How Nya Jones Turned Her Love for Journaling Into a Successful Wellness Brand

Meet Nya Jones, the 25-year-old founder and CEO who turned her love for journaling into the successful wellness brand Inside Then Out.

Born out of Jones’s innate curiosity, Inside Then Out makes wellness accessible through introspective, personal growth products such as the Better Every Day Journal that broke the internet during the global pandemic. Years later, people are even more inspired by Jones to live intentionally every single day.

In this interview with BAUCE, Jones reflects on her career and candidly shares her experience as a young, successful entrepreneur doing what she loves. Her journey is a reminder that you don’t have to settle in life and that it is possible to live out your dreams, but it all starts from within.

Life before entrepreneurship

Before diving into Jones’s life as an entrepreneur, I needed to know what life was like before founding the business. To no surprise, her career is nothing short of black excellence. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and interned at Meta, which led to a full-time role. “That was my first job post-grad. I was actually supposed to move to New York City for that role, but the pandemic happened, so that move definitely didn’t happen. I ended up moving back in with my parents in Florida,” Jones shares.

Jones did all the “right” things—she attended a top university, participated in a summer program at Harvard, and scored a job at one of the largest Big Five tech companies. With the world on lockdown, she seized the moment to dig deeper within herself beyond the accolades and external validation. 

“I was always a very ambitious person, doing all the things I was “supposed” to be doing. Then, when I was forced to pause, it made me reevaluate everything,” Jones expresses.

The “Aha!” moment

The slower pace of life that came with the pandemic turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Jones. Her love for journaling, combined with the urge to do inner work, led to an unexpected journey. 

“I mentioned to you that journaling is something that has brought me back to myself at different stages of my life. I’ve been journaling since I was a little girl. During that period [the pandemic], I was journaling a lot,” Jones explains. Everyone’s path to entrepreneurship looks different. Some people know from a young age that they want to be their own boss, while others experience a sudden calling toward it. For Jones, it was the latter.

“I had written a list of questions that I wanted to answer for myself, and I had this small ‘aha’ moment. I figured I wasn’t the only person who was going through this transition period of wanting to dive deeper into themselves and their true wants and needs. I remember looking online to see if I could find something that was already out there, but I couldn’t, so I thought, Why can’t I be the person to create it?” Jones shares as she reflects on the exact moment she decided to develop Inside Then Out.

“When I had the idea, I immediately felt that this was exactly what I was supposed to do. It felt urgent, and I don’t think I’ve had that feeling before,” she adds. If it weren’t for the pandemic allowing her to slow down, her life could look completely different today.

“It’s crazy how beautiful things can come out of very trying times,” Jones says profoundly.

Wellness is more than an aesthetic

There’s often this idea of what wellness is supposed to look like. There’s a certain aesthetic people envision. In Jones’s personal life and business, she focuses on what wellness feels like. She authentically created Inside Then Out with intention, and that’s what sets it apart from other brands in the industry. 

She further explains what makes the brand unique. “It’s not really easy to categorize something like it. If you actually look into the products, specifically our guided journals, they have such a wide range of questions—questions related to love, habits, or healing.” She continues, “Some questions will bring out sad memories or things that you might have stored in your brain, while other questions are very lighthearted and make you feel more grateful for things in life. Everyone can have a unique experience, and each [journal prompt] can bring out something different.”

Wellness is not one size fits all, and Jones gets that. She explains that “a lot of other brands lean very far in one direction. For example, you see gratitude journals, and then on the flip side of that, you see a lot of therapy and mental health resources where it feels a little dark processing your inner trauma. I feel like we’re somewhere in the middle. It’s a little bit of everything.”

The challenges of being a young black entrepreneur

As black women, it’s been ingrained in our minds from an early age that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far as our counterparts. The truth is that no matter how successful we are, there will be struggles. Being a business owner comes with its own unique challenges, but the added layer of being a young black woman can feel isolating. 

Jones opens up about the obstacles she is currently facing. “I think my biggest challenge is feeling a little bit alone sometimes as a founder because I didn’t grow up in an environment where everyone around me had successful businesses.” 

“I feel like I was the first to really do it [launch a business] in my circle, so I feel like a lot of people come to me wanting advice, help, and resources, but I am very much still figuring it out. As I mentioned, I’m 25, and I’m learning on the go. I wish I had a strong support system when it comes down to having people that I can go to if I need help with something,” Jones further expresses.

Is it true that when you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life?

There’s a popular saying, “When you do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Being able to do what you love for a living is a privilege, but Jones makes it clear that business owners are not exempt from long hours of hard work. Not every day is a walk in the park the way it is glamorized on social media. 

Jones shares her thoughts about the famous quote. “I don’t know if the saying is completely accurate in the sense that it will never feel like work. Even with the thing that you love the most, there are going to be aspects of it that you love and some that you don’t love as much.” Although Jones applied skills from her corporate job to her business, there’s always something new to learn when being your own boss.

“When you’re creating something from scratch, people are asking questions all the time that I am Googling. You’re faking it till you make it,” she says. “I’m constantly challenged on a daily basis. I’m always trying to solve a new problem or learn a new skill, and I naturally grow so much from that. I did learn a lot being at a big company, but at some point, I felt very stagnant, and there’s nothing stagnant about being a business owner. As long as you want to truly grow, there’s always going to be something new. It’s like having a baby [laughs].”

The transition from a full-time employee to an entrepreneur made Jones realize that you can feel good about the work that you’re doing without constant exhaustion or having the “Sunday scaries”. Jones shares an unforgettable feeling she experienced when first starting her business. “I had a feeling that I had never experienced before. Maybe, except for the first day of school when you’re a kid. I was going to sleep so excited to wake up the next day because I was excited about what I was going to do [with the business]. That’s a feeling that I’ll never forget.”

“I wouldn’t say that it never feels like work, but it feels like the right work. Even on the hard days, I would never trade my experience or my journey for anything else. I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.” – Nya Jones

Something to reflect on

At the end of the interview, I asked Jones for an affirmation or brief journal prompt. So she delivered an affirmation that has been a huge part of her journey:

“What I want is already mine.” 

“I truly believe that anything that you want in life will be yours if you go after it. It might not happen right that second, but when you’re in the right space, things naturally work out. Especially if you’re willing to put in the work, you’ll reap the reward,” says Jones.

You can join the Inside Then Out community over on Instagram @insidethenout and visit the website to shop for bestselling products like the Dig Deeper Journal and the Daily Focus Notepad.