From Burnout to Building Your Dream Life with Kierra Maggs

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome back to the Artifrends podcast. This is Kara. And today it's going to be me and a guest and we're going to be talking about designing your dream lifestyle and career with Kira Maggs. Kira is the owner of Limitless Social, a full service social media management agency and she works her mouth. She's based in Thailand. And we're going to talk all about her story, how she got to where she is today because she was working corporate, was based in Charlotte and Dallas and then made the jump and has been living and working in all these different countries, which is pretty incredible. So if that's something you're interested in, she's going to tell you exactly how she did that. We also talk about what it's like being a digital nomad, how to figure out what your dream life is and how to build it, how to visualize it and then fester it. So we get into so many great topics. So without further ado, here is Kira Maggs. Okay, and welcome to the show, Kira. Thanks. I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited to chat with you today. We have a lot of good topics that we're going to talk about. But first, we're going to do our peaks of the week. We do this every single week and we just highlight our favorite thing that's happened to the past week. I'm going to say my peak of the week was it was Easter on Sunday and I got hang out with the Connor's family. We had a big brunch, all his nephews were there. We were flying kites, blowing bubbles. It was super cute. The weather was perfect. It was like cool 65 little thunder like stormy. It hadn't happened yet. But like before a storm, it's like nice and cool, but warm out and perfect for the kites. That was actually amazing. So I'm going to say, oh, I guess like the candy, which I was so excited to have like a Reese's peanut butter cup. And then I'm like, oh wait, this is actually so gross. I guess it tasted like so chemically. I don't know if it was just like, you know, one of those candies that I just been sitting in the bag or like the plastic too long, maybe in the store, but I did not hit. So the cupcakes, like I've met Connor's grandma made cupcakes and those was my favorite thing. So that was my peak can never go wrong with cupcakes. Yes, exactly. Well, what's your peak? So my peak of the week, I was so happy. We went to Japan and Seoul for cherry blossom season. And honestly, Kara, it was like magical. Honestly, happened in the most random way that we ended up going to Japan and Seoul, dude, unforeseen circumstances in Thailand. But it worked out for the best. And I just feel like so reenergized and just like going to those places. I feel like sometimes it takes like a little bit of perspective. I'm sure we'll get into this, but I was feeling like a little bit burnt out in Thailand, you know, working different time zones and like Seoul and Japan are like even more. I think it's like 16 hours if I'm not mistaken from New York. So it was like we were going even further into different time zones. But basically it was just a great experience. And then now I'm in Chiang Mai on a solo trip. So I feel like I got my peak of the week would be just getting myself back, getting that solo time and just reconnecting with, you know, what I love so much, especially all about travel. So yeah, that's kind of my peak of the week. Amazing. Well, you already kind of gave a peak into some of things we're going to talk about like travel and working our mouth. So I guess you want to start and introduce yourself kind of start with your story of where you were before what you're doing now because you have had quite a career. Yeah, a little bit about my background. I went to school in upstate New York and right after graduation, I ended up getting a job offer in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I didn't know a single person in Charlotte, but it was in 360 recruiting, which for those of you who don't know, it's very, very heavy sales. And I'm a firm believer, even if you aren't from the corporate world, learning how to sell yourself, your services, even if it's a creative asset is so important. And I think maybe we can get into this in a little bit, but it ties so heavily into, you know, my agency today, my company today and what I've learned and I'm moving to Charlotte going there for a couple of years, working my way up the corporate ladder, you know, learning a lot in that time frame. So I think, you know, moving to Charlotte for the sales role, ultimately taught me so much in terms of there's a lot of great things that come out of corporate. There's a reason you have mentors, there's a reason that you have KPI analytics to get promotions. So I am very thankful for that. And I honestly loved recruitment to put this in perspective every single day. I had to do like 40 cold calls at headsets on. I was in a cubic hall in a room. And it was like co workers. Everyone's on the phone. It was almost like if you've seen Wolf on Wall Street, the stocks like selling stocks, it was like that, but recruitment were like placing people into roles and we would get commission off of that. So that was my start into the corporate world. And then in terms of how I got into marketing, there was a promotion inside the company. I for background, I studied marketing and college. I've always loved marketing. I've had so many marketing internships, but the sales role really appealed for me due to like the commission side of things. But there was a promotion in the company, a job opportunity that ended up opening where basically it was a creative marketing global manager role. And I ended up interviewing applying for this role and they flew me out to London to meet the rest of the marketing team because that's where the headquarters was. And then that's when I moved to Dallas, Texas where I had never been before. I didn't know a single person had never stepped foot in Texas. And you know, all of this taught me so much. And I really liked at that time of my life, you know, what I was doing in terms of the job, the people, the networking, it was great. But I still found this like deep down sensation of like, this isn't my true purpose in life. But I kind of like blocked it out a little bit in terms of, you know, not listening to it fully and just allowing myself to like be in that experience. But a lot of myself to like have that time in Charlotte and make the most of it. But you know, for many people, that was there like a dream job for me. Honestly, all I really wanted and as I'm learning more on my entrepreneurship journey, all I truly wanted was location independence. So, you know, I had this job. I had this like great opportunity. The company actually ended up flying me out to London. I got to meet the team in London. It was a great opportunity. But deep down, you know, I think what kind of made me realize, you know, is this the right path? Is this absolutely what I want to be doing is I looked at my boss at the time. And I was like, I don't know if I want to be in your shoes like 30 to 40 years down the road. Like I don't know if my true definition of success aligns with this corporate road map that was being taught to me. And I'll get into this a little bit more. But you know, throughout my entire college, like I was always an overachiever. I always had like 13 internships. I've always loved kind of entrepreneurship. And I feel like that kind of tied into why I wanted to kind of leave this great job I had in Charlotte, Dallas and kind of pursue something that is a little bit unconventional and to some people in that world is browned upon. And I really had to allow myself to push past some of these limiting beliefs that were taught to me in those roles as well as what I learned on my own to allow myself to live in Thailand and be able to work from soul in Japan because it was just so foreign to the world I was in. Yeah. And I guess you want to explain what you do now and then making out a bridge to gab of how you got there. Absolutely. So now I have an agency. I do social media marketing. I work a lot with real estate entrepreneurs and online entrepreneurs basically to break it down really simply. I run all of their social media and help them get leads from social media. So I have a team under me now as well and we do all their content creation, ideation, execution, managing on all of their social platforms, analytic reporting and then diving into actually managing leads and helping them convert. So I absolutely love it though. I feel like I'm at the point where the people I work with the clients I work with are also aligned with entrepreneurs that are visionaries that kind of have this. I feel like a lot of founders have a similar mindset with understanding entrepreneurship, understanding kind of you have to invest to see results. You have to invest in yourself. So I am absolutely loving you know the work I'm doing. Is it my dream job? I don't know yet. But I think I'm getting a lot closer than when I was working in a cubicle in Charlotte in Dallas working the nine to five with what I was, you know, told to do. And going back to that nine to five at what point were you starting to feel like, okay, I'm feeling little suffocated the burnout or the misalignment. It's starting to hit really hard. When did that happen? And then did you start to work on another side hustle that then became your full time job or did you work on this full-on-quit and surf agency? What did that look like? Yeah, no, that's a really good question. I remember at that time when all this happened my family, like my upbringing was very always black and white. You know, my mom's principle, my dad's a lawyer not going to college was never really an option for me. And when I got this really big promotion. I was really proud of how proud of me he was and it almost felt like at that moment I was I should be so happy that I have this great role and opportunity like somebody people dream of this. But there is still something deep down on me. I don't know if it was my intuition looking back. I know what it was. It wasn't my purpose at that time. But there was a deep yearning for something more. And I think for anyone listening that might be in that same situation. I think for yourself that freedom to think differently to think unconventionally and think bigger. It's okay to not know because for me at that time, like I was like a little bit like I should be happy, but I'm not. And I was like what's going on here. There's a little bit of dissonance there. And I remember sitting in the cubicle in Texas just picturing this is a little bit weird because I had never been to Southeast Asia, but I was visualizing a villa. with the jungle and just beautiful trees everywhere. And it's funny because like three years later, that is my life. Like that is what I actually ended up manifesting for myself. So basically I just knew deep down that I've always wanted to travel and this is a good and bad thing I was impatient. I didn't want to wait around to maybe get a corporate career that will allow me to do it. I wanted to take measures into my own hands. So it was hard, but at the time like I stuck through Dallas for a little bit and then I started like when I realized that I wasn't going to get that location independence, I started interviewing other places. And when I say started interviewing, I put so much time and energy any second outside of my job because for those of you who don't know, like finding job placements can be very, very difficult, especially post grad, like it's not easy. And I'm not trying to downplay that. I would apply and like be messaging a lot of point of context. And actually in Dallas, I ended up joining the team for a commerce to start networking to see if there might be other opportunities while I still have my role. Like I was doing everything in my power to make this dream of mine come true. And long story short, I ended up getting a globally remote job at the startup that allowed me to work anywhere in the world while growing my career. This title was a social media manager and that was a start of how I started traveling at the time while working in social media management. And that eventually ended up leading me to book a one way ticket to Mexico and I solo traveled for the very first time at that same time. I booked a one way ticket to Mexico and went all the way down throughout Colombia on my own while working for the startup. And it was the best decision I think I've ever made. But at the time, not everyone understood it. I think my parents thought I was a little bit crazy. My dad was super worried. My friends, my friends know that I love to travel and it's nothing like out of the ordinary for me, but I think there were also a little bit worried because there are risks that come with solo traveling and even like startup life, it's not as quote unquote safe regarding 401k and equity and job security. But it was just that deep passion that I really wanted to just travel and see the world and I wasn't gonna let anybody stop me. And how long were you in the remote position until you switched over to owning your own agency? Yeah, so I basically was working as globally during my job for probably just under a year. But in that timeframe, I realized, you know, with some of these remote jobs because I wasn't, you know, in the office, it was so much more project based than the sales role I had previously because even the marketing manager position I had was very heavily focused on in person meetings and in my personal opinion, like you can be so productive with your time and like do deep work for two hours and get potentially an entire day's work of work done if you do it right. So I started managing my time really well in the startup position and then on the side, while I was traveling, I also started picking up some freelance clients. So I basically like got a little bit of a taste of what it was like in terms of being around boss. I did it like here and there. I think I had like two clients throughout the entire like year long period. And then once I started seeing the demand and that you could make way more money being around boss betting for yourself, I was like, okay, there's a huge opportunity here and I think I want to take the risk. So I took the risk and I started my own company and started pretty small really kind of fell naturally working with real estate professionals. I also like love that world. I love anything regarding like real estate investing, flipping. So I already had an interest in the space but kind of all just happened naturally in terms of how I was getting clients in terms of building website, starting to build up processes. I love all things self-help. So I was immersing myself in you know, Matt Gray, Justin Welsh, all these like big name LinkedIn influencers as well as like other people that own their own businesses. So I really kind of got a taste of, okay, how do you actually run a business? But also how do you scale it? So I kind of got a taste of that and it's been going pretty well. - No, that's all amazing. And I think that is a very good advice of keeping your job while building something on the side and then waiting to quit until it's too much where you can't do both. Because I know everyone says, "Oh, it's a big risk to start something on your own." But it's like not really. If you've proved for almost a year that you can do the work and that more and more clients are coming to you, it's way less of a risk. If not like dumb not to do that, then if you actually just quit your job and had nothing like no clients booked, that's where, 'cause I feel like getting a client 'cause we've talked about this. Like I did a little bit of freelance social media management way back at the beginning of COVID and it takes like three months to get somebody at least to, I don't know, you probably, you're really a pro. I bet you're gonna get people on much faster, but it would take me like at least three to six months to get someone to work with me because it takes time. Like especially if you cost a lot of money, it can be conversations that people need to have to want to invest in a marketing manager if they haven't already. - Yeah, I will say this too. Like absolutely not to minimize whatsoever. Like the work it takes because it does take work. I was just because I had background in recruitment. I was like reverse engineering all the job platforms and I was like kind of like any point of contact. Say it was like a huge real estate company. I was like going in and like messaging them, following up, like doing all the business development outreach tactics to get and land clients in the beginning. So that's kind of, and I would kind of take not whoever in the beginning, but I would take clients that like aren't my rates today because I needed it and I was in that scary city mindset today, however, kind of like with what you're saying. Once you start to kind of get into this mindset of entrepreneurship, you know, you know kind of how things work. You can kind of identify who's my ideal client, who's not, who's a good fit, who's not. You can charge higher rates to get the right clients and kind of like what you're saying, like only work with clients that are aligned and not being that scary city mindset to get the next client at a lower rate. You know, I have a couple of their friends who are in the space too and they all say the same thing and with starting out, yes, it's super hard. You have to put in the work, but I think it's also about like fostering the relationships and knowing your worth when it comes to marketing, knowing your worth when it comes to what you can deliver and then raising your rates based on past clients. - Yes. And okay, moving to more of your lifestyle, this is definitely an unconventional life and I know you talked about a little bit. Letting go of what you used to think your life should look like. Can you talk about that? 'Cause I'm sure there's some listeners that are like, well, that tends amazing to move to Thailand or Southeast Asia and Workermoat, that is just not how life is supposed to go. Like, I'm supposed to be doing this for this age, this for this age or I know I have to buy a house, I have to put equity in the house or the mortgage river. What did that look like for you? 'Cause you're the oldest daughter. I'm the oldest daughter. Allison's the oldest daughter. Like, we just feel immense pressure to be the role model of the family and like doing things higher so it's me doing them. So yeah, can you talk about what it was like, letting go of those beliefs of what your life was supposed to look like in conventional timelines? Yeah, first and foremost, I will say it is not easy and like I will never downplay that, allowing yourself to think differently or I don't know, think outside the box in terms of what you want on a life is so important, but it's also scary. And for me, like it was not easy. And I'm not gonna sit here and say like, this all came so naturally and I was just ready to go to Thailand because it wasn't and that wasn't my journey. But I would say in terms of, you know, how this all unfolded for me, it first started with allowing myself to really get clear on what was important to me, kind of tuning out the outside noise, tuning out other voices that may have an influence on my decision and really getting clear on, okay, what is it that you could actually want? I'm sure, well, maybe get into this, but I really wanted to kind of map out my vision, like I'm very big into vision boards. I do them every single year, every single year, I have a word of the year and like what I want out of it. And I just remember, you know, back in Dallas, like I just felt like this burning desire to travel and see the world and grow my career while doing that. And I feel like allowing myself to not be bogged down by limiting beliefs was the first step. So basically if you haven't heard of this exercise called like David Visioning, I actually in Dallas wrote down what I wanted in my life to look like in five years from now, what would be my dream life? And I wrote down every single step of, okay, the minuscule details of what that would look like. How successful I would be, the type of leader I would be. What like any little detail that might seem minuscule, I wrote out and I think that's kind of also helped me with like at the time have the confidence because it was scary, it was unknown. There were so many undecided factors but like having that David Vision of exactly what I wanted written out like two, it's he. Not knowing all the details, but knowing what I wanted helps to make that decision. And also I will say this as well, you know, I solo traveled all throughout Central America and then I ended up going to Thailand and it's so funny too because when you're clear on what you want but you're not entirely sure of the how, sometimes the boy unfolds. And when I was in Thailand, the very first week, that's when I ended up meeting my boyfriend, like the very first week, I had never met a single person there in terms of like, they don't know anybody but I knew I wanted to be in Thailand, I knew I wanted to live in that environment that I was like growing in and still being able to have my business. And it's just so interesting how when you start to act in alignment with your intentions and like what you think you could want, things will fall into place. Like I feel like that is like the definition of, you know, the law of attraction. And it's just so interesting because yeah, you know, there's not a set answer but I feel like my best answer to that question would be write down what could you want. Allow yourself the freedom to dream big. and don't feel bad about wanting more, I would say. - Did following anybody on online or seeing other people doing what you wanted to do, did that help at all? Or did you have any mentors in the process, anyone that you reach out to, to kind of show you that what you wanted to do, was super realistic and was possible? - I, Cara, I would listen to probably an insane number of self-help podcasts. I love Mel Robbins. I love Jay Shetty. I love anyone that is like kind of that purpose-driven type of entrepreneur, motivational speaker. So I would really immerse myself in those types of podcasts. So Mel Robbins, Jay Shetty. But probably the number one person, I would say, after there's two people that kind of allowed me to go full send into living in Southeast Asia. I'm not sure if you've heard of the Wonder Lover. She's a tribal influencer. She has a podcast, kind of similar. We're talks about this type of lifestyle, digital nomad. And she talks about running a business. She's also very big entrepreneur. She also has multiple businesses. And I would listen to her episodes and think, I aspire to be one day. I aspire to, she has a jewelry line with her friends. She is having a coaching business and she works with her husband, who she met from London all around the world. And I just remember thinking, like, wow, like, that is my dream. And I also, if you know, Pia from I Love Creatives, I don't know if you know who that is. - I don't know any of these people. - Oh, no. - I don't know. - She was actually the person that I started listening to her podcasts. She designed and built Squarespace. And she talked about, yeah, it's like really crazy. She has like an entire, it's really crazy, like what she's built. And she talked about like, she just did a year of really just allowing herself to figure things out. She was working this great job. She quit the job and just like allowed herself the freedom to just be creative and see what she likes, see what she didn't like. And in that time, she ended up building this massive, massive asset. And I think when I was at that time in my life where I was like questioning things, hearing those success stories of, okay, it's okay. They gave themselves a little bit of leeway. They gave themselves the freedom to just create and be present and like see what they like, see what they don't like. That I think is what really gave me the push to go all in on this crazy lifestyle of being on to a newer, traveling the world. And just honestly carrying lost what people think. So now I love that. I guess a more technical question. The movie's just 'cause I'm curious, but maybe if there's someone out there who also wants to work remote, how did you pick your first location to go? Was it somewhere? 'Cause did you say start out in Mexico? Is that correct? Is that Mexico? Less scary for Americans. Is that like kind of dipping your toe into remote work? Or what does that process look like of how you chose to go there first kind of staying on the continent and then moving into a different continent? I'm just so curious. Yeah, well I both say for me, I don't know why I always wanted to go international. Like I am all for domestic travel, but I just knew because I had this globally remote job, I was like, I wanna see different countries. So maybe that's just like a personal thing. But there's this route that when I was looking into places to go for one, for Mexico specifically, I love the time zone. Like it's Eastern time zone, which is really important at that time in my life when I was working startup, I would have meetings all the time. So I needed to be in the same time zone. And I really wanted to feel like I was solo traveling for the first time. I kind of wanted to stay in the same time zone for starting out. So that was number one. And number two, in Central America, you can very easily go throughout like hop country to country pretty safely. There's a lot of backpacks actually, either going down or up through Central America, through Colombia. So I knew that there was gonna be like a lot of people I would be meeting just based on the research I was doing. I didn't even realize like how big it was really until I got there. But it's just very easy to just travel all throughout Central America. And there's, it's called, I think it's called, I'm trying to remember the name of it. I think it's called the banana backpacker room where there's like a name for it. There's like a trail that people like go city to city from and like some people are backpackers doing hostels, some people are remote workers like myself where you just, it's like an entire community of, okay, we're gonna go to Mexico and then Guatemala and then Belize. I did all Salvador. - That was so fun. - I wanna do this. - That's cool. - So I just knew like going in, it would be easier I would say to just travel across countries. So I thought it would be a great starting point. So that was kind of my logic. I was like, I need a good time zone. I also wanted some more tropical because I am a beach girl. I wanted the water. I wanted like lower cost of living, which you've got that in Central America as well as like all the amazing things with getting to experience the culture, immerse yourself in the culture. So yeah, I feel like though for anyone who might be considering working remotely, definitely do your research. I think for anyone who might even be looking to solo traveling as well, I think it's, I'm so glad to this day that I picked somewhere that was in the same time zone because you don't realize sometimes how fast things can catch up to you. And if you're alone or like you're working, like it does get hard and like you will get burnt out. So I just, I am really thankful that I chose Mexico to start because I don't actually know if I could imagine myself doing Thailand to start where it's like, well, about where time difference. And you have to be in meetings with your CEO boss. You have to be on, like you're not traveling, you're working. So you need to have the highest energy. So definitely just keep that in mind. If you're picking a location, I would just play it safe and pick somewhere that, you know, it's in the same time zone. Is it an environment that you'll like? If you like the beach, pick the beach, if you like the mountains, whatever it may be. Okay, well speaking more of travel, are there any favorite places that you've been? I mean, I know you just said a huge bucket list trip, just recently of the cherry blossoms in Japan, which I also recently went to Japan and it's truly become one of my favorite countries. Japanese people are just so lovely. The culture is amazing. It's so clean. Everyone's so nice. The food. There's so unreal. Wonderful. Yeah. But is there anywhere else that you need people to go visit? Okay, I have two places. One of them I know you went to. So first, I would say Croatia because it's just truly so beautiful. There everyone's super friendly. When I went, I had just graduated college and I think this might tie into why I love it so much. My college best friend and I ended up getting in a tire house for like a month and a half, right into Brawck, like overlooking the water. And we just lived in Croatia before either of us had, like we both got to choose our start date for corporate and it was like a month away. So it was just like the perfect time where it was like, we knew we had a job upcoming, but we didn't have one at the moment. And it was like European summer. At that time, we traveled to Greece. We traveled to Italy, the Almoffie coast. I just feel like people, if you haven't been to Croatia, it's just, it's becoming more popular. And that was back in 2021 when I went. I know you went more recently, but I just feel like it's such a hidden gem. Like the beaches there are so beautiful. Ugh, I miss it. You're making me miss Croatia. I know. It's, yeah, one for the first time last summer with my Kenna and Hania. And it was just like, we literally say that's one of the best trips I've ever been on. Peak travel experience. Yes. No, it's amazing. It's amazing. Okay, my second one's a little bit, I feel like I've been on common answer, but Tangier Maracco. Mm-hmm. I absolutely fell in love with Tangier Maracco. I studied abroad and that was like my first, like probably the most different trip I've ever been on. But it was just so different to the point where I absolutely loved it. Like it is such a beautiful country. Tangier has the most beautiful beaches. The culture there. It's like the most picturesque restaurant in like five star, five cores, beautiful building restaurants. Like a level of luxury I hadn't seen prior. So if it might be on your list, I would highly recommend Tangier Maracco. I also went to Casablanca. I didn't love it as much. It was interesting. But Tangier, I highly recommend that. No, it's, I've been lucky enough. I've been Tangier as well. And it was funny 'cause I went on a, it was a month-long shoot for visit Maracco. And there was like six teams, and we all went to different cities, and we had different routes. And I always say like my team definitely got the best route. What some, some people say their teams got the best route. I'm like, no, we got Tangier, Fez and Chef Chaoan. Chef Chaoan's the blue city. Yes. The one that we're like, everything looks like the sky. You guys have definitely seen it. Fez is like super old school traditional, like all the markets, the leather tannery that people probably seen as well. But like I agreed. I loved Tangier. It's such a cool place. And they filmed so many movies there. 'Cause it has Spanish influence. It's only like 25 miles from Spain. Like you can see Gibraltar across the water. But it's also more, it's so cool. I agree. That's such a good answer. Wow. Yeah, I love it. But I also love Korea. I love everywhere though. It's hard to do. Yeah. And going back to how other people can do this. If someone is working a full-time job, maybe they aren't ready to take the leap of doing their own thing or doing remote work. Do you have any recommendations for how someone can do something for two weeks or go somewhere for a month? Have you heard of anyone taking, I don't know, that's called like a sabbatical or maybe doing a course, doing like a month-long study at another university? Do you have any recommendations or someone who wants to do this? But they're just not ready to take that leap and just fully commit to this kind of lifestyle. Yeah, I think, I absolutely agree. I think you said this earlier. Like if you don't know if you're going to be comfortable with it, it's scary to take that risk. Like for me personally, I have student loans. Like I have other responsibilities to consider, which I think that's pretty common for other people as well. Sometimes it's just not possible to just quit your job and go travel the world. So I absolutely understand that. I think my best advice would be start getting intentional on who or what it is you could want because then you can narrow down your search on based on that. So for example, like for me, I gave you the example of Pia, but also like the wander lover like these were two female entrepreneurs that made a life for themselves. And I started to kind of listen to that content, like starting to like listen to their podcast or what they were immersing themselves in. Because that's a great starting point, I think in allowing yourself to get into a different mindset and like on teach yourself maybe some of the limiting beliefs that you may have. So that's number one. And then I would say number two is my biggest advice to anyone that is looking to maybe start to travel the world. I anyone can do this. I really believe that if you get and learn a high ticket skill such as like social media management is just one example. I've met so many other people who have created businesses in ways you wouldn't even realize because they are super specific on the niche in which they're making money. So my best advice is learn like analyze what are you good at maybe look at your past current and like what you would like into different types of jobs. What's your experience and how does that align with what you could offer as a service if you're looking to become your own boss and then identify. Okay, what's a high ticket skill I personally have so like just to give you some examples to anyone listening like virtual assistants every entrepreneur or big name founder that you know of needs assistance needs virtual assistants. And that means you can do it anywhere in the world. So that's just one example. And if you become really great at it like we talked about and you start to network with people in the space say you become a when I was when I'm referring to super specific. I'm talking say you want to become a virtual assistant for mail like the top 1% of fitness influencers. That's that's your niche. That's what you're targeting. Then you go in go on Instagram and start to pitch yourself to these top 1% male sports influencers create a portfolio. I would say that's top two like if you are interested in the creative side of the world of traveling and becoming your own boss identify what skills you're good at. And then to learn what you could do and what value you can have and create a portfolio of work that you can pitch yourself with because every job that I've gotten or every client I've gotten it's because you know I go above and beyond to show what it could look like working with you or working with myself. So I think it's super important you know for anyone looking to get into this if you're looking to become your own boss know what you're good at identify a super strong specific niche and then learn how to pitch yourself and go above and beyond for potential clients. And then I would say the biggest most underrated thing in all of us would be following up because that's something I learned in sales like always always always keep track and stay organized of who are you doing outreach to you know say you want to become like we talked about virtual assistant or the male sports influencers keep a very organized spreadsheet of exactly who you're reaching out to when you last contacted them maybe times of the year like that something I do like past and current clients like is there a way that I can bring more value to their business like start to like get really specific in what you could be solving to become the best at that spot so they're not looking for other options I know as long when an answer but I would say all the above in terms of just thinking outside the box and really being able to pitch yourself and bring value to whoever whatever you're going to be working with. Okay well this is a great topic to get into as someone with a sales background you totally had to learn how to pitch yourself regardless if you are an entrepreneur or work for somebody else you need to know how to sell yourself and what you do how would you recommend if someone really wants to work on their elevator pitch or just how they pitch what they do if they want to work on that what is your best advice for figuring out how to do that I learn this in sales but get your elevator pitch down to its heat I also think like just knowing like practicing the shower practicing in the mirror it might sound silly but talk to yourself like I talked to myself honestly daily about like being able to show up in meetings because once you get more comfortable in that light selling yourself like hearing yourself talk getting crystal clear on who you are what you offer and how you can provide value that's when I think it just starts to come naturally. I also think to like for anyone that might be pitching themselves are like looking to like sell a service I live and breathe by systems I think it's super important to like for example we're talking about pitching yourselves but before you hop onto that call you should have system setup with identifying people to outreach to an exact message for whoever it may be making sure like you have a commonality with them and reaching out to them with purpose and then hopping on the call because if you have systems. And you have that background before you hop on the call you'll feel more confident when you're pitching yourselves because you know you've done this before and you know that you have systems in place to help convert them to become a new client absolutely what are some of those systems on your back end that you like to use for your social media agency. So I absolutely love notion I don't know to use notion at all I have not do I have it I just haven't dove into it but I do like it yeah I am obsessed with notion I feel like it's either a way to do it. I feel like it's either like notion or people look click up yeah I just like okay yeah so does Friday I use notion though and I just love it I have everything from like pre onboarding prospecting post onboarding every little thing that is involved in like a new client onboarding process and workflow I have processes for it. So started to create S.O.P.s for those of you who might not know it standard operating procedures for every little menacea detail in terms of new clients I also have a team as well so like S.O.P.s for interviews S.O.P.s for offer letters S.O.P.s for contracts for signing S.O.P.s for client management like every little thing that you can think of I have. So when it comes to like pitching yourselves you know having these systems I think it's super important because then it tastes the guesswork out of it you know it down to a pat and that's something I learned from sales because it just makes you that much more confident to believe in what you're offering to believe in yourself to believe in what you're selling. So I think to answer your question as well a great resource to learn systems I'm not sure if you've heard of him but Matt Gray on LinkedIn that is his like bread and butter he has so much content on creative but also founder operating systems and kind of you know how do you go about systems but I think it's also applicable in all areas of your life if you think about it you know there's so many ways you can use systems to become more efficient to become better every single day. So highly recommend him though Matt Gray. No that's great and kind of going back to something that you said I wanted to ask you I know we think of remote work and starting our business we kind of do think like the social media managers maybe remote VA's or graphic designers like you said what are some of the more surprising jobs that I feel like when you're at these hostels or hotels and you're meeting other remote workers everyone just loves to chat chat I feel like that's really one of the best ways you can like see whatever else is doing remote what are some other interesting. Careers that you've met people or that you've found that people you've met are doing because I feel like some of them would surprise people like that you wouldn't realize you can do remote yeah so off the bat I met one of a really good friend of mine in we were actually climbing our volcano in bottom all and she was also very similar to me working remotely she was like being her own girl boss all of these things and she actually was working with property management in real estate she this is also why I think I love real estate so much because there's so much potential for passive income she had basically gotten a mentor she was from Miami she had a property I think she actually two properties in which she owned her own and she was managing it through like Airbnb and getting passive income while she was traveling but she was really happy. She was traveling but she would still take calls with so she would do that she had passive income through the property and then she also had a property management side gig where she was helping other people that own properties in Miami manage their companies or manage their properties so I thought that was really interesting because she was the same age as me we graduated college the same year I thought time you were both two years out and she was just managing properties while you're hiking a volcano like that is so iconic I love that for you that's one that comes to mind I think also just being in time. So just being in Thailand I've met so many people in the SEO world who make money through websites which I think is so interesting because I had never even heard of some of these ways to make money so for example you know this one person I know owns like a car parts manufacturing company he's from London but he makes a lot of money through people getting commissions off of his site so it's just like who would have thought of that you know like not me at the time like I didn't even know these existent in terms of waste time. I've never seen in terms of ways to make money but if you think about it if you have a platform that people are buying or selling products on there's a way to monetize that which I feel like that's not tall as well yeah there's a lot of interesting examples honestly like the one thing about I'm like it's crazy yeah exactly I feel like if you can think of it you can do it I know in the past I've met Ramo therapist like yeah I've met I'm trying to like remote that's like and they would just like travel around take like traveling vet gigs or like have clients that they would message and I'm like what the heck so there really is you can do so much and there's just so many options out there and there's so many different ways to make money online it's honestly if you need to expand your mindset go stay like a coworking travel hotel and just talk to three people and you'll be shocked at how easy it is for some people to make money online it's crazy. Yes no that's such great advice like I was saying like especially in Central America so many people like every other person had a different career field but they're all like living for themselves and like living this lifestyle it's crazy a lot of people are going to be happy. people in Thailand also anyone can really do this teach English online and like they're like tutors and mentors and that gets them a lot of freedom. You can kind of manage you know who your clients are or how many students do you want to teach English to what's the timeframes which I think that's pretty common for if you're looking to get out there and really want to go right away that might be a easy path for somebody to look into with remote jobs. Yeah that's a good one because I have a Spanish shooter online and I thought the same thing I'm like you're doing that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I'm very excited because yeah I studied for 11 years and I'm like I know a lot of it but I just want to relearn it and be it because I definitely want to go somewhere Spanish speaking this summer. I'm like I have to be able to talk to people or it's gonna kill me. So yeah that's yeah that's been a fun little hobby of mine. Well going back to building your dream life that's been a topic on the podcast that people always love to hear and they always love when we talk career or yeah feelings stuck in your career what to do how to get out of it how to move more toward what your dream life or career is and what advice do you have I know you said you're still working on it like and I feel like that's what it should be like you're you're not always gonna have that dream life or maybe if you have reached that next goal post you should dream bigger and like always keep moving but how yeah what did that process look like and how did you what was like your best tool for figuring out what that was for you. For anyone listening I would say my biggest advice for all of this is it's okay to want more it's okay to think bigger it's okay to think outside the box but with that I think the most important step is yes allowing those thoughts to come in but taking action because for the longest time I was like stuck in paralysis like if you part of analysis in paralysis I truly was like like going crazy trying to figure out how to do this and like so stuck on the how that the second that I started to like just let it flow and just like learn like okay it'll be okay and like let kind of the how unfold that's when the why I started to come and I know it's probably not the answer everyone wants to hear but it's so true like I really think you need to start to journal control what you can to control with you know outlining what you might want out of life and then start to take action it can even be small steps such as like say you identify a skill you might be good at is virtual assistance start looking at job boards in listings and maybe applying to a couple of jobs maybe start getting your resume or portfolio off the ground even if you don't have that many clients also I think a really good piece of advice because I think maybe a lot of already friends listeners might be in that creative world you can get beta clients for whatever it may be and and for those people don't know like beta clients could be your mom your sister anyone that you can show work for just start to build a portfolio to get actual clients so with all of this you know there's ways to take action I think to actually get results and it can actually be pretty easy if you just break it down and reverse engineer the end goal I think you can also use how to be a T for this I use how to be T more than I would like to admit but you can put problems in there and really powerful problems on you know what you might be struggling with and and how to get there and use AI to your advantage to figure out the how so yeah yeah I think that's really great and then as to making the how reality I know you talked about your big vision board person big on manifestation any other mindset tools or manifestation techniques that you haven't talked about yet for like of course you can you set action is the biggest piece of this like you actually need to do stuff but we love some Louis things and the already friends podcast any other tools I actually have two really big ones that I think anyone listening it might sound silly but it has really helped me so when before I went to Central America I actually went home for a little bit and I'd like spent like two months with family like for Thanksgiving and Christmas before I ended up traveling and I just knew I want to go to Central America but I didn't book the I hadn't book the flights yet and I took I think I believe Kendall Jenner did this and she talked about it on J. Shetty but I took a picture of my younger cell from like first grade my downstairs and I got a picture of myself from the first grade and I placed it on the mirror in my bedroom and I started to write affirmations on the mirror and I could see this every single day when I like every single day it was like the first thing I saw it was a picture of my younger cell and then it had like a list of like 20 affirmations of exactly what I wanted for example it was I will travel the world I will become my own boss I will live a life of freedom like things that truly mattered the most to me I physically row out and put on my mirror and I know it sounds a little bit silly but they all ended up coming true and I think being able to see it physically really did help it become a reality so that's number one but if you don't want to be as extra as me and you don't want to like have a printed out picture I to this day still have my lock screen I made a little vision board collage of a picture of my younger cell and I bolted out like the three most important affirmations of what I wanted and to this day I still see it every single day when I open my phone so I think yeah and that to me every single time I see it it's like a reminder of okay this is what I want to become the highest version of myself this is what I need to be doing to get there so probably the two biggest things and then the last one I started to incorporate recently I saw one of my favorite influencers started to incorporate this it's setting of arms at random times throughout the day with the notification would this be benefiting my highest self because that really checks you with is everything you're doing at this moment benefiting your highest self or you do need to like let it go and restart because I get so distracted so easily but that I think really helps check me with bringing it in and knowing exactly what I'm doing to get clear on the end goal those are probably really going because I'm with the way I go on distracted rabbit holes of looking at things on TikTok or yes I don't know even just sitting down like I need a break it's like no you don't you haven't done anything get us no it's hard to work in social media because they just come up and I'm like working for my clients but I get distracted it's hard that's what they want they're digging you in all different directions trying to get your attention and definitely work sometimes no I literally love all this thank you so much for all this amazing advice any wrapping up thoughts like if anyone's sitting here they're remotely interested in doing this and be starting their own business working remote any of the above what what are some short little rapid fire action steps they can take I know you've given so much already but is there anything else yeah that you feel like I would say first of all the first step is listening to podcasts like these and just like immersing yourself in these conversations so like be proud of yourself give yourself that grace because you are showing up for yourself even if it might not seem like it so that would be the first one because for me I feel like I would get bogged down really easily like I can be very hard on myself perhaps maybe like someone else listening but you really have to treat yourself with gratitude and talk to yourself internally with positive thoughts because externally that's when the good opportunities and potential job opportunities and networking to travel the world start to come when you speak to yourself with grace when you affirm yourself so that would be the first thing I know it seems a little bit silly but it really does work and then in addition to that with all the little minuscule things with the lockscreens vision boarding sending up notifications I would just say surrounding yourself with the best type of people that foster where you want to be for me in terms of like my circle I really wanted to be surrounded by like minded go getters ambitious entrepreneurs that were going to become the best version of themselves and I think it sometimes takes re-evaluating your inner circle and knowing you know this is person benefiting my best interest is this person gonna help me get to where I want to be is this network of my circle helping me become the best version of myself so I think this is a cheesy saying but you really are the top of the five people that you spend the most amount of time with so really evaluate you know where's my time and energy going I know nine to five can be exhausting I know that firsthand but like when you get out of work where's your energy going who are you surrounding yourself with and how are you spending your time because even if it might not seem like it you could spend five minutes on a job board and then whatever it may be to get your energy back and you can control that so I think yeah just evaluating your inner circle and then taking the right steps towards the right direction and coming up with little actions that can come with a huge result in the end absolutely and something that we always ask our guests on the Ernie Friend's podcast to you what makes a good friend such a great question I think to me a friend is someone that you can be on apologetically yourself with it's someone that you don't necessarily have to check in every single day but when you do it's like your energy with them is healing I think for me like when I look at my best of best friends it's like they understand me on that level where we don't have to call every single day we don't have to face time every single day but I know that they're supporting me because when the times that we do spend together it's so intentional it's so uplifting and they're so supportive in a way that I think it's just you can't describe necessarily I think support is everything in friendship and I know like in terms of a great friend like they'll always see your best interest at heart I love that so much well thank you so much for coming on the show please plug yourself where people can find you or if there's anything that you want to promote yeah you guys can find me at Kira mags on Instagram if you want to come with me on LinkedIn but always love to have conversations with anyone looking to venture into this world or agency work as well and then my social media management companies limitless social if anyone's interested in the kind of following that journey as well but thank you so much for having me this is like such an amazing conversation I think what you and Ellison are building is so special too so thank you so much you're just an already friends perfect guest perfectly lined we're so happy that we got you here's my your - Bye. - Thank you. - Yeah, thank you so much. - Thanks for listening to another episode of "Aughty Friends." We'll catch you guys next week. Bye.