Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Brodsky and Taylor McIntyre.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
Sarah: Taylor and I have been best friends for over a decade. She was dating my brother briefly in high school, and though they broke up, we’d become best friends. The joke is that the true love story was about her and me. Attending different colleges and leading separate, busy lives, we remained close, just not in proximity. In a turn of events, nearly eight years after high school and during the hectic year of the pandemic, she and my brother ended up reconnecting and decided to give things another shot, and three years later, they’re still going strong! In 2020, I decided to try my hand at Insta-Blogging. I went by The ATX Sporty Spice, which was as embarrassing as it sounds. After about 6 months of messing around with this, the novelty wore off, and I realized I needed to be more passionate about any content I was sharing. The slowdown of 2020 has allowed me to tap into one of my oldest passions, reading. Gradually Taylor and I started getting back into the swing of flying through books. We shared favorite titles and talked about books nearly every day. I vividly remember the moment- we enjoyed a day by the pool. My blog had been dormant for about 2 months at this point. I looked at Taylor over our mojitos and said, “What if- we had a Book Blog? A Bookstagram? My friend has something like that, and I love seeing what she comes up with. She shares reviews and recommendations, and it’s such a positive space! What if we worked together to come up with content? Taylor was immediately in, and we started creating content that very day!
Thus, Fully Booked ATX was born. Our gimmick is “two corporate queens with a full-time passion for the written word.” We both work in corporate and conference season is no joke. We are constantly traveling for work and pleasure when time allows. Three years later, we’ve created an organic following of over 4,000 people and counting. We take turns developing ideas, workshopping content, and bouncing feedback off each other. We tackle demand generation together and track our insights to see where our content engagement falls amidst other creators in our space. It is an uplifting and inspiring community that doesn’t gatekeep. Nothing is more entertaining than watching trends and coming up with goofy ideas for Reels. We sincerely have the best time doing what we do and engaging with the Booksta Community.
In January of 2022, we asked Taylor’s father, Damon McIntyre, a local carpenter and OG Austinite, to handcraft a Little Free Library for the East Side of town where we reside. The response from our community was tremendous when we threw out the idea. A Go-Fund-Me was created, and neighbors/community members donated towards the construction of what would affectionately come to be known as The Book Barn. This fund covered raw materials and went straight to a commission for Taylor’s Dad. He had offered to do the work for free, but our community couldn’t accept that. The joy he has given to so many with his gift of craftsmanship is unmatched.
In May of 2022, Taylor had the idea of creating a book club attached to our Fully Booked ATX brand. She hosts meetings at her home once a month, and it is a beautiful opportunity to bring a group of bookworms and friends together in one place. Many of our people have wanted to get back into reading, and this book club has been the catalyst for them. I’m so grateful that Taylor had the ambition for it and consistently initiated what has become our month’s highlight. We have about 20 members who attend religiously and come ready to snack, drink and discuss! It’s a blast.
Until now, what we do is purely a passion, but we’ve talked about monetizing. As we continue to create brand awareness through the book club and our Book Shop link (which supports local bookstores and gives us a slight kickback as a bonus), it could be in the cards for us. Creating this platform with my best friend has been some of the most fun I’ve ever had. Taylor is so detail oriented and creative-minded. She works hard, and I couldn’t ask for a better teammate. We’re so excited to see where this all goes. We’re grateful that Fully Booked ATX has been so well received, and we’re hopeful that the brand continues to grow and bring light and encouragement to all who interact/engage with us.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Sarah: It’s been smooth sailing for us. The key- is open communication and keeping it fun. This is our joy. The minute it feels like work, we know we have to reevaluate.
Taylor: We spend so much of our lives working, and our bookstagram is a pressure-free place to talk about our favorite topic, laugh with our book friends about our best and worst recent reads, and for Sarah and I to laugh at ourselves and the ridiculous reels we create!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Sarah: Professionally- I work in Alliances and Partnerships for a software company, and Taylor works in Marketing and Product Management in the medical device industry. It has been so fun to see how our diverse corporate skillsets translate to our blog; Taylor and I both bring different strengths to the bookstagram that have helped us create an authentic, welcoming space in the world to share the good, bad, and ugly about our reads.
Fully Booked ATX is our “just for fun” with a splash of “side hustle.” We are content with it being our creative outlet for now, but we’ve been in talks about thinking bigger and devoting more attention to building out the brand to monetize.
We’re proud of our collaboration and constantly in awe of one another’s minds. Taylor impresses me day in and day out with the things she comes up with. She’s so savvy, and she’s also hilarious. I joke that she keeps me young. She’s technically Gen Z, and I’m a Millennial, so thank God one of us knows how to work TikTok effectively! Taylor helps me bring an idea or a concept to fruition. Net net, she inspires me, and she’ll claim that I, in turn, inspire her. I’ll take it.
More than anything, our biggest area of pride stems from how much the brand and the content we create have touched others. We could have never imagined that so many of our friends and friends of friends would reach out to us for tips and recs concerning books, literally our favorite thing to talk about ever. We didn’t realize how much of a difference it was making until a few different people expressed how much the blog and the book club have impacted them over the past year and a half, specifically. We cried. It’s a privilege to be remotely linked/responsible for someone finding their joy in reading again. Connection is vital to the human condition, and the shared experience of reading the same book and discussing it creates such deep, meaningful connections. There is nothing better than escaping into a good book, and we are so grateful to share that experience with our community virtually and in person.
Can you talk to us about the role of luck?
Taylor: The bad luck of the pandemic (objectively the worst thing ever) slowed down time enough to give us the free time we needed and the creative brain space to launch our passion project. I wouldn’t say either of us relies on luck very much in general; even though we are both very fortunate people, dumb luck tends to elude us. As much as we’d love to give luck credit, this platform is our brainchild that has taken a lot of love and hard work to build. We work incredibly hard corporately, as well as on cultivating our brand and building relationships with our books community.
The luckiest thing in our story is how we became friends, as corny as that sounds. The day we met, it was an instant friendship, and I mean instant. From the first day, we hung out; it was abundantly clear that no matter what happened in this life, we would always be best friends, and you know what? Nearly 12 years later, we were right. Our friendship has taken work and commitment over the years, but the easiest thing in the world is being friends with Sarah. I have never met anyone who is more unabashedly herself, and learning from and laughing with her will always be my favorite pastimes.
Pricing:
- Please consider using our Book Shop Link: bookshop.org/shop/fullybookedatx when you purchase your books! This supports local bookshops, and most importantly, we also get a small kick-back from the funds!
Contact Info:
- Website: bookshop.org/shop/fullybookedatx
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fully_booked_atx_/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@fully_booked_atx_?lang=en
Image Credits
Taylor McIntyre, Sarah Brodsky
