Side-Hustling Your Creative Career with Beryl Ayn Young

Emily Thompson 0:00
Hello and welcome to being boss episode number 90. This episode is brought to you by fresh books cloud accounting.

Being boss and work and life is being in it.

Kathleen Shannon 0:16
It's being who we are doing the work, breaking some rules. And even though we each have to do it on our own,

Emily Thompson 0:23
being boss is knowing we're in it together.

Kathleen Shannon 0:27
Today we are talking to our dear friend Beryl young. She is the founder of recapture self, a community of creative moms dedicated to finding their true identity beyond being mom. But today we are talking to barrel all about her journey of going from working a full time job to being a side hustling creative to then quitting her job making the leap and working for herself. And you guys, we get into the nitty gritty details of what that looks like. We're also talking a barrel about being a mom and being a boss and juggling all of it. Can you have it all? We don't know. We'll talk about that. Hey, I want to pause here for a second and give you an important money tip brought to you by fresh books cloud accounting. So the tip is this stay on top of your expenses to avoid mountains of stress at tax time. I know that it's mid year and you're not even thinking about doing taxes in 2017. But if you start now, you will be thanking yourself later. You can link freshbooks to your credit card and debit cards and import your expenses automatically. So next time you expense that business lunch or tank of gas watch it magically appear in your freshbooks account. It makes keeping track so easy. And you can try fresh books for free by going to freshbooks comm slash being boss and injure being boss in the How did you hear about us section whenever you sign up, and you don't even need a credit card to get started? Oh and hey, you can expense your freshbooks account if you decide to keep going. Alright, back to our episode.

Emily Thompson 2:08
barrel. I'm so glad that you are here today. Thank you for joining me and Kathleen.

Beryl Ayn Young 2:14
Thank you for having me.

Emily Thompson 2:16
So we we met barrel. Um, I guess we officially met you a couple of weekends ago but we have been masterminding with you for

Unknown Speaker 2:25
a couple of six months. Has

Emily Thompson 2:27
it been that? I was thinking about that the other day? I don't even know how how long are we supposed to be doing?

Beryl Ayn Young 2:33
Does anybody leave in six months? Yeah, right? No, it's it's like April.

Emily Thompson 2:37
Yeah. So we've been hanging out once a week with Beryl on Google Hangouts for a mastermind group. And we've gotten to know barrel and what she does. And I think we're Kathleen and I both like super fell in love with you was at our mastermind retreat recently. And I think Kathleen, like Girl Crush down you, oh, new Southern girl. Um, whenever she asked you like, what do you want to be known for angels? Like threw it out at her? Like,

Beryl Ayn Young 3:03
that's pretty amazing moment. Actually. I was because I've been struggling with that in our mastermind for five months in like the, what should I be known for? versus what do I actually want to be known for, which I think is hard as a business owner. And I was immediately like, well, I want to help moms find their identity. That's what I want to do. And I love how say what you mean,

Kathleen Shannon 3:26
I love how you get really say what you mean there I want to help moms find their identity. And if you can be that concise. You have a solid brand. So barrel, let's start there with helping moms find their identity. Have you been on this path yourself? Like, tell us a little bit about your creative journey as a creative entrepreneur?

Beryl Ayn Young 3:48
Yeah, so that was really how my journey started was finding my identity, which is why I think I'm so passionate about that piece of my journey now. So my business started, almost will go seven ish years because I never started with the intention of having a business. My husband and I were thinking about getting pregnant. We didn't have kids at the time. And I had kind of picked up photography. I was always very creative, and I valued photography. But as we're starting a family and I started researching how much newborn pictures would cost versus wedding pictures, I was like, Oh, shit, I'm not gonna be able to afford my newborn pictures. So I was like, maybe I should learn this myself. So I picked up a camera, which is a big part of the journey as well. And I started taking pictures and about three months into dedicating myself to taking a photo a day, I got pregnant, which was amazing and a little bit sad for my photography journey all in one because the project that I started was taking a photo De, as soon as morning sickness kicked in, I was like, Nope, not taking pictures anymore. There's nothing

Emily Thompson 5:06
cute about that phase of your life.

Beryl Ayn Young 5:09
No, that's like, it'll be a picture of me and my bed every day. Like, that's not fun for anybody. Wait, but

Unknown Speaker 5:16
were you still working a day job at this point?

Beryl Ayn Young 5:18
Yes. So my background is in teaching, I was an elementary teacher for 10 years before going this other path. So I taught kindergarten first grade and technology to teachers for seven of those years. Okay, so

Kathleen Shannon 5:35
I'm a little bit curious about this about morning sickness. And I think that it's a burden, especially that women have to carry whenever we are our own bosses. And we also want to grow a family, we have very physical demands on our bodies, like pregnancy, and even beyond pregnancy with just being up all night sleep deprivation. And obviously, people who are not pregnant or are not planning on having children have their own struggles that come with being a boss. But today, we're specifically talking about kind of being a mom and being a boss and starting up a side hustle while working a full time job. And really the transition of how all that works. So I'm curious to hear about you had this morning sickness and your passion project took a backseat to that. Yeah, because probably all you could manage was going to the job that pays the bills.

Beryl Ayn Young 6:33
Correct. Okay, so that did have to take a backseat, I had to be okay with that. And at that point, I mean, the side hustle was literally taking pictures like there was no motive behind it. Besides, I'm just going to be creative hashtag passion project as a side hustle is a perfectly admirable thing. Totally. Unfortunately, that first pregnancy ended in a loss. So and that was really the like, pivoting moment and going from this is just a creative passion project to what more can I do with this? So our daughter Bella was I was 20 weeks pregnant when we lost her was on September 11 2009. And that was so sorry, yeah, it was really difficult to wrestle with because I hadn't dealt with loss much at all. In my life. I lost one or two of my grandparents when I was younger, but that was really my experience with loss and with grief. And the only way that I knew to communicate in that, during that time, was with my words, and with my camera. And so I started a blog, because I had to go back to my day job two weeks after the loss. And you Yeah, so it was this moment of like, I don't really want to interact with the world right now. But I have to. And so the blog, I started as a way to communicate what I was feeling without having to actually talk to people. So introvert problems. Like, I don't want to talk about this, and I don't want to talk to you. And so I'll just start a blog. And so I was sharing my pictures, and I was sharing my words. And then people started asking me if I took pictures professionally, which was sort of an odd like, moment in the journey. It was like, Well, wait, people are reading this. And they want me to take pictures for them. And that's really when it like shifted in my brain of like, oh, maybe I should learn what to do with this, and how I can harness this into something bigger. Maybe there's a bigger message here.

Kathleen Shannon 8:28
So what was your blog about? Was it a way for you to grieve and go through that process? Or was it a creative outlet? Was it a distraction from the grief? Tell me a little bit more about that.

Beryl Ayn Young 8:40
I would say it was all of the above. So I think it more started as a distraction. I was looking for different photo projects I could do, I was looking for a community to connect with that understood the loss process I was dealing with. And I also wanted my friends and my family to understand what this process was like, through pictures and through words, I started getting comments from people, oh my gosh, you're a really good writer, which I'd never heard before in my life, which was kind of crazy. And then I pretty quickly jumped in. I think like one piece of advice. If I can impart to listeners, it's sometimes you just have to jump and do it. And so somebody asked me to take pictures and I'm like, Alright, let's learn how to run a business. So I went to a workshop about running a photography business. I did that for a very short time. It was probably about a year that I had like a family photography business. I hesitate to even say I had a real like family photography business, but it was a good breeding ground and learning space to actually learn how to run a business. So I learned about working with clients and it was good, and then I realized we had another daughter a year later. So pretty quickly we got pregnant again. And my daughter Brielle is almost six now. And once she was born, I was like, Well, I don't want to be out taking pictures for other people anymore. And so then it was really figuring out how I could combine all of my loves teaching and photography and blogging into one cohesive thing.

Kathleen Shannon 10:23
Okay, I want to rewind a little bit back into the blog, and someone tells you that you're a good writer, and you're getting attention for your photos. I'm curious how that really shaped your identity as a creative and how I've been thinking a lot lately about labels. And I was labeled as a creative from the get go from the very beginning of time, I came out of the womb, and people were saying, Oh, you're so creative and different. So I felt like I had a lot of permission around that. So I'm curious barrel when you like, did you have to, at some point grapple with having the permission or feeling confident enough to say, you know, what, I am good at writing I am I can take photos, like, what was the turning point for you there?

Beryl Ayn Young 11:10
Oh, that's such a juicy tonic right there. Right. So I was that girl in high school, who would always like try out for the school play, or who would like try out for district choir. And all my friends are really, really good. And they would make it into these, like higher levels of things, and I wouldn't. So I definitely had my own worthiness identity journey to wrestle with. So I always liked being creative, but I didn't know what my place in the creative world was. And I knew during high school in college, that it probably wasn't going to be music or theater. But I had to figure out what that was. And when people started to recognize, oh, you're a good writer, or you take good pictures, I was like, oh, there must be something to this. And I had to just kind of step up into that, like, if somebody else is recognizing this in me, let me recognize this and myself and be confident enough to keep putting that my work out there.

Emily Thompson 12:06
Yes. There's so Boss, I have, um, I have a question about so we talked about your shift of like, you know, side hustle to like side business, and from like side photography business to, to what is now like digital product, would you call it like

Beryl Ayn Young 12:24
this guy called digital product education? Yeah. So

Emily Thompson 12:27
I want to talk about your shift, though, from day job, to your side hustle being your full time job. So at what point did you throw in the towel with being a teacher and decide you were going to to become a work at home mom who's busting out some online business?

Beryl Ayn Young 12:44
Yeah, so I quickly I pretty quickly, once I figured out that I wanted to be teaching, I pretty quickly started telling people I'm on a five year plan. I'm on a five year plan. That was in 2010, when my daughter was born. And the five year plan slowly went down to the four year plan and then the three year plan. And I love what you ladies are doing because you're giving this community and the space for people to be boss. It wasn't until I hired a mentor, who had kind of been through the work before me that I could see how the pieces of the puzzle could start fitting together. Because I was teaching a couple of photography classes locally, I had developed an online course for moms that were grieving from loss, like I had all this these hodgepodge of pieces. But I didn't have a cohesive like, well, what's the business plan. And the communication with my husband at the time was, well, if you can replace your day job income, then you can quit your job. Because we are equal wage earners, so it wasn't like I could just up and leave and we'd be okay. It was this huge conversation that had to happen in our family. So in 2010 was when I started working with a mentor and got that bigger plan of well, this is how you should rebrand yourself. This is an all of it came from elements of what I was already doing. And I really decided to own the fact that I wanted to use my ability and education to teach and mentor moms how to use their cameras. That was where I found that I could do the best work and make the biggest impact. And so I came home from my first coaching and mentoring meeting with a huge long list of this is what you need to do to your website. This is what you need to do on social media. This is what you need to do with your newsletter. And I was overwhelmed but I was also really excited and energized by it.

Kathleen Shannon 14:39
Okay, so I want to go back to this five year plan because I've never had a five year I need to wait

Emily Thompson 14:47
three weeks well good.

Kathleen Shannon 14:51
day plan. No but like I would I'm really curious to hear about is what did you need in order for you to feel confident enough confident enough to quit your job. So you mentioned that you and your husband had the discussion that once you could replace your income with your side hustle income that you could quit your job. Is that is that what you did? Like? Were you literally let's say you made $100,000 a year at your teaching job? Were you required to make

Unknown Speaker 15:17
$100 million?

Unknown Speaker 15:20
A second.

Kathleen Shannon 15:22
Okay, if you live in Oklahoma, did you replace your $24,000? Your teaching salary with $24,000? In your side hustle? Or was there a certain point where I mean, because then that becomes two full time jobs. I know, for myself, there was definitely a leap I had to take. And I was making a certain amount of money. But there are only so many hours in the day to be side hustling, right?

Beryl Ayn Young 15:47
That's such a great question. And so the five year plan, I think, was more from the confidence standpoint of like, Oh, I can do this. And I'm giving myself five years to do it. That's like,

Kathleen Shannon 15:59
five years, in five years, I'm gonna be so much more boss, I'm gonna have my shit figured out, I will feel ready. That's actually how I feel about getting fillings at the dentist. I'm like, there's a lot more brave in five years.

Beryl Ayn Young 16:14
So I just wanted to say like, I am like you ladies in that, like, I can sometimes hardly figure out what I'm doing it today, let alone next week. So if you asked me right now, like, What's your plan? What's your five year plan? Now? I have no clue.

Emily Thompson 16:26
It was your dream. You had a five years.

Unknown Speaker 16:30
five year plan?

Beryl Ayn Young 16:31
Yeah, I like that a lot better.

Kathleen Shannon 16:35
You know that interesting about that? Sorry to interrupt. No, go ahead. But I think that it's easier to think of your life in a five year plan, whenever you are working a day job where there is just one track of progress and success, there is only one ladder, right? But whenever you're working for yourself, it's really hard to imagine having a five year plan, because you can build 18 ladders, and you can build them at different heights over the course of five years, right? It's just, I think part of being boss and being an entrepreneur is really leaning into the uncertainty that anything can happen for better and worse, over the course of five years, hopefully, for the better.

Beryl Ayn Young 17:18
A totally mad.

Emily Thompson 17:19
Yeah, that's one of my favorite things about like taking, whenever people take this, like, I feel like I can't talk about taking the leap anymore. Because like, I'm so far beyond that, I remember what that was, like, like, way back then. But the idea that I feel like we, we feel like we have to go into it with a five year plan, like that's expected, like, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, if you're gonna be a business owner, you have to know like, what's out there for you to be working towards, in terms of like, hard goals of like, I'm gonna have this much revenue in five years, I'm gonna have this many clients, I'll be doing this and doing that. And, like, the joy of this, this job that we create for ourselves is you never know what opportunities are going to come around. Like, if you had went into like being a photographer, and made your five year plan of like, in five years, I'm gonna have like this many, like editorial spots, and I'm gonna, like, be making this much per client, like, you probably would have totally, like, shut off that extra ladder of like, No, I'm actually going to turn this into a teaching platform that allows me to share with a wider group of people or whatever it may be. I think that really, that adjusting that sort of mindset around, like, what happens in the corporate world, and how things behave out there in business is very different from what happens in like our group of creatives who are like passion driven, and monetize online, in whatever way you need to to get your job done.

Beryl Ayn Young 18:42
Yeah, and I think being open to changing course, is super important. But to go back to what you were asking about, like,

Kathleen Shannon 18:49
how did you side hustling, I went details about what were your days like at work? What were your evenings like at home? And at what point did you say, Okay, this is like, I've hit my metrics, or I've proven to myself that I can quit tell us so old journey details, all your like all of it, please.

Beryl Ayn Young 19:11
So this is such a great story, because the way I thought it was going to turn out was not turned out,

Kathleen Shannon 19:17
I think it was going to turn out.

Beryl Ayn Young 19:21
I thought I was gonna have all this money in the bank and I was gonna be like, Alright, I got my day job income, let me quit now. And everything

Kathleen Shannon 19:28
was money in the bank, like six months of living expenses, or

Beryl Ayn Young 19:33
no, my husband and I had a conversation about what sum of money felt right to make the leap. And for me, that was $20,000 in the bank. That was not my teaching salary. I didn't make more than that. But that was what felt a little bit more than that. Not was not 20,000 and it was not 100,000 it was somewhere in there. Um, but 20,000 was the magic number where we felt like there was enough of a cushion that I could take the leap. And when I started, I would also tell people and I also want didn't want to, like blow my cover at work of like, I'm gonna leave you guys soon. But I would say to people, like I don't hate my job right now. And in the beginning I didn't, I still loved my job. Working with kids and working with students. My main job when I was leaving was to teach teachers how to use creative technology in the classroom. So it was kind of like what I was doing with photography, I teach moms how to master their big fancy camera now. So it wasn't a far cry from what I was doing in my day job, and I loved it. And then I started side hustling, and I loved that work even more. So the idea that I was building creating something on my own was really, really enticing. And to get your nitty gritty of like, what my days look like. So my daughter at the time was about a year old. And she my mother in law used to watch her. And then we did like a hybrid of my mother in law would watch her and then she started to do a little bit of daycare and preschool. And so I would drop my daughter off, we would wake up at five in the morning, I commuted an hour, on my drive to work, I would listen to books on tape, like inspiring, like business II type things, podcasts weren't really big thing then. But I would do audible and I would listen to books on tape. And then I would go do my day job. Don't tell my own boss, but I used to have might my like personal email open while I was like responding to work emails, so if Something urgent came in, I could still reply to it. Because I had an office. I don't feel guilty talking about that now that I'm like, I'm three years out from having quit my job.

Kathleen Shannon 21:45
I love talking to side hustlers. And I'm like, Is there any of this that you could be doing at your day job? And once finding time,

Beryl Ayn Young 21:53
yeah, once it was like, I knew I was gonna quit, I just needed to find that extra little bit of time, I would do that during the day, I used to say to people to like, when you're in a corporate job, you're allowed to take breaks, you're allowed to go on a five minute walk, a 10 minute walk or a lunch break, like the school is a little bit different and how it operates. But I was like, I'm gonna think about this as I'm taking my 15 minute break, but I'm going to use it to reply to these personal emails. And I never felt guilty about that. And I would leave my teaching job. I was fortunate that I had a little bit of a different job in education where I didn't have to stay hours after school was over. So I would leave at about 330 in the afternoon, I would pick up my daughter do the drive home. Because we woke up so early. She my daughter went to bed early. So we would feed her dinner, we would get her in bed by about 630 or seven. And then I would work in the evenings either writing a blog post teaching my classes from about 730 to 10 in the evening. And that wasn't every night. But most nights I was doing something. I look back on it now. And I was like, Wow, I can't work in the evenings anymore. Like I used to be able to. That's what I do. Yeah, I don't have to anymore. But like I look back on it, I'm like it was crazy. But it wasn't because my five year plan turned into a three year plan. And a year three was when my job my day job shifted the work that I was doing. They kind of changed what my role was in the school building. And I got really, really frustrated. And so you

Kathleen Shannon 23:28
so you were side hustling for three years where you were going to work and then coming home and basically working from seven to 10 every evening.

Unknown Speaker 23:37
Yes. Yeah, any

Kathleen Shannon 23:40
point of that? Did you feel discouraged? I mean, I work on realistically, I work on about a one year timeline, like I can usually see one year out. But even then, for example, Emily and I are working on writing a book and giving a talk and those things feel like side hustles to our day job, which is recording the podcast, attending to the clubhouse doing those different things. So for me, even after just a few weeks, I'm like when are we going to see a return on this? Like I get all stressed out if I can't see the end game. So did you ever feel discouraged or unmotivated? How

Beryl Ayn Young 24:21
did you keep focus? I think I felt discouraged. I had a little bit of the imposter syndrome complex going on where I would see other people that were ahead of me and get discouraged there. But I was also making money during that time too. So I could also see my own financial gains happening. I had enough money to be able to pay for coaches to continue mentoring me and teaching me What kind of my next steps were and I was pretty evenly splitting my income into I'm going to pay for more coaching and I'm going to save a little bit for Being able to eventually quit.

Kathleen Shannon 25:02
I love that you were investing 50% of your side hustle income into your business. Obviously you were still paying the bills with your day job and you were not starving or going into debt for these things. I'm curious, do you feel like you've really seen a return on that investment? Do you think that you would be where you are now, if you hadn't gotten some of that coaching or mentoring masterminding along the way?

Beryl Ayn Young 25:26
No, I needed the coaching and mentoring and masterminding, it wouldn't have happened. Because I don't think I had any sort of framework in my brain for how you build a creative business. So I needed that person to kind of I had the creative vision, but I needed somebody to help me with the execution piece. And to keep me motivated on building a list and building a community and building an audience. And how do you do that? And I would say that, that three years that I was spending, I was working in one year chunks, because I was developing an online class teaching an online class developing an online class teaching an online class and I would teach it multiple times. And I was able to see like, oh, there's people signing up for this multiple times. So I knew that there was forward momentum and movement. year three, I started my job and was miserable. And that was when I knew I knew probably in about October of that school year that it was going to be my last school year, I hadn't come out and told anybody that yet. And I realized I was holding myself back from giving myself permission because I came home from work one day, and I was miserable. And I was talking to my husband about it. And I think I literally just like burst into tears on the couch. And I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do, because there wasn't that $20,000 in the bank. But I had a plan to make that $20,000 Sorry, I had a plan to make that $20,000 by the end of the year, and I'm crying and I'm miserable. And my husband goes, well then just quit. Like at the end of the year, let this be your last year and my husband who I thought was the one that was he's the financial guy. He's an accountant. I thought he was going to be the one as me like, well, the money's not in the bank, you can't quit yet. And he was the one that was finally like, if this is going to make you so much happier than do it like will will float for six months and then take stock of what's going on and see what's happening. And I I love the idea of manifesting your dreams I believe that you have to do the work as well. But from a manifesting standpoint, I had been building this like Signature Course during that entire school year. I had already resigned and in the month before I quit my job I launched my this like new Signature Course. And it was a $20,000 launch. And so I left my day job. Yeah, with that $20,000 in the bank, which was so exciting.

Kathleen Shannon 28:01
Oh, okay, huge. I have a question about the $20,000 you get how did you get to that number? Was it like a certain amount of living expenses? Was it just a gut check feeling was it? How did you get to that number?

Beryl Ayn Young 28:17
It was a gut check feeling I'm terrible with money.

Kathleen Shannon 28:20
I mean, obviously I'm not because I'm living like and working my my passion business. But I'm terrible enough with money to not budget well, but $20,000 felt right. And have you been good ever since like so you took the leap? You quit your job you have that $20,000 launch? Were you able to contain them? Or were you able to maintain momentum? And keep going did your salary on your side hustle which is now your full time gig did that start to increase for you? What do you see happen after you quit your day job with turning your side hustle now into a full time gig.

Beryl Ayn Young 28:55
I see myself freaking out with money about every six months. It's been three years and like every summer, my business pretty much has a slow season. My clients are moms, they're home with their kids for the summer. You'd think three years in I'd like plan for this a little bit better. But No, I don't. And I am typically freaking out about money every summer. But with that being said, it always picks up again in the fall and I've been able to make it work. I think it now that since I side hustled for three years and I have a lot of courses and programs and offerings. I can kind of pull things out and rejigger them or like I have a lot of I have like a bag of tricks now. It's not a bag of tricks, but it's like oh, I can I can pivot and I can switch and I can make money this way or and I hate to bring it all about money because I'm so passionate about the ladies that I work with and serving them and teaching them but I feel like there's just a lot more options since I've put the work in and done the time. And, yeah,

Kathleen Shannon 30:07
yeah, no, I

Emily Thompson 30:07
mean, and I don't think that money is something even you need to, like apologize for whenever I think about the people who are listening to this, like, the money is the reason why they haven't taken the leap yet, or the thing that they are freaking out about as well, like the passion will always be there. But well, hopefully. But it's like, it's the money that holds people back. And like that sense of security and stuff. So I love that you love that you spend this time filling your bag of tricks, tricks, which is exactly what I'm going to be calling it now. And that you can now sort of pull them out and launch them whenever you feel a need to sort of release that content. Again, digital products are one of my favorite things about online business. And that you can you can do them like that you spend some time hustling out the work and making it do. And then you have them and you can just sort of make money on them whenever you want. But like money and also impact on the plane that you're serving in the process.

Beryl Ayn Young 31:05
Yeah, and I'd say things have shifted and changed in the last three years I did a big year was the year I I went above my teaching salary. So my income was above my teaching salary. And that was super exciting. But being a passion based business, it's always shifting and evolving and changing. So through this mastermind program, we're together, you've kind of seen this new pivot coming to life that I've been going through. And that's the other thing that I think a lot of side hustlers don't realize that it's allowed to change, and it's allowed to shift. But you don't have to necessarily start over every time either.

Emily Thompson 31:43
I want to talk about that for a second. Because we have been watching your rebrand happening. And so I want to talk about like coming into your own a little bit like so you side hustled for three years, you've main hustled for three years, and now like this rebrand, like Tell me a little about about what got you to the point to want to do this, what it's going to mean for the future of your business and how you sort of came to this point where you want what comes next,

Beryl Ayn Young 32:11
I feel was wrestling with the what I should be doing with what I really want to be doing. And really coming back into alignment with the why and why I started my business in the first place. Not that my business every fell out of alignment with the why, just to give a little background on what I actually do. So I started teaching a photography class that was based in healing from the grief process. So it was all about using your camera in healing ways. And then from there, I taught another class to any mom that wanted to learn to find her identity or to heal from some sort of pain that she was going through. So that was my second class. And then I moved away from that a little bit. Because I had been teaching locally, a class on how to get out of auto mode, which is a very like technical, it kind of tapped into what I was doing in my day job, I can teach the technical skills to moms just as well as I can teach the heart centered stuff. So that was my signature course it was teaching moms how to get out of auto mode. And I think in the three years that I was main hustling my business, I start started to feel a little bit of that pressure of like, Well, the thing that's gonna sell the most is being able to sell the, the technical class, like I can give people a tangible when if they're taking the technical class, you're gonna be in auto mode by the time you're done. The tangible sell is harder when it's very heart centered, but it's also more meaningful. And as I started figuring out, where am I gonna go from here, how am I going to uplevel my impact. The only way I saw to do that is by going back to my roots of helping moms find their identity and that heart centered piece. And I'm still going to be able to teach the other stuff in there as well. But the rebrand process has been How can I really be the most forward facing with the personal identity piece.

Kathleen Shannon 34:03
So I kind of want to transition into talking a little bit more about being a mom and being a boss. And even just now you were having to tell your daughter to like give you just 10 more minutes to finish this conversation. So I would love to talk a little bit about I mean, about maybe the sacrifices that you had to make whenever you were side hustling I, I really struggle with the idea like can we really have it all and especially as women who are wanting to grow our families and nurture those relationships, while at the same time being totally boss, like we do not apologize for the goals that we have in our business, but it's really it can be difficult to juggle all of it and I really don't think that I can have it all and there are times whenever my family life is you know being sacrificed for my business life and then sometimes vice versa if I need to really focus on my family I might not be able to write that blog post this week, I might not be able to launch that thing in two months, it might take me three months or four months. So I feel like there is always a given take. And I would love to hear about some of that give and take in your life as a side hustler. But then also, once you did go full time with being a working mom, what has that been like,

Beryl Ayn Young 35:20
there's definitely given take, I feel like I didn't have to give too much when I was side hustling, because that's just what life was, I felt like I was gonna have to be teaching for my entire life. So I thought that I was resigned to have my daughter daycare forever. She was in bed by 630. Anyways, so I didn't feel like I had to give up too much time when I was side hustling. It was a wake up call when I quit my job though, how to balance all of it. And I agree with you that I don't think you can have at all I actually got like a bitch slap from a mentor of mine and my first year for over the phone pitch lab, like. But so I was on a, I was on a phone conversation with her. And I was really, really sad that I couldn't go there was some like school event or something that I was missing. Because I was home working my business and we were talking about it. And I was like, I feel like I'm trying so hard to strike this balance of being a stay at home mom, and being a working mom. And she's like, Well, are you really trying to be a stay at home mom. And it like stopped me dead in my tracks. And I was like, Oh no, I have zero interest in being a stay at home mom, I wanted the flexibility in my schedule. And the year I quit was the year my daughter started full blown preschool. And I wanted that flexibility to on a weekday. If I wanted to just say I'm done with work today, I'd be able to take her to the park or take her out for ice cream, or do those things. I didn't have that flexibility in my day job. But I've also been totally okay with hiring a babysitter for the summer, or putting her in camp because I'm equally as passionate about working my business. And I also want her to be able to see that like she is a strong, independent mom who's gonna go after her dreams. That's what I want her to be able to do also.

Emily Thompson 37:23
Yeah, I feel like I feel like what you touched on a second ago about the struggle really happening when you quit your day job. being something that I hear so often from creatives who finally take that leap is there, they think that they're just going to be able to like get into their structure and their routine and it'd be fine. But then there's like a time explosion, where they have all this time, but also not enough of it, and no idea as to what to do with any of it. And I think that I think that buckling down can be super difficult, but also not impossible. And even harder when you have a kid at home. So like I would love to hear how you found that structure in in your new life of working for yourself at home. Yeah, that

Beryl Ayn Young 38:10
was really hard. So some of the structure is built in because her starting preschool I had work hours from like 8am to 11am. There's only three hours. I was shocked,

Kathleen Shannon 38:21
like enough time to drop her off and get back and get her again to 11.

Beryl Ayn Young 38:33
So Wow, yeah. 11

Unknown Speaker 38:36
that's what I had. So from the hours of eight to 11.

Beryl Ayn Young 38:40
And then well and she still napped for a while she was a late napper. So she would come home and take a nap. The frustrating thing was I had to work when she was at school or when she was napping. And being a writer and being a creative like sometimes the desire to write would strike at like four o'clock in the afternoon. And I'd be like, well, crap, what am I going to do now? Some

Kathleen Shannon 39:05
days? See, that's interesting that before you were side hustling from seven to 11. So you had almost gotten into this circadian rhythm, right with your own work style and your own work time. And so to really shift that work time is really interesting or to even I was curious if you were able to turn it off now in the evening, like now that your side hustle has become your day job.

Beryl Ayn Young 39:28
I still work in the evenings. Sometimes I don't do all the work in the evenings anymore. But that was really hard to turn off. I felt like I had to be working in the evenings. So sometimes I did because of the three hour preschool schedule. But

Kathleen Shannon 39:45
I can't help I love she was in full blown preschool

Beryl Ayn Young 39:48
for three hours.

Kathleen Shannon 39:53
Like Wait, I'm curious. Why didn't you keep her in daycare after you quit? Did you feel

Beryl Ayn Young 39:58
manches? Okay, Nancy We couldn't afford if I was gonna Yeah, yeah. So that's why we didn't do it. So I had to find that balance. Um, but I was able to shift doing more mindless tasks in the evening, I found in the evenings, I was replying to a few emails, or I was checking in on Facebook with my students in my class groups, those types of things I could do in the morning or in the evenings. And in the mornings, I was really, that's usually my genius time for writing. So I would drop her off at preschool, and then I come home and I try to write something

Emily Thompson 40:31
nice. So still, it's about it was about finding, or at least dealing with the structure that you've had and making use of it in the best way that you could.

Beryl Ayn Young 40:41
Yep, I was also we were talking a little bit before we start recording about screen time. And I know that that's a huge hot button issue for moms and parents in particular. And I we don't set a whole lot of screen time limits. I know, it's all about balance for me there. And so if there were was a day where I knew I was in the middle of a huge launch. I'm like, just watch a couple hours of cartoons, we'll go out to the park later, and we'll get our outside time. So it's been about being okay with some of those limits, and being more lenient on those than maybe some of my other parent counterparts or friends are?

Emily Thompson 41:20
Well, I think that also just takes us back around to like, the idea that maybe we can't have it all, or I think we can but not at the same time. Like, I think we're perfectly capable of accomplishing anything we want. Just not all at once or not all in like the taint same time span, like, yes, I'm going to have the most amazing, like, structured business that's profitable and awesome. But there's not going to be at the exact same time that I'm like spending a month like road tripping with my family, like the one has to give for a minute for the other to flourish. And I think that getting okay with that rhythm with those ebbs and flows of, I don't know, this intentional imbalance is just as important as striving for actual balance.

Beryl Ayn Young 42:09
Yeah. And I structured my business around being a lifestyle business. So the things that I'm doing for my business, and my clients and my customers fit into that space. So I also feel like, I'm able to do work, even though I'm not doing work, right. Like, I'm away with my family, but I'm taking pictures of them. And then I'm sharing that with my clients. So I think it is all about figuring out what you want out of this business journey and just making sure you're in alignment. They're like my mom days, or my mom days and my business days or my business days. Yeah. And then sometimes you sleep sometimes. No, I sleep a lot.

Emily Thompson 42:50
Oh, that's right. You were the sleeper. Good. That's right. Beryl and I are sleepers and love sunshine.

Beryl Ayn Young 42:56
Yes, right. Both of those days. Leanne

Emily Thompson 42:58
loves her not sleeping in her cold weather.

Kathleen Shannon 43:02
I don't love not sleeping. But I was telling you guys at our mastermind retreat, if I could just live north of the wall, if I could always just be dressed in furs. Right and out and snow climbing a mountain. That's my happy place.

Emily Thompson 43:17
That's my version of hell right there. Cavalry was hard to meet in the middle

Kathleen Shannon 43:24
barrel. It's been so awesome talking about work and life. And being a mom and side hustling. I hope that our listeners have really seen that. It's not some fantasy, but it is kind of just this every day step that you take toward your goals. And really knowing what those are. If it's $20,000 in the bank, if it's the flexibility to be able to take an afternoon off with your kid, and really just not taking those things for granted. I've found that for me being a working mom, sometimes my job feels so demanding. And it's hard to see like, Oh, wait, I have a lot of flexibility here. And just appreciating it.

Beryl Ayn Young 44:08
Yeah, it's all about commitment and enjoying the journey while you're on it.

Emily Thompson 44:13
Right and a healthy dose of gratitude.

Beryl Ayn Young 44:16
Totally, man,

Unknown Speaker 44:18
amen.

Emily Thompson 44:18
All right, so we would love it if you have any sort of last advice for our listeners, like either side hustlers or work at home moms like piece of advice for being boss.

Beryl Ayn Young 44:33
Oh, you guys save the hardest question for last.

Emily Thompson 44:37
It's always our intention.

Kathleen Shannon 44:38
Yeah, I know. You feel most boss whenever you're hustling it out, being

Beryl Ayn Young 44:45
connecting. That's, I think the perfect word that I can impart onto your people. When you're connecting with your family. Make sure you're present and connecting with them. When you're connecting with your business. Make sure you're connecting in a way that allows You to really see the impact you're making in the world. Hey, man,

Kathleen Shannon 45:06
yes. So good. Thank you so much, girl for joining us. We've loved having you on the show.

Beryl Ayn Young 45:12
Thank you.

Emily Thompson 45:15
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Kathleen Shannon 46:25
Thank you for listening to being boss. Please be sure to visit our website at being boss club where you can find Show Notes for this episode. Listen to past episodes and discover more of our content that will help you be boss in work and life. Did you like this episode, please share it with a friend and show us some love by leaving a rating and review on iTunes.

Emily Thompson 46:45
Do the work. Be boss and we'll see you next week.

Beryl Ayn Young 47:04
Hold on a second. Yes, I

Unknown Speaker 47:12
go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 47:13
Please don't bother.

Beryl Ayn Young 47:16
Please don't bother me go have what you would like. She's gonna have such a stomach ache. You can have whatever you want. Go eat all the snacks. Don't eat peanut butter. She's peanut allergy.

Emily Thompson 47:27
Oh god. Don't touch the peanut butter.

Unknown Speaker 47:31
That's a real mom boss moment.