How my life has been shaped by moments when something didn’t feel quite right
This week, the Daily Memphian published a generous feature about my path from the entertainment world to small business owner, and from New York to Memphis. Reading it feels like looking into a mirror.
Because from this angle of distance, I can see a line of continuity: how much of my life has been shaped by the moments when something didn’t feel quite right.
And when things felt misaligned, I’d pivot: Leave the job. Start the business. Shift the niche. Move cities. Let the work evolve.
The truth is that this business didn’t just grow because of some master strategy. It grew because when life felt off, I gave myself permission to outgrow previous versions of myself and what she thought she wanted.
This article captures my storyline: the accumulation of each pivot and every choice to move the story forward.
I tell my clients all the time that a resume is a story; but maybe it’s a mirror too—one that reflects each brave decision you make in service of who you want to become.
And if things feel off for you right now, consider this your permission to shift the story.
Read the full feature in the Daily Memphian below or on their website here.
A New Yorker who helps others share their stories rewrites her own tale in Memphis
By John Klyce, Daily Memphian
In September 2024, Hayley Brooks and Jake Tempchin held a bris for their newborn son, Ari, and invited people over for the Jewish ritual.
When they had moved from New York to Memphis a few years earlier, they hadn’t known anyone here. But on that day, neighbors and friends piled into their Midtown home to celebrate their child.
“It was a truly packed house of people we didn’t know before we moved here,” she said. “And that everyone wanted to show up for us and be a part of our lives in that way was deeply moving.”
It’s one of many special memories she and her husband have shared since moving to the Bluff City in 2022, when Tempchin started his doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Memphis.
The switch from New York was a big change. But change is familiar to Brooks, who started out in the entertainment industry, and now owns a small business, Your Storyline — which helps people score new jobs, get into graduate school and promote themselves.
“Hayley, her husband, Jake, and her son, Ari, are among the hidden gems in Memphis that we need to shine the spotlight on them for the greater good,” said senior rabbi Micah Greenstein of Temple Israel, where Brooks and her family are members.
“Memphis is a wonderful mix of natives and newcomers like Hayley, and we’re all better because of awesome people like her,” Greenstein said.
The Move to New York
Brooks was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and from an early age, it was clear she was creative. She loved art and reading. She was a theater kid who wanted to be Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” so much that she dressed like her and went by her name.
“I was all in on the arts and humanities and things like that,” she said.
After finishing high school in 2010, she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania and majored in creative writing.
Hoping to ultimately work as a producer in the entertainment industry, she scored summer internships with Disney and Nickelodeon in New York.
Then, in 2014, she moved there after graduation and got a job as an assistant to a talent agent.
It was intense and exciting work. She wore a headset and was muted on phone calls between her agent and celebrities. She helped with the Golden Globes afterparty, and a live show hosted by Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen.
“It was really great exposure, and I was always invited to cool parties,” she said. “I was ensconced in this world, which was very cool.”
The problem was that she was working 12-hour days and barely making more than the minimum wage — which, in New York, was untenable.
If she was going to keep her job, she needed a way to supplement her income.
‘Something was not right’
People knew Brooks liked to write, and for years, they had asked her to look at their college application essays.
“I had always been your cousin’s friend or your friend’s friend or your sister’s friend, the best writer people knew in their peripheral network,” she said. “People would reach out to me, asking, ‘Oh, can you look at this?”’
The requests continued to come in while she worked for the agent, and a thought occurred to her.
“I was like, huh,” she said. “I wonder if, rather than becoming a bartender or working at J.Crew … I could make money doing some of this stuff that I’m already doing.’”
So, she started regularly helping high school seniors with their application essays on nights and weekends, and continued even after scoring a higher-paying job as an assistant for a TV producer.
Life was busy, and when scheduling her first date with her husband in 2017, she asked about a 9 p.m. start time because she had a client after work.
But she never thought about stopping, as she enjoyed helping with the essays. Her career path, meanwhile, was something she was starting to question.
It wasn’t that she was underperforming; to the contrary, she was excelling. She’d been given more and more responsibility, and she seemed prime for a big promotion. But she was also growing disillusioned with the entertainment industry.
“It was a very intense, toxic environment,” Brooks said. “It’s a lot of meetings over drinks. It’s a lot of… ‘Can you get this thing to this person to read and then I’ll do this for you.’ … I just thought it was very transactional and artificial. And it was confusing to me, because I’m a very extroverted, social, gregarious person, and I had to reckon with the fact that it wasn’t working. Something was not right.’”
These thoughts were amplified when she was offered the promotion but told it was in Los Angeles. She and her boss had been discussing the new position for a year, and this had never come up. She had also gotten serious with Tempchin and was preparing to move in with him.
Relocating to California wasn’t an option.
‘A resume is a story’
So, Brooks quit her job and weighed her options, while continuing to work with students on their essays.
She applied for an unemployment program in New York that helped people start a business, and launched Your Storyline. Then COVID-19 upended society, and she shifted her focus.
“It was really, really great timing for me to essentially create a digital business when the world shut down, when people needed jobs,” she said. “That’s why I pivoted to resumes. I was like, ‘Oh my God, a resume is a story.’”
She continued to grow the business, and in 2021, she and Tempchin got married.
Then, in 2022, when he was accepted into the doctoral clinical psychology program at U of M, they moved to Memphis.
A Big Change
In Memphis, Brooks and Tempchin did things they couldn’t in New York. After living in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, they bought and renovated a century-old bungalow in the Evergreen neighborhood.
They adopted a rescue dog that they walked in Overton Park. They did laundry in their own washer and dryer, which they didn’t have before.
That’s not to say it was an easy move. They didn’t know anyone here, and because Brooks was self-employed, she didn’t have a quick and easy way to meet people. But it wasn’t long before they made wonderful friends that they saw frequently — which, for them, was unusual.
When she and Tempchin left the home of a couple they had just biked with, they were surprised to hear their hosts say, ‘It was great to see you guys, we’ll see you next week.’”
“My husband and I kept saying it back to each other: ‘We’ll see you next week?’” she said. “In New York, it would be like, ‘OK, let’s get on our calendars for six-plus weeks from now to put something down.’ You make plans a lot further in advance, and you don’t see people as often.”
Spreading Goodness
These days, Memphis is a big part of Brooks’ life — and career.
Your Storyline’s focus has expanded, and she now, more broadly, helps people write and speak about themselves.
Sometimes, it means assisting with resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles and interview prep. Other times, it means helping craft effective personal statements for competitive programs, like law school, medical school and fellowships (working with high school seniors is no longer a part of her business now and she only does this pro bono).
Memphians from a variety of sectors have been clients, and she recently hired a local graphic designer to redo her branding, as well as a local photographer to take photos for her website.
“I’ve really enjoyed … tapping into the talent pool in Memphis and using it to make my business more aligned and current with who I am now, and how I want it to look,” Brooks said. “Because Memphis has been a big influence in that.”
She’s also gotten involved in the community. For the past few years, she’s done resume and college essay workshops with public high school students through the local organization Reach Memphis. She’s a docent at the Brooks Museum of Art, which she said is “a wonderful addition” to her life.
And she’s helped at Temple Israel, where she and her family are members.
“I love that Hayley spreads goodness wherever she goes and embodies Jewish values, because that’s the goal: to spread goodness,” Greenstein said. “I’m just glad that her husband needed these years to get his Ph.D. psychology in Memphis, so we get her.”
There are things Brooks misses about New York. She misses the walkability. She misses always seeing people out and about. But she loves having a house. She loves her work and volunteering.
And she loves seeing her friends.
“It is really tough to move to a new city, especially one that is so different from where you’re coming from,” said Leah Keys, Brooks’ next-door neighbor. Keys is a college and career counselor at Crosstown High and has recruited Brooks to help students.
“And Hayley and her husband Jake are killing it at this game of moving somewhere and really making the most of it — enjoying all of the wonderful things that Memphis has, asking the hard questions about the areas where there can be growth, and being great connectors and bridge builders in the community,” Keys said.
‘A cool moment’
If ever there was a sign that she’s become part of the city, it came in the fall, when she was scrolling through Instagram. She saw that The New York Times had done a “36 Hours in Memphis” feature, and she started swiping through the photos. Then she paused.
“I’m scrolling and scrolling, and I’m like, ‘Wait, is that me?’” she said.
It was. Among the pictures included in The Times’ post was a shot of Brooks, sporting a Yankees hat and walking their dog in Overton Park. No one else was in the photo.
“We have it framed now, in our house,” she said. “That was funny. Like, the New York girl is representing Memphis, in The New York Times, in a New York hat. It was a cool moment.”
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