



What does your position at Ulku Logistics entail? How does a typical workday look for you?

In short, my position entails management and direction of all content creation and related efforts.



Our content is often front-loaded at the beginning of the month so my typical workday changes a bit as the month progresses.

After the obligatory morning email check which I'm sure we all do, I review content orders that have been completed by our writers, requesting revisions if necessary. I'll coordinate with our proofreading and editing team to have each piece of the new content reviewed more in-depth. This team will also create metadata titles, metadata descriptions, and place the internal links. Those pieces of content may take a day or so to come back to me, so I usually have content from a few days ago to pull and send to clients for review. I also answer any client questions I receive in the interim. If a client requests revisions, I coordinate with our editors to make those changes - once I receive the content back, I send those on to the client for secondary review.

I also organize and update an internal content tracking sheet throughout the month to keep a bird's eye view of what content has been ordered, edited, linked, as well as what's ready to post, what is awaiting client approval, and where each piece is posted.

Typically towards the end of the month, content production has stopped and all content has been sent out or is awaiting client approval. At this point, we conduct an internal meeting regarding what content to produce for each client based on budget, SEO needs, and brand needs for the upcoming month. Over the next week, I pull all this information together, create instructions for each piece of content individually, and submit the entire order to our team of writers. Some months this can be upwards of 80,000-words of content or more.

At the end of the month, I have a few days where I have very little work; mostly client questions coming in, or some months we get a new client signed right after our meeting so I have to send in an extra order. Beyond that, I get that chance to take a few days off (while on-call) and do something that I'm passionate about, or just take the time to rest and recover.

I feel that is the rewarding part of owning a business; being able to listen to your body and rest when your work is done, rather than working because you're supposed to be clocked in for x number of hours.

Ulku Logistics is a family-run business, right? So you were recruited into this position I'm assuming? Did you already have these skills (copywriting, SEO, etc.) in your toolbelt from previous work, or have you had to devote a lot of time to learning? What were you doing before working with Ulku? Take us back to the roots of where you are now if you will.

It's not a family-run business, instead, it's made up of three owners with different, complementary skill sets.

Starting from the beginning, before I dove into the world of working online, I worked as a traditional media artist. Oil paintings, acrylics, spray paint, sculpting - name a material and I've probably made something with it. It was enough to support myself, but my passion for it was burning out. At this time, I traveled on the Renaissance Faire circuit with my fiance, Elliot. I dropped art for a while and worked on the circuit as a salesperson for some other vendors, but both of us were growing a bit restless for something new.

We quit the circuit and decided to start our own web design company. We quickly decided web design wasn't what we really wanted to pursue. It felt very similar to running commissions in my art business; every client wanted it to be perfect, and we would spend more time realigning a single image on a page rather than affecting change in something. We joined several training programs and our company became a whitelabel SEO service because we found many people in these programs needed help scaling their business. We learned an extraordinary amount on the subject through connections, trial and error, and plain-and-simple research.

During the switch from a web design company to a whitelabel SEO service, we didn't have any clients, so it was "nose to the grindstone" time in regards to learning. I began freelance writing to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads while I was working on the business with Elliot. That was when I discovered writing was something I was good at, which came easily and actually provided income (that was the surprising part!)

I began learning everything I could about writing, SEO-optimized content, and so on. This was an area I could specialize in, so I began directing our company's writing team and managing the content orders and specifications once we had clients coming in.

Half a year later, we onboarded our largest client yet.

He and Elliot worked together very well to craft pitches and SEO strategies, which also meant he wasn't so much of a client as he was a strategic partner. Unfortunately, since we were separate companies, a lot of money was lost every month in administration and processing fees. We decided it would be better (and easier) to merge the two companies together, dissolving our whitelabel service and joining as partners at Ulku Logistics. Here, I have both expanded and refined my role, but remain the Director of Content.

I understand you have no formal institutional education, in fact, you were unschooled. Can you tell us more about what unschooling looked like for you and the impacts it's had on your development and ability to self-educate?

I was indeed unschooled. Unschooling took on a different form every day, so it's hard to describe it in one form. It has certainly helped me grow and learn, not just as a kid but also as an adult. The biggest impact I feel it had was to help me be more self-reliant or resourceful. Most of my life, I learned without textbooks, so I learned to look for the answers outside that box.

As a teenager, I decided to begin running event-based businesses, so it put both commerce and social knowledge to the test quite frequently. I believe unschooling was probably one of the best things for me both emotionally and mentally because it not only gave me the opportunity to do those things as a kid, but I was given the freedom of choice in every aspect of my life.

Now, as an adult, I understand what I want to pursue, rather than having spent years pursuing a college course I picked because I was running out of time until the semester began. I actually received a mail invitation to a college when I was 16 after having filled out a random IQ test somewhere online. I researched the college a bit, and surprisingly, it was the real deal. After a few weeks of deliberating on it, I chose not to go because I didn't feel confident in what I wanted to do...and I'm glad I didn't.

This sort of ties into self-reliance, but I also feel that unschooling has provided me with the tools I need to use the resources around me to build what I need to. Between owning businesses as a teenager and owning the business I do now, I have never truly had a "normal" job, and I don't really want to. The closest I've come to a 9-5 schedule is selling on the Renaissance Faire circuit where I traveled for a while, which meant I had work every Saturday and Sunday (occasionally Friday) from 8am to 6-7pm, depending on the Faire. The rest of the week, I was able to pursue whatever goals I had. Some weeks, that was playing dungeons and dragons with my friends for five nights in a row, other weeks it was working on building my own projects or practicing new skills.

Overall, unschooling has been empowering and it has given me the tools I need to be self-reliant and resourceful. I grew up with - and still have - a mindset of "anything is possible so long as the work is put in."

Even though I'm no longer traveling on the circuit, I do still travel frequently because it's something I enjoy, and I know it's possible. I see so many people who don't think they can get out and do that, and I feel that, because of unschooling and owning my own business and such, I never put up those barriers to begin with, so that is another thing I'm grateful for.

I really love everything you just articulated. I've mentioned unschooling to so many adults in casual conversation and the sentiment is almost always overwhelmingly negative. You're a great example of how positive of an impact unschooling can make in regards to creativity, self-motivation, confidence, and self-education.



Moving on - what would you consider the three biggest successes in your life thus far?