Working a Full-Time and Pursuing Your Creative Passions
Episode 019: Show Notes
We are super excited to bring our friend Amber Housley onto the podcast today. We had the opportunity to meet Amber last year at the Savvy Experience and it was so wonderful getting to know her, getting to hang out with her, and learning more about what she does. Because, if you all didn’t know, she does a lot!
Amber has her hands in a lot of creative businesses. She is rocking it at her own brand and along with that, she also has the Inspired Retreat, the Joyful Garden Planner, and her brand new course, Blooming Business Kits. In addition, she’s also the marketing director for Lara Casey Media, which means she’s involved in Southern Weddings, PowerSheets, and everything Lara Casey.
Together we dive into talking about taking a support role and what it’s like to not always play boss. We discuss the benefits, the challenges, what she’d love to change, and what it is truly like to resist a support role and then embrace it completely. We also talk a little bit about balance and what it means to run a lot of creative businesses and have your hands in a lot of different pots. Amber is an amazing example, role model, and a very humble human being, so you definitely have to listen in!
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Balancing Different Careers and Avenues
We so often hear about creatives wanting to work on their side hustles so that they will eventually be able to leave their 9 to 5 jobs to work on their businesses full-time. However, for some this does not have to be an ultimatum — it doesn’t have to be either one or the other, you can choose to do both. Amber chose to continue working and balancing both careers as her personal brand grew. She realized that maybe her path to success could look different to others’, and perhaps she didn’t have to leave her full-time job behind. Amber wanted to use all that she was doing at her job to benefit her business, while helping others as well.
Making the Transition Away from Corporate Life
For Amber, her transition out of her full-time job was a combination of her own choice to leave as well as an incredible opportunity that came across her path. The corporate life and 9 to 5 really suited Amber well for many years and allowed her to accelerate the growth of her own personal brand, being able to network with major players in the industry. However, as she moved on to a new phase of her life, her priorities changed and she knew it was better for her to step into a new business, with a major change of pace.
Wearing the Boss Hat Versus the Team Hat
When it comes to being on a team versus being the boss, it all depends on your perspective on your role on a team. For Amber, she realized very quickly that she loved being on a team but that her forte did not lie in team management. This worked well for her when she joined Lara Casey’s team, because they have a team-based environment and they all strive towards accomplishing a similar goal, without the presence of any strict position levels. There is such value and importance to be found in playing the support role in a team, and when you resist embracing the position of support, you often fall short of all that you could have achieved together.
Motivating Others Starts with A Great Product
When launching new products, the main goal is to create excitement amongst the community of not only your customers, but your team as well. For Amber, she counts herself lucky to have an amazing community at Cultivate who are always enthusiastic about their product launches, especially PowerSheets. People are becoming aware of this product and the fact that it can inherently change their lives, and that’s really what their mission is all about. The more PowerSheets they sell, the more good happens in the world and it is amazing to be a part of a team that does that.
Balancing Calendars, and Choosing Yourself
Having a 9 to 5 job as well as a full-time side hustle requires incredible scheduling and knowing exactly where and when to choose what. For Amber, after a time of self-reflection moving into the new year, she realized there were a lot of things in her own personal brand that she just did not have the time to do. Inspired Retreat was taking up the majority of her calendar, and she knew it was time to choose herself and make the shift towards focusing on other goals. When it comes to having a full-time career and a business, you have to pick and choose sometimes. There are seasons in business when you can load up your plate and seasons when you need some more white space.
Learning Not to Resist Taking on the Supporting Role
Although it has taken Amber many years to get comfortable with being in a support role, she knows that most businesses cannot do it alone. When it comes to being the boss or fulfilling a support position in a larger vision, a lot of people have to try one or the other to know what is going to work for them. Embracing whatever it is that is happening in your heart does not make you any different, because everyone is needed. When you have found a great community, embracing the role you have is so important in carrying out the mission that your team has set out to achieve.
The Challenges of Balancing Team With Self
Amber has spent many years putting a lot of her projects after everybody else’s needs. This has been a challenge for her, and she has now given herself permission to make time for the things she’s been wanting to accomplish. Another challenge that Amber faces is that, with her history in the larger corporate world, she often finds it hard to know how to translate her experience into strategies for small businesses. It is harder in the small business world, because people are often wearing a lot of different hats, and so the vision of how things are run is constantly changing. To find the right balance you have to be constantly adapting to new situations, and innovating to sustain the changes.
Quote This
It’s amazing how when your mindset changes, different opportunities will present themselves.
—Amber Housley
Highlights
Learn how balancing different careers can be an alternate option to quitting your full-time job for good. [0:04:30.1]
Discover why Amber finally made the transition away from corporate life, and why her life stage was a major influence. [0:08:29.1]
Understand what it means to wear the team hat, and how to transition between being the boss into a supporting role. [0:09:37.1]
Find out why for Amber and the team at Lara Casey, motivating others truly starts with having an amazing product. [0:17:05.1]
Learn how to balance your different calendars, and knowing when it is time to choose yourself. [0:18:36.7]
Understand why it is important to learn not to resist taking on the supporting role, but instead to embrace it with the bigger vision in mind. [0:31:44.5]
Hear about the challenges that Amber faces in trying to balance the aspect of team versus self. [0:36:38.6]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:40:21.5]
Remind yourself that you can create your own definition of success.
Assess whether your supporting role fits into your bigger picture of the life you want to live.
Explore all the possibilities of how your business can influence a bigger goal for yourself.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Amber Housley
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest
Amber Housley is a Creative Business and Sweet Life Cultivator. As Marketing Director at Southern Weddings and Lara Casey Media, she is enthusiastic about sharing the message of meaningful marriages and intentional living. A multi-passionate serial entrepreneur, Amber has a big heart for helping women build thriving creative businesses and joy-filled lives. She combines her love of creating, gardening, faith and family into one ‘sweet life’ with her husband and two little ones outside Nashville, Tennessee.
KEY TOPICS
Finding balance, multiple careers, Transitioning away from a full-time job, Being a boss, Being a team member, Motivating others, Product launches, Balancing calendars, Choosing yourself, Challenges of balancing team with self
