Hey friends, welcome to another bonus episode of cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful entrepreneurs, the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin, and it feels so great to be back behind the mic with you all. I know, it's been a hot minute since I've recorded a solo episode for you. As you know, if you've been part of our community for a while, I stepped away from work for the month of August to get married, and to settle into married life. So that was such a welcome break, and so treasured. And I'm so glad I decided to do that, which I'll talk about a little bit in this episode.
But I'm also really excited to be back and I thought for this first solo episode back, that it would be perfect timing for me to share three things that I did as an entrepreneur, before my wedding. Now all of these things that I'm sharing with you are just from my personal experience, there's no right or wrong way to prepare for your wedding or such a big milestone in your life and getting married. If any of you plan to get married in the next few years, I hope you find this helpful just in terms of some food for thought on some of the things that I think are more unique to people like us who own our own businesses. And I just wanted to share some of the things that helped me in preparation. So here are three things I did as an entrepreneur before my wedding.
Number one was figuring out the name change was I going to do it was I going to forego this tradition. And if I did choose to change my name, how was I going to go about this. So ultimately, I did choose to change my legal name, to have my husband's last name as my new married, legal last name. Now, again, this is a very personal decision. I know many, many entrepreneur friends who did not choose to change their name when they got married. And I just think there's a lot of reasons behind why someone would or wouldn't, but I kind of just wanted to share my thought process around how I arrived at this decision.
So for me, I wanted to mark this start of this new chapter in my life as a family unit by, you know, taking my husband's last name. And I was actually really excited about this, you know, to me, that was something that felt important. However, having already established a personal brand and built my business over the last almost six years now, under the name Ellen Yin, I also feel a strong sense of pride and identity with my maiden name with my given name. And I wanted to honor that too, and honor my past my history, my family, the Yin family, in keeping that name at the forefront of this brand that we're building. And so what I decided to do is, like I said, I'm changing my last name, to my married last name, legally. And I'm going to go by my married name in my personal life. However, in my professional life, I will continue using my maiden name I given name Ellen Yin.
So just for a little bit of context, I am Chinese American. And in Chinese culture, typically, we are not given middle names at birth. So you know, I was never given a middle name at birth. And for me, it was quite simple actually, to just take in my maiden name and move it legally to now my middle name. So it's not a hyphenated last name. So my middle name is just Yin by itself, Ellen Yin, and then my last name will be my married last name, legally. But professionally, I'm really excited to continue building as Ellen Yin. And the reason I chose to keep Ellen Yin, professionally, were due to a couple of reasons.
And I actually put out a question on threads, and on Facebook and asked my married entrepreneur friends to weigh in, on whether or not they chose to change their names after getting married, and if so, why or why not? And it was a really, really interesting conversation. So I don't actually I think my Facebook post might be, it might be public, too. If it is, and you're listening to this episode, I will link both the Facebook post thread and the threads thread in the show notes in case you want to if you're curious and if maybe if you're getting married, you know in the near future, and you're wondering this yourself, you can go take a look at what people shared because there were so many great conversations that happened in that thread.
So anyways, I will share those links below in the show notes but some of the common threads that came up in those discussions that I wanted to bring it to mind for you all and that also influenced my decision where I think a lot of it if you are someone who wants to change your legal name to your married name, whether or not that affects you professionally, I think has a lot to do with whether you've already built a business with a lot of brand credibility and brand equity with your given name or your married name, or whether you're kind of just starting fresh after already getting married.
So for me, because I already had a lot of existing brand equity with the name, Ellen Yin, and press, under the name, Ellen Yin, and built up SEO, under the name Ellen Yin, I wanted to make sure that I was able to retain all of that work. And I think this is important because you know, if you're someone who is in that same boat, and has, you know, built up a lot of backlinks, a lot of mentions, like if someone searches your name, and it's our you know, a lot of the work that you've done is optimized around your current name, it could be a quite a large endeavor to have to rebuild that.
Because even if you do a, let's say, a marketing campaign, to announce your name, change or to rebrand, they're still a lot of historic data, right? Like I mentioned, the SEO, the articles on Google that are linked to your own name that you can't necessarily just change. And so that was a factor I definitely weighed heavily in in deciding to keep my given name as my professional name.
Another thing that people brought up in these discussions that I honestly didn't even think about, but it actually really resonated with me once I heard this point, was thinking about do you have any children? Or do you ever plan to have any children? And if so, do you want to share a last name with your kids as a family unit. And this was interesting for me, because growing up my mom, again, because we're Chinese American, in our culture, typically, women do not necessarily take their husbands last names. And so growing up, my mom always had a different last name than me and my siblings, my dad, but you know, my parents have been married 30 plus years. And I don't necessarily remember that ever being a huge challenge, in terms of, you know, paperwork and school stuff.
But I can see, and based on some of the comments that were shared in the discussions on Facebook and threads, I did get the sense that for some married women with children that sometimes it can create additional obstacles, when you don't share the same last name as your kids like for pickup or school paperwork, et cetera, forms all the things, it just adds an extra step. So it was probably more so of an inconvenience, rather than like an actual dilemma, in terms of how it presented in my life as a kid growing up with parents with two different last names. But it was something interesting to just kind of think on.
And I think for myself personally, and again, all of this is such a personal decision, I felt it would just be easier. And I would like to share a last name with my kids, you know, if Dustin decide to have kids. So that was another thing that kind of weighed into why I wanted to change my name in my personal life, but again, keep my given name for all of my professional and work things.
And then the last reason for deciding to change my name legally is actually something that I never really thought about, until recently. But it's such an important point that I felt like I had to, I had to share it with you all in case it's like a revelation for you all too. But this issue of privacy, right, even though now building a media company, the focus of the work that we do is really trying to build more brand equity in Cubicle to CEO, rather than in me personally as Ellen Yin. I can't discard the fact that my personal brand is intricately, at least at this point in time tied with Cubicle to CEOs brand, as the voice of this podcast as the face of a lot of the branding that we do.
Even though Cubicle to CEO is a standalone brand. My name is inextricably attached and intertwined with cubicle to CEOs. And so because of the nature of the work that I do, my name is out there publicly a lot. I don't share everything about my personal private life online, but I am easily searchable online for a reason, right? Because I want in many cases, people to be able to easily find the work that I do and be able to, you know, be redirected to our websites.
But that also leaves this desire and this craving for privacy in the parts of my life that I don't necessarily want to share with the internet and to be easily found, you know, just private home life. And so there was an appeal to me in taking my husband's last name as my legal name because it provides this extra layer of privacy, when online you're known for one name and then privately you have you know, a different legal name. It just I think it provides this extra layer of division that kind of allows you to better protect some of your personal assets personal debt. tails personal information that you just want to keep private, as you know, a human being living in this world, you don't want everything, you know, to be accessible to everyone at all times. And so that was really appealing to me to in helping me make my decision to change my name legally.
So that's kind of a reason why I haven't been, you know, sharing my new married last name all over the place. But I am excited about this, this name change, I still have to do a lot of the paperwork to you know, get it all finalized. But that's kind of how I arrived at this decision. So nothing really changes for you guys, in terms of you know, how you know, me, still fine to, you know, call me, Ellen Yin to address me that way. I'm so proud of who I am and where I come from, and my family name. So that's never going to change, and I will continue to go by that name professionally.
Alright. Number two, the second thing I did as an entrepreneur to prepare for my wedding was explore a prenup. So this is something that I actually feel really passionate about breaking the barriers and the taboo around this. I think traditionally, and this was true, I think, even for me a couple years ago, until I became more financially literate, and like really invested in learning more about personal finance. But I think the way the media portrays prenups, historically has always been, you know, in the situations of like a sugar daddy marrying a young woman, and then you know, like portraying people as Oh prenups are protecting you from like a gold digger or something like that.
Also, I think there's just a lot of, again, misconceptions or taboos around prenups. Because people believe if you even have that conversation, it's like you're anticipating or planning for the worst. And you're, you know, you're anticipating that the marriage won't last or that there will be a divorce or whatever the thing is, and that's why I think it's so important, just like I'm an advocate for financial transparency by releasing income reports. And having those conversations with you all, I think it's just as important to talk about something as big of a legal step and getting married, is thinking about how does this melding of not only your personal lives, but also all of your assets? How does that impact you as an entrepreneur and as a business owner? And how do you best protect what you've created? Right?
So something that, I can't remember where I read this, but it really clicked with me. So I hope this helps you too an analogy that someone shared about prenups is, if you compare it to like wearing a seatbelt, right, they basically said, If you wear a seatbelt, like when you get in a car and you wear a seatbelt, Nobody wears a seatbelt, because they expect they're going to get in an accident, no one anticipates or wants an accident when they put on their seatbelt. Right? That's not the purpose of the seatbelt. The seatbelt is to be there as a safeguard if the worst were to happen, because we all know that even with the best of intentions, life doesn't always turn out exactly as we hoped for. And there are some things that just are out of our control.
And so when you can put in the necessary safeguards to protect yourself and your loved ones, in those situations, you are doing your due diligence, right? You were being responsible for preparing yourselves and giving yourself the best possible opportunity at the best possible outcome. So that analogy really shifted something for me. And I was like, Oh, wow, that's really powerful and so true. I think another big thing about why a prenup appealed to me is that it creates clarity for both parties on the expectations of what would happen in a worst case scenario. And it allows for open and transparent discussions. And for two people to come to agreements, when they're operating under the best of terms and the best of intentions, instead of under the worst of situations and the worst of intentions.
I think that's so powerful. And I'm so glad that me and Dustin were able to be so upfront with each other and have really honest conversations leading into such a big moment of our lives, such as getting married, and be able to discuss, like what's important to each of us. What can we expect from one another? How can we come together as a team and create fair agreements that we feel like best protect each of us individually, as well as both of us as a couple? And how can we create clarity around those agreements when we are in our best place instead of in our worst place? Right.
And so that was another thing that was a huge shift for me something that I never really thought about in this way until I was in this process. So I hope these things that I've learned kind of help you reframe how you may think about You know, Prenuptial agreements, if that's something that you feel you want to pursue if you get married.
Another thing that impacted deciding to go down this route before our wedding is that what was most important to me in our agreements is my ability to keep 100% ownership over my own business, which my husband was very, very supportive of. And I love that about him, he's always been my biggest advocate, my biggest cheerleader, when it comes to my business. And that is something that I've always really loved about having him as my partner is, it feels so great to know you have the unconditional love and support of your partner in building something as time intensive and as resource intensive as a business, but also him honoring that this is something that I have built on my own. And it's not necessarily something that he has an active role in or has any ownership in. And so that was something that was important to me was that I would be able to keep 100% of my own business that I've built over these last number of years.
And this is interesting, too, because and I realize we have international listeners as well. So I'm not as clear about what the marital laws are in terms of split property outside of the United States. But in the US, every state has different laws that, you know, the courts, I guess will default to in the case of a separation or a divorce, if you don't have another existing agreement, like a prenup in place. So some states, and again, I'm not a lawyer. So this is just based on like what I've learned through this process, but like some states are community property states, which to my understanding means that if you don't have any other sort of agreement in place, if you get married, and then divorced, assets are divided 50/50, automatically, that's the default that they resort to.
Whereas some states, like where I live, I believe it's an equitable distribution state, I can't remember if that's the correct term, but it's not necessarily automatically allocated 50/50. So the cool thing about a prenup agreement is because you and your partner have full control and open conversation about what's most important to each of you, you get to decide you get to list in the agreement, and essentially tell the courts instead of defaulting to whatever the state decides for you, in the case of you know, a separation like this is how we want what we built together and separately to be allocated. And it allows you guys to place emphasis on what's most important to each of you. So that I think is just something really important that everyone should be aware of, regardless of whether or not you decide going this route is appropriate for you and your marriage.
And the other thing that I learned from this process is that because your lives will evolve and change as a married couple, and as a family, you're able to actually at any point, if you change your mind about something, you guys can come together and add amendments to your original agreement. And those are known obviously as post nuptial agreements. And so that also allows you the flexibility to be able to evolve and change your terms as you grow together. Because you know, life throws all sorts of things your way. And it's important to be able to have that flexibility. But again, always being on the same page together being on the same team together.
And I think that is another huge misconception is that prenups pit people against one another when in reality, like I shared here, it's really putting you on the same team and getting to come together and say this is what's important to each of us and together. And how can we have open and honest conversations about that ahead of time, when we're in our best of intentions place instead of worst of intentions place and be able to come to a clear agreement on every single thing, right. So that's another thing that I wanted to point out.
Oh, one last thing here that I learned is really important. Again, this may vary by state by state, but I think it's just good practice in general, of course, consult with an actual attorney. But one thing that really helps make your prenup agreement hold up in court and be stronger is that each party should have individual representation.
So I have an attorney that reviews everything. Dustin has an attorney that reviewed everything. So you have someone that advocates on your behalf. And then you guys can you know, come together and decide what is best, you agree to it and then you sign it. So that is what I learned in that process. I hope this helps any of you who may be completely foreign to this process have never considered it or maybe have considered it but you know, have some sort of confusion about it. I hope that our experience helps you in that way.
Alright, last thing that I did before I got married, is to prepare for taking time off. So I chose actually, this decision I kind of came to about a year before we got married. So we had a longer engagement about two years because I just I know myself and I need a lot of time to plan something as big as a wedding, even though we had quite an intimate ceremony and reception, it still was just, you know, it's a huge life event. And I wanted not to feel rushed.
So about a year ago, when we were a year out from our wedding date, I had already decided that I wanted to take that whole month off, because I didn't want to be super distracted in trying to balance, you know, working inside the business with also planning our big day making sure all those details were taken care of. And I wanted to make sure that our special day together and really, it was a whole weekend, which was so amazing, I wanted to make sure that I was able to prioritize that. So one of the things I did to prepare for that is, if you remember, last summer in the summer of 2022, when we retired our signature program, our signature 12 month mentorship coaching program, we closed enrollment so that when our last cohort of people finished their year with us, it would timed perfectly so that those final people within their year with us right at the beginning of August, so that I could take the entire month of August off and not have to, you know, be available to show for coaching calls or be available for support in the group and all that stuff.
So that was an intentional decision that I made way far out. As far as getting closer to the actual month, our biggest, you know, our biggest weekly kind of recurring thing that we have to get out is all of the content that we create for you guys on the podcast and the newsletter. And so, I front loaded a lot of the guest interviews for the podcast to ensure that it wouldn't interrupt our content schedule. So that did require a lot of effort on both my part and Sabrina, our podcast producer's part and getting ahead of schedule on that piece.
And then asking for help is also a big thing that really, really played a role in this. For example, we have an upcoming event in September, at my friend Jordan Gill's Make Your Mark live event in Dallas and I just knew leading up to the wedding that I wouldn't be able to focus on planning our were sponsors for that event. So like I knew I wouldn't be able to plan the booth for that event, and also be planning all of our wedding stuff. So I fully handed off that project to our account manager Andi, who really stepped up, you know, she doesn't normally do event planning or production because we don't do a lot of that in our company at this stage. But she fully stepped up for that project.
I'm so grateful and took the lead on all the communications, we decided to hire like a booth designer for that event so that that piece could also be delegated and outsource to professionals instead of trying to DIY everything ourselves. Especially being in a different state from where the event will be. We just knew that would make everything logistically so much easier on our team. So asking for help in areas like that.
Also asking for help from our amazing CEO collective. That is our group of go-to recommend it experts in different areas of business that you guys ask for support and all the time like, you know, who's your go to business coach? Who's your go to branding photographer, who's your go to writing coach, who's your go to Facebook, ads expert, who's your go to Video coach, all of these things? Who's your go to wealth expert, right? That's our CEO collective.
These are the experts that we've personally worked with that we have vetted and recommend for helping you in these areas. And I went to these amazing women and ask them, hey, you know, I'm going to be gone for a month would you be willing to fill in for me on the bonus episodes, because we made a commitment at the beginning of this year that we wanted to trial run, doing a bonus episode for you every single week this year. So that's 52 additional episodes that we added to our plate for this year. And I didn't want to not make good on that promise. And so I asked these amazing women if they would fill in for me for the four weeks while I was gone and share bonus tips in their areas of expertise. Little bite sized, easy to implement actionable nuggets for you guys to listen to and hopefully implement and they really stepped up to the plate.
So if you haven't heard these roundtable discussions, just go back into wherever you're listening to this episode right now. Just scroll back a little bit in the catalog. There's four of them their titled CEO Collective Expert Roundtable there's part one, part two, part three, part four, listen to all four, there are so many golden nuggets, you guys like I was blown away by some of the tips that these women shared. Just again, in all the areas that I just mentioned, video ads, branding, you know, wealth building all of these things writing, you'll want to hear these, they're like 10 to 15 minute episodes, and you can breeze through them. And even if you find, like one little piece that you can pull away and actually use in your business, that is a worthwhile ROI on your 10 to 15 minutes of time. So definitely go give those bonus episodes of listen if you have not yet.
But that is another great example of how powerful asking for help really can be. And I'm so grateful that I decided to do that and that those women stepped up for me. So thank you, CEO collective for doing that.
And the last thing in terms of, you know, taking a month off and preparing for that was being realistic with myself in basically, if you take a really big chunk of time away from work, right like I did, you kind of have to decide like am I going to front load all of the deliverables that you know, would normally go out during that time. And I'm going to essentially put double the amount of pressure on myself like the month or the months plural before like leading up to that time away, or am I okay with front loading most of the work, but still allowing a little bit of flexibility and room for me to do very short spurts or stints of active work and check ins during my time off, if it allows for more breathing room on the front end, so that I don't have to, you know, literally double or triple my workload in the month leading up to my time away.
And for me, it felt better for me in this particular situation to like I said, front load my guest interviews for the podcast, ask for help in covering the bonus episodes on the show. But then for one deliverable for the newsletter to be more flexible with myself, especially because that happens more so in real time for me to say, Okay, I don't need to front load all four newsletters. Before I take August off, I'm okay with once a week checking in and writing, you know, my note from the CEO and doing a quick glance over of all the other components of the newsletter, which Sabrina you know, puts together for me, and, and be able to do just those brief stints of work during August so that I don't have to put as much pressure on myself in July to front load everything.
And I'm so glad I went that route. Because you know, at maximum, I would have to spend maybe 30 minutes to an hour a week during my time off to be able to do my piece on on that deliverable. But it was such a, it was such a like a minor thing. So it honestly sometimes kind of felt nice just to check in. And you know, I had most of my days free and I was able to focus just on personal things. But it was nice kind of once a week to come in and just stay in touch with you guys and you know, share a quick note or whatnot.
So just realize that you have flexibility when you're preparing to take time off. And if you want to front load every single thing so that you're fully fully unplugged and unreachable, during your time away, awesome. If you would rather frontload most of the things but still be able to leave yourself a little bit of room to do what I did, and just do very, very minimal work, maybe an hour tops a week during your time away so that you don't have to put as much pressure on yourself ahead of time, then that can also work beautifully.
And you know, for my inbox, it was really great too, because I just put an out of office responder and I said, Hey look, like if we're not in an active partnership right now where there's a deliverable due, I'm not going to respond this month, and I'll get back to you when I'm able to. And that will likely be in September, or maybe not at all, if it's not something that really warrants a response. But that was such a lovely, you know, like space providing boundary that I put into, and people were really respectful.
And what's interesting is I actually saw the volume of emails, like personal emails that needed a response go way, way, way, way down in August. And I think it's just because when you actually tell people, Hey, I'm not available, like if you are clear about that, people are actually for the most part, really respectful about that. And so I think a lot of times people go on vacation, they're almost scared to like put an out of office responder on they're like, well, maybe I just like won't tell anyone I'm out of office and kind of just play it by ear and and see if there's anything urgent I put that in quotes because we can all make up our own levels of urgency, right? That needs to be responded to. But I think if you actually declare like, Hey, I'm I'm away like I'm not working right now. I'm not going to be able to respond. You may be surprised by how receptive and supportive people act she want to be of that.
So don't be afraid. Even if you're taking like a three day weekend, put your out of office responder, give yourself that peace of mind. And knowing that you don't have to response you know, at all. And you don't even have to over explain why you're taking the time off, just say that you are and make it clear. And as long as everyone's on the same page, I think you'll be pleasantly delighted by how people choose to respond to that.
So anyways, those are my three things that I did leading up to my wedding to prepare from an entrepreneur's perspective, I hope these three things were helpful. If you have any questions, I'm always happy to, you know, like, I try to be as transparent as possible about what's going on behind the scenes in my real life as a business owner in these solo bonus episodes. So if you have a question about something that I mentioned here that maybe you wanted a little bit more clarity or expansion on, please feel free to send me a DM @missEllenYin, I'd love to discuss and share if I'm able to.
And for any of you bride to be's, groom to be's, as anyone getting married in the next couple of months, or even a couple of years, huge congratulations to you! I'm so excited for this next chapter of your life. And I wish you the best in preparing for everything. Oh, also, I know, I've been sharing on Instagram, a lot of the photos and videos from our wedding weekend. But if you're on my newsletter list, so if you're a part of our email community, and if you're not, it literally takes 30 seconds, probably less. To sign up, you can go to Ellenyin.com, or cubicletoceo.co. Either way, on the homepage of both those websites, there will be a clear forum where you can drop your name and email to be added to our list. But if you are on our list, you will also get a way more in depth behind the scenes letter to you all sharing that special weekend.
I know a lot of you have been with me for many, many years. And it's so fun to grow together. And also to recognize that like, hey, yeah, we have lives outside of work. And it's really such an honor to share in these special moments with you. So I will be writing a special letter on all things wedding to my email list. So if you want to receive that, make sure you get on our list again, you can go to cubicletoceo.co or Ellenyin.com. Just give us your name and email and you'll be part of the list and we can send that your way.
Alright, thank you all so much again for just giving me so much grace during this time off. I'm so glad to be back and I'll see you guys or talk to you guys in the next episode.
If you are enjoying two doses of Cubicle to CEO and your podcast feed every week, will you help support our efforts and continuing to bring you more quality free content by going to ratethispodcast.com/cubicletoCEO that spelled CUBICLETO CEO and sharing a review for our podcast. If you go to ratethispodcast.com/cubicletoCEO, it will allow you to choose which podcast player you want to leave us a review or rating on it's super easy. It takes less than 30 seconds. You can even leave just a rating without having to write a review. So it's literally as simple as one click but it goes so far and helping us continue to pour into these resources for you. So thank you so much if you choose to do that to support our show. Again, the link is ratethispodcast.com/cubicletoCEO. We'll also link it below in the show notes
