For someone who didn’t grow up with a silver spoon, but grew up eating powdered milk for meals, it is pretty inspiring and exciting how Gina Horkey, a bodybuilding competitor, serial entrepreneur, and life coach, rose to success. In Homegrown Hustle’s Episode 24, we sat down with Gina to talk about all things entrepreneurship and how it boils down and connects to life, health, and fitness.
Shame isn’t something that Gina is holding onto. She is proud to speak about how poverty can be a powerful motivator to strive for success. Her values are intact – she believes being authentic and genuine to oneself is essential in personal and professional relationships. She is a hardworking millennial mom to three kids in Minnesota and is passing down everything she picked up in life to her children. It inspires me to see how Gina can be an open book; she is not ashamed of her past struggles. She also talked about her struggles with addiction and how she came about in her journey to sobriety.
Life and business can be two different domains, but from a perspective, they are interconnected, and one cannot thrive without the other. Gina has become a content writer, virtual assistant, and life coach. She is a serial entrepreneur. But what is a serial entrepreneur, and what do they do?
We don’t hear about serial entrepreneurship these days. No matter how multifaceted people can be, handling a business alone is challenging, and jumping from one business venture to another is a game of chance. According to Investopedia, one in five businesses fail in the first two years, and almost half never make it to their fifth birthday.
What is Serial Entrepreneurship?
A serial entrepreneur is an individual who starts multiple ventures. They may revert or withdraw from one business before embarking on another or simultaneously manage several ventures, entrusting leadership responsibilities to others.
Beyond establishing their ventures, they frequently invest in or engage with other startups that interest them.
Such entrepreneurs typically excel at spotting fresh business prospects and crafting a company’s vision. They are particularly enthusiastic about the venture’s initial phases, including tasks like conceptualizing products, assembling teams, and securing investments.
They often possess ambitious problem-solving skills, a high tolerance for risk, a never-ending stream of innovative ideas, and a deep market comprehension.
Kickstarting Content Writing
Gina started her journey to serial entrepreneurship when she used a Facebook group called 30 Days of Hustle to get started. She wasn’t even a professional writer at that point. But that didn’t hold her back from venturing into content writing. She was able to find clients by connecting with the right people and doing subcontract work for them. She also did get samples by writing herself on topics that she found exciting and posting them on a website. After the experimentation, Gina was able to launch her website, horkeyhandbook.com
Content marketing was new at the time. Gina and her mentor saw that opportunity, and in November 2014, she started creating one lesson a day, teaching people how to be successful in freelance writing. She started selling it in December of that same year for $25 per seat. After hiring a marketing strategist, Gina ventured into teaching affiliate marketing to her customer base.
Venturing as a Virtual Assistant
In September 2014, Gina took her first virtual assistant client. She said, “Virtual assistance is just this umbrella that says, hey, I can perform whatever online services you need, whether it’s bookkeeping, project management, podcast production, but customer service was my jam.”
However, that journey didn’t entirely take off for her in an instant. It took her a couple of follow-ups to reach her first client. She said that she was blunt and concise about it. That first deal was at $50,000 at the end of 2014.
Gina also explained how she established a website called fullybookedva.com for people who want to grow into virtual assistant services. She said her awareness of the market’s needs made her take the initiative to establish a platform for aspiring virtual assistants.
Journey to Sobriety
“ I’m gonna be sober five years here on May 5th.” Gina opens up about her struggle with addiction and how she used alcohol to block out fear and imposter syndrome.
“Instead of like acknowledging and maybe processing through negative emotion, which is a lot of the work that I talk about here as a life coach now, I just blocked it and just didn’t allow it and kept moving forward anyways, which worked for a while, but then caused other problems long term.”
Being a serial entrepreneur comes with great responsibility and pressure, and it is normal to experience roadblocks along the way, just like Gina did. She overcame it, and now she’s arrived to venturing out as a life coach.
Venturing Out as a Life Coach
“There’s fear involved every day when it comes to business, as far as I’m concerned. So we all have to like taking action and moving forward.”
After going through different business ventures, Gina holds that she can always take anything head-on if there is determination.
“It makes you focus when you have more to juggle. I mean, yeah, you might drop something, but if I get nine things done when I’m juggling 10, and you’re juggling two, and you get both of those done, well, cool, I got nine. But that one thing could be important.”
On the other hand, she emphasizes the difference between saying yes and people-pleasing.
Embracing Your Authentic Self
“If you’re saying yes to somebody, because you want them to like you, but you don’t want to do the thing, let’s say they invite you to an activity, and you’re saying yes to please them as a person, people pleasing, then you’re lying to them because you don’t want to do it. And so you’re not being authentic.”
Authenticity can save you from a lot of trouble, and that’s what Gina saves her clients from. She shared how one of her clients got out of a sticky dating situation and turned it into something positive. She said that during a coaching session, she made her client text someone she saw, telling him to be just friends. They’re friends and workout buddies, taking a big part of her life.
Moving on, Gina highlights how discipline can be integral to reaching the best version of yourself. As someone who dabbles in wellness and life coaching, Gina goes back into budgeting and interconnects it to dieting. She explains how dieting is a holistic process, and the best diet is the one you don’t stop.
Many people struggle to commit to change. As a life coach, Gina emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and the willingness to take action and take a chance.
“Awareness is key. If we don’t know what we’re doing in the first place, there’s no way we can unpack it, see what it’s about, and change it.”
She added, “A lot more love, acceptance, and then the future version of yourself is my favorite.”
The Power of Why
There are so many things we can do in life. We can learn many skills and experiences to collect along the way. In our journeys, we experience making mistakes; sometimes, forgetting them like it’s a cautionary tale can be challenging. We can be stuck in making new choices because we are held back on our part. However, Gina breaks this belief system and tossing it out. As a therapist, Gina doesn’t deal with trauma because she’s typically not looking backward. She’s looking at where you are and where you want to go. She believes that is more empowering and purposeful.
“Some people’s therapy would be more appropriate for others. Life coaching would be more appropriate for what I like about it is that we’re future casting to work towards the most evolved, best version of ourselves, getting what we want, and not living out of the past so much.”
Wrapping It Up
Wrapping up, here are some extra notes Gina gave us during her podcast session:
- Know yourself based on the goals you have for yourself in the future
- Taking action in the present, fully aware of how it’s going to impact your future
- Rather than accomplishment, take every experience as merit to developing your personal self
As a serial entrepreneur, Gina is always eager to learn and teach others. She is taking every experience as an opportunity to learn.
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