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Maybe you’re about to start your first job or you’d like to finally launch that side hustle you’ve been thinking about. With this series, our Squarespace YouTube creators share their own stories and tell you how to get started. It’s time to embrace this next chapter and run with it.
Jenny Mustard didn’t set out to become a fashion and lifestyle YouTube creator. She studied animal welfare biology, but after “spending three years studying all the different ways that we humans mistreat animals, I had serious doubts that I could have this as a career without getting chronically depressed.” The freedom of being self-employed was also appealing, so she decided to turn another of her personal passions into a business, and launched a website selling vegan vintage clothes in 2011. “I still don’t know how I had the confidence to do it…it was probably one very powerful thought that the alternative wasn’t an option.” Jenny recalls pushing her site out for the world to see as a pivotal moment on her journey to realizing her dreams. “It was scary, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing or what the reaction would be, but I did it anyway.”
Jenny’s best friend was her first customer, and “by the time customer number three had placed her order, I felt like a million bucks.” Success did not come quickly or easily, though, and the couple emptied their savings account. “To get to the point where my business got off the ground or I actually started making a decent living from it, you’d have to fast forward a few years.” But it was her own business, and she’d never worked harder on anything. Jenny and her husband and business partner David talked about giving up, but they kept at it, relying on David’s income while Jenny tested out new ideas and projects. “I’ve gone from selling vintage skirts to making vegan cooking videos...to writing books and starting a podcast.” Jenny and David pivoted from selling clothes to creating content on their blogs and YouTube channels, and The Mustards was born. “One day after years of worrying about rent and bills and buying food, we realized that we were making enough money to support both of us.” She knew they’d made it when they saved up to buy their dream camera, ten times more expensive than the DSLR they started out with almost a decade ago.
“If someone had told me back in 2011 when I first launched my online store in a 15 square meter flat with mice and rats and cockroaches...that I would, eight years later, be back in London in a lovely cockroach-free flat with all these experiences and adventures behind me, I wouldn't have believed them! Or actually perhaps I would have. Like I said, I do have a healthy amount of confidence, even back then.”
To learn more about Jenny’s work, visit themustards.co or her YouTube channel.
Ready for your own pivotal moment on your path to success? Visit squarespace.com to get started.