About Kathleen

My journey to full-time, high-ticket freelancing

My freelance journey all began years ago when I started freelancing as a way to make some extra cash from my graphic design and writing skills. I didn't know that what I was doing was called freelancing and I definitely didn't know that you could make a living as a full-time freelancer. 

After I graduated, I set aside my freelance work for a full-time role in marketing. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I had been recruited to join a well-known startup in San Francisco as the director of marketing. It was a dream job in many ways and I learned so much about marketing, tech, and how to scale a business quickly. 

But when the startup was about to be acquired, I found myself wondering what was next.‌

I started freelancing again while my husband and I moved away from the hustle and bustle of San Francisco to Kentucky to begin a new, quieter chapter in our lives. 

I still work with the Bay Area startups and tech companies but without the burnout of long work weeks, commutes, and a city life that didn't feel natural to me. I'm also able to choose to work with people and brands whose values match my own and to choose to take on projects that fulfill me creatively.

After a few years of full-time freelancing, I'd come to realize that being a freelancer has created flexibility in my life that I'd never had before as a full-time employee. I found that being my own boss allowed me to do life on my terms — I have been able to focus on my well-being and the things that I value most in my life: my relationships, travel, and health.

The latter is extra important to me – as someone with chronic health challenges, I've found that my overall quality of life is improved when I can manage a workload that allows me to take time to rest when my body tells me to rest and to build my schedule around the times of day that I tend to do my best work.‌

But don't get me wrong – freelancing isn't easy! It's not just fruity drinks by the beach in Thailand. To build a fulfilling, sustainable freelance business requires grit, determination, and dedication to continuous improvement of your skills, processes, and tool sets.

Early on, I found myself searching the internet for resources to help me figure out the unique challenges that come along with full-time freelancing as well as guidance on how to develop my skills as a freelance business owner but I always came up empty-handed because the freelancer "gurus" that I came across didn't actually teach me how to grow my business. 

The gurus I came across sold expensive courses, ebooks, and systems that didn't teach anything new or even especially relevant to the business side of freelancing – and let's face it, most of us don't need help with whatever our creative discipline is (social media, design, copywriting, etc.) but how to leverage that creative discipline into a successful, profitable, and sustainable business. 

I already knew how to be a marketer. I needed to know how to build a business that capitalized on that skill set but I was used to being an employee, not a business owner and I soon realized that those two functions are very, very different!

So I piece-mealed information, took some wild guesses, and struck out more than a few times as I fumbled my way through entrepreneurship to build my marketing services studio. 

I struggled with entrepreneurship in the first few years of full-time freelancing before I really hit my stride. Today, I provide marketing services for high-profile startups and tech companies through my studio. I love what I do and my clients do, too, which is why I have a waitlist of clients and often my clients bring me to their new companies when they leave one startup to begin a new role at a new startup.

The most important thing is that I've come a long, long way since the early days of being a baby business owner. I've built a solid, thriving freelance business that supports the life I want to live... not the other way around. Freelancing has allowed me to reach a level of fulfillment, peace, and balance in my life that I didn’t even know I needed.‌

In my newest chapter, I've started The Fulfilled Freelancer with the mission to help other freelancers on their own freelance journeys. I decided to become the resource for freelancers that I was seeking during my own early days and never found.

It is my hope to help you to build the freelance business you've been dreaming of – whether that's to increase your income, create flexibility in your schedule, or to support your creative or values-driven mission.

Happy freelancing!