Kara Perez makes wealth building brave & sustainable

TL;DR

Kara Perez, founder of Bravely Go, talks about her journey from struggling with debt to becoming a financial educator and author. She also shares her experiences as a digital nomad, the challenges of balancing content creation with personal life, and the journey of writing her book on money and sustainability.

We discuss:

• the importance of financial literacy & community
• the challenges of building a personal brand
• the realities of entrepreneurship
• practical money management tips for freelancers & digital nomads

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Transcript

Rachel Meltzer (00:01.425) and can you just introduce yourself real quick for our listeners?

Kara (00:05.945) Yes, hello, my name's Kara Perez. I'm the founder of Bravely Go, a financial education company that focuses on the intersection of sustainable living and financial education. And I'm also the author of a new book called Green Money, How to Reduce Waste, Build Wealth, and Create a Better Future for All.

Rachel Meltzer (00:26.19) Perfect. I'm so excited to talk to you. It's funny because I've been following you. I don't use Instagram anymore, so I don't see your face every day anymore. But for like two or three years there, I would just like see your videos every day. And you were the, just feel like I know your face and voice so well now. It's so weird how parasocial relationships form like that on social media. But it's good to talk to you in real time. No pun intended.

Kara (00:33.349) Mmm.

Kara (00:39.839) goodness.

Rachel Meltzer (00:55.694) I would love to start with like how you got started on your journey. I know this really started as just like a debt payoff journey for you and blogging. What called you to blogging about it and how are you able to sort of work through the start of building the initial phases of Bravely Go? Whether you realize you're like doing it or not, right?

Kara (01:08.59) Hmm.

Kara (01:18.949) Yeah, I did not realize I was doing it. So let's just start there. So I think it's important to put into context for listeners that I have never had a full-time salary job. I'm 36. No one has ever been like, hey girl, let's get you a 401k. Like never. So I graduated college in 2011. I had $25,302 in student loan debt and I got a job.

Rachel Meltzer (01:33.976) You

Kara (01:44.006) about four weeks after graduation as a waitress. And then I worked in food service until I was 30 in some capacity, either waiting tables or catering ended up being a big thing for me. But I was very low income. Like my first year out of college, I think I made $12,000 in 2012. And then I made like $15,000, I made $16,000. So I was barely able to pay

rent and groceries and utilities and like put gas in the car and that was it. So I couldn't really afford my student loan payments, let alone savings, let alone investing. Did not know what investing was when I was 22, 23, 24. And yes, great question. My degree is in English and my concentration is in critical race theory.

Rachel Meltzer (02:26.24) You

What did you go to college for?

Kara (02:39.421) which makes living in the U S right now, very interesting. Yes. And so I, yeah, like nobody wanted to hire me. Right. So I worked as a waitress and then as a caterer. And then when I was like just about to turn 26, I just had my quarter life crisis and it centered on money because money had been so hard in my early adulthood. And I had also grown up low income in a single parent household. And I was just like, my God.

Rachel Meltzer (02:41.614) Yeah, got a whole lens for that.

Kara (03:08.805) this is never going to change unless I make this change. I have to be my own knight on a white horse situation here because no one is helping me and no one is going to help me. so with my fabulous English degree, I've always been a writer and I thought, I'm going to blog about trying to pay off my student loan debt because I want

some sort of record. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a screenwriter. I wanted to be an author. I knew I wanted to write in life. And so was like, okay, well, this is what's stressing me the F out. So like, let's talk about this. So I got a free WordPress. It was called from frugal to free dot wordpress.com. And I was just like, here's what's up. I'm trying to go from intense frugality to financial freedom. And I would blog like four or five times a week. Just here's what I'm doing.

Rachel Meltzer (03:40.536) Yeah.

Kara (03:59.493) to try and earn money. Here's what I'm doing with the money I made." So the blog post would be like, okay, hey guys, like I picked up a catering shift this weekend and made an additional $120. I'm gonna put $80 towards my student loans. I'm gonna put $20 towards taxes and I'm gonna put $20 in, I'm gonna leave $20 in my checking account. Like I feel really good about this weekend. I'm hoping I can pick up like three more catering shifts or whatever. it was very sort of like budget diary.

Rachel Meltzer (04:27.0) Mm-hmm.

Kara (04:29.023) And was amazing. It actually ended up being amazing. The blog grew in traffic. It just got a bunch of attention because I think because it was very frank and yes.

Rachel Meltzer (04:40.638) Yeah, yeah, no one talks about it that way. Like, so taboo to talk about our finances. If someone, if I had found your blog earlier, I think I might have made some different decisions. It's hard when the people around you in real life are not talking about money. My parents never talked about money. They were like afraid of credit cards. I didn't get my first credit card until I was 25. Immediately maxed it out, couldn't pay it back, and now I'm still dealing with the debt of that. And that's like...

Kara (04:46.767) Mm-hmm.

Kara (04:53.029) I

Kara (04:58.285) Yes.

Mmm.

Kara (05:09.166) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (05:09.87) such a massive mistake. And of course, like I'm learning my lesson, but if anybody wanted to talk about what you need to do for a credit card, maybe I would have not been, you know, everyone's just like, yeah, you get a credit card, you're 25. And I'm like, cool, money.

Kara (05:22.796) Yeah.

Kara (05:27.781) Right, but like what are the next steps? Is there any like follow up with that? You know, sort of like, yeah. And it's like, I kind of like how you said, like I'm learning my lesson now, but it's sort of like, does the lesson have to be so painful? Does it have to be that I got into debt and now I have to dig my way out? No. And so, yeah, the blog got a bunch of attention. I ended up selling that blog and realizing I love talking about money and I paid off all my debt, my remaining, I had $18,000 left in debt.

Rachel Meltzer (05:29.408) What does that mean?

can't just do that.

Rachel Meltzer (05:39.899) my god, right?

Rachel Meltzer (05:43.875) Right.

Kara (05:56.567) and I paid that off in 10 months and I just started talking to people in my life and on the internet, like on Twitter and on my blog about money and realized I love this and there's such a need, right? Like there's people in your situation or there's people who don't think they ever can pay off debt, right? And they're like, I'll just be in debt forever. Or there's people who miss opportunities to save or invest because they don't know what tools are available to them or they don't trust the banks for some reason, right?

Rachel Meltzer (06:21.87) Mm-hmm.

Kara (06:25.653) There's just so many people who are getting screwed over by the financial systems straight up just due to lack of knowledge about the financial systems. And also we have very predatory like shareholder capitalism in our lives right now, which is a real bummer.

Rachel Meltzer (06:29.634) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (06:32.962) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (06:36.716) Yeah. I think there's also a layer of fear. Like money is survival in this country, in the corporate economy that we have. And it's really hard to live in a capitalist society and not be, if you're not extremely well off, to not be scared. Like I was literally too scared to look at my credit cards. And, cause I didn't know what to do about it. I didn't think I could do anything about it. And,

Kara (06:43.973) Mm.

Kara (06:49.379) Mm-hmm.

Kara (06:57.889) my gosh, yes.

Rachel Meltzer (07:05.55) In reality, if I had looked, I would have realized that I was paying hundreds of dollars in interest every month, and it would have been better to just pay a little extra and not have to pay. I literally paid as much in interest as I would have cost to pay off my entire credit card, because I was too scared to look at it, and I just let it sit there, because nothing bad is gonna happen to me if I just let it sit there. My credit score will dip. What's gonna happen, you know?

Kara (07:19.813) Mm-hmm.

Kara (07:27.48) Yeah.

Kara (07:31.171) Right. That kind of stuff doesn't feel real though. Like, my credit score lost 60 points. And it's like, okay, but no one came to my house and arrested me. Right? So like, is that a real problem? You know, it's so, I think, yeah, you're absolutely right. we also, specifically around debt, we live in a culture that says if you have debt, you're a bad person. It's your fault for getting into debt.

Rachel Meltzer (07:34.926) That's hypothetical. Right. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (07:51.276) my god,

Kara (07:54.081) you're the dumb ass who couldn't realize that this would be a problem. And I felt a lot of that with my student loans. I really regretted going to college because I had spent all this money on a fancy degree I wasn't using. I could see my friends getting jobs, getting promotions, buying houses in our 20s. And I was just like, cool, I make $16,000 a year. And I cry over my student loan debt at night, tight.

Rachel Meltzer (08:01.646) you

Rachel Meltzer (08:15.948) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I literally started looking at my student loan debt as like, okay, well, it's my longest line of credit and I'm self-employed, so maybe it's good to have around. I don't know how else to look at it and not feel bad, you know? It's hard. I will say though, that is incredible that you sold your blog. I mean, it was good timing when you started it and when you were doing it and that you put so much time into it. Like four or five days a week is huge.

Kara (08:25.017) Mm-hmm.

Kara (08:30.254) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (08:43.618) That's amazing, that's like a feat in itself. So kudos to you. I talk to a lot of people who like really want to get into blogging but don't know how to like make it financially feasible or worthwhile. And I feel like it's such a millennial dream to have a blog that makes money.

Kara (08:47.503) Thank you.

Kara (08:57.965) Hmm.

Kara (09:05.623) Yeah, I do feel like all millennials, I will say particularly women, I feel like we grew up on so many rom-coms where the main character worked in journalism in New York City and now we're like, I'll just be a blogger and that's my own version of that.

Rachel Meltzer (09:19.124) It's my dream. If I could just blog every day. I mean I do, but not for monetization. Like they make it seem in the movies,

Kara (09:29.331) Yeah. You know what? So I sold that blog, not for very much money, but then I started a new website, which I've now had for the seven years that I've officially had Bravely Go and like my LLC. And it wasn't until this year, 2024, that I made money from my new website. I put, I finally put ads on it and started making a little bit of ad revenue because

Rachel Meltzer (09:48.256) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kara (09:57.529) I just want to cover the hosting costs. It costs me like $400 a year to host it and then obviously my time with writing new blog posts, but I'm like, that's a lot. You would need to be making me like three grand a month website, which I don't think is not impossible, absolutely. But right now my website makes me $150 a month, which I'll take. I'll take. I'm happy, but it's not what I need.

Rachel Meltzer (10:08.174) This is not happening.

Rachel Meltzer (10:18.04) Yeah.

It's better than nothing. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I hear from a lot of people. Well, first of all, I read every time you post on threads that you wrote a new blog, I go and read it from threads. I am shocked by threads, by the way. Shocked. is so, it's just refreshing. It's great. No ads.

Kara (10:38.052) Mmm.

Kara (10:44.897) No ads. No ads is an incredible place to live. I know I'm like, anyway.

Rachel Meltzer (10:48.202) as we talk about putting ads on our blogs. Anyway, just like ignore my ads. But yeah, no, your blog is like helpful. I don't mind that you have ads because you're the kind of, I'm so invested in you and your brand and like the reels that you've put out and the education that I've gotten from you so far. I don't even watch your reels anymore. But just knowing.

your personality shines through so much and I think that's important for personal brands, but I don't give a shit that you have ads on your website because I love you as a creator so much and what you've taught me. And I'm like, I will watch these ads, Kara. You bet, you deserve this two cents from me.

Kara (11:17.849) Thank you.

Kara (11:22.533) I appreciate that a lot. I appreciate that a lot. And I think it does speak to just coming back to this idea of like people want to build maybe a personal brand or they want to share themselves on the internet. I will say like I've been doing it now for nine years really, but full time for about five and a half years. And it is a fine line between what do I share and what do I not share? like, I think also

Rachel Meltzer (11:38.392) Yeah.

Kara (11:50.657) increasingly like I'm someone who talks about money and also politics, right? And like how money is politicized and increasingly you get like angry people, which is fine to an extent. Like I really try and keep my pages open for communication because I feel like it's my responsibility as like a privileged white person to...

Rachel Meltzer (12:04.482) Mm-hmm.

Kara (12:16.581) to deal with the people who are like, wage gap isn't real. And I'm like, let me explain to you why it is. But it is a fine line between how much do I put myself out there so people can connect with me about something that we care about and they can see who I am and how do I stay sane on the internet. That's a whole other podcast probably. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (12:18.668) Yeah, it's very real. Sorry.

Rachel Meltzer (12:28.055) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (12:35.508) Yeah, no, I mean, there's a reason I quit Instagram. Like I used to share hourly updates. If I was awake, I posted every hour on Instagram on stories. And quite frankly, it didn't work as well as I had hoped. Like I do better marketing on LinkedIn for half an hour a day because my audience is there and they're there to work and they're excited. Like it was just the wrong platform for what I was doing. And also it was just exhausting. Like I don't even enjoy opening Instagram anymore, which is

Kara (12:43.278) Mm-hmm.

Kara (12:53.657) Mm-hmm.

Kara (12:57.176) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (13:04.748) disappointing, but I think you're right. it's, A, it's hard to be online that long and sharing so much of yourself and also knowing where the line is. Like you want to be personal enough that people connect with you, but you don't want to be so personal that you're oversharing or that you're like in, you know, putting yourself at risk and making your life vulnerable. So.

Kara (13:12.005) Mm-hmm.

Kara (13:22.487) Yes.

Kara (13:29.515) Yes, yes. Yeah, like I just saw someone who posted a picture, from the toilet, like full. was not like, you can just see my face and I'm clearly sitting down. I was like, girl, this is not safe for work. keep that to yourself. You don't need to share that.

Rachel Meltzer (13:42.808) Yeah. Yeah! Learn the lines. We need to know the lines. And they're not written anywhere, you know? I mean, I guess there are community guidelines on these things, but they're pretty vague.

Kara (13:58.19) Yes, very vague.

Rachel Meltzer (13:59.662) So you really have built a community around your brand. It's not just your blogs, your educational content on social media. How have you gone about doing that? What platforms are you using? I feel like you're pretty intentional about it. How have you been able to build that over the years?

Kara (14:20.717) Yeah, so it's interesting you're talking about kind of your experience with Instagram. The only reason I got on Instagram professionally is that I was going to all of these events in Austin. I used to live in Austin, Texas, and people would not ask for your business card. They would ask for your Instagram handle. And I had printed out these business cards and nobody wanted them. And I was like, OK, I guess I'll get on Instagram because that Austin's a very event heavy town and Instagram really just took off there.

Rachel Meltzer (14:36.333) Mm.

Kara (14:48.709) And this is like 2014, 2015. So like pre, you know, it still chronological Instagram. Exactly. So that's why I got on it. I feel like that platform was chosen for me. But what I will say, I feel like consistency is the most important thing. You can't bond with anyone, a celebrity, a neighbor, a...

Rachel Meltzer (14:50.723) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (14:56.586) Ugh, the dream.

Kara (15:18.711) Influencer you can't bond with anyone if you don't see them regularly, you know, and so being consistent but also really knowing what it is you're there to talk about I think a lot of people who aspire to be Influencers or to to have online communities they show up and they just kind of they expect the people Like the internet to tell them what they want and I think I came forth and was like my name is Kara

I want to talk about money. I don't like capitalism. I don't have a lot of money, but I would like to be financially stable. I like being outside. I have a partner. I'm never going to tell you his name. I'm never going to show his face. And if that kind of stuff vibes with you, great. And if it doesn't, you can go elsewhere. But that's what we're doing here. So I think Cree. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (15:52.815) Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (16:07.746) Yeah, you had a niche and a subniche and you knew it wasn't just like, let me share every minute of my life and hope you like it. Yeah.

Kara (16:15.051) Mm-hmm. Right. Exactly. think, honestly, and I think even some of the people who eventually become I'm Sharing Every Minute of My Life, they start out in a niche, right? Like fashion, beauty, travel. And then as they find out what their audience is responding to, they share more of that. And that's the kind of natural progression. But if you just kind of show up, like something that kind of kills me, kills my marketing brain, is people who are like, I'm thinking about starting a podcast. What would you want to listen to? And it's like, girl,

Rachel Meltzer (16:25.635) Mm.

Kara (16:44.805) or boy or like person, if you're just putting that out on the internet, you're going to get a million different pieces of feedback because some people are going to want to listen to a car, a podcast about cars and some people are going to want to listen to a podcast about vitamins and some people are going to want to listen to a podcast about travel. What do you want to talk about? What do you know about? What are you learning that you can take us on a journey with you about? So you have to be confident and comfortable enough to say, I am X, Y, Z.

I am not ABC.

Rachel Meltzer (17:16.114) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it's so much better to find easier. Your content will be better and it will be easier for you to find success, whether you're like being paid by a client to do something or you are trying to attract people with your content. If it's something that you're passionate about, like you happily wrote that blog five days a week because you were excited about it and you were motivated and you were like lit up realizing that other people probably are feeling the same things you are.

Kara (17:30.295) Yes.

Kara (17:38.04) Yes.

Rachel Meltzer (17:45.506) And that's why it did so well. It didn't do well because you were talking about money and money is a hot topic. It did well because you showed up every day and you were excited to talk about it. Yeah. I think that's important to when I coach freelancers on like starting their businesses and a lot of it, a lot of people get tripped up on their niche and they're like, but I'm going to have to this forever. And is it profitable? And like, do I only have to have one and all this stuff? And it's like, just pick something you could talk about until 3 a.m. and you will get there.

Kara (17:50.99) Right.

Kara (17:54.405) 100 percent.

Kara (18:07.673) Mm-hmm.

Kara (18:13.017) Yeah, and understand that it's okay to change and pivot, but you can't be changing and pivoting every single day, chasing likes and chasing validation from other people. Like when I first started, first of all, I didn't know this was gonna be a business. And I think now that we're so far into the influencer blogger, digital entrepreneur space, like we know it's much more polished than it was even just a decade ago.

When I started, it was sort of just like, I'm doing this thing that I like, my gosh, here's an opportunity, cool, I'm gonna do some more of this. Like, here's another opportunity. Like it was a very piecemeal and there was no strategy and now you have people, we have coaches and we have people who are like, here's the roadmap. And it feels like if you wanna do it, you have to come and immediately be like, here's my profitable niche, here's like how many times I'm gonna post. And the kind of organicness is lost.

Rachel Meltzer (19:06.574) Mm.

Kara (19:07.971) And I will say I made a lot of mistakes. I do wish that I had had a coach or I do wish that I had had a little more direction and I wasted a lot of time, but you have to release some of that pressure on yourself. If you're expecting to do it perfect right from the get-go, if you're expecting to have your first like 10K month, the first month, please my first month. Okay. January, 2017, I got my LLC January 7th and January 7th, something like that. First week of January.

Rachel Meltzer (19:22.754) Yes.

Rachel Meltzer (19:36.259) Mm-hmm.

Kara (19:36.835) So January 2017 was my first month and I think I made like $800 and I was thrilled. I was over the moon, right? I was like, I made this money, $800 before tax. Not an amount of money you can really do anything with. release the pressure on yourselves to really have it all figured out and give yourself the chance to, again, within your niche, like within your kind of structured boxes, to give yourself breathing room.

Rachel Meltzer (19:41.749) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (19:46.424) Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (20:05.708) Yeah, I think it's so much better to treat it like an experiment and like you're exploring, like you're on a choose your own adventure. You're never gonna get it right the first time. You've never fucking done this before, majority of people. you think, is this like a toddler never having walked before stumbling and you walking over to them and being like, bitch, get up. Like you wouldn't do that, right? So why do we do it to ourselves?

Kara (20:18.188) Exactly.

Kara (20:27.723) Exactly, yeah. No.

Rachel Meltzer (20:32.332) because we put a lot of pressure on it, we expect ourselves to succeed, especially if we've succeeded at something before, we've been good at something before, it's a lot harder to be new. And you just have to sort of find your way. Like my niche found me. I was not, when I first got successful and stable with freelancing, I was writing for coding boot camps. Where the fuck did that come from? Like I never would have like decided to become a freelancer and been like, I'm gonna write for coding boot camps.

Kara (20:40.109) Yes.

Kara (20:44.463) Mm-hmm.

Kara (20:51.577) Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (20:59.886) No, I got a gig on Upwork paying me $99 a blog to turn podcast interviews into blog posts for a coding bootcamp review site and realized they had over 200 coding bootcamps in a list on their website with their contact information and thought, wow, a free ideal clients list. Bingo! And just started networking and no one was specializing in coding bootcamps as a digital marketer. So I was like, that's maniche.

Kara (21:00.345) Mm-hmm.

Kara (21:18.187) my gosh.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Rachel Meltzer (21:29.174) I'm going, this is where the money is. Because it's search engine optimized for LinkedIn. Like if someone searched coding bootcamp freelance writer, it was me every time. And I would have done it forever if I hadn't priced out of the niche. But it found me and then I transitioned into tech. I also have never had a full time job. And every time I work with in tech, every time I work with someone new in tech, they all assume I've had like corporate or startup experience. And I'm always like,

Kara (21:37.613) Yeah, amazing.

Kara (21:42.212) Yeah.

Kara (21:55.968) Nah.

Rachel Meltzer (21:57.262) Sorry, bro. La de da. You're paying me $100 an hour. But it's definitely like, it's more of an experiment than I think people realize. And if you just stick with something for like three to six months, you'll know whether it's right for you. And you can just shift and change if you need to and reevaluate and look at the data.

Kara (21:59.599) Just me.

Kara (22:05.167) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (22:23.906) Where is the money coming from? Is your conversion rate up for getting clients? Does your audience like what you're doing?

Kara (22:31.331) Yeah, yes. And I also, love that you said three to six months because I also feel like it is rampant on social media where people are like, I posted every day to YouTube for a week and here's what I learned. And it's like nothing. You didn't learn anything because it hasn't really been enough time. You barely get discoverability results in a week on YouTube. Like give one video a month on YouTube and then tell me what you've learned from that, right?

Rachel Meltzer (22:44.597) Nothing. Yup.

Kara (23:01.455) post every day for six months and then tell me what you learned from that because, or every week for six months, but you have to give yourself so much more time than a lot of the gurus or lot of the viral content tells you. A lot of them are like, here's how you can do this in 30 days. We know what kills me is like, make 50 pieces of content in 20 minutes. And it's like, that content's probably not gonna do very well, cause it's soulless, right? And no, at this point, like the game is different and

Rachel Meltzer (23:20.398) Mmm. It's not good. No.

Kara (23:30.785) what we are seeing over and over and over again is that authenticity and a real connection and opinion, right? A stance. Not just something that's pretty, not just something that looks polished, but something that tells you who the creator is and what they stand for, as well as, yes, what they can offer you, but like, who is behind it? And we see that increasingly too with even like big corporations. Like Gen Z and millennials don't play about their money a lot.

Rachel Meltzer (23:37.261) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (23:51.944) Yeah.

Kara (23:58.833) of the time. Like if a brand messes up, millennials and Gen Z will boycott you. They will with all their money from you because yeah, like you don't align with their values right now and you have to, the brand has to fix it before the money comes back. And I think that's a very valuable lesson for small freelancers to understand of. It's not that I have to show up and pump out a ton of content. It's that the content that goes out has to reach the right people and say the right thing. And if that means you're only doing

Rachel Meltzer (24:04.111) Yeah, Chipotle is going down.

Kara (24:28.193) one Instagram post a week or something, that's fine, but be consistent and be clear in that post and give yourself three to six months to do that before you make any decisions, before you get your feelings hurt. This is also just, again, on the side, a bit of a tangent here, but like, this is also a business, freelancing, entrepreneurship that comes with a lot of no's. It comes with a lot of no's. I would say I've been like very successful. I hear no all the time.

Rachel Meltzer (24:56.962) Yes, yes, yes, or just silence. Yes, I was just gonna say.

Kara (24:58.359) or just get ghosted? Girl, my gosh, in promoting the book, right? Like I'm pitching myself to all these podcasts and to like newsletters and stuff. And I have a spreadsheet that I'm tracking. And so I had like 160 podcasts I've pitched and it's been great. And also like, man, the amount of people that are highlighted a soft, like a light red, which means I haven't gotten a hard no, I've just been ghosted.

Rachel Meltzer (25:11.852) As you should. Yes, yes, yes.

Rachel Meltzer (25:23.372) Yeah, but you're gonna follow up. Yeah. yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's how it is with getting freelance clients too. And I tell people, like, this is why you need to give it time. Like, you don't know what the person you're reaching out to is going through. You don't know if they're actively hiring someone. You don't know if people are getting laid off. You don't know if they're working on a strategy and they're gonna need you in three months, but right now they don't, but they're so busy that they can't get back to you. You don't know if they're on a budget freeze. Like, you fucking don't know anything.

Kara (25:24.27) it's shocking. It's like 50 podcasts. I'm like, they just didn't get back to me.

Rachel Meltzer (25:51.146) about their situation, you cannot make a single assumption, and if you do, you're just hurting yourself. All you know is that silence, silence is neutral. Silence means please follow up with me in three months when I am ready to make another decision. I follow up with people five times, even if they were silent every single time, but it's quarterly. So every three months, because that's when decisions are being made, so you're not being annoying, you're not being salesy, you're offering to help them when they might need help.

Kara (25:54.389) Mm-hmm. Yes.

Kara (25:59.705) Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Kara (26:08.279) Mmm.

Rachel Meltzer (26:19.904) And if they don't respond after five, then like, that's it. But it takes time. Most people are going to respond on like the third or fourth or fifth follow up. You're never gonna get a client first message, first follow up. And be ready to just hear no or not right now and follow up the, if someone says not right now, that means yes, please follow up with me. I don't wanna forget about you, but I'm not gonna remember you.

Kara (26:42.401) Right, right, yes. I think that's so smart. I love that. And I also think you have to kind of kill your own ego a little bit and understand that you're not other people's priorities. You may be helpful to them, but ultimately you're not their priority. Like I just had a brand reach out to me that...

Rachel Meltzer (26:54.628) my god, yes.

Kara (27:06.095) They slid into my Instagram DMs and they were like, they're like a sustainable clothing company for kids. And I was like, okay, send me like a partnership blurb. You know, like, what do you want to pay me? What do you want me to do? Let me know. So they emailed me and it wasn't going to work out for a couple of reasons. One, they wanted to do affiliate only. And two, they're like hardcore, just kids. They don't have any adult.

Rachel Meltzer (27:28.781) Mm.

Kara (27:30.861) Clothing and I am child free by choice, which I'm pretty vocal about on my platforms and it's not to say that My audience doesn't have kids right? Like I'm sure I have thousands of parents in my audience, but can I authentically market? Children's clothing for just an affiliate commission. Nah, I can't and so it took me like two days to get back to them To just be like, I'm sorry. I don't think this is a good work

Rachel Meltzer (27:34.156) Yeah, that's not gonna work out.

Rachel Meltzer (27:51.094) Right. Right.

Kara (27:58.679) I don't think this is a good work partnership because I don't have kids and I don't think I can do this. But it took me two days and I'm sure in those two days they were like, is Kara gonna get back to us? Whatever. But like they weren't my priority and you have to understand, that's someone who pitched me. So when I'm pitching people, I remember like, hey, they may have other things going on. It may be a busy queue for for them, right? Like, I don't know. So if you don't hear back, just assume you're not the main character in their life and that's okay.

Rachel Meltzer (28:10.052) Right.

Rachel Meltzer (28:26.626) Yeah, yeah, it really does. It just takes time to get used to it. It's just like anything else. Your nervous system, your brain, your like, is equilibrium to you is going to be different throughout your career. Like when I first started, I would like hold my breath waiting for someone to accept my connection request on LinkedIn or to respond to one of my DMs or something. And I would like sit in agony for hours at my computer, at my kitchen table, and my roommate at the time would come in and be like,

Kara (28:47.111) yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (28:55.534) bitch, send it, like stop overthinking it. They're not even gonna respond to you, don't worry. And it's, totally. It's really helpful to like look at it from a standpoint of data, I think. If you can recognize like the majority of people, if you're trying to get clients on LinkedIn for freelancers, majority of the time you're gonna have a 25 % success rate. If you're trying to use email to get clients or get featured on something, 8%. That might seem low.

Kara (28:58.27) god, amazing. We all need that friend.

Rachel Meltzer (29:24.76) but that's what it is. So do the quantity you need to do to find success in that. They are still by far the best ways to get clients or to get featured. If you're a freelancer and you're like working in digital marketing in most industries, those are the two main channels you're gonna use. It's still better than Upwork and Fiverr and these things you have to pay for to compete with people who are cheaper than you. But like that's just the truth. So if you can...

Kara (29:45.493) Right.

Rachel Meltzer (29:49.678) prime your brain to be like, okay, we're playing a game and every coin I put into this piggy bank might turn into a client, 25 % of these are gonna come out, then send 100 connection requests so that over the next two years you have 25 clients, right? That's what you have to do to play the game. So if you can look at it that way and get into it, great. But if you're beating yourself up and having these high expectations, it's not gonna go well, it's not gonna be fun. Yeah.

Kara (30:11.341) Mm-hmm.

Kara (30:15.989) No. Yeah, you're not going to last very long because that's a miserable place to be. So yeah, you just have to understand like this comes with a lot of it's like being an actor, you know, like actors try out for a lot of things and they don't get it and they keep trying out.

Rachel Meltzer (30:30.988) Yeah, yeah, for years. Okay, I wanna talk about, before we get into talking about your book, you guys have had kind of a tumultuous couple of years with traveling and moving and things like that. We have a lot of digital nomads in our community and a lot of people who either live in a van full-time or travel for three to six weeks at a time and then have a home base. How's that, do you have any like,

tips or lessons learned from this experience of like traveling for eight weeks at a time and moving across the country and stuff like that.

Kara (31:09.266) Hmm, yes. I, right, my partner and I traveled in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Columbia for eight weeks in 2022. Then we came back and stayed with his parents for a month, and then we did another seven weeks of travel in just Columbia. And then we've moved within the US like three times in the last year and a half.

So it's been a lot of movement. And I would say my biggest piece of advice, like if I could go back and do it again, I would deprioritize meetings to an extreme point. So like one of my biggest streams of income is one-on-one coaching with people. But it's so hard to do that when you're moving hotels or hostels or even if you're renting an apartment.

Rachel Meltzer (31:35.63) You

Rachel Meltzer (31:50.197) Yes!

Kara (32:03.245) It was hard to take coaching calls from my partner's parents' house because they didn't have a dedicated workspace. His mom is retired, so she's home all the time. And I would just be in the corner of our bedroom, which had terrible lighting and bad Wi-Fi, desperately trying to go through someone's budget spreadsheet. I'm like, this is crazy. If you're moving around a lot, meetings slow you down and they stress you out.

Rachel Meltzer (32:14.252) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (32:19.438) Mmm.

Rachel Meltzer (32:30.062) Mm-hmm.

Kara (32:32.941) I would say before you start moving around, try and build out other parts of your business that require less of your presence. So whether that's like social or affiliate or speaking or whatever it is, content that you can batch as opposed to needing to do every day or in person, that would have been a huge difference. That would have made a huge difference in my experience. I would also say something that

made me really sad the other day actually. I just like, like I said, I've been doing content for seven years and I've been with my partner for a little over for like 10 and a half years. So we've really not had very much time together where I don't like snap pictures of what we're eating or like if we're doing a weekend trip, I'm like, I have to get a little content. And I try really hard to do that right in the beginning of our trip to be like, I'm going to take an hour and like,

Rachel Meltzer (33:03.47) Rachel Meltzer (33:25.272) Mm-hmm.

Kara (33:30.827) walk around and take pictures of our Airbnb or like go outside and get content and then you and I can have time together. And what he said to me the other day was I just really look forward to when we can do something and you don't take any pictures. And I was like, God, I'm so sorry. I thought I was doing this in a way that was really respectful, but it is intrusionary. Intrusionary? It intrudes. Intrusive. It's intrusive. and so

Rachel Meltzer (33:36.504) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (33:43.532) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (33:49.166) Mm.

Yeah, it intrudes. It intrudes on the experience. I totally, yeah. I know how you feel. I had that experience with my partners as well in the past when I was doing Instagram. And most of the time they would like help me take pictures or they would like be nice about it. But at the end of the day, it is a difficult experience. And like now, if you look at my camera roll, I probably haven't taken a picture in like four days. I just like, I don't take pictures anymore. I have analog cameras. have like,

Kara (34:03.63) Yeah.

Kara (34:08.121) Mm-hmm.

Kara (34:16.201) my God, I can't even process what you're saying.

Rachel Meltzer (34:21.73) two Instaxes and a Polaroid print digital camera and I use those more than I use my phone now because I'll go to events with people and give them a copy of the photo physically and it's such a nice feeling. It feels very relieving but also there's something special about being able to show your perspective and take photos and videos but you gotta do what you gotta do. Still hard.

Kara (34:25.861) Mmm.

Kara (34:32.408) Love.

Kara (34:46.681) Well, yes, yes. I think like coming back to kind of like travel or moving around a lot, think it's good to be organized about when you get content. And it's also really good to say, we're gonna have like two or three days this week where we're just experiencing. I really wish I had done that more, especially abroad. Like, I don't know when I'll next go back to Mexico. I may never go back to Mexico, right? And like.

Rachel Meltzer (35:12.354) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kara (35:14.179) I spent a ton of time on my phone when we were in Mexico instead of just being in Mexico. So I completely understand like content is a part of how I earn money. So like I have to do it, but I think if I could have been more organized of like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are my content days and like Thursday and Friday are my me and T-bone days. I think that would have made a huge difference to him and to me.

Rachel Meltzer (35:32.286) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think there's also a way, like I used to be really afraid to take time off of Instagram as a creator. I feel like we need to be more okay with that or like building it in. I know you do it occasionally, but like how can we make it? This is what I love about LinkedIn. They have a native schedule and it actually works. It's not glitchy at all. And I just schedule literally all of my content. I am on line when it goes live most weekdays, but like,

I have taken weeks off where my content still went out and it still performed well and people still clicked through to my website and I'm doing great. And it's a nice change of pace, but like, how can we find ways to build in breaks and just like not be on it at all? Or like on the days where you don't want to be taking photos or be in a picture of yourself, can we just like do a story Q and A and turn it into a carousel? Like, what can we do?

Kara (36:31.777) my gosh, yes. So something that I started doing about two years ago is I'm not on Instagram on Saturdays and nobody has noticed or no one's DMed me to be like, why aren't you on Instagram on Saturdays? Again, I'm not the main character in these people's heads. I'm a nice, hopefully nice person that they see on the internet, but very few people wake up in the morning, I assume, and are like, where's Kara Perez's content? I don't think anyone is doing that.

Rachel Meltzer (36:39.36) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (36:43.778) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (36:56.864) Yeah.

Kara (37:00.773) So give yourself permission to say I'm gonna take X amount of time off whether it's one day per week two days per week or you know every third Friday, whatever you want because I promise you no one is gonna notice and At least right now with Instagram They must have changed the algorithm this year but a big thing a lot of content creators are saying is they're getting higher conversion and like visual They're being seen at higher rates

Rachel Meltzer (37:29.091) Mm-hmm.

Kara (37:29.903) when they post less, like so on Instagram Stories, which I used to do these really in-depth, very long, detailed Instagram Stories. And now I get punished when I do that. My views are significantly lower than when I post one story slide. So now every Monday I just post one story slide, links to my newsletter, which brings me to the second part of this, so people can sign up for my longer form content that is not algorithmic-based. So I also think you have to use the algorithm

Rachel Meltzer (37:37.315) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (37:43.63) That's crazy.

Rachel Meltzer (37:54.808) Yeah. Yeah.

Kara (37:59.525) platforms, TikTok, Instagram, threads, Twitter, whatever, but you have to have your own website, you have to have your own newsletter, and you have to have non-algorithm places to build your business because the algorithm will always betray you. It will always eventually betray you because you are the product on Instagram. If it's free to use, you are the product. And that means that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care about decimating your little tiny Instagram business in pursuit of him.

Rachel Meltzer (38:13.268) Always. Yeah.

Kara (38:28.633) getting more ads on the platform or whatever it is.

Rachel Meltzer (38:31.052) Yeah, yeah, I mean the whole reason they're pushing you to post less stories is because they want people scrolling. They want people in the reels, right? And it sucks. But I totally agree, like relying on the algorithm is never gonna lead to a successful, sustainable business. I always tell people to start getting emails right away. Especially like if you're getting clients on LinkedIn and you're like talking to people in the DMs, I don't do negotiating in the DMs, I don't do anything. like, you can set up a discovery call with me here, which will collect their email.

Kara (38:38.893) Yes. Right, exactly.

Kara (38:51.535) Yes.

Rachel Meltzer (39:00.5) Or you can give me your email and I will send you a proposal. But like, we're not doing that in the DMs because you'll lose that lead if you lose access to Instagram, I mean to LinkedIn. So yeah, that's really good advice. That balance between travel and work is hard. It is like you're an entrepreneur and you get more vacation than anybody else in the world. But then it's also like, we kind of get less. Like even when I'm on vacation, I still work frequently. It's such, it's, don't know. It's hard to look at cause it's like,

Kara (39:08.559) totally.

Kara (39:15.949) It's challenging.

Kara (39:22.094) Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (39:30.08) I'm never gonna do well in a full-time job. Maybe that's a story I'm telling myself that is like a limiting belief, but I can't imagine that I will enjoy going to work in a full-time job. So it's like, I'm eating the trade-off. Like I am willing to like take the downsides, but it's sometimes it's really hard. And sometimes I look at my partner, I'm like, you're so privileged. And then sometimes he looks at me and he's like,

You can just take the dog for a walk at 8 a.m. Like good for you. Gosh. So we get like resentful, but it's just either way you have trade-offs is really what it is.

Kara (39:57.583) Yeah.

Kara (40:04.535) Yes. my gosh. Yes. My partner worked from home a couple, one day, a couple of weeks ago and I was just on the couch like giggling to myself. You know, I was on TikTok. I was on Instagram. I was just kind of like, I wasn't being very productive. And he just turns to me at one point and he's like, what is your job? And I was like, lol, I don't have to do, like, I don't have to have a meeting with my manager. I don't have to meet KPIs or whatever. Right? Like I set my own KPIs, but it, yeah. You like,

Rachel Meltzer (40:13.304) Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (40:19.542) No!

Rachel Meltzer (40:28.087) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kara (40:33.345) guess what, sometimes I get paid on a 90-day cycle or I have to pay all my own taxes and fees and the business credit card, yeah, I have to pay that. That doesn't just go to ex-corporation that comes to me.

Rachel Meltzer (40:45.868) Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. All right, so let's talk about your book. First of all, you obviously wrote it. How long did it take you to write it and what was that like for you, that process?

Kara (41:00.537) My publisher gave me five months to write it and I used four of them because the first month I could not get my life together. I just couldn't. Exactly. So yeah, it took about four months almost on the dot to write it. What was the process like? So the book is about money and sustainability and I really wanted to make both of which are very intimidating or in some cases, like boring topics depending on where you come from.

Rachel Meltzer (41:07.552) Of course, you gotta have the pressure.

Kara (41:30.053) So I really wanted to make it both action oriented and relatable. So each chapter has a lot of interviews in it of people who are already doing the thing that that chapter is about. So like one is about how you can get your needs met without needing to spend money. So I interview someone who is in a babysitting co-op where they trade babysitting hours for childcare instead of.

Rachel Meltzer (41:43.0) nice.

Kara (41:59.481) paying for childcare.

Rachel Meltzer (42:01.134) So smart. As someone who is thinking, I'm trying to decide if I wanna have kids or not, and maybe I'm overthinking it, maybe it'll just fucking happen, but childcare is one of my biggest fears because it is so expensive, and I'm also scared of our school system and our healthcare system, so that doesn't help. But can't put that on a kid, you know what I mean? It's like, if you're gonna have a kid, you're suddenly in all of these systems that cost a lot of money, and it's like, that's so smart.

Kara (42:03.041) Yes, it's so cool.

Hmm.

Kara (42:14.597) Mm-hmm.

Kara (42:29.155) Yeah, yes, and it's a fin. I'm sure, you could start it and people would be open to it, you know? mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (42:29.634) That probably exists here. We live in a hippie town. Amherst, so crunchy. my God, I would start it. I would be that girl. Yes, I love leading initiative. Kara, I'm already so thrilled. Okay, sorry, continue, continue.

Kara (42:42.769) my gosh. But so yeah, so the book is just filled with stories of people already doing the thing that so many of us tell us, tell ourselves rather that like we can't do where there's no point in doing. because the book discusses climate change very frankly. and like the book is not to convince you that climate change is real. It's assuming you're already there and like, here's what we can do about it. And so it grapples with big problems, but.

It is just story after story after story of people who are already doing it. And so that was really amazing to get to talk to these people and get to interview these people and connect with these people. It also was really draining and really stressful because people, I would reach out to people in like January, hey, can I interview you thinking this will happen the next two weeks? And some people would be like, sure, circle back in March. And I was like, okay, well, the book is due May 1st, so.

Rachel Meltzer (43:35.246) you

Rachel Meltzer (43:40.31) No.

Kara (43:41.669) I'm gonna need to, like, that was a bigger challenge than I realized it would be. And if I had known scheduling would be so hard, I definitely would have started, like, day one. Like, the day I got the contract. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (43:53.29) Yeah, at least like setting up the interviews in the first month. Just, yeah, yeah.

Kara (44:00.037) But other than that writing, honestly writing was really easy because this was a book I'd wanted to write for a long time. I already had a lot of the book in my head and I just had to get it out. What was harder for me was writing the book proposal and now doing book promotion because again, have to, I'm scheduling all my podcasts. I have my spreadsheet that I talked about earlier, right? And like that is so time consuming. So that's A, time I'm not earning money.

Rachel Meltzer (44:21.966) you

Rachel Meltzer (44:27.106) Yeah.

Kara (44:27.685) And B, it's a draining kind of work that just makes me more tired. Writing really got me excited. It lifted me up. I was so passionate about it. And I'm like, God, you know what sucks? Sending the same email like 47 times slightly personalized? This is not fun work. So this part's harder for me.

Rachel Meltzer (44:42.27) Yeah, no. Yeah, for sure. Did you, first of all, you were doing your normal job, like your coaching, your content creation on top of the book work while you're writing your book?

Kara (44:57.861) Yes, definitely, like I took, started taking Fridays completely off. So I wouldn't take, or from other work. So I wouldn't take any meetings or coaching clients on Friday. So that could just be for writing. And that was really helpful. And I also closed my books during certain times. I would be like, these two weeks, I'm not doing anything. Like I really need to focus. And like the book was due May 1st. So I didn't take any coaching clients for April.

Rachel Meltzer (45:20.142) Mm.

Kara (45:27.929) But so I had to pivot. So A, I haven't made as much money this year as I made last year because the book has just dominated the year. And that kind of has pros and cons because I knew signing with this publisher, it was gonna be a sprint. Like we signed in November and the book comes out.

Rachel Meltzer (45:37.902) you

Rachel Meltzer (45:45.23) Mm.

Kara (45:50.137) this November, so it's exactly a year. And a lot of other people, they get a book deal and then the book comes out, yeah, like two or even three years down the line and I was like, no.

Rachel Meltzer (45:50.71) Yeah.

Two years, five years, yeah. Did you work with an agent and pitch and you got an official real publisher and all the whole ordeal?

Kara (46:01.999) Mm-hmm.

Kara (46:05.711) Yes. Yes, I actually have behind me, have that black frame is my like publisher announcements, like the publishers weekly announcement. Cause I was like, fuck yeah, we did this. But yeah, you got to celebrate your own wins, know? And yeah, so I had an agent reach out to me.

Rachel Meltzer (46:11.395) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (46:17.654) That's so cute. Ugh, yes.

Yeah!

Kara (46:27.033) And I liked them and we signed and then we worked together for about five months on the proposal. So that also took way longer than I thought. I was like, we'll bang it out. No, no, it's they were like, you got to rewrite this. You got to do that. You got to bump up your numbers. the numbers are on like followers and stuff. That's a huge thing. And then you pitch, she pitches the publishers, right? Your agent queries is what it's called.

Rachel Meltzer (46:34.904) That's so much longer than I thought.

Rachel Meltzer (46:46.19) Ugh.

Kara (46:54.589) And we had a bunch of people say no. Again, those nos come in hot and heavy. But then I actually had two publishers reach out to me directly within like two weeks of each other. Or I guess they reached out within three weeks and they both made offers like the same week, which was crazy.

Rachel Meltzer (46:59.336) yeah, yeah, feels great.

Kara (47:15.277) which my agent negotiated and handled. So they came to me, but I was just like forward to her and she handled that. But then I had to pay her out of my advance. I had to pay taxes out of my advance. I don't get royalties until I out-earn my advance, which is 7,000 copies of the book. So it's a much more complicated process than a lot of people think. And it dominates the year. I would say I've had a very good...

book writing and book experience. Like it has not been very stressful. It has not been very hard. Parts of it have, but like the overall, it's been great. And it's just been the number one thing I've done this year. So you have to know if you're, you either have to like have someone supporting you, right? You have to be like, and my partner pays all the bills this year, right? Or you have to provide for yourself. I didn't need, thank God, to withdraw any money from savings, but.

Rachel Meltzer (48:01.72) Yeah.

Kara (48:12.493) I have not saved any cash this year. Like normally I'm a very heavy saver and investor. The only investing I've done this year is to max out my IRA, which is $7,000 and I'm happy and proud of, but normally I invest more than that, but not this year because all my money has gone to bills. It is, it's intense.

Rachel Meltzer (48:14.723) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (48:21.806) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (48:28.871) Yeah, that's so intense. I didn't even think about the fact that like, I mean, I knew that, you know, writing and editing and dealing with the publisher and the marketing and publication, all of that is like a year or two, or sometimes five if it's like a fiction book and you're special. But I did not even think about the fact that the proposal, I would think a proposal would take like two to four weeks, five months. And you had to take the time to like,

I mean, your agent came to you, which is great, but if you did want to write a book and you didn't have an agent, like you'd have to find an agent, that takes time. So overall, like end to end, it's like three to five years to write a book.

Kara (49:06.785) Yeah, it definitely can be. I, again, like I knew that this publisher was gonna, it was gonna be a sprint, but like I have a friend who's writing a book right now and she has extended her own, they gave her eight months to write the book and she was like, I need a full year. So that pushed out her publication by an additional, so by like the additional four months she needed to write and an additional three months that the publisher needs to do like.

Rachel Meltzer (49:22.152) Yeah.

Kara (49:33.775) to do the publishing, Like to get it into book form and get it into warehouses and coordinate with Amazon and Barnes and Noble and stuff. So now her book was supposed to come out like January of next year and now it doesn't come out until May of 2025. It was supposed to come out January, now it's coming out in May. And so you just have to also be really mindful of that because there are good and bad times to launch a book.

Rachel Meltzer (49:54.83) Wow.

Rachel Meltzer (50:01.774) Mm-hmm.

Kara (50:01.911) Like I would never, I actually am annoyed that I'm launching in November, especially this November because of the election. Like nobody wants to talk about money in July. That would be a terrible time to launch your book. So, but the publisher has to stick to a timeline. You as the author can really only dictate so much. it's, there's a lot to be said about publishing a book traditionally.

Rachel Meltzer (50:08.47) my god, yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (50:23.226) my gosh, so much, So I have like two more questions for you, if that's all right. Number one, what is your, if you could pick like your top one or two or three favorite things from your book that you are most excited about, what would they be?

Kara (50:45.641) gosh. I think again, in the process of writing, just getting to connect to such amazing people was absolutely my favorite thing. And I feel like I made friends from my interviews, which is really cool. I would also say I really tried to make the book practical and realistic, but hopeful. And I think I did that well. And so I'm very proud of myself for that. And so I would say that's my kind of second favorite thing is that

I think people will leave this book feeling very inspired and not just inspired to like get money, fuck bitches, you know, like, but inspired to build community, inspired to reach out to people, inspired to think about wealth, not just in a financial sense, but in a social sense, in a cultural sense. And I'm very proud of that.

Rachel Meltzer (51:21.517) Hehehehehe

Rachel Meltzer (51:35.342) Yeah, that really resonates with the content that you create too. I would not have started spending tracking and actually looking at my debt. Boy, no. Sorry, this is my, this is one of our cats. He really likes to get up in your grill sometimes. He's bored. Yeah, I think these are things that I started doing because I felt inspired by you.

Kara (51:49.061) my gosh, hello.

Rachel Meltzer (52:04.174) creators like you and that's like your content is very hopeful and approachable and practical and that's like that's all you can hope for if you want people to take action like that's it and I think that's true of all the content that I've seen of yours.

Kara (52:06.563) I'd love to hear that.

Kara (52:22.994) my goodness, thank you, I am very flattered.

Rachel Meltzer (52:24.238) Okay, and then my other question for you, last question aside from the promo stuff, do you have any money tips for freelancers in particular? Because that is the majority of our audience here.

Kara (52:41.189) Yes, do not avoid saving for your taxes. Please save for your taxes. It's a very, I see it all the time. I work with a fair amount of freelancers too. And I'm like, babes, that whole check doesn't belong to you. I'm so sorry, we live in the United States and they're gonna tax you. But like that's gonna happen. Please save, I save 30 % of all my income.

Rachel Meltzer (52:45.808) my god, yeah.

Yeah, I feel very called out.

Rachel Meltzer (53:01.58) Yeah, yeah.

Kara (53:09.54) for taxes and you never pay the full 30 % because you got deductions and all these things, but like save 30 % and use that as a good metric. Like if saving 30 % for taxes is really negatively impacting your business, that tells you something. You need to charge more, you need to diversify, you need to do whatever, right? But then also when you don't pay that full 30 % in, you get to give yourself a little bonus. Like every April I give myself a little bonus. I'm like, ooh, look at this money here.

Rachel Meltzer (53:23.448) you're not charging enough.

Rachel Meltzer (53:37.358) That's a really good tip. I actually did not save for taxes for the first like three or four years of my business because I'm a clown and I was just like constantly in emergencies or like living beyond my means. And then tax time would come around and I would either just barely be able to pay it, but it was like with my whole next paycheck. So of course still not saving for taxes or I was like, well can just like get on the IRS payment plans. No big deal. No repercussions. But then you're

not saving for next year's taxes because you're paying last year's taxes and it just like you get caught up in a really crappy cycle and it's not fun. So that's a really good tip. Yeah, totally. Okay, where can people find your book? Is it on pre-order right now?

Kara (54:09.784) Right.

Kara (54:18.735) Just that's the money nerd in me right there.

Kara (54:28.429) It is available for pre-order everywhere. So Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Bookshop, Target. It's called Green Money. Green Money, Cara Perez will take you right to it on the internet, a little Google search. And then I'm on the internet way too much. And my blog, if you want to check that out and see how I'm earning 150 bucks a month, is bravelygo.co, not dot com. Do not go to the dot com. I don't know.

Rachel Meltzer (54:43.618) Hmm. Hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (54:49.614) Hmm

Rachel Meltzer (54:54.862) You

Kara (54:56.781) I don't take ownership of that website. I don't know what's going on over there. And then I'm we bravely go on TikTok and Instagram. And I'm also on YouTube where I do long form content, if that's more your jam. And that's more socio-political, socio-economic. So if you're like, I am curious about Gilmore Girls Money or like the millennial class gap. That's what I talk about on YouTube.

Rachel Meltzer (54:58.954) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (55:20.854) I did watch your Gilmore Girls video, which is funny, because I'm in my annual Gilmore Girls rewatch era right now, so it was perfect timing. You're so good at timely content. Who is she? That was great. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show today, Kara. It so good to meet you.

Kara (55:25.676) Yes.

Kara (55:30.901) my goodness. I try, I try.

Kara (55:38.627) Thank you for having me, this was just so delightful.

Rachel Meltzer (55:41.006) All right, everybody go pre-order her book pre-orders are the best orders But if you're listening to this later, obviously just go order it normally