Uncovering your niche definitely takes time and requires a lot of trust and intuition. I love that, it makes me feel closer to them and cultivates a sense of community, oftentimes with people I’ve never met! My readers have often commented that they feel like they’ve had a conversation with me after reading my blog. I hide (almost) nothing about what’s going on in my head and my heart, no matter how embarrassing or painful. My writing is candid and truthful, very relatable. How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?īeing authentic. You can read through my previous love letters and sign up for my almost-weekly-newsletter on my website. It makes them feel less, well, crazy, knowing that we’re all having similar experiences manifesting in different ways. It’s very conversational and vulnerable, and my readers appreciate that. If what you need is life advice, my newsletter (aka love letter) is basically a diary of what I’m experiencing and learning as I get older. I make it a priority to visit new places, immerse in regional experiences, and find unique things for my readers to do outside of the typical tourist traps. If you’re looking for, say, the perfect 2 day itinerary in Istanbul or Havana, my website,, offers personal suggestions from your morning coffee to your evening nightcap. My writing has evolved to accommodate that. I realized I had 2 types of followers: ones who wanted to live my lifestyle vicariously, and others who wanted to know how to spend a weekend in various cities worldwide. It’s also where my writing career took off, so I let go of the original idea to run active retreats and dove into writing. Eventually, I became a yoga teacher and supplemented a rather measly income by teaching classes.Īfter 10 years of this, I moved to Mexico City, which is where I am today. In order to keep my sanity while constantly flying to different time zones, I made practicing yoga a daily priority. Like, $8k doesn’t get you that far! I got a job on cruise ships, and here is where my life in the travel industry took off. While I didn’t master Spanish, I learned a lot more about life. Long story short, I moved to Barcelona when I was 24 with $8k in savings to learn Spanish. I’m an author, travel planner, and yoga instructor. I soon pivoted to full time writing and published my first book in September 2023!īethany, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do? I realized maybe this whole experience started as a way to bring me closer to my real calling. My readers were reacting strongly, and positively, to my writing. In the meantime, I was building up my newsletter and blog, something that was both fun and therapeutic for me. I plugged along for a while, trying to find clients in other ways and becoming increasingly more resentful of my original business idea. And while I’m not complaining about it, it was a hard truth to digest and it really put the future of my company into perspective. They say “your friends are not your clients” and that turned out to be more accurate than I could have ever imagined. Who wouldn’t sign up for that? I figured my long time yoga students and friends would be my first clients and this would help to get my business rolling. I wanted to plan and lead unique retreat experiences all over the world. COVID all but destroyed travel, so I decided to take that time to start my own gig. For over 15 years I’ve worked in various areas of the travel industry while teaching yoga on the side. My business started as an Active Retreats company. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered? Bethany, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the toughest things about progressing in a creative career or as an entrepreneur is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. We were lucky to catch up with Bethany Platanella recently and have shared our conversation below.
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