From Barista to Blogger

In this post, Megan Hur­ley talks about the future we all want for our blogs, and how we can take baby steps to achiev­ing a happy future. If you would like to guest post on Blo­gus­sion, read our guide­lines for more information.

At some point in his or her life, almost every­one will land a min­i­mum wage job. This is espe­cially com­mon for young adults who are look­ing for some­thing to sup­ple­ment their busy school schedules.

These jobs, like work­ing at a fast food joint, restau­rant, or in my case as a barista in a cafe, can be a good way to gen­er­ate that much needed spend­ing cash. Remem­ber, though, you only have that cash because you are most likely still liv­ing under Mom and Dad’s roof, and there­fore still have them to pay your big expenses.

What hap­pens when you’re done with school, look­ing for a “grown-up” job, and want to get out from under­neath Mom and Dad?

When I grad­u­ated from col­lege this past spring, I thought that increas­ing my hours at the cafe to full-time would be all I needed to cover rent, bills, and car expenses — and still have some left-over cash — until I could land a great job that actu­ally had some­thing to do with my degree. I will be the first to admit that I’ve led a fairly shel­tered life. But look­ing back, even I am sur­prised at how naive I was!

I quickly dis­cov­ered that even on weeks that I would be sched­uled for the max­i­mum 40 hours (which was rare — the cafe was try­ing to con­serve on hours), money was very tight. Not to men­tion the fact that work­ing 8 hours, more often than not dur­ing a long and incon­ve­nient mid-day shift, left lit­tle time for tak­ing care of any­thing else in my lim­ited social life, includ­ing search­ing for a “real” job. This left me with a new dilemma: drain what was left of my free time to get another, monot­o­nous min­i­mum wage job, or move back in with the par­ents to con­tinue the job hunt, and lose any hope of inde­pen­dence for the time being. Nei­ther option was appealing.

Now there’s noth­ing wrong with liv­ing at home and stay­ing with that entry-level job until some­thing bet­ter comes along. But let’s face it, with the econ­omy the way it is right now, oppor­tu­ni­ties won’t just find you. Which is why you need to pump in that extra effort to cre­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ties for yourself.

For me, the oppor­tu­nity was start­ing up a blog about money-making ideas at FindingBenjamin.com, and cre­at­ing a busi­ness for myself. (The idea didn’t come com­pletely on it own — I did have a nudge in the right direc­tion, from my entre­pre­neur father.) Scary, yes. I started with aver­age com­puter skills, and VERY lim­ited knowl­edge of blog­ging and every­thing that goes with it. And as much as I whined and com­plained about work­ing in the cafe, at least I knew what to expect there.

But you don’t win by play­ing it safe. Though it’s chal­leng­ing, I am con­stantly learn­ing new things, and with my 19-year old brother Chris com­ing aboard as my part­ner, this fledg­ling project is start­ing to grow quickly. And sur­pris­ingly, I am enjoy­ing it!

I’m still hold­ing on to the cafe job for now — no more than 15 hours a week — just for a lit­tle cush­ion, but it won’t be long before I’ll be ready to let it go for good. (I’d like to be able to enjoy my own triple-grande-extra-foam-non-fat lattes, not make them for some­one else.)

Even if you’re not ready to com­pletely forge out on your own, start think­ing of ways that you could one day work for your­self and make good money doing it — even if it’s jot­ting your ideas down in a jour­nal, or tak­ing small steps like cre­at­ing a per­sonal web­site, or even just look­ing around to see how oth­ers are doing it.

There are all kinds of advice arti­cles out there from other young entre­pre­neurs. Ven­tures like this can have very lit­tle or no cost involved, so you don’t have to worry about tap­ping into your hard-earned tip-jar money right away.

When you are ready to give your idea a go, know that it won’t be fun and excit­ing all the time — you WILL make mis­takes, and you will have frus­tra­tions. But use them to your advan­tage. Work­ing for your self and get­ting a startup going is a chal­lenge. But because of that, it’s also so incred­i­bly rewarding.

Think about it — the free­dom to work on your terms, with­out any­one scold­ing you about cold food or bit­ter cof­fee— it’s a won­der­ful thing! If you work hard enough, sooner or later, that scrib­bled idea could become a real­ity. Or maybe it won’t, but by then you’ll have the expe­ri­ence to do it big­ger and bet­ter with the next idea. What do you have to lose?

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