We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kristen Van Horn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kristen below.

Kristen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

I think I always knew I wanted to own a business.

In fact, it was on my “bucket list.”

My husband and I met working at a frozen custard stand in St. Louis, so I always imagined that one day, we’d own our own frozen custard stand.

Instead, we both went to school and became teachers.

And while my husband is still in education 20+ years later, I knew very early in my teaching career, I wasn’t meant to be teaching middle school physical education.

It wasn’t until we had kids and my daughter started kindergarten that I knew I needed a change so that I didn’t miss out on the important things in her life.

I had already started my business by then (6 years into teaching), but missing putting her on the bus for her first day of kindergarten lit a fire under me to build my business so that I could quit my job.

One of my only regrets in life is not starting my business as soon as I knew teaching wasn’t for me.

But, 7 years after resigning from teaching, I’m so thankful to be where I am now.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a former physical education teacher and mom of 2. I built my business while working full time and was able to surpass my teaching salary so that I could pursue entrepreneurship full time.

Now, I help online business owners create schedules + systems that allow them to spend fewer hours working in their business and more time serving their clients and enjoying life.

One of the things I am really passionate about is helping entrepreneurs spend less time when it comes to marketing. In fact, I co-created a membership that infuses my content system and strategy that helps you create marketing content in as little as 5 minutes a day that brings in more clients to your business.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

After we had our first child, I knew that I wanted to be a present mom more than anything. But at the time, I was a middle school physical education teacher, I had an hour commute, and I was also the head coach of a high school volleyball program.

I had already been blogging for awhile, so I knew there was some sort of monetary potential there.

It wasn’t until after we had our second child that I was approached by a girl on Instagram asking if I wanted to do a guest blog post that I began thinking about pursuing business.

She was an online running coach and had asked me to share more about my running experience since I was a running blogger.

I had never even considered becoming a running coach, but that’s what she was doing and lit a fire under me.

I asked her how she got started with her business and she became my first business mentor.

We worked together for 2 years building my business until eventually it surpassed my teaching salary and I could resign from my job.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Running has always been my passion. I remember going on runs with my dad when I was in middle school.

I’ve been running ever since then.

And while I was a competitive runner, I was never good enough to be a collegiate athlete or professional runner.

What’s the next best thing? Coaching runners.

So that’s how my business started. I was a running coach for a few years before I realized I had lost my own passion for running and the one thing I was asked about the most was how I could “do it all” — run a business and be a present mom.

Based on that, I decided to pivot my business to teach entrepreneurs how to balance both life + business by creating systems + schedules.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://kristenvanhorn.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/kristenvanhorn_

Image Credits
Debbie Smith, Fifty Love Photography