How I Quit My 9-5 Job and Started My Full-Time Business
I started the Girl and The Word blog in 2014 as a way to share my reflections with my friends. I didn’t have any grand plans for this brand. Yet, as life would have it, I was able to quit my day job just three years later and embark on a self-employed journey that completely changed the lives of everyone in my immediate family. Now, I make around six times the amount that I made in my entry-level Copywriting job, all while doing what I love most: writing and creating faith-based content.
I know what you’re thinking… You must be lucky. It doesn’t happen to most people. And sure, not many people end up becoming full-time online content creators, but those who do get there rely very little on luck and a lot on grit. That means that there is a formula, and if you follow these steps, you could likely do it, too.
My present-day success on social media happened because I followed these five exact steps:
1. Explore your passions.
The goal here is to dabble in hobbies, subjects and industries that interest you. Allow yourself to soak up your passions like a sponge, consciously taking notes on which one piques your interest the most. I believe that we have all received a vocational calling from the Lord, and sometimes this calling evolves from season to season. Give yourself permission to be a student in this season, and reflect often on what idea or subject really excites you more than the rest. See which ones can meet a significant need in the world, and explore them in depth.
2. Focus on building one skill.
Many creatives (including me) struggle with focusing on only one skill because we just want to do it all. If you’re passionate about something, it’s hard not to try to do everything pertaining to that subject. However, what really helped me succeed in building my business was focusing on building one major skill: storytelling. Although my work revolves around sharing photos and videos, what separates my voice from the rest is my ability to tell stories. This is why I highly recommend that you spend substantial time finding the one thing that you really want to hone in on, and double down on refining that skill. Note that I didn’t say talent, I said skill. Talent is something you’re born with, and skill is something you can acquire along the way. I once scored into the lowest English composition class that my community college had to offer. My writing was that bad. But I loved my experience in that class. Being able to pen the right words to my thoughts made me excited to develop my writing skills. By the end of my time at community college, I got accepted into UC Berkeley as an English major. Now, I’ve even published a 240-page devotional journal and working on a second book. If I could learn to be a decent writer, you could learn to master a new skill as well.
3. Find your why.
In this new era of virality, it’s actually easy to come up with shock content that catches fire on TikTok or IG. However, virality should not be the goal in and of itself because your platform won’t be sustainable that way. Over time, you’ll feel that gnawing emptiness creep up on you after creating the same, empty, viral stuff over and over again. You’ll find yourself creatively stuck and wondering why you started in the first place. Don’t just “create now, think later.” That’s the perfect recipe for disaster (or more likely, depression). Find your why first and be firm in sticking to your mission. Then, you can filter all your opportunities and messages through the lens of, “Will this advance my purpose on this platform or not?” You will still have moments where you’ll feel like a small sailboat in a wide open ocean, but at least you’ll have your compass. Find your why and keep it close to your heart; it’ll keep you heading in the right direction even when things get overwhelming and confusing.
4. Plan ahead.
Along the same vein, you should also take time to plan ahead and be intentional with your platform. Planning ahead could look like:
Choosing a cohesive style across all your platforms
Penning a brand name that explains your content
Planning your content months in advance
Finding your why
To make it even easier for you to get started, I’ve created three beautiful Social Media Starter Kits so you can have a gorgeous, cohesive brand right from the get-go. Each kit comes with:
5 IG highlight covers
5 IG story backgrounds
5 original piano tracks for you to use in your videos
3 customizable YT thumbnails
1 customizable YT banner
If I found a kit like this when I first started my journey, I would’ve been ecstatic! I spent hundreds of dollars that I didn’t have at the time to purchase all of these components separately because I was so serious about starting Girl and The Word. Now that I’m where I want to be, I know exactly what it is that new creators need the most. These kits were put together with so much love and integrity, so I hope it’ll give you the push you need to get started with your brand!
5. Create a sticky brand.
A sticky brand means that it resonates with you for a long time. The last thing you want to do is create a platform that has no message, no point, and provides no value. When I set out to create The Hooga Shop, I intended it to be a sticky brand from the start. The name rolls off the tongue and sparks curiosity, the purpose is to help people live cozier lives, and I bit the cost and gave out tons of free wellness wallpapers when we first launched. Everything about Hooga brought people a sense of TLC, and the brand stuck through the economical turmoil caused by COVID.
Amongst the other tips that I’ve learned, these are the top five pieces of wisdom that are the most important and worthy of your time. Along the way, I’ve also learned many, many mistakes, but I’ll save that for another blog post.
If you’ve learned something new from this blog post, have a tip that you want to share or just have additional questions for me, feel free to type it in the comments and I’ll do my best to get back to you soon! ❤️