Ashley Mikkelsen, Srta Spanish

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the Creator Space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.

On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like, how can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don't burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey.

These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

Today's guest is Ashley Mikkelsen, the founder of Senorita Spanish. Senior to Spanish looks to provide Spanish teachers with resources to amplify their classes through reading, games, lesson plans, technology, and more. Ashley, welcome to the show.

[00:01:10] Ashley Mikkelsen: Thanks so much. I'm so excited to be here.

[00:01:12] Sanjay Parekh: So I'm excited to have you here because I think you might be the first Spanish teacher that we've had on the show.

And I think the things that teachers do to hustle and do side hustles is super fascinating and super interesting. But before we get into all of that stuff, give us a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today.

[00:01:29] Ashley Mikkelsen: Sure, so I am from North Dakota, I did not grow up speaking Spanish, I had some amazing teachers of my own when I was going through middle school and high school, so I always tell my students, I didn't start speaking until I was in 8th grade, didn't start learning Spanish at all, and I've I did just fine.

I'm fluent. And they're always like, oh, you're fluent. Yeah yes. So that is something that I really like coming into the classroom as a second language learner, because it's that encouragement, right? You can do this, even if you don't have this background. We can get you to a point where you, yes, you can travel.

You can go places. You can be the translator for your family if that's needed. I always get the question at parent teacher conferences like, hey, we're going to Cancun this, January. Will so and so be able, and it's they've had three months and they've been gone 25 times so probably not your, well, okay, those conversations get a little bit.

[00:02:20] Sanjay Parekh: Take a translate app with you just in case.

[00:02:23] Ashley Mikkelsen: They'll be able to help you, maybe not 100 percent rely on that sort of thing. But yeah, I was really blessed to have some wonderful teachers. And when I went to college, I knew that the only thing that I knew was I want to do something with Spanish. And in my journey in college, where you're like discovering what do you want to do?

What do you want to be? I came from a family of educators, I have aunts, and my mom is a teacher, and I went into school knowing how much work teachers do. Education is hard work. Tons of effort put in outside of school, inside of school, before and after, on, days off, all of this. And I still remember the day I called my mom and I was like, mom, I think I want to be a teacher.

And she was like, well, you know how much work it is. So that was the kickoff. And I, finished my program, studied abroad, found my first teaching job, and I loved it. I still love it. I am out of the classroom right now. I have. littles at home that I am to have some time with, win and out, but I do hope. So we'll see you, we'll takes us.

[00:03:33] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Why, originally, why did you pick Spanish? What was the reason for that as your language of choice?

[00:03:40] Ashley Mikkelsen: I had spanish or latin and latin, no thank you. So that's why Spanish.

[00:03:46] Sanjay Parekh: I don't need to do well on the SATs, whatever.

[00:03:48] Ashley Mikkelsen: Yeah, my schools didn't even, the SAT wasn't a big deal in North Dakota. You took the SAT if you wanted to go to school somewhere else and wasn't interested in that. So again, not even on my radar really and they had French later on and I always just feel like French is quote beyond this sorry French teacher friends, but it's it always feels like a confused Spanish with lots of extra sneaky letters.

[00:04:14] Sanjay Parekh: It's a highfalutin language, whereas Spanish is for us regular people.

[00:04:18] Ashley Mikkelsen: Yes, I am.

[00:04:19] Sanjay Parekh: There you go.

[00:04:20] Ashley Mikkelsen: Yep. So when I say like, why did I pick that? It's because that was literally the best option. And I'm so glad I did.

[00:04:26] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. How many years did it take you to get to the point where you felt like you were fluent?

[00:04:30] Ashley Mikkelsen: I was really lucky to have some great teachers. And so after my senior year of high school, so I started in eighth grade. So it's five years of Spanish. I went to Spain and I stayed with a host family and I remember being so comfortable speaking with them and not having any problems at all. And of course, I continued studying in college and obviously expanded and deepened, but I felt conversationally comfortable after those years in high school.

[00:04:59] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so then you're, you become a Spanish teacher And then you decide to start doing this side hustle thing. When did that start?

[00:05:08] Ashley Mikkelsen: Yeah, so, it was not about the side hustle, right? It just fell into that later. So, the school that I started teaching at was really good about professional development and networking with others, both within our district and without it. So they had a program set up with a local university where as you did professional development within the school or the district, you could then turn those hours of PD into grad credits.

And if you're familiar with education salaries at all, what often happens is you can get an advancement in your salary by getting more education. So PD hours turn to grad credits turn to money, eventually. And as a, first year out of college, I was like, yes, I would to pay off my loans. So, getting into PD and starting to network with people outside of my school and learning more and more from teachers who were just putting things out there hey, I tried this did not go well. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. And I started, it was really on Twitter back in those days. We were doing like PLCs on hashtag threads and that sort of stuff.

[00:06:17] Sanjay Parekh: And let me stop you there. What's a PLC?

[00:06:20] Ashley Mikkelsen: Oh, professional learning community. So you thinking about groups of educators who have some sort of something in common and it isn't even necessarily all Spanish teachers.

There are world language teacher communities, but there's also teachers who are interested in gamification in technology based, there's communities for pretty much everything. So I'm not going to even try to list them, but yeah, as I was participating in those communities, I realized it would be so much easier to share my thoughts in a longer format than the, whatever the, like 140 character limit or whatever it was. So that's when I.

[00:06:55] Sanjay Parekh: Became 280.

[00:06:57] Ashley Mikkelsen: Yeah, it was like impossible. And you would, do a little bit and then slash one, and then you didn't know how many threads you were going to get. And finally, I was like, I'm just going to start blogging because I have thoughts. I want to share them. And this whole, like navigating Twitter thoughts are not working.

And when I wanted to share a resource that I tested that I, enjoyed and wanted other people to be able to try out. Being able to share it in a more permanent and findable way for others really led me to blogging. And that's when I started saying, oh, well, okay, now I'm blogging, but people are having trouble accessing and downloading the things that I'm trying to share.

So that's when the download format started coming in. And I realized that it was going to be easiest if I just used a platform that already existed to help teachers and to like share resources between teachers. So there's a marketplace called teachers pay teachers. And that's what I started doing is as I was blogging about an activity, I started like putting it in a more other people friendly format, because sometimes you know, your brain just does things and you try it out .

And so I'd started to like repackage it to make sense to somebody else's brain. And I put it on my TPT and then I'd link it from the blog post where I said, here's something that I tried. Here's what it, what it did, how it worked. And I'd link it to my TPT and it just snowballed from there.

Then it was, okay, how can I put these pieces together? Oh, people would like to see some digital things with it. The journey just went on.

[00:08:30] Sanjay Parekh: So how long has it been that you've been putting these resources on Teachers Pay Teachers?

[00:08:35] Ashley Mikkelsen: Nine years now. Eight or nine. Somewhere around there.

[00:08:40] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Okay. And so at what point did it become oh wait, this is actually real money that's coming in. How long did that take you to build that?

[00:08:49] Ashley Mikkelsen: Years. Years. I remember really specifically, my first goal being like, it would be really nice to pay for my Planet Fitness membership, which if you're familiar with that gym style at all, it's like $10 a month.

And so I remember it like, again, relatively new teacher, pretty fresh out of college, and I was like, yeah, it would be so nice, and then I do remember being like, hey, my internet bill is this is back in the day, it was like $25 a month, and I was like, maybe I could pay for my internet bill, and it just kept, shifting my goalpost to just, a little bit more and a little bit more to try and alleviate the other areas of my budget.

[00:09:27] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, now, you know I've read people that have done this and that the top teachers on this site are making like millions of dollars a year and I think some of them have quit teaching.

Some of them have continued teaching. Like, where is that mindset for you? Is there a number that you get to? You're like, okay, I should just do this instead of actually teaching any.

[00:09:48] Ashley Mikkelsen: Well, so like I mentioned, I'm home with my littles, my TPT allows me to do that. So that first year after I had my oldest, so.

My oldest was born in September. I had just moved back to North Dakota, had found a teaching job. I started school and two weeks later I had a baby and then I went on maternity leave. And because I was new to the school, my maternity was six weeks long and then I went back to school and then that was 2019 and the 2020 school year.

So if you think back in your memory, just a few years, that was Quarantine teaching. So we, I went back from maternity leave and just a few months later they said everybody go home. We don't know what's happening. Just go home. And so I wound up teaching from home at my dining room table with a six month old.

And that was when I really started to realize I am missing all of that to be trying to do this mess of, we don't know what's going to happen. And we don't even know, my district didn't know what they were going to do the following year at that point. And I don't think anybody really knew what they were going to do the following year at that point, but I prayed.

And sat down with my husband, and we prayed some more together, and we tried to do some budgeting and reflecting, and we realized, Wow we could do this. You could just not, and you could be home, and you wouldn't have to do this whole six week maternity leave thing again, and you could just, so, that was the year that I left the classroom, and like I mentioned before, I would love to go back, and I plan to go back. But we're not sure we're done growing our family yet at this point. So really when we're talking about family and personal life first and how we can balance that and what my family needs and what I need just to be like mentally healthy, even cause it was such a disaster for me at that point that, like I could not go back to the classroom.

Thankfully, that's just a gift to be able to have that option, but I miss it. I do. So who knows?

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[00:12:12] Sanjay Parekh: So for right now, your side hustle has become basically your full time hustle. And so are you still — it's an interesting business too, right? To me, because you've created all this content already and you're probably continuing to make revenue on old content that you made years ago. So that's this ladder effect that ends up happening.

So are you still making new stuff now? And how much of your day is spent doing that versus chilling with the kids?

[00:12:38] Ashley Mikkelsen: Well, that's a really hard question to answer because every single day looks different. If you have ever spent any time with little kids, you know that their schedules are unpredictable at best. So, there's.

[00:12:51] Sanjay Parekh: That is a very nice way of saying it, yes.

[00:12:54] Ashley Mikkelsen: We have, so my oldest is five and my youngest just turned one this week. So we have a five, two and a half, and a one year old. So really, there's a lot that's up in the air. My husband also works funky hours. So there are times where, you know, it's just all different.

No day looks the same. There are days where I get good stretches of time to work. And there are days where I'm like, oh, I just want to answer an email. Like I just can't, so, I am definitely still creating. I'm definitely still working. My husband and I work really strongly as a team together for he has the girls and it's, you're out there, mom's downstairs, the door is shut, she's in the office, and, would like to say don't bother mom during the office time, but that's, it's not reality.

There's like a child safety doorknob on my door, and I'm pretty sure all of my children can open the door. I guess I could say I have a one year old, but it just feels every two seconds somebody's saying, hi mom, what you doing? And I'm like, yeah.

[00:13:51] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. Just so you know, that doesn't end. It doesn't matter if they're 20, they still come and do that.

Which is actually quite nice. I get that regularly with 20 old humans in the household. Hey, what are you doing? What are you working on? Okay. I'm going to stop what I'm doing and tell you what I'm working on. Let me explain to you.

[00:14:08] Ashley Mikkelsen: Yeah. It's nice. Today, my little came in and she was like, what'd you do?

And I was like, working and she goes, what you're working on? And I said, make it puzzles. And she goes, oh, I love puzzles. Can I have the puzzle? Can we do the puzzle? And I was like, well, you don't read yet and you don't speak Spanish yet. So this probably isn't a puzzle for you.

[00:14:27] Sanjay Parekh: There's a couple of hurdles between us right now and you doing the puzzle.

[00:14:31] Ashley Mikkelsen: She has been able to, my oldest has been able to help me with some coloring and like project things in the past And that was really exciting for her, is being able to work with mom. So, it's just fun.

[00:14:43] Sanjay Parekh: How do you think about so as you're, you've built a lot of these resources already, how do you think about and plan what you're going to do next?

Do you have a process? Do you just come up with ideas? Like, how do you think about this for yourself?

[00:14:56] Ashley Mikkelsen: Oh, all of the above. So I use data tools to look at SEO and find gaps that way. I use my own analytics from years past. See what do people like, what do people use? I look at the feedback people give me.

And when I'm seeing like, we really love this. I try to lean into that and say, okay, well, I can do more of that. If that's something that you guys are loving, I'd be happy to. Sometimes they just get emails that are like, hey, I have this coming up and I need some help. And I always tell, I try to like, always answer those emails with, I'm so glad you sent me a message.

I love helping. And then I'll try and do whatever I can to make things for that unit or try and bid, sometimes I have things that already work for them, but try and put those pieces together for them to say, hey, these are all the things that I have that fit what you're looking for. Check them out and just see.

But using all of those streams and talking to people on Instagram and on YouTube and in Facebook groups and just seeing what do you need.

[00:15:55] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. So now that you're not in the classroom on a kind of day to day basis is there anything that you do to make sure that you stay in touch with that?

Because, you're building resources for the classroom and when you're not there it's harder to test some of these things. So how do you think through that for yourself?

[00:16:13] Ashley Mikkelsen: Well, so a lot of it. And a lot of it is relying on what has worked before, and a lot of it is networking with people who are still in the thick of it right now.

So I have some teacher friends who, I'll send stuff to them, and they'll try it out, and they'll let me know what they thought, and, if it was good on timing, and that sort of stuff. And the other part of it is really, teaching is so much more. of an art in serving the students that are right in front of you.

That even if, it's not incumbent for a teacher to have seven sections of students, and three of those sections might be the same prep, so you might have three Spanish 1 classes. You most likely cannot use the exact same lesson in those three class periods because they're different kids. So, sometimes, even what I've put together and that I've used, for five years, somebody else is on it and be like, that only took my kids 20 minutes and it took yours 50?

And I'm like, well, I used it the first day of the unit. And they're like, I used it the ninth day of the unit. And you're like, well, so, those kinds of things, there's so much flexibility that there are times where you test something and somebody else is going to say, that didn't go as well for me as I thought it would.

And sometimes it's the other way. It's like, where they tested it, and they loved it, and I'm like, I really didn't like how I set that up, just because, not only are the students different, the skills are different, but also the teaching style is different, and teachers are different, so all of those things.

That there's so much variety, right?

[00:17:42] Sanjay Parekh: Have you, so like looking at your resources that you've built, have you thought about taking them and trying to apply them to other languages? I know you're a Spanish teacher, some of the theories and concepts might go across.

[00:17:53] Ashley Mikkelsen: Yeah, certainly. I do have some resources that I have made editable, so they can download kind of the format and then just plug in the vocabulary or the words or the structures that they need to use. I have had people reach out to me and say, hey, can you make this in Italian? Can you make this in French? And I go, ah, French!

Like we talked about before. But generally, I don't create in other languages just because there's so much nuance to it. And even just Spanish is sometimes really challenging because when you think about we were talking just before we started this conversation about, you say you all and up here in North Dakota, we say you guys.

Well, that's just one English-speaking country. When you think about there's 22 countries in the world that speak Spanish, and there might be times where I say a word and somebody else is that is just not a word, and you're like, yes it is, I promise. But it's a word here and not a word there, and there they might say this, and that, that, all of that happens, and so if I think about stretching into another other language where that still happens, and I don't have that depth and breadth of knowledge. That is something where like that piece is so important for language teaching when you're talking about teaching the culture and you're teaching all these different perspectives without having that year like years of study and experience and knowledge I would not feel comfortable creating resources and putting them into somebody else's hands and somebody else's classroom and saying you know here you go because those pieces are so important.

[00:19:25] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. So as someone that's obviously we can hear your passion and your love of involved being involved with other educators, what keeps you going on those days that are just hard and difficult, or, there's some intractable issue and you can't figure it out? What keeps you going?

[00:19:43] Ashley Mikkelsen: Well, first I am a problem solver at heart. I love that challenge, and I think teachers in general, most of us are, because teaching is full of problems. It just is. There's so many bumps and hurdles and things that you just, the copier is down, or this kid puked, or, whatever, or your kid puked, and you have to be, there's so many things.

Problems are almost like our bread and butter. As much as it, stinks to say, I like solving problems, and that's one of the fun things. The other part of it that really keeps me going, though, is that community piece. That teachers really have this network and this reliability where you can just say, I am stuck on this, whatever it is.

And you can lay out the problem, and there are so many people online nowadays. You can go down the hall, you can talk to people in the lounge, or you can post your problem on the internet and say, who can help me? And there are so many people who will help you and who love to help you. So that community aspect is just, it's so amazing.

[00:20:49] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, there's, I think there's a very parallel, a good parallel there because entrepreneurs by nature, that's what we are, right? We're problem solvers and that's what we do. That said, I think for most of us that are entrepreneurs, we've never had to think about if a kid is going to puke on the thing that we were working on.

So, I feel very fortunate that is not one of my problem sets that I've ever had to consider and contemplate somebody vomiting. Because of something that I'm doing. So I appreciate that.

[00:21:19] Ashley Mikkelsen: It's a unique, like I said, it's a unique situation.

[00:21:24] Sanjay Parekh: Very unique. And I as, as much as I appreciate everything that you do, I hope I never had that problem where I have to think about what to do with vomit.

Just because okay, well, let's talk about the things that influence your work. Do you have any kind of personal story or experience from your past that continues to influence what you do today?

[00:21:45] Ashley Mikkelsen: Well, like I mentioned my own teachers, so the teacher that I had in high school, I actually got, I say, I got the honor to work with her when I moved back and she's just still so amazing.

And I still get a chance to talk with her and we kind of bump elbows every now and then because we're in the same town and just so many things that she did. That looking back now, after being an educator and learning more about how our brains learn language, she's just brilliant. There's so many times where I'm like, Wow, how did she just do that?

And she just like, Wow, and just seeing how her and of course I've had the chance to observe other teachers and go to conferences and there are just so many teachers who are just so skilled, but they don't make it look like that, they just make it look like they're just breathing in their classroom and things are just happening and, now on the other side of things, wow.

So much thought, and effort, and skill, and experience went into all of those little things that just happened in those three minutes of their class. And it's so cool to see these teachers blooming and growing and learning and just being able to see that happen both in person and online is just so inspiring to me.

[00:23:08] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I agree with you there. Like when you have an incredible teacher like that, they're worth their weight in gold. I still keep up with my orchestra teacher that I had from the third grade through the ninth grade. She's still in Kentucky. She's retired now. We had dinner with her not too long ago.

Not just me, but the entire family when we were going through Kentucky and we had dinner with her. So shout out to Miss D in Kentucky there. She's a fantastic teacher. I'm sad that she's not teaching anymore, but she's been doing it long enough that retirement is well deserved at this point. But let's switch gears a little bit and talk about wellness for yourself, right?

This is a lot to juggle. You got three kids. You got this business on the side. We're not really on the side. It's a full time gig. But Exercise, wellness. What do you do to deal with stress and everything else and staying healthy?

[00:23:57] Ashley Mikkelsen: Exercise is a big one for me. Pretty much keeps me sane.

So, when we moved from, we had been in Illinois for a few years. We moved back from Illinois to North Dakota. I say we because my husband and I moved together. And that was wow, it was just really good timing. So we had been at a gym in Illinois that we just loved. They were like a family to us. It was really sad to leave them.

And when we moved here, we didn't have that same community, but we thought what if we take the money that we had been spending in our gym memberships and we just invested and we built a garage gym of sorts. And man, like all the time, we're like, high five. That was awesome. Because that was also the year COVID happened.

So, wow, we were so lucky because we got that before people started, raising prices for dumbbells and all these things. And we really lucked out. And my husband had done his level one training with Rogue Fitness. So he drove home from Ohio with a, backseat full of stuff so we didn't have to pay for shipping.

We just really got lucky there. But now, it's been five years since we did that and I am so thankful. Because before we had kids, we didn't realize how awesome that would be. And now, having kids, I'm like, oh my gosh, I would never be able to get to the gym with all of them in tow, and I don't know how people do it.

I know that there's family daycare gyms and things like that, but I literally just, everybody out, here we go, we're going to the, we're going to the garage. And sometimes it's all of us, and sometimes it's just three of us, sometimes it's all of us and the dog, but we are, we work out in the garage together, and I love that my kids get to see us doing things.

They will pick up, they have their own little dumbbells. So my girls have purple two pound dumbbells and pink three pound dumbbells, and they sometimes fight over who gets which, but they will pick them up and they will imitate us. And it is so awesome to see that. They are watching us, and they are understanding how this is, healthy for them, and they'll talk about how strong their muscles are, and they'll run in place, and I just, I absolutely love being able to have that time together as a family, even though also some days, I don't want to paint it all with rose colored glasses.

There are times where children have been, kicked in the head because I was doing backward, something and my foot went up in the air and somebody was walking behind me. And why were you, whatever, like it's reality, right? So, don't ever think that just because there's a home gym means wow, it's all sunshine and roses.

No, I use a baby gate to cordon myself off from them. And there are times where I'm like, you're going to lose a finger. Don't touch that. Things like that.

[00:26:36] Sanjay Parekh: They don't really know the gym rules when they're that age. There's safety zones. You're not supposed to be behind a person kicking.

[00:26:41] Ashley Mikkelsen: Yes. And we do have things like that set up in place for them where we have there's, we have a blue like camp chair and we're like booties and blue, like mom and dad are doing a lift sit down, and they like, they know they'll sit in the blue chair and they'll go and as soon as we're done with the lift, they're like, is that set done?

And we're like, yes, and then they, then they're back up and whatever it's like, they get the concept of rest time, but this isn't something to happen overnight, right? Like my five year old has been doing this since she was a baby in the bouncer and now our one year old is the baby in the bouncer watching us.

So it's just, yeah, it's crazy, but I love it.

[00:27:15] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, it's nice to not having to spend the time going to and from the gym as well, right? Like that, it's so many things that we have. Learn post pandemic of not spending time in the car and losing that productivity. If you can do something else, that's just as good.

[00:27:32] Ashley Mikkelsen: And there are times where it's like I know people might be surprised to hear this, but in North Dakota, it does get over a hundred degrees in the summer. It does get hot. So there are definitely times where I'm like, oh, a gym with AC would be so nice. We do have a heater put in our garage for winter, but I tend to turn it up to 50 degrees and then do my workout and my husband is like, what are you that is not warm enough and I'm like, but you turned up to 65 and I just like melts that kind of tweet a little bit 50 degrees.

[00:27:58] Sanjay Parekh: I agree with your estimate. 50 degrees is not warm enough by the way. And you're supposed to sweat when you work out.

[00:28:03] Ashley Mikkelsen: So that is exactly what he says. He's but then you don't sweat. And I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. So, whatever I'm usually outnumbered on that one because the girls obviously also prefer when they can move their hands and not I will put on your snow pants.

We're going to the garage and they're like ugh.

[00:28:21] Sanjay Parekh: No frozen digits. I vote for that too. Okay. Let's talk about you've been doing this now for a good number of years. Is there anything like looking back now that you think, hey, if I could do this over again and do it differently, I would.

And this is how I would do it.

[00:28:37] Ashley Mikkelsen: I would buy clip art. Know that sounds so simple, but. When I first started I would literally make my own clip art and I am not artistic at all. So I would spend so much time putting in shapes in Google Slides to be like this circle and then layer this circle and eventually it would become a snowman and actually pay three dollars and download art from an artist who makes beautiful art and save yourself the six hours.

That's one of those things that I just was not willing to invest because I didn't see that return would happen. When I was talking about how, man, I was really hoping I could pay my 10 a month at Planet Fitness. And now I'm like, I still am a stickler about things. We just had the cyber sale and I had filled up my cart with things that I was going to use.

And now my next steps are I've stopped everything else and I'm going to make what I had planned with that art that I bought until I get that money back. Because that's just how my brain works. I wish that I could tell baby Ashley, like it's fine. Spend 5, spend 3, whatever it is, get the art that's from.

[00:29:49] Sanjay Parekh: How long did it take you to get to that point? So in the beginning you were making her art. How many years was it before you were like, this is dumb. Let me just buy our own?

[00:29:57] Ashley Mikkelsen: Embarrassingly long.

[00:29:59] Sanjay Parekh: Or is this like a new revelation from last week?

[00:30:01] Ashley Mikkelsen: It's been longer than that, but I would say probably four or five years. And there are still times where I'm like I can make that myself like even last week I did something that was like just a free coloring page and I couldn't find something that I liked, and I drew it myself, and I was like, you're not an artist, what are you doing?

And even my daughter was like, Mom, what are you drawing? And I was like, Shh, peanut gallery? You go color on your page, and I'm going to color on mine. And, yeah, I just, there are times where I can't quite find something, or whatever. But for the most part just by the heart.

[00:30:41] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah.

I love that. It's great advice, right? Thinking about what your strengths are and what your real value add is and focusing on that and I think that is you're identifying there It is a struggle for entrepreneurs because we want everything to be good. We want everything to be the way we think envision it.

And if you go out and get stuff from other people, it's 90 percent the way there, but not a hundred percent how you think about it. But here's the secret. I think most other people are never going to realize it, right? 99% people is not going to matter to them. The only met people that it's going to matter to is us.

And we just need to get over it and continue on. So, I love that as a piece of advice. Well, this has been fantastic, Ashley. Where can our listeners find and connect with you online?

[00:31:26] Ashley Mikkelsen: So probably the best place to connect with me would be on my Instagram. My Instagram handle is It's SRTA_Spanish.

So Señorita Spanish. And then I'm the same on YouTube and that's also my website is SRTASpanish.com. So if you want to check out my blog and see what I have to share there, maybe you're looking to work on your own Spanish. Sometimes I get questions about things like that. I have recommendations for books you can check out for beginners and all of those sorts of things too.

[00:31:56] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. Thanks so much for being on the show today.

[00:31:58] Ashley Mikkelsen: Thanks so much for having me. This has been fun.

[00:32:02] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.