How Jessica Moorhouse Went From Hobby Blogger to 6-Figure Money Expert

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This is the digital nomad quest podcast with Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design the best lives.

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Hey guys, it’s Sharon from digital nomad quest. I’m here with Jessica Morehouse. She just did an amazing seminar on basically going from Hobby blogger to money expert. I want to dig in more about that i i like really resonated with what you talked about, you know, kind of being an introvert and then bringing out your shell as well as sort of doing like a whole rebrand and everything maybe First of all, would you be able to like tell us about yourself to the viewers out there dirt? I’ll give you a really short synopsis. Yeah, so I started blogging as a hobby eight years ago in 2011. And it was really just so I can be creative afterwards have something to do and to just like also meet new people in the community. And that’s been really cool about blogging, just meeting other bloggers and then I realized that there was a way that you could actually make some money off

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This and like maybe I should look into that I made so many mistakes and eventually decided to kind of shut down that first blog and start new, totally rebrand and really kind of have a hyper focus on not just being a random personal finance blogger but have a very clear purpose and that I want to be a millennial money expert. So really speaking to millennials, specifically millennial money issues, and really kind of owning that space. And I’ve been doing that full time almost three years now. Awesome. Did you have that idea that you’re going to be this person when you first started blogging, or no, I thought I started the blog just as a way to learn something like digital marketing skills. I thought that was the trajectory of my career. And just I wanted just like something to do, like I just graduated from film school. And so I was used to working you know, doing a lot of creative things. And so I needed a creative outlet and so writing on a blog seemed like a really good fit. Never thought it wouldn’t turn into something like this. Yeah, I mean, what was Mo Money Mo house that was

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it was

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And a ridiculous plan words My last name is Morehouse Mo Money Mo Problems is a great song. But it was really just I wanted it to be like personal finance with a dash of sass. That was the tagline I had. I thought this is I mean so many interesting choices. It was really just me just documenting my personal finance journey. So if I like hey, I just learned this new way to budget or Hey, I just learned how to invest or Oh, I’m having trouble with this or I learned this that’s what I would share. So it was really just about me and my personal journey and what I learned and then at a certain point, I kind of wanted I felt like I just explored every part of me so I wanted to stop talking about me and just kind of turn the camera and focus on others and just talk about how I can help you got it and what was there something that like sparked the rebrand Did you come across somebody that’s talking about something? Well, I think part of it was I saw a couple other bloggers do rebrand successfully. I was also working for a law firm at the time that was going through a major rebrand so that was a big inspiration and help for me to learn what to do in a rebrand. I had no clue and then I think I was also looking at what did I actually want to do and achieve what was the purpose of why

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The new blog and I realized I didn’t want to just be a blogger I wanted to actually be like that money expert I know we see on TV you know TV have you know book deals we look speaking all that kind of stuff so I my god is where I have my sights set so let’s try to get it and she’s saying all right so you mentioned you got like a lot of media attention after you did that whole rebrand was there something specific that got you that traffic that attention? I think I was just one of the few millennials who were also like a personal finance blogger and content creator at the time in Canada that was really owning that kind of term millennial money expert and also I was doing a lot of different things. I started my own event series, I was putting out a lot of content on my social media and my blog, I had a podcast and was one of the food personal finance podcasts in Canada so I was kind of doing a couple different things and also, I just made made sure to honestly use keywords and like search engine optimize everything. So if a journalist or a brand who’s looking for a millennial money expert in Canada or Toronto, they would find me Okay, got it.

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Do you think it’s possible to do this with like an umbrella name, instead of just like your own name as absolutely, I’m definitely not someone that would be the expert on that. But there’s some huge bloggers out there that have grown these amazing blogs, and they’ve done it successfully. They definitely I feel like what they’ve really done well is again, it comes down to search engine optimization. So you may not come up as your name, but maybe it’s the content you’re putting out. So if someone is searching, like how do I invest with $1,000, you want to make sure that your content is coming up first, so that you really put a focus more on content and less about yourself. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I’m trying to think about my strategy for my own. Yeah, thing, right. So you know, digital nomad class was trying to teach us of income, but also talk about designing your life and things like that. But yeah, I think when I was at your talk, I was like, oh, like, maybe I need to change everything. But not necessarily though. I think there’s so many great examples out there of people that because sometimes I think it’s not so much about the brand name, it’s about your brand proposition and really what you’re putting out there

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There’s a lot of brand names My name even come from but yeah, really like the people the content and just like the vibe, okay? You think it’s like doable it’s doable I’m not saying it’s right for you so definitely something you need to do more research on and really be like at the end of day do a bunch of research, do your due diligence and really see is this a name that I do want to keep? Or should it make more sense to go with a different name? Yeah. And and you mentioned kind of doing a lot of podcasts, social media stuff blog stuff. Was there like a certain amount of blog posts you’re putting out or week amount of podcasts? For me I’ve always been able, you always have a limited capacity and what you could do so if you want to put out a lot of content, you may have to hire help to create more content. I’ve always just done everything myself. So I’ve always been, you know, one blog post a week one YouTube video week, one podcast a week, okay, and you think that’s like fine to me, that’s worked, but you may have to do less or more. It depends. Okay, and once you get your like, first speaking gig.

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The first speaking gig I got was actually was for these two guys that were at this university.

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Ontario and they were putting on a financial literacy event. And it was for high school students. And again, they found me through just searching, you know, who’s a millennial who knows money in the Toronto area. They found me and so I had to create a 30 minute presentation for this, you know, it’s a good large amount of people. It’s a couple different high schools that were there to learn about it. And I was terrified. And I don’t think I did it very well. It was a very well put together because honestly, these two guys were like university students that they didn’t really know what they’re doing. I didn’t get paid, obviously, but it was a really good learning experience. I took that and then I’m like, Okay, this is what I’m gonna do differently. And then the next thing I did was wait. I mean, that’s like impressive. You You said, You are kind of more introverted, like what brought you out of that? Well, here’s the thing that I learned is being introverted doesn’t mean being shy and sometimes I can be shy but introverted really just means that when you are doing something social around people, you need to have that personal downtime. Yeah, recharge and that’s definitely who I am. But so when you think of that introvert ism is not about being shy. It’s just about that’s how you

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recharge? Yeah, then that kind of I think opens up the possibility that you can go out and get what you want. Like, no one’s stopping you but yourself. Yeah. So it’s really about doing that first thing that scares you, and then succeeding, and then doing another thing. And another thing until there’s so many things that I have done in my past, and I’m like, I can’t believe I did that. That would have I wouldn’t like that’s so unlike me, like the thing I did today. This session like that would have scared the living daylights out of me four years ago, but I did it. And it was awesome. I liked doing it. It wasn’t scary. It was actually fun. So you just have to keep on pushing your soul. Do you feel like doing it? More and more just made it? Yes. The only way to get good at something is just doing things over and over and over. Yeah, practice makes perfect. More experience builds that confidence and then everything seems a bit easier. Yeah. How many have you done now? Like how many speaking gigs on my website? I’m not even sure but I know at least for this year. 2019. I think for the ones I’ve done and the ones coming up, I think about 15 Wow, okay, yeah, that’s awesome. So do you feel like it makes perfect like it’s now I don’t even get it.

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is really not that big of a deal. Do you practice a lot? as awesome? Do you feel like doing all these like in person things really help get you kind of more clients or more hundred percent because you have that one on one engagement with someone which is so much more impactful than meeting someone online. So that’s why I actually love doing these offline things. Because a you can meet a lot of great friends meet great connections that could lead to a Work Opportunity. Or you can convert someone into a client because they they really like you. They just saw you speak or they just met you when you had a really good connection. Offline in conjunction with online is key. Right? Okay. like would you say or your business that actually made the biggest difference doing this? I’d say So yeah, I feel like a big turning point. It was me doing my first event. And finally, for the first time ever putting the basis to kind of the numbers behind everything I was doing. I got to meet the real people that followed me for a while and they were real people. And so I think that was a big turning point for me and really impactful. Awesome. Do you have any last words of advice for people who want to take their blog from Hobby to

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actually making a lot of money. Yeah, there’s a lot of things like a share, I’d say the one of the key thing I actually shared this with someone this morning, who asked me the same question, I think one really important thing to remember is this is a long game. So I started my blog eight years ago, I didn’t think it would turn into this. I’m super glad it was, but it really was, I never stopped. I never quit. I just kept on going. I made a lot of mistakes. I failed a lot of things. But you just kind of learn from that and keep on moving forward. So you just don’t get caught up in the idea that things have to be perfect to start, just start and then you’ll get better and improve. Yeah, that’s great advice. Where can people find you? You can find me. My website is Jessica Morehouse calm. I have a YouTube channel under the same name. And I also run at the Mo Money podcast you can find on any podcast station. Nice. He still kept the Mo Money. I did keep them on money. Yeah. All right. Thanks so much. Yeah, I learned so much from this interview from your seminar. Thank you so much for speaking with me. Thanks for having me.

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