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

Carli, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

In August of 2023 I was laid off from my job. I had left my job at an interior design firm to “switch to the dark side” as we usually say in the A&D (architecture & design) industry for anyone that has moved over to sales. I loved that I was able to be more in control of my schedule, not sit on calls and meetings all day, even be paid to travel around the Pacific Northwest. And I was actually doing really well into my first year. Then, on a wednesday, the day after my new furniture arrived for my apartment I had only moved into 6 weeks prior, I was laid off. I pretty much went through every emotion possible in the first 24 hours, and honestly I’m still pretty bitter about the whole situation.

I flew back home to Minnesota 10 days later, for a pre-scheduled trip to spend time with friends and family before traveling through Belgium for a week with my mom. I didn’t return back to my apartment in Seattle until almost 3 weeks later. After getting set up with unemployment, and spending hours everyday job searching, which left me mentally drained, I started to think about “what do I actually like”?

The answer came back to travel. I’ve had an appreciation for traveling since I was younger, but following Covid I started expanding when, where and how I was traveling. I also was a person that friends would often reach out to asking “where should I go here?” or “what did you like about _____”?

I can enjoy a weekend of sloth and couch rotting with the best of them, but having nothing to do for days or weeks on end does not work for me. Whenever I have too much free time I seem to always fill it. Since I had nothing but time, and realized travel was a much bigger passion than design, I decided to start a travel blog. Because why not? I didn’t really know how much work goes into blogging or social media content creation, but I had the time and desire to learn. Next thing I knew, I was at my desk editing wordpress and writing blog posts until 3am every night (I’m a lifelong night person). That is until I started another 9-5 two months later.

But that itch to share information, learn new skills, and get creative stayed and I continued to work on my blog and content on nights and weekends. Slowly building up my pages, honing my skills, expanding my network and meeting people in this brand new industry.

I might not be as far along as I had hoped when I started this endeavor 3 years ago, but I’m able to see how much I’ve progressed from my first blog posts to the most recent, even my videos and editing from the end of last year to now has grown.

I know this is worthwhile because it is something that I’m doing for myself, rather than for some corporation. In my most recent job, nothing about it felt meaningful except the person to person connections I had with my clients. But with blogging and content creation, what you create isn’t transactional, it’s creating a connection with your audience, and as a bonus they might follow or subscribe to your newsletter or click on your links.

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 background and context?

I’m Carli, a former interior designer that has now transitioned into travel blogging and content creation. I started this passion project following a layoff 3 years ago. It has been my creative outlet since that time, continuing to grow as I learn more skills, travel to new destinations around the world and meet other travel creators.

There are a lot of creators with beautiful inspirational photos and videos on social media, but that’s where it ends. They’re just for show. Most people aren’t going to vacation in the Maldives or spend 2 weeks on the French Riviera. Don’t get me wrong, I also want to do those things as well, but as an average American I’ve always been limited with vacation time and money.

With my blog and social media I share the information that is going to help people travel more for frequently, figure out how to get to a destination and what are the highlights once you get there. I also share a lot about solo travel. A lot of people (myself included) lose so much time waiting for others. Covid really taught me that our time is limited and we shouldn’t waste it. If you want to go on that epic bucket list trip, do it. You’ll regret not going more than you will ever regret going. Even the worst trips at least have the best stories.

I think what helps set me apart from some others, is my sense of authenticity. If I went somewhere and had a bad experience I’m either not going to show it, or I’m going to share what I did not like about it or what went wrong. One of my best viewed videos is a London hotel review where I say “there isn’t really anything special about this hotel” but I posted about it because it was clean, in a good location, and a great price point. There are other creators that will post listicles just for the sake of putting up content, but I share about things I’ve experienced because that is the knowledge base I can provide.

One of the best moments I’ve had is early on, in the first year of my blog, I had a woman email me about my blog post on traveling by train in Morocco, asking for some additional advice/information. I was so excited that this stranger had even read my post, let alone was trusting me to help guide her further. It’s a good reminder that you don’t need a huge following or monthly views to have a meaningful impact. My goal is to continue providing useful information like making sure you get your free Delta miles if your bag shows up after 20 minutes, teaching you how to solo travel safely, or just sharing why I loved the ABBA museum in Stockholm and you will too.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had learned about SEO (search engine optimization) from the beginning of my blogging journey. I spent about 6 months just writing away, making all these posts that no one was reading, because they weren’t written with SEO in mind. SEO isn’t particularly sexy or creative, in fact it’s kind of the opposite. But, if you aren’t writing in a way that gets your page and your posts seen then you may as well just have a livejournal instead.

I eventually took an SEO course which was pretty eye opening in how much I didn’t know. I am still nowhere near expert level when it comes to SEO, but I at least have a stronger foundation. In fact, last year a friend of mine went to Antigua Guatemala with some high school and college friends. When she came back she told me one of her friends was looking up bars in Antigua and my post was on page 1, and she said “my friend wrote that!” I didn’t even know it was on page 1 (see not an expert) but that never would have happened if I hadn’t gotten the basic skills.

No matter what field you are in, take time to learn and improve your skills. That could be a writing workshop, watching YouTube videos on how to master video editing in CapCut, or find local or online courses. The time (and sometimes money) you invest in yourself and your creative field will only help get you closer to your goals.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I see online a lot of people say things like “I’m so sick of influencers they should get a real job”. I would love for the keyboard warriors in the comments to put together a 30-60 video and let me know how long it took them to film, script, edit and post. There is so much work behind the scenes that goes into creating content. And yes, there are some people that can be obnoxious, but isn’t that the case with any industry?

I see this a lot from businesses saying something like I had someone reach out asking to do a paid collab and they don’t get anything out of it. And that’s fine if it doesn’t work for them, but it goes the other way as well. Brands reach out to content creators all the time asking all this work basically for free or “paid with product”. Product doesn’t pay the bills. Exposure doesn’t pay the bills. Having a marketing company do a full advertising campaign would cost tens of thousands of dollars, but they’re asking not only for free labor, but in some cases photos and videos to run their own ads. That means they are using your work to make money while all you get is some sort of “free” product.

Another thing that is different (at least for myself) is consistency. As a person with ADHD (although there is a strong correlation between creativity and ADHD and/or neurodivergence) it can be easy to burn out if I push myself too much. I can get into patterns of intense hyperproductivity, ex: writing 5 blogs in a week, and then a week or two later struggle to even write one blog. And unless we’re working with a client and have a specific timeline to turn around content, it can be difficult to keep those parameters. I’ve learned that I do not need to post to social media every day (like some accounts push) because that is just not realistic for me, and when I don’t meet those goals then I can have a feeling of failure. Instead, I’ve learned that 3-5 times is just fine, and the world won’t end if I skip a few days (or maybe even a week).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://adventureswithcarli.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adventureswithcarli/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adventureswithcarli
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@adventureswithcarli