My First Year Blogging Full Time Was ROUGH

I always like to think that when I’m in my 50s and PAID that I will look back on the very first year I was freelancing and blogging full time and laugh. Or maybe laughing is too harsh—let’s say I’ll be very thankful for those days because it taught me about sacrifice. And funny—I’m writing this post and looking at the date and just realized that last week (10/15) made six years since I handed in my last resignation letter. I stayed for two weeks after (because I’m considerate, of course) and then my last day of working for someone else was October 29, 2010. A lot of folks think that move was so brave of me and some even thought I had it made. Nope.

Now remember I told you in a previous post that for the longest time I didn’t tell people what I did for a living—blogging wasn’t well understood by many and I didn’t have the time to explain…lol. Shoot, even today I’m still very vague about what I do for a living. But what happened after October 29, 2010 was ROUGH financially.

I wasn’t (and in many ways now I’m still not) always doing the right thing financially. I took care to never be late on anything, but let’s just say I was kinda blowing money fast before Rick Ross made it a popular song. My spending habits combined with debts (including student loans) are pretty much what kept me in a field I did well in but didn’t love. But I made a very conscious decision years before I quit to get it together and pay down a bulk of my debt. It was the only way I could see my way out of being “stuck” in a career I didn’t always feel passionate about. Blogging wasn’t even the first field I wanted to break into—I really, really, really wanted to get into advertising (my BBA is in Marketing) but for many reasons we’ll discuss one of these days, it fell through. Then after that I realized I had a love for fashion and makeup so I got a Certificate in Image Consulting in 2006 from the Fashion Institute of Technology. I thought being an Image Consultant was going to be my career and I started a blog to market myself as one—things sort of went off track in a good way after that though.

But anyway, back to my point because I can seriously get sidetracked :/

Basically me telling myself I couldn’t spend money on anything but essentials

I made a decision to sacrifice and be super diligent with my spending and paying off my debt. I entered into a program that consolidated my debts, got me a lower interest rate, and gave me one high, but manageable payment. You guys know how much I love clothes and makeup but I loved it EVEN MORE back then…lol. I still bought things when I got sales bonuses at work, but for the most part most of my money went into paying off my debt. I had started my blog in November 2007 and though things were suuuuper slow blog-wise for years after my start, things started to pick up in 2010. I was writing for other outlets, brands were inquiring about working with me, I was getting invited to industry events (events that I couldn’t go to because they were during the day when I was at work), but then a friend of mine who was working on the backend of my site got a virus on her computer which in turn affected my site. I went to logon to my site on the work computer and immediately got a virus alert screen and then the phone at my desk rang—IT WAS CORPORATE SECURITY :X (At this point I was practically hiding at my desk thinking that by somehow hiding I’d be less in trouble…lol. Meanwhile security wasn’t even based in my same city).

So security is all “hey, are you okay? I just got a bunch of virus alerts on your IP.” And I’m all “Yeah, I don’t know what happened—I went on some beauty site and then this happened” (acting like it wasn’t even my site…lol). So they blocked my site from the company’s everything so here I was at this job that didn’t fulfill me AND I couldn’t even log onto my own blog. #firstworldproblems

All of this build up was going on and guess who was just a few payments away from paying off her biggest chunk of debt? ME!

I figured that since I didn’t have that big payment each month and I was making a VERY modest (SUPER MODEST) income from writing gigs and my blog, if I could be super strict with my spending, I could actually quit my job and try freelancing full time. So I did it.

BUT IT WAS ROOOOOOOUGH. I remember needing to go to brunches and dinners because networking was incredibly important if I wanted to go further, but also having MAJOR anxiety about having enough money to pay for my share. If anyone had come up with splitting everything evenly, I was DONE. I remember one time I had exactly $20 in my account to withdraw for a networking outing but I couldn’t access it because of the ATM network fees. I had to ask one of my colleagues to borrow $20 and had to practically jump through hoops to make sure I got it back to her the next day. ROUGH.

ROUGH, yo.

The roughness made me tough though. I had to quickly learn that I had to make do on virtually nothing. There were no Starbucks runs. There was no “ohhh, let me see what’s new on ASOS.com.” There was no “ohhh let me treat myself.” I treated myself by making sure I had my bills paid on time…lol.

We’ll talk about these early days more one day and the present-day workings of my grind—who knows, maybe I’ll write a book about it.

And speaking of books, telling this story is exactly why I resonate very well with Daymond John’s latest, The Power of Broke: How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage. You know Daymond John, I’m sure—but do you know how he grew his FUBU brand from a small budget of only $40 dollars??!?!

In his new audiobook, The Power of Broke, he tells us how he got started and how he pushed through to be known for being a co-star of ABC’s Shark Tank, a best-selling author, a pioneer in the fashion industry, and an exceptional motivational speaker. The Power of Broke features narration by Sway Calloway (yup, “you ain’t got the answers, Sway”), who engages the audience with Daymond’s lessons and the importance of staying hungry in order to be successful.

The book is available on Audible, an Amazon app I love. OMG—a few years ago I had this genius idea of driving to visit my family in Georgia one December so that I could save money on renting a car since I was going to be there for about a month—it was a good idea until I had to drive back to NYC by myself…lol. Thank GOODNESS for the Audible app—I listened to most of Gone Girl on the drive and it thankfully kept my idle mind occupied from going crazy on the long drive. So yes, Audible is the homey for that and look at this full circle moment as Audible is sponsoring this very post.

Audible is being even extra awesome and offering you all a free 30-day trial to check out the app AND The Power of Broke. Go here to download your free 30-day trial and grab The Power of Broke here. Let me know if you do it and what you think of Daymond’s book—tweet me at @StyleNBeautyDoc.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Audible. The opinions and text are all mine.