Apr 17, 2019
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My guest today is Alex Nerney of CreateandGo.com.
In 2016, after side hustling on their blog for about a year,
Alex and his girlfriend Lauren McManus decided to go all in on
themselves.
They sold everything they owned, quit their full time jobs, and
moved in with Alex’s dad in Seattle and became full time
bloggers.
So when I heard about Create and Go, I was on Alex and Lauren’s website, reading their story on their about page, which by the way, guys, is a really good story and I’ll link up that page in the show notes, there were two things that really stood out to me and made me want to invite them on the show:
The first thing was this quote from the story:
“We were blessed and plenty thankful for what we had, but there was one feeling we couldn’t escape. Is this really it?
Really… Is this really IT???
Yeah, getting drunk on the weekends when you’re young is fun and who doesn’t love going to the movies for the bajillionth time in your life, but we couldn’t escape the feeling there had to be more to life than this.”
And if you guys have listened to this podcast for awhile, you know that the exact same thing happened to me when I was sitting at my desk at my day job one day, this feeling of dread just washed over me and I was like, “Is this IT? Is this really all there is?”
And so I felt an instant connection to their story.
The second thing that stood to me (aside from the fact that Alex and Lauren grew their online business to over $100,000 a month - yes, a month - over the course of span of 2 years) is that they share in detail on their About page every single failure and misstep along the way.
So I’m gonna stop here and let Alex tell you the full story in our interview, but what I really want you to take away from this interview is that you gotta try a lot of different things, you gotta make mistakes and learn from them and try something new, and just never stop because you eventually will find your way, just like Alex and Lauren did.
So in today’s episode, we’re talking about:
- How Alex and Lauren quit their day jobs and went all in to run their health and wellness blog full time
- How Alex and Lauren leveraged Pinterest to gain traffic to their blog
- What content does best on Pinterest
- What common themes Alex sees that separates the people that become successful from the ones who flop
- The exact steps they took to monetize their first blog, Avocadu.com
- How Alex and Lauren build trust with their audience by marketing towards deeper values
- The importance of being honest with your audience
- Alex’s advice for starting a YouTube channel
- Alex’s belief that he had to change about himself
My favorite quotes from Alex:
“If people are telling you that you work too hard, you are probably
on the right track.”
“You have to give up things that are good for something greater.”
“Growth in anything requires an obnoxious amount of effort.”
“If you feel like you are a hard worker but you are wondering why you are spinning your wheels, these are solutions for you. These are real solutions that literally just take a hustler’s mindset and stickability.”
Links mentioned in this episode:
About Alex and
Lauren
Digital Marketer.com
https://createandgo.com/
https://createandgo.com/how-to-start-a-blog/
https://createandgo.com/how-to-make-money-blogging/
https://courses.createandgo.com/p/launch-your-blog
Bio:
Alex is the founder of Create and Go, an online blog that teaches
others how to start a blog and eventually make money blogging. Alex
and his partner Lauren quit their jobs, sold almost everything they
owned and went all-in blogging. Within their first year, they made
$103,000 blogging. By year three, they are currently making over
$100,000 per month online! And the best thing is Alex and his
partner Lauren live their life completely on their terms!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/createandgo.co/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOkrld1FHoM_VMMjaeMekug