We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bittina & Kevin Sheen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bittina & Kevin below.

Bittina & Kevin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

There are so many things that culminated into taking the plunge for both of our businesses and we did it all during the same year, which has been a rollercoaster. In 2022 we started the Poulsbo Film Festival when Kevin left his former employer where he organized a short film festival for 5 years. Kevin worked so hard building the branding and using his prior experience in festivals and Bittina leaned in to her community connections for venues. It was amazing to see the support and excitement for the festival in year one – something we could not have done without the support of the local business community. During 2022 we also got engaged (and moved in together and got married!) in the midst of planning PFF and to top off the year, we purchased Away With Words Bookshop at the very end of December. It has been a wild ride to say the least, we reopened the bookshop on January 23rd, and have only been closed one day since then (4th of July). The learning curve has been steep, but our love for our community has kept us going and we feel so fortunate to be surrounded by so many great business “neighbors” in Historic Downtown Poulsbo. Kevin was still working full time when we purchased the bookshop, and a few months in we were able to take the leap into being fully self-employed which is both scary and exciting. We would not be where we are if we didn’t decide to take the risks we did in the last year and a half, and we can’t wait to see where we are in another year and a half from now. (and hopefully we can fit in a vacation at some point- because we are TIRED!)

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

To better understand our businesses, we first have to set the stage and share a bit about our community. Poulsbo is a town of 12,000 people, located about an hour outside of Seattle. Historic Downtown Poulsbo relies heavily on tourists and is known as “Little Norway” – full of Scandinavian-themed shops, murals, and storefronts. We grew up here and both moved away from the area for college- Kevin attending The Evergreen State College to study Film and Acting, and Bittina to Arizona State University for a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications. We reconnected a few years ago and have combined our strengths to build the “brands” we have today.

Poulsbo Film Festival is currently in year two, with festival dates October 13-15 2023. The festival was born out of a desire to bring diverse storytelling to our community which had never had a festival like this before. This year we will be screening 47 films, and the most unique part about the festival is that our downtown does not have a theater, so we create pop-up theaters within businesses like breweries, art galleries, event halls, and even our local aquarium. We mostly depend on sponsorships from local businesses and we were fortunate to receive some grant money from a tourism fund and love that the festival brings people to Poulsbo to appreciate all that we love about it. Something fun we did to “keep the lights on” between last year’s festival and this upcoming year was to host monthly movie trivia with different themes. We had a consistent group of folks who would come out and it was a fun way to stay engaged with the community and continue to support local businesses that support us for the festival.

Away With Words Bookshop has been around for 5 years, and we were lucky that the previous owners had created a turnkey business that had a great reputation. We are a shop that is about 40 percent books, 60 percent self-care and gift items, including lotions and sugar scrubs that are themed to go with book references. The shop is located smack-dab in the middle of Historic Downtown Poulsbo, and when the opportunity to purchase the shop came up, we knew we had to jump on it. Over the last 8 months, we have thoroughly enjoyed shifting the business a bit to have more of our own touches including curating a selection of pop culture gift items and stocking many books that have been turned into screenplays. We started carrying ceramics made by Kevin and his parents, who have sold at Pike Place Market for 50 years. The pottery pieces have quickly become one of our best-sellers (along with bath bombs and rubber duckies). We are excited to continue through our first year as bookshop owners and know that we have a lot to learn, but have been thrilled with the warm welcome we have had so far. Our goal moving forward is to continue to grow our online sales, especially our Seasons of Self-Care Subscription box that contains two books plus a selection of seasonal goodies, and to grow our audience for book clubs and events.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

People who hear our story say that we could be a Hallmark movie. We met in high school, and went to prom together before going separate ways for college. We maintained a long-distance romance (pre cell phones or social media- GASP) for a year+ but broke up in the fall of 2004. We reconnected during the pandemic and the rest is history. We just attended our 20 year high school reunion together, something that neither of us would have ever guessed would be the case. Running multiple businesses with your spouse/partner is something a lot of people say they could never do, but we work surprisingly well together, each using separate strengths to handle different aspects of running the business, and learning a lot as we go.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the first projects we worked on as a couple was Bittina volunteering to help Kevin with some events he was running at his previous employer during the pandemic. The film festival that Kevin had run for years had to shift to being drive-in movie format due to restrictions at the time in Washington State. Having to pivot what had been a consistent business model into a new model was a challenge but we were able to still pull off a very successful event by creating boxes for each car attending the event with snacks, water, and branded swag, as well as utilizing a food truck, and mobile bar and photo-booth style red carpet. Seeing continued interest in events despite restrictions was a motivator in creating our own festival- knowing that there is an audience out there interested in storytelling and when there is a will, there is a way.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.poulsbofilmfestival.com www.awaywithwordsbookshop.com
• Instagram: @awaywithwordsbooks @poulsbofilmfestival
• Facebook: /AWWpbo /PoulsboFilmFestival