Do you feel stuck? Maybe you are unsure what you really want to do for work? Consider taking a trip to get away from it all to find your tribe to help you figure it out.
Melissa Jones is a huge advocate of using travel to not only discover the world, but to discover yourself as well. She recently came back from Alaska, completely her goal of visiting all 50 states! She’s a talented freelance graphic designer and photographer based in Portland, OR.
Her entrepreneurial journey was sparked a few years back after attending the World Domination Summit, a conference for people who want to live unconventional lives. If you are trying to figure things out, she advises finding your tribe of people doing what you want to do. Definitely, consider attending WDS!
Some lessons in this episode include:
- Power of transformation. How to use travel to transform your life.
- Find your tribe. Surround yourself with people to reflect back qualities you can’t see in yourself.
- How to value and price your work.
If you are interested in taking a trip to transform, Melissa has got a lot of great advice to share about travel in her latest book, Woman with Wanderlust: A Guide to Roaming.
Life Skills That Matter In This Episode
- Building community.
- Self-reflection.
- Purging and simplifying.
How Melissa Works and Thinks
- Wake up time: Between 6am and 7am.
- Self-reflect practice: Unplug and get out into nature.
- Superpower: Creativity
- Ideal work environment: Depends on the work she is doing. Sometimes she works at home on the couch with no distractions and other times she prefers co-working in a coffee shop.
- Most important life skill: Building community is #1.
- Favorite productivity tool: Google Calendar
- Recommended book: Essentialism
- Wants to meet: Someone who can help her write more effective sales pages on her website. (Is that you?)
- 90-day goal: Create a print version of her ebook.
Inspirational Quotes
“Finding my community, being able to find my tribe showed me I had support and I knew I had people to reach out to when I needed help.”
“Change one thing at a time.”
“Sometimes working on your passion (as your work) ruins it for you.”
“You have to inject a few new things into your routine to shake things up and to get new ideas percolating.”
Coaching Advice
If you are struggling how to value your work or how to charge for your services, Melissa has some very useful advice on how we can all stop racing to the bottom and start raising each other up . . .
1) Don’t offer discounts, offer more value. She doesn’t even give discounts to her family and friends. For example, if she is doing a photo shoot for them, she includes more photos in the package. Offer extra service or product, rather than discounting your work.
2) Don’t charge hourly, charge for packages. People see greater value in your work when they can buy a variety of your products or services for one price. When you charge hourly, clients may feel they are being overcharged because they don’t understand the process behind your work. They only value the end result.
If you are a freelancer or consultant, create basic packages of services and estimate the number of hours it will take you to offer the services provided in each package to come up with a price. You can then charge an hourly rate for any extra work beyond the scope of the package.
3) Demand drives up prices. It’s a basic economic rule. As more and more people want your product or service you will have to charge more because your supply of time and energy to create your work is limited.
Resources + Bonus Materials
Woman with Wanderlust: A Guide to Roaming
Here’s the courtyard at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum where Melissa and I would love to spend a day working!
