments," is a perfect example of, like, just try things.
33:27
Kate Kayaian: Just say like,"What if I did that for 30 days?
33:30
Kate Kayaian: See how I like it."
33:31
Eric Dickmann: Mm-hmm.
33:33
Kate Kayaian: some people, I've had clients who are like,"I literally have no idea what I would even experiment with.
33:38
Eric Dickmann: Mm-hmm.
33:40
Kate Kayaian: know." And I just, I get quiet with them and I say,"What is something that you do know, anything, could be anything at all, you are 100% sure of about you and your life and what you want?" And sometimes it's,"I don't know what I wanna do, but I know I wanna do it from home." Great.
34:02
Kate Kayaian: Okay.
34:03
Eric Dickmann: That's a piece of the puzzle, right?
34:05
Eric Dickmann: Yep.
34:05
Kate Kayaian: a good place to start.
34:06
Kate Kayaian: You're not gonna go get an office job somewhere.
34:08
Kate Kayaian: You know, you're not gonna go work retail.
34:10
Kate Kayaian: Okay.
34:10
Kate Kayaian: All right.
34:11
Kate Kayaian: Um, I had a client who was a former Google executive, and he wanted to become an artist He's a very talented guy, and he was struggling with what kind of art to make.
34:24
Kate Kayaian: He had set a goal for himself to do a show, a gallery show in a year's time or six months time, I can't remember.
34:32
Kate Kayaian: And he was struggling with like, what kind of art do I want to make?
34:36
Kate Kayaian: Do I wanna draw hands?
34:38
Kate Kayaian: Do I want to do landscapes?
34:40
Kate Kayaian: Do...
34:40
Kate Kayaian: What do I wanna do?
34:41
Kate Kayaian: And I said,"Well, what's one thing that you know you love?" I expected him to be like,"Pencils or charcoal or..." Right?
34:55
Kate Kayaian: He goes,"Math."
34:57
Eric Dickmann: Math.
34:57
Eric Dickmann: Okay, not the answer I expected.
34:59
Kate Kayaian: the expe- uh, uh, answer I expected, and he said it like throwing his hands up like,"Well, you know, maybe I shouldn't have quit'cause the only thing I really love is math, and that's what I did in my old job.
35:08
Kate Kayaian: That's the only thing I know I love." And I said,"Well, what if you toyed with the idea of math and art?
35:18
Kate Kayaian: Just go with math.
35:19
Kate Kayaian: Go with math.
35:20
Kate Kayaian: If you know you love it 100%, go with math." He came back two weeks later with the most stunning pencil drawings of mathematical equations, like visual representations of the, of the mathematical equations.
35:34
Kate Kayaian: And he said,"Well, this is what I loved about math, that people were always looking at these numbers and figures, and I was seeing these shapes.
35:42
Kate Kayaian: That's why math always made sense to me,'cause I could see the shapes." And so he, he did a whole show based around different aspects of that, and it was stunning, and it was just all he knew was math, and he just went with it, right?
35:58
Kate Kayaian: You, You just need to know one thing, whether it's I, uh, I don't ever wanna put on a pair of high heels or a tie again, or I wanna be out in nature, or I wanna work with numbers, or, you know, whatever it is.
36:13
Kate Kayaian: If you know one thing, you can just follow that rabbit hole and you'll find it.
36:18
Eric Dickmann: And begin to build from there.
36:20
Eric Dickmann: Yeah.
36:21
Eric Dickmann: I love that.
36:21
Eric Dickmann: And so you've got the book now.
36:23
Eric Dickmann: You've got the podcast.
36:24
Eric Dickmann: You've got the coaching practice.
36:26
Eric Dickmann: You do some speaking.
36:27
Eric Dickmann: What's next?
36:29
Kate Kayaian: For now, I think more of the same.
36:32
Eric Dickmann: More of the
36:32
Kate Kayaian: More of the same.
36:33
Kate Kayaian: I think I've got another book in me at least, so we're starting to think about that, which, you know, that's a kicker.
36:39
Kate Kayaian: As a teenager, I had a very tumultuous relationship with my mother, as is very common.
36:45
Kate Kayaian: And she kept saying, you know, she loved the fact that I was in music and wanted to be a cellist.
36:48
Kate Kayaian: She was very supportive.
36:49
Kate Kayaian: But every once in a while, out of the blue, she would just be like,"Are you sure you don't wanna be a writer?" And I'd be like,"What are you talking about?" She'd be like,"Well, you're really good at it." And the only thing I could think of was I had one, like my sophomore English teacher Marion Hike.
37:07
Kate Kayaian: And she would give me the worst grades because she said like m- I'm...
37:11
Kate Kayaian: She didn't like my writing style.
37:13
Kate Kayaian: It wasn't proper, right?
37:14
Kate Kayaian: As English teachers, you have to, you know, o- obey the rules, and I did it much more as a creative writing practice.
37:21
Kate Kayaian: And but I took that away of like,"I am bad at writing." And actually, no, what I had was a really interesting writing style that people sort of are drawn to now, right?
37:33
Kate Kayaian: So I'm like, I publish something, I'm like,"This is so wrong.
37:36
Kate Kayaian: Everybody's gonna be so mad at me.
37:38
Kate Kayaian: This is terrible writing." And people are like,"Oh, I really like your style.
37:41
Kate Kayaian: It's really unique."
37:43
Eric Dickmann: Oh, that's awesome.
37:44
Eric Dickmann: There's so much pressure when we feel our peers are gonna be looking at some of the things that we do.
37:48
Eric Dickmann: Uh, sometimes it's just such a release just to get things out into the universe and say,"I'm happy with it."
37:55
Kate Kayaian: Yeah.
37:55
Kate Kayaian: Yeah.
37:56
Kate Kayaian: And so yeah, I think I have another book, and my podcast, I am, I'm having so much fun with it.
38:03
Kate Kayaian: My podcast actually is a place for me not only to bring in great guests, to talk about things that, uh, that I don't know about and w- wanna learn more about, and that my audience certainly wants to know more about.
38:14
Kate Kayaian: But it's a way for me to test new material.
38:17
Kate Kayaian: I tested a lot of the material for"Beyond Potential" through my podcast, and I could see what landed, what, you know, what topic, which episode, uh, did I get a lot of emails and a lot of DMs about, um, of either people saying like,"Well, I disagree with this," and haven't, you know,"You didn't think about this," you know, or people saying like,"This was super helpful," and,"Thank you for this," really helped me know what to put in my book, what to leave out, what to rethink, how to shape it in that way.
38:46
Kate Kayaian: So the podcast has been a lot of fun and a great tool for me at the same time.
38:51
Kate Kayaian: And speaking, it's like the best of both worlds because my, my keynotes are all based on, you know, various aspects of the book, either exactly the book's topic or in parallel.
39:05
Kate Kayaian: And it feels like it's very comfortable for me,'cause it feels like I'm walking on stage with a cello.
39:13
Kate Kayaian: it's Everything that I loved about that adrenaline of like walking out on stage, and yet The point of my being there is to help this room full of people, to say something that, uh, triggers something in a good way and, and helps them move through something, helps them think about something differently, helps them help somebody else in their life, right?
39:34
Kate Kayaian: There are ripple effects to it.
39:35
Kate Kayaian: So more of that.
39:37
Kate Kayaian: I'm just absolutely loving it.
39:38
Eric Dickmann: I mean, I've really enjoyed your story of, of reinvention and how you found new purpose in the books, in speaking, in your coaching.
39:47
Eric Dickmann: If people wanna find out more about the programs that you offer, where should we go?
39:52
Kate Kayaian: Yeah.
39:52
Kate Kayaian: Well, my website, katekin.com, sort of houses everything.
39:56
Kate Kayaian: You can grab the podcast episodes, you can grab the book, you can learn more about my coaching work.
40:01
Kate Kayaian: So I do a lot of one-on-one coaching work, and then of course my Creatives Leadership Academy as well, my group program.
40:09
Kate Kayaian: And, um, and hire me, book me to speak if you wanna do that.
40:14
Kate Kayaian: And otherwise, I'm on Instagram a lot.
40:16
Kate Kayaian: Instagram and LinkedIn, but Instagram is, you know, that's where we hang out.
40:20
Kate Kayaian: Come say hi in the DMs, tell me what you're up to, and I'd love to chat.
40:25
Eric Dickmann: That's great.
40:26
Eric Dickmann: I'll make sure that I have all that linked up in the show notes so that people can find you.
40:29
Eric Dickmann: I have really enjoyed our conversation today, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story.
40:34
Eric Dickmann: I hope it's gonna be inspirational for our, listeners who are at that point in their own lives where they say,"I just wonder if there's something else out there, wondering if there's a way that I can add more value."
40:45
Kate Kayaian: Absolutely.
40:45
Kate Kayaian: Thank you, Eric.
40:46
Kate Kayaian: It's been, been a treat.
40:47
Eric Dickmann: Thanks for listening to Beyond Expertise.
40:50
Eric Dickmann: You can find show notes, resources, and links mentioned during this episode at podcast.ericdickmann.com.
40:59
Eric Dickmann: If this conversation resonated with you, I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue exploring what it means to reinvent ourselves beyond our careers, titles, and expertise.