Hedi Schaefer- music industry to work- life integration and becoming a design thinking practitioner.

My name is Hedi Schaefer and I am a music industry veteran-turned innovation consultant. For the past 10 years, I have been traveling the world helping people in organizations from start-ups to large corporations create user-centric services, products, and healthy company cultures.

However, my life took a turn when I became a mom. Suddenly, everything I knew about "the right way to live" crashed. I had to start from scratch and figure out how to create a life that was fulfilling and purposeful.

Thankfully, I was able to use my skills as a design thinking practitioner to help me through this process. And now, I want to share what I've learned with you.

I believe that you can create a life that is fulfilling and purposeful, no matter what your circumstances are. You just need to know how to go about it.

That's why I've decided to share my story and the lessons I've learned with you. I hope that by doing so, I can help you avoid some of the mistakes I made and show you that it is possible to create a meaningful life for yourself.

The following text has been transcribed. 

Hello and welcome to Kim Talks. Your host, Kim Hayden and I'm super excited to be here, especially because today is International Women's Day. So again, thank you so much, everybody, for showing up. Today's guest is from all the way across the world over in Germany. We have Hedi here. Heidi is going to be sharing with us a little bit of how she did the transition, the big crash and everything. But let me quickly just do a quick introduction. Okay. So this first professional endeavor was in the music industry, which we will be diving into, which transformed into an innovation consultant helping people and organizations and startups. So great, great gal to have here creating user xset, user centric services, products and healthy company cultures. All this while spending ten years traveling around the globe a little jealous on this side, I must say. Then Hedi launched her greatest endeavor. Yet she became a mom and everything crashed. And the big shift was underway, leading to the big transformation that's coming full circle to work life into integration and becoming a conscious design thinking practitioner. And we're going to dove into that. So welcome, my dear welcome. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited.

Awesome. Well, you know, you talk about your greatest endeavor becoming a mom and work life integration. You are. Tell us where you're filming from today and why.

Well, Work-Life Integration. Yeah, that's it. So it's 8:30 And my daughter is asleep, so I'm naturally kind of in the kitchen because everything else, you know, has to be blocked and has to be quiet and hush. Yeah, I've got my plan, as you see, and I've got my lighting, and I haven't done the dishes, so I'm not going to turn the camera at all. This is private.

That's all that matters. And, you know, and the reality is I talk a lot on that word. Perfect. So I'm not perfect. I am messy. I am a work in progress. And I'm proud of that because I want to be called perfect the day they shut me in the dirt because reality is perfect. Doesn't leave you where to go. All the work in progress whatsoever. Absolutely. So talking about a work in progress. Share with us a little bit of what you do and what your different definition of like that transformation is.

Okay. So I'm a transformation coach. I'm actually, I would say a creative transformation and conscious innovation coach. So what I do, I enable people or empower people, especially women these days to find their authentic truth power purpose and use their change processes. This messy, messy phase, which is just a process. It's just a process to their advantage. So everyone us when I was in the transition and I've been a lot, as you said in that beautiful introduction, that, yeah, I've been transforming a lot, but I never made everything out of it that I could. And when I became a mom and really already crashed, I was like, okay, there's got to be there's got to be more to this than just crashing and feeling sorry for myself and feeling messy. What if I would upgrade to the best life that I cannot imagine right now, but that I truly want and feel that it's time? So that's what I do. And what was the question?

I wanted to know a little bit about your progression to that, but also what is your definition of transformation?

Transformation is really shedding your skin and becoming who you are. It's all there. We always think that we have to go outside and find ourselves when in reality, transformation is coming to ourselves.

Coming to yourself. That's actually quite good. Yeah. Embracing yourself. Absolutely.

And getting to know yourself because most of us, we are following a treadmill. We're following a program we're following outside expectations. That's how we are raised. So really the crucial part or the the interesting part, I would say is really getting to know yourself, getting clear on what your purpose, values and visions are and reprogramming. Yeah, your supercomputer, which is you yourself into a positive belief and emotional system that works for you and not against you. Because there are two problems I found or actually three, but two major, major blocks when it comes to transformation and that is one, we know what we want to get out of that we don't know where to. So you need the clarity in order to really, you know, take one step ahead and not get stuck in this over woman in this. Yeah. And this mess. And the second one is really you had the belief system, your whole energy, your whole consciousness. You cannot solve a problem. That's Einstein. It's physics. You cannot solve a problem. From the same consciousness that it was created. And you cannot , that's Henry Ford's. Whether you think you can or you think you can't always. Right. Whether you think you can, you know, have the love of your life and live the life of your love. You know that it's up to your belief system and yeah. And your emotions and feelings. Yeah. That you can.

And I think it's critical that we as women have to show ourselves, grace, forgive the things that we view as failure and start moving those over to the feedback loop. Right. That's what Edison talked about. You know, everything was feedback feedback, feedback. How do we build upon build? I mean, I know that as a mother of three, nothing is harder than mother's guilt. Oh, I shouldn't have done that or I wish I'd done that. But at the end of the day, we have to at some point in time, let go of the shame, the guilt, the fear. We have to learn to like ourselves. To love. Yeah, love ourselves. You know, I find that so many women don't even like who they are.

Yeah, it's true.

And it's it's. You didn't really tell me about that. How did you get to where you are now? Because you only stack on more work when you have a kid and you've shifted, so you did it, and now you do share that with me.

I absolutely was actually that was a key moment when I had my baby, which was so. Well, I was in this incredible life, right? So I was always proving to the outside that I was enough and I was worthy. Look at me. I'm working for this and that. I'm all over the world. I, I don't sleep. I, you know, I work hard and so then she came, and I also transitioned. So I was living in Berlin, moving from Berlin to the world. But, you know, I was then in a very quiet place here in Germany, like 24,000 people. And so my daughter came in, she was very, very okay with herself. Like, I realized how, yeah, she was really in love with the lights and I wasn't. So I was really wondering how I could be a good mother to this incredible person. And this incredible being and first of all, it brought a lot of shadows obviously up because light, you know, light and shadow always know what I'm.

The same, yeah. You cannot have one without the other.

Exactly. And also the question of who do I want to be as the mother? I took her as an example and as the still the greatest teacher I ever had. I had plenty and wonderful mentors and had tons of certificates, but she is like you know, she's so real and so pure and she's so empathetic. And she said well, then I realized, okay, wow. I don't love myself. Like, that's what the root cause was. And I literally wrote on a Post-it How can I be warmhearted? Because I was judging myself. I was judging others. I was not living authentically. I didn't even know who I was. Think that was the main problem up to this point. I could tell you very well that I was doing great things. I was always like, you know, the interesting girl at the party telling everybody, you know, and innovation, blah, blah, blah, and going away, feeling a bit empty, but never really questioning it. And that moment was so scary that I realized I needed to get to this point because I didn't even know then as a mother what I was doing. So first of all, I didn't know what to do anymore. Plus, I had no clue whatsoever who I was. I didn't like it and I didn't know what it was. So that was the situation I was in as their only.

Now, there's basically two bursts that happen at the same time, the birth of a mother and the birth of the child. So it is pretty fascinating. I am curious, though, if you use the term that conscious design thinking practitioner can you walk me through that and what that means and what that offers?

Okay. So the conscious design thinking program, so I've got to programs, one is the mastermind that goes through the nine transformation, success, transformation success piece. That's really like the essence of transformation: conscious design thinking is really going step by step through an innovation process. And that means that you first of all, like, it's, it's threefold. So first of all, you do research, you blow up your mind because that's where we are captured right? We think we know everything and we're scared to go out of the box. So to really understand what is out there, we have to kind of be a little bit forced and that's what it is about. Design thinking means that you can create anything, you can create yourself, you can create your life, you can create products and services. You can create cultures and organizations. Doesn't matter. You can create everything. But you first have to go out of the box and into the unknown and learn and learn from different people that did it already or that are awkward. And, you know, that just gives you insight, that inspiration that's what it is. And then you transfer to your own context. And the third part is the consciousness part, which is, as I said, I look back from all of my innovation projects and I was very involved in that mess. I was like, wow, probably 30% really made it to the next level, meaning they were implemented and you know, in one innovation project, there are so many people involved, me as a coach and it is a lot of energy. And I was like, Oh, that's not much obviously. I knew at the time it was a mindset and was the, you know, the people that either did it or didn't do it. But other than that, I didn't really know what to say or what the brain is capable of. So that's the third part. Truly, truly reprogramming your mind into believing and knowing.

Yes, you can, you can do this. And that's the three parts of conscious design thinking.

Is something that so I know that you have a program for that. Is that something you build or is that something that you adopted?

Design thinking? I have done four since 2009. So design thinking isn't something new. It is user centric design that was labeled as design thinking. In what sense? What made it popular in 19 2005 2008? It came to Germany and it basically took off because this is how designers think and we adapt it. That's to, to organizations, to companies, to banks. I was in the banking industry for almost five years constantly because they didn't know who their customers were, they didn't know what they desired, they didn't know what to, you know, what kind of services to provide. Also, then the whole if you're doing innovation in the context in a company or yourself, your whole environment changes. So then the question was, how can we apply it to our organization culture? How can we collaborate together? How really, to be honest, really basic human intelligence that we just forgot about. And that was really learned basically in the design thinking process where you first do research on what the problem really is and then create solutions and then iteratively go move forward. As you said, like in the beginning, there is no such thing as perfect. There's just progress. And the more you iterate the more perfection there is. At the end of the day, most people just stop and think, go, this is this is the idea. Most people don't even do the research phase because they think they know, but actually they don't. So this is what design thinking is really based upon, especially also creativity is a creative source within ourselves problem solving that you don't focus on. And it's not whether you focus on the fun. I can't or this is impossible. We've done this before, or you change your mindset and where are the where are possibilities? What can we get inspiration to move forward on?

Design thinking is I have a vision now. I have to figure it out. It doesn't design thinking doesn't start with limitations. It just starts with the concept, the vision and then reverse engineering it. I mean, some of our greatest people are gone, wouldn't it be cool if and when they go, how do we do this? And we live in it.

Yeah, sorry. The consciousness part, that's the part that based on what I was learning and realizing, okay, there's a part missing because so many innovation projects fail. That's the part that I added.

Yeah. Yeah. They're making that conscious choice to take it step by step on our live stream system here. As I mentioned, the livestream each livestream generates upwards of, you know, 25, 28 different pieces throughout social media, meaning that it's being tracked this many times through Google, right? It's where it's all been. Everything's done. But it starts with the concept What if we did this? How many times can we get the social interaction we need and how it literally took nearly three months reverse engineering this entire system to find every missing step, every missing component two are now I can say, okay, it's all there. It's literally from literally setting up your initial contact Google form all the way through to it being on Spotify. Right? So the entire system and most people go, well, it's just but this is why most podcasts fail. This is why businesses fail. This is because we don't stop them and back fill the gaps. We don't go, oh, there's a step missing. Instead, we just keep pushing forward and that it should fix itself. Right.

Design thinking is a bit different because design thinking doesn't know the answer at all. Like we don't know the solution. In the beginning it would be like in your context, I'm thinking like what would be a good analogy like redesigning the podcast experience that would be a design thinking challenge is like totally open. And then doing user research on how do people enjoy listening to a podcast and also being on a podcast asking them, you know, when was your best podcast experience why was it, what was it worst podcast experience? Why was it in trying to find out the needs behind it? Then, you know, they actually love listening to podcasts while they're still breastfeeding. Oh, I don't know. And then you're like, Okay, wow, maybe, maybe I've got an inspiration here. That's, you know, I can't market.

We marketed it to formula companies.

I don't know. Oh, yeah. Well, that person that that mom is now your user like how can you make the best podcast experience for her? She's bought, for instance, she's super bored. Like she's completely tired because like, all she does is hang in there. So maybe like in the 60 seconds before your show you can do okay. That's that she does something for her brain and that she feels valued. I don't know. That could be, that could be an outcome, you know what I mean?

Absolutely.

Open. Completely open ended. And that's also the scary part for most organizations, for most companies, for most people to really step into this unknown. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what the solution is. But that's innovation, right? Being completely open and just absolutely.

Absolutely. And I think that that can be a challenge. I want to know about your music career. Tell me a bit about that. You said you started all of this in the music industry. What did you do in the music industry? First off.

Everything. I was an assistant. I was writing scripts. I was doing basically, I was really sucking everything I could. I was absolutely in love with music. That's everything I knew that gave me joy at this at this time of my life. I was early. Yeah. Growing up. This was my resilience center, if you will. Yeah. So this was my cocoon. I wasn't really good at school. I didn't really belong there. So music was my jam. And so, yeah, I was working for an artist, well known German artists slipped into that, and then from there went to opera. I loved opera. Why not stage management? And from there to film and music, TV and everything, you know, I was managing an innovative award. It was the Blah blah blah Piano Festival in 2010. The cool piano city was oh my gosh we had I think hundreds 100 concerts in all of Berlin living rooms and they were yeah. And you could just got a ticket back then. It was super innovative. I think it was replicated thousands of times. But then you could, you know, sneak into other people's rooms where the pianist would, would live and have your private concert there and yeah, that's like that. So I was really, really curious, yes. And bending what was possible. I think that was the main intention behind it.

We had something like that here called What Was That Dinner and a song. So it was for bands that were CouchSurfing and you put them up for three nights but you had to feed them and in turn they would play a concert the night before they would actually play their gig. So actually not a bad idea.

It's like the Muppets, right? So but no, I'm going to just fill the air here. So International Women's Day is an awesome time to stop and think and also to reflect on how we can support other women. I hear a lot of times from fairly successful women that they'll say something like, you know, the greatest challenge they've had are the greatest hurdles they face have been from other women. So one of the things that is International Women's Day I would encourage everybody to make a conscious effort today to reach out to somebody who inspires them and to be kind to somebody that they have not shared time for. So maybe somebody that you haven't, you know, connected with. Right. Because I don't know whether A it's they're not your cup of tea, or B, you feel like they're maybe not the same level you are or whatever, but take time sent to text today one to somebody who inspires you. And some said the second text to somebody who needs inspiration okay. So we're back. You're all plugged in. It's alright. I could fill in any time. So back to the music. What skill set or what lesson did you learn during that timeline that you have brought forward and applied into your current position?

On the music industry or hard because I'm thinking.

From your music industry years, what is it that you've pulled on today? In your design thinking, in your coaching and you're in, in where you're at through this transformation?

Yeah, teamwork makes the dream work. I think that if you're an artist, it's great that you're an artist and you are the face. But what is behind you holding Mowgli like this? There's an entire army of people that make this person able to touch so many people. And yeah, teamwork makes the dream work and collaboration is key, especially nowadays. So I was always back then, I was very young, so I started being like Christmas Eve, who was back then? Very famous. I was super young and super overwhelmed with the situation. And I was yeah, I was always I felt I was always the youngest and always the only know I wasn't the only women, but like it was always a bit of a fight, you know, between women back then and I when growing older, I made the conscious decision that I truly don't want to nor do I believe that women you know, that we are we are greats. I didn't even know the word in English. It's not about, you know, you are me. It's like us. We are so great together, especially women. And this is what I. Yeah, what I base everything on. My whole business is based on women power today because it's absolutely incredibly intuitive. And the new women are well, they're there. It's so easy to work with them. I can't even say it in words because it's just flowing. It's just flowing and out of ego. And ego is really not the part of it. Well, why not it's just really, really fun. We have so much fun.

Absolutely. And that's a big part. There's enough hard parts in this world. Yeah. You know, we don't need any more heart. So let's, you know, find ways to have some fun. What is it? What would be a word of advice? So how old is your baby for four? Okay, so you've had a few years practice at this right now.

If there's a woman that's going to watch this that is in that big crash potentially right around the corner, what would be your advice, your insight for her?

Everything is a process, everything is temporary. Change is the only constant in life. And you can either make it work for you or pretty much against you, like you can feel terrible and then guilt and what you say you said in the beginning, but you can use this as the greatest gift and chance because you're a mess. Anyways, there aren't any words. It's like puberty. I don't know what it is in English. Like the two years after your giving birth is almost like purity because your brain is this. Yeah, so use this time when you're breastfeeding, when you, when you have the chance to really be with yourself to listen, to find yourself, to reprogram yourself into self-love, self-talk that actually works for you. And there's a very simple, simple practice that I, that I teach, especially young mums when they are in this process. And then it's just reframing your limiting beliefs to take a pulse. If you take a pen, you write down your limiting beliefs because you're listening so much anyway. When you're in that space because you know, everything's quiet and you write it down one, one sentence to post it and then you reframe. It's not a negation. So now I am not afraid. What are you, I'm free, I'm happy, I'm loved, I'm lovable. Write it down and then tell you it's not yourself. That line is, first of all, a lie. We're hardwired. So first we have to tell ourselves until we believe it so that it's wired differently and also if you're breastfeeding or if you're feeding your baby and you're always very much you know, you bow lots of your body is also very much bowed down very small. That's also like you're all nervous that your self is an intelligence so you react to your emotions so try to really make power poses as much as you can so two to 3 minutes superwomen posers tell yourself that lie testosterone goes up, cortisol goes down. So it is basically a power booster that you instantly. Yeah. Can use the next step towards the vision and also dream to create your vision. How do you envision your dream life? Dare to dream, we have totally forgotten to dream.

Yep.

Super important because thoughts become things absolutely.

Absolutely. Projected until you reflect it. So you're putting it out there. This is gal, a local gal saver east. She puts out this little lady and they're just very inexpensive, but they're affirmation journals. Oh, nice. All your words. And they're designed so you do one a month every day. Every day. And ladies, you know, I have abundance. I have abundance. This is the abundance book. So you know, I am thankful for what I have. I am open to opportunities that align with my goals. I attract wealth, I attract help. The wellness of my body. Like, you know, sometimes you need something to help spur you on. So if you're finding that you're sitting there and you need to go, you want to go to the next level and you're ready for the next level, align yourself with, you know, pieces and things around you. You can't see my room, but I have my flying pig on my desk because, you know, I was born in a trailer park in Wichita, Kansas, and I'm sitting in Canada, you know, a six and seven figure earner having produced over 70 half hour episodes of television for broadcast TV. Anybody can do anything as long as you believe that pigs do fly. So any closing in? Any comments? Yes, you're good. I'm going to have a hole. I'm going to have a whole T-shirt with flying pigs. I think. So I think that's going to go on at my shop. I saw a T- shirt with Flying Pig real quick. Can you share with me where we can reach you, how we can follow you and how can somebody engage with you?

Easiest way simplest way is my website TDC for that. Com this a to the i s c h h e fbr the com and reach out to me at Haiti and paid for that. Com. I am on links in Telegram, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn, YouTube as well on Haiti for AT&T offer.

Awesome. I'm right actually. Just put your information right up here on your let me just pull it up. And there we go, folks. Everybody can see that there is her website. So do go give her a follower on all the socials. I am on a quest to hear and listen and share aspiring women globally. Thank you, Heidi. I appreciate your time. And go give your baby a hug and a kiss. Kiss. Nothing smells better than those right behind the ear on the back of the neck. That's just like my favorite place. Now, my 33 year old son would say, no, mom, but just on that note, I'm Kim Hayden and this is Kim talks again. Thank you for joining us at today's live stream.

Until next time. Thank you and happy International Women's Day.

My life fast forward? I was in the music industry, transformed into an innovation consultant, and traveled 10 years across the globe. Helping people in organizations to start-ups create user-centric services, products, and healthy company cultures. Then I became a mom, and my whole world and the way I lived: From the outside in, crashed. Leading to a big transformation process where I created myself and life from scratch. Into fulfillment and purpose, knowing that you can do too. 

Follow Hedi on social media!

https://www.instagram.com/hedi_schaefer/?hl=de 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hedi-schaefer-2b375a3b/ 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwQI0bcLU5X499_GQYWJhEQ