What It's About
A student climbs out of debt by sharing her personal story of transformation.
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
Alexis says that she waited so long to start a side hustle because she was afraid of what could go wrong. She encourages others who hope to have a side hustle to consider what could go right. “Think about the positives, the opportunities, and how anything is possible, as cliche as that sounds.”
Fun Fact
Alexis used the extra cash that she made from her blog to take her mom on her dream vacation, an Alaskan cruise. One of their favorite memories from the trip was from the very last night. Along with a few other passengers, they were watching the sunset from the back of the boat when a whale came up over the water.
Notes from Chris
Episode 1008
The year was 2011. The first Thor movie had just come out, Adele’s Rolling in the Deep was at the top of the charts, and Alexis Shroeder had just graduated from high school. As is the case for many students, those four years were rough. But Alexis had to deal with issues far worse than failed tests and friend drama. She lost her father to cancer, struggled with family issues, and was in an abusive relationship. As time went on, Alexis developed depression. She turned to alcohol and cigarettes to cope, but ended up feeling even worse than she did before. As a consequence, she ended up gaining a lot of weight. She hit a tipping point when her family’s house was being foreclosed. Alexis needed something in her life to change for the better. So, she decided to work with a personal trainer. With regular exercise and a change in her diet, she felt much better than she ever had. She had the strength, energy, and dedication to be active. She started to kickbox, hike, rollerblade and go for walks. Her friends were amazed at the 180-degree change they saw with her health. They soon began encouraging her to start a blog about her journey. Alexis thought about it for a while, then eventually decided to launch Fitnancials.com in 2013. She didn’t just want to talk about health, she also wanted to talk about managing money. The combination was important. Over the next few years, Alexis casually posted on Fitnancials a couple of times a month. She only spent an hour or two a month working on it, but she enjoyed the process. It felt like a personal journal, just one that other people could read and draw encouragement from. Soon, however, something else would change. The blog started to pick up a decent amount of traffic. Companies began to ask if they could advertise on the sidebars of her website—or if she would be willing to do sponsored posts. As a college student looking to pay the bills, Alexis jumped at the opportunity to make some extra cash from her hobby. At first she earned a few hundred dollars a month from Fitnancials, which went a long way for someone with a low income. After gaining some traction, she started talking to other bloggers. She made new friends, both offline and virtually. Through this process, Alexis realized that people really could make a living from blogging. Real life examples were all around her! So in 2017, four years after she first started Fitnancials, Alexis committed to treating her blog like a business. She wanted it to grow, and she knew that only spending a couple of hours on it a month would not get her to the level she hoped for. It turns out, Alexis’s ideas to improve her blog were right on the money. She began to make $1,000 a month, then $3,000. She even climbed up to making $5,000 a month. In her first year of committing to her blog, she made $35,000. This was while she was still attending college. Then, in her second year, between her junior and senior years of college, Alexis made $80,000. This is more money than she ever expected to make in a year in her life. Since then, she’s graduated with a degree in psychology and has been able to pay off all of her student loan debt, buy a car, and start maxing out her retirement accounts. Her biggest and most important life transformation was for herself, overcoming those major challenges she experienced in adolescence. But her second transformation is helping others make their own positive changes … in both fitness and financials.MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Fitnancials.com: Learn more about Alexis and her journey at her website.
- BudgetsAreSexy.com: Shout out to another helpful financial blog site.
- Gardening Mama Monetizes Frugal Living Blog: By focusing on a specific group of readers—and understanding their core needs—a blog about natural living and saving money earns $3,000/month.
- Health Scare Pushes Marketer To Start Profitable Blog: When she found out she had high cholesterol, she knew it was time to make a change in her life. Learning to make an extra $2,000/month telling people about it came along as an unexpected bonus.
- NYC Jazz Musician Builds $40,000/Year Blog:A musician finds financial freedom by growing a blog and starting an e-course teaching other people how to play jazz.
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