Anna S. E. Lundberg

Coach, Speaker, Writer

Fearless Fridays: From ad agency to digital nomad pioneer

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Fearless Fridays with Kit WhelanFor this month’s Fearless Fridays interview, I’ve been talking to another digital nomad extraordinaire, Kit Whelan. I met Kit in Barcelona in October at the second year of the 7in7 digital nomad conference, which she co-founded with her partner Nick as well as Kyrie, whose story I shared last month.

In addition to being a co-founder of the 7in7 conference, Kit is a freelance social media strategist, as well as the creator and host of Nomad and Spice, a podcast dedicated to supporting location-independent women. An early adopter of the digital nomad lifestyle, Kit has been travelling for almost a decade, and discusses the importance of community when you’re living on the road, as well as balancing a love for travel and the desire to make an impact with your work.

Watch the full interview or read on for the highlights of Kit’s story!

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From ad agency to digital nomad pioneer

kit whelanKit Whelan has been a digital nomad for nine years, having started her career in an ad agency and then working on the Obama campaign. She runs a social media consultancy, mostly working with small luxury hotels, and co-founded the 7in7 conference for digital nomads. She also co-hosts the Nomad + Spice podcast for location independent women… and is obsessed with cats and space travel.

 

1. At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

After finishing university, my goal was to get a job at an ad agency. Thankfully, it was before the Great Recession in the States, so it was not that hard to get a job then. I remember hanging up the phone after getting the job offer and thinking, “Is that it?”

I’d worked really hard in school and university, and done all these things so I could have a good resumé. Then I got the ‘good job’, the last societal finish line.

I enjoyed my job, I really did, but after a few years, it was just so repetitive; I didn’t feel like I wanted it. I desperately wanted to travel more than the paltry two weeks a year that they give you in American companies and I just wanted more out of life – more adventure, more excitement. So that’s why I originally quit my full-time job to work on the Obama campaign, because I felt like I was doing something that was bigger than myself. I wanted that to continue. For me, going back to a full-time job would have been going backwards.

2. What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

Kit Whelan
Kit and Nick have been travelling together as a “24/7 couple” – and, as you can see from their faces, they make it work!

At the beginning, I was so focused on the travel that taking time for work still seemed like an inconvenience. Now, I have three businesses that I take a lot of pride in and I spend a lot of time working on them – my perspective has definitely shifted. But when I began, remote work was still very new. It was a lot harder, with potential clients asking, “Where are you located? What are you doing?” They were often a little nervous and I would have to negotiate with, “Just give me three months and we’ll see how it goes.”

I travel and work with my partner so there are also challenges of a more personal nature. Honestly, for me, being the 24/7 couple is great – but I know that’s really challenging for a lot of people. For us, as long as we’ve got a good pair of headphones and can have our separate time and space, we’ve done pretty well as far as the whole “work-together-all-the-time” thing goes!

3. Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

For me, the biggest thing that you could possibly need for a nomad lifestyle isn’t just making money from your laptop, it’s the community and support: that is the most important thing. And in the early days, when I was more focused on my travels than on work, it was mostly just Nick and I. We would meet people wherever we went and that was fun, but we didn’t have a long-term support network.

Obviously we had our families, but that wasn’t the same as having a really solid support network. We stumbled into one when we were in Berlin the summer of 2013 to 2014 and there happened to be a lot of other nomads there at the time. This was still during the time when if you met another nomad, it was like finding a unicorn!

It was like, “Oh my gosh! You’re a nomad too? We’re best friends now.” We started hanging out with these people, having movie nights, then hanging out every weekend, co-working together every day during the week. It was like having this little nomad family for the first time, and that’s when I realised what we’d been missing. I’ve now worked to build that for myself.

I started a conference to make more friends and to show other nomads that this is what you need, this is what you’re missing. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people drop out of the lifestyle and usually that’s because they’re lacking community. They’d say that they felt lonely, they said that they missed having that community, and often they’d end up going back home.

That’s a perfectly valid choice, but you don’t have to do that. You can absolutely gather your own network and your own nomadic family and have that support system no matter where you are.

4. What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Looks like Kit has found her community: these are the smiling faces of the year 2 conference attendees in Barcelona

The best part for me is the community; but I think still the best part of the nomad lifestyle in general is just the freedom and the ownership of my time. When I had a full-time job, a great apartment, great friends etc., what shaped me a lot was that fact that I was living on someone else’s schedule – I was working for someone else’s goal and I had no time for myself. You end up just living for the weekend because by the time you’ve arrived home from your job, you’re just exhausted.

There’s no time to do anything for yourself and even now, if I’m stressed because I’ve taken on too many projects, I end up feeling like I have to remind myself that I chose this: I’m the one who gave myself this work, I’m the one who chose to do these projects. I’m the one who decides when I wake up, I decide when I work. I decide where I live and what I eat. Everything is my decision so if, at any point, I’m miserable, it’s my own fault… there’s no boss to blame.

So my favourite part of the lifestyle is definitely the freedom.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

Stress less. Things will work out – you don’t need to have everything planned, and failure is good, you learn from it. And I think the most important thing is to find yourself a community.

To non-nomads (we like to call them Muggles!), you will always be an oddity. They’ll say, What? You don’t have a house? You’re just travelling? You work from your computer? How do I do that?!” and you might feel like you’re coaching people sometimes.

You need to have people in your life who completely get you. People who can support you through what you’re doing and have been through those situations. That’s the most important thing.

Read more about Kit’s social media consultancy on her website Kit + Co, discover her podcast at Nomad and Spice, and read more about the 7in7 Digital Nomad Conference on the 7in7 website. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram @KitWhelan.

Fearless Fridays: From nomad newbie to conference co-founder

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Fearless Fridays with Kyrie MelnyckThis month’s Fearless Fridays is with Kyrie Melnyck, co-founder of the 7in7 conference for digital nomads – which is where I met her, while speaking at their second-year event in Barcelona in October. (In fact, there will be a few more interviews coming up with other co-founders and speakers in the coming weeks…) Her story is a perfect fit for this month, given our focus on freelancing at One Step Outside these past weeks. Kyrie left a job in events at a tech company in Vancouver to become a digital nomad, freelancing and now running this conference as well.

Kyrie discovered the idea of being a ‘digital nomad’ through a chance encounter while working as an events planner for a technology company in Vancouver. Fast-forward to today and she is the co-founder of 7in7, a conference for experienced digital nomads taking place across 7 years on 7 continents. In our interview, Kyrie explores her reasons for choosing a nomadic life and how she builds communities to tackle some of the biggest challenges that location-independent freelancers face.

Watch the full interview or read on for the highlights below!

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From nomad newbie to conference co-founder

Kyrie MelnyckKyrie is an ocean-loving digital nomad and co-founder of 7in7, a conference for experienced digital nomads that’s taking place on 7 continents over 7 years (yes, even Antarctica!). She has 7+ years of event experience and is the owner and founder of Catalyst Events Co., which supports people with event strategy and auditing. When she’s not eating, sleeping and breathing events, you can find her on the beach, tracking down the best coffee in town or plotting her next adventure!

1. At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

I was in Playa Del Carmen in Mexico and I met two nomads, Shane and Cassie, and they dropped the term ‘digital nomad’. This was about three years ago, and I asked, “Oh, what is that? That sounds like something I could do.”

Nomad Coffee
Kyrie likes coffee – can you tell? She’s pictured here with her second co-founder, Nick

Then I ended up researching like a crazy person, trying to find anything and everything. I couldn’t find a lot of information for women or people in this space who had been digital nomads, but I did come across Kit Whelan, who is actually the co-founder of 7in7 now [note from Anna: Kit’s interview is coming up next month!], and just randomly reached out to her for coffee, because she happened to be in Vancouver where I was.

She was leaving two days later and I appreciated that she took the time. It just snowballed from there! I had this seed planted and I thought, “I need to get out of here, I need to do this, I need to be a digital nomad.”

So I transitioned from my role as an event coordinator at the company I was with, into their customer support team – I had been with them for a few years and I knew the product so could slide into that role quite easily – and I then took that remotely to Cambodia. That’s where it all started, and it went on from there.

2. What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

I think everyone probably faces their own set of challenges moving into this sort of lifestyle, where there are not any rules set for you, so you’re creating your own.

Buying the ticket and going to Cambodia was great. I had the ability to use my previous job to help me figure out what was going on there – like training wheels, I suppose! I didn’t jump right into it. I had remote work, I was getting paid in Canadian dollars and living in Cambodia, which helped me find the time and space to figure out what I wanted to do with it. I really appreciated that.

One of the biggest challenges was jumping from the standard hours and knowing that I had that consistent paycheck, into something more client based, and trying to figure out how to adjust finances and budgeting whilst travelling. Managing clients, and when they would pay you, was also a real learning curve; I’m awful with numbers. So most of the challenges were around budgeting, figuring out the systems for dealing with clients, and how that can become consistent, so I didn’t have to stress every month about money coming in.

Then the second thing was community. Having co-created 7in7, I created one of my own! I guess that’s the extreme, I don’t think everyone’s going to jump up and plan a conference to try to find their people…

It just so happened that I fell into that, and it’s been a truly magical journey, because I’ve had all of these amazing people come into my life. Loneliness can be a huge factor when you’re jumping into a remote work lifestyle or digital space.

3. Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

Creating the community of 7in7 has been more of a passion project than a job, because it’s just so great and fun to do. I think that’s played a huge part in creating a community and having that remote team to bounce ideas off of was a huge support; having them to combat loneliness was big for me. Previously working in a company where I was the only person that was remote was quite a challenge.

As for budgeting and finances, I’m still working my way through those ones, but it’s getting a lot easier. It’s becoming more consistent. I think it’s just a matter of diligence and really paying attention to what you’re doing. It’s easy to lose track when currencies change all the time.

4. What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Kyrie in the desert
Where in the world is Kyrie…?

I think the flexibility is probably the best part. I’m currently travelling with my partner and I think it’s been fun to experience the world with someone else, which is new to me, being able to go out and explore in different ways. Actually having someone to ask, “Hey, remember that awesome sunset we saw?” instead of being alone and saying “Hey, look at these pictures.”

I think that’s probably the best part of my lifestyle right now; plus 7in7 is great. It’s nice to have a big thing that I’m working towards for another five years. It’s directed to the travel path, and my life, which feels good, and it’s exciting to see the growth of that over the next few years.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

I think the number one piece of advice is that there’s no right way to do it, so do what feels better. I think the whole time you’ll be teetering on this level of fear, thinking, “Am I doing this right?” and having to push yourself.

There are all these little points of fear; but then you also need to find financial stability, and a place that you feel comfortable – don’t just go to Chiang Mai because everyone’s going to Chiang Mai. If you don’t like Chiang Mai, go somewhere else.

Trying to find your own path is the tricky part. I’m still doing it! But I think the number one piece of advice would be to just create your own path. Don’t follow other nomad paths – but definitely reach out if you need any sort of support. Ask people about it, because everyone’s excited to share.

 

You can find Kyrie online at Kyriemelnyck.com or follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Find out more about 7in7 on their website and you can follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!

 

 

 

Fearless Fridays: From sales and recruiting to business growth strategy

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Fearless Fridays with Kelly RoachThis month’s Fearless Fridays interview is with none other than my own coach and mentor, Kelly Roach. Kelly is a former NFL cheerleader and had a hugely successful career in sales and recruitment before she decided to start up on her own in order to create what she most valued in her life: freedom, fulfilment and financial abundance.

There are so many valuable points that Kelly makes in this interview. She shares how she right away recognised the importance of having someone to guide her through the process and hired a coach a year before she even started her business; she talks about the importance of building a team so that you’re never alone as an entrepreneur; and she gives some powerful advice around showing up and doing the work to create a brand and an eco-system that will last for years – even when you’re not always seeing the results right away!

I REALLY recommend that you watch the full interview below (and keep an eye out for Kelly’s little entrepreneur in the making, Madison) and you can also read on for the highlights below.

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From sales and recruitment to business growth strategy

Kelly RoachKelly Roach is the host of the top-rated podcast Unstoppable Success Radio, an International best-selling author, and the CEO of Kelly Roach Coaching. As a former NFL Cheerleader and Fortune 500 Executive where she was promoted 7 times in 8 years, Kelly brings a powerful combination of proven and profitable business growth strategies coupled with the mindset, wellness and productivity practices required to help entrepreneurs build a profitable business around a life they absolutely love. Kelly’s passion and purpose is in helping entrepreneurs around the world achieve exponential profit, sales and income growth.

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

I started off doing sales and recruiting for a Fortune 500 firm, and really worked my way up the corporate ladder extremely quickly. I was promoted seven times in eight years. I became the youngest Senior Vice President in the company, and I was managing 17 branches. I had a team of 100 people. Really what I was doing was a lot of what I do today, just in a different format. I was responsible for driving sales growth. My whole job was teaching, training, coaching, and developing people to one, believe in themselves, two, have the confidence, and three have the skills to go out and sell and market and build their business.

When I started my own business, I really took the best of what I loved so much and was so passionate about in that field and really channelled my energy into something that I felt was much more impactful and fulfilling to make a difference in the world, which is focusing on small business owners. For me, it’s very fulfilling when a business owner says, “I was able to pay off my debt,” “I was able to quit my job,” “I was able to pay to take my family on vacation.” One of my favourite success stories ever was when a client told me that after their first six months working with me it was the first time ever that they got to pay for all of their Christmas presents with cash.

It’s little things like that, that’s why I decided to do what I do. I know today that every business owner that I help, it’s a family that I’m touching, and it’s a relationship that I’m reinforcing because of that person now being able to have the freedom and flexibility to put their family first, which is my most important premise in my business. It doesn’t matter where you are today, whether that’s important to you or not, at some point it will be. If you start ahead, and you start working on that when you don’t need it, which is exactly what I did. I wasn’t pregnant with Madison yet. I didn’t have a daughter, but I was planning ahead for that when I started my business because I knew that by the time she got to be the age that she was interacting and kind of knew what was happening in life that I wanted to be a really present mom. When you plan ahead and you work towards your dream, and you set goals for yourself, you can make anything possible.

Kelly Roach coffee shop
Kelly realized that her core values are freedom, fulfilment and financial abundance.

The biggest thing was honestly quality of life. Getting seven promotions in eight years was my goal – and I really made the decision to go in early and stay late, and work on the weekends, I didn’t have to do that. The corporate world is a completely different beast than the entrepreneurial world: when you’re building your own business you build a team and you keep adding to that team, so you’re able to leverage your time. I don’t work any more in my business today than I did when I was a start-up, and we’ve grown obviously substantially. But the difference is in the corporate world every time you get a promotion, every time you take on more, you’re expected to just work more and more and more and more hours. There’s no correlation. You’re not actually building something that’s scalable, or that will allow you to then later reap the benefit and the reward of that.

To me, that was a very short-term way of operating. I thought, “This doesn’t even make sense. I’m not actually creating something that down the road I’m going to be able to leverage. I can keep getting promoted, but I keep having less and less time. Even though I’m making more money, I’m not accomplishing these things.” It was really just coming to a precipice of realizing that my three values were freedom, fulfilment, and financial abundance. I really had to do some reflection and I recognized that that is not available or possible in a corporate environment, especially in a Fortune 500 firm. You really can’t expect that in a job. I think you have to take responsibility to go out and create that.

Now what I will say is that I worked very, very hard in my own business to make sure that my team members are able to accomplish those three things, freedom, financial abundance, and fulfilment in their work. I do think it’s possible, but I think it’s very rare because you would have to have a business owner or a business leader that has that mindset of wanting to create that. In most companies or corporations, that’s not obviously, that’s not a priority. That’s not something that’s on their radar to create for people.

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

I think the hardest thing for me to learn as an entrepreneur is a willingness to fail publicly. That is very, very difficult, especially when you’re high D, type A, high achiever, which I know probably you are and so many other people listening. It’s very difficult to fail publicly, so that’s what holds most entrepreneurs back from achieving true success because unfortunately now with everything being done on social, you’re going to win or lose in front of everyone. You’re on a grand stage with everything that you do. I mean, I’ve had completely failed launches where I literally sold nothing. I’ve had webinars where I’ve had no one show up. I’ve had every failure that you could imagine as an entrepreneur.

It was really my willingness to say, “Okay, this is my starting point and now I’m going to do this over and over and over again until I nail it,” and be willing to fail publicly so that we could succeed and achieve greatness. That was the hardest thing for me, it was so difficult to do that. And even now, it’s hard. It’s hard being in the public eye with everything that you do. But I think you have to decide what’s more important to you, protecting your ego, or achieving the end result that you want. For me, I think to myself, “Okay, remember the end result, keep focused on your path.”

I think the other thing is that in every other facet of life we understand that you’ll have to practice and practice and work towards things for years, but then I think in entrepreneurship we expect that the first time we do something it’s going to be this magically perfect result. Then when it’s not, we think, “Oh, that didn’t work, let me go focus over here” – which is the worst thing you can possibly do!

My biggest message of 2018 for entrepreneurs is play the long game and you will be the only person leading in your industry. Everyone’s playing a short game right now, so if you’re the person that’s thinking about 5, 10, 15 years from now, the decisions that you are making will be 100 times more powerful than the decisions that your peers are making. Literally, the cream always rises to the top. You may feel like, “oh my gosh, I’m struggling, I’m scraping by right now, I’m barely able to get a client” – but if you’re making good decisions every single day, that will ultimately translate into you being the leader in your industry.

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

I’ve had lots of coaches and mentors myself. I always tell the story of the best decision I ever made when I started my business, which was that I started business coaching with Ally Brown a year before I started my business. That is how much I believe in coaching, in the power of coaching. I realized I could cut 5 to 10 years off just by doing it the right way the first time instead of trying to make it up as I go.

I had a background in business growth strategy and sales, and I still knew that there were immense differences between, for example running an online business and running an offline business. I can’t even convey the value in finding someone who is where you want to be and investing in coaching and training with them. I still to this day utilize so many of the things that I learned from Ally Brown in 2012.

I hear from people all the time that as an entrepreneur, you feel like you’re on an island, you feel lonely. Well, if you build a team and you get a coach, then you’re in a community and you have people who are rallied around you, all working towards a common goal. I never feel alone. I can say that I never feel alone. No one needs to feel alone. But the decisions that you make will determine if you’re on an island, or if you’re in the centre of this community with people having their arms wrapped around you.

I started off with a VA for one hour a week, and that was the start of my team. I think it’s very intimidating for people to hear ‘team’ because they’re thinking of investing $50,000 in a full-time person (or pounds, or whatever!). You know what I mean? Yes, that is the ideal, and that’s where you want to get eventually, but that’s not where you’re going to start; that’s not where anybody starts. Just get started with some small incremental amount of help allow you to focus on the right things so that you’re not getting dragged down into the things where you should not be spending your time and energy on.

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Everything. I mean, I would say I’m at a stage now where years of making good decisions, years of planning in advance have come to fruition. The ability to have my husband home full time with my daughter, which was the number one most important thing in my life – I retired my husband so that Madison never had to go into day care – that’s my proudest accomplishment. Being completely debt free. Last year we paid off our house. We have no debt of any kind. Getting to take a lot of family vacations, spend quality time together, put my family first. Last summer, I took every Friday off. This summer, we’re doing a lot more trips, because Madison is older and we can travel now. I just think that after a period of years of doing the right thing, and doing the right thing, and doing the right thing, even when I wasn’t getting the results from it, it comes full circle.

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

My biggest piece of advice for new entrepreneurs today is to focus on engagement-based video. That was not available when I started my business. There was no such thing as live streaming, and Instagram wasn’t even a thing at that point. I would say that is the best business breakthrough that’s happened in the past decade, and it’s free. If you’re a new entrepreneur starting today, you need to make your phone your best friend. You need to make your phone your best friend, and get on camera.

That is the biggest piece of advice I have for new entrepreneurs. It wasn’t available to me. Now with my second business that I’m just starting, everything we’re doing is engagement-based video: we’re live streaming every week, we’re doing Boomerangs, we’re doing stories…. And we’re seeing our audience grow faster there than my audience is growing in my coaching company. It’s because we’re leveraging the tools and technologies that are available today that weren’t available when I started my first business.

 

Find out more about Kelly at Kelly Roach International on Facebook and you can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Fearless Fridays: From money to mountains

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Fearless Fridays with Sarah WilliamsThis month’s Fearless Fridays interview is with Sarah Williams. I stumbled across her in the She Podcasts group on Facebook, where I also recognised her from the Yes Tribe. Small world, with people living out big dreams!

After working in finance for eight years, Sarah quit her city job and spent 18 months travelling the world, climbing Kilimanjaro, backpacking around South America and doing a ski season, and using that time to help her decide on what she wanted to do with her life. She set up Tough Girl Challenges as a way of motivating and inspiring women and girls and she’s also the host of the Tough Girl Podcast, where she interviews inspirational female explorers, adventurers, athletes and everyday women who have overcome great challenges.

In the interview, Sarah shares how much she loves the freedom of how she can live her life now, as well as sharing some of the challenges. It’s quite a change to go from a ‘conventionally successful’ job in the city to forging your own path, and you’ll often find yourself up against some pretty strong doubts and judgements from certain people around you. She found incredible support in the online space and, despite the challenges, her advice to you is to “just start!” Read on for Sarah’s story or watch the full interview below.

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From promoting investments to promoting strong female role models

Sarah WilliamsSarah Williams is the founder of the Tough Girl Challenged Podcast, dedicated to inspiring and motivating women and girls to get fit, active, travel, explore, have big adventures and generally live life to the fullest. An adventurer and endurance athlete, Sarah left a career in banking in London to complete several personal challenges including running the Marathon de Sables, walking the Appalachian Trail and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Sarah is now back at university and facing mountains of a different sort with her degree in Women and Gender Studies, whilst running the Tough Girl Challenges blog and podcast driven by her vision to see an increase in the number of female role models in the media.

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

It was very gradual. I’m a very positive person but it was a case of little things here and there. Week after week, it was becoming harder and harder to find faith, happiness, motivation and drive for what I was doing.

I was in a very fortunate position. I did have savings and I didn’t have any liabilities, so I could go and leave. I headed off to Kilimanjaro to go climb the mountain, which was amazing. I also spent time with family in Australia.

However, I do wish I had started Tough Girl Challenges when I was still doing my working job so that I could receive a regular income to build up the side hustle and learn everything I needed to learn about social media, editing and being an entrepreneur.

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

The big challenge for me is the financial side of things: it’s trying to make money from something I’m really, really passionate about. I moved back home with my parents and suddenly I’m a 36-year-old woman thinking “Am I doing the right thing?”

That’s still a struggle. I have these great days where I get nominated for an award, or I have the chance to share my story, and then there are really low days where you’re just sitting at a computer for 16 hours a day doing social media, trying to promote your podcast and your story, trying to get sponsorship and speaking gigs. It’s so hard.

I’m not complaining about it because it’s my choice and I’d 100% rather be doing this. I think a lot of people look at my life or look through Instagram and think “Oh, Sarah’s at the gym again,” or, “She’s out walking the Appalachian Trail,” or, “Oh, she’s doing X, Y, and Z” – but people don’t really get to see behind the scenes. That’s been quite tough.

It’s also adjusting your mindset about status. Working in finance in the city, or working for a big global corporation, people ask you “What do you do?” and you say, “Oh, I’m doing X for this bank.” There was a lot of ego involved. Then you have that stripped away and it becomes “Oh, I’m a blogger, I’m a podcaster…” You get very different reactions from some individuals. Some people are incredibly supportive but other people aren’t.

With my family and friends, I struggled with the suggestions of “Why don’t you get this job? You’d be so good at doing this,” whilst trying to explain that, “Actually, I’m really trying to make this work. I know it doesn’t look like I’m doing much, but this is my passion, this is my dream.”

There have definitely been hard times. Explaining to friends and family, trying to make money, living at home with the parents… My parents are amazing by the way! I’m actually quite lucky and very spoiled, but it is still a challenge.

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

Online, which has been amazing. I’ve got my own Facebook group called the Tough Girl Tribe, which is incredible. I think a lot of women sometimes feel isolated when they say, “I want to go and run across the Sahara Desert,” or “I want to do this challenge,” and they may not have friends and family around to support them. It was great to connect other like-minded individuals.

I also became a member of She Podcasts, an incredible Facebook group for other female podcasters to be able to ask those questions which you think are stupid questions (and probably are stupid questions). But sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, and you need to ask, “What’s the hosting place? How do I get my RSS feed? And how do I link it in?”

I’m also part of a mastermind as well. I connected with three other women last year and we talk once a month. Everybody’s in a similar position or in a similar industry and able to share best practice and share their knowledge and experience and just get advice and tips.

But I definitely think it’s not the same as in real life. I think that’s one thing I’ve struggled with: I feel I’m losing my social skills because I’m so happy about what I’m doing. I just sit in my bedroom and work all day and go to the gym, I’m not having daily interactions or daily banter. Yes, I get it on Twitter and social media, but it’s not the same as physically talking to people.

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Sarah Williams
Running the Marathon de Sables, a six-day ultra marathon in southern Morocco

It’s the freedom. It’s the freedom of choice that I can just do what I want to do when I want to do it. Last year, I headed off to the Appalachian Trail to do this big walking challenge – but my business was still running. I had pre-loaded all my podcasts and blog posts and I had a small team of amazing women who helped with my social media while I was away. I spent three months walking through the Appalachian Mountains in America and it was incredible. I think the freedom is amazing.

I think it’s having a choice too; I know all the hard work I put in now is going to bring rewards. And I love the fact I don’t have to work to a schedule.

Also, I don’t actually interact with people I don’t like now. I know that sounds really weird, but you know sometimes, in business environments, you’ve got to be sort of nice to everyone, and be professional. Sometimes you just don’t like them as a person and you think, “I find your attitude negative” or “You’re not my cup of tea.” Whereas now, 9 times out of 10, with everybody I speak to, it’s not about competition but about collaboration. It’s about working together and being supportive. It’s just a completely different dynamic, which is amazing. There are so many benefits.

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

Say to yourself, “No more waiting. Just start.” I really want to ram that down people’s throats! Just please start. Whether it’s that you want to start training for a 5K, or you want to get fit or healthy or go to the gym, find a new job or a new relationship – whatever it is, you just have to start. The first step is, unfortunately, the hardest, but then you build momentum and things start rolling and happening. You suddenly think, “Whoa, why didn’t I start this earlier?”

 

To keep up to date with Sarah and her latest challenge, as well as find inspiration for your own adventures, visit ToughGirlChallenges.com. You can find more information on the Tough Girl Tribe and listen to Sarah’s inspiring podcast here. Well worth checking out!

Fearless Fridays: From banking to promoting an active lifestyle

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Fearless Fridays with Annie RossI met Annie Ross on a paddleboard in the River Thames. At the time, she was “on her way out” of banking, although still confronting a lot of fears around what that could mean. Having realised that she wanted to do something different, she set herself a challenge of 52 sporting challenges in 52 weeks – and our paddleboarding weekend was one of those challenges.

The ‘Exerk Yourself’ challenge turned out to have a positive effect on Annie’s work, giving her job purpose during a time when she didn’t want to make any drastic changes. It also made her new project fun rather than having the pressure to start earning money and turn it into a business right away. Eventually, though, it also gave her the platform and the confidence to take the leap and focus on setting up her own business.

As Annie says, she’s now “obsessed with helping people get active”. I love her message that you don’t have to climb Mount Everest or take five months off to travel across the Americas. You can build adventure and fun into daily life. There’s also an element of bringing people together and using these activities to create a sense of freedom and purpose outside of whatever’s happening in your life, for example, when you’re considering a big career or lifestyle change.

Read on or watch the full interview below to find out about the thought process that Annie takes herself through whenever she has doubts, and the total flexibility that her work allows her these days.

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From teaching to photography

Annie RossHaving been working at Deutsche Bank for five years, Annie initially set up Exerk to spend more time doing what she really enjoyed, which was staying active. Organising a year of 52 sporting challenges in 52 weeks alongside her full-time job gave her the confidence and the platform to eventually hand in her notice. Today, she’s building this into a more structured programme for corporate women who struggle to find the time to be active.

1) At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

The final trigger was that I was offered a job via a contact that I’d made from a press launch, having been writing as a fitness columnist for the Evening Standard, who had picked up my blogs. I met this guy who, a couple of coffees later, said, “Let’s look into you working for us.” That gave me the confidence that I could get a job outside of banking – this was at a big sports company. I handed my notice in off the back of that being a possibility. While I was working out my notice, I finally realised that I didn’t want to go and work for this sports company because it was effectively just another office job.

I let myself have no plans for a whole two weeks(!). Then a friend of mine suggested a company called Impact Marathon Series, who were launching marathons around the world. It was this perfect combination of having freed up my time, wanting to speak more Spanish, loving organising sports events and bringing people together – and someone who was willing to fly me out to Columbia to do it!

London Marathon 2016
Annie running the London Marathon in 2016

So I ended up in Columbia two weeks after I quit Deutsche Bank, on my own for six months organising a marathon. It ended up not happening sadly, but all the work was put in and it was amazing. I did Columbia and Nepal with them, race directing Nepal and project managing Columbia, and there is nothing I would rather have done for my first seven months out of banking. It involved travelling, working, and engaging with people in a really different way, in a different country doing a different job. That gives you confidence by chucking you into different situations as you realise that if you can work in three different countries in the same year, one in banking, one project managing, and one race directing, you can probably do a few other things as well!

2) What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

After the Impact Marathon Series work, I used my Evening Standard column to travel for a bit and write travel reviews. It was a natural decision after that to come home and be with my friends, my network, and create a business – calling a day on that nomad living in South America. Since then, it’s been weird, because you come back and everyone says, “Oh my God, you’re back! You must be back for a reason” – and the answer is, “Yes, but I don’t know what that reason is yet.”

There has been a lot of excitement but also not knowing who you are anymore. Before, it was, “I work at Deutsche Bank, I did this, I did that” – not knowing what I was doing now made me feel really fidgety and anxious. Not having a purpose was really difficult for me. Every three weeks, I’d get really excited about another idea, I’d go full on into it and I’d meet with HR companies from big banks to talk about their corporate wellness stuff, for example… and then something would happen, and I’d just go off the boil a bit. Then I’d pick up the next idea and run with that.

That was tiring for me and it was tiring for other people. It took time to step back and stop putting pressure on myself, to give myself the space to commit. I signed up to a marketing seminar, and it all kind of unravelled like a big knot that was there in my mind and my heart, and gave me a clearer path to what I’m working on now.

It’s weird as you’re only answerable to yourself, especially for someone like me who expects a lot and puts a lot of pressure on myself. There were days when I felt like Deutsche Bank had been a really easy lifestyle, in comparison! So that says a lot about how low I felt at various points.

You have to stop yourself every now and again when you find yourself on the Guardian jobs website! I still have those days when I think, “Let me just see what’s out there, just in case.”

3) Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

I went through the process of asking myself, “Should I go and get a job? Should I just go back into banking and make life all rosy and salaried again?” So you sit down and you ask yourself questions: “Is it because you want money?” In my case, “No, my insecurities are not around money.” Then I would ask, “Is it because I’m lonely and I want to work in a team again?” “No, because I can engineer that into my life.” “Is it because I want to be learning in a different way, being put on education courses by the company or just learning from other more experienced people in the team structure?” And again, “No, I’m doing enough courses, I’m doing really interesting things, I can say yes to anything I get invited to at the moment if it fits in with the strategy…” So I was able to rule that out.

I’m also a big believer in the power of people. I have no qualms about sending off an email to any company or person that I think looks interesting. That has led me down some awesome and has been my number one thing in that respect. It can seem like there’s a lot that I’ve done on my own, but behind that you’ll find other people’s advice, ideas or even just a chat over the phone.

4) What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Total flexibility. It’s up to you to fill your time, which is a beautiful thing. In the corporate world, our time is filled by other people, our diaries are manipulated by our bosses, by our team assistants, by our colleagues, by our friends in the evenings… One of the main reasons that I wanted to step back from London was that to meet up with a friend, we were looking four weeks ahead! Now, flexibility means that I can give more time to friends, more than just between the hours of 7 pm and 9 pm one night every four weeks. I can say, “Hey! I’ll pop by and see your new baby,” for example.

I do have to be careful so that I set limits on the amount of work I do. And, although I said the power of people was the biggest support for me, there is also the problem that you can be too “yes-y” – you can end up having all these calls all day that interrupt your concentration just for the sake of having a call. I am very easily swayed so if someone comes over here with a really good idea, I will spend half the day considering that, before pulling myself back on track.

There’s a book that I love called The Art of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Life is about trade-offs, and if you want to build something new into your life, you have to get rid of the fluff. Every now and again, you just need to take out the stuff that isn’t working for you anymore, get rid of it, and work out what you really want to be successful and happy. Otherwise, everyone else will chuck their old laundry at you!

5) What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

The thing I’m trying to tell myself – I don’t know if it’s advice – is to take life less seriously. I think if you’re anything like me, you put a lot of pressure on making the most of each moment and all that media around us reinforces that that’s the way we should be living. But if you’re naturally someone who does that, it can mean that you don’t actually enjoy those things. You want to enjoy the ride!

Hopefully, that’s a nice reminder to people who are moving out of the corporate world and into the other side of things, which is more volatile, can be just as stressful, and is more rewarding but in very different ways. You just need to enjoy it and be curious: “Oh, this is a new way of having a conversation, or of being paid – interesting!” And then you can reflect on that later. But overall: take life less seriously!

 

Since we spoke in the interview, Annie has continued to evolve her project and made the decision to launch her programmes under the existing umbrella of Exerk. You can read more about her programmes to help you build an active lifestyle “that can survive life’s twists and turns” on her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.