Health Scare Inspires Adventurous Career Change

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

In today's story, a longing for independence and a health scare inspires a graphic designer to reinvent herself and create an adventure-themed brand of shirts, totes, mugs, and more. Last year she made a full-time income from this project, and she did it while traveling for almost half a year, 162 days to be exact. Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau. Now there is more than one way to do most projects, so it's important to choose your values, identify what's important to you, and then make your decisions accordingly. In this case, independence was the primary value. This person really wanted freedom and

independence, and that's what enabled her to build it in a way that allows for so much traveling. Part of the way she's able to do that is by relying on a production partner. Now somebody else out there might say, "Well, I actually would want to do everything myself. I would want complete control over the project." So again, that's why it's important to choose your values and make your decisions accordingly. So in this story, I'll tell you how she navigates this challenge, and perhaps it will inspire you to think through one of your own.

Got stories coming up in just 30 seconds. Stay tuned. One Thanksgiving a few years ago, graphic designer Julia Taylor was recovering from surgery. While getting ready to trudge through the snow on crutches, she received a text from a coworker asking her to look into why one of their websites was down. It didn't matter that it was Thanksgiving. Julia was the only one in her company's IT department.

Something needed to change. She had started working as a web designer when the field was just finding its legs. She worked at that job for eight years through lots of changes and layoffs. That Thanksgiving was the last straw, the moment that got Julia thinking there had to be something better. Over the next year, she picked up freelance web design and development contracts that allowed her to quit her job in August of 2014. That summer

was when she first started the side hustle that would become her current full-time passion, Aligned Adventure. Aligned Adventure is an online retail brand that creates art prints, canvas totes and camping mugs centered around Julia's passions, travel and adventure. Some of her designs feature popular destinations, camper vans, and slogans like "I love you" to the mountains and back. It started as an Etsy shop, but Julia used her web design skills early on to build her own website as well. Start-up costs were minimal. A few bucks to set up her first listings on Etsy and a couple

hundred dollars to order sample prints from a production partner. Having that partner early on was crucial. Even if she did want to make all her products herself, Julia couldn't afford to acquire a fine arts printer. Aligned Adventure only made a thousand dollars that first year and the printer would cost more than that. But in the second year, with sales increasing, Julia could justify buying the printer. From

that point on, she handled production and shipping herself. And to pay her salary, while it was still growing, she was also taking freelance web design contracts. Here's what's interesting. Even though there was a certain pride and a better profit margin in making everything herself, it wasn't a smooth process. Julia lived in a snowy Colorado mountain town and she had to make the trek to the post office to drop off packages whenever she had orders. The 2016 holiday season was the last time she went through that whole

process. Because in January, a huge life changing event forced her to halt production for a week and then reconsider everything about how she ran the whole business. That event was that Julia and her mother were both diagnosed with ovarian cancer 27 days apart. Julia was lucky. Her cancer was caught early. A mere six weeks later, she was able to go on a back

country trip in Utah with her husband and some friends. But Julia's mom's cancer was more advanced and needed chemotherapy. So Julia flew out to support her. During that visit, she drove her mom to the hospital for a blood transfusion and they camped out there for eight hours waiting for treatment. While her mom was in a haze of Benadryl, Julia worked on her laptop getting through client orders. At that moment, the slow burning realization

that it started with her own recent back country trip crystallized. This was what mattered. Being with your family when they needed you, not shackled to a desk hundreds of miles away, but still being able to make a living. Julia was already most of the way to being truly location independent, but now she was going to make it a priority. She started with the printing process. During that stressful holiday season, she had needed

to rely on her old production partner to fulfill some of the orders. And after some hard thinking, she realized that the extra stress of printing and shipping her products herself just wasn't worth it. Sure, the profit margin was bigger, but that wasn't the only reason she did it. The other reason was that Julia felt conflicted. Etsy's community is well known as a place for crafty do it yourself types. Many Etsy sellers believe that if your products aren't

100% handmade, you're doing something wrong. Julia had bought into that mentality, even if she hated forcing herself to print her own work. She'd let go of that mindset and quit doing her own production. After all, she'd started her side hustle to get her freedom back and nothing kills freedom like standing in line at the post office. After making that decision, she was ready to go all in. She took fewer freelance contracts

until she was able to make Align Adventure her full time focus in early 2018. And it paid off because that year the business brought in $65,000. Today Align Adventure is still growing. The company is on track to make six figures by the end of 2019. Julia is proud to say she's built a business that supports her dream life and is using her brand to inspire others to live their lives without compromise. In fact, that's where the name comes from.

Julia believes that if you're aligned with your passion, you can grow and impact the world in ways you'd never be able to do otherwise. She's now living her dream of being fully location independent and plans to prove it by traveling the world for eight months starting in December. She'll do this all while running her business without an office or a commute. So, hey, listen to these words of advice from Julia. A little bit more about her story of how she transitioned from doing her own production to going back to working with that production partner. She said, "For a long time, I was ashamed to work with print production

partners because so many Etsy sellers believed it was wrong and it meant that my work wasn't a hundred percent handmade. I forced myself to print and ship my own work even though I hated it and I hung on to that portion of the business way too long because I was afraid of letting others down. Basically, I had stories in my head about needing to please others instead of listening to myself. And once I let go of that, I followed my true authentic path. That's when my business really started to take off." I feel like somebody else needs to hear that today if there's something that you're holding on to because if somebody else's expectation or assumption or somebody else's belief about here's how you're supposed to do it, maybe if you can let that go, follow your true authentic path as Julia calls it.

That's when your business is going to take off. So she also says she was grateful for her illness in 2017. As crazy as that sounds and as scary as it was at the time because it ended up being a gift that has totally transformed my life in business. So lots to take away from that. And I'm so glad that Adventure Aligned has been able to grow. Be

sure and check it out. We're going to link it all up in the show notes. Those notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1042, episode 1,042. Thank you so much for aligning your adventures with mine today. I hope you'll continue to do that. Much more is coming up. Be sure you're

subscribed. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.