Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: You're listening to the remote mom collective podcast, where moms can find their stride in the remote work world. Whether you currently work remotely or you want to, you're in the right place.
I'm Brittany the remote mom, and I've been working remotely since 2007. I became a mom in 2015, and there's a lot to learn. Together, we'll support, inspire, and empower each other on our journey to balance work, life and motherhood from the comfort of our own homes or wherever we're working remotely. Together, let's redefine what it means to be a working mom. Let's support and inspire each other.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Remote mom collective podcast. I am Brittany the remote mom, and today I'm here with Jennifer Cummins, and we are going to chat today about working from home. And today we are talking about you don't have to accept the status quo. So I'm going to send it over to you, Jennifer, just to introduce yourself and give a quick update on what you have going on. And then we'll just jump right into the topic.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Sure. So, hi, everybody. I'm Jennifer Cummins. I am the CEO of Coral House Productions and JC Films, a new llc I just established recently. And I am creative. Coral House Productions is a b two b creative agency that helps businesses tell their stories through video marketing, website design, and professional photography and really just help business owners tell the why behind the brand. We really have a heavy focus about brand strategy and we love doing what we do. We love telling stories.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: That's awesome. And you are a military spouse too, and that's how we connected. I think we originally connected on LinkedIn. And the military spouse world, as my listeners know, is really important to me. But we also have listeners who are not military spouses. And I know that you have a Kickstarter for a new film that you have. And before we jump into the topic, I definitely wanna make sure that we make time to talk about that. Can you share a little bit more about that?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Sure. Absolutely. So I've been working on a project for the last year. I've been keeping really quiet about it cause we've been trying to raise funds quietly behind the scenes. But now it's time to open up the lid on the project and let everybody know about it. So we will be producing and I will be directing the documentary the in the shadows of service, the modern military spouse story. And it's going to be the story about the modern military spouse and everything surrounding that, the unemployment issues that affect our community the underemployment issues that affects the military spouse community and just bringing awareness overall to the problems that military spouses incur.
The stereotypes that are set behind the assumption that all military spouses are either uneducated, stay at home moms or women. I mean, there are lots of male spouses out there as well. And so kind of just shattering those stereotypes and making this documentary a positive, inspiring story and also showing military spouse entrepreneurs that have changed, like breaking the flow of everything and not accepting the status quo that's placed upon us.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: That sounds amazing. I can't wait. I definitely want everybody to check this out. Even if you aren't a military spouse, I think this definitely can be eye opening for you and probably help you kind of overcome any challenges that you might have or inspire you, because a lot of the. A lot of the struggles that military spouses have could be very similar to other stay at home moms.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And honestly, this is something that has inspired me to talk more about remote work life, because that is not something I ever saw myself doing. When I was a little girl, I always just wanted to create films. That was something I was very passionate about.
Did a lot of stuff. I did a lot of acting and modeling on screen. And then when it was my adulthood years and going to school, I was ready to start telling stories behind the screen. So I went to school for video production and for film. And that's what I expected to do. I expected to move to LA or New York City and start making and producing films. I even had the opportunity working with Turner broadcasting right after college, but I'm aging myself here. But when I got out of college, it just happened to be the recession of 2008. So there wasn't really a whole lot of full time work for me at that time.
So I jumped on a ship and I started working for carnival cruise lines. I lived at sea for two years, and that is where I met my husband. He wasn't working in the coast Guard at the time. He was actually just working for carnival cruise lines as well. But he had always wanted to join the Coast Guard. So that's where my military spouse life kind of began. And then I quickly learned that getting a job as a military spouse, Washington, not going to be easy. Even though I had some stellar people on my resume, didn't really matter. They saw gaps in my resume.
They assumed that, oh, well, you're going to be leaving in, like, a couple years, so we don't want to invest our time into you. And even though I knew at that time well, remote work is an opportunity.
It just like, for them, it just wasn't feasible to operate in that manner. So I did the best that I could to squeeze my video production skill set in any kind of marketing department, because that's all I could do. And then I found a job here and there, going to city to city, wherever we moved every three or four years, but I didn't always. And it was a struggle, and it was really hard on my soul, on everything. And I was just like, no, this can't be what life is supposed to be about. I am an ambitious woman. I have these plans in my life that I want to do. And so I decided to create my own business. Oh, this will be easy. I said with myself, I can start my own business. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was not a business person. So certainly there was a lot of mistakes that were made. I jumped through all those hoops and learned from them very quickly, but kind of just made my own remote world that I could take with me.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: That's awesome. Okay, so first of all, I have to go back to the. To the. Be working on a cruise ship. If I could go back in time, I wish I could have done that.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: It was phenomenal. It was probably some of the best couple years of my life. I have friends from all over in different countries. Philippines, Australia.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, that sounds. When I graduated from college, my mom was like, oh, we have. Because I graduated from college in zero four. And she was like, oh, you know, I have so many friends who work on the cruise lines. And this is totally off topic. This is not about what we're talking about today, but I just wanted to mention, like, I wish that I could have gone back in time and taken that opportunity to go on that cruise ship, but then my life probably would have been completely different now. So who knows?
[00:07:16] Speaker B: It was some of the best years of my life. Would I go back and do it now? Heck, no.
Because at that time, again, I'm aging myself. When I was working on the ships, I think smartphones had just come out. Yeah, we didn't have the best capability of staying in touch with friends and family. And while you're at sea, I mean, certainly you don't have a signal. So that was really hard to be away from your friends and family and just being on a ship with people that you just met. But it kind of forced you into a social situation where you just had to get to know people that you're living right beside day and night for the next six to eight months.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Oh, that's so awesome.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: But it was great.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: The, like, hindsight is 2020, and the shoulda woulda coulda's are all there, you know, for all of those things. But that sounds awesome. Sounds like an awesome opportunity there. So let's go back to how you decided to start your own business, and you aren't a business person. And so, you know, and another thing that I want to touch on, too, is something that keeps coming up as I'm talking with other women and other moms who work remotely or own their own businesses.
The stay at home mom narrative has changed so much to where it used to be. Like when I was a kid in the eighties and nineties, stay at home moms didn't work. Stay at home moms took care of the kids, and maybe they had kids after school. That's where everybody came over after school for the moms who were career moms. And I think things are changing so much now, so that stay at home mom anymore is not necessarily a mom who sits and does all the laundry and the chores and everything at home. They're actually running their own businesses from home.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Completely different than what we, I would.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Push that narrative and say that because they have to, we're, we are having to have a two household income, and that is just where we're at in the economy is just, we have to both be working.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: And, you know, if, if you don't have childcare, you don't have childcare. You have to figure out and make it work. Hopefully you have a great neighborhood full of people that will come together and help you with that. Or maybe you do have daycare, or maybe you have school age children where they're going to elementary, middle school, whatever. And you can squeeze in whatever you can in those times, but then if something comes up, you have to just drop what you're doing and take care of that. So, yeah, it's definitely, yes. I feel like more women are more ambitious and wanting to work and do amazing things, but at the same time, I think the economy has forced a two household.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: That's a really good point. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's a combination of ambition and the economy, for sure.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: So when you, let's go back to the entrepreneurship, when you decided that you were ready to start your own business and you knew that you needed to do it, what were, what were the first, like, what were the first things that you did to start that adventure? Because it can be really overwhelming.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: It can be overwhelming. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I can say that, you know, at first because I just didn't understand at the time. I was like, oh, what's my name gonna be? What's my logo gonna look like?
And what's my website gonna be like? No, those are not the things I should have been thinking about. The things I should have been thinking about is more what is my business plan? Who are the audience members I should be reaching out to? And does my product and service align with those needs? What do I need to do for marketing to reach those individuals? So I definitely came at it in the very beginning from a visual perspective because I am a very visual person. So I was really excited about that process. But you really have to kind of think logically about your audience, and are you going to be providing the needs that fit with that audience? I will say I never came from a business background. I don't have really anybody in my family that went into business for themselves. I know my mom kind of just, she worked in accounting for a couple different places while I was growing up in bookkeeping and stuff like that. So I kind of got some business sense from that. But overall, I kind of just taught myself. I became obsessed with learning, finding any other kind of resource online. There was lots of online courses that I would sign up for, and then there was a point where I'm like, I need to stop learning and actually start applying some of the things that I'm learning.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I actually have done the same thing where you're like, I'm going to take this free course, or this course is only $29 and this one's really cheap, and this one's, you know, I feel like I could do that one. And then you get really overwhelmed because of all of the resources. So did you ask for help from anybody? Did you have like a mentor that you worked with or anything like that?
[00:12:17] Speaker B: I didn't actually. I kind of self led myself for the most part in the very beginning. I will say that I did work at a company while I was in Traverse City.
I was their marketing person while I was there, and it was a husband and wife.
They actually, funny story. I worked at a company who sold cremation urns and memorial products online. Fabulous company, by the way. Stardust Memorials, I'll shout out to them. But Marcy and Jordan Lindbergh are the owners of that company and another company that's next door to, it's called efs or e fulfillment services. And I learned so much by working at that company, just watching the two of them and how they ran their business and different things that they would do to incorporate within their e commerce listings and postings and website building and just how they conducted business in general. So I was like, I was a sponge the whole time I was there. And they've been fantastic. They allowed me to work remotely after I left there because they knew military spouses. They knew the story of the military spouse, and they were just so friendly and open to the idea of kind of retaining me for a little bit, which still to this day, I do some work for them. And I'm just so utterly grateful for the pair of them because they really did help me shape some of my business knowledge in the very beginning. So I did get a little bit of mentorship from them, I would say, but I will say remote work in itself, and it's hard to begin to do that remote work lifestyle when you're first starting out because you're not used to. I know. Covid, I feel like has changed a lot of things.
Covid forced everybody to stay at home and work, right? So everybody kind of got their toes dipped in the water and got that experience of what it was like, oh, hey, I can go throw a load of laundry in. Oh, look, the kitchen could be tidied up. Oh, wait, I'm supposed to be working right now.
So I feel like everyone got that kind of experience. But certainly you do have to be very adamant and strict with yourself and also set those boundaries while you're working.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And for those listeners who just aren't, who aren't familiar, you guys should be. Now that the military spouse life, military spouses, on average, move about every two to three years, and so they're having to constantly find new jobs. So remote work is so beneficial for military spouses. And we also recognize that for moms that work from home, it's so wonderful for moms to be able to work for a company that offers remote work or maybe you start your own business. And so we have to also jump over those expectations as moms not necessarily work from home employees or business owners in general, but as moms, we have another hurdle we have to jump over because we have those expectations about being a mom. And, you know, are we working too much and not paying enough attention to our kids? And there's that line, there's that expectation in society that we feel like we have to meet or exceed, and sometimes that can be so hard to do.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. And if I can speak for any of the moms here, that, you know, go on Valentine's Day at pre k or kindergarten and see, these are boxes, these little mailbox designs that some of the moms do to put together for their little Valentine's Day mailboxes. Some of these moms are like, they are like overkill. They design, like, these massive, beautiful boxes that, you know, the kid didn't design themselves and probably spent hours or days designing. I remember when my kids were in pre k, I designed this cute little shoebox with the slit in the front. We painted it pink. There was glitter all over it. I thought, yeah, I nailed this, did this right? And then I go in and there is like a whole John Deere tractor mailbox.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: I was like, oh, my, I failed at that moment that I had failed as a mother and that, you know, I should have been spending my last two days dedicated to this school project.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: I am so over the over the top projects. My daughter will be in fourth grade in the fall, and I don't have time to do all of that. Like, I love the other moms that have time to do that stuff. I, number one, this is a sound horrible. I don't want to, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to do that. I want to let somebody else do it. I want my daughter to do it. Like, I want her to have the ability to do that kind of thing. So at least for me, I know, like, I don't set my expectations that high because I know I'm not going to do it. Like, that's not me. I'll go to the store and I'll buy her something, but I'm not going to make it.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: See, and I love arts and crafts, so I do love doing the projects. But at the same time, I've just, you know, you always wonder if your kids are going to go to school and they're going to see what the other parents did with their kids and they're going to think, oh, why didn't my mom do this for me? And that's such a bad cycle to get your mindset and especially, you know, you got to give yourself a little grace. And that's something that I've learned, too, over the years, is just give yourself a little grace. Youre for my speaking for myself, I'm trying to run my own business. I'm trying to produce and direct a film. I'm trying to raise funds for this film while also not getting paid because, you know, we have no funds for it. So I'm doing all this in my own spare time, and I'm parenting two small children while also being a military spouse.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: It's just like, oh, my gosh. Like.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: If you didn't make a John Deere tractor mailbox, it's okay.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: It's okay. Oh, my gosh. Yes, I know. And we always have those. It's the mom guilt, and we always feel so guilty about not doing those things. But I think we have to realize all of the other balls that we have in the air as a mom in general, just in motherhood in general, and not necessarily even working for yourself or working for an employer, it's just too much sometimes. And so those society expectations and bars that everybody has set so high, we don't necessarily need to worry about jumping over those or exceeding those.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'll go back to. Going back to the topic overall for the episode here. Is just not accepting the status quo. And those are part of those elements, is not accepting the stereotypes or things that are placed upon you on what people think you should be doing.
You're doing a great job. You're being a good mom or dad. You are working from home. You know, you just got to give yourself a little extra grace and just know that it can take some time to kind of get used to working at home or working in a coffee shop, wherever you would like to work remotely, but just give yourself a little grace.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: How does somebody do that? Do you think? Like, what is a good way for somebody to get over that first expectation hurdle?
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Question of imposter? Yes, I think everybody has. You know, you might not be able to give yourself that positive affirmation all the time, but surround yourself with people who will. If you are, you know, doing, tell everybody you're. Tell everybody what you're trying to do and, you know, share with them your goals. I think one of the things that someone had shared with me is share the goals that you want to accomplish with other people so they can help keep you accountable. Yeah. Thank you. Help keep you accountable for what you're doing and also congratulate you for doing the or reaching the goal that you're trying to reach. And that kind of just surrounds yourself with a little bit of positivity and pats on the back that you might not expect and also try to just leave yourself those little positive affirmations. I know I see a couple other spouses and friends of mine posting on TikTok or other forms of social media, and they're frequently posting positive of affirmations. And I love that because I can just go and scroll and see that and kind of uplifts me knowing, hey, I'm not alone in this. There are other people who are just like me going through the same thing. So I think that is helpful.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. The power of community, really, I'm going to say is so powerful, using the word power twice in a sentence. But community can be so incredibly helpful and supportive. And so it's really important whether it's a virtual community or in person. And I like the idea of saying it out loud to somebody else to help. Having an accountability buddy, too, is certainly helpful as well.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: Exactly. And that was another thing I was going to say. There's a lot of resources online, too, that can get you out of the house. So if you are working from home, I will say that I see a lot of the four walls of the inside of my own home and I have to force myself to get out sometimes. Otherwise I'm just going to go crazy.
Or, you know, my husband comes home and I'm like a human social and I just start berating him with conversation, you know, and it's important to get out and make a coffee date with another friend that might be remote working and just remote work side by side, a coffee shop or the library or just, you know, just make sure you're getting out and socializing because that has an incredible effect on remote work life.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it really does. I started a local group, here I am, where we just go and meet for coffee every once in a while. There's no working. It's literally just like, let's start our day, let's meet at 830. After the kids go to school, we'll meet for an hour and then we go to our home offices and we work. So it at least gets us out and able to talk to, like another adult human being in real life.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And if you're starting your own business too, rather than working for somebody else, there's a company out there called, I think it's a million cups of coffee or a million cups or something like that, where you basically can go and just kind of help pitch your business, kind of practice your elevator speech, and also just meet other business owners locally and kind of get to know and socialize people in your community that are doing the same thing you are.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: I didn't know about that. That's really cool.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: I'm going to have to look it up and send you a link for that.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah, please do, because that sounds really interesting and I think that could be something that's super helpful for people who are wanting to start their own business.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it is 1 million cups.com. that's what it is.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: 1 million cups.com. okay. That's awesome. We definitely, everybody check that out. That seems like a really good resource. Thanks, Jennifer, for that resource. Now, before we wrap up, because we've got some really good nuggets of helpful information of how to get out there and how to keep yourself accountable. And we're just not, we just don't need to compare ourselves, really to anybody else. It's our own path. I think that's part of it as well.
Do what feels good to you and what feels authentic to you, but you also need the support. So definitely find a group that can help you in person or virtually. But now I really want to talk really quickly before we wrap up about your Kickstarter and that, and we talked about it briefly at the beginning of the episode, but for anybody who's really interested in learning more about the military spouse lifestyle or wanting to support it, just share, if you could just share this Kickstarter with your network, just take a look a listen, Jennifer, go ahead and give us just a little bit of information about that and where it can be found and all of those kind of good things.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Sure. It's on Kickstarter. The project is called in the shadows of service, the documentary of the modern military spouse. And it explores the lives of the modern military spouse and their experiences navigating the challenges of military life. So from the frequent moves the deployments, to balancing careers and family obligations, military spouses are affected by a 21% unemployment metric. And that doesn't even account for the underemployment metrics. I think it's even higher. I think it's like in the forties or 50% of percentiles. And this is something people are not aware of. Every, anytime that I mention that metric to anybody that's not in the military spouse community or military community, they're like, oh, my gosh, I didn't know that. Because the national average of unemployment, usually around three or 4%, but for military spouses, it's 21%. That has been like that for over a decade. And so I'm hoping that this film will be able to shed some light on that. And we'll be following the story of maybe three or four individual spouses and just kind of exploring their life. We're going to explore life of a new spouse, someone who's just entered into the military life, one that's been around for a while and a couple other storylines but our Kickstarter, we're trying to raise funds. We're trying to raise $75,000 for pre production costs for the film. That's just a little sliver of the overall budget that we're trying to fund, but we think we'll be able to get some grants for the rest of it. But we are just trying to get off the ground. We've been struggling for a year to try to get off the ground. So this Kickstarter for that, and we've already raised over $11,000, almost 12,000. So we're getting there, but we only have 30 days left. And the problem with Kickstarter is it's all ordevelop, nothing. So if we don't reach our goal, we do not see a cent of the money that we've raised already.
On the plus side, if you do decide to donate, there are really cool rewards there that you'll have to check out. You can do. There's like a challenge coin or a t shirt or some stickers or there's lots of things there. You can get movies, vip screening tickets to see the film when it comes out. And so those are really cool rewards there for you. So definitely check it out. If you can't donate a dollar, five, whatever, just share. Share their kickstarter. We're just trying to get off the ground and get as many eyes on it as possible, and we'd appreciate any support from the community.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: I love that. Jennifer, thank you so much for all of your hard work on this. I know that this is going to bring some really important information to light. I think you're right. Many people don't know that about military spouses. And so thank you for taking the time to bring that to the world. Hopefully we'll get it out there and sharing that story because it is so important.
Now, before we wrap up, is there anything else that we should mention about overcoming the status quo that we didn't dig into? We only have a couple minutes left.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: I would say as far as not accepting a status quo, I would say if you really want to start your own business, do it. Take the steps. Have the confidence. Shatter that imposter syndrome. Surround yourself with positive people and have grace and faith in yourself.
It's not Rome was not built in a day and you will get there. Just kind of do your homework, surround yourself with those people. And I would say if you're working remote for somebody else, still give yourself a little grace and try to set those boundaries between your work and your life at home. I know that's really important is setting those boundaries for yourself and making sure you're stopping at 05:00 and spending time with your family. You can set timers for yourself to kind of help with that and then also just socializing and making sure you're getting out of the house.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Those are some great, great, great suggestions. I love that. Thank you so much. Well, I'm so glad you were here today. It was really nice chatting with you.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to have come across your podcast and learn more about the remote mom.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And where can everybody find you? We'll share links in the show notes, but tell the listeners where everybody can find you and the Kickstarter and all that.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Sure. So my website is coralhouseproductions.com and all my social media handles for the most part are at Coralhouseproductions.
I am also on TikTok in the shadows of service. I think that's the most important one. If you're not on TikTok, we are sharing other things across the house productions pages on Instagram and Facebook. But yes, that is us.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, we will definitely share that out, listeners. Give it a look. Share like all of those good things that you do with social media. And as we say here on the remote mom collective, being different makes the difference. So let's support and inspire each other. Thanks, y'all. We'll talk to you next time.
