EP046: Katarina Moškatelo, Content Creator and Travel Guide from Croatia

Sanja Milosavljević: Good day, good people, my name is Sanja Milosavljevic and I am going to be your host today. You are watching and listening to Mondopreneur podcast, a podcast dedicated to entrepreneurs of the world, and not just to them, but to all people that are interested in entrepreneurship, that maybe work in institutes or big corporations, but have entrepreneurial spirit in them. This whole project is supported by US Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia and thanks to them we can really share some great stories of some great people. My today’s guest is Katarina Moskatello. She is, I cannot say that we are colleagues, maybe I would like that, but she is one extraordinary lady with wonderful voice and she comes from Croatia. I am sure I will enjoy our conversation and I hope that you will, too. Hi, Katarina.

Katarina Moškatelo: Hi, hello, to everyone, from these 40 degrees centigrade, as I count here in Zagreb, while my friends from Croatia are all on the seaside for a long weekend. We envy them, watch their Instagram photos and drool a bit. So, here we are, doing what has to be done and we are also going to the sea. How are you? What’s the weather over there?

Sanja Milosavljević: It is also very hot here, and as we like to say in Belgrade, it is like hell, but I like it. We had a long winter and cold and rainy spring and it was enough. When it’s sunny and when the weather’s nice, everything is just fine with me, nothing is bothering me, like I am a different person when it’s sunny. Suddenly, I have more energy, everything is easy for me, and I am easy going. But, when it is cloudy, then I am also a bit blue, so I like it, and would like it to last as long as it can.

Katarina Moškatelo: What is with that interstate? When it’s either cloudy or sunny, but it’s too hot, and your head is blurry from the heat.

Sanja Milosavljević: And you are blurry, yes.

Katarina Moškatelo: A person cannot – well for me, I have to admit, with years I am becoming a meteropath. You cannot focus on work because of the heat, your movement is slower. It is simply like you cannot do a thing.

Sanja Milosavljević: I agree, when metabolism slows down. But there are the rivers Danube and Sava, and you can go to the sea easily. We need a longer drive to the sea, so there is a way, I am not complaining. Katarina, do you want to introduce yourself? To tell us – well we all know your name Katarina Moskatelo, but can you tell us, where do you come from, what is your educational background, how your education is connected to what you do today, or it has nothing to do with it, what is that you do, do you have any interesting hobbies to share with us.

Katarina Moškatelo: These are a lot of questions in one. You like to cover everything.

Sanja Milosavljević: I will remind you.

Katarina Moškatelo: It won’t be needed, I hope it won’t, but thank you. For the beginning, thanks for the invitation before I say anything else. I was really glad, I love projects like this, I love quality and interesting stories, really great. The guests that I managed to see a bit are all some inspiring people. I think that’s what we’re mostly looking for today for some inspiration. What I’m doing is actually working on my own inspiration, so I guess that’s how it happens – you know, the domino effect, so you inspire others a little bit and yourself, and it’s all somehow connected today. And who else am I, so I like to say that a person, before anything else, is not what he/she does but what is inside that person. I like to say that I am somehow a playful child forever. Half and half. Half is a playful child, half is one serious wise old woman and soul. So some combination of the two. By the way, I was born on an island, on Hvar and grew up and went to primary school and secondary school there. Why do I mention it at all, because I think it built me ​​up very, very hard and that it’s pretty important, where I actually grow up, in that kind of environment because it predetermined a lot in my later life. Somehow the road led me in the direction of Zagreb – Split – I wondered a lot. That Gemini sign – we mentioned astrology earlier – that Gemini in me is tireless and he is constantly fidgeting somewhere and he is constantly interested in something beyond the wall. So I somehow headed in the direction of Split, to study the Economy. During my studies, I came across an ad related to radio and I really wanted to actually try that job on the radio and what all that can be learned there. Well, in a way, because of my voice, the color of the voice blended well with the usefulness, people accepted me and within two weeks I learned what to do and in a way I got stuck on that radio for years. Over the next 12-13 years, the radio line-ups and cities also changed, everything somehow managed with its course, and I have to admit that at that moment I didn’t think too much about where it was heading. Not that I actually-

Sanja Milosavljević: So you were relaxed, you didn’t have anything at all, yes, you didn’t expect anything, great.

Katarina Moškatelo: Pretty much, yes. I think that throughout my life I was quite relaxed and that burden actually came some 5-6 years ago when I moved to the metropolis of Zagreb. Most people when they start doing something in the media it adds up on personal education and after college you stay in the same city. And then you build some kind of your own path, career and so on. For me, nothing went that way, for me everything is always upside down. So, actually only 5 years ago, when I was 34,35 years old, came to Zagreb to work on Antenna Zagreb actually and that opened up some completely new possibilities for me. All that time, it seemed quite interesting, because I was actually constantly interested in that contact with the microphone, it was intertwined with the choice of education and with the very opportunities that life brought to me. And that radio job. At the same time, I have been working as a tourist guide for 15 years, so there is the microphone again, these people are there again. So there was a need to record commercials, and people would say, you have a nice voice, let’s go record something. Okay, how does it work, what does it look like? Well, you think that reading those sentences is just like that, so you realize that it’s something much more and more solid. So you start educating yourself in that field in the direction of voiceover, that’s what feeds me today. Generally, what feeds me today in 2021 during the pandemic is actually my voice selling a bunch of different products in the media, on radio, television, wherever.

Sanja Milosavljević: Well now – sorry to interrupt – but you really have such a beautiful voice. So you have so much – it’s so melodious, and probably the work on the radio shaped you and you have excellent diction. So it’s an ideal combination. You have a voice that is so melodious and so pleasant that it somehow caresses you as you speak, caresses a person who listens to you and you have excellent diction.

Katarina Moškatelo: I have to interrupt you on two subjects you mentioned. First, for this melodious voice, thank you very much. I always remember some moments when I would lead a group of people to Spain, or the graduates that go on excursions to Spain, Italy and so on and I love to lead these young people because you learn everything from younger generations, especially generations who are an amazing source of knowledge and various skills. And now you can imagine how you think they will be good with everything you promised them to speak about, and then the people fall asleep. And then you turn around in the bus during the speech, you start telling them the story about Cosa Nostra and so on, you turn around and they fall asleep after three minutes. Well, it is because your voice is so beautiful, you put us to sleep, they would say. So sometimes it doesn’t make much sense when you go too long and talk to people widely, you really put your people to sleep with your voice. So, I think in the future I will have to choose something that will be able to combine the well with the useful – to put people to sleep and make money from it.

Sanja Milosavljević: Well, I don’t know, it can be – if you do an ad for sleeping pills. I have no idea how to calm people down.

Katarina Moškatelo: Lullabies, for an example.

Sanja Milosavljević: Lullabies, yes. That’s nice. Well, okay, tell me-

Katarina Moškatelo: And on the other hand- say? Say, say. By the way, you – look, you have to stop me because when I go long and wide, it can be like…

Sanja Milosavljević: You know what, I like to let people talk as much as they like because that’s the freedom, I don’t need to shorten anything here – say what you want to say. I really do, and my questions are usually very short and I prefer to hear other people than me to elaborate the question for ten minutes. No, I just wanted to ask you, do you have any hobbies that are also interesting? Or is everything you do a kind of hobby?

Katarina Moškatelo: I just wanted to tell you that. Somehow it has been developed that way, in the last few years, so I went that path from the island Hvar, than Split, Zagreb, so a mix of four or five different jobs that constantly had to do with the microphone, was always, in a way, developing as a hobby. When I would go to a public speaking workshop of any kind, with any of the people where I studied and educated myself, it was like investing in myself, it’s a hobby. I enrolled in acting school at some point. It is a four-year program, but extremely interesting, creative, so it is not an academy, but something where you study acting. The systems of Stanislavski, Chekhov, Strasberg and so on, everything that can come in handy for a person if he/she is engaged in this type of work. It was a hobby for me, too. Then a new show was born, which we made last year – the year before last, so it became a kind of hobby. You know, it’s all over for me – the podcast started, the Kilometers started, they were created during the pandemic. I can’t call it my job. Yes, it takes its time every day, throughout the week and on a monthly basis when we shoot episodes, but regardless of that I still see it as a kind of hobby. So it’s a lot of hobbies, my father knows to say, but let’s focus on one thing. But I won’t do that. I think over the years I’ve learned that there are people who aren’t simply destined to do just one thing because they would wither. Like a flower without water. This dispersion in some people is very appropriate, they are sometimes called manifest generators. So you are constantly creating some new content, some new ideas, you are scattered every day on some three or four different networks, a few different jobs and it suits you indescribably. I really like the dynamics of my job and the fact that one day is one thing, another day is another, so a hobby as a hobby – my job is almost a hobby. But I love it, I can tell you that I love nature, I love to center myself in nature, definitely. I like to walk, read, all sorts of things that people normally like doing these days, all sorts of things to clean themselves from everything. I started practicing mindfulness for the last two or three years. I just felt that the dispersion is so great, but if we don’t know how to deal with it, it can really overwhelm us. And that’s where I realized, yeah, I need to stop with some things, I’ll do this more, I’ll do this less, I’ll do this like this. So, in general, I don’t like to be subject to the structure of the day or say here I don’t know on Friday, I go to training every day at five o’clock. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t like the classical structure of the day.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, yes, well, I have that – I remember a few years ago a friend told me that I was actually a Renaissance person because I also do everything. I don’t have just one job or just one activity but, as you say I’m scattered. And I was talking to him and I said God, but I felt a little schizophrenic. I mean, sometimes it’s too much.

Katarina Moškatelo: Yes, that moment comes sometimes.

Sanja Milosavljević: And he was like, you are not a schizophrenic, you are a Renaissance person. Let’s just call it a nice name and you’ll see – it works.

Katarina Moškatelo: And you know what, I’m sorry, I’ll interrupt you for a bit. It’s great for me because today, more or less, all of us are on LinkedIn, we communicate a lot there. I think a genius network is not just for networking but really for learning and opening up some new points of view. And you notice that let’s say today, especially the younger generation, we’re talking about the ones born during the 90’s and onwards, it’s mostly people who – no one works just one job any more. And these people also, yes, but the flow of information that comes to us is terribly fast, the jobs we do are very stressful, the time in the day is unfortunately the same as 500 years ago, the day lasts as long as it lasts. And we actually burden ourselves with an indescribable amount of things in one day. For someone that fits, but for others I don’t think it fits, it’s just a condition of a person who has to feel it, so if you think you’re a schizophrenic you need to stop – or anyone, me too, anyone – I think you should stop first and think about why do you feel like that. Is it because someone else is telling us this is not good for you or is it because we really feel restless or insecure or uncomfortable or unhappy, this is the moment to know how to think, okay this is the time to come to terms with something new but we will reduce one of the five things we do, or we will arrange it in some other way, but we just need to know how to indulge ourselves and adjust. That listening to your inner self is the key.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes. To indulge and to adjust, I like that. I will note that – indulge and adjust. Well, you know what I wanted to ask you. For example, I was born in 1980, and while I was growing up, radio was that medium for us. I grew up with radio and then at some point it was slightly replaced by Sony’s walkman. And that’s it for me. And I love radio a lot and I love radio shows a lot. And I love some great DJs playing some great music. Even today I listen to the radio. I am that audio type of person. How come-

Katarina Moškatelo: Same here.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, yes, the same. And I really do – especially because I can do more things at the same time. As you said, the day lasts as long as it lasts – I can choose the content I want, I can choose the content that suits me and that I like. So where is radio today? You’re from that world. I’m someone who just consumes it on the outside. But when you look at it from the inside – where is radio today?

Katarina Moškatelo: It’s very good – I have to correct you, often, people lately, announce me as a radio host. I don’t dare call myself that way anymore. I have been for many years, so over 10 years, but I am not anymore. I haven’t been on the radio for the last 2-3 years and I kind of-

Sanja Milosavljević: You stepped out of that world, yes?

Katarina Moškatelo: I don’t want to call it – it’s not right to call myself a radio host, and-

Sanja Milosavljević: No, I didn’t even think – yes – I’m not interested from the perspective of you as a radio host but from the perspective of someone who was actually in that world. Audio.

Katarina Moškatelo: In that case, what I can tell you I definitely think – it is my huge love before anything else. So whatever I say needs to be multiplied and then divided. I grew up with radio – so there, on the island, before anything else, let me say, the television was turned on Sundays. I’ve never been attached to screens, in the last few apartments I’ve been to, it didn’t even matter to me to have a TV. When I look for apartments I don’t look for a TV set. I use content on demand and so on. I’m not really attached to it unless it’s really a great documentary, so I’ll follow something that’s topical and happening in that moment – important to me, personally. Football, for example, does not belong to that category. But radio as radio constantly followed my every step. While grandma was cooking in the very small kitchen, the radio was on. While the mother was doing something of her own the radio was on. When dad came from outside, the radio was on. Whatever happened to us, the radio was forever on. When there was no electricity during the war, we put the batteries in, we listened constantly – especially sailors, we had sailors in the family. There were some naval minutes when you would wait for a week for someone from the far sea to call on some frequency to greet their family. So you wait for days for that person – there were no phones, no cell phones, no internet, emails, nothing – you wait for that moment for this person, who has been at the sea for 6 months, no one has seen or heard from him, to leave a short message to greet the family. Here, I am shivering now. These are such strong emotions, the radio actually made a history in terms of connecting people, in terms of arranging, opening some new ones – I mean revolutions were rising, everything was happening because of the radio. Radio today is a completely different story. I think he lost his ‘Identity’ in a way today, but I think it will never die. Radio as radio. Radio as a medium is something that is eternal, it is with us. It is inconceivable that you will be driving a car in the future, so if that car is flying and you are no longer on the road, you will be listening to something in the car. I think that radio as such a medium, unlike TV, which is slowly threatened by a kind of extinction and oblivion if it does not come up with something new and different, I think that radio is something that will be eternal. However, I don’t know why we decided to sell our souls to certain formats today, I don’t think I’m a big fan of that, even though I was myself – I’m saying this from the perspective of a person who worked on radio and before the format – before the radio was formatted. Format is what decides for you – you have a clock and you decide how long, during that one hour we can talk-

Sanja Milosavljević: And only the algorithm is important – only algorithm and not something else. I am not a fan either. But it has-

Katarina Moškatelo: It has its own look, it has its own good sides. It feeds people. It brings people something. People really don’t have that time or strength or enthusiasm today, maybe listening to something with so much attention because we are – we go back to the fact that everything is connected, we are scattered – and because of that scattering we can’t sit and listen to the radio and be completely present. Mostly, I’m talking to most people today. And then, we come to the point that simply a person has too little or too much of something, and the very authentic emotion that radio once had – I think for a start, disappeared the moment people stopped calling radio. When live recording, the live broadcast disappeared, as such. Do you know where it’s still done? On smaller, smaller village radios, you know there is still a smaller environment, but let’s just say, certain types of music and other audio don’t suit me there.

Sanja Milosavljević: Of course.

Katarina Moškatelo: But it suits me incredibly well. It comes back to me, it’s so sweet to turn on the radio and hear someone selling three pieces of something. So, it’s ingenious, I want it. I want to listen because I am aware that those three things will bring someone`s lunch on the table tomorrow and so on. So you know what the fusion is about, the fusion of everything where we somehow hurt ourselves. So we desire something but we really don’t desire it. We would like this kind of emotion but we would actually kill that emotion. We wouldn’t actually sell ourselves, but we actually have to make a living from something. So we are constantly in that sort of search for balance and the same thing happened to the radio, regarding your question.

Sanja Milosavljević: It’s important to me – I still listen to the radio today, for example, Radio Belgrade or Radio 202, but before, radio was a source of serious information for me. It’s like waiting for a favorite band, to hear a song or follow the charts or listen to some shows that are educational, whatever, but that was what the internet is to kids today, it worked for me. Television no, radio yes. And then I love it and still listen to it. I even have a speaker system in the apartment in every room and if I walk from room to room I listen to the same thing in each room.

Katarina Moškatelo: Smart, smart, if I could, I would show you our little one in the kitchen, so we have a completely retro one. So small, small, you know where you spin on it like this until you find the station, it has an antenna, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I just love that sense of something old around me. The sense of old takes me back to a time when we kept our emotions simple and when that emotion was really worth something and when that authenticity, when it was not only preached about, but lived, that’s how it is.

Sanja Milosavljević: You said that very wisely. And now the part where I said we were colleagues – what do you think about the podcast? What is a podcast? A little before we started shooting, we commented a bit on what podcast is and so on. I am not a podcaster, I am not at all – this is not my profession at all, I am – I have my own company, I work there, I am from the food industry, this was just a wish and passion for me. And why is the podcast so popular?

Katarina Moškatelo: I don’t think – you actually said that great in the introduction, which your viewers and listeners probably already know. I think those times are over – there weren’t even those times where a person could be educated to live only by doing that. The fact that we are used to Joe Rogan making a living from it – it took Joe Rogan years and years for that to happen, and in the end, he didn’t study anywhere for a podcaster either. People simply start doing it primarily because they are driven by some general topic. I think it’s always been for any good podcast and that is that there is some clear and pure desire to want to talk and convey ideas within some interesting topic. Personally, I think it came too late to us. I mean it’s too late – I don’t know when you started listening to foreign podcasts, but in the last 15 years I’ve listened to the BBC and some scientific podcast and all sorts of things we had, economy – I really like psychology, especially psychology, which then intertwines into the business part of the story and I actually wanted to start with a podcast dedicated to psychology. However, knowing our environment and knowing the fact that when you have been on the radio for so many years, you have known about the people and what will go with the listeners, so to say. So I took a safe path, I admit. I knew the psychology podcast at that point wasn’t going to go well, it’s a pandemic, people are already down. If we start with some serious topics, it is very questionable what I will get as a result. As much as my energy, charisma can be maintained on some other level, it does not mean that it will go with the listeners. On the other hand, I thought that a podcast on the topic of psychology might actually wait and leave it to people who are experts. That would deal with the topic as experts-

Sanja Milosavljević: Well, I’m sorry to interrupt you, one of the guests at Mondopreneur was a psychotherapist here from Belgrade and it’s like – I got nice comments, people would just say hello. But when Bojana was a guest, so many people were overjoyed to have the opportunity to hear me, and I am not an expert. So we talked, she’s an expert, I’m not. And I ask her the questions, the way that would, I don’t know, an aunty at the market or an uncle on the street or someone from my environment who has no prior knowledge – I asked her the way I think it should be formulated. And then she would answer, because she already has enough experience, knowledge and knows how to do it, she gave answers that are clear, precise, understandable to people. When you have two experts talking, then you have a third expert who understands them, but, an ordinary person has a problem, he might be upset that he can’t actually follow. That episode was I don’t know, maybe it was the most watched, the most people listen to it.

Katarina Moškatelo: But, look now, Sanja. Imagine that you did every episode with the psychologist?

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, yes, I think I agree. People were- as if they were eager to hear that it’s okay not to be okay, that it’s okay to have-

Katarina Moškatelo: I think that from this perspective, as I imagined it, I think that a psychologist who talks to various people from completely different industries would do much better, who will then get an intense and quality picture and again examples, inspirations, experiences, all together, in total. It’s coming soon – I made an episode with a psychologist on that very topic of travel and what they do to us, what they do to us emotionally, why we need them so much, why we are used to it, what actually happened to us during the pandemic with these impossibilities to move and so on, what it all made of, how to deal with it and so on. That episode is coming to Kilometers soon, so I greet my team and recommend you watch it when the episode with the guest psychologist arrives. But I’m telling you at that point, when I was thinking about what to dedicate the podcast to, what to dedicate the topic to, travel, that actually drives me for years now and all that research. But talking about travel in a way where I show people pictures and talk about the architecture and history of a work I don’t think is the best way because it’s something they can google, find, watch a documentary and so on. What people need are human stories, in fact, and that’s how those Kilometers are intertwined with travel and kilometers of life, because as soon as you leave your parents’ home and pass over the home door step, you make your first kilometer, which shapes you into something. And so we kind of came into that one fusion of actual times and research and experiences and all together and that’s how Kilometers were actually born. And why are people so eager for something different today and why is there so many podcasts here and why has our podcast been built so much – which is ingenious, I welcome absolutely every idea, even every hairdresser who wants to talk with passion about why my hair is so terrible and what can I do with it, if you will tell me about it with passion, then tell me, I will listen. If you’re going to tell me about building materials because I don’t know anything about them and I’m thinking about buying an apartment and how I’m going to do it all, how am I going to manage that work, tell me, make a podcast about construction, let me hear, I want something to learn. I think the time has come for everyone who knows something about something or can convey something to someone else, that people are so eager for it, that is the first and the second we have become so much in the last 10 years an incredible boom happened, I remember you said you are born in 1980, I’m 82nd during high school – I don’t know, tell me, I didn’t have a cell phone.

Sanja Milosavljević: Of course, neither did I.

Katarina Moškatelo: So, when I look at myself for the last 15 years – from a person who doesn’t have a cell phone to a person who is thinking about what to send to Instagram, what to LinkedIn, what to Facebook, you know. What on YouTube and at what time. That’s all, it is a huge, huge range of growth, knowledge, learnings, stress, novelty, mega fusion of everything.

Sanja Milosavljević: I agree, and from a historical point of view, 15 – 20 years is nothing.

Katarina Moškatelo: Nothing!

Sanja Milosavljević: Nothing, but the moment.

Katarina Moškatelo: You get it? And then we come to that cacophony where suddenly in those 15 years we were given everything on a platter that we never even imagined, people, look, there is no more Playboy in the shop. Because, all the nudity is on the internet, what are you going to do – you are not going to turn pages anymore, of course. It is absolutely-

Sanja Milosavljević: I’m sorry, I thought it was because of the ecology, as we will no longer print, not to pollute the environment.

Katarina Moškatelo: Yes, yes, so absolutely from the instructions on how to repair a car, setting the AC, psychological topics, anything – everything is there. So absolutely everything is on the Internet. On the one hand, it is too much for people and too little on the other. Well, everything is very superficial, everything is in a short format. More or less. Because people like the short format because of the time consumption, what we mentioned a moment ago and for the radio. You simply don’t – you can’t invent time you don’t have, and you want to consume the content. And in that kind of ocean of ​​everything, I think that desire to create podcasts was born. Look at podcasters, I like to call them real podcasters, I think they are people who don’t limit their podcasts to an hour or two like I do sometimes, it’s something where you go with the flow. So when you turn on the mic and it lasts for three hours, then that’s the end of the podcast. Because in fact a certain topic that is talked about so spontaneously and it develops so much, it is the conversation that develops that it does not have – of course it has its own structure but there is no limit-

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, you see I also have that time limit for one simple reason that`s just that – there is so much content, you need to hold someone’s attention for a very long time, but to actually talk about some things, it’s like in everyday life, if it’s under an hour, two, three, until it is searched out, until every stone is turned, until every corner is searched, you have done nothing special. But, like me, I have this specific topic, I have women in focus and it’s great for me that now maybe some girl, woman, young woman will hear you how you got to the podcast from the radio, and thinks like, hm, maybe I could do it. I have more general topics, rather than some daily or very specific ones.

Katarina Moškatelo: But it’s generally interesting. Because let’s say you have noticed, people tell you that they may not have time – to watch the whole episode or listen, that they can’t find the time. It often happens to me, as if I could be at least shorter. But people, I am too short- in terms of podcast duration, I am too short!

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, it’s actually too short.

Katarina Moškatelo: That it is actually very short and that I am sometimes so afraid that it is superficial, that we went to the superficiality that lasts about 45 minutes because people can’t ask everything that I would like to ask, which I think each of these individuals deserves to tell about themselves, you can’t actually even provide for, because you’re limited.

Sanja Milosavljević: I know, those are my challenges, too. They really are. And that’s what I constantly think about and when I think about the next guest and what I would ask him or her then I see that it is really something so specific, that there are two or three topics and I would last for 10-15 minutes, in a way, maybe enough to go a little deeper, not just to scratch the surface and move on.

Katarina Moškatelo: Well that’s it. Today we are all trying to do as much, out of the rush. I’m such a character that it often happened to me that I just scratched something and then later, it’s not that you have a guilty conscience, but I’d rather dedicate myself to it briefly, you know. That’s why the dispersion from the beginning – it’s great, you just need to organize it well to go a little deeper somewhere, because otherwise, what are we all going to do at the upper level, the upper level is crowded.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, and I would ask you something, I was thinking about that this morning, for example. I constantly see those ads on Facebook and Instagram, visual storytelling, how to become a perfect visual storyteller and so on, and I am, intimately, personally, I am for that audio storytelling. I like to hear- okay a picture speaks more than 1000 words but I like someone to tell me- I like to hear exactly what you just said about travelling, I like to hear that someone really ate some super greasy pie somewhere in Serbia, Montenegro or Macedonia. So, I need that. Will that change or will we still remain those visual types and then visual media will always have primacy over audio? What do you think about that?

Katarina Moškatelo:  I like it that you see me as a Nostradamus, but I can`t talk…

Sanja Milosavljević: I cannot say. I cannot reveal, yes.

Katarina Moškatelo: I can’t answer that question, because I’d like to know that honestly, too. Storytelling as such is something that is wonderful. And I think we need to dedicate ourselves to that. I warmly recommend it to all those who are struggling with how to convey a certain story, how to intrigue someone, whether you are writing or talking, or doing some visual content, Udemy- you know about Udemy application, platform? Well, at Udemy you have really ingenious courses of all kinds, so give yourself a little time, explore, take something and you won’t lose anything special except a few dollars. In some cases, you learn something new, because it is so useful, so ingenious and we can get so much knowledge that we can use every day. And what will we survive and in what form, I think I would dare to say that what holds the water, will survive. Be it video, be it audio. I think it’s going in that direction. Here I am really thinking about what I will do with Kilometers and whether we will take a break soon in this season. Because some new ideas are born and it’s all interesting to me – you start with one project and through that project in a year or two you learn something, you understand something and suddenly some completely new doors open. So whatever we start doing, it doesn’t mean that’s the end, that’s the ending point. We will develop both within that project and within something else, it is important that we do not limit ourselves. It’s the same with storytelling, it’s important that we don’t limit ourselves. That what we want to convey, we find the best possible way to convey it. And whether it will be an audio form in the end, a video form, whether we will write, whether we will hang it on the streets, print it, it doesn’t matter anyway, I think it’s important only to find the target audience.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, that is the beginning and the end in fact. Well, it is not the end, it is the beginning. You want to tell us what your last year looked like? You know, from the perspective that there is no movement, that we are suddenly limited to 4 walls and from the perspective of that very voiceover because it still means going to the studio, working with a large number of people and what did it look like to you? I mean-

Katarina Moškatelo: Well, you see, for me – I really don’t know. It’s just like that for me – I’m lucky that I often think spontaneously without much preparation, a few steps ahead. So it was with that video CV I made-

Sanja Milosavljević: Which is great.

Katarina Moškatelo: But don’t watch at the old one! Please. Watch the newer one, from three years ago, although it is already old, it is time for a new one. Thank you very much. It came out of the playing a bit, after the dismissal from the radio, I enrolled the acting classes, I sat down with an acting teacher who is a wonderful, wonderful drama pedagogue and I asked her, I just made something, I really like it, what do you think about that and I said- it’s a little silly of me to tell people like, I’m working on the radio and I’m a great radio host. And she told me that what I have said, I didn’t tell anyone that I’m great at this and that, I said that I’ve been doing something for many years, I’ve been doing something else for many years now. The person will judge for themselves whether they want you, whether they see you within a project or not. So, you have to dare. That is the key thing. It was the same for me during the pandemic. In fact, I always dare to do something, at least that’s what people around me say. It all seems to me somehow – one should dare to do something. You have to play and see what will happen. I don’t care at all what someone will say, I think I left that way of thinking that while I was still on island, because when you live in a small town – I lived in a village of 300 people. Every day, my mother and father would tell me: What people would say. It`s a doctrine. It’s intravenous to me.

Sanja Milosavljević: We are all, more or less, we are the same. That is-

Katarina Moškatelo: Well, all those who went through that – well, not all, but the majority who went through that will understand very well. And then at some point you realize okay now it matters to me or it doesn’t matter to me. Beware, we can never leave something that is very deep in ourselves from the system, something that is-

Sanja Milosavljević: So deep.

Katarina Moškatelo: Absolutely. But what can be done, we can learn to live with it and we can use it for our own good, actually. And that’s what I did in terms of work, and that video CV and to go back to that pandemic, so it didn’t hurt me because I made a home studio, because I worked in parallel coaching people. I do preparations for public speeches with people that are nervous, insecure – they are not sure how to either exhibit or present something and they are struggling with something I am familiar with and is from my domain that I have fought with and studied. If I can help them, I will help. If it is already a situation for a phonetician, a situation for a psychologist at some point, then I leave things to the people I work with, but in principle that is what I was working on more during the pandemic. I was still recording voice overs. Carefree retailers weren’t out of work so things in the shops were being sold, which means they were being advertised, which means I had work to do, thank God, so it’s okay. On the third side – Kilometers were created. It started – so the pandemic and lockdown first started in the third month and I started with this in the third month. I did create it to some extent and did some part of the strategy two months earlier, but what happened, happened and it was ok. What to do at that point, to talk about travel when no one is going anywhere – we will talk about that. But no one is going anywhere. That’s why we’ll talk about that. But it gets on people’s nerves because no one is going anywhere. That’s why. We will create feel good content – we will talk to people about what pandemic has brought them in a way, what they have learned through it. Why not? So we just changed our perspective. We can’t travel with a bunch of agencies and things like that, but we can do the latter. So, in a way, I took advantage of the pandemic. At the same time, it was extremely emotionally demanding. Last year, my father was really bad in that whole story – he was in the hospital, so we couldn’t reach him for a month, visits were forbidden, so in away – we managed to say goodbye to him and to say goodbye on time, I managed to be in Otok earlier, because as a freelancer, I have time. You know, you have a period of 2 weeks where nothing special happens – no conferences, no events that I moderate, I can always record in advance, because I have a travel microphone with me, so … in a way I managed to organize my life and luckily that was the case then, because I can go wherever I want. I managed to go to Otok a little bit earlier before my dad had a stroke, so we supported each other, played games, didn’t get angry until the evening and quarreled like we always quarrel because my life is completely incomprehensible to him. He wanted me to work in a bank and I persistently explained that it was not for me and so on, but in general, we somehow survived that last year. I am the fourth, there are four of us brothers and sisters, so this whole farewell without a single living soul, only the four of us with my mother was, everything put together was so unreal and that all year, everything it brought to us, and then another movement, I moved in with my boyfriend who lives a completely different lifestyle than I do, and so many challenges, so many amazing things. So I can tell you, when you asked how my last year was, it was like some brutal rollercoaster. I don’t know if I would take a ticket and say: Hey, I will have another ride! Or I would say: Give me a break, please. I’m dizzy. That’s about my last year.

Sanja Milosavljević: Well, OK. I mean, I’m sorry – I have a similar experience but it happened a few years ago and I know how painful it is. I know, in general, how much it requires for a person to calm down, withdraw, think, and regroup and so on. I’m so sorry.

Katarina Moškatelo: Okay, but we are rationalizing, it’s all life and it’s completely normal, you just need to know how to mourn and understand it that way.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, sure. But the moment it happens to you, you are never ready for it and then that shock of the first moment, until time passes, until it calms down a bit.

Katarina Moškatelo: Okay, but it’s like those earthquakes, here with us. I don’t know, maybe someone will say Jesus, crazy women, but that’s the way it is – where neither death nor earthquakes nor anything – it’s all life. I’m not dramatizing it. I am much more tormented and tormented by some everyday injustice when I see a man who does not have something and deserved it or should have got it or a person who has to go through a certain type of violence and did not deserve it and has no rights and cannot get away. Things like that hurt me. And whether it will shake or not, we will die or we will be born, it’s a circle of life.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, it’s a circle of life. Just like that. That is what is happening, has happened, is happening and will happen. There is nothing – we can’t do anything. We can’t intervene, we can’t do anything about it.

Katarina Moškatelo: That’s right. I am only interested in things where I can intervene.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, so came to an end of our conversation. We even exceeded those 40 minutes.

Katarina Moškatelo: You see, I didn’t say the half I wanted. You asked me about a literature-

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes. Can you recommend something to us, because it’s obvious to me that you work on yourself a lot and read, research and so on. What would you recommend us to read? Or to listen?

Katarina Moškatelo: Yes, what I listen… That’s where I should focus now to say what all I love to listen to. Jamil has a great podcast, find it if you can, but other than that you have great ones – you know what I’m reading now, you wouldn’t believe it. Before anything, there is always some kind of education, considering that I do those public speaking workshops and that I work with people privately – and I need that. So every time at every new conference, when I go out in front of people, I learn something new. Either it is a new topic about which I know nothing or there are completely new technical conditions about which I also know nothing. I am not a television child, I am a radio child, so everything in front of the camera is a challenge for me. And therefore more exciting, I kind of like it. So, I don’t know, I have a great one from Emma Sargent and Tim Fearon How to Talk to Everyone. For example, a great book that you can learn a little more about how to listen. Because when we feel insecure among people who may know something more than us at some point, or we have not encountered something so far, and so on, especially through entrepreneurship. We find ourselves in these situations all the time, we constantly face some challenges because we are ourselves and accountants and CEOs and employees and administrative assistants and we are all that at the same time. You can literally find strategies for various situations here. It’s ingenious. The Power of a Successful Presentation was written by Sasa Petar and Frank Petar – a short booklet, but it comes in handy format, it is ingenious. The Power of Persuasion, something she did, the book written by Mirela Španjović-Marković from Twitter communications. She usually does a lot of workshops in Zagreb, she wrote a genius book. So the Power of Persuasion is a genius book. There are a lot of NLPs there, I don’t know how many of you work in NLP, and it’s very interesting to me. NLP is like any method – you choose whether to use it in the direction of manipulation for something negative or for something good and quality. It has everything, the Art of Public Speaking by Marijeta Matijaš, and yes – and the Excellent Communication Skills of Verbal and Nonverbal Persuasive Techniques that Antolović and Siličić did is just such a good and interesting book. That is some science literature. And for the very end, before I greet everyone – evergreen, which I think everyone should read, these are Conversations with God, which Walch wrote. He is a man who has never believed in anything in his life. And the way he discovered some new things, mostly interesting, very interesting, for discussion and for a whole new podcast and a new topic.

Sanja Milosavljević: For one series, not just for one episode but for the whole series. Well, thank you very much-

Katarina Moškatelo: I told you what I have managed to say.

Sanja Milosavljević: Well I know, but we are limited with time. Thank you so much for accepting, for taking the time, to share your time we all miss, for sharing with us your story and some tips. And for recommending us some nice books to read. Really, thank you. I really enjoyed it. I knew I was going to enjoy it because I listened to what you were doing, Kilometers and I knew I was going to enjoy it for sure and I know people will enjoy it, too.

Katarina Moškatelo: I hope they will, with the fact that it is a small percentage, it is 5% of some common story. Anything that people are interested in in general from the things we do can be found on the Cloud and if they want to get in touch, if they need some advice I also work online with people. Feel free to contact us. You can visit website www.moskatello.eu, there is an email if I can help you with something or in the end, of course, it’s always there, it’s something that is done on a weekly basis, Kilometers- Kilometers come as dessert. While there is dessert, use it and enjoy.

Sanja Milosavljević: Wonderful. Thank you.

Katarina Moškatelo: Thank you very much and thank you for actually doing such a beautiful and interesting thing and different from others. Cross my fingers for it to last.

Sanja Milosavljević: Thank you. Good people, you were listening and watching the Mondopreneur podcast. You can always follow us on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. Just type Mondopreneur. Be good and in good health and see you in a week.