Even our burnouts could be blessings in disguise. If you search through a number of great entrepreneurs out there, some of them only ever discovered their own paths to success after falling out of something. No exemption to that is Laura Pennington. From being burned out, Laura decided to become a freelance writer, which later grew and turned into a successful business. She shares her story success after burnout and provides some inspiring tips. Laura lays down great advice that would help aspiring virtual entrepreneurs to improve their business in many aspects.

Listen to the podcast here:

How To Work Your Way To Success After Burnout with Laura Pennington

My guest is Laura Pennington. She left her career as an inner-city geography teacher after burning out. I know many of you have been burned out as well. Not knowing what was next, she googled "How to become a freelance writer?" She landed her first paid gig soon after. From there, she built a six-figure freelance writing business that allows her to travel the globe and do what she loves. She now teaches others to start their own careers as a virtual assistant or a freelance writer. She also teaches online entrepreneurs how to use digital teams to scale their businesses. 

Laura has been featured on Writers Weekly, The Huffington Post and Business Insider. She has worked with many of the most successful personal injury law firms in the US as well as companies like Microsoft and TrueCar since she got started as a writer. I went through burnout, which is what led me to be in the career that I love and enjoy. What made you even Google, “How to become a freelance writer?” Was writing something that was in your heart? What was going on?

I was in the midst of a PhD program at the time. My whole adult life had been working towards a career in education, so to come to terms with the fact that that wasn't going to work for me while I was working as a teacher led me to go, "What skills do I already maybe have?" I had never been paid to be a writer. I wasn't even on the school newspaper, none of that. I had had some professors in college and in graduate school who had encouraged me with my writing ability. I tutored quite a few college students when I was teaching in the Political Science Department at Virginia Tech while getting my master's. I thought the learning curve with writing is going to be a little bit easier for me than teaching myself graphic design or web development. I thought all I need to do is teach myself how to write for the web or how to write for magazines and that's the only reason that I googled it. I never intended it to be a career. I thought it would be a great way to have some extra money, but it grew very quickly.

How did it grow? I'm always curious when someone's business takes off and how that happens for them.

For me, I focused on giving my first couple of clients an amazing experience. They were taking a risk on me. I'm a total stranger on the internet. I don't even have a degree in English or anything like that. For me, I focused on delivering early. I focused on turning a content that was above and beyond what they expected. I made things easy for them. I took things off their plate that didn't require a whole lot of hand-holding or instruction. That made that first couple of clients to want to not just give me one project but keep working with me, refer me to others, and give me testimonials that would allow me to earn other business. It's so easy to do those little tweaks like that where you're focusing on giving people a positive experience. Once someone finds a good writer, they're much more likely to stick with you. There's no need for them to go back out in the marketplace. When their colleague from law school or whatever as...