Turn Your Hobby Into A Business: Interview with Kate Casey
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“I think sometimes women hit a wall. You have to say to yourself, ‘Do I completely switch directions or do I give this up?’”
Kate Casey hit the nail on the head when she said she was a disruptor. She’s a disruptor for women who are under tremendous pressure and need an escape. Those women like me. I relate to that and I go to her for those reasons.
I have been a fan and follower of Kate Casey from Love & Knuckles for years now. We have mutual friends and I’ve seen her around in town, but I have always felt too shy to talk with her too much. It even took a while for me to invite her on the show, to be honest. But I bit the bullet, and like she says about other things, I wish I hadn’t wasted that time.
Kate, with four kids, did full-time work in PR and had her comedy hobby blog. This year, she gave up the full-time gig to really make “a go” at her hobby! She seems to be very conscious, intentional, and doing quite well at her new full-time gig!
Today, Kate is doing stand-up comedy, she’s writing all over the place, including doing reality show recaps on her site, writing for the Fashion Police in US Weekly, writing for several other publications, and doing seriously funny parodies on Instagram. (Some of my favorites are below.)
“Unless you take the leap, you can’t give yourself that challenge. You may say to yourself, ‘Why did I waste so much time?’”
“It’s a hustle. I’m a one man band.”
There were so many good nuggets of information and moments of inspiration from this interview - a few of my favorites are below:
On Building a Business
- She’s a hustler. Never took a maternity leave and never told anyone she was pregnant. That’s the problem with consulting. If you are not available, they will find someone else.
- No matter what you are doing, you have to look at the business side of things. Nicholas Sparks determines what he writes next by what’s missing in the market.
- The business you need to start is the disruptor. Are you disrupting the system?
- Be more than one thing.
- If you paint yourself in a corner, you're going to come up short.
“I am writing. I take my computer everywhere I go. If I am waiting in the carpool lane, I have my computer with me.”
On Life
- Unless you take the leap, you can't give yourself that challenge. You may say to yourself, why did I waste so much time?
- People need to be more mindful of how easy it is to help someone. It's so easy to help someone. Your little introduction could be huge for them.
- We are all too hard on ourselves.
- If you love something, you can make time for it.
The Interview
- Problems with consulting
- Transitioning her hobby into a full-time job
- Internal struggles of taking the leap
- Business side of comedy
- Her career advice from Travis Kalanick - Founder of Uber
- The real side of blogging and what people don’t understand
- Hustling
- People need to be more mindful of how easy it is to help someone
- Her hardest client
- 2 mentors - I am so grateful. I've got to pass that on.
- Her Sh*t or Get off the Pot moment
- Logistics of having 4 kids and hustling
- Some frustrations
- Time Management
- Helping people - again
Kate does a parody on of Celebrity Moms often with the title "Same Thing, Right?" (Below are a few of my favorites from her Instagram account.)
Links
- Leslie Jones from Saturday Night Live
More from Kate
What did you want to be when you grew up??
- I always envisioned myself either being a cast member on Saturday Night Live or a politician.
What was your first job?
- My first job was filling folders at a small investment banking firm.
What are your go-to books and apps?
- My favorite books are Bossypants by Tina Fey, Revenge: A Story of Hope by Laura Blumenfeld, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. My favorite apps are Twitter, Instagram, SiriusXM, and A Beautiful Mess for my picture parodies.
What are your favorite gifts to give?
- My favorite gifts to give are books, monogrammed lucite trays, and photos.