DiversifyHER
DiversifyHER is a Gen Z-led podcast where I, Raven Heyward, engage with leaders to discuss the importance of representation. My mission is to inspire young girls, create meaningful mentorship opportunities, and explore ways to empower and uplift individuals in various industries and leadership roles.
DiversifyHER
EP 47: Mary Esposito and the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship
Listen as Raven Heyward, founder and host of DiversifyHER, converses with Mary Esposito. She is a Morehead-Cain Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill, entrepreneur, and content creator passionate about blending creativity with business. She is the founder of Purple Pear (@shoppurplepear), a crochet venture she started as a teenager that has grown into a thriving platform with an audience of over 307,000 on Instagram. She is also the creator of Money with Mary (@moneywithmary1), a financial literacy initiative with more than 49,000 Instagram followers, designed to make personal finance approachable and empowering for Gen Z.
Connect with Mary:
Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-esposito-52485119a/
Hello everyone and welcome back to Diversify Her Podcast. I'm your host, raven Hayward, and today I'm happy to have Mary Eva Esposito join me. She is a Moorhead Cane Scholar at UNC, chapel Hill, entrepreneur and content creator, passionate about blending creativity with business. She's the founder of Purple Pear, a crochet venture she started as a teenager that has grown into a thriving platform with an audience of over 307,000 on Instagram. She also is the creator of Money with Mary, a financial literacy initiative with more than 49,000 Instagram followers, designed to make a personal finance approachable and empowering for Gen Z make a personal finance approachable and empowering for Gen Z. Her work has been featured on podcasts, including Yahoo Finance, and she was invited to the New York Stock Exchange in recognition for her entrepreneurial and financial education efforts.
Speaker 1:Mary regularly speaks on panels at conferences where she shares insights on entrepreneurship, financial wellness and social impact. At UNC, she serves as a peer mentor with the Carolina Financial Well-Being Center, helping students navigate topics like budgeting, credit and investing, as well as building the program's official Instagram. Through these experiences, she brings a fresh perspective on entrepreneurship, digital media and financial empowerment in today's evolving landscape. I'm also happy that I have known Mary since my freshman year here at Chapel Hill, where we were both Assured Admits into Kenan Flagler Business School. Thank you so much for joining me today, mary. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Hi, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited to be on your podcast. I've known about it since freshman year. We were in the Assured Admit program together, so this is awesome. This is super exciting, and thank you for having me, of course.
Speaker 1:I'm glad this is long overdue. We've been talking about it since freshman year, so now that we're seniors I'm glad that we finally got the ball rolling. But for the first question I want to ask what inspired you to turn crochet into a business with Purple Pear, and what were some of the biggest lessons that you've learned in the early stages of building a brand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, honestly, crochet started as a coping mechanism for me during my eating disorder recovery when I was 13,. I was in a treatment center for a couple months and there wasn't much else to do, so I learned how to crochet and I also picked up knitting, and I actually really enjoyed it. It became a form of therapy for me, and so, even though I was discharged from the hospital, I continued to craft and eventually I started making things. People started asking how they could get them, and that's when I created my Instagram page and everything kind of just grew from there. So I've been crocheting and selling my plushies for the past, oh Lord, like eight years, eight years, I'm 22.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so yeah that's crazy, so that's truly amazing. I remember, even just like, seeing certain TikToks of where you know it would go viral, or even at the end of our freshman year, like I was kind of in the background of one of your videos. That was hilarious. But I want to know how are you able to balance crocheting, as in your business, along with school, and like typically for a certain plushie, like how long would it take you to complete one of the items?
Speaker 2:first. I do want to give a shout out to you for that, though, because do you know how many comments were like who, who shorty in the back, like I know you saw? Yeah, like people were fangirling, they got thousands of likes. Hey, no yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I think people originally thought that the video was about me. Like some of my friends would send like, oh my goodness. I thought that they were talking about you for a second because of the way I was like fidgeting, and the fact because it was the end of the class and I was just ready to get back to my room and go to sleep. Like those 3, 30 classes in college are brutal, yeah, so that was just hilarious and, like I, remember I even texted you.
Speaker 1:I was like there's no way like people are actually talking about me in this video no, they were like damn, like who is that?
Speaker 2:So definitely, definitely, definitely. I mean you were smart. But to your question, it's hard, I'm not going to lie, I mean okay. So I'm really grateful for UNC Chapel Hill because it did allow me this flexibility to balance my entrepreneurship with my academics. For example, I was able to come in with a lot of AP credit that allowed me to place out like my languages and my maths, getting a short admission to the business school, like I mean you know, we got to start our classes early as freshman year, collecting those business elective credits, like starting the core classes early, studying abroad, getting funding for that. So really I've had so much support through the university that just made it easier for me to take the minimum course load every semester, which is around 12 to 13 hours, and then have that flexibility outside of that classroom to continue to grow my business. So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm currently in 12 credit hours and loving it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great, I know, especially being an assured admit and just having the flexibility to take those credits, but also like the weekend classes that are offered at the business school, like those are very helpful as well. So you've grown both Purple Pear and your money with Mary into these thriving communities. So I want to know what strategies have helped you scale your platforms and how are you able to balance the creativity with the consistency of content creation, because you and I both know that in order to have these strong platforms, you kind of have to have a schedule or there's like a method to how much you're posting and when you're posting. So how are you able to balance all of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have to do this thing. I call it content batching and it's basically where I do the step of every single process all at once. So like, for example, I'll script a ton of videos, then I'll collect the raw footage from a ton of videos, edit an entire batch and then like, so forth, so forth. Like down to like, drafting captions, preparing the Instagram drafts to be scheduled out you know what I mean and then I try to aim to post like two to three times a week although I'm not going to hold you with this, like senior year, finishing out this whole semester thing, like it's like more, like one to two times a week, and it is what it is.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's, it's temporary. We're going to get that back up post-grad, but that's, that's a post-grad problem. But, yeah, I want to be more active because I do have two platforms. That does mean I have to double my content output, so it can get pretty challenging. So, also, I'm constantly brainstorming new ways I can create content that I can cross post on both through the ad collaborator feature on Instagram, and so I can get like through the ad collaborator feature on Instagram, and so I can get like two birds with one stone, I think, is that metaphor.
Speaker 1:Yes, Killing two birds with one stone, Exactly. So I want to know. We've talked about, like, what sort of inspired Purple Pear, but what made you want to create Money With Mary and you know what motivated you to want to turn that into a platform and like. What do you think is most important for Gen Z to know about financial literacy right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay. So to answer the first part of your question, I started Money with Mary because I wanted young women especially to feel comfortable talking about money. I noticed like growing up there was definitely a audience heavily skewed towards men involved in the financial literacy space, and so some women might not feel as comfortable entering that space, and I think that that needs to change. I feel like financial education isn't built into our education system right now, but it is as critical as ever. I mean you know job market, inflation, supply chain issues. I mean everyone could benefit from being more financially literate, and so I definitely want to help bring more women into that space and by creating that comfortable environment.
Speaker 1:Very important. So, to answer the second part of my question with you know, what do you think is the most critical or crucial advice that you could give right now to Gen Z pertaining to financial well-being?
Speaker 2:is so important to start investing just because the power of compounding over time. I mean it's crazy how, like the value of money today, you can put that in the stock market and then passively, it can compound and then you know you can retire with a much larger sum of money. It's just about that discipline and that consistency. You can even automate these investments. I think it's worth it to check out. You know, if you're employed, do you have some sort of retirement benefits, some retirement account? Does your employer match your contributions? Or you know, can you use your earned income towards a Roth IRA and get that tax benefit? So there's so many different things, I feel like, related to investing that are so important, but the biggest one would just be to start.
Speaker 1:Very important. So through the Carolina Financial Wellbeing Center, you mentor students on budgeting and credit and investing. So how has that peer-to-peer mentoring shaped your perspective on leadership and what gaps are you seeing in the financial wellness for college students? I know you just touched briefly on investing, but is there anything else that you've noticed since working with the center?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Yeah, so to answer the first part of your question, I feel like peer mentoring really showed me that leadership is about listening. A lot of students do come in anxious about money, so creating this safe space is what, like, really matters. But when it comes to the gap that I most often see in our student population, well, honestly, I want to be like all of the above because, like I mean, I'm glad we have a program now, but I mean 2024, we should have been had this program. You know what I mean. Like, students are struggling in all areas, quite frankly, not just students, gen Z, arguably as a whole credit budgeting, investing all of it, investing all of it but one particular area for the student body is student loans.
Speaker 2:I feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about how to pay off this debt. You know, okay, we took out the loans when we were young. We didn't really know what was going on. You know, okay, we're in school, we're getting the major. Okay, now we have to think about graduation, which means, you know, maybe the have to think about graduation, which means, you know, maybe the loan payments start or maybe the interest starts right, and what does that mean? There's been some issues where some students have found that they've been paying off debt on, they've been paying off money on their loan, but then they actually still have to pay even more than the principal amount because they were only paying off the interest and maybe say it's a predatory, staggeringly high interest rate. You're screwed. You know what I mean. So just about like understanding that and checking refinancing options, etc.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is probably very stressful in a sense. And so, with you having to talk through certain things like this with students, like does it ever get to you, or is there ever a moment where you know it may affect you more than you thought it would have? And like, how are you able to like still take care of your mental well-being and yourself in order to like show up for others?
Speaker 2:ourself in order to like show up for others. I mean, I think that's a good question. I think that if we were to look at it from just a pure utilitarian perspective, the positive utility of helping these people understand and empowering them to get better at their finances far outweighs the negative utility that I might get from, say, like, the stress of approaching their situation. So, overall, I think that's the way I look at it. If it's a scale like making that decision, and that's really helped me, I think also, I feel inspired because when you know you have these one-on-one conversations with people, you can really figure out what are the greatest areas of need. I don't have to just guess and then I can then take that and incorporate it into my own content and knowing that now I can genuinely really reach people where they're at, I can meet them there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's very important. Like, I think, what you touched on is basically just extending grace, but also having a level of empathy, because, like you said, money can be such like a taboo topic for us to talk about, and so, whenever you are, you know, educating or consulting or helping someone through something this personal, I think it's very important to have that same approach that you just explained, and so I'm really glad that we have the center and I'm excited to hopefully collaborate with them in the future, with, like other organizations that I'm a part of on campus. And so I want to now shift to looking forward and legacy. So, with features on major podcasts and speaking at conferences, how do you see your work evolving over the next few years and what kind of legacy do you hope to leave for young entrepreneurs and change makers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for asking me that. I think that in the next few years I want to continue exploring what it would look like to keep integrating and blending creativity with empowerment, whether that's through, like social media, workshops, partnerships, etc. I'm especially interested in the craftivism movement Stands for craft activism and for me this is in the context of fiber arts. So exploring further how I can use knitting and crochet to spark important dialogues and just kind of push forward these movements that I want to see Super big feminist over here. So you know, continuing to examine personal finance through a feminist lens, advocating for reproductive rights, I definitely want that to be a part of my legacy. Some of my biggest role models are Georgia O'Keeffe and Judy Chicago, Great feminist artists. So once I'm an artist first and I'm an entrepreneur second. So everything I do revolves around like art, you know, like.
Speaker 1:I just I have an artist brain.
Speaker 2:So, honestly, I want to be an artist first, and then entrepreneurship will follow me wherever that takes me. I also want to show that you don't need to fit in a mold to succeed. You can dress how you want, talk how you want, listen to whatever music you want, and people are going to take you seriously or they're going to miss out. You know what I mean. So not having to put yourself in any kind of box to get to where you want to be in life in all contexts, but especially in a professional one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's really important, something that you touched on. How are you able to exude and have this much confidence? Do you think that it just came with time, or is there like a certain moment or peak and you're like, yeah, like I need to stop caring what others say or think? Can you explain more on?
Speaker 2:that. Yeah, this is actually funny because I've tried to unpack this, because I'm like why, why am I like this? Okay, this is my working theory. Guys, let me know in the comments what you think. Okay, okay, so I am on the spectrum. Just hear me out, this is all going to make sense. Okay, I'm on the spectrum.
Speaker 2:So I have trouble reading social cues. So that means I have a hard time clocking. You know, if two people are making a look or clocking, is this socially appropriate for me to wear? You know what I mean. Like I have trouble registering other people's nonverbal judgments, essentially, if you don't say it to my face, like basically over my head. So that obviously has its cons, but it has its benefits, because I just it didn't register with me. Like you know the judgment and like all of that stuff. I just I just didn't.
Speaker 2:I could not understand what I was doing that you know was unconventional or non-conformative. I just like, did it. You know, like that has to. I don't, I don't know anything else, but like I also feel like I'm an artist and I I operate, um, with this mentality of I want, whatever I'm doing every day, I want something I'm doing or wearing to be sending a message about who I am or what I stand for. I love earrings. I love statement earrings. Those are my favorite version of my favorite channel of this right, whether it's like big Venus symbols or, you know, eclectic symbols or genitalia, all sorts of crazy stuff you know hanging from my earlobes, any of that stuff and I don't know. It gets me creative, right, because I can style different outfits every day and stuff and just play around with that. But at the core, like I don't know, that's how I operate.
Speaker 1:No, I really love your theory. I think that that probably has some truth to it, because I think that must be so freeing, to just not care. I think for me personally, I almost overanalyze social situations, or I feel like I put too much pressure on caring how others perceive me and what they may say, so it almost makes me like so hesitant to do anything or to say anything because I don't want it to come off wrong and I don't, you know, want others to perceive me in a certain way or light. But just as you said, like, if they don't like it, then so be it, you know they're lost. So I think that that's very important and, I don't know, I feel like that may also just be a representation of how our generation is, like the Gen Z specifically.
Speaker 2:We have just been known to cause a ruckus, as they may say or just like not care well, I think it also maybe stems from the fact that, like I did try to acclimate more in middle school and I couldn't, I just I was the worst at this kind of stuff, like you know what I mean, and it just felt so inauthentic and nobody believed me right Like nobody believed that, you know, I was actually this archetype.
Speaker 2:And so I realized like, no matter what I was going to do, like whether I tried to fit in or just didn't, I was going to feel the same way, kind of misplaced, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, I might as well go with the path of least resistance, which was just marching to the tune of my own drum. That was the comment my eighth grade teacher left on my report card. I remember Mary marches to the beat of her own drum.
Speaker 1:And that's real, and that is amazing, and I think that everyone should operate like that. And so, as we come to the end of this episode, I have a signature question that I always ask, which is what's one piece of advice you'd give Gen Z on how they can go out and diversify themselves, whether it's in their career, their communities or personal growth?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say my biggest piece of advice is to build multiple lanes for yourself. You don't have to pick just one path, because every single skill you have will compound across different parts of your life. So you should say yes to opportunities that stretch you, and an example of this is I. So I'm an entrepreneur like whatever. I've never been into board games. I picked up chess and now when I approach my business strategy, I can envision it as like a chess board and I can apply like these strategies, like for long-term gratification and like setting up particular pieces to fall into play. You know what I mean. Like it's so interesting to me that this skill set is so applicable across industries and across interests and, for example, spanish. I'm learning Spanish for travel, but wait, now I can start building out Spanish translated resources for financial literacy. So it's so interesting to me.
Speaker 2:You know like we box ourselves in, like, oh, I'm interested in finance, so you know I have to do a JP Morgan internship in addition to moving to New York City. Now, I have nothing against that. Actually, that sounds lit. Hey, I want to do this in the summer. Hey, you know what I mean. But like that's not the only thing. You know what I mean. You can be interested in finance and be an artist like me. You know I didn't just pick money with Mary or Purple Pear. I wanted to do both, so I did both. You know you can and say yes to things that you, you know you might not anticipate being something that you're interested in, because you just quite literally never know that is so real and I definitely took a few notes and some golden nuggets that you just dropped.
Speaker 1:I hope all of you listening did the same thing. I will be sure to have money with Mary, as well as Purple Pear and your LinkedIn in the bio below. Thank you again for coming on and talking with us. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I hope everyone listening did as well and I'll catch you next time on Diversify Her. Thank you you.