We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Charles Schelinski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Charles, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
It seems to be a theme in the everyday lives of many people that something is missing. A purpose, a task to perform or something to work at other than simply subsisting. Ours is traveling, and more than that, taking what is wonderful out of traveling and helping others travel more, and travel better than they do now.
We have taken trips before, but I’m the kind of person that cannot sit on a beach for more than a few hours. I am restless and I like to explore, to move around. So I started to journal, but everyday life, going to work and coming home, doesn’t provide enough variance for me to be excited about journaling it. When we went on our first trip to Europe, which we only did because we managed to do it quite cheaply, I combated my jitters, my restlessness by recording my thoughts. It worked! My enjoyment of our trip skyrocketed. I was far less restless through recording what was going on and thinking back on it.
I have a good life, a good family, a job that pays well enough. This was something extra, something to vent out some effort, to blow off steam, and to work at. It calms me down, and while it is not my main purpose, having this website, this business, to focus on and enjoy, it helps me direct myself in the right direction.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Our brand is exemplified in our motto, which is Travel More, Travel Better. We would love to travel full time, creating helpful content for others to use to see the world in an affordable, and sustainable manner. Travel does not need to be expensive, or based on a consumer model.
To that end, right now we are focused on building a following, not by creating content simply for clicks or likes, but content that is helpful, wholesome, entertaining, and useful , even if it isn’t potentially viral. This is a slower road to take, but we think it is the right one.
Our first real trip was booked out of frustration. We were fed up with not doing anything important and with just working and with feelings that we were wasting our lives. One day we got an alert for $180 tickets to Europe from what was then scottscheapflights, and is now Going. It was a mistake fare, so we booked it right away, knowing the price would go up in hours if not minutes, which it did. The route took us from Wisconsin, to Washington, Canada, England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. It was a ridiculous way to travel, a convoluted way to get to Europe from the US, and we loved the whole thing.
After that, we felt exhilarated. We had found an activity that we loved, and we started recording our thoughts as a hobby. Then we made a website, because that sounded fun. Social media profiles were next; they were free after all. We bought a camera, and booked more trips. We found something to work at, to spend time on, that was wholesome and helpful. We found a purpose. The next step is to grow our base, and monetize in a way that is unobtrusive, so that we can travel more.
Learning to do all these skills (make a website, learn photography, now learning videography) has been a great experience. There has been a lot of frustration, but learning these new skills has changed what we can produce dramatically, and we can see the levels of proficiency that exist in each of these areas we are engaged in.
Our impact and feedback has been positive, and sustainable. It is difficult at this stage to monetize to the point where we can transition to maintaining a full time travel schedule, but that is changing, and as long as we are sustaining our message of low impact travel, that is fine with us.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Perseverance comes to mind immediately. Our first attempt at a website was horrendous. Seeing where we’ve come from, we are quite proud of our work so far, but there was a lot of frustration along the way. Stay the course, be diligent, and persevere. The rewards do not come at the beginning of the race, but after, and the race could be a long one.
Be a good student. Perhaps a better way to say what I mean is that you need to learn to learn better. We started not knowing a lot about what we wanted to accomplish, and looking back I can see many places where we could have saved a lot of time. We did not know better though. So learn as much as you can about what you want, as fast as you can, both on your own and with other people. The most helpful resources have been our friends, family, and people willing to give advice or teach a skill. Successful people do not happen alone.
Organize. Hindsight being what it is, I can see so many times where we should have done something differently and saved so much time! Make sure you organize your efforts, and keep your end goal in mind. There are two of us working on our brand together, so breaking up the responsibilities, making checklists and to do lists, and staying on schedule is important.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
Being invested in a project can be overwhelming, there’s no getting around it. Sometimes things don’t go your way, sometimes progress isn’t happening, or a setback frustrates you. So many examples come to mind! Learning to make a website with no prior experience was so frustrating!
Take a step back, and look at the big picture. There are going to be facets to your own goals, your own projects. When I am blocked writing an article, I can think of something to put on social media. I can fiddle with SEO on the website. I can edit some photos. Maybe I browse flights and see if there’s something cheap I can book.
Or maybe I need to take a day or two off completely from working on the Gilded Gosling. Some really good ideas have come to us after putting everything out of our minds for a while, and restarting.
The important thing is, and the crux of our advice, is to have good expectations; you will be overwhelmed, frustrated, and stymied in your efforts. Building a brand, starting a company is exactly like sales work: there will be a lot of “no” in your future, and dealing with those negatives, those dead end roads, is a given. You deal with it or you don’t, but expecting it to happen is imperative. Knowing that it is going to happen, you can learn how to deal with it in the best way that works for you. Having a support group that can lend support when it is needed is a great help.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gildedgosling.com
- Instagram: @GildedGosling
- Facebook: The Gilded Gosling
- Other: Threads – gildedgosling
Image Credits
All pictures taken by the Gilded Gosling team.
