Susan Lahey is Marc’s co-author for both Repurpose Your Career books. This is one of the best of the 25-plus interviews Marc has recorded in the last year. Susan is a freelance writer who is driven to take on new challenges, whether that’s writing about the nature of meaning, the scary adventure of changing your career, or truly death-defying acts like jumping out of airplanes and parenting. Marc was Susan’s first real Austin client.   Listen in for thoughts on enduring hardship with bravery and purpose.   Key Takeaways: [1:14] Marc announces his first audience survey on what demographic listens to the podcast, what you like, and what you would like to hear about in the future. Please take the survey at CareerPivot.com/PodcastSurvey. This will redirect you to a Survey Monkey page. Marc will keep the survey going through 2017 to hear from you. [1:55] Marc reviews the series format of this podcast for new listeners. The previous episode was an expert interview. This episode is a career pivot interview. The next episode will be Marc’s story of moving abroad and taking the job with him. The fourth episode of the month is a Q&A episode with Elizabeth Rabaey. [3:43] Marc introduces Susan Lahey and welcomes Susan to the podcast. [3:52] Susan is always tempted to stay home with her adult children and watch Netflix, paint, and hide out from everyone. So she makes herself go do stuff, instead. She just got a tattoo that says “Life is Short.” [5:12] Susan was a newspaper reporter for the beginning of her career, at the Kansas City Star, from age 17 until college and as her first job out of school. After several years she got a job as an associate editor at the business lifestyle magazine in KC. She left there to raise a family, freelancing from home. [5:54] At age 42, Susan was divorced, took the children and moved off the grid to New Mexico, taking what work she could get. The Taos News wanted her as a freelancer but didn’t move on it. [6:55] She started working as a community liaison for an EPA technical assistance group for a Superfund project. That was tough since she did not speak Spanish and was new to the community. She also did substitute teaching. She was broke. [7:26] Susan and her children volunteered at a food pantry for the food. Finally, she got on as a freelancer with the Taos News, for maybe $100 an article. [8:16] Taos was challenging in being far behind the times. Susan was out of touch with the times as a freelancer. She wanted to give her children a better opportunity. [9:38] After a trip to Europe they were motivated to change their lives. Austin had “a similar vibe” to Taos, a University, and a lot of intellectual capital. Susan rented an apartment and drove the family to Austin to start over. [10:43] Susan finally sold the Taos house for “five dollars.” At first, she wrote eHow articles, but that was unsatisfying for her. She attended networking events and learned how to market herself online with blogs and web content. She pushed herself, using EMDR psychotherapy to help her overcome fear and stress of networking. [15:33] Creatives are typically introverted and selling yourself as a creative is really hard for them. Confidence is essential for approaching clients. [17:26] Marc was Susan’s first major client. Then she got some blogs. Through a contact who was recommended by Marc, she started writing tech news articles for a tech startup publication and finally got paid reasonably. She has covered SXSW for six years and went to Thailand and Norway to see their technologies. [19:36] Susan got an article in Wired and is hoping to write more for them. She had also written a profile for bootstrap guru Bijoy Goswami, who works people through the psychological risks and fears of starting your own business. [20:10] Bijoy introduced Susan to his best friend, Danny Gutknecht, and Susan worked with him on one book and other writings. They will write more. Most of her work is with Danny. When Susan has 'bandwidth,' she looks f