🌷 I'm retiring

Where I've been after my one-year creating hiatus—and where I hope we can go from here.

Feb 26, 2023

Real quick: in case you’re thinking to yourself, “Who the heck is this Mica Gonzalez and why is she emailing me?” you might have stumbled upon then signed up for something from my YouTube channel, my blog, my quiz, or my online course. You might also know me as the girl who went on that podcast that one time (or that podcast…or, okay, there were quite a few podcasts).

But now that that’s out of the way…

It’s me. Hi. I’m the girl-who-took-a-year-away-from-her-blog-and-business, it’s me.

For the curious, the full story of where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing since my last known sighting in Content Creation Land is now up on YouTube here.

(It’s only a 5-minute ramble, half the time it takes to make pasta for Sunday dinner.)

Give it a gander if you want some details I won’t be getting into here. Because in this newsletter is where I would love to explain to you, my internet friend, that I’m retiring.

Er, well, something like that, at least.

By retiring, I mean:

I’ve stopped taking on clients for my coaching programs. I said goodbye to my last one sometime last year. I haven’t hopped on a Zoom coaching call in weeks, and wow, does that feel different.
I turned off sales funnels for my online course. It’s still available for those of you who enrolled, don’t worry. :)
I no longer plan on doing launches now and in the future. If I have cool stuff I want to sell, I’d rather skip the long funnels and just go straight to telling you, hey, here’s a thing I made, buy it if you like.

TL;DR I stopped running the business I’ve been running since I started my cute little blog in 2018.

Woof, that’s a load off my chest.

In case you’re wondering why:

Sometime between 2020 and 2021, when my business was peaking and making record-breaking months in leads and sales, when I was launching new things left and right, I realized something…

I don’t actually like launching and selling.

I like creating.

Creating real, actual content with value. Not a sales pitch or funnel only hiding behind some content with some value.

After trying the whole coaching and course-creating life—a life that I genuinely believed I could just continue on forever at the time—I felt that launching and being the kind of creative business owner that I’d been was actually what was taking me away from what I loved doing most: just making valuable content.

Making valuable content for you.

There I was, newly into my mid-20s, itching to just create for the sake of creating and adding no-strings-attached-in-the-form-of-hey-here’s-a-discount-on-my-course value.

So I made what felt like the dumbest decision ever: I closed a business that had been giving me the life and freedom I’d been wanting for so long.

“Bye, felicia” – me to my business, probably

It’s funny. For a while, I was afraid to admit that’s exactly what I did: close my business.

Half because I wondered what people would think of me. Half because I wondered if I was making the wrong decision.

What ultimately got me to commit to the choice, however, was a simple thing.

When I first started my blog and my business, it was in pursuit of a life of freedom, fueled by creativity and passion and impact.

While that did lead me to starting a creative business down the road, I found that the business part isn’t what I love to do. And since I was in a place where I could change that—I had no employees, no loans, no investors—I knew it was okay to let go.

If I’m honest, it was only recently that I realized that closing my business meant I could now go back to the other exciting things I’ve always loved—creating content for you.

It was then that the most delightful, delicious thought hit me:

Isn’t that the life and freedom I’ve always wanted after all? :)

Who said I needed to be a creative business owner to live a life of freedom, creativity, passion, and impact?

I could still have that—all of it—even without a business.

But, of course, without said business, things were going to have to change. As they’re meant to.

So I hope the next half of this email can explain what this change means for you and me from now on:

First, just because I’m not running a business doesn’t mean I won’t be making content anymore.

I’m excited to start this new chapter, going back to the days when all I worried about was what I’d create next; not how I could “10x my sales” like every guru on the internet told me I ought to be doing.

As of writing, here’s what I think that’ll look like:

One new YouTube video or blog at least every other Thursday. My videos and blogs might be productivity advice, mindset changes, Notion tutorials, Google Calendar hacks, software reviews, and some topics that are completely new and exciting even to me. (For instance: I work in tech now. And it’s such an interesting space! Maybe there’s something for me to uncover and share with you in the future.)
The Creator Club newsletter (aka this email!) hitting your inbox at least every other Sunday. If I can manage to make it weekly, I will. But this newsletter is our sacred space to talk about the ups, downs, and zigzags of creative life so I promise to only send an email when I have something worth sharing.

Truth be told, I don’t know how well I’ll stick to this plan. After all, so many things have changed since I was last able to create consistently, and that feels like a lifetime ago.

For one thing, I’m engaged and now spend maybe 10-20% of my week planning a wedding. (Oh yeah, that totally happened.)

And now that I work with a startup instead of for myself, I no longer have the luxury of spending 50% of my week making new content like I used to. (Not to mention I’m a first-time cat mom to a rambunctious boy that demands cuddles 50 times a day.)

There’s a lot of chaos. But it’s a good kind of chaos. I’m busy in the best way, and I’m learning to create even through—and with—that chaos.

Or, really, I’m just taking the advice I’d always parroted to you busy creators: you don’t find time for your passion projects; you make time.

Chances are, you’ll never really find it, time. I sure know I haven’t.

Second, I’m making it my life’s mission to give away as much free value as I can—and that means you’ll notice some changes ‘round these parts.

I want to put all my focus into creating the next best piece of content for you without having to hide it behind a price tag. So you might notice I’ve since turned on ads on both my blog and my YouTube channel.

Now, it’s not insane money I might make from a client, but it helps cover costs like my website hosting and domain among other things, so it’s still a more-than-welcome income stream to keep my platforms powered.

I might still create a paid product or two, like a template or a workbook, but I now stand by a simple rule:

If I’m making more sales content than I am real value-driven content, then I’m doing something wrong.

Keep me accountable to that, okay?

Finally, I might need your help more than ever.

I want to reach as many people as I possibly can with (hopefully) valuable content about being a creative, rejecting hustle culture, getting productive, and all the stuff I’ve devoted the last five years of my life writing and recording videos about.

I might sometimes ask you to share this newsletter to a friend.

It probably takes 5 hours for me to just finish one email. Sharing this to a friend will take 5 seconds. And it’ll go such a long way. :)

Sharing not only helps me reach more people like you that can benefit from my work, but also—if I may be this transparent—help me attract even more partners and brands to work with. Their support will help keep my content free for you and everyone who’s yet to come.

In case you do share this newsletter today, thank you. So much.

It’s now the end of this one. A looong one—so if you made it this far, please imagine me handing you a warm cup of tea as a thank you.

Until the next one, stay kind and creative,

Mica

One final ask

Since this is a new newsletter, you might have found this on your Promotions tab.

If you could do me a favor and reply with a “Hi, Mica” to this email, that’d be immaculate. Brownie points too if you move this to your Primary inbox :)