While NBA superstar Stephen Curry made noise on the court for helping lead his Golden State Warriors team to a championship win, the leading ladies of the Curry household were making their own noise beside him.
In addition to 3-year-old Riley Curry stealing the playoff spotlight during after-game press conferences, Ayesha Curry was giving fans an inside peek into the normalcy of the Curry household with her family recipes, lifestyle blog posts, and YouTube cooking videos. Now, with more than 200,000 YouTube subscribers and more than 1 million Instagram followers, 26-year-old Curry is branching out to share exactly how she balances it all as a wife, career woman, and mother of a toddler and newborn.
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In her latest partnership with retail giant T.J. Maxx for their “The Maxximizers” campaign, Curry is teaming up with parenting blogger Ilana Wiles and TaskRabbit CEO Leah Busque to show their support for everyday women who utilize their smarts and resources to make the most of their daily life. Working with Edelman Berland to conduct a survey on more than 1,000 women, T.J. Maxx found that just 19% of women describe themselves as remarkable despite the demanding schedules they juggle on a daily basis that range from working full-time jobs, to preparing a family meal, managing family finances, and making time to help others in need.
“Women are so creative, savvy, and resourceful in getting the most out of their days and having an incredible impact on those around them,†said Curry. “That’s why Ilana, Leah and I are excited to partner with T.J.Maxx this fall to draw attention to just how remarkable women are every single day.”
In an interview with BlackEnterprise.com, the superstar mom and wife opens up about the start of her blog and YouTube channel Little Lights of Mine, her key to balancing work and family and the critical life lessons she hopes she passes down to her daughters.
BlackEnterprise.com: With your blog and YouTube channel you shed light on your love for cooking. When did you first discover this passion and what prompted you to start the online platform?
Curry: I’ve been passionate about food ever since
I was a little girl. My mom is Jamaican and Chinese and my dad is Polish and African American so I have a really diverse background and food has always been a big part of my life. But I think the passion really grew around the time I became a teenager. For my 13th birthday, I asked my parents if I could have a cooking party. They literally went to the grocery store and brought me everything you could think of and I cooked the day away with my friends. So it’s genuinely a passion of mine, but I didn’t know I could make a career out of it. After I had Riley, I made a career shift from acting and I thought what am I going to do and how am I going to make my mark in this world? My husband is the one who was like ‘Everyone is always asking for your recipes so why not start a blog?’ So I started the blog in 2014 and put my recipes on there and a whole bunch of lifestyle stuff. I later started the YouTube channel and now it’s just been growing ever since and I’m really excited about it.(Continued on next page)
What do you think has been your key to growing your online brand?
I don’t really think about it too much and I just kind of do what makes me happy without worrying about what people are going to do or say. The playoffs didn’t hurt, but at the end of the day all of this stuff is genuinely what makes me tic and what makes me happy.
What advice do you have for someone who is trying to make a profitable living off their passion?
You just have to go for it. Once you make that decision to give it a try you have to dive in head first and never look back and learn as much as you can from everyone you come in contact with.
As a mom of two young kids, a wife, and a blogger with a growing audience and brand, what is your key to achieving balance between work and family?
You have to designate what times are for what and stick to that. It’s so easy to work from your phone now, but I feel it’s important to know when to shut that down. For me, I’m the queen of to-do lists. I always have a list that I’m check marking and going through to make sure things are done. I’ll say these days, with the baby, I try to shut down work and emails around 7 p.m.
As your two daughters get older and watch you juggle your personal and professional life, what are some of the key lessons you hope they take away?
Well first, I hope I make them proud. But I hope they also take away that you can sort of have it all. You can have a family and a career regardless of how many people are naysaying that or trying to tell you to fit into a box. For me, with my husband playing in the NBA, people are like ‘Well why don’t you just stay home?’ And I’m like that will be great, but that’s not what I want to do. It feels good knowing that the way I’m placing my path with my career is my own and it’s not because of anything or anyone else. So I have to remind myself of that daily and I hope [my daughters] will one day do the same.