- May is for Mamas -

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Show Notes:

Welcome to May is for Mamas, where every episode in the month of May is dedicated to all the mamas out there with topics and conversations specifically for you. Today, I'm chatting with my friend Shay Cochrane, who is a wife and an entrepreneur, and a mama of two daughters. She owns Social Squares, which supplies elevated stock images and digital marketing education for female owned online brands.

Her vision as a creator is to enable more women to find greater success sharing their ideas and businesses with the world, and she does all that and just 16 hours a week. I love how she models her life and her parenting and I have loved this conversation with her today.

We jumped into some hard stuff like, what it looks like to raise daughters in 2022—body image, style, confidence, work ethic, technology, teaching your kids about money. You are going to leave this conversation with some really practical parenting conversations and decisions, as well as some solid encouragement to keep up the good hard work we are doing as mamas.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.

Nancy: Shay, I am so excited to have you on the Work and Play Podcast. Thank you so much for being here and I'd love to start just by you telling anyone listening a little bit about you, your family, and what you do.

Shay: Yeah, well, I am so grateful to be here. I'm so excited to have this conversation, I don't get the chance to really have this type of conversation often. So if anyone's excited, it is me, but I'll answer your question.

My name is Shay Cochrane, I am a mom of two daughters. I have a 12 year old daughter, she's about to be 13 in like five minutes—literally, she's just so close to the teen years and then I have a 10 year old daughter.

I am an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur and business owner really since I got married, so like 16 years ago. My husband’s also a business owner and entrepreneur so that's very much like a regular undercurrent in our house, we live in Tampa.

The business that I run is a stock image membership for female business owners. I love the opportunity to help other women build businesses and get their messaging out there and so I do that through providing the images that they need for marketing.

I live and breathe small business and business growth and entrepreneur, and just trying to support women in that. So, yeah, that kind of gives you a little bit of a peek into both who I am but also the dynamic in our household, it is kind of like a 24 hour mastermind in our house.

Nancy: Which I love, you know that you and Graham are our people. So for anyone listening, Graham Cochrane is her husband. He was my business coach several years ago, I still consider him my business coach.

Gosh, I don't even know how long we've known each other, a long time, maybe close to a decade. Which is so special to have been able to kind of grow in our own entrepreneur journeys and businesses and lives and families side by side, albiet kind of far away, but I love how our paths just kind of weave in and out. I love just keeping up with you guys and following along with your work.

But what I really want to ask you about and talk about today is your heart, your life, your parenting, raising daughters. I will just say Social Squares is an incredible business, that's your business that you run that you're talking about—the stock image business for anyone listening, who's unfamiliar. I'm going to tell you guys a little bit more about that at the end of the episode and give you an exciting deal on it. So make sure you listen all the way to the end to learn a little bit more about that.

Let's talk about parenting. Raising daughters in 2022 and I know so many things flood my mind of all the challenging topics and you know, ways that we have to navigate this. It's a beautiful opportunity, but it is certainly filled with some hard conversations and difficult things we have to navigate.

There are so many, to be honest, like little Instagram images and captions that are popping into my head from your Instagram, that you have really just spoken straight to some difficult topics on raising your girls, but how you guys do them has really made an impact on me. And I want you to know that from everything from body image and living in Florida, where you guys live—as well as finances, teaching your girls to invest in entrepreneurship and all those things.

So that's a little bit of my context of why I was so excited to have you on my podcast. So first before we get into all that, tell me about your work and parenting your girls and I know your boundaries are really important to you and your work and being a mom and also being a business owner. So what does your schedule look like and how did you come to set those boundaries and decide on them?

Shay: Yeah. Oh, I'm so excited—so excited to talk about all this.

So boundaries with work, like I said, since Graham and I are both small business owners, we have the gift and opportunity to set our own hours and to set our own boundaries, which is a big responsibility and very hard for anyone who is a business owner—it is very, very challenging.

From the beginning, we've been pretty intentional about what we wanted work-life to look like so that we would both build businesses in such a way that the business would be set up to serve our life and not kind of all of our life serve the business and be kind of catering to the business.

So for me, what that looks like is that I work about 16 hours a week as the CEO of Social Squares, and that is done on Tuesday and Thursday from 8-4. So it's two full days and that has been true for probably the last, at least 10 years. And the origin of that is, you know, not very interesting.

It's just that it was all the childcare that I could afford when Chloe was two. I was already a business owner before I had children. I used to be in the wedding and portrait photography world and when I had Chloe, some of you have heard me tell my story about that first year of her life before, but I really tried to just, you know, bring on a baby and keep things exactly the same.

I'm just going to run my business, to be honest, like running a business felt very wonderful compared to like nursing 10 hours a day and changing diapers. I felt very important and valuable when I was running my business and that became in conflict in my heart with what I really knew that I wanted, which was to be a mom, like be fully engaged.

I wanted to be a mom, but I found a tug of war constantly in my heart and that in my flesh, I wanted to choose the work over mothering an infant because it just felt better. But I knew in my mind that that wasn't the way that I wanted to set up my priorities. So pretty early on, I was like, there has to be boundaries around this. I have to kind of find a way to keep those two things and give them each their own space.

How much childcare can we afford? Because Chloe was, you know, two years old, three years old then, and that was two days a week. We kept the two days a week because the preschool offered a two day week option or an everyday multiple hour option—you know, everyone's like pretty familiar with that. So we did the two days.

So literally you see, it just kind of started like that in the beginning and I've just kept it like that because I've found that that's sort of the sweet spot for me, between being able to mentally separate from work. If I touch work every day, it's very hard for me to like mentally separate and engage as a mom or as a friend or as a wife. So I've just kept those parameters, Graham also works a very reduced weekly schedule that is different than mine and we both kind of have some hard and fast rules.

Like we don't work on the evenings—outside of our work hours, we don't work on the weekends, we don't work on vacation, we don't have any work pushes to our phones. So we really try to compartmentalize so that when we're at work, we've set it up so that we can be a hundred percent in, but when we're not at work, we're a hundred percent out of work. Of course we struggle with that, of course it's hard. You get a Vox and it's about Work and you know, those lines can get blurred, but that's what we're always, always, always fighting for.

And that's what has served our family really well, in our context.

Nancy: And I think having those boundaries are so important because if you don't have boundaries and you don't say them out loud or write them in your schedule and say, this is what I want, the work will take over.

Shay: Your clients will set your hours for you.

Nancy: So, you know it's hard, especially when there's possibly a missed opportunity. You know, that you get while you're off hours or there's only a certain time that somebody can do this thing and it's hard, but I think it's so important to say that.

I think one of the biggest things that you said that resonates with me is just the mental switch. Like it's very hard, even though my kids might not know that I'm listening to a Vox about work because I've got my air pods in or, you know, doing something quickly about work. My mind, isn't there with them, my mind is somewhere else.

So feeling that sense of being all present is just such a gift, not only to your kids and your family, but to yourself, because I think you feel satisfied. Like, okay, this is where I'm meant to be right now and you don't feel that tension of—oh my goodness, I'm being pulled in two different directions.

Shay: And an important distinction there, I don't think we need to hide our work from our kids.

Like there's very meaningful ways that you can bring your kids into the work that you're doing. I really think the goal is for me to be joyfully, peacefully, present and having fun with my family, engaging with my husband, engaging with my kids when I'm with them. So again, it's not to like shame the working mom that you need to hide it from your kids.

It's so that you can be a great business owner and also be a great, like fully engaged, fully present, full of joy, having fun wife and mom.

Nancy: Absolutely and seasons change, somebody listening might not be able to afford the childcare and still have to work, so there are definitely difficult situations we find ourselves in, but I think even still compartmentalizing, as much as we can is helpful.

Just setting those boundaries and saying, even if you're teaching your kids, like these are mommy's work hours right now, or whatever it is, just making sure you have those boundaries. Just so that it's not constantly overlapping, because for me that leads to just feeling so drained and like I'm not doing anything well without them.

What are some ways that you do invite your kids into your work or show them your work? Cause I agree, I think that's really important too.

Shay: Well, I think one of the ways is, I mean there's so many different ways, right? So this kind of gets into why I work, but work is good. Right?

We see in Genesis that God creates, His first act is creating and creating order and then even before the fall, He puts Adam and Eve the garden and he calls them to work the garden and tend to it. So we see work as like really good and God honoring, in a way that we are image bearers of Christ in working.

So I think whether you own your own business or you work at a local retail store or you are a nurse at a hospital or a teacher, like I think that it's good and right and true that work is honorable to do. Whether your work is, you know, being a mom or being a homeschool mom or tending to a home, work in general, regardless of what you're doing is good and God honoring.

So we can bring our kids into it in that, like, this is how mommy images God, she does it through these things. But you know, also practically and more specifically in my business, I can give the girls a vision for what I do specifically. An example would be like, you and I have a mutual friend, Ashley Prophet who runs a company called The Mourning.

It serves moms that have gone through infant or child loss and it gives them resources and instills hope. It's somebody to come alongside them. Well, Ashley, our friend who our kids also know needs images to promote and to get her messaging out and to create blog posts and Instagram posts to do her good work in the world. So I can connect the dots for them that like, oh, mommy supplies the images so that Ms. Ashley can help minister to people through the work that she's doing.

Or we have another friend that has an amazing platform that's serving a very specific group of women. Anyway, I won't keep going into details, but if I can give my kids a vision for how like mommy supplies images to help other women do this, then they can kind of rally behind that and they feel a lot of pride in that.

They get it, wow, mom's doing meaningful work. Mom is helping or serving and then there's also, you know, there's so much we could get into there, but regardless of what you do, you can also bring your kids into it in the way that having a business or doing any kind of work allows you the opportunity to give of your time, of your talent, of your resources.

So there's so many ways that you can bring your kids into and should bring your kids into the work that you're doing. And not at all feel a sense that, oh, I need to hide it or be ashamed of it. It actually can teach your kids so much through seeing you work and allows them participation in that as well.

Nancy: One of the phrases that always sticks out to me is—more is caught than taught with kids. And I think there is a whole generation of kids, I'm sure we've all heard it, even our generation millennials and you know, the generations after us that there's just laziness or there's not a good work ethic or they're so entitled.

I think one of the most powerful things is to just model hard work. Modeling that to our kids, that this is why mommy works and letting them kind of catch that it's not always easy, but it's meaningful and it's good to push through those hard things and we aren't entitled to everything. You know, we try to teach our kids, “Hey, if you want money in life to pay for food and your house, the one way that you get that is work, that's where money comes from.” You know, just having those conversations early on in like very basic ways, but modeling that.

There's one question I've been wanting to ask you, mostly because it's something I've been wrestling with personally. So this question is admittedly totally for me, but you kind of just answered it in a way, you're welcome to add on or embellish a little, if you want to.

But in your life and your marriage and your family, Graham is so successful in his online business. He could easily financially provide for your family without you having to work and yet you continue to choose to run Social Squares and run a team and work two days a week. Why is it that you continue to choose that when you could be, you know, a stay at home mom, just hanging out. What is it that drives you to keep working and running that business?

Shay: Yeah, that's such a good question. And it's a topic of a lot of conversation in our house because to be fully honest with you, that can frustrate Graham sometimes. When work is stressful for me he might be kind of quick to whether directly or indirectly kind of say, like, “Why are you doing this? Like it's hard, why are you doing this? You don't have to.” And so we have to have that conversation a lot of why am I doing this? Like, why do I still show up if I don't have to?

And that could also be true if your family is financially stable enough, maybe your spouse isn't wildly successful, but you're financially stable enough that you don't necessarily need more. So all of us, you know, at some point may have to face this question. So I guess for me, there's like a spiritual answer and there's an unspiritual answer and I already kind of gave you the spiritual answer.

So let me like backup to the unspiritual answer. One, I have the time, right? My kids are in school now. So I'm in a position that maybe many of your listeners aren't in, where both of my kids are in school full-time. So I actually do have a lot of free time to myself right now.

I also just enjoy the extra money that it provides, I have spending money that doesn't pull from the family budget. I can like spend an exorbitant amount of money on a silly face cream that Instagram just sold to me without feeling like, oh, is this like a wise use of our money as a family? I have kind of some of my own blow money. So it just like very unspiritually. It’s just fun to have.

I can invest it and watch it grow. Like I got the opportunity to put the down payment on when we bought the condo office space, like I got to put the $30,000 down payment down. That felt very, very satisfying to me to like invest in real estate. Like, wow, this is really cool.

I set aside money from the business every month that automatically goes right into a savings account that I know that I'll use specifically to invest with in some way, and invest can look like a lot of different things, but I'll invest it in some way.

I can give it away. I have discretionary give away money that the business affords for me. So like, I'll take a percentage of every month’s profit and just set it aside. There's like certain things I definitely give to, but then there's certain things that I just will set a certain amount of money away and I'll just wait until something comes up that needs money, where I can just be really generous. And that's so incredibly fun. That's another reason why I work.

So those are kind of like all the unspiritual answers and I think that there's nothing wrong with those things, but, you know, we kind of touched on it. The spiritual answer is that honest work done with integrity and excellence images God.

That's so awesome, I can be an image bearer of a God that is a creative God when I'm creative. I can also love and support other people through my work, my images can help them build businesses that are helpful and fulfilling for themselves. I can also give God honor and credit when the work grows and succeeds.

When there is success, I can say, “God did that, I don't know how that happened, but like God did that. This is so crazy.” And I can share that with believers to encourage them. I can share that with nonbelievers to give them a vision of the type of kind, loving, compassionate, caring God that we have.

So I can give them a taste of how kind and generous God is when he enables the business to grow and I can share about that. You know, we also kind of touched on like, I work to show my girls that we all have a skill and knowledge that we can share with the world.

That doesn't mean that you have to monetize it and build a business around it, but you know, we're always kind of like gold mining in a sense with them like, “Oh, what kind of skills and talents and knowledge did God give you? Like He has good works planned in advance for you to walk in that He already knows. We're trying to help you uncover those things. And a lot of that will be based on what your interests are and what your passions are.” So it's just a way that I can show them like this was how mommy uniquely made me.

I'm always taking pictures or I love helping women grow businesses and so I can kind of model for them what it looks like to use your skill and knowledge to share with the world, monetized or not monetized. I can also show them how to work so it gives me the opportunity because they may find themselves in a situation where their husband can't provide all of the income and they do have to work.

I have an opportunity too that's unique to not just being a stay-at-home mom to model for them what work-life boundaries looks like. What those kinds of priorities look like, what it looks like to struggle with hard things, how to pray through challenges, how to deal with frustration.

Like when mommy comes home really frustrated because there's just a problem that I can't solve and I feel overwhelmed and discouraged by lack of momentum or whatever it is in business and we pray about it as a family at the dinner table. That's an opportunity for them to learn like, oh, this is how we handle challenge, this is how we respond to obstacles, we go before the Lord and we ask for His hand in it and ask for wisdom and discernment.

So there's so much that benefits our children by seeing mom work. So those are all the things that I kind of lean into that I'm fully being who God made me to be, Shay, specifically by having my hand in some kind of business and that might grow or change over the years. But this is part of me being the way that God made me to be.

So how can we make that work with also what God has called me to as a wife and a mom and a church member and a community member. So yeah, it's hard to make those things fit and it's a good struggle, but it's part of me being fully the way that God has made me, which is important for each of us and for our kids to learn.

Nancy: I love that answer so much Shay and so much of what you said resonates with me and my life. And you know, right now I still have a very little baby, he's nine months old at the time of this recording and so I'm still breastfeeding, I'm still home with him all the time. My work is basically as minimal as it possibly can be right now.

I'm just keeping the podcast afloat and that's basically it. But hearing you talk and share kind of what your life looks like now and the work that you do and all the reasons you do it, it just makes my heart so happy and so full because I believe those things with you, like, yeah, there are some kind of unspiritual perks to working that are fun and they keep us going. They're not bad, they just make our lives a little bit better, a little more fun.

But also work is good, I think all the way back in episode one of Work and Play, I outlined exactly what you said. God make work in the garden, whatever work looks like for you in your life, in this season of your life right now, whether you are a stay at home mom, or you're homeschooling, or you're working full-time hours at a hospital, or you're an entrepreneur or whatever it is, it's good. You get to be like the Father, like God. I heard someone say, you're never more like God than when you're creating something and when you're creating new things, because He's a creator. I just love all of that, but I think it boils down to our gifts, right?

I think of a couple of my friends and even some family members that if they were to do what you and I do, this entrepreneur thing kind of, you know, I've led a team before, you're leading a team, driving creative ideas, problem solving. It would drive them crazy, I mean, that would be the most stressful life for them. They're like, no thank you, I don't want to touch that with a 10 foot pole. But for me and you like, that is how God wired us and our minds and our brains and what our calling is and the assignments that He's given us.

It's like, okay this is very specific to what he's placed inside me and inside you. Even you and I, while we're very similar, you and I are very, very different just because every single person on this earth is so different. You know, there's some of us that are more similar to each other and God has different good works for each of us.

And so I think it does come down to anyone listening, like what is the work that God has for you that is in line with your gifts that He's placed inside of you and your passions? And then also the season of life that you're in because you and I are in different seasons of life in our parenting and in our businesses and that's beautiful and good. It looks different and that's good.

So, keeping all of those things in mind is so good and just so you know, Will and I have the same conversations that you and Graham have. He's like, “What are you doing? Why don't you just stop it all, it's stressing you out.” And you know, some days I'm like, I do want to and some days I don’t. We're in a similar position where I don't have to work and I'm so grateful, but there's something in me and I've told him, “Babe, this makes me feel a little more like me to do this even if it’s just a little bit, even if it causes me stress.”

Shay: I don't know if you feel this, but if we were dependent on my income, I could justify me working like 60 hours a week. Like, I’ve got to pay the bills and I gotta make this work, I've got to make this happen. Because I don't have that reason, I really feel an extra amount of pressure to keep it contained and keep it not being a huge stressor on me and you know. That's like a whole other conversation, but it's just a unique challenge.

Nancy: It's very unique and it's overall overwhelmingly, it's a huge blessing, right? Overwhelmingly we get to work, we get to do this, our husbands ultimately are supportive and that's incredible and this is, you know, additional income. That's so amazing, but it just comes with its unique set of challenges. Thanks for answering that question for me because we're very similar and I just wanted to kind of ask you about that and I loved your answer so much.

Shay and I covered a lot in our conversation, which is the reason I split it into two parts. It really is that good, I just couldn't leave anything out.

So a couple of things before I say goodbye this week, and you can listen to the rest of the conversation next week. First, this episode is made possible by my incredible, generous, Patreon community. The wonderful listeners of this podcast who believe in Work and Play, who believe in living a faith centered life, who believe in the content and conversations I share.

For as little as $1 a month, you can become a patron and support the Work and Play podcast too. Head to patreon.com/workandplay to get access to some exclusive episodes, one is waiting in there for you. It's all about how to use the notes app on your phone, it's really good, I'm not gonna lie I kind of love it. More resources are to come and a community of friends who are listening right alongside you. You make this podcast possible and I'm so grateful.

Also, if you haven't checked out Shay's business yet, Social Squares, you absolutely should and she has been so generous and is giving my listeners 20% off your first payment. That could be the monthly payment, but also it could apply to the quarterly and annual payments too, which would save you even more money. Go to socialsquares.com/workandplay and you can learn all about that.

It's an image membership site that provides truly beautiful stock photos to match your brand and your aesthetic. I promise, there's so much to choose from, it's so beautiful. You can search by color. It's really incredible what she's built and my favorite part is it just saves so much time. I'm an affiliate for Social Squares because I believe in it so much, just head to socialsquares.com/workandplay, then make sure you use the code Work and Play at checkout.

I'm going to close with words from Paul David Tripp who said,