3 Things I Needed to Go From Wannabe to Successful Entrepreneur

by Katie Hart | Sep 16, 2018 | My Tech and Travel Journey

3 Things I Needed to Go From Wannabe to Successful Entrepreneur

I should be on a plane right now. Heading back to Pennsylvania, ready to resume my 8-to-5 on Monday.

Instead, I’m sipping tea at my lovely house sit in Oxford, waiting for my clothes to air dry (because dryers aren’t really thing in Europe), deciding what I want for dinner, and strategizing about how to grow my business.

Location independence was a dream of mine for so long, but I always had this fear in the back of my head that it wouldn’t happen. I was smart, but not special. Creative, but lazy. Great with ideas, but not ambitious in the slightest.

So I maxed out my two-week vacations with trips to Europe and NYC and Chicago, gradually started investing in better courses online from people who were living the life I wanted, and began hanging out in communities online with people who were starting businesses.

But I still had no clients, and it felt like I would never have a successful business. Then 3 things changed.

These are the 3 things that changed for me between “wishing” for location independence and it actually becoming a possibility!

1. I found a tribe. The Bucketlist Bombshells were all about having location independence, but not having to work for years and years to get to that point. Through their courses I rediscovered my love for design and learned the best way to start earning a steady income while traveling – an ongoing service-based business.

2. I found a niche. I was completely intrigued by the idea of being a Pinterest manager, but it seemed almost too good to be true. So I signed up for a course, and then a few others. We’re still bit of a newer thing, so Pinterest management often gets grouped with social media, even though it’s not very social. What I really loved about focusing on Pinterest was a) it used my design skills, b) I could do the work whenever I wanted due to scheduling aka complete time freedom, and c) it provided a tangible result for clients – more traffic to their websites.

3. I found a mentor/client. After a little success with Pinterest design, I knew I would need to have some ongoing management clients to bring in steady income. The problem was, while I knew so much about Pinterest from the courses I’d taken, I had no experience actually managing a Pinterest account for someone else! Enter Susi. I shared in her group promo thread an offer I was trying out – 50% off my services for 3 months – and she took me up on it! And she has shared about my work in her group several times, leading to additional clients. I’ve also gained so much from what she shares, from improving my mindset to making travel more affordable with house sitting!

That’s it. Those are the 3 things that changed for me, between being a wannabe entrepreneur to the beginning of an actual business!

How long did it take? I found my tribe in April 2017, and it took a bit before I bought their courses and started doing them. I first heard about Pinterest management in November 2017, and bought my first course in January 2018. I had my first Pinterest design client within a month, while I was still finishing up the course, and Susi became my first management client in March 2018.

Want to know more about my journey? Join the Create Wherever Female Entrepreneur Facebook group!

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!

Choosing a City to Work from Remotely

by Katie Hart | May 24, 2017 | Travel Planning

Choosing a City to Work from Remotely

One thing to consider when working remotely is where exactly you will be operating your business! If you’re wanting to work from home in your pajamas, the answer is easy, but if you want to use your new-found freedom to see the world, the possibilities are endless.

I’ll not be going into visa requirements, since that is different for every type of passport and every country, as well as constantly changing. It will also depend on how long you would want to stay in a country.

Most people have a vacation mindset when they travel. If they want to visit 10 countries in two weeks or go explore places without reliable internet, they can. But digital nomads need to be aware of how a change of location will affect their work and their clients. They can still go on a whirlwind tour or trek into the wilderness, but they do it within vacation time they’ve budgeted for themselves and build a more solid atmosphere for their daily lives.

But you can still build this solid atmosphere in amazingly cool places you’ve always wanted to visit!

There are certain variables you’ll want to consider when choosing where to go, and fortunately, a great site exists to help you gauge what cities are ideal for digital nomads! The Bucketlist Bombshells introduced me to Nomad List, a free site (though becoming a paid member has additional benefits) that presents many statistics to help you choose a city!

The main 4 variables the Nomad list looks at are cost of living, fun, safety, and internet. Each of these are further broken down into specific aspects, and they all add up to a Nomad Score.

You can then filter the results by your own preferences. Say you don’t really care where you go as long as you can live there cheaply – you can look for places under $1000 a month. Say you want to go somewhere in Europe – click on Europe. Say you only want places with very good internet – you can see the average bandwidth for the city, and find some coworking spaces with reliable speeds. Say you want to easily fly to surrounding areas – search for airport.

For myself, I’ll like to work from Europe and travel frequently to other countries. The cheapest places are in eastern Europe, but most cities I’d like to visit are in western Europe. Berlin is centrally located and a reasonable $2000/month, and has a very high Nomad Score (plus Germany has a freelancer one-year visa option for longer stays). I would prefer the UK, but prices range from $2500-3000, though that pales in comparison to Switzerland’s and Denmark’s $4000 a month!

And remember, as a digital nomad you’ll be able to change up where you live frequently – so you can balance out a more expensive location with a cheaper one part of the year.

Where would you like to base your business, at least for a few months?

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!

On Quitting Your Job: Courage vs. Responsibility

by Katie Hart | May 18, 2017 | Confidence

On Quitting Your Job: Courage vs. Responsibility

I’m not quitting my job.

Not walking out. Not putting in my two weeks’ notice. Not saying, “Bye, Felicia.”

Not yet at least.

As a part of so many travel and freelancing/solopreneur groups, it seems like every day I hear about someone is quitting their 9-to-5 to pursue their passion, the open road, and creativity. This move is unanimously praised as the right thing to do, as a huge courageous step.

It is especially prevalent in the Bucketlist Bombshells Tribe Facebook group (one of my favorites), for several reasons. First, because the group is about both travel and building your own business. Second, because that’s exactly what both co-founders of the group did – quit their jobs and moved to Mexico (as discussed in their recent Forbes article)!

Third, because their target audience is millennial women. In particular, ones who can see themselves traveling the world, which says two things – their ties to their current location are limited (often they are single and don’t have children) and they have, or aspire to have, disposable income that they want to spend on travel.

That is a broad generalization that of course doesn’t apply to everyone in the group. It does, however, apply to me.

The main tie I have to my current location is my family (parents and siblings, along with their families). I am one of nine children, and my parents and all but two of my siblings currently live within a half hour drive. I rent a place with one of my sisters. My brother, sister-in-law, and their two children (who will turn 7 and 3 in July) live 4 minutes away.

While technology has made living apart from family easier, it still would be hard to be away from them most of the year, especially my nieces, who grow and change so quickly. It would also be difficult for the sister I live with to find an affordable rental on her own.

Shared living costs is one aspect of the responsibility I feel about keeping my day job – especially since I just signed a year lease. Even if I would spend most of my time abroad, I would need a space to store my stuff and a place to stay when I’m hear (if I was only coming back a week at a time, I could stay with family, but I’m guessing trips home would end up being a month or so, and I need my own space). $300/month wouldn’t be too bad to keep paying, since a storage unit would be $50-$150/month anyway. I would need to see how much I’d be home after the lease was up.

Another responsibility is my car. I live in an area where a car is needed to get around. Fortunately my car is fully paid for. I could perhaps get a sibling to cover my auto insurance costs in exchange for using the car while I’m gone, or severely reduce my plan, or even sell the car and use a rental whenever I’m in the area.

My health insurance is covered through my job, and I don’t have to pay premiums. But I have Hashimoto’s, a thyroid autoimmune disorder, so I need access to medicine and infrequent blood tests to monitor my levels. If I quit my job, I’m stuck paying for health insurance on my own. It seems like many younger millennials would be able to get back on their parents’ health plans (or perhaps they are already on them?) if they quit their jobs spontaneously.

I also have cash invested into my vacation in September. Plane tickets, some non-refundable rooms, tours, and long train journeys have already been paid in advance. I will be using 9 of my 10 vacation days for my work year of May 2017-May 2018, which means if I leave before spring 2018 I may have to pay some of them back. However, paying a couple hundred to quit my job earlier would not be terrible. Since I know this vacation will be pricey, I suspect that I won’t be able to save much for a transitional buffer until the trip is over.

I definitely would be leaving my company in the lurch if I quit suddenly, even with 2 weeks’ notice. Right now, the company has a skeleton crew, with many people doing multiple jobs, and I know my leaving will put extra work on the shoulders of my already overworked coworkers. I am, however, a bit frustrated with the company – I have been asking for 2 months to have a conversation about salary, and it hasn’t happened yet. Two months ago I was in the middle of a big project and my confidence level was high. Now I’m between projects, so my value to the company isn’t as visible, even though I have plenty of tasks I am still doing.

The bottom line of this discussion the fact that I need to be making money with my fledgling business before I even make plans to quit my job. I have too many responsibilities that need cash. Maybe these women who are quitting their day jobs don’t have as many responsibilities. Maybe they have a safety net of moving back in with their parents if things don’t work out. Maybe they have a nice lump sum in the bank.

Or maybe they have decided that it is time to be courageous.

I’m not there yet. Call it fear, call it preparation, call it realism, but I know quitting my job right now is the wrong thing. But I’m hoping the time will soon come when it is the right thing, and I can finally embark on my digital nomad adventure.

Bye, Felicia!

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!

Entrepreneurial Roots

by Katie Hart | May 15, 2017 | My Tech and Travel Journey

Entrepreneurial Roots

I’ve never been much of a salesperson. I’m quiet, not pushy, and if someone declines politely I generally never ask them again. However, for most of my childhood I didn’t have an allowance, and for a good portion of my adulthood I didn’t have a full-time job, so when it comes to making money, I’ve learned to be creative. Here are a few things I’ve done over the years:

Household Chores

My siblings and I each had our own list of chores growing up, but there were a few things we could do above and beyond those to earn cash. For a bit, it was ironing. I could iron 12 pieces of clothing for a dollar. Needless to say, I did not get rich off this.

Bread Business

While I’ve never been a great cook, baking has always come easily to me, so in high school I started selling bread to earn a little cash. I sold a bit to people at church, but the majority to my dad’s coworkers. I would spend most of a day baking, and Dad would cart the boxes into his office and come back with the money I’d earned – usually around $20 after I’d paid my parents back for ingredients. In retrospect, I should have raised my prices, since the same people were going to buy a loaf or two regardless if they were $2 or $4.

Selling on eBay and Amazon

Pretty self-explanatory. I dealt mostly in used books, so I generally didn’t make much.

Online Research

This is one clear case where more assertiveness could have led me down a completely different path in life. I did some work online for a recruiting company – mostly resume mining and database cleanup. A coworker offered to train me to be a recruiter, but barely out of high school me was terrified of talking on the phone, especially to strangers. A more writing-based version of recruiting may have suited me, but I let the opportunity pass by and gradually they needed less and less of my help.

Book Reviews and Articles

Thanks to some review opportunities at my local bookstore, I began reviewing books for a couple small magazines. The pay was generally a free book, but the magazine connections did lead to a few articles that actually paid cash. I also started a book blog, and later a TV blog, and made a few pennies in Google Adsense revenue.

Database Work

One of the websites for which I reviewed needed help entering book information into their website database. The owner received the first chapters of books in Microsoft Word from the publishers, and needed help formatting each one for the web. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was my first coding job, as I manually inserted HTML tags throughout the text before uploading it and some metadata to the database. And this and my resume mining job were my first taste of Virtual Assistant work – though I don’t think the term had gained traction at that point.

Magazine Writing

My experience and connections in the book industry led to one of my most lucrative ventures to date – writing for an online magazine as a contributing editor. I was in charge of two different genres, and I interviewed authors via phone or email and created an article from the interview. It was awesome getting to talk with some of my favorite authors, and I would generally try to read some books by the authors I didn’t know before the interviews. I also gathered industry news into another column, and several times was asked to write an additional feature piece.

Avon

I sold Avon for a while in my early 20s, then stopped since I wasn’t making money with it. Some coworkers encouraged me to sign up again more than 3 years ago, and I’m still selling it. Most of what I make is due to one steady customer, so if they stopped purchasing, I likely wouldn’t make a profit and discontinue selling it. As it is, I make a little for my travel fund and get clothes and beauty products at a discount.

What jobs have you done in the past to earn money? Can you use the skills you’ve learned from them to help create a location-independent business for yourself?

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!

Do One

by Katie Hart | May 12, 2017 | Confidence, Digital Nomad Skills

Do One

About a month ago, I received an article in my inbox that stuck with me. Paul Jarvis referenced the iconic John Hopkins teaching method of “See one, do one, teach one”, and explained that most people are too quick to pass over the middle step – do one. He noted that it’s especially visible within the booming online courses industry, where people learn something new and sometimes immediately churn out a course of their own on the subject.

It caught my attention because I love to share new knowledge I’ve gained, and I was trying to figure out if I could create my own course based on what I know. My brain is stuffed full of all sorts of things, but it was hard for me to come up with something that people would actually pay me to teach. I thought perhaps it was a lack of confidence in my own abilities, but in fact, it was a lack of experience (a la my last post, Confidence and Courage).

I’ve never been much of a doer. As a print learner, I grasped things best by reading them passively. I shared them with others via writing. It means I generally do well with text-based things. But if something doesn’t have the thrill of learning something new, or the thrill of helping someone figure something out, I lose interest. Which is why I can be very smart but also very insecure about my abilities.

So, right now I’m trying to work on the doing part. It’s why I’ve committed to writing a blog post every day in May. It’s why I’ve set aside the idea of creating a course, for now at least. It’s why I’m taking these skills courses – even though more learning fits in the “see one” box, all the mini projects and the whole setup of a service-based business is about doing.

Yes, doing is the boring bit of the journey that most people skip over. ***insert training montage here*** But doing is going to give me the confidence to get to the exciting part!

What is something you need more practice doing?

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!