Katie Hornor on Sharing Your Gifts, Respecting People, and Defining Success

Katie Hornor knew from a young age that wanted to serve God. She also realized that she had a teacher's heart, so she majored in education.

After finishing school with a degree in education and a minor in Spanish, Katie and her husband moved to Mexico as missionaries. While in Mexico she worked at a Bible college and local mission college.

But one of the most pivotal decisions in her life was deciding to home school her children. This was the moment she realized that other parents in Mexico had no resources for home schooling their children.

So, to supplement her income and help out parents who wanted to home school their children, Katie and her husband started a home school blog. Katie realized their was a massive whole in the market for home schooling in Spanish, so she filled that gap.

Her home schooling blog became so successful that bloggers started approaching her asking how she grew her business. Katie now helps teach bloggers from all over the world how to grow their blogs and businesses.

In this episode Katie talks about sharing your gifts with the world, respecting everyone even if they don't deserve it, and defining what  success means to you.

Here are three things you can learn from Katie:

Share Your Gifts with the World

One of the things that many creatives take for granted is their ability to change the world through their art. We are so concerned with creating our art that we overlook how much of an impact our work has on everyone else.

Katie believes we should share our message with the world, and the best way to do that is by working for ourselves. "Working for yourself is so much more fun. It's something that you offer. There's a couple different analogies. When you have a message to gift to the world, when you have something to offer to the world, your vision and your passion come out as the answer to 'What does the world need?" If you can answer that question, then you know where your passion lies and what it is you have to offer. The world just needs that, and you can offer it to them, and that can get you excited about it and excited enough to get up early and work on it before you go to your job or to state up late... and things like that."

One of our biggest fears as artists and creatives is not being good enough. We think that our work isn't good enough. We fall into the comparison trap.

Katie's solution to that problem is focusing on our unique message. Sure, other people may do the same thing as you, but no one does it exactly like you do. Embrace that advantage.

"Working for yourself, you're getting that message out there... I deal with a lot of bloggers who are afraid of comparison. I'm doing the same thing as somebody else. Either I don't want to compete or I'm not doing it as well. I just tell it. You have to stop comparing. You're going to reach people with your own unique message. Yours is different because your life is different. Your life experiences are different. Your training is different. The people who are drawn to you is different than the people who are drawn to that other person. And there's going to be people you can reach with this message that those people would never reach. And if you don't give that message, then those people who you were going to reach are going to go without. If you don't bring this dish to the table, there's somebody on the other side that's going to go hungry because you didn't do your part. And that is a big motivator."

It's up to us to share our message with other people. Our gifts can help people who are trying to succeed. All we can do is try to share our message with the world. It's up to others to decide whether or not they want to listen to you.

"When you have that knowledge or when you have that experience that can help other people, and when you have that message that's going to change someone else's life, it's your job to give it. Whether the person on the receiving end takes it or refuses it is not a reflection on you, but it's your job to offer."

Respect Everyone

Sometimes working with potential customers makes you want to tear your hair out. But the thing is, you should always put your best foot forward.

It's easy to become angry or frustrated when dealing with tough customers, but as the face of your business, you need to always be your best self.

Katie believes this means doing the right thing no matter what.

"Those messages of 'Do it right no matter what it costs you, and do it right even if someone looks down on you for it,' and the messages of respect them because they are a person and treat them right even if they act in a way that doesn't deserve it. All of those messages have been huge with us building our business."

These interactions are all important because business is all about connections. It's about connecting with your customers and potential customers too.

You don't want to lose future business because one person was unprofessional to you. We need to treat each and every person we encounter in our business with respect because our relationships form the foundation of our businesses.

"It's the connections that matter... and it is the people. If it wasn't for people, there would be no business, so the relationships are huge."

Create Your Own Definition of Success

When we start our creative journeys, we often forget to define what success means to us. We know we want to be successful, but we rarely define what success actually means.

Katie is a huge proponent of defining what success means to us. While most of us have a general idea of what success is, our definitions of success probably vary a lot. Success to you might be quitting your full-time job to work on your art, but my version of success might be traveling the world while practicing my creativity.

Before you do anything else, you should define success for yourself.

"If you want to begin building your own online presence, number one you need to know what your goal is and what your definition of success is. So your goal for building an online business might be different from mine or the next guy's, and that' okay, but you need to know what it is or you're not going to be able to make good decisions about how to get there and then to know what your definition of success is: How are you going to know? How are you going to evaluate if what you are doing is working? How are you going to know if you've reached success?"

Although your definition of success might not be making a lot of money, you still need to make money to support your creative practice. The only way to make enough money is by educating yourself on marketing. This is especially true if you are trying to do everything by yourself.

Once you know how to effectively communicate with your audience, connecting with them will become much easier, and you will have an easier time selling to them.

"You need to educate yourself well... because if your business is online, you're competing in words a lot, and so you need to learn marketing and you need to learn copywriting. Learn how to sell, how to formulate your story, how to communicate and connect with people in a way that's meaningful and memorable so that you can compete in the different areas that you are present in with your business."

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