Today we’d like to introduce you to Katelyn May.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I was born and raised in South Louisiana.
My younger sister and I were raised on Disney, and I remember sneaking to the movies to watch the Harry Potter films as they were coming out (My mom wouldn’t let us watch them growing up. She has since changed her ways.) We would come to Orlando a couple of years to come to Disney and Universal. It was always a place that I thought would be cool to live in to be close to the magic.
My husband and I got married in 2017 and moved to Missouri shortly after for his job. We knew we didn’t want to stay there forever, but we weren’t sure where we wanted to go. I took a job in Washington DC in 2019, commuting. We decided to move there in early 2021, so we started to make plans for that significant life change. I was so excited to be such an easy flight away from Disney, so, of course, I was planning on getting an annual pass.
When the pandemic started, we held onto hope that we would still move to DC. One of my friends reached out to me during that time and asked if I wanted to start a podcast with her because we were both bored during the lockdown. I was super excited about this idea because I thought a lot about starting one. Still, I had no idea where to begin or what my content would be, so having another person with me was kind of the push I needed to start seriously looking into what I needed. We decided to talk about Disney, Harry Potter, and other lifestyle content, and I came up with the name Bibbidi Bobbidi Basics.
It was a big learning curve, but it was super fun to talk Disney every week and be creative during such an interesting time. We knew we couldn’t move to DC about four months into the pandemic anymore. I had lost all of my work, and it was going to be too expensive, but we still wanted to move out of Missouri. So, we decided to move to Orlando to commute to DC a lot easier when my work started to pick up again. It was less expensive than DC, allowing my husband to launch his own business and work entirely for himself.
Of course, being so close to Disney, Universal, and the beach was a big plus as well! We moved to Orlando in January 2021 and fell in love with being here. During all of this, my friend and I continued the podcast, and I was super excited at the idea of being closer to the parks to expand our podcast reach. We brought on a blog writer in early 2021 and made a TikTok account for the pod.
In August of 2021, my friend stepped away from the podcast for personal reasons, so I took the whole month of September off to regroup and think about what I wanted the future of the podcast to look like. My team and I launched the third season of the podcast in October with a whole new look and feel, and it became the Bibbidi Bobbidi Basics that listeners are familiar with today. I wanted this new season to be fresh and different, so I decided to call it “The One with All My Friends” and be very guest-driven.
My mental health suffered quite a bit in 2020 and 2021, and part of that is because of how divisive the last couple of years has been. I knew that Disney and Harry Potter were two things that could bring different walks of life together, so I wanted this podcast to celebrate that. I wanted a show where different people from all walks of life could come and talk about the fact that there is something that brings us all together in such a positive way.
So that is kind of the cliff notes version of how I got to be here and have this podcast.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
*insert the Ross Geller “I’m fine” gif here* lol.
It has not been a smooth road. I think everyone reading this can relate to some extent because I started this podcast in an already tumultuous time. Like a lot of others, I had very big plans for 2020 and I would have never guessed that I’d be here in Orlando creating content as one of my income streams, much less in the form of a podcast. The learning curve of starting a podcast was probably the first struggle.
I not only learned how to be the talent on a podcast, but how to produce and edit one as well. Luckily, my husband studied multi-media in college so he was able to walk me through a lot of what I needed to learn, but we do/have done everything in-house. We don’t outsource any aspect of this podcast or the website, blog, YouTube channel, and merch shop that comes with it now. I think another struggle that came along the way was when life started to find its new normal.
The podcast was born out of boredom and needing a creative outlet and it was pretty tough to try to balance it with real-life all of a sudden. I started to go back to work (I’m a tour guide so I’m away from home for long periods of time). So now instead of being home all the time to record and do behind-the-scenes work, I was working and trying to prep ahead of time so things could be scheduled on time and nothing would fall through the cracks.
Of course, a lot of things have fallen through the cracks every now and then. I am human and, as I said before, we do everything in-house so it’s been interesting to try and balance everything and maintain consistent content creation. Another big struggle was when my partner stepped down. I really had to look at the pod and what I wanted it to grow to be and try to decide if it was going to be possible to sustain it by myself.
I’m so lucky to have the support of my husband who has taken on a lot of the work and our blog writer for all of the help that she provides. I think our most recent struggle has been how much of our lives the podcast has taken over. What once was just a fun once-a-week hobby has become so much more than that. We produce one episode a week, we also produce blog posts, design custom merch, and gather recent weekly news about Disney, Harry Potter, and pop culture.
We also put our episodes on YouTube now and we are trying to produce more content videos in addition to regular episodes on YouTube. I never would have guessed I would be doing this, but I’m super thankful to do work that I love and believe in and the relationships that it has brought me along the way.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
So, I wear several hats and I’ve had numerous career changes that have led me to where I am now.
I received a bachelor’s degree in theatre therapy in 2015 and immediately enrolled in cosmetology school. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and I really excelled in my theatre makeup and hair design classes so I thought that might be a direction I wanted to go. I worked in the hair industry for a bit, but that’s when my husband and I moved out of Louisiana to Missouri so I was unsure about starting over in a new place.
That’s when I enrolled in a tour guide course and started working out of DC. During all of that, my husband and I started our company Mayflower Creative. We started off as just wedding videography but it quickly grew into website hosting, design, social media, and consultations for nonprofits. So, we split the company into Mayflower Creative which handles all of the nonprofit and small business client work, and Mayflower Fairytales which handles the wedding photography/videography.
During this split in Mayflower, I started the podcast and made the decision to move to Orlando to pursue content creation and Jonathan (my husband) working full time for Mayflower. So now I am a mix of the content creator, tour guide, and half of Mayflower Creative Co. (I mainly work with our social media and wedding clients).
I think I’m most proud of where I am today. I’ve worked in a traditional 9-5 job before and immediately felt like that wasn’t for me. I’m pretty proud of how I chased that dream of working for myself and making my own rules and path. It has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it has also been the most rewarding. I’m so proud for not giving up when things got hard and learning to adapt to change and go with the flow.
I think what sets my content creation and podcast apart from others is my sole focus is to celebrate what brings us together instead of what divides us. A lot of things on the internet nowadays are focused on pitting everyone against each other, but the thing that I am most proud of is that so many have told me they feel welcome and accepted in my little part of the internet. That’s so special and magical to me.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Talking about myself is so hard. lol Especially talking positively lol. I have this unrealistic need to prove myself. I’m one of those people who struggle when someone doesn’t like them (I’m trying to recover from this.) I think this has been a large driving factor in where I am now though.
I wanted to prove to myself and others that I can accomplish what I want and create a life that feels authentic to me. I think that’s the heart of a lot of where I am. I think because of this need, I’ve had the drive to move to a new city where I knew absolutely no one, learn new skills, reach out to people in my community, and keep the podcast going by myself. I didn’t want to give up on something that I loved and brought me fulfillment just because things got hard or challenging or uncomfortable.
Because when things became uncomfortable, I was able to grow, and when things grew I started to get more opportunities (like this article) and more connections and friendships. Now I’m doing more and more what fulfills me and I’m able to provide for myself like this and that makes me feel so blessed.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@bibbidibobbidibasics.com
- Website: bibbidibobbidibasics.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/partofkatiesworld/ (personal) and https://www.instagram.com/bibbidibobbidibasics/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BibbidiBobbidiBasics
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BBBasicsPodcast
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcz93IfoGWbqdHJAxCOnXjw
- Podcast TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bibbidibobbidibasics
- Other: https://anchor.fm/bibbidibobbidibasics
Image Credits
@bythewaves.photo and @megtullos
