Beyond Potential: guiding creatives to ignite their full career potential with Kate 

Michelle Lynne: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Fearless Artist Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Lynne… and today I am very thrilled to welcome on Kate Kayaian, who is a coach for musicians, a former cellist, and has a brand-new book out for musicians and creatives. Welcome, Kate.

Kate Kayaian: Thank you so much, Michelle. Great to be here.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, I was happy that you reached out. We have a few friends in common and I was curious about how you said that you were coaching musicians at a mid-level, so I thought that immediately attracted me to want to talk to you, because I thought that’s very similar to the work we do with the Fris artist. Um, so I’d love to hear about you, what is coming up in the book, and how you approach this idea of building our careers.

Kate Kayaian: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, the book Beyond Potential just came out a couple weeks ago at the end of March.

Michelle Lynne: Congrats!

Kate Kayaian: Thank you.

Michelle Lynne: I know it’s a big deal.

Kate Kayaian: It is a big deal.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: It’s like having a child.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah, yeah.

Kate Kayaian: But, you know, I was a cellist for my entire career. I started—like a lot of us start—playing when I was four and a half, five years old, and was very fortunate, had great teachers, great training, went to great schools, all the right festivals, et cetera, et cetera. And I loved it. But at a certain point, mid-career, I started to wonder if there was something more, something that felt lacking, right? And I was doing great work. I was so fortunate I was getting the right calls from the right people, and I realized that I had kind of been living my career in default. I was like, whoever called, those were the gigs I did.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kate Kayaian: They were great calls. So I was like, I felt really happy and fortunate, once I was able to kind of take a step back. You know, somebody mentioned my retirement party way in the future, like, “Well, when you retire…”

Michelle Lynne: Oh.

Kate Kayaian: “…this is what we would celebrate.” And this person was not a musician, by the way.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Kate Kayaian: My…

Michelle Lynne: That’s a good coaching question. That’s a very…

Kate Kayaian: Coaching question.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: She, you know, not being a musician, she was like, “You’re gonna be 65 one day and we will celebrate your retirement.” Which, of course, is not how it works in our world. But…

Michelle Lynne: No.

Kate Kayaian: Yeah, when I stopped laughing, I thought about it, and she’s talking about, like, “Oh, we’re gonna play all of the recordings that your groups have won Grammys for, and we’re gonna bring back all of your students to play, and you’re gonna…” I was like, “These aren’t the things that matter to me.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: These are just the things that I’m doing. You know, if these are the things I’m doing, why am I doing them? Like, this is my career, this is how my career is gonna be defined. So with the retirement party, that really threw everything into question for me, and I was like, “Well, if the things I’m doing aren’t really the things that matter to me, maybe I should change it up.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Wow.

Kate Kayaian: And then I started looking for evidence of other people, like mid-career, like nothing’s wrong, no injury, no mental breakdown, no health issues, just switching things up. And I couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t find any stories, and I was like, “This can’t be the way it is. This can’t not be allowed.” Musicians have to be able to just pivot and do whatever they want to do in their career for whatever reason. And I felt so much resistance and I talked to some friends like, “I think I wanna do something else,” and they would say, “You can’t.”

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Kate Kayaian: “You can’t. You’re too good. You have to keep doing this. Like, you can’t just quit.” And I wasn’t really talking about quitting at that point, but…

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Kate Kayaian: …I think I can. And as soon as I made those decisions to just do it anyway—

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: —and I talk about how to get to that point in the book, of course, but you know, as soon as I made the decision to just sort of do it, announced it publicly, and started doing other things, I can’t tell you how many calls and emails— I mean, you must get similar calls and emails too—messages of like, “I didn’t know we could do that. Can you tell me how?”

Michelle Lynne: I didn’t know we could escape. There’s a way to escape the matrix.

Kate Kayaian: There’s a way to get out of that default mode.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: So what my book Beyond Potential does is it breaks it down into three parts: reassessing where you are and what you’re doing, then redefining what it is you do want to be doing, and then reigniting everything that you’re doing—your career, your life. And that third part has really tangible, like, “Here’s what you should do to make this happen.”

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Kate Kayaian: That first part, the reassessing, is just taking a step back and saying, “Okay, what’s going on here? What am I doing? Do I love it? Am I doing it because it’s what I want to be doing, or am I doing it because it’s just default?”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like part of your message is about giving permission to even consider these questions.

Kate Kayaian: Absolutely. That’s first step one. I give you permission.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, for you, when you assessed where you were at with your career, and you said you’re a former cellist, so are you currently playing or have you left it behind?

Kate Kayaian: No, I still play cello. I just decided that that was no longer going to be where I got my main income.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. Okay.

Kate Kayaian: Chamber music—I play concerts, I play performances. Usually when people are like, “I will give your organization lots of money, but only if you play a house concert…”

Michelle Lynne: Right. Got it, got it, got it.

Kate Kayaian: …yeah. I’m also conducting—I conducted a lot in Boston, but not professional groups, mostly student and amateur groups—but I am running the Bermuda Philharmonic, the Music Director and the President here in Bermuda, where I live, which is an amazing group and I love it. And it’s a nice outlet for my musical experience and knowledge, and to stay in it in that way.

Michelle Lynne: Going back to that question of your retirement party, another version of that question is your obituary, right? Which is a little bit more intense, but like, why did that hit you so hard, do you think, if you still kept some performing in your current career?

Kate Kayaian: Yeah, I was doing a lot of teaching, I was playing a lot of contemporary music. Boston has a contemporary music scene, and I was doing a lot of that. And I’m dyslexic, and I realized that I loved my friends, I loved the group, but learning a lot of contemporary music really quickly hurt my brain. It was probably more difficult for me than anybody else. Of course I could play it, but reading it was really difficult.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Kate Kayaian: I was like, “I’m not happy doing this.” And so part of that first pivot was like, “Okay, if I don’t want to be doing this, I want to be playing the music that I want to play. I want to have more agency over the repertoire that I’m performing and recording and performing.” So I started doing more recital tours, more solo cello concerts, more concertos, and I thought that that is what would make me happy. And for a while it did…

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Kate Kayaian: …but not quite, because I don’t love having to be on a plane every week and go to a different place. I love traveling, so I was like…

Michelle Lynne: This doesn’t make sense…

Kate Kayaian: …this doesn’t make sense. Then COVID hit and I was in Bermuda and I was in a coaching cohort, thinking about what my next step was gonna be. I knew I wanted to create some sort of program, wasn’t sure what it was gonna be, and immediately I was like, “Well, summer festivals are getting canceled and that sucks for high school and college-age musicians. So I’m gonna create an online festival, ’cause I know how to teach on Zoom. I know these students, I know the top cello faculty at the conservatories, I’ve worked in admissions. I just had the right skillset to make that project happen at that time.”

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kate Kayaian: Everybody told me I was nuts. Everybody said it wasn’t gonna work, nobody’s gonna want it, nobody likes to teach on Zoom.

Michelle Lynne: Okay. Our lives, I’m just getting flashbacks of traumatic moments.

Kate Kayaian: Well, this was literally like I had this conversation on March 18th…

Michelle Lynne: Oh, geez. Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: …and everybody’s like, “No, everybody hates this whole Zoom idea. Don’t even start, Kate.” And I was like, “I think we’re gonna have to figure it out.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: The festival ended up being a huge hit and big success, led to some other things, and led to colleagues asking me for help to set up similar things.

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Kate Kayaian: And in coaching those people, the feeling of being on stage and everything is just going right and you feel like you’re on fire—it’s the best feeling in the world, right? For me, coaching felt even better than that.

Michelle Lynne: Wow.

Kate Kayaian: I felt like I was home. I felt like all of my life experience as a musician, as a creative, everything I had been working on in myself, in my own life, all came together in this world of coaching and writing. I had a blog at the time and it just suddenly felt like, “Yes, this is it. I finally found it.”

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Kate Kayaian: That’s really the origin story of the book, and now the book takes people through those three stages—reassessing, redefining, reigniting—with practical exercises and mind-set shifts to help them do the same in their own careers.

Michelle Lynne: That is so good. Yeah, it’s like a little bit similar to Ikigai, which is the Japanese sense of finding your purpose. We do this with our mastermind: what do you love? What are you good at? What can you get paid for? What does the world need? It sounds like this hits the center for you. I mean, I have a similar thing with The Fearless Artist, building this up, and I realized this is the other half of who I’m supposed to be—the pianist and the speaker, the pianist and the coach—and there it just compliments each other. So then you really feel like you’ve found that groove. I’d love to hear: besides getting set up for teaching in COVID, what are some of the struggles that your clients are having, or what are people coming to you about?

Kate Kayaian: You know, it’s kind of a combination of all sorts of things. Some of them come to me and they say, “I want to create this project, whether it’s a workshop or a teaching program. I have an idea for a program or an event in mind, and I want mostly tactical, logistical help.” Or they come to me thinking they want tactical and logistical help—which they get—but of course, as you know, you can give somebody a checklist like, “Here are all the things you need to do in order, here’s the playbook, go make it happen,” and they will get stuck from imposter syndrome and resistance and procrastination and all those stories they’ve had in their mind telling them that they can’t do it.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kate Kayaian: And that’s part of the first section—reassessing—is looking at those old stories of what’s been holding you back and what beliefs are hidden under the surface like, “You’re not allowed to do that; if you’re a freelancer or a teacher, you’re not allowed to go play concertos.”

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Kate Kayaian: “You can’t; go do it.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: Some people come to me and they just say, “I don’t know. Something’s just not right. Help me figure it out.”

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kate Kayaian: And we dig through and we figure that out.

Michelle Lynne: I mean, even your own friends were telling you, “No, you’re not allowed to go be a coach. You need to be a cellist because you’ve put in your 10,000 hours and you’ve proven yourself and you’ve got the accolades, and we’re gonna talk about it at your retirement party.” It’s like other people like to kind of put you in this box, how they see you, where you fit; it makes sense to them and we embrace that, like, “Yes, this is where I belong. This is what I should be doing.”

Kate Kayaian: Yeah. I will be perfectly honest, some of my friendships really suffered from it. Some people just felt a little threatened by it.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Kate Kayaian: But 99% of them were like, “That’s so cool what you’re doing.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: Right.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. And so talk a little bit about the impact: do you have any client stories that have stuck with you or moments when you see the lights flip on?

Kate Kayaian: Yeah. You know, I talk about in the book and in my speaking the five levels of internal growth that happen before you see outward success. They are: taking responsibility for your life, changing your attitude from a “no, I can’t” to a “yes, I can,” and then, finally, identity. When your sense of identity shifts…

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: I had a client who, similar to what I said earlier, she’s a freelancer in a big city, doesn’t have the top gigs but she’s got gigs and doing well, and she wants to do a solo project. She had a lot of resistance like, “I’m not a soloist. People don’t see me as a soloist. Who am I to do this project?” We worked on all of that, and she was given some opportunities to be a soloist.

Michelle Lynne: Fantastic.

Kate Kayaian: And I said, “How do you feel about that?” She said, “I feel great, ’cause I’m a soloist.”

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Ooh. Identity shift, like you’re saying.

Kate Kayaian: That major identity shift of “This is who I am and this is what I do.”

Michelle Lynne: Can we hang out here a little bit? I think three people in my mastermind told me, “Who am I to start this summer festival? There’s someone else who does a summer festival.” You know, “What are people gonna say about me if I step out of this?” How do you help someone in that place?

Kate Kayaian: A great question. As coaches, it’s not our job to just say, “You are a soloist. You can be a soloist if you want to.” It’s about asking them the right questions: “Who told you that you can’t be a soloist? Why do you think you can’t be a soloist? Has anybody ever said that you shouldn’t be a soloist?” Often they come back with a school competition they didn’t win, or a masterclass they weren’t chosen for. And I remind them that just because you weren’t chosen when you were 13 doesn’t mean you can’t do it when you’re 23 or 33.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah.

Kate Kayaian: So reassessing those old stories, helping them see that these beliefs came from a different stage of life and they can outgrow them.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. I think it’s profound because we act based on how we believe; if you’ve formed these beliefs and habits, and the story or circumstances change, how we’ve acted stays the same because it’s familiar.

Kate Kayaian: Exactly. I had a client who wanted to get up earlier. He said, “I like to sleep in.” I asked, “Why did you start sleeping in?” He said, “Well, I was a stay-at-home dad, and I’d get up early with the kids, then go back to sleep.” His kids are in college now—he’s outgrown that story, so outgrown that habit.

Michelle Lynne: Right.

Kate Kayaian: Habits are determined by the stories we tell ourselves.

Michelle Lynne: Mm-hmm.

Kate Kayaian: So identifying and reframing those stories is step one before changing habits.

Michelle Lynne: Yeah. Yeah. So talk a little bit more about the third section of your book and how you’re empowering people to get out of default.

Kate Kayaian: Part three is reigniting. It’s about taking responsibility—no victim mindset—and shifting your attitude to “Yes, if…” For example, someone might say, “No, I can’t start a festival because I don’t have a DMA.” The “Yes, if” mentality is, “Yes, I can start a festival if I collaborate with a fundraising expert, learn how to raise money, get support from partners.” It reframes obstacles into opportunities to learn and collaborate.

Michelle Lynne: That’s a great reframe: from “No, because…” to “Yes, if.” I love that.

Kate Kayaian: It works magic.

Michelle Lynne: I’m already thinking about how to apply this to my life. Thank you.

Kate Kayaian: I do it all the time.

Michelle Lynne: We have to be ruthless in catching ourselves in victim mentality. I hear the same patterns over and over, even in coaching musicians. And then I have to look in the mirror and say, “I’m responsible. I have to show up.” It’s like a mirror.

Kate Kayaian: My favorite thing is when people say, “I know I need to do a face-to-camera video, but I’m just not feeling confident yet.” I tell them: “Courage before confidence.” You just have to do it, even if it’s terrifying; the world won’t end. Maybe you delete it, maybe you keep it, but each time builds confidence.

Michelle Lynne: Yes.

Kate Kayaian: I’ve had clients send every draft of every email to me on Voxer until they felt ready. Then they send it, see no negative feedback, and build confidence.

Michelle Lynne: That’s great. And our job as coaches is to be cheerleaders and support until they don’t need us anymore.

Kate Kayaian: Exactly.

Michelle Lynne: I had to learn sales DMs, and that was hard—coming from a musician mindset, you don’t want to sell or be pushy. My coach helped me craft authentic messages and focus on impact. Shifting the story from “billing for euros” to “transforming lives.” That’s been awesome to see.

Kate Kayaian: Musicians have other skills—admin, admissions, teaching—use them. They’re your secret sauce.

Michelle Lynne: And if you don’t have them, figure out how to get them—“Yes, if.”

Kate Kayaian: Yes.

Michelle Lynne: What’s one of the highlights for you in writing this book? It’s done and in your hands—do you want to show it to us?

Kate Kayaian: She’s so pretty.

Michelle Lynne: Beautiful color.

Kate Kayaian: I’m so happy I did independent publishing but with a pro team—everything looks amazing. What I love most is distilling all my coaching into a single framework: the stories, the reassessment, the tools. It’s evergreen too—graduate students, mid-career pros, teachers—all can benefit from reassessing, redefining, reigniting.

Michelle Lynne: Absolutely.

Kate Kayaian: And I talk about needle-moving tasks versus rocking-chair tasks.

Michelle Lynne: Okay.

Kate Kayaian: Needle-moving tasks give you a finished product. Rocking-chair tasks feel productive but get you nowhere—like researching the best peanut butter instead of making a PB&J.

Michelle Lynne: Yes, right.

Kate Kayaian: It’s about awareness: allow rocking-chair for a set time, then switch to needle-moving.

Michelle Lynne: Oof.

Kate Kayaian: Right?

Michelle Lynne: Good. Oh, I love this—so much gold here. Thank you, Kate. Anything else you’d like to add about the book or how people can find you?

Kate Kayaian: You can find me at katekayaian.com. That has links to the book, podcast, social media. Follow me on Instagram—I hang out there and love DMs. You can also grab my Quarterly Retreat Planning Guide to plan life in 90-day chunks. We’ll put that link in the show notes.

Michelle Lynne: We will. Thank you so much, Kate, for your time. Good luck with the book promotion—we’ll be following.

Kate Kayaian: Thank you so much, Michelle. Great to be here.

Michelle Lynne: Yes. Enjoy your day. Okay everybody, thanks for listening. Make sure you screenshot this and share your stories, and we’ll see you on the next episode. Be fearless.