Pinterest Management & Pursuing My Passion (Horse Trekking in Italy)

Ciao belle (if you were wondering, belle is the plural of bella - for my Italian language nerds out there 🤓), 

Thanks for reading my blog post today. I am going off on another trajectory, as this post doesn’t really cover content marketing tips or Pinterest marketing tips, but instead, it covers remote work ideas and how I freelance online as a Pinterest manager. 

Many people want to quit their day jobs in order to fulfil their dreams and passions (we’re very lucky if we’re paid to actually do something that we’re really passionate about). In this blog post, I will share how I found a way to live my passion (horses and adventure, i.e., horse trekking) while continuing to work remotely online as a Pinterest account manager.

You don’t have to win the jackpot and land your dream job in order to do what you really want to do. This is what I have found works for me in order to afford the freedom to do what I am passionate about. 

Find an online job that you like, and that you’re good at… 

You don’t exactly have to love what you do. The trick is to find a gap in the online job market where your skills are needed and you can offer an online skill or trade that you’re good at and enjoy.

In the past three years I’ve earned a living mostly as a freelance offering Pinterest management services, working as a virtual technical VA (virtual assistant), and a Pinterest ad manager (I also freelanced as a production coordinator in the film industry for a period too - and continue to happily freelance in this domain when the opportunity arises).

This type of freelance online work affords me a lot of freedom.

In large part because of my skills, I had the opportunity to take on another job this summer that I normally wouldn’t have been able to with a normal 9-5 job - being a horse trekking guide in Sicily, Italy. 

I have always been a rider and horses have been a pretty big part of my life, but I never imagined that one day I would be working and being paid to ride through arguably some of the most beautiful scenery in the world every day and translating Italian to English to our visiting English speaking guests (spoiler, if you would like to do this type of work in Italy - Italian language skills may be needed. I am an Italian language geek - so I loved this aspect of this job too).

How I constructed my days between my Pinterest management remote work and my horse trekking job

I was mainly leading 1 - 3 hour rides in the morning and the afternoon, spending 4-6 hours a day in the saddle, riding through local terrain and a nearby vineyard. I balanced this with my Pinterest management services as I was able to work online for two hours during the midday (it’s too hot to ride in the midday heat anyway) and then catch up for a few hours in the evening after I had completed my work with the horses for the day. 

Honestly, I have to say I was pretty dedicated to my cause. I basically had no social life outside of socializing with my horse trekking colleagues. I rode, looked after the horses (grooming, feeding, tacking up, un-tacking, cleaning gear), and worked online. After a 10-12 hour day of riding and working online, it could be pretty tough going, but the riding and overall experience made it all worth it for me.  

The tricky part came into play when I had to assist with a 6-day trek (210km from the north coast of Sicily to the northern slopes of the Etna volcano) and decided not to take my laptop with me. The days leading up to that trek I was working late every night to ensure that my client’s work was all prepped and scheduled. Fortunately, everything went smoothly and my Pinterest management clients hardly noticed any change. This made me realize - it’s not so easy for online remote workers to truly take time off! 

My horse trekking clients were always happy, especially since they were on holiday. There was an element of responsibility in judging their riding abilities and keeping them safe, but then there is also the fun side of entertaining them with facts and commentary of local terrain and sights. I had a great time brushing up on my Sicilian history and botanical facts and Italian improved tremendously.

Find an online job you can quickly excel at, and be well paid for…

I don’t mean to sound disheartening, but we often can’t rely on our passion-related work and passion projects to support us financially, or at least not in the beginning. I am not a starving artist type, instead, I initially put a lot of time into learning online-related skills that I knew were sought after (spending many hours studying, researching, and completing online courses).

By forgetting about passion and focusing on building skills that improve options in the near future, I gave myself a better chance of making my passion project an eventual success.

➡️ If you are curious to know if Pinterest could work for your business, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at info@ciaobellamedia.com or book a discovery call with me.

➡️ Do you want more traffic to your website, leading to more sales? Did you know that you can hire me to bring more traffic to your site with Pinterest marketing? Check out my range of services here.