Play for Profit Podcast

About Me and the Play for Profit Podcast

• Najela • Season 1 • Episode 1

Share episode

Najela Carter shares her journey as a multi-passionate entrepreneur who built multiple income streams while maintaining her school psychologist career. She challenges the common entrepreneurial advice that forces people to choose between their day job and business aspirations, offering a sustainable approach for those who want both.

• School psychologist whose online business journey began when her district went on strike in 2019
• Struggled with entrepreneurial advice telling her to "burn the boats" when she actually enjoyed her day job
• Discovered that as someone with ADHD, rotating through multiple interests works better than hyper-focusing on one business
• Experienced a health scare that made her reevaluate toxic hustle culture and prioritize healing
• Developed the concept of "seasonality" – building one aspect of business to sustainability before moving to another
• Created multiple streams of income that provided financial security through tough career transitions
• Pivoted through various roles: educational consultant, book coach, and business strategist
• Values joy and well-being over making millions at the cost of health and relationships

You don't have to burn the boats to build a business. You don't have to sacrifice your sanity, your health, your relationships or your joy to succeed. You can love what you do during your day job and build a life that honors all of your passions.


Speaker 1:

I'm Nigella Carter, a school psychologist, business strategist and educational consultant. I help multi-passionate entrepreneurs build multiple streams of income doing what they love. A little bit about my story. I am a dog mom. I live in Washington State, I'm married and I've been living in Washington State for about five almost five years now. My husband and I jumped right during the pandemic and, with everything going on, we might be jumping to Canada or someplace else soon.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that was really difficult about jumping into the online business space was all the advice to ditch my job and go all in. They never had an answer for what if I actually like my day job? I jumped into the online business space in 2019 with various businesses. My school psych job went on strike. California has some really high caseloads and I basically just spent my time optimizing my day job so that I could work on my side hustles in the evenings. I love being a school psychologist. I really enjoy helping kids navigate their strengths and provide support. I've been able to work in pretty good school districts. Some places are hit and miss. Overall, I love my job. When my job went on strike in 2019, I was a contractor and the schools weren't open. There was no work but that. And if schools weren't open, there was no work but that started my journey into the online business space.

Speaker 1:

A lot of marketing bros saying you have to go all in, quit your day job, but they never had anything for how to balance like an actual side hustle Because, like I said, I love my job. I wasn't planning on quitting but that job going on strike my first year school psych. I just need side hustle, a good safety net if you do it properly. But nobody had an answer for managing that, especially if you're neurodivergent or you have chronic illnesses Like I get really bad migraines like sometimes they last three or four days. Most advice is for able-bodied male, white males, not people who are neurodiverse, not chronically ill people dealing with trauma. They kept saying go all in and focus, focus, focus, except for in order to sustain anything like my ADHD brain is not wired to stay focused on one thing. That is counter to what we're taught in the online business space. To sustain any one thing, I have to rotate through them. I can't be like, oh, I'm just gonna go all on this business for one year. If that's not, you's okay.

Speaker 1:

People who are multi-passionate, who have multiple interests, multi-potentialites like we get shamed into being flighty or unfocused because the world isn't built like that. I think of Renaissance people who were multi-passionate. Like they can carve sculptures, they can make inventions, and as things started getting more industrialized and capitalism took over, it really does make sense for capitalism purposes to be a robot essentially and I don't think any human is wired this way but especially ADHD people who, just you know, in order to sustain any one thing, need to jump around. I think of it like a computer, where you have your one program open and stuff running in the background. That's how I feel. Like my business is. There's seasons and if you think about it like that, it's easier to manage.

Speaker 1:

Even though I love my job, I know I'm not going to get rich. Being a school psych, I do make a decent living and over the course of this journey I've been able to figure out like, hey, I don't need a bunch of money to live, I can do with more. I don't need millions of dollars. I don't want to be one of those people that just hoards wealth for no purpose. I understand we want to build a legacy and generational wealth, especially as a black woman, building something I could pass to my kids or donate to charity. I don't need millions of dollars to accomplish that. Working in education, I am not gonna get rich. I can be comfortable if I keep expenses down In order to bring in more money. I'm going to need something else.

Speaker 1:

Last year, in April 2024, I had like a health scare that landed me in the emergency room. I realized I was allergic to the stuff I was putting in my hair. They gave me medication that dropped my potassium levels so low that I was probably days away from having a heart attack if I hadn't listened to my body. I remember there was a challenge for one of the entrepreneur groups I'm in. It almost felt like I wasn't dying. Just to be clear, oh my gosh, I'm on my deathbed. But it was like I was in the emergency room getting a IV to get my potassium levels up. I remember being with the IV, exhausted and dizzy, trying to still complete the 10k in 10 days challenge because I wanted that badge of toxic hustle. I remember coming up with the idea of play for profit while I was there thinking what am I doing? Like I am, I need to rest. Like I am literally in the emergency room, I just need rest. But that got me thinking can you pursue all of your passions at once? I am multi-passionate I'm a school psychologist, educational consultant, business strategist, wife, dog, mom. I love to write.

Speaker 1:

Let health scare help put things in perspective. My biggest mistake was trying to build it all at once. I don't think you can. I think there's this quote in the entrepreneur space where they literally say, oh, you can have it all, but you just can't have it all at once, and I think there's some accuracy to that. Embrace seasonality, prioritize yourself and your needs and you can have it all. You can have it all, but you're not going to build it all at once. So many people try to do all the things at once. Give yourself time to breathe, and I think that goes in life and business. You have to embrace seasonality and prioritize yourself.

Speaker 1:

I prioritize joy because that health scare was like what I was working so hard before as a school psychologist and while I was making like a comfortable living, I was so exhausted I couldn't enjoy the money. I remember getting out of the hospital and it was time to renew my contract. I was trying to get FMLA leave. I walked away and took a 20% cut in pay because I was like I can't imagine working that hard ever again, not at the expense of my health, not at the expense of my relationships, not at the expense of even my dogs. Like my dogs when they don't get human or cuddle time, or me and my husband are just two ships passing in the night and they get ornery and start acting out. If dogs are gonna do that, I don't want to set that precedent when I have kids. I decided to prioritize joy. I couldn't imagine trying to hustle my face off, whether it was as a school psychologist or business business strategist. I wasn't going to let my passions fall by the wayside. In pursuit of money, some hustle bros and girl bosses sacrificed everything Friends, family relationships, sanity.

Speaker 1:

There's so many podcasts I listened to for prominent entrepreneurs. They were like I made seven figures but I got a divorce. My wife had to bring my kids to the office so I could play with them and they could actually see me, or I just I had enough time to get home and tuck my kids into bed and that was all I was going to do. I wasn't going out like that. I'm in a good position to do this slowly and sustainably. Another podcast I was listening to, especially in this economy. This lady had people out here being like, oh, you could go and start your own business and just put things on a credit card. I don't think that's wise, especially with the current administration in 2025. Let's not do something crazy when we have no idea what the day-to-day looks like. You could definitely do things to set yourself up for success without having to burn the boats, because, like all the people who told me to burn the boats are now coming back on the driftwood saying they got burnt out. They're prioritizing rest. If you could start that saying they got burnt out, they're prioritizing rest If you could start that early in your business instead of learning the hard way, your business will be better for it.

Speaker 1:

I'm actually in the position where I could leave my job if I wanted to, but I work for the local tribal school and I love it there, pursuing passions, multiple streams of income and prioritizing your joy. It took me a while to get to this point. I had a contract at the beginning of the school year and it fell through the day before I was supposed to start, which never happened, and so, truth be told, I kind of panicked and just took any job. And that was stupid as well, because I worked for a very, very toxic district. Thankfully, my side hustles and multiple income streams sustained us through tough times. It did give me the chance to just, like that bad district, just walk away Like I literally put my computer in my mailbox at the school, told them I was leaving and left Like I was able to just drive off. But those side hustles helped me wait for a better fit. Looking back at my multi-passionate journey, it's been a fun ride.

Speaker 1:

I went to UC Riverside. I graduated with a degree in psychology and creative writing, actually started off as a neuroscience major. I didn't know how much I needed to study until I was ready to change my major. I had to work on one problem for three hours a day just to understand calculus. By then I had one series of classes left for physics and I was done. I pivoted and majored in psychology and creative writing. In 2013,. I graduated with my degree in special education and applied behavior analysis.

Speaker 1:

I worked two jobs substitute teacher and tutor. That first summer I was a supervisor for in-home therapy. I realized I don't have any time off and trying to get time off has been a nightmare. So I was like what can I do with this degree so I can work in the school system and get summers off. I get aggravated with people who are like, especially putting down teachers, like, oh, it must be nice to get summers off. They're doing a full-time job with people's badass kids in an overcrowded classroom and they're doing a full year's worth of work in nine to ten months. It's not, you get time off. It's nice to do that, but that's like recovery time. Okay Again. Imagine like your high-pressured, high-energy job and trying to compress everything into 10 months opposed to 12. And yeah, let's not rag on teachers for getting summers off. They need it.

Speaker 1:

That first year I was like this is wild. In home therapy, you're doubling up on hours Trying to fill contracts. There was a time where I spent eight hours with one family they had three kids on the spectrum and it was like, oh my God, like never again. So I went back to school and was like huh, what can I do with my degree in special education? That's not teaching classes. Although I think I would have made a good resource teacher. I'm not teaching a whole classroom. That could use my degree.

Speaker 1:

That's when I went back to school for school psychology. I graduated in 2016 while working two jobs preschool mental health consultant, supporting eight schools with 16 programs, and my supervisory job in the evenings and obviously got burnt out from that for a variety of reasons, took a break, went back to in-home therapy, started my job in 2018 as a school psychologist. I was able to move to Oakland and live there for a year while I filled that contract and then 2019, like our district, went on strike and I was like, oh heck, no, I'm not trying to be caught out in these streets without a job. So I that's what I went searching. I was listening to financial independence podcasts about entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1:

One lady who was a school psychologist was also a business coach as well, and I was like huh, I wonder how I can be a coach. I didn't do due diligence when looking for a coach. I ended up getting some marketing bro, he's a nice guy. I have a problem with somebody whose my business philosophy follows Trump's art of the deal. I was like dude, anyway, I didn't do my due diligence on that, but I did jump into the online coaching space and decided to become a book coach because I was like hey, I like to read, I like editing, I can hold people accountable, but I think that program was set up for failure. It was stuffed with all of the things about business. The more complicated you make things, the harder it is for people to get results. This was one of those programs where you know how you get programs and the coach is, oh, I helped so-and-so reach six figures in six days and then, like behind the scenes, is, oh yeah, that person was already making six figures and just needed to tweak some things. That's how that previous coach was.

Speaker 1:

At any rate, I realized I hated book coaching. I worked on some cool projects Don't get me wrong. It wasn't about undercharging and over delivering. I don't think you could pay me enough to be a book coach. The more I spent on other people's books, the more time it took. From my books. I had some really fantastic projects that went on to get published and receive awards and everything, but it wasn't fun. Honestly, it felt like editing English papers all day.

Speaker 1:

Fast forward to 2020. I got married February 29th 2020 and you can guess what happened two weeks later. My district didn't renew my contract and we had an opportunity to move to Washington. We sold our house and moved to Washington and we've been here ever since and I still tried the book coaching thing and just was like I can't do this anymore. I hate this, this is terrible. So I pivoted to educational consulting for early career school psychologists. I had been a school psychologist for about three or four years and felt I had enough experience just optimizing my job and doing the job that I could actually coach other people. And so I went on to do that. I still do that, of course, in a different capacity.

Speaker 1:

I was getting a little burnt out on one-on-one coaching for that, as I pivoted and did like resources instead and then decided, huh, I wonder what else I could use this degree for. What do I really enjoy doing? It was data. I know enough about business. I ran two successful businesses on my own with a full-time job and big life changes.

Speaker 1:

After the hospital I went in on myself and, my joy, I invested in coaching to build something for myself. But like you can't build all of these things at the same time, like you need to pick one and build it to what's going to be the most sustainable and pay well, and then, once you get it to a sustainable point, you can move on to some of the other things and you can't do all of the things at the same capacity. So say, if you're like, oh, I'm going to do educational consulting, I can't do one-on-one for that school psychology, my day job and book coaching or business strategist it's not sustainable. Trust me, I learned that the hard way that summer.

Speaker 1:

I spent my entire summer pursuing my passions. I prioritized joy and passion over hustle and grind and it was probably one of the best summers I had, following my passions and wh. There was no pressure to monetize everything. Money has never been a defining factor of success for me. I was able to practice abundance and follow the dopamine when life got tough, like those multiple income streams really did help sustain us. If you take anything away from today's podcast, let it be that you prioritize your joy, embrace seasonality and build a sustainable, multi-passionate business without burning out. You don't have to burn the boats to build a business. You don't have to sacrifice your sanity, your health, your relationships or your joy to succeed. You can love what you do during your job and build a life that honors all of your passion. You just have to pick one thing, build it to where it can sustain itself and that's for you to determine and then you move on to the next thing. Right?