We recently connected with Michele Granera and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Michele, thanks for joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

I am thrilled working as a creative. I worked at a “regular job” in a corporate, 9-5 setting off and on over the past 10 years and it was draining to me. I am the type of person who will do what is needed, and for that season in my life, working at a stable job with a corporation was what was needed. I did the job and I did it well!

However, it was not nurturing for me mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. This year, in January 2023, I put in my two-week notice and officially started working as a creative full-time. The process has been fun and at times confusing, but ultimately astonishingly life-giving for me. I am constantly learning new things and surprising myself by taking risks.

Working as a creative has turned out to be exceedingly rewarding and I am so glad I took the leap.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi! My name is Michele and I run the travel blog Adventures Abound, which focuses on outdoor adventures, sustainable travel, and hidden gems. I want to encourage my audience to get out and enjoy adventures around them without necessarily having to hop on a plane and travel around the world.

I started traveling more frequently after I studied abroad in college, and over the years I couldn’t quite seem to shake the travel bug. Eventually, I started a hobby blog and Instagram account, but after a few years, I have finally come over to the full-time professional creative side.

I provide itineraries and well-researched guides to locations that I visit alongside beautiful photography on my website. I use social media to supplement this with inspiration and mini guides, as well as forming a community. Clients can be destination marketing organizations, brands, and businesses looking to reach the audience that I curate. I help them tell the story of their brand or destination, and always stand behind my storytelling 100% meaning that what you read is my honest opinion. Having my audience’s trust is the most important thing.

I also love that working for myself and choosing the clients I work with allows me to be authentic to what is important to me. I focus on sustainability and the outdoors in every destination I visit, from bigger cities to rural areas. I won’t photograph anyone without their consent, and I always talk to business owners when possible before writing about them. To me, travel is less about the transactional experience and more about the people, the communities, and the culture.

Not every blog or business keeps going after the first year, but we are here for the long haul. When we visit a destination, we go deeper than the guidebook. We connect with the community we are in, and we take the time needed to translate that into our guides. This makes us different because we are willing to put in the time and effort it takes to share quality content.

I would say that a lot of times creativity stops being fun when it is required. When there are expectations, deadlines, and standards it can be hard to persevere but being willing to keep at it will bring you far. This is one thing that sets me apart as a creator and blogger as well as a small-business owner.

I am extremely proud of the way my small business has been growing so much in its first year. While I am still a small creator, I create extremely high-quality work and it shows. I have already worked with several remarkable destinations in my first year because of this.

Creative work is incredibly collaborative, and I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for the blogging and creative community.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I have always been a big dreamer, and I love media that encourages that. I live by the quote “If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.”

A book I read recently (or let’s be honest – listened to the audiobook of) was Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth Gilbert is the same brilliant author that brought us Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things. Her book Big Magic inspired me to pursue creativity in a way that is life-giving and BIG.

She doesn’t require you to do something creative for work; one of her main examples is a lady who takes up figure skating in her later adulthood. “You are not required to save the world with your creativity.” Creativity fuels our souls and this book has had a huge impact on encouraging me to keep being creative, to be brave, and Do It Scared.

However, with bravery and creativity must also come practicality and business acumen. For this, being a part of a like-minded community has been the greatest resource. Attending conferences with other creative and business-minded women and connecting with them is the only way I have been able to learn everything I know about running my own business and I will always shout out my community in return.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I was in college, I studied Biology and hoped to work in the research sector after graduation. Research is one of the hardest things to work on, because it involves constantly failing and being willing to keep going anyway. It turns out it was not for me and eventually, I moved on to work in an unrelated field.

Three years later, I landed an internship abroad teaching undergrad students about field research. I was sure that this hands-on experience would finally jumpstart my career in the research industry, but was again unsuccessful. However, I still had the opportunity to share about the culture of the country we were working in with the students, and these are the experiences that led me to start the hobby blog that grew into my business today.

I get to incorporate my love of sharing cultures with others through my blog. I get to make sure that sustainability, environmental protection, and ethical travel are an everyday part of my business. I get to be paid to go on hikes in some of the most beautiful places in the world. So much of that came from the experiences I had before.

I suppose this is a story about pivoting as much as resilience. The irony is that as a freelance creator, I am constantly pitching my work and hearing no or nothing at all. If I let that stop me, I wouldn’t have landed 4 paying clients in my very first year! Learning to grow, change, and keep pushing forward are paramount to the success of my work as a creative.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theadventuresabound.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/adventuresabound
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theadventuresabound
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@adventuresabound

Image Credits
All Images – Michele Granera