Meet the podcaster who helped schoolkids communicate with a space station

Ashley Mejia is a communications consultant and podcaster based in Florida, who loves talking all things freelance; this is a day in her life.

Ashley Mejia

We’re usually up at 6am most weekdays, nudging my three young kids out of bed. Breakfast is probably waffles with Nutella, and then it’s a mission to keep them focused on getting ready for school. The two little ones are often more interested in Lego or Hot Wheels, and I use my Google Home to give them pre-scheduled reminders like “Kids, do you have your shoes on?” or “Did you brush your teeth?”.

Our drive to school might be to the soundtrack of a kids podcast, and once I’m back home, I try and workout. My rule is to not start work till I’ve moved my body. I also try not to look at my phone or email before I get to my desk because I might see a message that could stress me out as I’m getting breakfast ready. It’s about creating a boundary between work and home, and honouring that early morning time with my kids.

Once I’m at my desk, the projects I might be working on at any given time are super varied, ranging from communications strategy and social media planning to content marketing and brand content creation. The morning with the kids is such a flurry of activity that when I start work, I have to take a breath and think “Ok what am I doing again?”. What has really helped is using a daily planner in which I zero in on the three things I absolutely have to get done today, come hell or high water.

I came to freelancing around 2009 via jobs in public relations and marketing, and I set up a marketing agency with a business partner. But then I hit a crunch point when I had my first baby.

The business was going well but there was a steep learning curve – there were definitely some moments of YouTubing our way through it – and when I dropped my baby off at daycare, I would be crying in the parking lot. Then while I was working, I found myself squinting at the camera feed of the daycare centre just to catch a glimpse of my baby daughter. It felt like there had to be another way.

Feeling torn between work and home took me by surprise. I come from a small town in America and was always super ambitious, but I didn’t realise just how much I would love being a mom.

I’m from an immigrant family and my grandparents were farm workers who worked all the time. My mom was able to get an education and was a nurse and my dad was in construction, and they worked a lot too. For me, it has been a privilege – a reward for their sacrifice and a marker of success – to be able to spend more time with my kids.

And that includes picking them up from school at 3pm – which means I’m watching the clock until I need to rush out the door. Then when they’re home, it’s homework, ukelele or piano practice, or tutoring. Once they’re in bed, I probably do another hour of work. I try not to, but there’s only so much I can get done in school hours.

Something I really cherish is the freelance community around me, whether that’s someone to bounce an idea offor just ask for advice on taxes. Some of those connections have come through the guests I interview for my podcast Talk Freelance To Me.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve had from a podcast guest is to identify and eliminate points of resistance in your workflow. This came from Marielou Mandl, a video creation expert and user-generated content influencer. Her advice was to observe where momentum stalls and create systems that remove those friction points. For her, that meant keeping cameras, lights, and editing tools permanently set up right at her desk and moving her flat-iron and makeup caddy from the bathroom to her desk so that she can get camera-ready in seconds. I loved this advice and think it can be applied by any creative freelancer.

For me, the joy of freelancing is the flexibility. A few months ago, I helped my daughter’s school submit a proposal to communicate with astronauts on board the International Space Station. Our proposal won, and the kids embarked on a 9-month adventure of learning how to conduct an interview, learning how to be on radio, and got to speak to an astronaut who is in space right now. It was such a wonderful experience being part of that, and if I’d been an employee or running a busy agency, I would never have had time to do that. The best thing about freelancing is that I can do motherhood my way.