We Never Planned to be Full-Time Content Creators...

This is the story of how my husband and I went from being a choir teacher and a worship leader to full-time DIY content creators. Let me preface this by saying that at the end of this story, I am not going to sell you a course or ebook. I am not sharing this to make any money, but because I know there are people out there who are working corporate jobs and thinking: "there has to be another way." There are teachers who are burning the candle at both ends and want their creativity back. Or moms who want to make income but stay home with their babies. Whoever you are, I'm here to cheer you on in your dreams. Buckle up, because this story is full of joy, sorrow, betrayal, heartbreak, and triumph.

My last ever show at the public school I taught at

Quitting my Public School Job

I snapped this photo the day of the very last show I directed in May of 2022. It was High School Musical (not one of my favorites, tbh). I had decided about 8 months prior that I was going to take the plunge and quit my job at the end of the school year to start a music studio full time from my house. I was exhausted from the 1.5-hour commute, before/ after school rehearsals, and because I just wanted to be home more.

I am a bit of a money nerd so I started a "Quit my Job" savings fund and my goal was to save up 6 months of expenses in case I couldn't get my business off the ground fast enough. I had from about November to August (August would be my last paycheck) to do this, so I aimed to save about a thousand each month. I had already paid off our student loans and we had no car loans, so we didn't need much to get by on the bare minimum.

When I have shared about this journey before I have gotten a lot of comments about "Well your husband paid your way!" but the truth is that church staff don't get paid very much, especially not at brand-new churches that are just starting. Kyle was paid well below minimum wage for several years.

My First Ever Reel

That June, once freedom had set in, I took my Instagram from a private to a professional account and posted my very first reel. It was so bad. Kyle and I watched in shock as I refreshed the page and saw hundreds more views roll in every second. (I've since deleted it, so don't even bother looking lol!)

At this point, I had no goal, no aim. I started posting more reels but with no rhyme or reason. I posted baking reels (Kyle loved those!). I posted videos about our travels. I posted a few home decor reels. And it was really fun! I went from 500 followers that June to my first thousand that October. At this point, my music studio business was doing really well. I had close to 30 students and I had completely replaced my teacher income working about 15 hours a week.

Growing on Social Media

When the calendar turned over to 2023, I decided to try to grow more on social media. I joined Chris Love's Julia's Good Influencer and I learned so much. I learned how to create a media kit to send to brands and how to reach out for sponsorships. This was also when I did what is called "niching down," which is when you pick a main category to post about. I realized that cooking videos weren't where my joy was so I pivoted to home decor. I joined the One Room Challenge and did a big room makeover, and that catapulted my growth as well. But the biggest difference was that I began making friends with other content creators. And I was able to learn and be inspired by them.

At this point, I started to view social media as a fun little side hustle and maybe a way to decorate my house with sponsored decor. That summer I was at around 6k followers and I got my first "big" brand deal, with a rug company (I use the scare quotes because they did not pay me except for product exchange). It was so exciting! I also had a series go viral called "The Secrets of Goodwill" and that took me to nearly 20k followers. At this point, I realized that I needed to expand to other platforms, so I got on TikTok and Facebook.

Going Viral

In the fall of 2023, I decided to do the One Room Challenge again, and build bookshelves. This was my first experience with a really large build, and it was honestly kind of scary! By the end, I had used just about every type of saw, drill, nail gun, and power tool you could think of. The result of this project was not only a really amazing space in my home, but all the reels from that project cumulatively got around 10 million views, and I ended the year with over 50k followers, but the growth just continued. By mid-January I had surpassed 100k followers, and I was starting to get paid brand deals. This was the point when I began to think that this could be a full-time job. Not only that, I was getting messages from people who were sharing how my DIYs had inspired them and that was truly my goal. I am a teacher at heart.

Behind the Scenes

Leading worship together

January of this year was the beginning of an incredibly difficult period for Kyle and I. Kyle was still the worship leader at our church and his workload had tripled because we had outgrown our church building and were meeting in the auditorium of a school, which required us to setup and tear-down our equipment every week.

There are parts to this story that I am choosing not to share because I know that publishing every detail of the hurt we experienced at the hands of those we trusted at our church will cause no healing.

When our production director quit in January and his position was not replaced, Kyle was required to work 6 days a week to pick up the slack. Kyle reached out to the lead pastor and asked for help with the workload as well as help with a new staff member who would berate Kyle (and other staff members) with increasing frequency. Unfortunately, he was still required to work six days a week and was not able to hire an intern or an assistant. Still, the staff member issue grew to the point that the yelling and disparaging began happening on Sunday mornings in front of volunteers. I reached out to the pastor for help when I noticed it was negatively affecting Kyle, and still, nothing changed. Easter weekend came and was a beautiful weekend; Kyle led a worship night on Friday and several services on Saturday and Sunday. Everything seemed to go right...

The next day Kyle was called into the lead pastor's office and was fired. After a couple of weeks, most of our friends quit reaching out. We now had to grieve the loss of our friends as well as our church. What was harder than the grief, for me, was anger that the people who were supposed to have our back did just the opposite. Instead of protecting Kyle from the toxic staff member, they gave that person Kyle's job.

Kyle, with his heart of gold, forgave. Kyle moved on. Once the shock wore off for Kyle, the sheer relief of being taken out of that toxic situation was so enormous, that he was grateful to be free.

Hiring Kyle

About a week after Kyle was fired, his dad drove down from Indiana to help him work on our camper van conversion. The first night he was there, Kyle and his dad rode up and down the street for a few hours, goofing around on Kyle's longboard. I walked outside with Dolly (our dog!) to check on them and I saw something I hadn't seen in so long. Kyle was laughing! He was carefree and joyful. I hadn't seen him that happy in months. And in that moment I knew that God had pulled him out of that negative situation to protect him and bring him to a place where he could flourish again.

He suddenly had creative energy again. He wanted to help me with my DIYs. He started working on the camper van every day to finish converting it. He started a YouTube channel for our van conversion and bought an FPV drone so that he could get into commercial videography. I finally got up the courage to share what happened to Instagram (in far less detail) and I got a beautiful message from a follower.

To be honest, I hadn't even really considered Kyle working with me as a possibility, but as I started looking around, I couldn't help but see how every part of our story was setting us up for this. Kyle and I had spent 5 years working side by side building two church ministries and learning how to work together. Kyle studied audio and video production and was an amazing videographer. He also knew how to DIY and could build just about anything. I knew how to run a business from starting my music studio. So we decided to have Kyle join MAM (Melissa Ashley Meares) full-time. Financially, I had not pushed MAM to a place where it was bringing in a full-time income, so I was terrified. I had brand deals coming in but they were not steady. Do you remember that "quit your job fund" I had made when I quit my job? Well, we still had it, and we knew we could use it to take Kyle on while we built up more business.

If there was one thing I learned from my Music Studio it is that the best way to skyrocket your growth is to pinpoint your weaknesses and hire someone to fill them. So I took the plunge and hired a virtual assistant. After only 2 months of working with them, I began to see our income increase substantially.

We were still struggling to work out paid brand partnerships because I did not have the amount of time (and honestly, the expertise) that was required to email and negotiate with companies, so Kyle strongly encouraged us to sign with a talent management company. This was such a huge weight off of my shoulders and freed up so much time for me to create. And within a couple of weeks of signing on with them, my Facebook took off by nearly 100k followers and we now have over 280k followers across platforms. It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that a quarter of a million people want to follow our account to create their own beautiful home.

Our 5th anniversary trip to Lexington this summer

Where We Are Now:

At this point, I still run my music studio, although in a smaller capacity to give myself more time for our social media business. Kyle launched our YouTube channel which is focused on van and travel content, and we are a few weeks away from our van build being done. We are still planning out our long-term goals, but we hope to sell our house within the next year, buy land, and build. Our dream is to own acreage, build (Kyle!), and decorate (me!) a little fleet of tiny homes to rent out as Airbnbs: A-Frames, Yurts, etc.

Our doodle, Dolly

Even though we went through heartbreak and some very low lows, I can see now that our life has become everything we could have ever dreamed of. We both get to work from home full time and be together all day every day (I know for some married couples that probably sounds like a nightmare, but we really love it). Kyle is able to do creative work that fills him with joy, and he has more time to focus on fun side projects, like drone videography. Dolly also loves that she gets both parents full-time with her! The best part though is that we have the freedom to travel on weekends and do longer trips, since I have the flexibility to take my music studio online.

One of the thumbnails from our van YouTube channel

In the meantime, you can expect to see us around DIY-ing every inch of our Tennessee home and sharing the process with all of you. If you read this far, thank you! Your support means the absolute world to me.

xoxo,

Melissa