A year ago, March 2022, I started thinking about what my future would look like if I were to leave Getty Images after its return to the public market in five months time.
I spent the months of March and April deep-diving on DAOs in the context of web3, enthralled by what DAOs represented — this idea of equal ownership, new governance models, and the architecture for the future of work.
I spent May — the month I turned 30 — thinking seriously about the idea of leaning into a career that would let me better connect with a following of young women I had accidentally garnered through my participation on TikTok. Content creation comes naturally to me, and I enjoy being vulnerable about my own growth and learnings in an attempt to help anyone who might be listening.
This desire to help other people is core to who I am, and year-after-year I’ve turned down opportunities to build upon the psychology degree I possess due to my reluctancy to enter an unstable and ever-evolving psych industry.
But “coaches” are part of an emerging segment of “solopreneurs,” people who are self-employed, sell their subject matter expertise in the forms of services and digital products, and are both enabled by and reliant on social media algorithms to surface new customers. Coaching required no additional schooling and posed less risk as a career to try-on, especially because I already mentored young women through zoom meetings (at no cost), and enjoyed packaging information and creating material to share with others (again, at no cost).
As part of seriously considering this as a career path, I learned a ton about creators and the Creator Economy in general. As a creator myself, I have deeply internalized creator pain points, and I love thinking about how technology influences trends and the future of social, happy to make predictions and observe things like web3 and Elon’s Twitter acquisition unfold in real time.
In June, I went to London for our first in-person board meeting in over 2 years. I knew the continued success in store for Getty, and I was reminded of just how unique my opportunity was at this wonderful company — the executive team were my closest peers and I knew all aspects of the company and industry intimately. We were also heading into a global economic downturn. Maybe I should stay at Getty? I probably should stay at Getty… I spent the rest of June and all of July working to create a position for myself that would report to our Head of Product and liaison with our creator community. It was a great — and safe — opportunity for me to take on after rolling off being Chief of Staff for the past 3.5 years. All I had to do was present the role to my CEO and get his sign-off.
A week before that presentation I found myself home alone and on an 8th of mushrooms (the psilocybin type and the most I had ever done). As these sort of spiritual experiences tend to go, it wasn’t during the trip but rather a few days after once the dust had settled and the planes had landed, that I was able to process and realize that staying at Getty was once again playing it safe and ignoring the nudges from the universe telling me to go a different direction.
I knew that I needed to quit my job and dive straight into the void of the unknown, no matter how terrifying. While I knew I was passionate about social tech, the creator economy, helping women, and experimenting with all of the above — I hadn’t yet landed on the right idea, so the only response I had to give when asked why I was leaving Getty was the honest one of needing to leave to “buy myself some time to think.” But that time comes with a cost, with having to be okay being uncomfortable and unstructured for an unknown period of time without an idea and without an income.
My last day at Getty was September 1, 2022.
I spent September through December adjusting to an unfamiliar life and ideating against potential paths forward. While different in execution, each path focused on the same things:
connecting women to people and resources that help improve lives
helping creators be better discovered and less reliant on social media channels
helping the middle class of creators make more money
creating an organized and engaged community that informs product development
centralizing, storing, and creating artifacts around digital content/products
One morning, on November 30th, I woke up and wrote:
Build for female solopreneurs
digital/physical products and services
location based
discoverability feature
I gave myself the holidays to think about anything other than the ideas my future were dependent upon.
On January 11th, I returned to my desk once again and watched as the same idea I had written six weeks earlier seamlessly flowed out of me, only now expanded upon and more fully formed. A marketplace for solopreneurs and consumers.
This was it. The moment I had been waiting for. The moment when you know you’re exactly where you’re meant to be in the universe and when the universe knows you’re listening. Even as I write this now, my body becomes again covered by the same chills and goosebumps as it did in that moment and during many other moments since.
I spent January to February figuring out that I should niche the broad solopreneur segment by focusing solely on female solopreneurs in the health and wellness space. All I needed now was a technical solution and the money to build it, that is until I stumbled upon a near perfect, out-of-box wordpress plugin called HivePress that would only set me back $200.
I spent February to March doubling as a developer to understand the functions, features, and limitations of the plugin only to be convinced it would more than suffice as an MVP.
I had the idea, I had the means to build an MVP, and I had a database of solopreneurs in the health and wellness space. Now I only needed clarity and commitment from a side of Catherine I have a complicated and evolving relationship with. So I booked a trip to an ashram in the bahamas for 10 days to meditate and to see if she would agree to being a willing partner in the path that lay ahead. (Fortunately, she has).
I got back to New York on Tuesday, March 14th, and by the 15th, I articulated my idea and shared it with the world for the first time by way of TikTok, and asked any interested parties to fill out this survey.
Now, as I write this two weeks later, I’m inches closer to launching the MVP thanks to people who have offered their time for free in exchange for helping me achieve my vision, am in talks with more vendors than I can honestly handle, and I continue to uphold my commitment to myself and to “god” to listen and lean into the nudges I receive from the universe as the path ahead of me continues to unfold.
Feeling excited, open, and blessed.
xx