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HeiterPodcast | Otter.ai

HeiterPodcast

Sarah Shotts33min

Sarah

00:00

So hi, Kiki, I'm so excited to welcome you to the podcast. We've been planning this for a really long time. And it finally worked out. So I'd love for you to just introduce yourself to anybody who hasn't met you yet.

Kiki

00:12

Yeah. Hi, Sarah. Thanks so much for having me. It really is an honor. And yes, I'm glad we finally made it. My name is Kiki Kiki short for Katerina. I am a mum. And I'm married to Ben, we have two little kids. JJ just turned three and Clara is seven months old. And we currently live in the Austrian countryside, and an old farmhouse. And when I don't look after the kids, or you know, I'm busy with household chores, I run a print publication called heiter. Heiter is the German word for cheerful, joyful, and that is the while being cheerful being joyful is the big focus after magazine. And we want our readers to, you know, read the magazine be inspired and live their life and also style their life, I guess in a more mindful way. Yeah,

Sarah

01:08

yeah, I love that. And I remember heiter, I guess it started as a digital magazine. And then last year, it became a print publication that was really exciting to watch.

Kiki

01:19

Yeah. And while it was actually a long time coming. Do you want to tell me a little bit about how I started the magazine? Yes, yes, yeah. Back in 2016, I worked for one of the biggest fashion companies in the world. And I also went to university and my life was literally all about work, and fulfilling other people's expectations in a way. And I didn't look after myself at all. And it ended and mental and physical health issues. And it was so bad that I had burnout. At some point, I couldn't go to work anymore. I couldn't go to university anymore, my employer told me that they will stop paying me. And my course leader basically told me that I would probably fail my final year at university. And as you can imagine, I was really devastated. Because it was everything I had worked for at this point. And, well, luckily, I realized pretty quickly afterwards that I was the only one who could get myself out of that situation. And I really wanted to make sure that I looked after myself, and well that I got better. And started doing that by inviting small moments of joy into my everyday life. And that meant that I took myself out for coffee, it was simple as that. I bought myself flowers. I walked the dog along the river, I started to do a little creative activities. Again, something I had never worked, I had kind of stopped doing even though I'm a really creative person. And really little by little I got better. And I was so amazed by the experience and also by those findings in a way that I wanted to share it with other people. And yeah, that is how high tech came about.

Sarah

03:06

I love that I I've had some similar experiences. I think there's something about university where you're so focused on that, that you forget to take care of yourself. And it's so much pressure. And for me, I don't remember if we were connected at this time, or if we connected after that. But I went through a similar burnout health issue. And for me, the word was adventure. And so I was putting micro adventures every week, because I was just sitting there burned out, like I just finished university. And I brought that energy into starting my own business. And so I was like sitting in front of the computer all day, working, working, working. And I realized that was not healthy. And so I had to start, like you said, going out for a walk or doing some watercolors but it had to be like really small and really accessible. I love I love that we both like came to that as a way of Yeah. Coming back to ourselves.

Kiki

04:07

Yeah, and that is what I love about it like the concept of Heito. In your case adventure. It is so personal, you know, watercolors colors for you, and what you just said, it's accessible. It's unique, and it's accessible. Because so many people mix up being joyful, or even just Well, the word highter they mix it up with being happy. And I think happiness comes with so many expectations and hate it doesn't you don't need to do much to get to that state. And yeah, I just really love it. And thanks so much for sharing your story with me too.

Sarah

04:42

Yeah, those little things can make like such a really big difference.

Kiki

04:46

They can. So

Sarah

04:49

one thing I like to ask on the podcast is when you were little when you were growing up before you took on all of the cares and responsibilities of being an adult. What did you love to do then?

Kiki

05:00

Haha, still thinks I enjoy. Now I guess, being creative as I already said, I think one of my favorite activities back then was drawing. At some point I actually thought about becoming a fashion illustrator. And then, while fashion to me is also very creative again, even now, with the kids being around and with daily life being very messy, that's the one thing I can do pretty much every day I can get up and I can be creative with mouth. I know it's just something small. But, you know, it is one of my heightened moments, I would say. So yeah, dressing up. I already did that when I was little. And then I also well, roleplay and I was also in my my real world. No real world in my own world. That's that's the kind of real my own work. I made up stories. I wrote a lot of stories. And yeah, we were outside a lot. I also grew up in the Austrian countryside. And yeah, we spent a lot of time in the garden in the barn. Yeah, coming up with games, I guess it all leads back to creativity. That's, that's something that's been with me throughout my whole life.

Sarah

06:19

I love it. What is the Austrian countryside? Like? Like, describe it for us?

Kiki

06:24

Um, it's very green. Yeah, well, that's, that's the overall picture. Where we are right now in the mountains a little bit further away, but we can see them, which, which is absolutely lovely. I think the closest Mountain is maybe 40 minutes away from us. And sometimes we do go and we go for little hikes or walks with the kids. And I think, well, maybe a little bit less now due to climate change, unfortunately. But we still have proper seasons, I think. Yeah, because I lived in the UK for a while as well. And my husband is British. And I think that's the bit that really sets us apart. In the UK, you have the same weather pretty much all the time. But over here we have very hot summers, we're not too far away from Italy, actually. So it can feel a little bit Mediterranean already. And we do get cold winters. And, yeah, the seasons in between my favorite seasons, Spring and Autumn are just how they are supposed to be. Is it similar to you where you are.

Sarah

07:29

Um, so we seem to have kind of really long hot summer, and pretty cold winters. And then spring and autumn, which are my favorites are really short. So it's like a couple of weeks, and then it will be like blazing. So you have to you have to seize the day while while it's happening. They they do exist. So where I grew up in Mississippi, we didn't we didn't really have we barely had spring or autumn at all, like the leaves would just turn brown and fall off the tree. So at least I'm a little bit further north so that we do get a an autumn, it's just very

Kiki

08:10

short. Okay, yeah, I understand.

Sarah

08:13

And so right now, like all of the, I'm seeing like a bird out the window. All of our flowers have just opened up or daffodils. And having a little bit of a cold snap, we haven't come to really fully proper spring, but I'm hoping it's around the corner. So let's talk about you had the realization like of using Hydra for yourself. So how did you when did you decide to start sharing with others? And how did you how did that kind of like grow and grow into application?

Kiki

08:49

I think it was shortly after already. Because as I mentioned earlier, I was in my final year at university already and I knew that my final university project was due. And I simply did that I made high temp project. And I actually had a pilot print version coming out the same year as I finished university. But yeah, then there were lots of pivots and changes. Just because I changed as well. And I was still you know, employed for several years. And yeah, that is how it started. And then after having my first son, well, our son, only son, three years ago, I was I realized pretty quickly that I wouldn't want to go back to work. Just because, well, it was a great job, the one I had, but I knew that if I went back as a mum there would be limitations to our personal life but also to my work life. And I just use that is an opportunity really to fully focus on hi to them? And yeah, that is where going back to the initial print publication idea. I'm kicked off really?

Sarah

10:11

Yeah. For me as well, when we had Davey, it just brought so much clarity as to what was important. And what I really wanted to do. Were before that my energy was really like, fractured in all these different directions. And when you have so little time, so little energy really know where you want to put it. So talk us through the crowdfunding and some of the behind the scenes of like, how do you how do you find a printer? And like,

Kiki

10:45

yeah, all that kind of stuff? Yeah. And I'd love to. So yeah, to bring out the first print publication. I had a Kickstarter campaign last year. And that was actually well, it was hard work. And I know you've done crowdfunding yourself. And yeah, it is exhausting about it, and motivating people to get involved. But with that, I just feel like I was very lucky. Well, I do have to say, at first, I had to do it twice. My first Kickstarter campaign failed, because my grandma, well, there were several reasons. But the big ones were my grandmother passed away. Right before I start, oh, well, around the time I started it, and yeah, I was, I was not in the right place. Also, I was about 11 or 12 weeks pregnant with our second kid, and I was constantly exhausted. Yeah, I wasn't set up for that, really. But I didn't give up. I just created a second campaign. And that went well in the end. And what I wanted to say is, I was really lucky with that, because over the years, I had built such a lovely community around tighter the hotel friend, a lot of people from social media, actually, who have always been supportive. And they Yeah, just really got him on board with the print publication project as well. So yeah, that worked out.

Sarah

12:15

I love that you did a second Kickstarter, because actually, my first Kickstarter was for a project several years ago, a long time ago. Now, it was like another lifetime before it was apparent. And I had the same situation where it was like, I had a lot of people who wanted to support me, actually, my dad had just died. So there are a lot of parallels in that. And like the energy that you need to put into that, it like, I felt like I was hemorrhaging energy. And it just the timing was bad. And so with Kickstarters, you really need the support early on. So that it can build and a lot of the people who were going to pledge for me, they weren't able to do it till the end because of traveling and things like that. And so I reached my goal for the first week by the end of the project. And if I just reached that goal earlier, I think it would have funded according to what my Kickstarter, crowdfunding teachers were telling me anyway, about how the structure of it all works, that I took that really hard and I just went into this downward spiral of having a failed project. And it was almost like the amount of money that I had raised, I could have done the project on a smaller scale. But at the time, like being in that grief for my dad, like I couldn't see the possibilities. And so I was just like, Okay, I'm not doing this. And I loved seeing you like, take it and reframe it and pitch it again, like take your time and come back to it. I think that's such a great lesson for anybody that if the funding doesn't come the first time, it doesn't mean people aren't interested. It just means that I didn't all come. There's so much with fundraising, that all has to like, come into alignment together at the same time. So I think I love that you shared that part. For anybody who's listening that might be doing a crowdfunding. And also that that's another layer to that is for Kickstarter, if you don't get your goal, you get none of the money. That's true. So when I fundraise when I crowdfunded for my book, I did it on Indiegogo, because I was, I'm a little bit sure I can make it work. Whereas if I, I was afraid if I did Kickstarter again and came up short, I was going to end up in the same pattern. So that's one difference between those two.

Kiki

14:37

I must say it was quite scary because so many other people were involved too. I had the graphic designers I work with an external studio. They're called defenders studio. Um, they're based in London and absolutely brilliant. If anyone is looking for graphic designers to support them with their magazine, I had already spoken to the printers. It's also a question I still need to answer how I found and then I had more than And 25 contributors, and obviously I wanted to, you know, make sure that they got what they were owed as well.

Sarah

15:08

Yeah, yeah. Collaborative Project.

Kiki

15:11

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because again, and what is that only a Hayti. so unique. And I really want people to read the magazine and get inspired. And if it was my voice only, I don't think, wow. Yeah, hopefully there would be still a lot of value to it. But I think to really hone the joyful moments and, you know, look into how can you find your personal heightened moments, um, you need more inspiration? Well, and

Sarah

15:39

it's so beautiful. I have the digital copy from the Kickstarter campaign. And, like, I love all of the photography that you commission and like just the layout, it's just, it's really, really lovely and inspiring. So

Kiki

15:54

there's so much. Yeah, I think that's one of my favorite parts about doing it, the curation and working with so many different people. And, yeah, it, I'm really happy with it still, I actually have a copy here. My, you know, only your paid staff thinks that subscribers will see the video. application, it also goes with your color palettes. Sarah, it does. Green is a good color. Because I'm holding it. The printers question to me, it was really, really important that it's 100% sustainable. And I simply did some research and I looked at local printers. And I wanted to see who has the most sustainable production production processes. And yeah, that is how I picked them in the end. Yeah.

Sarah

16:53

So did you have a blog first, when? Yes.

Kiki

16:58

Yeah. And that already had interviews up. And you know, I talked about topics that brought me joy. And, yeah, slowly, I also got that of people involved. And yeah,

Sarah

17:10

yeah, I seem to remember reading blog posts. And that must have been when you started connecting to some of the different collaborators that you've now put into the publication? Yes.

Kiki

17:18

Yeah. Yes. Some of them have actually been around since the very beginning.

Sarah

17:24

Yeah, when I pulled it up to read it. I was like, oh, Elan, I know her. It's really fun. Like, you don't know what to expect. And then you're like, Oh, it's a friendly face. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So you've also recently I think, recently launched the society, the hydro society. Yeah, about that.

Kiki

17:48

Yeah, I'd love to well, the height of society, or the idea for it has been around for a while. But it was actually also the Kickstarter campaign that made me really started. A lot of the heiter readers or Well, a lot of people who are in the heiter community. Business owners as well, independent business owners are in a similar boat, to me, a lot of them are moms. And, you know, back in the day, that was a massive community feeling on Instagram, I think, Sarah, that is how the two of us also met was such a while it is still a brilliant community. But the technical setup of Instagram makes it a little bit harder nowadays to really connect and still chat with everyone you want to chat to. So I wanted to bring that community feeling back in in a different setting, I guess. And yeah, that is how the society came about this society is a an exclusive community membership. And well, first of all, we offer workshops for people creative workshops, and mindful workshops so that they can actually experience joy or try out something new. That happens once a month, then we, for the business owners in particular, we also offer anti overwhelmed business sessions, because there's a lot of noise out there around business, how you should run it. And it can get very confusing if you constantly have, you know, a lot of business advice, and I just wanted to get rid of that noise stripped down. And I'm regularly asking guest speakers to come in who run their businesses in a really simple way. And they talk about them to our members. Those business members also have the chance to advertise in a magazine, which I think is fairly unique. And obviously it helps their businesses and we also have networking sessions and co working sessions. And just from my personal experience, having the society has really added to my everyday life. And even though I have My kid at home, even though I'm, you know, based in Austria, I get to connect with people from all around the world like minded people, I get to chat to other mums. While moms who also run their businesses, we have similar challenges, we also have similar joys. And yeah, we can exchange our experiences. And it's been really, really lovely.

Sarah

20:25

I love that. What platform is your community on the the interactive part,

Kiki

20:33

and the interactive part is on Zoo. It's just the easiest tool at the moment. And, yeah, we've had good experience with it. Also, with the workshops, we just record them and then send up the replay to the members who perhaps cannot attend a workshop live. And then, for the digital community part, we do use Facebook. And I know a lot of people have a problem with Facebook, but we just always say, We shift our focus, and we don't think about how annoying Facebook is. We make it a community thing. And

Sarah

21:09

yeah, I deleted my Facebook a few years ago, I made a secret one, just groups like yours.

Kiki

21:18

That's a good idea. So um,

Sarah

21:21

yeah, if anybody isn't on Facebook, but is still interested in the community, that's one way to do I don't use my real my full name. So no one can like Look up for me and friend requests. I use my first name and my middle name. Yeah, wait, if there is like a class I want to take and they have a Facebook community. That's how I do it. Because that feed just like, I don't know something about Facebook. There's a lot of like news and politics. I mean, Instagram is getting worse about that too. But something about Facebook just seem to stress me out. And on Instagram, I just try to curate my feed so that I'm seeing the things that bring me highter

Kiki

21:59

Yeah, that is good. I think everyone should do that. Yeah. And I love that about Facebook. Because, yeah, it's again, just, you know, putting focus on what you enjoy, rather than throwing yourself under the bus.

Sarah

22:12

Yeah, it takes some control of how we make the Internet work for us and not work for the internet. So I'd love to hear, since we're both parents, like, how did becoming a parent change your creativity? Or did it? And how is it to like, weave those parts of your life? Together?

Kiki

22:34

Yeah. Well, I must say, especially now that I have to, there is less time for creativity. But same as with heiter, I don't want to say I've lowered my expectations, but I've made my goals more accessible, even more accessible. And what I mentioned at the beginning, just getting dressed in the morning and putting some of my creativity into that has really helped me. And it's helped, it's helped me to, you know, continue to have creativity in my everyday life. I do have a lot of ideas. But I think that's also because my work situation has changed. Of course, I also had ideas when I was still in employment. But if you're, if you're employed, there was at least, but my case, I was constantly stressed. And I was usually worried about other people's problems. I had my own team of more than 40 people. And that was just very challenging. And yeah, there was not a lot of room for me to grow. And now that I work from home, and that I also see the kids and have more time to go outside. I you know, I constantly have new ideas, also from a business. I don't want to say that I get all of them done. Because yes having to is a bit of a challenge. But the ideas at least here, I write them down. And hopefully one day, I will have more time again to work on them.

Sarah

23:59

Yes. Yeah, that happened for me to like, when I was a new mom, and I had no time or energy to do anything. I just had all these ideas. And so I just have like David's almost for now. And I'm still like working through that list of artwork, ideas of things that I wanted to make. Um, yeah, it's like, rather than, you know, you may not be able to follow through on the idea right then. But there's creativity in the act of having the ideas and definitely capturing those and you can come back to them or they might take a different shape. And I also think to what you said about like you're getting outside with your kids, like we do things with our kids that bring us inspiration that we wouldn't do if it was just us. And there's something to learn in that too.

Kiki

24:50

Yeah, that's so true. And we played well with playdough this morning, and I was just thinking as well. It's so creative, and we get to do it with each other You know, I know that some parents get perhaps really frustrated about not being creative enough. But if we just open our eyes and appreciate what we've got, we find so much more creativity in it. And then we might think at first

Sarah

25:14

Yeah, and the kids have new eyes. So they see things. Like, I noticed so many different things than I did before Davy. I've always been very observant, but the things that I'm naturally drawn to are different than what he's drawn to. So like he's really into vehicles. And so fire truck has become like a big event. And I never realized how many airplanes fly past like, I'm like, looking over here at these flowers blooming. And he's like, do you hear that?

Kiki

25:46

So exciting? Yeah, even, um, well, my kids are bilingual. JJ already talks. Sometimes you do need a little bit of creativity to understand because he makes us German. And that's fine. Yeah. And now that he's three has also started to ask questions. And even, you know, trying to come up with an answer that he understands can be a creative person. That is true.

Sarah

26:16

David actually has a speech delay. We're both autistic. And so he isn't fully like..., "Do you hear that?" It's like his biggest sentence. And so we're always having these creative in interchanges with spoken word and sign language. And he has like a thin app on his talker where he can like point to words, if he can't say them yet. He's talking more and more, but it's kind of like a multimodal communication kind of thing. And there's definitely creativity and like, Okay, how, how do I express this complex idea or process or the plan for the day into like a format that you're going to follow? Yeah. And then you have a younger one that is absorbing all of that as well.

Kiki

27:05

Yeah. Yeah. It is really impressive. Watching her impressive. Obviously, we had JJ. But JJ was born two weeks prior to the very first time locked down. And it was just the three of us my husband, JJ, and I. And you know, he had well, I'm pretty sure he developed normally. But there was so many things that, you know, just took him time to learn. And now with her, even though she's only seven months old, I can just see that he watched she watches watches her brother, and the things she can already do or wants to do herself. Yeah, it just really amazes me.

Sarah

27:45

Yeah, we, it was a really strange time to become a parent. So we had, we had David a little bit before you, but he wasn't even one yet when we had the lockdown. And so I'm, like, I have some chronic illness stuff. And so when he was born, we didn't really go out and do things until he had all his vaccines. So we were in a pre pre quarantine, before the quarantine and it was just the time that we had started going out to the library, to the swimming pool, like to the park. We had just started going out into the world when Ben COVID happened and we had to quarantine again. So it was like we had this like extended extra time of quarantining where, you know, it's a really weird, like you said experience of being a parent. And then you have this kid who like, hasn't seen people, like we went out and the one of the first times we took him to the park, we're like, look, there's deer, like look, and he was like, he was pointing at the people like, oh my god, there are other humans here. And so these pandemic, babies, like they've just had a very different different entry into the world.

Kiki

28:59

Totally. And unless it also took him about what he's, he's very open and, and loving, and he's got many friends. But it took him a while to get used to other people. Whereas Clara, or at least one, it just really doesn't matter who holds her she's she's totally fine with it.

Sarah

29:18

And love it. Debbie is so friendly, but he also I don't know, there's something there's some interesting complexity there where it's like, he's perhaps extroverted. But he doesn't want to be in a big group of noisy people. Like if it's like one to one, he will make friends with anyone but take him to like a really noisy place and he's, you know, it's just a little bit too over stimulating. Okay, well, that's all I had on my list. Um, is there something else that you wanted to talk about or something coming up for you?

Kiki

29:58

Let me think obviously, We are already thinking about Issue number two. We were planning to bring it out now in spring. But yes, with motherhood. And me really under estimating the two children are more extreme than having just one. We've now postponed the launch date to October. Autumn, we'll see. So yeah, that's something we're working on at the moment. And, yeah, we're hoping for people to preorder already. We're still looking for sponsors, if anyone is interested, I think contributor wise, we're also open for taking on new contributors, even well, mainly for the blog at the moment, but there's also room to potentially contribute to one of the print publications in the future. Yeah, that's, that's on the rate at the moment. But I think other than that, we hoped to Oh, yeah, not just hope. We are trying to constantly put up content on social media and, and, and our blog, but constant is a bit of a negative word, I just realized, we try to put up regular content that adds value. And if any lead

Sarah

31:18

hop over Yeah, hop over and follow if you're, if you're missing the calm, relaxing, inspirational stuff on Instagram, hop over and then put it in your favorites. So that's what you see. I always see people complaining about their Instagram feeds. And really, it's really within your control. So you can unfollow things if they're stressing you out and you can put your favorite things on favorites or close friends. And that comes up on your feed first, so I would definitely recommend hider for that, for that little hit. Yeah. Okay, and oh, and I guess where can you tell us all your handles? I'll put it in the show notes as well. But in case someone's just listening.

Kiki

32:03

Yeah, so um, Hunter, The spelling is haich e i t e r. Again, it's German. If you type in heightened magazine magazine, as in the English word magazine, you'll find us on Instagram. That's also our website actually heights. magazine.com. And if you wanted to follow me personally, Katarina Geisler Evans, I think Sara will put in the link there might be easy misspelling it out now. Evans is the part that's it. You speaking the rest is Austrian or German. And yeah. Okay. You'll find that

Sarah

32:39

Well, thank you. I'm so glad that we made our timezones me twice today's that we could be in the same, the same space here together the same digital space, and it's been really nice. Like, I've been kind of like Instagram friends for a long time, but like, being able to talk in real time. It's really fun. Yeah,

Kiki

32:59

I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you. Yeah, I'm sure we'll chat again soon.

Sarah

33:04

For sure.

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