Talk Digi To Me
Excited to talk digital marketing, business and entrepreneurship? Let's go!
I'm your host Carlie Robinson and with my guests we'll uncover digital marketing tools and trends, and gather insights into how to make your business more successful. We'll also hear stories from successful business owners on what helped or hindered them along their path.
This year marks 21 years in advertising for me and I'm celebrating by sharing my passion for digital marketing and my studio in Barbados with all of you!
Talk Digi To Me
Talk Digi To Me March FWD: Ana Young
Ana Young's journey pulses with the consistent heartbeat of service and genuine connection. In this captivating conversation, Ana reveals how her early desire to be of service to others evolved into a successful 20-year career spanning radio announcing, life in an agency, and finally, pivoting to freelancing.
Ana takes us behind the scenes of her bold decision to leave the security of agency life, and the vulnerability of questioning her choice. Her candid story about breaking down in her mother's lap before recommitting to her freelance path resonates with anyone who's ever taken a leap of faith in their career. Seven years later, she confirms the freedom was worth every moment of uncertainty.
What truly sets Ana apart is her masterful approach to maintaining balance. Through vision boards, journaling, and disciplined financial management, she's created a sustainable framework that allows her to pursue passion projects like the Conscious Folk podcast while ensuring financial stability. Her perspective on balancing work that pays versus projects that fulfill offers practical wisdom for entrepreneurs at any stage.
The conversation takes a powerful turn upon Ana's reflection on a missed opportunity to maintain connection with an early mentor delivers a poignant reminder about the relationships we sometimes take for granted.
Ready to reimagine your approach to career development, professional relationships, or work-life balance? Listen now and let Ana's story inspire your next steps forward.
Welcome to Talk Digi to Me. March Forward, a women-only series in celebration of International Women's Day. We're talking to women in the field of marketing, media and technology, Women who make an impact, Women who dare to march forward. Presented by Carly Robinson from Robinson Creative.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talk Digi to Me. March Forward. I'm your host, carly Robinson, and my guest today, the wonderful Anna Young. Anna has been in the field of marketing and communications for over 20 years. Currently she's the co-host of the Conscious Folk podcast with Tracy Fowler, founder of Honeycomb Productions, which offers social media management, content production and event management, and the co-founder of AnimeCon, the Caribbean's number one pop culture convention. Welcome, anna, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3:That's such a wonderful intro. You did such a great job writing that.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't believe. I just wrote it in 60 seconds prior to the beginning of the show. Right, it's what we do.
Speaker 1:Absolutely what we do.
Speaker 2:So let's jump straight into it. It I love to kick it off with this question. When you were a little girl, what did you want to become?
Speaker 3:there were two things I wanted to be either a nurse or I wanted to be a nun. Oh wow, I think I just like the idea of um doing well by people and being of service, and I think when I was younger, those were the two, those are the two light paths that looked as if, oh, I could definitely do some good here. I could really help people if I was a nurse or if I was a nun. Obviously, that didn't work out, but I still think that, with regards to what I try to do with my life, with my work, is that I try to be of service.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think that's a really great thing to have at the forefront. Yes, wanting to be of service Now, were there any female mentors that you may have had early on, any nurses or nuns that particularly reached out to you?
Speaker 3:No, I don't think so. I really do feel like it probably came from my upbringing. I think, like most Bajans, I was very heavily into church at a very, very young age and I feel like those were things that were mentioned quite consistently. So then I kind of became a part of like, yeah, these are things that I can do to to help others and, you know, to be present and to be helpful, and so I don't think there was anybody in particular that told me or that I saw as a mentor, that I wanted to follow that path. I think it was just a matter of what my surroundings were like.
Speaker 2:Now, I know you didn't end up becoming a nurse or a nun, but I want to let you know that you really do carry a sense of as a person, someone who has that spirit of I want to be helpful Like you, that spirit of I want to be helpful, like you just said, I want to be of service. So you do have the spirit of that, anna, thank you. I have to say, um, so what led you into, then, marketing and communications?
Speaker 3:I'm really not entirely sure. I was leaving um secondary school and we needed to select something, because from there it was on to either Barbados Community College or it was on to UE, and at that time Barbados Community College would have had the mass communications course and I thought to myself well, that could be anything, that could be writing for the newspaper or writing for a magazine, it could be going into broadcasting, it could be going into radio announcing. Sure, why not? Those all sound like really interesting areas to play in, so why not give it a go? I think as a young child I loved the idea of being entertained, so I used to.
Speaker 3:really I used to lock into like television, radio, reading. All those things were interesting to me and I was like if I could probably end up in one of these different areas being a part of that, why not? So it really was more a case of OK, it seems like something I already quite like, even though I haven't really done the heavy lifting of what it means to be creative in those spaces. So why not try and see where it goes? So I started from there, so Mass Comm at BCC, and then I left BCC. I worked for a summer as an au pair and then from there I went into my first job at a radio station as a radio announcer and a news producer. Oh, wow, very cool. It was very cool.
Speaker 2:my mother was thrilled, she felt so great she's like oh, I'm glad to know you can get a job in mass communication. I'm not even kidding.
Speaker 3:Her actual words me were I'm so glad you were able to do something with your love of television and I was like thanks, me too.
Speaker 2:Wow, but I mean, it's just gone from there. So your first job working in a radio station. What next? What came after that?
Speaker 3:I worked at the radio station for about two years and that was a great experience because it started as just doing the news, producing that kind of content. Then I did some radio announcing as well, and then I was kind of ready to move on to something else. I ended up going on like a bunch of different interviews, and the one that really stuck with me was working at an advertising agency. So I was hired as a junior media coordinator, which, for those who may not know what that is, it's essentially looking at how we place media, where we place it, why we place it, how much we place it for, and so I started working there under Stephanie Barnett, who I would count as a mentor from there because when I started.
Speaker 3:I knew nothing.
Speaker 3:I knew absolutely nothing about what it meant to be a media coordinator and Stephanie had been there for a few years and she really took me under her wing and gave me a lot of instruction. And I think from there is when I learned that you might be hired for one particular role, particularly at an agency in the Caribbean, but you end up having to learn so many other different practices in that one position. So, yes, I was hired as a media coordinator, but essentially what you end up being was a full-time account manager. So you were writing radio scripts. You were helping to design press ads and magazine ads. You were learning to write copy. Yes, you were placing the media. Oh, a client needs a small event done, let's just get the girls to do it.
Speaker 3:So it ended up being a full education in that one particular role you know, agency life is super hard, but it's so fun it is so much fun and that's what I love about it because you kind of feel like I can do anything because I've had to do everything and. I find that really quite fascinating and I've definitely taken some of that um learning into my role as a full-time freelancer and that hasn't really changed. There's still like a little bit of everything that you get you get to touch.
Speaker 2:yeah, so when did you make the decision? Um, at what point down your career path did you make the decision to pivot to being a freelancer and what would have been like the catalyst? Because you did spend many years working for agencies? I did.
Speaker 3:I spent a lot of years working for agencies and that was a wonderful experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I was just ready to have a bit more of control over my life when it came to the time that I had to do my work, and I also wanted more control over the clients that I worked with. I think one of the frustrating things and we talked about many wonderful things about working in agencies, but one of the frustrating things is not being able to manage your own client list. Yes, okay, and I was at a point where I was like, yes, it's paying the bills, things are taken care of, but I don't necessarily feel fulfilled. And I was at a point where I felt like, ooh, I'm feeling quite drained because I'm not getting life out of these projects. I'm not getting life out of this work, and because I was feeling so completely drained by it, I decided maybe it's time for me to kind of take a break, figure out what it is I really want to do, who it is I really want to do it with and go from there how long did it take you to actually make the firm decision?
Speaker 2:because I know it's something that you probably have to think about for months, maybe longer than that. But like, how long between the thought just starting that trickle in your brain and you saying, okay, I'm going to pull the plug on this and I'm going to just go freelance.
Speaker 3:It took about six months, but only because I knew I wanted to use that six months to kind of figure out what I could be doing once I was done, because, even though I wanted to take a break, I'm the kind of girl that likes to have a plan. So I took that six months to say, okay, I need to start kind of wrapping up mentally what I'm doing here but still figure out how I'm going to survive outside of this steady paycheck and these steady clients and probably saving saving as well.
Speaker 3:Absolutely plus. I wanted to get the bonus before I left so for sure, it took about six months, and then by the end of that I was really ready to go so you can plead the fifth on this one and not answer.
Speaker 2:But what did your mother say when you told her you were leaving your full-time job?
Speaker 3:well, oh my gosh, here's the thing I remember and this is me being completely honest I'd left that job and it was maybe about a month later. I remember going by my mom's house to pick her up to go somewhere and I was feeling really, really overwhelmed, like things just were not working out the way that I wanted them to and I was just feeling completely like, why did I do this? And I remember I sat in my mother's house, I laid my head in my mother's lap I've never done this in my life, at least not as an adult and I just cried my eyes out and she said to me well, why don't you just ask me if they would take you back? And that was exactly what I needed to keep going. I was like, nope, I will not be going back.
Speaker 3:And I mean, I know that my mother comes from a different generation where they are firm believers in, but you gotta grind it out, you gotta stick to it, because the only way that you're going to get something worth in life is if you do. And I'm like, no, I am not working, however many months out of the year for a three week or possibly four weeks vacation where clients are draining me no. So it was a, it was a snap back to reality. When she said it I was like, oh no, this is not going to work for me. I am, I'm out, I'm staying out.
Speaker 3:And I think, I think out, and I'm staying out, and I think, um, no, I think from there on, it was just yeah, keep going, because this is this is very much for you, this is very much for me. So I had to make it work so how long have you been?
Speaker 2:how long ago was that decision? I mean, that was a few years, seven or eight years, seven or eight years now and today. Do you have that control that you wanted? Is it everything you wanted?
Speaker 3:yes, I do have that control and it is everything that I wanted.
Speaker 3:It doesn't always feel that way in certain moments, but anytime I stop to think about the fact that I can say, yeah, this isn't really working for me, I'll need to cut this particular contract or this particular ties, but I'm happy to recommend you to somebody else or or what have you, and I love that I have a network of colleagues that I can do that with, but it is absolutely worth it. There is definitely a peace and a clarity that it brings, and I quite enjoy being able to structure my life in a way that suits me as I get older, because there's no way that I would want to keep up the pace of work that I was doing in my all throughout my 20s and, like throughout my early 30s, into my mid 30s, and now that I'm in my 40s 110% I'm looking forward to possibly early retirement. So I know what I'm working towards and I want my life to look a certain way and feel a certain way. So being able to structure that from now is quite rewarding.
Speaker 2:I love that that you've got that plan in place. Like that, I'm a girl that loves a plan. I know I know how do you stay disciplined and on it. I think you vision board.
Speaker 3:I vision board.
Speaker 2:Does that help with?
Speaker 3:the discipline it does. I do vision boards, I do journaling, I do journaling, I do goal settings, and I don't want to say that I'm a little pedantic about it, but maybe I am, but maybe you have to be. I think I have to be because, again, it is just me who's making sure that all of these things happen. So I do like a vision board every year. This year I did like a bingo card. So that, do like a vision board every year. Um, this year it did like a bingo card, so that it came down to very, very specific goals.
Speaker 3:Like you know, I want to go to thailand, or I want to go to korea, or I want to save this much, I want to invest this much, or I want to produce three podcasts this year, and you know all those little things, and it's really helpful to be able to take those off as as you go along. That, for me, is a huge reward in itself. Um, I don't have anybody who's paying me like a bonus or they're viewing me, as you know, employee of the month. I got to be employee of the century where I'm concerned, because it's just me. So there is definitely a focus of making sure that I have things taken care of. But I also am able to give myself a great deal of grace because I can understand when I'm capable from when I'm not actually capable.
Speaker 2:Now you have a lot of course on your plate, I'm sure, and one of the things, one of the scary things about being a freelancer is what if you enter a drought period? Where how am I going to pay my bills? Because my bills come every month but my projects may be up and down. I might have five on at one time and then one, you know, or two. How do you balance work that pays versus passion projects that really give you that?
Speaker 3:fulfillment. Once I have work that is paying, I think I'm extra careful about saving and investing. I try very hard to make sure that I set myself a budget every month. I know it sounds super basic, but the basics are what works.
Speaker 2:I started really doing that this year with, like a nice Excel spreadsheet to have a proper, a real in-depth look. Okay, what am I actually?
Speaker 1:spending my money on. What do I?
Speaker 2:think I'm spending.
Speaker 3:Wow, it's definitely should have been doing that since last year, but that's the thing, and I think that that comes out of the same training we would have gone through for media planning, because it does make you very aware of where everything goes and why it needs to be allocated and where you could be losing money. So I think even learning that on the job helped me a lot in preparing myself for working for myself full time. So I'm very strict about my personal budgets. Um, and yes, I'll have a little entertainment budget.
Speaker 3:You have entertainment in your paycheck, so it works.
Speaker 3:So you know those are things that you should afford for yourself, um, but I'm very strict about budgets and I'm aggressive about saving and investing, because I do know I'm not always going to have a passion project that pays, or just mean I have projects that are paying at all. So when I need to lean into you know, know, my emergency fund or something's happened to, actually, I'm not going to say something's happened to anything, because all of my devices are listening, you all are great and nothing is going to happen to you guys, but it's just being aware that something could happen. So, um, passion projects are always what I enjoy doing because, again, that feeds the soul, but you still got to actually feed yourself. So that's where the paid work really comes in and, yeah, once I have that going on, I'm just making a concentrated effort to make sure that the money's taken care of, because anything can happen down the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, so talk to me about a passion project is conscious folk a passion?
Speaker 3:project for you. Conscious folk is a passion project for me. Anime con was a passion project for me. Um, conscious folks specifically, we're talking about caribbean wellness, or wellness from the caribbean perspective, because a lot of the times when we look at wellness through any kind of lens, it's from an international perspective and sometimes it can be a little bit, I will say it, whitewashed. So we do like to look at it from the Caribbean perspective because we want to be able to understand what we're thinking, what we're feeling, what we're recommending.
Speaker 3:I know Barbados was on recently and she was talking about how she became kind of like a yellow pages showing my age for what is cool and different and fun. That isn't the typical thing happening in Barbados and that's what we want to do when it comes to conscious folk, and that's what we're doing when it comes to conscious folk. So it's really allowing people to talk about different ideas and experiences that are not the norm. So if they're an entertainer, we're not necessarily talking about, oh, their performances and their music. We're talking about. What is your process? How do you continue? How do you heal? How do you heal? How do you pour into yourself when you're not able to do it, when your community is pouring into you. So we're kind of asking about the questions and the experiences. That may not be the norm, because there's more to people than just what they present professionally. So we try to dig a little bit deeper to find out what's happening on a very conscious level.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Now I want to ask you a slightly tougher question, which is how can we, as women, help each other to march forward? Now you mentioned barbara anista, who was the last guest I had on the podcast, and she actually mentioned you. When, I think, I asked her about her mentors, she mentioned you and I was like, oh well, I've got a surprise because we'll be, on next.
Speaker 2:Um so, but one thing we spoke about was the idea of collaboration. Yes, um, you know she's in a very similar field content creation, collaboration among individuals, rather than competition, helps everybody march forward. Um, what are your thoughts on how we as women can can just you know kind of pull each other up?
Speaker 3:push each other forward for sure yeah, um, and I also think it is making sure that you are surrounded by people who are supportive. So you mentioned the idea of there being the mentorship where, um, carla would have mentioned mentorship, and I remember when carla striking out into digital creations, social media management, all these different things, we had a lot of conversations and it was fascinating to me because I felt like it reminded me so much when I was getting right to strike out, the conversations I was having with, like Tracy Highland conversations. I even had with you conversations that I had with Tracy Fowler, conversations that I had with Sarah Odle. So all of these women in my life who I have worked with, they've worked on things that I brought to them. I've worked on things that they brought to me and recognizing okay.
Speaker 3:So there's another one of us who's about to strike out on their own. How do we make sure that person is settled and they're comfortable and they have projects and what do I have that they can work on? It's like a league of heroines, it's. It's so. Honestly, I think women save my life on a daily basis and that's not even a joke. Um, even the other day, I remember I called up a friend because I needed to get a hold of a mic because, there was, my mics weren't working. I was like, girl, do you have mics that can use?
Speaker 1:and she was like I'll be down your side later I'll drop it off, and I was like, that's what I love to hear.
Speaker 3:Um, I do think collaboration is incredibly important and it's more than feasible when you have the right type of collaborators around you, and I've been very fortunate to have incredible um female partnerships like I. I can't say that I haven't. So yeah, I haven't. So yeah, I would definitely echo what Carla said A collaboration is key.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Now last question If you went back to primary school girl, she's in her classroom. You know probably reading or writing. You walk in. What do you tell her? You know you've just come out. Come out of your delorean, or you're racing.
Speaker 3:you're like, what do you have to say to her? Oh, I would say, make an effort to stay connected to your old infant school headmistress. And the reason I say that is we just did a highlight of women that we consider to be mentors, whether we've met them or not, just something that we really admire, on Conscious Folk, where we talked about like what a woman you know from women's day, and one of the women that I highlighted would have been Esme Bascom, who was my infant school headmistress, and I lost contact with her, I think by the time I got to like secondary school and you do get kind of swept by that young age because you're thinking about all these things are happening, all these new experiences, and you kind of forget some of the people who got you to that point. You're young so you really don't know.
Speaker 3:But she passed um maybe about 15 years ago, and when I wanted to do this feature about her, I remember reaching out to her grandson and her grandson reached out to like his aunts and other teachers that she worked with and got me information so we could write this like tribute to her, and I was, as I was writing it, I was like god, I wish I kept in touch. Yeah, there was so much more that I wanted to learn from her and I was, as I was writing it, I was like god, I wish I kept in touch. Yeah, there was so much more that I wanted to learn from her, and there's so much I wish I had been able to tell her about how she really impacted my life. Um, because, when I came to Barbados because I'm originally from Trinidad I, my mother, took me to the school, but the ministry of education said well, the school is full, so you have to delay her attendance by a year my mother was like I can't do that.
Speaker 3:This child needs to be, in school, yeah but mrs bascom said yeah, we don't have any chairs, we don't have any tables, but if you bring a chair, I'll teach your daughter. And my mother brought a chair and she taught me and that, you know, was something that she didn't have to do. But she was very much a no child left behind kind of woman and I wish, if I could go back in time, I could tell myself girl, continue to talk with her, continue to communicate with her, continue to be a part of projects that she works on, because it just would have been, I think, a different, it would have added a different element of collaboration and of inspiration and mentorship to my life that I kind of wish that I had. Now I feel like I'm okay, but I do. I do wish that I had done better where that was concerned.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, but I think you'll make you know going forward, should you be in that similar position again, I think you would approach it differently, and so you know, I mean I think I've been doing that more because even with working as a freelancer, people don't talk about this, but they probably should, or maybe they do. We don't have the benefit of seeing people every single day, so we don't have the benefit of having, like that office connection. So for me, I'm quite keen of like reaching out, like hey, you good, what's up? Want to grab some coffee? You want to go for lunch? Do you want to go for breakfast? Because I want the people in my life to know well, I actually quite value you outside of what we do for each other on a work basis. So I've been trying to be more connected to the people in my life and I think that that's something that I have learned from losing connections in the past. So it's definitely helped me to think about what's going to be happening as I march forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you definitely do that. I know that you do that frequently with myself and I really do. Let me let you know now to your face.
Speaker 1:I really do value and appreciate it.
Speaker 2:the way you check in on people and I like it's definitely made a difference for me, I should say. So thank you very much for sharing your story here today. It was really nice being able to hear all about it, both personal and your professional successes as well, so I wish you all the best. So thanks very much. This has been Talk Digi to Me. March Forward.
Speaker 4:Do you have questions about your digital marketing toolkit? Contact Carly directly via WhatsApp at 266-4847, on Instagram at Carly Talks Digital, or send your email to carly at myrobinsoncreativecom. That's C-A-R-L-I-E at myrobinsoncreativecom.