Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Karissa Merrill. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Karissa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about making remote work effective.
Covid has taught society many lessons. One of those lessons being that employers put too much emphasis on start and end times of the work day, and the need for employees to be in person. While I recognize that there are many careers where being in person is absolutely essential, there are many where it’s not. I remember being young listening to my mom celebrate her employer allowing her to work from home, so she could be with her young children. Now after the events of the year 2020, hiring recruiters are seeing an uptick in job seekers whose requirements are working from home. As I write this article I reap the benefits of working from home. I sit here typing, glancing up watching the waves crash along the shoreline in our beachfront house we rented to escape the Miami summertime heat. My husband and I started our business together just before our country went into lockdown. During lockdown we pivoted in the ways most companies did, we turned towards zoom. Now we work our day to day from our homes offices. We now have started offering in person seminars again to our clients as the world has opened. These seminars are scheduled far in advance. Working from home has enabled us as a family to come and go as we please for the most part. Since we can work from anywhere that has wifi, we embrace the freedom to travel and explore. While working from home has its perks it requires accountability, and focus. My husband and I work together and separately to create separate spaces in our home where we work, and to keep ourselves on track. This requires that we hold ourselves accountable, so we created goals to work towards. When we reach a goal, we create a new one. We have flexible work hours, so we created working hours in our home. This type of scheduling has allowed us to have boundaries when it’s working time and when it’s family time. We hold each other accountable to stay focused during the day, meaning don’t turn on the tv, do household tasks, etc. All of our employees work remotely and we provide them training upon hiring on effectively working from home. Working remotely has many benefits and requires self discipline.
Karissa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My husband and I own and operate Pursuing Your Purpose LLC, we refer to it as Purpose for short. Purpose is centered around large corporations and small businesses with the overarching goal to bring a sense of Purpose for all clients. We work with these companies as consultants bringing advanced business advice and insight. We help to create and implement new systems inside the workplace to solve a problem. We focus upon company culture bringing together a well rounded company focused upon the well being of its employers, and assist in solving gaps in the workplace. We are most proud of the fact that we bridge the gap of personal and professional life in these companies. From our work companies have benefitted from an increase in profit, progression and performance.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
Our business started as a side hustle. It became our only form of income after lockdown when my husband’s former employer closed the sector he was working in. I was newly pregnant and graduating from school. We went from having a comfortable income to not knowing how the bills were going to get paid. My husband and I created a bubble around ourselves, nobody in, and nobody out. We pushed hard for months to get our business to where we would break and then profitable. We didn’t have savings and we didn’t ask anyone for money. We sought out resources and advice to learn and grow our company and to grow ourselves. We took our company making a few thousand dollars a month to making over six figures before the end of the year. In 9 months I grew and birthed a baby, in 9 months my husband and I birthed and grew a company.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn that there’s a limit to what we can have. This is something I still train my mind on today. I struggled many times thinking, “Theres no way we can make that much money, why me?”. Every time I thought we couldn’t make a certain amount of money, we did. I had to teach myself that my only limit is my mind. If I believe and tell myself, I’m only worthy of so much, I will only have so much. I had to teach myself “Why not me?”. The truth of the matter is that we can have anything we want in life, we just have to believe we can. There are people in this world who have come from horrifically, unimaginable places, who are now billionaires. An important thing to note is that while I am using money as a ‘reward” in this example, the “reward” can be anything you want. This could be a mother wondering if she has the strength to pull herself and her child out of an abusive household. As soon as she believes she can, she will, and her “reward”, well that’s peace.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://pursuingpurpose.net
- Instagram: karissamerrill_
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karissa-merrill-392303176
Image Credits
Bellies N Babies a product of T.Y.E studios Carly Terenzio Photography