Archive

From Barista to Writer: Building a Business out of Thin Air

posted 20th October 2011    Written by: Dusti    CATEGORY: All Posts, Dusti, Job/Career/Work, Season 5

I never had any intentions of being an entrepreneur. Really I didn’t.

I thought I was just starting blog. Harmless, really. Then, it was a month-long course on blogging. No biggie. Then, I made my first affiliate sale. Oooh, that was pretty exciting. Then, I was writing and marketing an ebook.

Okay, so it was a slippery slope.

Who am I kidding? I showed all of the telltale signs of the would-be entrepreneur.

The inability to stay at a job I couldn’t stand and couldn’t change. (Seriously, I’ve had 36 jobs.) I had to stop participating in student council, because I blew a fuse or ten when I realized all they did was fundraise for parties and dances. So much for wanting to get the curriculum updated and get the school more active in the community. That may have also been why I was voted most likely to be a politician… in 8th grade.

I joke about it, but honestly, stepping into this new role has changed my life in ways I struggle to describe.

Let’s jump back to the summer of 2010. I was working at a Starbucks, slinging coffee out a window to people more or less unhappy with their lives. (The only notable exception to this was Phil Knight and his wife, two of our regulars.) Life was okay. Except that I knew I was handing a false answer to their problems out the window.

When I wasn’t making coffee, I was online. I’d started blogging in my spare time, downsizing my life, and doing more of what I loved. And what did I love? Writing. Sharing. Even when only an hour of my day could be devoted to this secret passion, it lit me up like the 4th of July.

When I first got started, I did it all for the love of writing. All of these thoughts and ideas had been building up with nowhere to go, and when I started blogging, it was like the floodgates opened. My heart soared every time I penned something. Little pieces of me scattered online and throughout the world.

Now it’s October 2011, and I have built myself a job and the makings of a business. In the past year, I’ve written about half a million words. No exaggeration. Between college, writing for pleasure, and writing for business, the flow of words has been more akin to tsunami force than that of the steady river metaphor I had considered using there.

With no qualifications, I wrote ebooks that real people bought. I offered my services as a branding coach and a copywriter – and real people paid me with real money. Danielle LaPorte says the universe speaks in cashflow, and it certainly did to me. The whole thing still blows my mind.

It’s amazing on so many levels, but entrepreneurship is not easy, especially if you’ve got workaholic tendencies. It feels like your work is never done. There’s always this inner conflict going on. How should I be spending my time? How much time with my daughter is enough? How many hours a week should I work? How many would I like to work? How many do I actually have to work to pay my rent?

We take the structure a workplace provides for granted. The thing with being the one calling shots is just that – you’re the one calling the shots. There’s no one else to blame. It’s all on you. Every decision you make about your schedule, your rates, everything. I’m a fan of bootstrapping, but now I dream of the day I can hire my very own virtual assistant. (I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the heavens will open up and angels will sing.)

Have you considered starting your own business? I’d love to hear about your ideas, and if you have any questions about how I made the transition, I’m happy to answer them! (Molly and Hannah, I want some input here from you guys, too!)

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Why I’m Completely Unemployable

posted 22nd February 2011    Written by: Amanda    CATEGORY: All Posts, Amanda, Creativity, Family, Job/Career/Work, Season 4

Following my final bout of having a Big Girl Job in 2008, I determined that I am, in fact, unemployable. It’s not to say that I don’t possess the necessary skill-set to be a perfectly useful worker robot. What I am saying, in fact, is that even though I’m a perfectly useful worker robot, I’m also a miserable one.

If you put me in an office that I cannot leave, I will hate the job and watch the clock. And, more often than not, will find ways to get my work done as quickly as possible so that I can peruse the internet instead of doing anything further productive.

If you create expectations that I have to be at a desk at a certain time until a certain time, in spite of my productivity, I will quietly resent the job and — to a lesser extent — you (the only exception being my stint in career counselling).

Just because you live entirely in meatspace, doesn’t mean that I do. Just because you live entirely in cyberspace, doesn’t mean that I do. Give me balance. Give me serenity. Do not confine me.

And so, sadly, even though at twenty-four I have quite an impressive resume, I am entirely unemployable.

Marching to the beat of my own… madness?

My great-grandfather owned his own mechanic shop and raised countless foster children alongside his biological ones. My grandfather ran a successful wholesale business for the better part of forty years (probably more). My father currently runs a technology consulting business where he specializes in small-business networking solutions.

Entrepreneurship runs thick in my veins.

But these men struggled with their entrepreneurial pursuits, driven by a palatable need for success and financial solvency. Each of them needed to provide for their growing families. Each of them worked long, hard hours in order to find that success. For my grandfathers, it came at a cost: their health and, in the case of my grandfather, healthy relationships with family.

For my father, he couldn’t put a price on the happiness of his family. He didn’t want to go down the road his father did, where money became the only important factor of becoming an entrepreneur. So when we struggled and marched forward anyway, we did it because we believed in him. When times were tight and we were broke, we shrugged it off.

It was only money.

It wasn’t love. Or health. Or happiness, for that matter.

When my job and I split in 2008, I didn’t have those dreams for myself. I wanted something stable, secure, and with a regular paycheque. I wanted to be able to afford to go on vacations with my family. I wanted to go shopping when I wanted to. I wanted to live a relatively care-free existence of financial solvency right out of the gate.

But it didn’t happen.

Obviously.

I found myself in flux, where I had the ability — and the discipline — to make my own rules and march to the beat of the Entrepreneurial Drum. The only variable, of course, was determining if I had the lady balls to make it work. Did I have the confidence to run my own show? Or was I going to let fear rule me as I had let it rule so many other decisions in my life?

Screw it. I’m doing it my way.

I half-expected my parents to choke at my decision of starting up my own business. They half did. Mostly, they saw it coming. They’re intuitive like that.

There was a pattern of behaviour in each of my jobs, throughout the time that I was traditionally employed.

Get hired, enjoy getting to know co-workers, settle in, fall into a deep lull of unappreciated output (because, quite honestly, that is the life of a code monkey), become depressed, struggle until I finally find something new, rinse and repeat.

It was exhausting.

It was also completely pointless, as I’m about as unemployable as they get.

Not many people strive to achieve unemployability. The exit strategy of heading back into the 9-5 grind is tantalizing and safe. I know that no matter what happens in the next five months, there is no going back to safe and warm and meek.

There is only forward.

I only hope that my son (did I mention that we’re having a boy?) will share my fire and shake off the confines of traditional employment as early as possible. Might spare him the heartache. And the backache. Oy.

Image by Evil Erin.

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My Quick Life Story in Video

posted 12th April 2010    Written by: Molly Mahar    CATEGORY: Inspiration, Job/Career/Work, Molly, Travel

Well this little gem was meant for a contest over at Spring Inspire but due to technical difficulties and an impromteu trip to the mountains/river/lovely town of Index, I missed the deadline.

Shite.

Thought I’d share with you!   It’s a bit about my story and how I got to where I am now…  High-school goody two shoes, Quarterlife Crisis, Backpacking Trip around the world and inspiration behind Stratejoy all included.

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Craving Something… Anything… Meaningful

posted 13th July 2009    Written by: Robyn    CATEGORY: All Posts, Quarterlife Crisis, Robyn, Season 1

INTRODUCING ROBYN

This is how I got to where I am…

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Come along for the rest of the ride!

Being a natural-born planner and a self-defined overachiever, I believe my Quarterlife Crisis began early—at age 22.  I had graduated college with a journalism degree and a women’s studies degree (don’t ask me what I planned on doing with this, because I have no answer).  I immediately packed up my bedroom at my parents’ house and moved to downtown Chicago, living right in the heart of Lakeview in a gorgeous Victorian 3-flat.

I interviewed relentlessly, and I landed a job as a supply-chain-something-or-other at Kellogg Company.  I began the job with a shining attitude—I arrived early, I dressed up, I left late, I conversed with my coworkers. I had a dreadful one hour commute to and from work everyday (think opening traffic jam scene of Office Space) that eventually weighed on me by day #6.

My lack of stimulating work also started weighing on me. I spent most of my time zoning out in front of excel sheets and taking long lunch breaks—sometimes to my car where I could nap in my backseat (sad, pathetic…funny looking back at it).

Being unchallenged and unmotivated, I questioned whether this is what my work life would be like…and if it was…damn…I needed more time to have fun before settling down with this.

After three months, I realized all my planning and over-achieving had gotten me nowhere.  I quit my job, dropped my lease in Chicago and bought a flight to Sydney, Australia. I backpacked up the East Coast of Australia.  I did things I never thought I’d do: learned to surf, kayaked with dolphins, sailed the wide open ocean, snorkeled with jelly fish (eek!), camped on a deserted island, went white water rafting, and of course, made friends with kangaroos and koalas.

I was on a roll!  I couldn’t get enough, so I went over to New Zealand to go black water rafting through caves, hike on glaciers, and chicken out on bungee jumping.

I returned to Chicago three months later, completely revived with fresh ideas.  I felt like a new person–less concerned with structure and planning and more concerned with just “seeing what happens” and “going with the flow.” Slowly, I fell back into the pattern that society demands…I began the job hunt again–this time believing I knew more about what i was looking for, but found that all I could think about was how huge the world was and how little I had seen.

I was now stuck with a travel bug that would haunt me during my next job.

I received an offer to work at a marketing firm downtown with a salary bigger than I ever imagined starting with.  I immediately decided I would love the job and decided to buy a condo and settle down in Chicago, subconsciously knowing I needed an anchor to keep me still.

Whenever I daydreamed about exploring the world, I pushed it to the back of my mind and told myself, “Now you are working for a global company.  If you put in your time now…I bet you can work anywhere in the world!”  Some how I managed to lie to myself and make myself believe—there’s talent!

This brings me to my current point in life.

I am now working a job that takes up the majority of my time and manages to leave me unfulfilled and unchallenged no matter what kind of work I request.  I crave something—anything meaningful.  I crave a challenge, and most of all, (If this is what the corporate world is like) I crave calling my own shots and not answering to “the man.” I am on the verge of quitting my job, trying to sell my condo, possibly going back to school, and possibly starting my own business.

I expect hiccups along the way, but I’m up for the challenge—obviously!

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