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Welcome to another episode of My Offbeat Journey.

I am so excited to welcome the new year with you and to continue sharing amazing stories and my own journey living an offbeat life.

There has been a lot of changes the last year and this year is no exception. Our biggest change for the podcast is that we are omitting our Thursday episodes and will only run our weekly Monday episodes from now on. We will of course continue sharing incredible stories from inspiring individuals and I will continue sharing my personal journey with you.

I can’t wait to see where 2023 leads us and I am excited to have you in this journey with me.

Listen Below:

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Ep. 297: How This Content Creator Has Been Able To Do Slow Traveling Through Remote Work with Jessica Hall
Ep. 296: How This Travel Expert Seizes Every Opportunity To See The World with Gabby Beckford
Ep. 295: How This Tin Whistle Backpacker Lives A Simple Yet Fulfilling Life On The Road with Finn

Transcription:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of my offbeat journey and I am so excited to talk to you today because we are in the new year, 2023!

There’s a lot to look forward to this year and of course a lot of things that has happened last year and I’m sure you’ve all gone through your ups and downs as I have had and I can say that it has definitely been a transformative year for me and hopefully it will be an incredible year, this year, for me and for you as well. 

So there’s a few changes, or a lot of changes that’s been happening with me in terms of my business and I think I had mentioned it before, months ago, that we had transitioned, my husband Aaron and I have completely transitioned to a new phase in our business, we’re focusing more on content creation, in terms of writing. He actually left his job and is now partnering with me in our business and it has been doing really well and we have been focusing on that. 

So there’s obviously a lot of changes and what’s happening and the main thing in terms of the changes that’s happening with the podcast is we are now omitting the Thursday episodes. So that has been the biggest change in terms of the podcast. But we are continuing with the Monday episodes. 

I just wanted to make sure that we are still creating, continuing to create content for you that is still really valuable, but because of the limited amount of time that I have, in terms of interviews and recording, I am going to omit the Thursday episodes from now on, starting this month, but the content will still be great, we’ll still be doing interviews and also I will be putting in some solo episodes as well, just to keep kind of showing you how this has been going and there’s obviously been a lot of changes since I started in 2017 and I am now on my 5th year, going on 6th year of the podcast this year. 

So there’s so much changes that have happened, obviously the biggest one was me transitioning from my nine-to-five to becoming a podcaster and now starting a new phase which is creating content and also creating content for other companies as well and that has been the main bread and butter and that has honestly been giving me so much more success than anything that I have done in the last five years since venturing off into the nine-to-five, venturing out of the nine-to-five.

And now that Aaron has been able to help me full-time, it has just grown exponentially and I didn’t think, well, not didn’t think, but I honestly, I’m just so happy that we are able to take the business this way. And yeah, it’s been a roller-coaster ride, it hasn’t been easy. There have been a lot of sacrifices, a lot of ups and downs the last five years, but now I feel like it’s just starting to pay off, all the hard work that I have been doing and now Aaron is doing with me. 

But I just wanted to share with you in this short episode that we will be changing the scheduling of the podcast from Mondays and Thursdays to now only Mondays. 

So, we’re still doing our weekly episodes but only on Mondays from now on. I don’t know how that will affect some of you. Some of you may not really care, some of you may, but I can again promise that the content will still be the same. It’s still going to be amazing. I’ll still be able to talk to some incredible individuals who have been able to work remotely, become digital nomads, and share their stories with you all. 

And of course, I will be able to keep sharing my journey with you, and it has definitely been a wild ride the last five years and now it’s just another phase in my business, so, just to give you a little rundown of how everything started for me, you know, in 2017, I was still in my nine-to-five and I was still working at a job that really, I didn’t mind it. It wasn’t the worst but it wasn’t the best. It just wasn’t something that I was super passionate about and I wanted to do something creative and that’s how the Offbeat Life Podcast started.

I wanted to talk to people who lived this offbeat life, who lived the life that was not the norm; they traveled and worked at the same time or they worked as a, you know, they were able to work from anywhere, they were able to have that freedom lifestyle that, the freedom to work whenever, wherever they wanted. 

And I really wanted that to be something that I can look forward to and fast-forward to 5 years later and I’m able to do it sustainably and, you know, the last 5 years, especially, the last 4 years has been, as I mentioned, really up and down, especially with income, you know, especially when you’re a content creator, it’s, some months you make a lot, some months you make nothing and then it goes up and down, but the last year, it has really been sustainable for us, the business and it’s just been continuous growth. 

And at this point, in my business, we’re definitely in the midst of, I mean, to tell you, honestly, for me, for myself, just getting a little bit overwhelmed because there is more work than I had anticipated because we’re getting more clients. 

So, the next phase where I’m going to be going into and where Aaron and I have really started talking about is to start hiring people now, so that we take off some of the things off of our hand and also really focusing on how we can grow this and make it sustainable, so that we’re not overwhelmed and it doesn’t blow up in our face. 

So, the growth has been steady, if I mean honestly, if I just think about it, I feel like It seemed really quick, but not really because I’ve worked so much and for so long with the last 5 years, that now, it’s finally paying off and I’m finally realizing where I should be in the market and what content I should be creating and how I’m able to find my clients. 

So now, it’s just getting into the hurdle of a of really figuring out what we need to work on, what are the things that need to be looked into so that the growth is again, like I mentioned, steady and it doesn’t, you know, I don’t mess it up and we don’t fall on our faces, so that’s why it’s been pretty hectic. 

But it’s definitely been growing pains but growth nonetheless and it’s been pretty amazing to finally see all the hard work coming into, you know, paying off and all of this is, it’s pretty, sometimes, I just, I’m still thinking how, “Oh my gosh, is this even real?”, and years ago, my husband, Aaron and I talked about this moment of, you know, getting him out of his day job and working for this moment that we’re able to live right now and we have so much more freedom than we’ve ever had before and one of the things that I know that he was really concerned about was, you know, I love to travel and for him it was like, “Okay we can’t do any of that thing, any of those things, unless we make sure that the business is steady, it’s stable.”, and now, it’s so interesting like, he’ll tell me that he’ll want to go to these places and one of the biggest reasons why he’s more open to all of that now, is because of the flexibility and the freedom that we have with our business. 

So there’s just been so many things that has opened up for us and I am so grateful for everything that has come our way, but again, it didn’t come without a price and it didn’t come without hard work and dedication and I can just say that if you’re in the trenches right now, if you’re in the middle of the beginning or even the middle part and I’m definitely still, I don’t know, I still feel like I’m in the beginning part, even though I started this 5 years ago because I feel like it’s just starting to pay off now. 

I can just say that, keep working, keep learning, pivot when you need to, keep going when you, you know, when you feel it and even when you don’t, because most of the time it can get monotonous, it can get boring and I think once it gets to that point it means that you’re doing something right. 

So, don’t give up. It’s only the beginning of the year, we don’t know what the rest of the year is going to bring us but I hope it’s going to be a great one for you and for us as well. 

So, let’s all stay optimistic and we’ll definitely get back to this 12 months from now and see where everyone is and I will definitely give you a monthly, kind of updates, of what is happening with us and where the growth is taking us. 

So, it’s definitely gone to a lot of different places, where when I first started it was mainly the podcast and then we had the web sites and now I’m doing a lot of concentration for different companies and that’s where our bread and butter is, so, it definitely came to a lot of different changes but it took that long and I think it allowed me to really see where I enjoyed myself, the most, where I fit in the most and I felt like for a really long time I was pushing a boulder up a hill, and now, it’s like the boulders going down the hill on its own, and it’s just taking me for a nice ride and it feels so good to finally feel like I’m not pushing anymore and that it just feels natural and I have heard other people say that to me before, but I didn’t realize how true it was until I finally found my niche. I stopped fighting and just started kind of listening to myself, my intuition and really went with the flow and really went where I felt good. 

And to tell you the truth, I decided to let go of a lot of things that actually made us money because it didn’t make me feel good about the way I did my business. And it didn’t make me feel good about the way I felt every day, even though it’s creating income from it. And, you know, one of the things that I did let go of was working with sponsors and it just didn’t feel right to me. I don’t know why. I just didn’t feel good. 

And also working on social media, I was creating a decent income with that, but I just don’t like to be on socials and I had asked myself all these questions, like, “Where do you want to see yourself in 5 years or 10 years? and is working with sponsors one of those things that you see yourself doing? or is you know, social media?”, and I definitely said right away, “Heck no!”, that’s not where I see myself going and then I started looking at the things that I was doing that really gave me joy and it allowed me to, I don’t know, just kind of be on my own in a lot of ways and keep to myself, be my own boss, have more, have more, I guess control over what I was doing and this is where it led me, is to create content for companies, contracting, being a contractor and also working with different types of businesses and helping them create content for their website and that’s where we are right now. 

So, for the next solo episode, I’m actually going to go over the questions that I have personally asked myself to get to this point and also the questions that I actually have asked my one-on-one clients, when they come to me and how it allowed them to be successful and what they’re doing because they really ask themselves these important questions and it, I know it works, because it has work for me and it has worked for my students as well. 

So I’m going to go over that, some, some of these questions and I would like you to ask them for yourself as well. So, yeah.

So today I just wanted to let you know what’s happening that we are going to let go of the Thursday episodes, that we are keeping the Monday episodes, we’re still doing weekly episodes, but just some the Monday episodes, I’m still going to be interviewing some incredible individuals and also giving you more solo episodes to give you some insights on this journey. 

If you want to learn more about what I’m doing, maybe you’re interested in what I’m doing right now, make, you know, as a writer and contractor for a lot of these companies I can talk about that too cause it’s honestly, one of the best and easiest ways that I have been able to create income and I love it, but it depends if you’re also creative, if you love writing and yeah, I did all of this because I said no to a lot of things and also, I tried so many different things and figured out where I wanted to be, so make sure you stay tuned for that episode where Ike, again, I give you all the questions I asked myself to get to this point to really figure out where I fit in and where I found my happy place in terms of my business and it allowed me to leave my nine-to-five, well, not in the beginning, but it allowed us to fully support ourselves a hundred percent with a business and have Aaron leave his nine-to-five, and make more than what he was making and what I was making, when I was still working in my nine-to-five.

So, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope to see you then and I will see you every Monday on the Offbeat Life Podcast and if you want to find more resources and how to find online jobs, you can go to theoffbeatlife.com. I will talk to you later, bye everyone!