We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful The Nest. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with The Nest below.

The Nest, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

It’s all about the one-syllable words. The Nest. It’s short and sweet, and it’s easy for kids to say, ha! But in all seriousness, the name of our business is much more than just those 2 words.

When we began thinking about our business and what we would provide, our mission was to create a safe space where people of all ages could come together to create and connect. And so, if you look up the definition of what a nest is, it’s a bed or a structure prepared by an animal and especially a bird, for its eggs and young. A nest is where animals nurture and grow their families, which is exactly what we as a business want to be for families – we want to be a place where kids and adults can get creative, make mistakes and learn new things throughout all the different stages in their lives.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

The Nest was dreamed up one Saturday afternoon while the 3 of us were hanging out & catching up. It started as a “wouldn’t it be fun if we had a space where we could teach & play with complete freedom?….” The idea very quickly turned into a… “Wait, a second, let’s make this happen.”
All three of us come from teaching backgrounds. Natalie’s experience is teaching art K-5, Carley & Katy’s passion is working with kiddos in the primary K-2 grades. Together our teaching experience adds up to 35 years!

Throughout the years, we have seen the nature of teaching & priorities in education shift, both positively & negatively. Still, the relationships with our students, their families & our colleagues have always outweighed the challenging aspects & demands of the job. It has always been the relationships & our love of teaching that kept us returning to the classroom.

So we saw this shift in the world, specifically the education world, as an opportunity to re-imagine our roles as teachers & provide a safe space for kids (& adults) to come freely create & connect without distractions. And so, on that random Saturday afternoon, The Nest was officially dreamed into existence!

How’d you meet your business partner?

The three of us all met teaching at a public school in Austin, Texas! Katy and Carley were both teaching first grade at the time, and Natalie was teaching art. Funnily enough, Katy was Natalie’s daughter, Keely’s first first-grade teacher! It’s so wild to think back on how much has changed and evolved since we met in 2010!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The transition into entrepreneurship has definitely come with some growing pains – there have been many moments that we’ve learned that you just gotta’ put on your big girl boss pants. As teachers, we are natural pleasers and want everyone to be happy, but as business owners, it’s ok to say “no” and do what is best for your business. Creating and building our business has required us to set boundaries, and that’s been healthy for us.

Most importantly, this journey has given us more perspective on how valuable our skill sets truly are. When you’re inside of the classroom day-to-day, it’s easy to normalize the millions of things that you do each day, but when you step away from that with fresh eyes – you realize how many expectations our society has placed on the shoulders of teachers and how truly valuable their skills and knowledge are.
We’ve been extremely fortunate to have been on this new journey together, and having one another to lean on has made the experience more of an adventure – between the 3 of us, someone is bound to be able to figure it out, and if not… there’s always Google, and we’ve done a lot of that along the way too :)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thenestatx.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenestatx/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thenestatx/

Image Credits
Alyse Green Photography