The Traveling Entrepreneur: Auguste Hill
Welcome to The Traveling Entrepreneur! Each Monday, we'll feature a different entrepreneur who spends at least part of their working hours on the road. Learn their tips for working from anywhere, what they'd do differently if they had to start their business over again, and their favorite place to travel (so far). Enjoy!
Meet Auguste Hill
Q. Can you tell me a bit about your business?
A. I’m a writer and consultant to other creatives.
Q. What is your favorite thing about being self-employed?
A. Working from home or in a cafe. I can talk out loud to myself or make unapologetic noise as I read bits of dialogue and prose to myself, or while editing tricky material.
Q. What is the most challenging aspect of your business?
A. The challenge of being so exposed by my very personal non-fiction and, to a lesser degree, my fiction work. Being aware that I tend to hide behind the transparency of my work isn’t great for getting it read by an audience, so I have designed an alter ego marketing/producer persona to help me bridge that uncomfortable gap.
Q. If you had to start your business over from scratch today, what would be your top three priorities?
A. First, I'd have a humongous hotel budget for more travel. :) Second, I would have found great mentors from the start. Most importantly, I would have set up the Transgressive Writers Workshops sooner because the interaction with other Creatives keeps me happy and teaches me so much about the process of writing.
While doing research in Paris
Q. Do you travel frequently while maintaining your business?
A. Yes, I started my Ph.d in Critical Theory in Malta over the spring and circulate from there to Berlin and Los Angeles as well as brief pit stops in various cities as research requires. For instance, I will be in Paris at the end of September to start another workshop and then in India in the winter to meet some authors there.
Q. Are there any tools or resources that allow you to work from anywhere that you would recommend to other entrepreneurs?
A. Yes, I have an online calendar set up for my video chats and consultations that bequeaths the onus of scheduling internationally amidst the shifting time zones to the recipient. Maneuvering for mutually agreeable meetings between Europe and the U.S now gets done in the time it takes me to share a link instead of days of negotiating. It's truly a time saver! Also, when I am designing my own visuals for marketing campaigns, I have a FREE basic design app that is pretty streamlined so I have to stay lean and minimal with my approach. I love doing visuals so I make sure I indulge for a reasonable length of time.
Q. What has been your favorite destination so far?
A. Gozo Island out in the middle of the Mediterranean! I went there with a friend and we pushed our creative and personal limits on a daily basis, often getting lost in the most visually luscious of relatively primitive locals. I haven’t felt that disoriented since I was a kid playing in the vast acreage of our family farm and it gave me a chance to reassess my vision for my business from an essential, primal perspective. I find that locations play a big part [in my creativity] when I am writing.
At a performance lecture
Q. How does traveling enhance your current business?
A. Traveling keeps my mind in search mode as I’m constantly being reminded that what I thought of as The Real is only a sidebar to other cultures. This enables me to write from the beginner’s mind perspective and the effects are often akin to hours of less entertaining meditation practice. For instance, my current hub of Berlin was chosen with the mood of the piece I wanted to write in mind. The interplay between my own psyche and a city’s often precipitates as a part of the narrative in a meta sort of way, especially in the fiction work.
Q. What advice do you have for people who want to travel while they work?
A. Insist on Leniency. Sometimes I don many different hats as I design my mobile lifestyle. Managing a book’s development requires focused intention, so I set reminders when I need to be in peak performance mode. Because of the demanding nature of constantly reinventing the quotidian when I am editing, I have to remember to be loving, forgiving, and kind to myself as I produce workshops and a performance lecture plan . Finally, I have to be my own personal assistant designing a constructive holistic perspective when travel’s parameters shift as they often will.
In Switzerland
Having lived in over 50 places in the last 30 years, Auguste Hill is most comfortable untethered and on the move. She’s working on her Ph.d in philosophy toward a critique of the benefits of movement and trauma to accelerate creativity. She is constantly looking for ways to go beyond her limits and consults other Creatives who want to exceed their professional boundaries. Her book Consanguinity Disruptus comes out in the Fall. In conjunction with its release Auguste will be conducting performance lectures internationally while facilitating her Transgressive Writer Workshops for authors, screen writers and rogue academics. To learn more about Auguste, visit her website or follow her on Facebook. You can also learn more about her Transgressive Writers Workshop here.
If you're a globe trotting entrepreneur, and you'd like to be featured (or if you know someone who might), please email me at nicole@nicolehunteditingandwriting.com.
