We recently connected with Carrie Green-Zinn and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Carrie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

Yes, I most certainly take vacations, both literally and figuratively! This is at the root of my becoming a travel blogger. Since a very early age, I’ve had a strong wanderlust instilled in me by my mother. I remember gazing out my bedroom window, seeing a hill just a few streets away. At the time, I imagined it was a foreign land that I dreamed I could visit someday!

As a young kid, our family vacations were stationwagon road trips to Cape Cod for two weeks. Then we expanded to a road trip to the Canadian Niagara Falls and to Wisconsin to see cousins. Flying came later. I vividly remember my very first plane flight at age 11 from Atlantic City, NJ to Worcester, MA, after spending time with neighborhood friends. I got really home sick, so they put me on a short flight on Allegheny Airlines. It was so exciting, I forgot all about being home sick! There was no turning back from there. By the time I was in high school, I was already plotting on how to see the world.

I was the first of my college friends to take a semester abroad. That trip to Europe and Israel was life changing in so many ways. Since that time, I’ve had many adventures and careers that have taken me to new places. From dancing with a circus in Mexico to dancing with psychiatric patients in San Francisco, I have never shied away from a new opportunity that will lead me to seeing more of the world.

When I decided that my retirement career would be as a travel blogger, I felt as though I found the perfect balance of creativity, giving back, and enjoying myself, all the while seeing new places and experiencing different cultures.

Vacations are so important for getting out of your day to day, stretching your comfort zone, and replenishing your sources of inspiration. I’m always up for an excursion!

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’m an almost retired school psychologist who began life as a dancer, turned dance therapist, and then turned licensed educational psychologist. In between two masters degrees and those careers came a brilliant jazz musician for a husband and two perfect daughters. Because I always loved to travel and photograph my adventures, I insisted we figure out ways to give our girls the travel bug early on. Saving money, using mileage points, and having summers off were all key to that plan. And it worked!

Now all I want to do is travel more, and share those experiences with others. I love to be the one who has the scoop on where to go, what to see, and where to eat. It’s the best feeling when people use my website for tips and inspiration and find their own adventures in places I love.

It didn’t occur to me that travel blogging could become an actual business until my girls were graduating college and the pandemic hit. I was writing stories for my mid life blog when I discovered the world of travel blogging. I was instantly hooked. It fueled my passion for travel, photography, and writing. I knew that when the pandemic was over, people were going to crave getting out of their backyards.

What sets me apart from a lot of other travel bloggers is my life phase. As an empty nested, semi retiree, I have both the time and the resources to go and do things that I’ve always dreamed of doing. I have first hand knowledge of travel with young kids, with adult children, for couples, and girlfriend getaways. I can offer insights for active hiking trips and big city excursions. I don’t discriminate! I’ll do it all! (Except for bungy jumping or skydiving).

This isn’t a time of winding down for me, in fact, I feel the opposite. I’m just getting started!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I am on what feels like the biggest learning curve of my life with my travel blog. While I am obsessed with it, love creating it, and am driven to grow it into the successful endeavor I want, the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing is ever present!

I am literally learning about technology in ways I never thought I would have to. The easy part is traveling, taking photos, and writing about it. What is not easy is building a website, and learning about SEO and marketing. These are things I knew nothing about, and never thought I would need to know about. Now, I’m now in very deep.

Those of you, like me, who grew up before computers, before the internet, and in the dark ages will understand why I had to unlearn everything I knew about being an expert in my field. I have been a very confident career woman my whole life, navigating a world of dance, people, children, and psychology. All of which came very naturally to me. This technology world, however, is not an organic thing for me at all!

When I decided to dive into this path, my daughters helped me learn a lot, but none of us were prepared for how inadequate it would make me feel to not know, not understand, and not be able to do this on my own. I’ve had to spend a lot of time, energy, and resources getting the help and support I need to make this work.

So, I try to remind myself daily not to compare my infant to someone else’s adult. I can’t jump ahead to be the best at what I do until I learn to do it. I’m problem solving and asking for help more than I ever have and find that “unlearning” my old patterns is helping me to learn new ones of resilience and determination.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Since I started my travel blog, my goals have been pretty simple. I wanted to share my love of travel with my readers, take photos, write, and have it pay for itself. I want people to enjoy what I create and find it inspirational and useful. My readers loved all my personal stories from my first creative blog project, so when I pivoted to a travel blog focus, they came with me. And the following continues to grow.

My free give away on the website offers a packing list and puts people on the subscriber list. I keep in touch with them via a newsletter. It’s a way to provide my subscribers with updates on the blog, seasonal travel ideas, and include them in my travel blog family. I try not to inundate their inboxes by just touching base once a month. It’s easy enough for me to sustain, and useful for my audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://carriegreenzinn.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carriegreenzinn/?next=%2F
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carriegz
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carriegreenzinn/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/carriegreenzinn