interview by Prime Sarmiento
Sarah von Bargen is not only one of my favorite bloggers, but she is also someone that I openly admire and secretly envy. The sassy woman behind Yes and Yes which regularly publishes posts which “addressed the many, many aspects of modern life and didn't pigeon-hole women into different camps,” has a mobile career that she loves and allows her to travel wherever, whenever she wants.
Indeed, while Sarah is based in Minnesota, she leases her flat four months a year because she travels around and outside of the U.S. And Sarah can well afford to do this because she has a thriving online business. As a professional blogger, copywriter and “internet awesome-ry” consultant for small businesses, Sarah can work and live anywhere! Now, isn't that lovely??
In this interview with The Gypsygals, Sarah talks about her journeys, the joys of having a profitable online business and how her decision to change her careers brought her a fulfilling life and business.
Q: You used to work in an advertising agency. How long did you stay there and when did you decide to change careers?
A: I interned and worked at a variety of advertising and marketing jobs for about three years. While I liked the work and felt I was pretty good at it, as cheesy as this sounds, I didn't feel like I was really contributing to the greater good. The world was not a better place because I'd written a clever slogan for a granite company.
When I was 24, I'd been working for a Devil Wears Prada-caliber boss for nine months. I'd chosen quit-by date and was looking into moving abroad to teach English. As luck would have it, the awful boss laid me off a week before I was going to quit. So I spent my summer volunteering with refugees and looking into ESL programs.
Q: Is there anything that deterred you from making a career change?
A: I have a pretty significant amount of school-related debt, so I knew that when I switched careers and traveled I'd have to make sure that I had a nice nest egg and would earn enough money to support myself and still pay my school loans every month
It took me a year to save enough money to move to Taiwan. Or rather, to save enough money that I, personally, felt comfortable moving there. A lot of are probably fine moving abroad with $500 in their checking account. I am not one of those people. I saved money the good ol' fashioned way: working two jobs, buying everything second hand, and then selling all of my stuff before I left.
My school debt also affected my choice of travel destination. I needed to teach somewhere I could make at least $2,000 a month, so that limited me to Japan, Taiwan or Korea. A good friend had lived in Taiwan for several years and had a brother who still lived there. He and I emailed back and forth several times and he recommended a reputable recruitment agency. I applied with the agency and got a job offer within a few months!
After teaching in Taiwan for a year, I traveled through Southeast Asia, Europe and America for seven months and then moved to New Zealand for graduate school to earn an MA in Applied Linguistics so I could continue to teach ESL, but at a higher level and (hopefully) in my own country or at universities abroad.
Q: How did your travels helped you in pursuing a new career?
A: I'd say my real career change came later. After I finished my MA and moved back to America, I started a blog. Obviously, I'd been writing for years in my advertising and marketing jobs and also during my two degrees, but it had been ages since I'd written anything for myself or written in my own voice. There was a very specific type of blog that I wanted to read and I couldn't find it, so I just started one myself. Apparently, other people had been looking for the same thing, because the blog started to do quite well. Like, people other than my family members were reading it!
Eventually, companies and individuals who read my blog wanted to know how I'd 'made it' on the internet. So they started to hire me to help them define their brand,write copy for them and develop plans to get the internet to pay attention to them. So that's what I do now!
Taking time off between careers to travel has certainly helped me. We all know that taking time away from work or your day-to-day life recharges your batteries and reboots your creativity. And from a strictly professional point of view, when you travel you meet heaps of other self-employed people, several of whom have hired me!
Travel has also helped me hone my time management skills. I work constantly, but when I'm traveling, I don't want to spend all day in front of a computer when I could be skiing/exploring temples/eating street food. So, I've gotten much better at organizing my time and managing my clients in a few hours a day, instead of frittering away my time by refreshing Facebook every ten minutes.
Q: What are things that you know now that you wish you knew before you changed careers?
View work through the lens of skill sets, not job titles. It might seem strange that I went from Public Relations > ESL teacher > Professional Blogger. But when you look at what I actually do on a day-to-day basis at those jobs there's a lot of overlap: writing, project management, creativity, networking. It can be intimidating to change jobs, but when you look at what you actually do you'll probably be surprised by how applicable it could be to another career.
Q: What's your advice to people who are still on the fence on the career change?
A: If you actively hate your job, start taking small steps towards finding out what you really want to do.
If you’re bored with your job, take a break, learn a new skill, take on a new project, find excitement elsewhere. The only person who can make your life and job awesome is you!
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Resources:
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