Laura Elliott’s Success Story …

On New Year’s Eve in 2013, I bought my ticket for my five-week trip, which turned into three months. I not only researched and began to write my screenplay on Java, but I also enjoyed freediving off the island of Lombok; receiving a sacred blessing in the holy water at the Tirta Empul temple on Bali given by a holy man and his brother who had been kind enough to bestow much-needed wisdom to me; taking a cooking class with my youngest daughter on the the shores of the Andaman Sea in Phuket on Mother’s Day; working as a Global Dental Relief non-medical worker in Kathmandu; trekking the Everest Base Camp Trail; shaking Jane Goodall’s hand; and, drinking champagne as I strolled in the Australian outback while kangaroos hopped in the bush at sunset. The trip of a lifetime. Or, so I thought.

See, I didn’t realize that trip had only been a warm-up for something bigger. A journey that would encompass two years that found me selling most everything I owned to head into the world and go where the Lord took me — around the world, twice. The trip began with me teaching VBS to missionary children in Prague and ended in the jungles of Brazil at Iguazu — which brought me back to the beginning in another way. Just outside of Iguazu, I toured Itapu, one of the world’s largest dams, a project my dad worked on as a hydroelectric engineer based in Venezuela, where I traveled as a teenager.

Long story short, I fell in love with non-fiction, found a way to write again and also help people. The nuts-and-bolts of my business came with a lot of hard work. There were business plans to write (Thank you coach Lori Koop, and The Right Brain Business Plan author Jennifer Lee) and proposals to draft (I made myself propose on 3 new jobs a day, which was like a full-time job). And every day there were many questions to answer, like how do you go about pitching and selling an article?

Because it had been a long time since my first travel article published in The Los Angeles Times, a piece about Dracula’s Bran Castle in Romania (a story for another post), I had to start over writing whatever I could (yes, I wrote drapery descriptions at one point) for whatever they’d pay ($15 for a 100 word article). But that changed as I built up my clips and my expertise. I basically burned the candle at both ends and practiced a boatload of faith.

Throughout my career in writing interviews for everyone from COOs to celebrities and style makers, I discovered my passion for ghostwriting too, something born out of everything I learned while interviewing Dad — how to listen, research, and let the story go where it needs, giving it all the time it requires.

Through it all, I’ve discovered that security is an illusion. I no longer put my faith in the things I used to, like a job and a house and all the things I thought would never go away. Instead, I put my faith in God. I also learned that, for me, home is truly where my heart is and not within any particular set of four walls.

I have never been happier. I live location independently with a home base at my beach house (part of the dream) in Santa Cruz, CA ten minutes away from my adult daughters (another part of the dream). I am a partner on a vintage sailboat which I race most Tuesday nights when I’m in town during the sailing season. The reconnection with my childhood passion of sailing has given me the wonderful opportunity to write for the cruising and yachting market and also brought me and the love of my life together, a sailor who enjoys travel as much as I do.

As a ghostwriter for global thought leaders, I consider my work an honor and a privilege by helping to give a voice to people with important messages. People who don’t have time to write down and organize their important material on their own. I find this act of service much more than a livelihood, it’s a way to help people and help our world.