Being fired was one of the best things that ever happened to me…
Well, to be honest, it was one of the most embarrassing things that have ever happened to me, but after much time to think through the pain and humiliation I felt, I realized that being fired from a position I felt incredibly honored to hold for a community I was not only part of but happy to help lead- I was actually given the freedom to step into my own.
A quick story.
I was working in the RV community as the Director of Operations over a community job board. I spent about 3 years nurturing a community of people who were both supportive and in need of support, which I was happy to provide.
You see, I’d been a Working RVer for about 4 years before being recruited to this position and actually wrote content for their magazine for a full year before coming on board. It was a great opportunity to continue to share my knowledge of working while traveling and I was happy to help encourage and inspire others to get up and get going.
About 6 months before I was fired, I published a book containing my personal tips and in-depth information I’d researched about ways to travel and work seasonal jobs along the way. I was publishing most of this information on my website (Live Camp Work) and decided it was the next step in getting this information to as many people as possible.
Publishing content about my own seasonal jobs worked, as well as others I felt were really interesting. I was always pretty restrictive on my website. There was an invisible line that I tried to stay clear of since I was now working for a company publishing job ads about some of these same job opportunities. As I write that, I feel the need to clarify, that this is partly why they hired me- because I already wrote about these topics and was living this lifestyle authentically.
I felt like it was a great balance of work and my real life. I was reassured and encouraged by my then-employer, to continue providing value… until he felt I was more popular, more well-received, and more likely to be competitive if left to continue to grow.
Well, as you can imagine…
I was fired.
Quickly and publicly.
And by publicly I mean, this employer literally sent email blasts to over 70K people in this community trying to tarnish my name, my brand, and basically make it impossible for me to continue to talk about this topic.
It was humiliating as I mentioned before, and for a moment I thought about just quitting and moving on to a new niche. After all, I wasn’t making anything substantial from my website aside from the book sales, so it wasn’t really much of a business-
Well, something interesting happened.
I noticed I was getting a ton of new email subscribers… turns out, that the more emails he sent the more people flooded my website and subscribed to my email list. They knew I wasn’t the unethical villain he was trying to paint me as, and they willingly started following along on my now pretty amazing RV website!
So after replying to hundreds of emails with both positive and negative comments, criticism, and loads of encouragement, I decided I was not giving up.
I was going full force ahead…
and Lord help anybody in my way!
The handcuffs were off and I was free to do what I wished, as I saw fit.
It was an interesting moment filled with much anxiety and even more uncertainty but I took hold of the reins and kind of slapped myself back to reality. Getting out of my head about the whole situation and into my own lane, one I would ultimately design for myself was my main goal.
My website was getting a lot of traffic and I was going to give these people something to look at. I was also in a situation where I was now asking the same question they were… How do you make money and travel?
And what better way to answer this question, then with a virtual summit?
So I started planning the Make Money & RV Virtual Summit.
It was a 5 figure summit that solidified, not only could I be successful as an entrepreneur, but I could do it my way, with virtual events, digital products and big plans to build multiple income streams that gave me the financial security I was aiming to now build.
This was the start of my love for virtual summits and I’m so happy to have found it!
