Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Butler

Mary, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?

By profession, I work in the financial services industry specializing in financial planning and wealth management. I have been working in this industry for years and while I enjoy it as a career path, it isn’t a particularly creative industry. Throughout my life, I had always been more of a reader and didn’t really think of myself as much of a creative person. That is, until I began making cocktails! After work, I enjoyed trying new cocktail bars that would open in my area and began experimenting with making my own cocktails at home when the pandemic hit. As I began to learn how different flavor profiles meld together, I began to look for new ingredients and liqueurs to put into my drinks and I had so much fun doing it! I had finally found something that I could really get creative with and make something classic or make something totally new. Cocktail creation became something that I’m very passionate about so I began to share my creations online and the feedback that I’ve received since then has been absolutely amazing and pushes me to create more unusual and delicious cocktails or challenges me to try to make a drink with unique or funky ingredients. Each day, I just go with the flow and see where my new ideas take me!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

Cocktail creation is so much fun and can be whatever I make of it but the content creation side of it is a lot more difficult. When I first started sharing my drinks online, I didn’t really know how to film and edit them and didn’t even have a tripod (which made a huge difference when I finally got one!). There definitely was a big learning curve until I found my style and was able to better streamline my setup and filming process. Now that I have been doing content creation for almost a year consistently, it is so cool to see how far I’ve come with both my cocktails and my videos of them. Of course, there are still times when my recipes don’t turn out the way I hoped or glasses break during filming but overall I just try to have as much fun with it as I can!

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

I primarily specialize in cocktail recipes and do my best to create drinks that are easy for people to make at home using ingredients that they may already have or can easily get. Throughout the year, I like to let the seasons and holidays drive my inspiration for recipes so that my audience is able to recreate delicious cocktails for different occasions, such as a girls night in or various holiday parties. More recently, I have begun to branch out to sharing some of my favorite local cocktail bars in the Greater Seattle area as well as working on creating videos with tips of how to create, stock, and elevate your own home bar.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?

In all honesty, I’m not much of a risk taker although I greatly admire those who are! I have always played things more on the safe side and tend to go the path of greatest certainty after carefully analyzing all options rather than going out on a limb and trying something completely new or scary. But for myself, beginning to build a small business in content creation is probably one of the riskier things that I’ve done. The public aspect of sharing content gives way to a degree of vulnerability by putting my creations out for people to see (and potentially criticize) which can be a bit daunting. Overall, I believe in comparing the pros and cons of doing something and using logic to decide if the potential reward outweighs the risk.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @mixitupwithmary