Elesha Piper is at the beginning of her success story and that’s something which started once she found herself in a debt binge and overwhelmed.
In this interview, made possible by The Constant Investor, we learn how she turned herself around and how she is using her story of transformation to bring a community together and start her own business.
“Basically, I had no savings, no job and I was about $15,000 in personal debt with no assets, and a huge interest rate.”
“I was so ashamed, that was my biggest emotion, because no one knew about it. I felt really alone because no one talks about this stuff.”
The turnaround came from the internet.
“I became obsessed with blogs on personal finance, on getting debt free”.
“Suddenly I was connecting with people on the internet and seeing, oh my gosh it’s not just me, people are in a lot more debt than I was so that was quite comforting in some ways.”
“I stopped buying stuff. I just spent so much money on crap really, so that was my focus. There was no cutting back. It was just; you need to stop buying stuff.”
She channelled her often confronting, often funny experiences of shedding the debt by writing about them.
“I basically blogged anonymously for the 14 months that I was paying off the debt, it was awesome, so cathartic.”
“I came across minimalism as a lifestyle again via blogs, there’s a lot of interlinking between debt freedom, not owning very much and having a very simplistic approach to life and it all kind of weaves in together.”
Her own experiences and desire to understand our relationship with possessions led Elesha to start her current blog, Minimise to Maximise.
“I was writing about my personal experience with minimalism.”
“About a year ago I had a post that went viral on the internet and my Facebook page went from 170 people liking it to over 15,000 in a week and a half. I suddenly had a lot of interest from people asking if I did coaching and all these kinds of things that hadn’t even crossed my mind.”
Elesha also talks about trying to start a business while working full time.
“A lot of my audience is now outside of Australia, so throughout last year I was doing a lot of virtual coaching, I was also working with people in their homes here, helping them declutter. I also did a class as well last year, and still blogging and writing in between, as well as working full time.”
“Niche plus the internet is just a success bomb waiting to go off”
“I feel like there is so much opportunity to tell a story about how you’ve solved a problem, the Internet makes it so easy to spread the word, to be a guide for someone.”
“I feel that’s how I got to this point, it was other people and their stories. I hope to one day be the success story that other people look to and go, you know what, if she can do it so can I”.
Listen to the full interview at The Constant Investor or iTunes
