Notes from Chris

Episode 1921

Julia Taylor’s face burned with embarrassment. She had just asked for help in an online forum for web developers and had been mocked for her “silly question.” And it wasn’t the first time. From these negative experiences, she vowed to create a more supportive and inclusive community.

But let’s go back a bit. A former U.S. Intelligence Officer, Julia had left her previous career where she had been stationed in Afghanistan to follow her heart to the U.K. and be with her boyfriend, a member of the British Special Forces. The couple married and her husband remained in the military, which meant they had to move every two years. This halted any career growth for Julia, leaving her in an unfulfilling day job.

One day, her boss came in and told Julia to figure out how to make the company website do a particular thing. Julia managed to complete the task with a bit of Google research. She had never touched a line of code before in her life, but she figured it out and it worked! From that moment on, Julia was hooked on coding.

She had a feeling that this could be her ticket to location independence and a career she could do anywhere.

Julia developed her online course, WP Rockstar…along with a community she called GeekPack, that same year. Through the community she began teaching women—and a few men now and then—how to code.

This project has been a tremendous success.

She’s now taught more than 2,500 students and has six team members to help manage the GeekPack online community. The purpose of GeekPack is to empower women to change their lives for the better through the power of code.

Learning to code didn’t cost Julia anything upfront because she already had a laptop, so her startup costs were low. The business now brings in—get this—seven-figures annually.

The eighteen months spent living in an RV was a fun and challenging time that showed her anything is possible. For Julia, the best thing about her business is showing other women that code doesn’t have to be techy or bro-ish…it’s just problem solving and troubleshooting—skills that anyone can learn.

 

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  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Learn more about Julia at her website, geekpack.co.

SEE ALSO:

• German Agency Helps Designers Work Less, Make More: Noticing that new clients have lower budgets for web design, a woman in Berlin creates a series of low-cost kits.
• Ohio IT Director Earns $31,000 Setting Up Wordpress Sites: How an Ohio IT director earned more than $31,000 empowering others by providing them with the tools and resources they needed to set up their own websites.
• Engineer Codes His Way To $3,700 Per Month: A South African engineer obsessed with efficiency uses the Internet of Things to create a reliable source of recurring revenue.

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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