Product Manager to Food Blogger: Turning a Hobby Into an Income Source Post Layoff

When it's your second layoff, and you have a hobby that has brought passive income in the past, what do you do?


In this episode, I spoke with Christina Tattory, a veteran Product Manager who's turned to her hobby to help navigate tough times in a rough job market post layoff.  Christina gives us a look into the life of a Food Blogger.  We discuss what happens behind the scenes, what it takes to get into creating a food blog, and the importance of SEO (search engine optimization) We also discuss the importance of finding a job that supports your mental health. After listening, don't forget to check out her amazing blog with super delicious recipes.

                                                               
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @rebootloadingpodcast

Interested in becoming a guest? Email me: rebootloading@gmail.com

Get in touch with Christina  here:
              Food Blog:
https://simpleeverydayrecipes.com

              Social media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simpleeverydayrecipes/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinatattory/

Transcript

00:04
Hi, welcome to the Reboot Loading Podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie. Hello everyone. On today's episode, I'm here with Christina Tottori. She's a mom of two and a long time product manager. She was most recently laid off this past January. One of the exciting things that I am wanting to talk to her about is she is now working on doing food blogging. So please.

00:32
Welcome Christina to the Reboot Loading Podcast. Hi, I am very excited to be here. I've been in product management. I was in product 11 years. I've built really cool features. And while doing all of that, I've always had my hobby, which has been food blogging and food photography. So I started that, I think it's 2017, 2018-ish, and...

00:57
Now that I've been laid off, I can spend more time with it. So I've just been diving into that more and having a blast. That's awesome to hear because a lot of us have realized being laid off is we have other sides and some creative outlets that we want to pursue. One of the positives, I guess, of a layoff would be that you have more time to devote to some things that really help you and that are really good outlets for you.

01:25
So that's exciting. I know that with the layoff, that can be pretty jarring to your mental health. And I know that you had mentioned you were laid off twice and at one point you were laid off when you were pregnant. Yeah, my first layoff, I was around 27 weeks pregnant, my son, my second kid, and was interviewing, found a job pretty quickly. And in the last five years, it's been...

01:52
way more apparent to me being in product management that companies don't actually know what product management is and what the actual benefits to product management is at a company. And so I think for me, it's a blessing in disguise type thing that I was shifting more away from actual product management in the last five years. I was starting to move away from doing actual product, which is what I love.

02:20
to do and that's why I went into that role, you know, 11, 12 years ago. That's interesting because what you mentioned about product and the company's not really understanding what product managers do in my job search and looking for things that I'm trying to do. It's just interesting to see some of these job descriptions these days and the titles that they're giving years ago, you know, it was, it was easy. It's like, okay, what do you do? Oh, I am an engineer.

02:46
I am a cashier. I am a teacher, right? Now it's like, they have these elaborate names for things. And then if you read the job descriptions, they don't match up in any way, right? Like they'll have this elaborate description of something. It's like, oh, that's just product management or oh, that's just project management. Yeah. But that shows you like a lot of companies aren't really understanding. But like you said, when you're starting to move away from something that you actually love doing, what do you do then?

03:16
You're gonna have to pivot some way. You're gonna have to figure out your next. Yeah, and it's funny because when I look back at a lot of what I've done over the years, you know, I tried college out and it just wasn't for me. I didn't love it. I didn't necessarily know 100% what I wanted to do. And so I got a job at an animal health company. I was customer service analyst, but I was actually playing the role of kind of like a junior product manager.

03:44
also customer service, and then a little bit of web development because I was helping build some of the veterinary websites. And so it gave me a really good taste of a few different areas. And I was like, oh, wow, this is awesome. So I started on the side learning web development. And I was like, this is really cool. I can build websites, I can build programs. And funny enough, I met my husband at that company as well. And I was like, I still don't 100% know what I wanna do. And...

04:12
Then as I got towards the end of that, I was like, building the website is fun and all, but it's more fun solving the actual problem and identifying what the problem is. And you know, what's the what and the why behind it? And so that is what got me into product right from there. And you know, my first job, I as a junior PM, I hit the ground running. It was like, I didn't have a ton of experience, but they gave me a chance and loved it ever since I've had.

04:41
great mentors along the way. I've had two managers over the last, you know, 11, 12, 12 years that I've learned an incredible amount from and it's been a lot of fun being in product. You know, I'm splitting my time right now between looking for jobs and then diving into, you know, more of what my hobby was over the last eight years or whatever it's been driving, you know, income that way for my family and

05:08
I have that creative outlet on top of, I'm still doing a lot that I've learned in product management along the way. I absolutely love that you mentioned about the college thing. Having the ability to kind of explore and figure out what drives you and learning that through having different jobs, like you're gonna grow in a completely different way.

05:33
then yes, going to college, you can become more well-rounded and whatnot, but also having those personal experiences and realizing what it is you do want to do and what you don't want to do early on, I feel like that can be so much more valuable in so many other ways. Having kids, I think too, has helped me realize, not realize, but really kind of see that like you can't expect a 17-year-old or an 18-year-old to know what they want to do, right? Like if

06:01
You know, if my kid says to me, my daughter is like, yeah, I'm going to go look at schools. Great. We'll go look at them. If she wants to be a doctor, right, or, you know, whatever it is that you absolutely need a degree in. Yeah, I'm going to support her every step of the way. But if you don't know what you want to do and you want to just take a year off and work, then figure out what you want, you know, during that time, figure out what you want to do. And then maybe, yeah, you're going to go to college after that. That's great, too.

06:31
not going to let you live at home for free, right? And you're just going to kind of sit around and you know, my husband didn't go to college at all either. And so, you know, my husband does very well. He's in the tech industry and you know, he is grown up to where he is with no college degree. So it is possible, right? You just need to make sure that you find what you really love and you dedicate the time to learning what you need to learn and you gain that hands-on experience. I like that you

06:59
are open about that and understanding about that because it is something, and especially with my own kids, I'm seeing that now where I'm looking at them going, they're so young and how can they possibly know what they wanna do for the rest of their life? And the one thing, like what you had said is just learning and learning about the things you like, that's the one thing that I tell them is like, I don't care what you do, but just don't ever stop learning. Don't ever stop trying to propel yourself forward in whatever it is that you wanna do.

07:28
And you can change your career many times, right? There are some people that they're in corporate and they love it and they have kids and they decide, you know what, I wanna be a stay-at-home mom. That's a career in and of itself. And for someone that says otherwise, I will argue until the end of time, stay-at-home moms have the hardest job. And that's where you can change your career. And so that's kind of what, you know, it's not to say that I'm never going back into product management, you know, I'm looking, but for what I'm doing,

07:58
it's one of those things that maybe I'll make the decision that, yeah, I'll, I'll do this because it does, you know, most people don't realize that food blogging and food photography bring in a significant amount of income. Um, you know, I have my food blog, but I also do, you know, when you go to people's food blogs and you see those pictures, not every food blogger takes their own pictures. So I take pictures for

08:23
food bloggers as well, because maybe they just want to be the creative part behind the recipe, right? And they don't want to deal with the photography part. They will hire someone to do that photography. And so it gives me a way to have multiple ways of income coming in. And I've got that creative outlet with it as well. It's not a formal career change, but if I decided to, I could change my career and say, you know what? I'm just going to be done with product management and move into this and see where it goes.

08:53
And this is a part of that creative process as well, figuring out now at this point in your life, after having dealt with being laid off and dealing with this particular job market, which is absolutely insane. We all know this. Yeah. Now you're able to focus on something and what you were saying earlier, it was like, okay, kind of like a trial and error thing, you know, especially with kids and having them figure out for themselves. And I know that you bake and you cook. So it's like.

09:23
recipe, right? When you first make this particular batch of cookies that you want to make and you're like, oh no, it's too much, you know, baking soda or something. And it's like, okay, next time you're going to tweak it a bit. And that's really like, for my quirky, you know, comparison here, that's really like life, right? Yeah. In our career because we're always going to be tweaking a little bit to make it what we want to get that best tasting cookie out of it or whatever you're making. Well, and that's what's crazy. You know, I, you know, my website,

09:52
It's called simple everyday recipes. My main focus of that is, you know, I'm a mom of two and the most stressful time of day is dinnertime. So between four and seven, getting them dinner, fed, it's a night for baths, whatever it is, and then getting them to bed, it's chaotic. You know, my phone is sitting across the kitchen, don't even know who's trying to contact me because if they're exhausted, hungry, everything, thrown into those three hours

10:22
The last thing I want to do is order food every single night. Sure, are there weeks that we have done that? Absolutely. But I want to create recipes that truly the everyday family, whether it's you've got kids that you're trying to feed, you're a single parent, right? And you don't want to have to clean up massive dishes after you make dinner for the family, or you don't have kids at all, you just had a long day and you want a home cooked meal, but you don't want it to take that long.

10:50
So I mainly share a lot of recipes that are relatively quick, minimal dishes. I do throw in some, I say more complex, but things that are more than one pot meal type things, within there, but my main focus is aimed towards, look, you want a good meal, but you don't wanna sacrifice on flavor. Here, I'm gonna give you a recipe for that. And so that's where my hobby has always been and a way to just kind of de-stress after

11:19
spending the day in corporate, right? Some days you have eight hours worth of meetings and your brain is dead. I would just sign off and go start cooking or baking. And it would be a fun way for me to just create new things, try new things, and also just de-stress. And so that has always brought in a level of income over the years, whether it's through ad revenue that gets generated, sponsorships through different brands. I've worked with many large brands.

11:49
whether it's just creating a recipe for them, doing photography for them, whatever it is. And then, you know, also just the food photography piece. And so focusing on that, it's always been part-time. And so up until recently, I've been able to double down and really focus full-time on it. And it pays off when you do that with food blogging, the more you put into it. There is a lot of behind the scenes that a lot of people don't know about. And that's where...

12:17
you're doing everything from creating the recipe, you might make the recipe six times before you actually share it. So like, there's times I get it right on the first time and I'm like, awesome, this is great. I'm confident that I could share it. But then there's times where I'm like, eh, still need to tweak it. Or, you know, my husband is my taste tester and he is very honest, I love, with anything that I create. He will tell me if something tastes horrible or if it's awesome. And so I'll...

12:45
make recipes smaller batches and then make sure that they're good to go. And I make only things that our family will eat. You know, I'm not going to make something that I'm just going to go to waste. And you know, so I'm creating the actual recipes. I'm doing all the photography for it, everything from, you know, if I think that it's going to be helpful for kind of a step by step process kind of shoot, I'll do that. All of the photo editing, food photography is very different than

13:13
portrait and things like that. There's very specific kind of ways you have to do things. So a lot of it is like figuring out styling of how you're gonna do something. What is your content calendar? I'm already working on recipes that are pumpkin related or something that is more fall because you have to get your content out early enough for Google or Pinterest, all these different sites to pick it up, managing brand relationships and projects that you have with them.

13:43
managing my website, my subscribers, doing any like keyword research, you know, all of that is behind the scenes of what actually happens. And I'm a huge advocate of I will never charge someone for a recipe, but I try and educate everyone on what that actually means. So most people hate ads on websites and don't get me wrong, there are some websites that I go to and I'm like, oh my god,

14:12
Yeah, I recipe or the article, whatever it is. Yeah, I was, I was just thinking about that because there are some that I will go to and it's like, where is the recipe? Like I, there's so many ads in between that I just say, forget it. Yeah. And that's where, so like, depending on that, you know, there are many ad companies out there. There's two that are pretty much the top two in the industry. And so, and I'm with one of them and they, both of them allow you, you know, to set density of ads.

14:42
and some placement. And so I have always been coming from the product background user experience, right? Like more ads doesn't mean more money. And so for me, I want to make sure that, you know, accessibility is something that I focus on, but also that you just have an overall good experience. If you're coming to my website to get a recipe, you shouldn't see 50 ads on your way down to get it. And so I will

15:10
strategically place them and make sure that when you hit jump to recipe, you're not taken to an ad before the actual recipe, you're taken directly to the recipe. Um, sure. Does that take away some revenue for me? Yes, but there's a larger return on removing it because more people are going to come back because that annoyance isn't there, right? Your engagement is higher. And

15:35
I want to be able to offer free recipes, but I also need to be able to get paid for it. And so, you know, primary income is through ads. The recipes are always going to be free to you. And so that's how I do it. I make sure that the experience is great for users. I've actually had a couple of people comment to me as well on the podcast. Like they're like listening to it because I don't have any ads. And I'm like, I will eventually need to because I got to make a living too. Like I got to recoup some of the money.

16:04
I like that you are talking about all of the things that happen behind the scenes. When you get into what you're wanting to do, right? In your case with the food blogging and with the pictures. For me, it's like, I love doing this podcast, but I didn't realize all of the effort and all of the work that you have to put into it. Like you said.

16:26
the behind the scenes pieces and managing all those things. And then you have to, you're basically your own marketing person. You're basically your, your own accountant. You're your own everything. I mean, you are the one stop shop doing all of the things. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of dedication. It really is a labor of love. And I feel like anytime anybody wants to go into their own entrepreneur adventure or solopreneur adventure, it's.

16:54
It is not instantaneous. It is not without a lot of hard work. There's very few people out there. Like if, even if you look at influencers or everybody trying to get on social media to be like getting their bazillion views and all of those things, it's not without a lot of work. There are very few that can have a viral video and it continued to be viral. Right?

17:22
And it's funny, I've always been just doing this as kind of the side gig and I, social media, I actually don't spend a ton of time on social media when it comes to my website. And that's mainly just because I'm one person, right? So I need to figure out where do I get the most, right? From where I spend my time. And so trying to deal with Instagram's algorithm and like Facebook and all of these other things, like it changes every other day.

17:52
I don't want to be dealing with that. And so most of my traffic is organic, right? You'll find it coming from Google, Bing, wherever, right? You're searching. It also will come through Pinterest, which it is social media, but it is really just another search engine. And so that is where, or referrals, right? So other people that I have done work with, that's where most of my traffic comes from. What I love the most is just sharing the recipes. I love...

18:21
getting emails or comments from readers saying, I tried this and it was great. Or, hey, I was able to bake this for my daughter for her birthday or whatever it is. And that's what I love the most from it is, I make these recipes for my family and I know how much they enjoy it. And I know how much less stressful certain times of day are for me with some of these recipes. And so being able to...

18:48
have someone else benefit from it, that is what I love most out of it, is getting that, right? And so, I see a lot of referrals with that. I had like a chicken wing recipe go viral and it was one of those things where, I was getting emails of, I tried this, my husband didn't think that these were actually gonna be good and I made them and now we make them for every big party that we have. And so those are the things where it's like, I wanna prove you wrong.

19:19
I'm doing a burger week coming up and everyone says like, oh, you can't have a good tasting turkey burger. Well, I'm gonna prove you wrong. I made them, right? The family tried them and they were like, wow, these are insanely good. And so it's just things like that where I wanna try and prove you wrong for certain things. And I get to do it creatively, which is always fun. Really, it's just all a labor of love. Like you have to have a certain thing that's driving you to continue to do this. Otherwise...

19:47
You can't go into these sort of things, not having that passion about what you're doing. It will not work. And it's the same with, like you were saying about putting smiles on people's faces or like getting them to send you messages saying like, I love this recipe and all those things. It's like my sister and I do jewelry and other various art shows and that sort of thing.

20:12
We did one recently and my youngest daughter was there with us and always the question when we come home is just, how did you do? How much money did you make? And it's always like, it's not as much as you were probably hoping for me to make. But she had made the comment this time because she got to see it in action and she said, I see why you like this because people were so happy to see particular jewelry pieces and that...

20:39
They just smiled at them and they were laughing and talking about different stories about like, how would they wear them and, and those sorts of things. And she's like, it's fun. And then you get to talk to different people. You get to meet different vendors. Like it's a whole different experience. And I was so happy that she got to see that side of it because she's understanding more so like, this really is like a heart and soul thing that I had to put in there. It's not just something that I can say, Oh, I'm going to make a, my full

21:09
climb living off of this. No, we have to have, we have to hustle in other ways, right? We have to figure out the multiple strings of income in order to do the things that keep us happy and keep our company. Yeah, and it's funny because I know some food bloggers that five, six years ago, they, or even more than that, where they were working in corporate and they decided to make the jump to just doing food blogging full-time. And I thought about it at some points and

21:39
Being in the tech industry, I know that you have AI, you have all these different things, right? There isn't always the guarantee with a lot of that. Google's gonna be getting rid of, they've said they're gonna be getting rid of cookies for the last two years. They were supposed to do it this year. They're not gonna be doing it now until 2025. And so that also affects, right, revenue for food bloggers, but anyone, right, that runs ads, that will affect their revenue. And so for me, it's always just been

22:08
Is it going to be a reliable source of income? And the big thing is building your subscribers because if you've got the readers, right, they're always gonna keep coming back. That's been my focus and my website gets 200,000 plus views per month and the fall MQ4 are the highest time for bloggers in general, but specifically food bloggers. And so most will make most of their income of what they need.

22:37
during just Q4. And so your year is prepping for that timeframe. I'm time boxing my day, right, to make sure that I can post anywhere from two to five recipes a week, just depending on the week, how and what I want to send out to subscribers, various different things, because I, you know, I've been growing month over month. And even year over year I've grown, just, you know, there's one year that I didn't do anything on my blog and it still grew.

23:04
For me, I set my goals the same way as I would if I were working in a corporate job. And I just have to be more strict with my time and time box to make sure that I can still do all of the things that I need to do to make sure I hit those goals for the different projects that I have throughout the year. It's great that you can use a lot of the things that you've learned over time in corporate and just do your own experiences there and put that into what you're doing here.

23:34
And I have to say, I'm looking at your website right now and these pictures, oh my gosh, like they look, all the things look delicious. I'm like, I want to make all of these things. And I've seen a lot of these, like the kind of staging things like for commercials and those sort of things where they will use like non-food stuff to make it look better. Yes, yeah. There are certain like tricks that I have. So like one of them,

24:01
I was making a breakfast recipe the other day and you know, when you pour syrup, it's a very difficult shot because it's syrup is, it just quickly falls, right? Gravity does its job. And so when you're trying to get certain shots, there's ways that you can manipulate ingredients. So like I reduce down the syrup that has like the corn syrup in it, you know, not like pure maple syrup, but by that reduce it down.

24:30
I reuse it with some recipes just for kind of that main shot because I can actually pour it on and then I can peel it off what I actually have. Or like, you know, if I am doing cookies and I want milk in the picture, milk is expensive. I mean, I go through so much milk with kids and I'm not gonna waste an entire glass of milk for a photo shoot for cookies. So I'll do where, you know, a quarter of the cup is milk.

25:00
I'll add water and then I add a little bit of white paint into that cup so it looks like what milk would look like. And so there's things like that that I'm kind of doing. I don't use truly like food props in the sense of like when you see an ingredient that is the ingredient, but there are times that I have to like manipulate the ingredient to bake it to where you don't want to eat that specific ingredient. Like I wouldn't really want to eat the syrup after now that I, it stays in my

25:29
cabinet of all of my props and everything. I'm not gonna eat that ingredient, but I have it for the shot. And so there's things like that, or if I make cookies the night before, if I want that shiny texture of the chocolate, I pull out a blow dryer and I put it over to like melt them a little bit, things like that. Oh, that is so cool though, to know kind of that behind the scenes pieces.

25:56
But to see these pictures, oh my god, there's an easy no-bake banana pudding pie that I'm looking at and oh my gosh! That is, that just looks awesome. And I have to say, what we were talking about earlier as far as the ads and all those things, I've gone on probably a bazillion different food websites looking for recipes and all that. Yours is probably one of the easiest I've ever seen to read.

26:24
Yours is just so well laid out. Thank you. Yeah, I again, like my main focus is, you know, I want every reader to have a great experience. I don't try and hide that I have a jump to recipe button. If you want to click and just go to the recipe, I even tell my subscribers in the emails that I send them. I do a roundup of recipes that I've done for the week. I literally have something in that email that says.

26:50
Click the jump to recipe if you just want to get to the recipe. Like I'm telling them and I lose out on revenue for that, but it creates that better experience. And I see that the engagement is so much better with that. And I also integrate in with tools that make the reader experience a lot better. So a lot of my, you know, if you sign up on my website, you'll have an account that you can create where you can favorite all of my recipes.

27:18
So you can go in and say, oh, I want to favorite this, you know, banana pudding pie or these wings or whatever it is. And it'll sync across all of your devices. And it also allows me to create a better experience for you because then I can start to tailor in with these tools. Oh, Stephanie is looking at a lot of one pot dinners. Okay, let me make sure that when she actually goes and searches, when you go and search, I show you like, what are your favorites?

27:46
What have you recently viewed, things like that. But now I can show you, I know that you want more one pot recipes. I try and integrate with a lot of these tools that will only benefit the reader and that I can get the data from it to actually see what is being searched for on my site. I didn't know that people were searching for chicken wings and I created the chicken wings and post them and a week later, they went viral. Literally that page for chicken wings.

28:16
had in one day, like 150,000 views in one day. And so that people still come nonstop. That right now is still that and 30 minutes cinnamon rolls are right now the top two recipes. And that right there is good product management. You could tell that you are a plus product manager. I like the user experience that you focus on because

28:44
That is something I feel like we are all willing to deal with a little bit more of maybe some inconveniences if we're getting a better user experience. And so, yes, you need to balance what the business needs and what your users actually need, because at the end of the day, you need to bring in revenue, right, for whether it's just you. And food blogging or you're working in corporate, it's balancing that, right? So like.

29:13
I know that Q4 is a very busy period for food bloggers. And will I slightly tweak some of my ads and be a little bit more specific to where some are? Yes, 100%. Because that will give me a little bit of the extra money that I need to create a better experience but I need a little bit more cushion. You know, I'm an open book when it comes to

29:39
what goes on for food blogging. And I don't think people actually realize the income that people can make with it. Now, it's a lot more difficult now in the sense that Google has done a lot of work. You have to be very educated with SEO. You have to be very educated with accessibility on websites. It's one of those things that can bring in a lot of income. When that wing recipe went viral, in one day I made $2,500 in one day.

30:07
It's all about the experience, the engagement. It kind of all has to go together, but you can, if you dedicate the time to it, right? And you educate yourself on all of the different things that you have to do behind the scenes. It's not just posting a recipe. Goes for all the other, you know, websites out there doesn't just have to be food blogging. What you're putting out there, Google and Bing and all these other search engines, you need to optimize it so that they recognize that users are going to want to see it.

30:36
and that they're gonna wanna get that click through because the second they click through, if they bounce back to those search results, Google is gonna say, oh, that user didn't get what they wanted. Let me move you down in search rankings. And those are things that people just don't know. Especially online presence, right? People think that it's just so easy to just go out there, create a YouTube video and then just push it out there and think that you have to have, you know, pretty graphics or whatever the case is, but.

31:03
You can have the best of the best, but if you're not ranking on these sites, if you're not doing what they're expecting you to do, you are gonna go down and you can have the best content ever. You can have the absolute, most amazing whatever out there, but people won't see it just because of those reasons. Exactly. That's what's so crazy is, when you have a website, you always have to kind of go back and update your content like once a year, just kind of make tweaks and...

31:31
see where they're ranking, where they can be adjusted, because new content is coming out all the time. And I updated a couple of recipes. I try and republish one recipe per week. One of my recipes was on like page three of Google. I still got traffic from it. Most people aren't going to page three of Google. Looking past the top 10, you don't have a ton of people looking. And so I updated the recipe, resubmitted it to Google.

32:00
less than a week later, it's now the number one recipe in search results for that food item. That's a huge gain for me, right? I have a group of food bloggers that I talk to all of the time, communities that I'm in, we learn from each other. And many of my friends in this industry have five, six people on their team doing things for them. And they're full time employees, like they're not just contractors. So they've got someone.

32:28
creating recipe videos, they've got someone handling all social media. I'm doing that all myself right now, but there are food bloggers that have built businesses around this and generate a significant amount for them and their employees. I see you going in that direction though. This is probably one of my favorite websites. Like I'm not even gonna, I'm not even lying to you. And I really do think that.

32:53
in some ways your layoff was maybe a blessing in disguise for you because I think you have such untapped pieces of talent out there that you're going to discover. I'm putting it out there. Thank you. For now, still actively looking, but this at least gives me something fun to do while bringing in income. And also I get more time with my kids. My daughter had a field trip, her first field trip.

33:20
her first field trip and I was able to go and I didn't have to give my team anything that they needed for that day or like request off with my manager, you know, I don't have those restrictions, you know, I've got that flexibility. Like I got to spend the entire day with her at the aquarium, which was awesome because they're only young for a certain amount of time. In the last few months of my last job, it was, I've never experienced anxiety.

33:48
in my entire life ever. And I had crippling anxiety. And I never wanna go back to that again, ever. While layoffs sucks, like absolutely sucks, I think from a mental health standpoint, it was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me, even in the market that we're in, which I didn't think I would ever say. You do have to put a lot of things into perspective, especially if you're looking at the fact that some places are just very toxic.

34:18
It's so much uncertainty right now that I think that people are experiencing, like you said, like people who had never experienced like true, true anxiety over things are feeling that now. Yeah. And I'm a huge mental health advocate. I talk about it in one of my podcasts with Dr. Jeremiah Piercy, cognitive psychologist. We talk about stress in the workplace. And

34:47
People are trying to find other ways to do things. And like you said, that flexibility that you have now is invaluable. You cannot put a monetary value on that. You know, it doesn't matter if you're making a billion dollars at a company, if you are working yourself to the bone and burning out and you have nothing else to give. Exactly. What's the point there, right? For me in that scenario, like I wasn't sleeping.

35:17
I wasn't eating. I like, it was, it got bad. Like I was never experiencing, so I didn't even know what I was experiencing until I literally contacted someone. Cause I was like, what is going on? I wanna make sure that if I, you know, the next job I do find wherever that is, that, but my hope would be that they truly value their employees and see the benefit that they bring and that their decisions that they are making directly impact their employees.

35:46
right, that are keeping things afloat. Yeah. You bring up so many good points in that I saw something recently on social media where it was like, we're not saving lives, we're saving PDFs. It's, we're really trying to save the bottom lines of the companies and what they're trying to accomplish. And you are completely replaceable. What I particularly like about having the option or the opportunity to do things for yourself.

36:16
your hobby turned into something that can make potential income is that when you're going into a corporate space, you are always constantly trying to prove yourself to someone. Prove it to your manager. Prove it to your coworkers that you can do a particular job. First is when you start doing something for yourself and trying to bring in, you're proving only to yourself that you can do something. Yeah. And yes, you have multiple people that can critique you or whatever, but

36:46
It is all for you. The bottom line is for you. The money that you're going to make is for you. It's you're not doing it for anybody else, right? You're not padding other people's pockets. You're, you're doing this for yourself. Yeah. And yes, there's a lot of trade-offs to it, but you have to have that continued drive and that continued understanding that, you know, you're, you're your own competition, really. And.

37:15
And I will say also a lot of things that I've learned in my time off is what are the things that are really important to me for my next company? And like you said, you know, you want that value there. There's so many things that I've been much more picky about than I think I have in the past where I wanted kind of more the superficial things of like, yeah, I want more money, I want more opportunity to have like learning experiences and that sort of thing, your typical why you change jobs.

37:45
mentality. But it's really more now looking at those deep rooted things that you need to have self satisfaction from, which is kind of simple. It's like, treat me like a human being. And that's what's crazy is, you know, when I, before starting my last position, I had two offers, I was talking to three companies, two of them got back to me quickly, you know, and there was a

38:14
the job that I made less money with. I knowingly did that. And so for me, it was because of, right, individuals that I talked to and how I knew and what I would be working on and the impact that I would have, right, and the change that I could make. And so, yeah, could I have made more money at the other position? 100%. But I chose the one, right, for the scenario that I was in, but also

38:41
for what I was going to be doing and how it aligned with what I wanted. And when you look at being a woman in tech too, that is something that you also think about when you are looking at jobs. What is your experience going to be at a company? Earlier on in my career, I've been usually the only woman on my team. Maybe there's one other.

39:09
there's companies where like I've applied or I've looked to apply but then I look at their you know reviews on blind or I look on reddit to see what people have said and one of the companies it was like if you're a woman stay away. A lot of my experience has been really shaping what I'm looking for now and yeah it'd be cool to work at a company and stay in product management and still do some you know this side hustle but...

39:37
I want to make sure that I'm at a company that really makes sense too, because I don't want to leave after six months because, oh, I'm actually not doing product management or, oh, I have a really horrible manager. And it's a two-way street. I mean, these companies are also interviewing you to see if you're a good fit and they also have to be a good fit. And we put to the, our livelihood right at the hands of management. Yep. And so-

40:06
It's one of those things that you hope that, right, they know where they wanna go and how to get there, or if things are changing, what are they doing to align to that, things like that. And so, you know, you hope every company has management, right, that can get you there. Like Christina, I've had such a wonderful conversation with you, I'm super excited to see more of your blog posts and these beautiful, delicious pictures, oh my goodness.

40:33
I will have all of your contact information in the show notes for where someone can get in contact with you. Check out your blog, I highly recommend it. And I'm excited to start trying some of these recipes. I will definitely let you know how they turn out when I do. And I also wanted to ask you if you'd be interested in coming back in some time just to talk about more of your blog adventures and just to see where you are with everything.

41:03
Yeah, well first, thank you for having me. Had a blast. And yes, I would love to I would love to chat again. Awesome. If you're interested in becoming a guest on my show, all the information on how to contact me is available in the show notes would love to speak with other laid off individuals, mental health professionals, recruiters, business and career coaches and resume writers. Also, if you're enjoying the content and would like a shout out in an upcoming episode, a link in how you can support this podcast is available in the show notes.

41:33
Thank you so much for listening and until next time.