Today we’d like to introduce you to Karma Kitaj.
Karma, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My family was not at all entrepreneurial, my father being a research chemist and my mother a high school English teacher. But my mother always said: “If you don’t toot your own horn, no one else will.” So, I’ve learned to toot. And have fun with it, hoping I don’t alienate too many people. So far, I haven’t lost friends that I know of.
My first foray into starting a business was going into private practice as a psychotherapist with only a Master’s degree in social work. I’m not a team player and always liked to work on my own, setting my own rules and agenda, working as much as I wanted and having only myself to blame if things didn’t work or praise myself when they did work.
Another attribute that has driven me is the love of learning. To keep myself stimulated in my profession, I always enrolled in the newest therapeutic modalities, rather than “settling” for practicing in the established ways. This yielded me many clients, seeking cutting edge therapy.
Before long, I went back to graduate school to get a PhD, prompted by my 101-year-old Viennese grandmother’s question: “When are you going to finish your studies?” a query she made of me on her almost death-bed. While in grad school, I found that I enjoyed the process of writing and researching and after getting my degree, I became a Visiting Research Scholar at the Centers for Women at Wellesley College. There I began research for my first book, called “Women Who Could… and Did,” based on interviews with prominent women over age 65 in the arts and sciences. I was searching for answers for how women of that generation got to the top of their fields before the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and ’70’s.
I had to learn to publish and promote this book, so took many workshops on marketing and publicity, blogging, and created a TV show called “A Livelihood: New Adventures As We Age,.” where I interviewed 100+ people over age 50, the Boomers. To publish my books, I started my own publishing company, Huckle Hill Press.
Having started to ride horses at the advanced age of 50, I decided to write my 2nd book about top-level equestriennes, so traveled all over the US interviewing women in all riding disciplines. “Women Riders Who Could… and Did” gave me the challenge of publishing and promoting another book.
Meantime, my professional life was enhanced by training and becoming certified to be a life coach, starting my own company called Life Spring Coaching. Finding that anybody could call themselves a “coach,” I had to distinguish myself from others. I decided to focus attention on Baby Boomers who want to create a life that’s even more gratifying than what they ever expected. I began writing a blog called, “Retirement As You Want It,” still available online, and wrote for the Huffington Post as well as other online publications.
One of the people I interviewed for my TV show introduced me to her art studio, which awakened my latent artistic talents. For the past 10 years, I’ve studied and shown my art, choosing the medium of encaustic, an ancient method using hot pigmented wax and mixed media. I currently have a show in the Crowell Gallery in Newfane VT and show my work whenever I get the opportunity. Already well acquainted with “tooting my own horn,” I have found venues interested to show and sell my art, both online and in galleries. See www.KitajArt.com
My next adventure will be to publicize my first novel, for which I’ve just signed a publishing contract. It’s a historical novel based in Boston’s old West End in the early 1900s, then moving to Greenwich Village and Provincetown. I look forward to it, as I enjoy being on stage, in print online, and creating a buzz about things that I love to do. I tease myself, telling people, “I’m my own best fan.” I hope there’ll be a few others who also like my new book.
Has it been a smooth road?
There is always a struggle in anything one does for the first time. But, I’ve never avoided challenge. Struggles?
1. When I presented my doctoral dissertation plan to my committee, it was unexpectedly nixed by the head of the research department, who was not part of my Committee. It disillusioned me so much that I took off 9 months, fully expecting I was going to junk the PhD, which I didn’t need, I reasoned. By the end of that period, I thought I’d do as I was told (a hard thing for me!) and get that PhD. Just being called “Doctor So and So” opened opportunities I wouldn’t have had. It also taught me the discipline of doing research, which I used in my first book, “Women Who Could and Did.”
2. Trying to find a traditional publisher or university publisher by 2000 had become well nigh impossible for the never published writer. So, I wanted to publish that book and set about learning how, with the help of wonderful online groups, to self-publish.
3. Beginning a new business as a life coach in an already filled arena was another challenge. When I finally realized I could not be all things to all people, no matter how much I enjoyed working with all kinds of people, I decided to carve out my niche and I fared much better.
4. Selling art and selling books are each challenges in a super-saturated market. There’s a part of me that just likes the process of doing each one of these and is not concerned about selling. However, knowing that someone else likes what I do enough to want it to be part of their lives drives me to publicize.
5. Although not entrepreneurial, learning to ride horses as a not very athletic person and to dance Argentinian tango have in themselves been a challenge. But, my husband, who shares these passions, and I take lessons weekly and drive ourselves to get better and better. And enjoy these hobbies to the extent we become more expert.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Life Spring Coaching, Huckle Hill Press, and KitajArt story. Tell us more about the business.
1. Life Spring Coaching, which I frequently practice remotely via video conference with people anywhere in the world, draws people with a fervent desire to make their lives more fulfilling, challenging, and fun. Although I promote myself as a coach for Boomers who want to JumpStart their lives after leaving their mid-life responsibilities, people come to me at all junctures of their life course. I take pleasure in facilitating people’s going from a blah life to one that makes them want to get up in the morning with plans for making and doing things meaningful to them and others.
2. Huckle Hill Press is my book publishing company. I have published my first 2 books there, but my next one will be co-published with Koehler Books, a small independent publisher. I look forward to writing and becoming known for a series of historical novels using the early 1900s as the setting.
3. KitajArt hosts my encaustic and mixed media paintings and monoprints. Although encaustic painting is an ancient method, it’s only in recent decades that even other artists have become familiar with it. I enjoy the role of a renegade that takes on new adventures, ones that few lay people, even art lovers, have ever heard of.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Everything has gotten to be global. My businesses have global access, which is a blessing because I can reach people all over the world. It also presents its own difficulties… of internet access in some countries, of censoring in others. It also presents challenges re: shipping art work or even books to far corners of the world.
The worst part of this internet-based culture is the necessity to beware of scammers, of people purporting to want your services, be it coaching or psychotherapy or buying lots of art work. I’ve been bitten by scams a few times, but now have a good nose for sniffing those out, rather than going to all the trouble to package pictures, only to discover that the purported buyer is a scammer.
I don’t know if the internet world will just keep getting worse in this respect or if more strictures will be placed on sellers and buyers.
For life coaches, I imagine like any young profession, there will be more and more call for licensing. Which will be a boon to those of us who’ve gone through certification and long training.
Pricing:
- Life coaching is expensive as health insurance does not cover it. My current pricing is approximately $185/ hour with a discount when the client pays up front for 3months.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.LifeSpringCoaching.com; www.HuckleHillPress.com; www.KitajArt.com
- Phone: 617 429 2580
- Email: karmakitaj@comcast.net
- Facebook: Karma Kitaj
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
