Sarah Conley, of StyleIt, shares how she has lived for the past decade in NYC as a freelancer and professional sidehustler. She discuss the body confidence movement, her various work roles and how she grew her blog into a full time business.

 

Today I have Sarah Conley on the podcast. Sarah is a friend of mine going back for a long time now, probably at least half a decade. Which is a really long sounding time. In that time Sarah has been a constant inspiration for me. She runs a really prolific blog called, “Style it” or as I thought for a long time, “Style-IT”. I was totally wrong. And Sarah, beyond doing that is an expert in social media. She has run a bunch of social media and community management for a number of different companies. She’s also done a lot of innovative things in fashion and has a great community of people that she works with, as well as just a really good kind of passionate vision for what she wants to be doing in the world. Sarah also was recently diagnosed with cancer and survived, obviously because she’s here in the podcast. But also I think fought it in a really public and valuable way for the community. So, we have Sarah on this morning. Sarah thanks for joining.

 

Sarah: Hi, Thanks so much for having me.

 

Kristina: Sarah, I gave a little bit of a preamble of what you do and who you are. But could you share sort of all the different side hustles or at least a handful of the side hustles that you are most proud of that you’ve been working on for over the past decade.

 

Sarah: I usually start with the things that make me the most money, but if you’re talking about the things that i’m most proud of, you should invert that. [laughing]

I do many things and I think that’s one of the most interesting things about being a person on the internet, is that, you end up doing a lot of things and you find out that not only are you good at many things, but also those things that you’re interested in, can be valuable sources of income. So I have a blog that is ten years old this year.

 

Kristina: Congratulations.

 

Sarah: Thank you, I’m an internet grandmother. [laughs] I have also been working in social media for 9 years, which again, makes me an internet grandmother, because rarely anyone has worked in social media for that length of time. So i’ve seen many interesting changes and experienced many internet crises. I’m also a freelance writer and sometimes I help my friends negotiate their business deals, sort of, suito business manager. So, I do many things throughout the day.

 

Kristina: One of the things that you just said is really interesting, is that in the process of doing these side hustles you realized all of these things that you’re good at, that maybe you didn’t know before. But, what was the first moment where you thought, “hey, I don’t need a corporate job or, I could do this plus the corporate job. Where did it all start for you?

 

Sarah: Honestly, i would probably say college, because when I was in college I was never a person that sort of fit into any mold. I always had a laptop with me and this was, ya know between like 2001 and 2006 so that wasn’t super prevalent at the time, like I always had my laptop, I was taking it with me everywhere. There were classes that I wasn’t allowed to answer questions, because they just wanted someone besides me to answer them, which was just a really strange experience. I just never fit in, the way that other people fit in or it seems like they did. So, I knew that I had to get a job, because we all need a paycheck and my mom was the type of person who works for the state government and sees that stability, that’s really valuable. I, on the other hand, have never quite found the same value and structure and stability. So yeah I think it really started for me in college, because I was always sort of an anomaly.

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