Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexandra Borzo

Hi Alexandra, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

I like to tell my clients that, when I first started working independently and from abroad, it was back when that was still novel. I could mention where I lived on an onboarding call, and it would cast surprise and marvel over the conversation. Post-covid, however, and with the boom of gig work, my whereabouts are no longer a surprise.

My path to independent work, though, will forever be unconventional. It was an accident, actually. When I moved away from the U.S., I left a cushy job at a big bank’s headquarters in the Midwest. It was the most engaging role I’d even had — better than any I’d even dreamed of — but my heart was elsewhere. For a long list of personal reasons, I left the bank for a marketing contract that I was offered in Guatemala.

Fast-forward six months, and I was relocating instead to Peru’s capital, coastal Lima. Right before the move, I created an Upwork account as an idle curiosity. I thought, “let’s see what’s out there,” but the plan was to dabble only until I found a local job in Lima, which I needed to secure my worker’s resident visa.

Nearly eight years later, my once heart-pounding and intense work of a freelance lifestyle has evolved instead into the security of working as an independent contractor. My clients are fixed. They’re loyal to me, and I to them. My best client is also my longest-term client. The kind of consulting and writing I’m doing at this point, too, is more specific to my interests and expertise than I could have ever imagined.

That’s how the last eight years looked…on paper. Great. An independent professional who proved herself and whose business organically grew and cemented into something ideal in every way. Looking at the shifts and pivots in my personal life to make it all happen, however, involves seven apartments, 19 short-term vacation rentals, a new continent, two more visas, roughly 50 international trips, and so much more.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

The biggest challenge has always been the same: balancing personal life with work. In the early days, when I was frantically accepting any gig a client would offer, I was working around 80 hours a week. I felt so stressed so often that the physical symptoms were notorious. I couldn’t sleep. My skin was breaking out in new ways I’d never seen before. I developed acid reflux.

Even as business began to go really well—better projects with superior pay—I was too nervous to let good work go. It was easy to refer the clients whose projects (or pay) didn’t match what I wanted to other freelancers, but there was so much good work coming in, too, that I still found myself saying “yes” too often.

It took years to learn how to juggle great work with my personal life, namely spending time with my partner and keeping up with marathon training (a hobby that happens to take a lot of time and energy). I’m still tweaking my personal choices and habits to find greater balance still, but it has gotten significantly better.

Over the years, there were countless days of waking up before 4:00 AM, running hours before the sun came up, then planting myself in front of the computer before 7:00 AM to stay there until 9:00 PM, before going straight to bed to start all over. After years of that, my unforgiving schedule got better when I had a new reason to shave down my client book. I should have done it earlier and of my own volition, but I was finally required to by another big change: I was moving to another country again.

In order to relocate to Spain in 2023, my client book became considerably smaller, and I was finally able to get a foothold on the lifestyle that fit my emotional and physical needs. I had so much time for other things that I described my work schedule in 2023 as “almost normal.” (Though, the “other things” included an enormously time-consuming sequence of immigration paperwork tasks, a challenging search for a Madrid apartment, etc.) By 2024, I was finally established in my new home and was using the extra freetime for living life. I gained such great momentum with my hobbies that it was finally easier to say “no” to good work thtat I didn’t need. I stick now to the best work only, and it’s allowed me engage with more energy and focus on the projects that really fit.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

I remember, as a kid, the long detective stories I used to write. I filled floppy disks with stories of 50 pages or more. I also remember my fixation with writing articles and inventing ads to compose my own magazines, which I bound with yarn. (The articles could range from reviews of my favorite Animorphs books to listicles of how to plan for a treasure hunt. This was around fourth and fifth grade, mind you.)

I’ve been reflecting on my childhood a lot lately because of the professional projects I now get to do. I say “get to do” because I’m often blown away by how much fun I get to have while I work. Somehow, the writing and crafts I felt passionate about at age 10 merged together, and I actually make a living now to do more of the same.

There’s my longest-standing client, for instance, whose marketing I handle. This includes the big-picture strategy down to the implementation of every detail. My linear brain is always happy when I’m deep in my charts and calendars, and my inner-writer and ad artist gets to play where words meet design.

Then, there’s another long-term client for whom I get to write tens of thousands of words each month to help inspire other creatives. How fun is that?

If asked, back when I was 10, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I don’t think I could have dreamed up a position as perfect as this. My client book is mercifully smaller now, too, with fewer than a dozen active contracts. Between copy writing, ghost writing, and marketing consulting, it’s still hard to explain exactly what I do. Whatever you call it, though, it makes me as happy as a schoolgirl.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?

Now that I’m thinking even more about my childhood, I should turn again to the detective stories I used to write. I still remember some of the logic behind the character names I chose. I also remember typing away for hours in my parents’ bedroom, where the family computer was kept, back in the ‘90s.

More than the writing, though, I enjoyed sharing the creative process with other creative people. I didn’t need their input or validation since I hadn’t learned yet to acquire a taste for constructive criticism (nor did editing ever occur to me). Instead, I fed off of others who had the same itch to create things.

Fortunately, I found that in my best friend in grade school, another writer. She wrote even more than I did. Actually, she was more prolific and better than me in everything at school, too — grades, sports, music — but I found her talent enormously motivating. I remember sharing our stories with one another, and even trying to coauthor some. In fact, I believe I felt as comfortable with her as I did because I could muse out loud about creative projects without masking my excitement. She was openly excited about her projects, too. It was a special time.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.borzo
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aborzo/