Today we’d like to introduce you to Kali Hawlk.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I began my career out of sheer stubbornness.
I wanted to be a professional writer, but graduated with my B.A. in history and minor in professional writing during the middle of the Great Recession in the Deep South. I struggled to find ANY work at all, and found it difficult to convince hiring managers or companies to take a chance on an untested, inexperienced, recent college grad. I finally took a job working in an administrative role in a small company because it paid enough for me to cover my bills and offered a 401(k) — but I continuously applied for writing gigs, both full- and part-time, hoping someone would give me permission to begin my career as a gainfully employed writer.
I tried that for a year before I finally realized that if I was going to make it work, I had to stop waiting for someone to give me permission. I had to figure it out and do it on my own — so that’s exactly what I did. That’s why I say my career was really born out of stubbornness; I think many people would have given up or taken it as a sign that they weren’t meant to do this work. But I was tenacious and I couldn’t see any other way.
I started freelancing, and my first paying gigs were far from impressive. I wrote 600 word articles for $15 a pop — and I LOVED it, because I was finally doing exactly what I said I always wanted: I was getting paid to write. I also started a personal finance blog on the advice of some other freelancers who said it was a good way to build a portfolio when you were just getting started. That lead to a number of other writing opportunities with incredible exposure, but that came with $0 paychecks. At the time, I took that tradeoff because exposure and experience was exactly what I needed.
All this was back in the summer of 2013. Over the fall, I enrolled in more continuing education classes and earned a few more professional writing certificates. I started focusing in more and more on a niche and found that I excelled at copywriting for financial brands. Meanwhile, my blog was making an impact. I regularly got comments and emails from people telling them my advice and suggestions around money changed their lives and helped them turn their financial situations around. The way I wrote about money helped people make the change they needed; it helped them shift their mindsets and start doing things differently.
Between the fall of 2013 and the summer of 2014, things really took off — and I finally started making a significant income from my freelancing work. In fact, by May of 2014 my freelance writing earned me double what I made at my day job. So I quit and switched to full-time freelancing, and I haven’t looked back since.
Between 2014 and 2016, I spent a lot of time learning, experimenting, and growing my business. I transitioned from being merely a copywriter for hire, to running a full content marketing firm for financial brands. I took a stint as director of marketing for a national financial planning association for a few years to increase my knowledge and skillset, and then set off again in October 2016 with the experience, skills, abilities, and expertise I needed to run the business I operate today, Creative Advisor Marketing.
That’s my story on the business side. Personally, I was born and raised in Georgia and lived right outside Atlanta until my early 20s. Moving up to Boston in 2015 was and is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m in love with this city and all it has to offer, and both my personal and professional life has grown by leaps and bounds since I made the transition up here.
I lived in the South End for my first 3 years here, but as I share this I’m sitting surrounded by boxes in our little brownstone condo. We’re about to move across town to the North End and I couldn’t be more excited! I love every bit of Boston and we’re excited to shake things up.
I live with my soon-to-be-husband (we’re getting married this June), Eric Roberge, who is also an entrepreneur. He’s a fee-only financial planner in Boston and runs his own independent firm, Beyond Your Hammock. He’s an incredible force in my life and one of the things I appreciate most about him and our relationship is that we work together as an amazing team (and we literally work together; I’m the unofficial CMO of Beyond Your Hammock!) and we both empower each other to reach our highest potential. I love being with someone who is not only my biggest supporter, professionally, but pushes me to keep growing and improving as a person.
We live with our two cats, Stormy and Scout, who constantly provide lots of love and snuggles — and entertainment, as they both have personalities more fitting of big dogs than cats!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
On one hand, I want to say yes, it’s been a smooth road because I have no regrets. I used to hate hearing people say that because I thought it was cliché at best and simply impossible to be true at worst. But I remember the day I was walking down A Street on my way from the South End to the Seaport last fall, and that question popped into my head: “Do you have any regrets?”
And my immediate, honest answer was, “no, I don’t — because I love who I am and I love my life and I love the people in my life. I wouldn’t change a single thing that’s happened up until this moment because if I did, this would all be and look different.”
When I think about all I’ve accomplished and all I have to be grateful for right now, it’s hard for me to say “it hasn’t been a smooth road.” Because my experiences have served me perfectly. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t face challenges and struggles and failures along the way.
One of my biggest struggles was in trying to figure out what kind of business I truly wanted to run. I felt enormous pressure to grow and scale my business. I thought that success looked a certain way (and, specifically, that way was to hire a team to work under me and transition from doing the work to managing my team doing the work). It took actually starting to go down that route and hiring someone to help me to realize that wasn’t right for me. It was such a struggle and I felt like I was fighting to make things happen. It was a huge effort and it didn’t feel good or right. My version of success is operating as a solopreneur, or a one-woman shop. Once I acknowledged that and committed to it, business stopped feeling like a struggle or a fight. Things got easier and smoother. It was a good lesson to learn, and today, I happily own the fact that I feel more like a hyper-successful freelancer rather than a “business owner.” And that’s what’s right for me and I love it.
The biggest struggle I’ve ever had to face though, has been myself. I’m my own worst enemy and my biggest bully. I don’t think anyone could say worse things about me than what I used to say to myself (and what I still say to myself on bad days). I’m still trying to learn how to be kind to myself, how to go easy and not be so harsh or demanding or judgmental, but I’m not good at striking that balance. I’m a tenacious person and a perfectionist, so it’s hard to let things go sometimes. I’ve done a lot of personal development work and have grown and changed and improved in wonderful ways, and through that I’ve realized that mindfulness, awareness, acceptance, and love — of other people and of yourself — it’s all a process. There’s no finish line or ultimate goal; it truly is a journey that you commit to taking, and a journey that gets a whole lot better when you learn to love the process instead of constantly seeking a destination or an outcome.
Creative Advisor Marketing – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I’m the founder of Creative Advisor Marketing, an inbound marketing firm that helps financial advisors and other financial brands build better businesses by creating compelling content that helps attract prospects, capture leads, and convert clients.
I started my firm to make business feel more human and to help financial professionals use marketing tools that develop trust and genuine connections with their audiences. I really feel passionate about helping financial advisors use creatively written, well-crafted content to attract the exact people they want to work with, and I love opportunities to educate financial professionals on why inbound marketing such an effective tool to develop relationships built on trust with their prospective clients and wider audience.
Because I focus on serving a specific niche, I’m well-known as the go-to content creator within the financial planning space, and I’m really proud that I’ve built that reputation. I think what helps set me apart is my dedication to being honest, transparent, real, and authentic.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I measure my success by the amount of autonomy I can enjoy in my life. The more I can do what I want to do, when I want to do it, the more successful I am.
I also define success by authenticity. How often I’m able to be fully myself in every situation is a big marker that I look for — and anytime I feel like I’m not being authentic or not able to be myself, that’s an opportunity for me to look closely and ask why. It might indicate that I have something to continue working on to improve, or it may be an indicator that a situation, client, person, or opportunity isn’t right for me.
This was actually something I faced recently in my business. By almost every measure, my business is highly successful — but something still seemed to be missing. I realized it was some degree of self-expression; although I write for my business, I needed a personal creative outlet to write on other, more meaningful topics. So I took on the challenge of starting a new personal finance blog and that’s been giving me what I was missing. I blog about mindful living through intentional spending at GoingBeyondWealth.com
And I measure success by the quality of my relationships with my friends and family. The people I’m close to in my life are so, so important to me and I value them so much. If I’m able to spend time with the friends and family I care most about, and am able to invest in those relationships and make them better, I’ve succeeded.
Contact Info:
- Website: Blog: http://goingbeyondwealth.com | Business: http://creativeadvisormarketing.com
- Email: kali@goingbeyondwealth.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/kalihawlk
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/kalihawlk
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