Meet Kat Steih

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kat Steih. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kat below.

Hi Kat, so excited to have you with us today and we are really interested in hearing your thoughts about how folks can develop their empathy? In our experience, most folks want to be empathic towards others, but in a world where we are often only surrounded by people who are very similar to us, it can sometimes be a challenge to develop empathy for others who might not be as similar to us. Any thoughts or advice?

1. Wanting to be a creative person
2. Not having the skills at the beginning
3. Feeling so different from the people who did have the skills
4. Continuing to learn the skills
5. Thanks to my brain being different, being non-neurotypical, I often felt shame around not being chosen
5. Then I also felt judgmental towards others who were different or who presented in unique ways
6. I realized this was part of my own shame
7. As I grew in learning skills and gaining more recognition in the scene, I started to realize how working with others who were different and looking to build their skills was like supporting myself at that age

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

1. I am a performing artist and my skill is crowd work – so I am a rock band leader and we have written a bunch of songs and my job is to ensure that everyone is connected and having a good time at the shows
2. I’ve been doing this since I was in high school and it’s one of my favorite things to do
3. I’ve been writing music for 10 years and I keep developing my craft as a songwriter
4. What I’ve been learning most recently is tour booking and band management
5. We are starting to tour regionally and develop our offerings to share with more music markets

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. Perseverance – my mind always finds a way to solve a problem, even if doors close on the way. If doors close to opportunities, my mind always finds a way to move forward in some direction that’s exciting to me.
A. Advice: I’d say find a mentor who you can share your thinking with, so they can help you adjust your thinking. I didn’t recognize my quality of perseverance by myself – my therapist pointed it out to me. But it was me who got myself to the therapist 😉

2. Asking for help – I ask for help in a lot of ways. I work with consultants and also with assistants. Also I collaborate with others to finish projects. Working with others helps me bring a project into reality out of the more foggy dream zone.
A. Advice: Find a consultant or an assistant or a collaborator who you really like. It’s scary to even look for someone, and a lot of the fear comes from “what if they tell me something I don’t want to hear?” And then you might start working with them and they tell you things that don’t work for you! That has happened to me and it was very discouraging, until my mentor told me I didn’t have to keep working with that person and I could find someone better for me. So my advice is, find people to work with who can help you, and if you find someone who tells you things that don’t work for you, move on until you find someone else.

3. Communication skills – because my collaborators help me move a project to the finish line, I need to communicate with them and stay in authenticity while still staying connected. This is a very scary thing cuz what comes up in these relationships is Differences. So working on communication skills that allow for differences, channel differences into helpful actions and habits, and encourage closeness is a huge skill.
A. Advice: work with a mentor who can help you each step of the way and give you a helping hand to define the issues you are struggling with verbally.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I am moving to a new level in my music business, so I would love to work with:

A. Glam rock / punk – prog Bands who are touring and want to exchange shows in their city and my city (Ann Arbor / Ypsi / Detroit MI)

B. A sound person / light person / stage director who would like to travel with the band and support a stage show

C. Dancers / clowns who would like to take part in / develop a stage show that would go with our music

You can email me at [email protected]

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Hilary Nichols
Alex Nouhan

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