An Interview With Netrepreneur Michelle Brouse

by Bonnie Boots 

The world is not an easy place for overtly creative people. I know. I am one. Creative types are great at seeing the big picture, but not so great at sticking to the small details. Flitting from one idea to another is normal for us, so we're great at multitasking. But give us a list and make us work through it in a sequential manner, and we'll fail miserably.

These are just some of the singularities that mark right-brain-predominate thinkers. But because linear-based, left-brain strategies rule the business world, people like me are often at a disadvantage when it comes to finding employment. We just don't fit in at jobs that require us to do the same task over and over again, always the same way.

We're great, of course, at creating music, poems, cartoons and fantasy novels, but the "help wanted" ads offer relatively few positions requiring those skills. Instead, we tend to fall into jobs offering lots of variety but little pay; jobs that mostly fail to draw on our rare and real talents.

When I first stumbled onto the internet, I immediately saw the potential it offered creative people in terms of finding and creating their own employment. Getting active on the internet, after all, demands a great many creative skills, from web design to copy writing. And as the internet grows, so does the demand for people that can create.

That's why this month's Netrepreneuer Profile is Michelle Brouse, a highly creative woman who left ho-hum jobs behind when she took her talents on-line.

Michelle lives in Ohio, an area of the Midwestern United States known for it's extreme weather shifts. She's the stay-at-home wife and mother of two active little boys, ages 2 and 5.

Because her "office" is a desktop computer in a corner of the family living room, Michelle's work and home life tend to run together. She works, on average, between 2 and 7 hours a day. She may get a few minutes in the morning to answer email, and an hour or two before school lets out, but with two rambunctious boys competing for her time and attention, Michelle finds she gets most of her on-line work done in the evenings, after everyone else is asleep. "I can concentrate better, and get more done," she says. "But I still warn folks that I'm the turtle of the internet!"

Like so many creative people, Michelle found her talents for art, music and writing meant little when it came to finding work. Her first job, at age 14, was cleaning horse stalls at a local farm. Moving up to "groom," and eventually "trainer" was probably a dream job for a teenager, but as Michelle matured, the need for benefits like health insurance lured her into factory work.

After a number of factory jobs, then years as a bartender, Michelle says, "One day, I said to myself, "there has got to be more to life than THIS!"

In 1996, she enrolled in a one-year technical college for a course in computers and graduated at the top of her class. That lead to a position with a computer task group. While on the job, she learned to use Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft FrontPage to build web sites. Learning those two skills, she says, became the basis of her own business.

Michelle's first step into self-employment came when she discovered people were buying and selling ebooks on eBay. She bought master resell rights to an information package and posted her own auction. Much to her delight, she says she "made quite a few bucks."

She then bought into a membership site that gave her access to 2 public domain books each month. She realized that creating more attractive covers for these books would increase her sales.

"That membership site and my desire to create cool ebook covers lead me to build my first web site, www.ecoverfx.com," Michelle says, "and I haven't looked back since! Now I have so much work I can't keep up with it."

I asked Michelle what aspects of her life and work had been most changed by the internet. She says, "It has totally changed my life in that I no longer have to work for other people. I choose who to work with and who not to. I'm not stuck in a cubicle next to Mr. Goofball who sits around complaining all day and gets nothing accomplished. And I don't have to spend money on gas, parking, lunch, daycare, all the expenses that ate up my paycheck when I had a job outside the home.

"Now," Michelle says, " I get to work with people that actually enjoy their work, with people from all over the world that have "win-win" projects and solutions on their minds. I never hear them complaining. They're too busy building a new program or learning something new or talking about a recent accomplishment. What could be better than that?"

But best of all, reports Michelle, "is that I get to spend time with my boys when I want to, or when they need me. It's especially nice to be home when the boys get sick, or I get sick. Now I have all the "sick days" I need. You just can't beat working at home!"

Michelle says that one of the best aspects of being self-employed on the internet is that her income is no longer limited to a set "dollar per hour" as it was when she held a job. "I can spend two hours designing an ebook cover, and make $67.00 bucks, and that's just fine. Other times, I can spend 20 hours or more building a site like www.graphicfreebie.com which is out there working for me while I'm off doing things with my boys."

 "That," says Michelle, "is truly priceless. There's nothing like taking off with my boys and coming back home about 4 hours later to find an extra $300.00 bucks in my account. The sky is really the limit on the Internet, it just takes some time to figure it all out."

I asked Michelle how she was able to "figure it all out." She said her biggest problem, initially, was information overload, something nearly everyone faces at first. "You find all this great information online," Michelle says, "and it starts to boggle your mind. There are so many opportunities, you don't know what to do first. You don't know what to LEARN first. "

"When you work on your own," she says, " you have to learn a whole lot, unless you have the money to hire it out."

Michelle says the help she received in membership sites and on-line forums was priceless in helping her find her way through the information minefield.

The owner of one membership site helped her get her first web site rolling and also taught her about forums. "I learned from other folks in forums, and kept busy," she says. "I learned everything from how to buy domain names, where to get hosting, what to do when something breaks, how to rid yourself of computer viruses and spy ware, to how to build relationships online and everything in between."

Michelle says she has one word of caution about meeting people in forums: do a background check before you get involved. "I've put a lot of trust in people, and a few times it wasn't deserved," she says.

Now, before she begins working on a project with anyone, she puts their name in Google to check out their background and reputation. "Do your homework," Michelle advises, "and you'll avoid getting ripped off by con artists and worthless products."

In closing, I asked Michelle to give me the best advice she had for people just getting started on the internet. She said

 "The best advice I can give others would be this:
1. Decide what you want to do, and be sure it's something you will enjoy. You won't want to stick with it unless you enjoy it.

2. Make a plan on how to get there. Map out where you want to be in another five years, and plot out what you will need to learn. Then do your best to STICK to the plan. Don't allow yourself to get seriously sidetracked.

3. Build relationships with others online who can help you. Their advice and help is invaluable, and will save you much time and grief. Even if you just need to ask a few questions at a time from several different people. If there is one single thing that has helped me the most, it has been building great relationships with others.

4. You'll have to quit reading at some point and start acting. While in the information overload period, just quit reading and start doing. You'll find out what you need to know once you get started. When you get a few steps forward, you can always stop, find out what you need to know, then keep on going."
 

Netrepreneur Michelle Brouse is a website and graphics designer. Visit her sites here:

www.ecoverfx.com
www.graphicfreebie.com

 About the Author

Bonnie Boots is the publisher/editor of The Internet Wizards Magazine for people who want to create their own products and market on the internet. Register for your free 1-year subscription at http://www.theinternetwizards.com