Today we’d like to introduce you to Kailey Yañez.
Hi Kailey, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
Well, at 16, I began looking at my options for college, knowing I wanted to end up in a social media-oriented field. Being homeschooled growing up, I was able to accept a few internship opportunities while still in high school. During one of these internships, as I entered my junior and senior years, I was tasked with curating social media content and managing a few social media campaigns… needless to say, I LOVED IT!
I fell in love with content marketing and all the things that come into play when building a brand. Shortly after that internship ended, I was offered another internship with a church that was growing FAST! At 19, Within eight months of interning, I was brought on part-time, and shortly after that, I was given a full-time position as a member of their communications team.
In my time with that organization, I had the privilege of working with some incredibly talented individuals. Within about three years of working with them, I was mentored in photography, graphic design, and videography. Due to the insanely fast-paced environment, I felt like I was constantly drinking out of a fire hose. (The best and worst way to learn, in my opinion. Haha) I began learning more and more about content marketing and social media management and continued to fall in love with the field I was in. I was also charged with creating training resources and leading teams of volunteers ranging from 30-50 people at a time in the same areas I was beginning to be mentored. It was one of my life’s most emotional, exhausting, and exciting seasons!
In the last year of my time there, our team went from 6 full-time employees to 2 while simultaneously moving physical locations and having 20-30 plus events. They weren’t hiring new people to the team, and the workload was redistributed between whoever was left. By the time they decided to reconstruct the department, I was let go, and honestly, as heartbroken as I was, it was the best thing that could have happened to me!
The week after I had been let go, I connected with a friend of mine, my now business partner Zac, who had served as a volunteer at the organization I had just come from.
I told him I was looking for freelancing jobs as a photographer or social media manager until I figured out what was next. (My husband had been let go from his job as a loan originator less than two weeks after I had been let go from mine.) So, I was frantic to find work.
Zac told me that he had just decided to go full-time with the business he had been doing on the side since 2014. This same week one of his clients tagged his business in an Instagram post. Through a crazy series of events, he began getting calls left and with people right asking for different services, one of the most common asks being about social media management and content development. That was where I came in!
Over the weeks and months to come, I became a business partner to Zac and co-owner of Motive Marketing. From that week forward, we began bringing on more and more clients, and before we knew it, we were really doing it! Our business was continuing to grow, and we were continuing to partner with amazing organizations.
To this day, sometimes we will be in a meeting, and one of us will look at the other and say, “I can’t believe we get to do this!” “I can’t believe this is happening!”
Now at 22, I currently act as co-owner and Marketing Director at Motive Marketing! I help facilitate the onboarding and run our ongoing content development for our retainer clients, amongst many other things! To this day, it still seems all too good to be true, but being a part of a start-up has been one of the most exciting and terrifying experiences yet.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Haha, the short answer is no. It has not all been smooth. There have been moments where it was evident that God was leading me to take a risk, but there have also been many moments where I didn’t know what my next move was supposed to be.
One of the most significant challenges I have faced in my career has been learning just to do things scared. As someone who naturally is inclined to overanalyze everything and struggles with anxiety, I began letting the anxiety and fear of possible failure trump my excitement about the amazing opportunities I faced.
Learning to pause and differentiate between when I am scared because something is dangerous and when I am scared because something is simply intimidating has helped me enjoy the excitement of new opportunities. I still don’t do it perfectly, and more often than not, I will still get anxious about things I have no business being worried about. But I am continuing to fight to enjoy the busy seasons that life has thrown at me and learn to walk with confidence that there is always a reason a new door opens, and if any part of me wants to walk through it, I need to be ok doing it a little scared.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
At Motive Marketing, we help people build incredible brands through content marketing. Using avenues like photography, graphic design, videography, writing, and maximizing websites and social media platforms, we help people clearly and creatively tell the world who they are and what their organization has to offer. Your motive is what drives you, and that’s our mission. As an extension of your team, we drive your strategy and campaigns directly to your goals.
Regarding packages and pricing, we tailor-fit every proposal to a partner’s specific needs. So, if you are looking for ongoing social media management, a new website, want to host a webinar, or are looking for an event capture team, we can help!
I’m proud of the beautiful images, videos, and content we can provide our partners with because the reality is that they are so worth it! Their business is worth it. Someone worked hard to build that business and plan that event, and it is a gift to show off our partner’s hard work through various content.
Something that sets us apart as a business is that we are passionate about making sure our partners know that they are just that, partners! We don’t want them ever to think we think of them as just ‘clients’; we want them to know that they will always have us in their corner, that they count on us, and that we are proud to work with them.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I know I reference my high school experience a lot, but because I am so young and I didn’t go to college, it acted similarly in my life as a training ground to how college would be in someone else’s.
Being homeschooled my whole life and being the oldest of 9 kids… Yes, 9… my high school experience looked slightly different than my peers. I homeschooled myself through high school using online curriculums and even using babysitting money at times to buy new textbooks. (Sounds more like college than high school, right? haha) But the experience taught me early on that if I wanted something bad enough, I could work to make it happen and that having it was extremely important and necessary.
At the end of my senior year of high school, my dad got a job opportunity in a different city a few hours from where we lived. So, I decided to be bold and take a massive risk by moving out and working two part-time jobs until I figured out what was next. I had been working and saving for about four years at this point. So, I began to spend my savings by signing a lease for an apartment, buying a car, and getting my license all within about four weeks… yes… I signed a lease for an apartment before I even got my driver’s license. It was a weird time.
Deciding to step out and pursue a career in content marketing without a college degree was terrifying. Being 18, I felt like a dumb kid. Honestly, there were moments I was dumb, but I knew deep down that if I wouldn’t bet on myself, why should I expect someone else to?
Fast-forward to being let go from my first big girl job. I realized that I was in another moment where I needed to bet on myself and take a risk. When talking with my husband about this potential job opportunity with my friend Zac, my husband came to me and said, “I know you can do this; you know you can do this, so if you want to do it, just do it!” Him creating a safe place for me to potentially fail is what gave me the confidence to risk it all. And that’s what I did! I stepped out and joined Motive Marketing as a start-up, knowing full well that my business partner was also betting on me, and I chose to act as if I had everything to lose. Taking risks has led to some of the biggest blessings in my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://marketwithmotive.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/motivemarketingtx/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MotiveMarketingTx
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/motivemarketing/
Image Credits
Motive Marketing
