Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Caitlin Murray this week.
I'm delighted to have Kaitlin Murray on the show, though most of you know her by her Instagram handle Big Time Adulting. I first found Caitlin's account during the pandemic when I felt like I was losing my mind. Her content was exactly what I needed to know that I wasn't alone. When I found out that she had an amazing pivot story, I knew I wanted to have her on the show. Plus, she is hilarious many of us moms. Caitlyn left her job from Eternity Leave, planning to ease
back in slowly after having her third baby. After all, she had worked when she had the first two. But then everything changed when her oldest was diagnosed with leukemia and she knew she needed to pivot to stay home full time amidst all of the pain. Caitlyn began writing. From there, she decided to start sharing her life online.
Now with over a million followers, Caitlyn has redefined what success means to her several times over, and I can't wait for you all to hear her story and become as obsessed with her as I am enjoy.
My name is Caitlin Murray and I am a content creator, a writer, and a mom.
Okay, so we are going to go in chronologic orders. We're going to back up. We're going to go little Caitlin. Oh wow, Yeah, we're like really gonna go take me back and yeah, yeah, we're really going going back. What did you like get me in the headspace? Where are you in your sibling order? Like, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
I was the second of two children. I have one older brother. I am from Massachusetts. I like to say I am from southeastern Massachusetts. I've lived like all over the south shore of Massachusetts. I grew up on Cape Cod a little bit. We started just being there in the summers. Then my family moved to our house that we spent summers in, and I went to school on
Cape Cod full time. And then my parents separated when I was in like the eighth grade, and I went to boarding school, and then my parents moved off of the Cape to two different towns, one easton one in Plymouth, Massachusetts. So that's like where I'm from. And my brother and
my family all live in Massachusetts. Still and I live in New York, and my childhood was it was great, pretty average, except for my parents' separation and divorce that iube was pretty devastating for me and kind of felt like it came out of nowhere.
I think, especially with three kids, I more and more begin to think that a sibling birth order is so formative. Do you think it was for you or do you think any of those experiences were so much more formative for you.
It's so funny because in my house, with my nuclear family here now, I feel like my kids are like to a te birth order stereotypical. But in my house growing up, it was different. My brother was more of like the rule breaker, sort of rebel between the two of us, and then I was definitely, I think, just maybe as a reaction to that, like a more people
pleaser type kiddo, sort of stayed between the lines. If you can imagine, never got in trouble played by the book What did you think you were going to be when you I mean, what didn't I think I was going to be when I grew up. I was going to be maybe like an actress. I was going to be the president. I was going to be a teacher, a million things. You know, I didn't really have any hard and fast visions, but yeah, I'm none of those things now.
So you were pretty well rounded.
I suppose thank you for saying that. Yeah, I did have a variety of interests. I still do. I still really do.
Early on, Caitlyn didn't put much weight on her career. She thought she'd get married, have kids, and stay home, and things started to fall into place when she met her husband, Michael.
I met my husband in college. We went to Middlebury up in Vermont. He was from New York, and so after graduation we were together, but like, our relationship was a rocky place at that time. We were just up and down and we were doing a lot of some breaking up and making up and thing. But I just wanted like a new experience and a couple of friends,
and I decided to move to New York. And the rest is kind of history, because my husband and I did end up blocking it in like several years later, after exploring if we were really right for each other or not. And I've been in New York ever since. You guys are still together.
I feel like people don't generally think those are going to work out those relationships that are like up and down. Did you think that it was not going to work out?
I think that there was a period of time in my early twenties after graduation that I wasn't sure. But there was like a pretty distinctive breakup that we ended up when when we got back together, felt very different and like our relationship had turned our real corner in terms of like its maturity level. And at that point I knew that he would be the one. But when we first started dating, which was a scandal because I had a boyfriend at the time, he was such a
good friend of mine. He was like my best friend at the time, and I thought this guy could easily be my husband because I just enjoy him so much. I still feel that way.
What do you think felt different when you guys got back together, Like what had changed?
Yeah, you know, we were both from parents who whose marriages were not successful, so I think that we had a lot of reservations about, you know, being super realistic about who was right for us and making sure of that before deciding to actually get married, and was almost
like quite cynical about that selection process. I mean, I feel like even then I was I sort of understood marriages about finding the person that drives you the least crazy, Like they're going to still drive you crazy, because everyone's going to drive you crazy, but the person who will like not make you be crazy yere, And so I think I went into it was like a really solid understanding that marriage is hard.
Yeah, that's totally fair. And how much did you think about having kids? How many kids? Like, how central was that to your thinking about what your life was going to look like? And did you make decisions around it.
I always wanted three kids because I had only one brother, and I always was super curious as to what a family of three or more would look like. I think I always wished I had one more sibling or that kind of thing, and just to see what that family dynamic would be like. So it was sort of this goal in my mind to get to three. But holy shit, after I had won, I was like, to do this, it's crazy. I didn't know this was going to be so hard, And so that was a real slap in
the face. Eye opener. And my husband's cousin would say, kids are like crack. You have one and then you kind of want to have another, even though it's like for you.
What were you doing professionally at the time. Did you feel like that was a real focus for you, equally to trying to figure out how to have three kids.
Professionally At that time, before having kids and while dating and at the beginning of my marriage, I was working or actually I stopped working at this place right before I got married, or as around the time I got engaged, because I was working for this company that raised money for charities based out of Ireland, and all of the way that we did that was through hosting large events, and all of the events and opportunities to entertain donors and be at parties all of the time and be
traveling to other parties in different places was never going
to be conducive to a mother of young children. So I was kind of like, I got to wrap this up and find a job that is going to be a little bit more friendly to motherhood because I really knew that I wanted kids, and I kind of figured like I would go like a very vanilla traditional path about it, where I was like, I'll get married and then I'll wait a year, and then I'll start trying to have kids, and I'll have a kid, and then all have another kid two years after that, and but
like I had it all planned out in my mind what I thought was going to be, which is of course never how it all turns out.
So what you're describing right now, I think is a lot of what we talk about, which is changing your version of success. Yes, that your version of success in that job, it sounds like, was being successful in the metrics of the job, raising money, putting on a bends, being present, all of that, and as your personal life evolved, like as your personal life changed, it was no longer meeting your your metric of success.
Yeah, I mean in that sense, I will say quite honestly that I don't think I ever took that career path of mine and even the job that I got after that to continue working to too seriously, because in my mind I was going to become probably a stay at home mom. So when I became pregnant with my first child, in my mind, I was like, that's it,
I'm going to become a stay at home mom. I've been I've been ready for this, I've been this is what I've been thinking I wanted to do, And then when the baby came, I was like, holy shit, I want to go back to the office. This is so hard, you know. I was so jealous of my husband, who would be able to like skip out the front door and go get a coffee and like go to the bathroom by himself and eat lunch and shit like that. And I was like, oh my god, this like is
so different from what I imagined it would be. I can't even begin to describe how duped I feel right now, honestly. And I had this conversation with my boss before I left to have the baby, and I was really honest and I said, you know, I don't want to trick you into thinking that I'm going to come back after
a maternity leave or something. And she was like, Kaitlyn, take your maternity leave, and if you decide at the end of that that you don't want to come back, I will be totally okay with that, but you might feel differently, like just take my word for it. And she was like, we can restructure your like let you come in on a part time basis. And that's what
I actually ended up doing. I went to down just three days a week in the office, and I was so grateful for her for leaving that option open for me. That I didn't anticipate wanting to use. And it was a real like a mental saving grace for me to have that. By the time, like I went back on maternity leave, I thought, like you would think I would just be like crying, like, oh my god, I can't leave my baby. I was skipping down my walkway to
get out the door to work. Now. Granted, like I knew, I was also being part time and I would have time home with the baby, so I was very lucky to have that set of circumstances, but I was really shocked to feel the way that I felt. It was
a definitely like turned my world upside down moment. So after I left that job that was like the fast paced party life, and I went to work in a different fundraising capacity but in a school, and I was dealing with high and neet worse individuals doing fundraising there, and it was a very like much more structured like work life friendly environment. It was not these lavish party situations. It was very PG everything, PGPC everything, and it was great for like the purpose that it served at that
time of my life. But I was not passionate about where I was or what I was doing, and there came a point in time, but something's happened in my life that made it very clear that I needed to be more at home.
When we come back, we hear how Caitlin's life was turned upside down in a blink of an eye. After finally finding her footing back at work, Caitlin received news that no mother wants to hear.
So I had my first two while I was working there, when my oldest was three and my middle at the time, who was my youngest, was only one. My oldest was diagnosed with leukemia and that ended up obviously turning my whole world upside down. And the place where I worked was wonderful about that situation for me, and they allowed me to kind of like restructure my job however I wanted it to be at the time working from home
as much as I needed or wanted indefinitely. And this was well before the pandemic, and working from home was like not as normalized as it is now, which was
so nice. But this was a long process. My son was in treatment for over three years, and during time I also became pregnant with our third child, and he was born in May of twenty nineteen, and at that time, my oldest who was still in treatment, was well enough to go back to school, but was still super fragile and would have to go to the hospital right away if he had a fever because he had a port in his chest, and I really needed to be readily
available and on call, and I couldn't be commuting into the city. We were living out in the suburbs at that time. We still live out in the verbs, but I needed to be there immediately if he were to get sick, and especially if he had become febrile. So I took that as my queue to exit the structured working world as it were. And that was really hard.
Even though I wasn't like super dedicated to my job and that career per se, it was something that was mine that was not about being a mom, and it was like this wonderful escape for me to just be working and doing something outside of my role as mom and caregiver. And to give that up felt like I was leaving this whole like part of my identity for grabs or just like a side and giving, you know,
sort of giving up on that part of me. But it and that's where that whole redefinition of success really came into play, and I had to really focus on the fact that my most important and valued place at that time was with my kids. And you know, it was my honor to be there for my son when he was sick, and I would do it a thousand
million times over. But for me personally, it did feel like I was making a deeper sacrifice of myself because even though that job wasn't what I wanted, I knew I wanted more personally for like a deeper sense of fulfillment.
You talk about this identity shift like that you can both things can be true. You can want to be home with your kids and you had always wanted it, and you can be sad about that loss of identity for yourself. To me, like, I'm guessing this, but your identity probably became your external identity. Probably became even more merged with your family life than an average mom who would step away from her and be with her kids,
because you became like the mom of the kid with cancer. Yeah, I was fully part of who I was and what I had to be doing at the time. And this is where the huge part that I didn't expect and didn't envision came fully into play in my life was, which was that I didn't want to be the full
time stay at home mom. Like but this is where women have such a get the short end of the stick all of the time, because men don't have to feel that guilt about not being there for and with the kids, Like it is just a given that they will be working. It's always a given for them, and there's no question of who's going to if they're going to be the ones to stay home, or if you're going to get help or what it's it's always on what's what is the woman going to do right? And there's always.
Something that you have to set aside in any scenario. I mean, unless you were like just fully in love with being home with your kids and it works for your family and the financial structure of your family, then I'm like, oh my god, you're so lucky that you don't have to feel the torment of being there but kind of not wanting to be there, but knowing that it's important for you to be there and that it's a valuable job and the hardest job and all of that.
To sort through her complicated emotions around it all, Caitlin turned to writing and started a blog.
At the beginning, it definitely felt really heavy, and it was heavy. There were a period of months where I honestly just like did not really feel like joking or laughing or didn't feel like I was able to access
a lot of joy at that time. But what I had started doing fairly early on in my son's treatment process was writing to family and friends about not just like updates, but something more anecdotal, and I would talk about our lives altogether, what I was going through mentally as a mom at that time, and I was able to touch on and tap into humor there and really
like let some stuff rip in my writing. That felt so good to be able to say, because I felt like I was still honoring, like the hard parts of what we were going through and then able to just get a little release and take the edge off a little bit with the humor. And little by little I continued to really tap into that and lean on it a lot as a coping mechanism for what we were
going through. And it's one of those things where now on my Instagram account, all I do is make fun of kids and the challenges and the struggles of what it really is like being a parent. And it's not about the cancer stuff like it's about the every day, the mundane. It's stuff that I felt from the very beginning of becoming a mom. But I didn't know that it was like okay to talk about that stuff until I had started going through this difficult situation with my son,
and I got through that. And I don't know if this is an expletive free podcast, but today it's not because I really didn't give a fuck about what anyone felt or thought or said about what I had to say about what it was like to be a mom, and that at that time, because I was really in the trenches and I knew my worth and my value as a mom, I had a lot of conviction in that.
Going through those really tough moments. Obviously you would never wish it upon anybody, but going through tough moments like that really does make you tougher to criticism because you really truly give a fuck less what people think and like how you process it, because you're like I made it, like I made it through or I'm making it right now, and so I'm really uninterested in how you judge me in it.
Yeah, it's very freeing in a lot of ways of so many things, you know, in a way that I can't say that I always am good about this, but not getting bogged down as much by little things, or really appreciating and finding a ton of gratitude in the little things, which goes along with I think the like not caring about the things that aren't that important, such as someone else's opinion of you when it's not hurtful, you know, like when you're not like hurting anyone or
doing something like what does it matter what you think? I'm saying how I feel and I'm talking about my experience. You know, I'm not telling you how you need to feel.
And she does this masterfully on her Instagram account. She showcases what's real and honest in a way that feels both deeply unique and completely relatable. After the break, we dive into how and why Caitlyn decided to transition her blog over to social media. Welcome back to the show. After a few years of blogging, Caitlyn found her way to social media in a way might not expect through the publishing industry.
And that's when I actually ended up getting started with my Instagram account, which took me to a whole new career path in a wonderful way that was sort of born out of this really difficult experience that I was going through. But all this to say that, like, your life can totally change, and there's so much room for different careers and endeavors that you may never have expected that are completely outside of what you've been trained to do or have done throughout your life.
So when you made the transition, were people sending your blog around?
Like?
Did your blog start to go around as a public platform and then you transitioned it to an Instagram account? And why not use your name? When you started a bit?
It did go around, but like very minimally, just like probably from a family friend network perspective, like it was definitely not reaching far and wide. And that is sort of what ended up propelling me to start my Instagram act out because a woman who lives in my town, who worked in the editing world for years, had seen it and asked if I would be interested in her showing it to her publisher, and I was like, this
would be wonderful. I love writing, And the publisher sort of came back and was like, this writing is fine, She's fine, But like, this woman has no platform we're not going to give her a fucking book deal, you know, like scram And so then I kind of realized how that world works, and I was thinking, maybe I should take my show on the road, get on social media, and see if I can build a platform. So that's
how I got that part started. And yeah, so the blogging and the emailing of our experience was not the thing that gained me an audience. Yeah.
So when you started the account really to be able to give herself a platform for the blog to make it a book, did you start it in the same space, like, in the same headspace that you were saying, I'm trying to use humor to get through this really hard cancer moment because your content now is not related to it. So did it evolve or was it always focused more on your experience in the every day Yeah?
I think. And I didn't answer the part you asked, why didn't I use my name? I had gone back and forth on that. I'm not sure why I didn't. Sometimes I wish that I did use my name, but I had just named my blog Big Time Adulting, even when I was just sending it to family and friends, and I just stuck with it. I just thought that some of the other mom accounts that I had seen on Instagram had like names, not their name, but like
fucking names I don't know whatever. So this was my name and that's what I went with and here we are. But yeah, the beginning, I wasn't quite sure about like
what and how I was going to be sharing. But I think that I knew that I had a lot on my mind about just the day to day stuff, and that I was thinking all of these funny things about what my days are like and all the craziness that goes on in a day with little kids, and how easy it would be to make fun of them, and that people needed to know that kids should be made fun of more.
Yeah, I mean, I really can't be in to tell you how many times my friend sent me your content and they're like, Emily, this thing that you've been like privately complaining to us about our in our text chain, like she's actually saying it out loud. And I think that you gave a lot of us like a permission unlock to say yes, I can be like it's the both things, like yes, I could be happy that I have these kids and this is really hard and it's okay for me to complain about it.
Yeah, It's one of those things that you don't feel is okay to say when you first become a mom, because there's so much ingrained in us about what being a good mom looks like. And a lot of that I think goes back to like some deep seated, like patriarchal trauma that we have about like being a good wife and a mother and all that shit. And there's a lot of martyrdom in motherhood, you know, things that we say or do or don't do and kind of are willing to die on the proverbial cross for that
are not really serving us. And so think that like when you're able to talk about this stuff, especially through like a humorous lens, because that always gives it, like it's much more palatable for the masses when you make it funny, you know that it breaks down a lot of those walls that we feel like we have up as moms, that we have to present a certain way or look a certain way as a mother or else
you're a bad mom. And that's just not true, you know, because there's so much going on behind the scenes and behind the curtains that we're all experiencing and dealing with them or just thinking that we suck at this or whatever, and I was like, you know, I'm just going to put it out there and say all the things that I suck yet to everybody, for anyone who wants to hear.
It didn't take long for Caitlin's account to catch on and go viral during COVID. As moms everywhere, we're looking for anyone to talk honestly about what parenting was truly like, and Caitlin filled that gap in the market flawlessly.
I did have a lot of growth during COVID because I think that there was actually it was a highly relatable situation for me because we had done so much isolating and so much staying at home with our son while he was sick that I had a lot of this material was just stuff that I had been feeling and thinking along the way while I was cooped up
with my kids. That was a completely not new situation for me at that point, and I was like, I've got material for days on this, and then it just became it was super relatable to the masses at that point too, So a lot of that stuff did go pretty viral. Good morning. Welcome back to the Shit Show. I'm Kaitlyn Murray with Big Time Adulting, live from one of the coronavirus hotspots in the nation. We'll come back
to the shit Show. I'm Kaitlyn Murray with Big Time deuilting live here from the corner of my bedroom where I'm hiding from my children this week.
Had you been thinking as you create it like that you were kind of tracking growth, like, were you tracking trends? Were you really conscious about it or it was just sort of a brain dump spot for you.
I think a little of BOLF because I knew that I had to be sort of true to myself and authentic in my messaging if I wanted to be sustainable and consistent with it, because like you know, I just wanted to be able to show up every day like as I was I could, you know, I go on there no makeup, like woke up first thing looking like death warmed over and ready to just you know, diarrhea of the mouth, whatever it is that's at the top of my mind about the kids and the things that
are happening in my house. So I knew that I had to be able to like make that happen every day. But part of that is because like the algorithm response to consistent, regular output of content, and that I was like, I can do that, but I just have to be able to show up as I am.
Was there one particular or a couple particular that really went viral and you're like, Okay, we've hit something here.
I think the first one that went viral was a video of me dancing with Luky strapped to the front of me to back that ass up in our kitchen, and it was like I had sunglasses on, he had sunglasses on, type saying, and the floor was covered in like markers and stuff. And I think it just was like, I don't know, if something it hit, it got shared by somebody who had a big account, and then it
went all over. And then after that it was like drips and drabs of things that like performed well, like decent engagement, and then things that were like whoa that really got shared far and wide, And a few of those things were at the beginning of COVID for sure. But yeah, it's been a pretty like steady growth process throughout.
I will say I did see some like immediate rewards within the first maybe five to eight months, I probably had like twenty thousand followers or something, and I was like, wow, that's growth. I can't believe I have twenty thousand followers on Instagram from spewing this shit in my kitchen, you know.
And so how do you think now about your parameters? Like how do you structure your work? How do you think about your parameters around your work and your home? Like you're still you still have three pretty young kids. It takes a lot of time, but you're very successful.
Well thanks. I feel like a chicken with my head cut off, like all of the time pretty much. I don't have a ton of help, Like I only have my babysitter. I'm very particular about like how much people how much I want other people around, Like I really prefer to be alone. I have a babysitter a couple afternoons a week pretty much, and then if needed, when I have like an event or something like that, I call it auxiliaries or call her back in or to
get more help. But it is become a lot to handle because about a year and a half ago, I started taking my content and my work like much more seriously as a business, which was sort of part of the plan. I was sort of always playing a long game to wait till I got a certain size of an audience to start focusing more on the business aspect of what I was doing. I never wanted to be like an influencer in the very traditional sense, like kind of selling other products or doing a lot of brand
deals and that kind of thing. I do some of that stuff, and it's great to monetize all the work that I put into this, which is it's really cool to be able to do that, but that's not like my long term goal. So I was always sort of playing a long game, and I had the privilege to do that because my husband was always the breadwinner and he was able to support us while I was kind of doing this as like a let's see what happens
type thing. But now it's become a full on business and a lot of work, and it's my life is super busy and crazy, but I feel like every mom's life is super busy and crazy, so I'm just like everybody else. And to be honest, I shouldn't even say that, because I really adore being able to do what I'm doing. It feels like so much fun, it's so much fun. What do you think your version of success is? Right now? That's such a good question. I keep like changing my
mind on that. I think that what I have always felt is when I started this that I truly did want to monetize it in a very meaningful way, like at the beginning. But I didn't do anything to monetize it for quite a while. But I think that that's also one of those things it's like important to say. Even though I didn't know what would happen, it was sort of like a little bit like throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks at first, and what
is this and what am I doing? I did feel deep down that I wanted to turn it into something big and I wanted it to be successful monetarily, and I still feel that way, And I feel like women don't always say that that they're like hoping to make a lot of money what they're doing right and what they're putting their time and effort into. So that was
always definitely a goal for me. My version of success, I think, would be to build a business, a real substantial business of my own, and make it successful through using my audience, you know, as a consumer. For whatever that is. It has to be something that's like definitely really meaningful to me that I'm going to be willing to talk about and sell and that kind of thing. So I haven't quite figured. There's a lot of like balls in the air and ideas and irons and the fire.
So it's kind of waiting and narrowing some things down.
Do you come back to that book idea now that you actually did build the audience?
So I am writing a book right now. Also, I have a book deal and I have another year to finish it, But I like have not talked about it that much because I don't want to get sick of
hearing myself talk about it. But the book that I am writing right now is a collection of short stories, which is just perfect for me, and I feel like it's also really great for my audience, who are you know, pretty much all moms that don't have a lot of time necessarily to sit and read a huge book, and that they can take these little, like bite sized stories
and read one before bed or something like that. But yeah, I think I just felt that during the process of writing to my friends and family about what was going on with my son, that I was super therapeutic and I was finding a ton of joy and outlet in that process, and that I loved doing it and thought that I would love to one day maybe write a book if I were given the opportunity.
We had chatted a little while ago and you had said something to me about how you're not sure that this, like you don't want to kind of bank on like this being the thing forever.
Yeah. Well, I think social media is just such a it's like the wild West, you know, like there it's lawless out here on social media. That's sort of what I what I mean when I was saying that I want to build a business that's like sustainable on its own without relying on me being on Instagram all day every day, which is something that I enjoy doing, but I want to just be able to do it just
for enjoyment eventually. So in that sense that it's not like selling somebody else's product to rely on the way that you're monetizing it, Because if that's what you're doing, then you need to be reliant on social media, right, You're totally reliant on your audience and these brand deals coming to you. But if you build your own thing and you have your own product and you're able to.
You do still want to obviously use your network or your social media network to put it out there and advertise for yourself, but that it would be like successful independently.
I also want to talk a little bit more about your use of humor in dark times. It's something that obviously has come from a very personal place for you, and you've been quite successful at it. And I think a lot of people right now are trying to figure out, like feel like they're in a dark time. I feel like I'm in a dark time. How do we use humor or how do we access it? How do we
feel like it's acceptable to use? Yeah, it's funny. I mean like I always feel like it's acceptable to use, but not everybody feels that way, which I've learned over the last week or so, Like you can't just some people are just not always ready for a joke or whatever. I mean within your personal circles and stuff. I think it's like.
You just let it fly, but there has to be a certain part of you if you want to be if you want to go without route, and that's like the person that you represent that has to stop fucking caring about what everybody thinks about what you're going to say all of the time. You just have to really follow what's right for you and use it when it feels like you're ready to. I did feel, like I said, there was a period of time where I didn't feel too funny about everything, but I did. I did get
back into that. I did tap back into that, and I just I laugh and I joke, and I say, it's quite the defense mechanism that I use to shield myself from the real feelings. But I don't. I really do like to get deep about real feelings and stuff too. And I just think it's important to be able to laugh. And who doesn't want to laugh? Right? It's just feels so good totally.
What is something we look back at all this What is something that at the time you thought it can be the big thing, or can be something else that you thought was really a negative, and now in retrospect you see it as having really launched you into the person that you are now.
I think that when you're younger and before, maybe like things happened to you that allow you to have less fucks to give or something like that, you feel like you have you put a wall up and you don't show your vulnerable sides, and it's hard to like maybe a peer, it's not weak, but it may maybe in your mind feels like it's it would appear weak to
be honest about your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities. And that I've really found, especially since starting my social media account, that talking about that stuff and where I feel like I have shortcomings and weaknesses or shame and stuff like that has really been the thing that's attracted people probably the most to me and my page, because I feel like I can be honest about my challenges and I'm okay with that, and I think that that's just like
breaking down walls makes everybody feel better and that they can say how they really feel and not be judged and or feel censored and just to be themselves.
You know, they're so great. I think I told you to Scalen. But when I was setting out to do this podcast, I thought I needed an agent, so I went. I met with like every agency, and they would put me in the news division because they thought I was news and the like. But you're not trying to be a cable news host, so actually we don't know what to do with you. And I was like no, I'm trying to not be news. Yeah, and then I really didn't know what to do with me because I know platform
that wasn't news. And in the process of everybody rejecting me, I was like, Okay, actually I'm going to build it myself. Yeah, like I'm going to do it myself because if they can't see the vision, then actually I don't need them.
Yeah. And I think that like we sort of doubt ourselves all of the time, like, oh, I don't know what I'm doing, I can't do this like every but people who do this know what they're doing or like they've done it before. They're getting professional advice and that kind of thing. And the really like the real truth is is that nobody really knows what they're doing at all. And if they think that they do, they they're probably wrong. You know. They probably are changing paths like left and
right along the way. It's like you just have to go out and start and sort of figure it out for yourself. No one's coming to save you. You got to do it yourself. But totally thank you.
Caitlyn's been so great.
Yeah, thanks guys, good to see you. Emily.
Caitlyn and her family live here on the East Coast, and in between all the kids' activities, mom duties and social media fame, she has also had time to host a podcast. You can listen to her show, Big Time Adulting anywhere you get podcasts. Plus, there's a very special episode with yours truly, so be sure to give it a listen. You can follow Caitlin on Instagram and TikTok at Big Time Adulting talk to You next Week. Thanks
for listening to this episode of She Pivots. If you made it this far, you're a true Pivoter, so thanks for.
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