Instant Teams

Hi, I’m Kristen, a military spouse with MadSkills. Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, I’ve been married to MAJ Kevin Smith for ten years. We PCS’d in October to Fort Knox (our fifth move in those ten years) with our seven-year-old son, two dogs and a horse.

When military moves forced me to reconsider my career trajectory in traditional corporate marketing, I turned to a hobby I’d enjoyed since 2001 – blogging. Years, thousands of words typed, hundreds of connections made and I slowly built a career offering freelance writing, content marketing, and blogging consulting services – all built from my personal blogging.

Now, I have two businesses. KL Smith Creative empowers entrepreneurs, professionals, and brands to create community and connect with their audience through effective, on-brand blogging, social media, and email strategy. Blogging In Balance is a membership community for content creators (bloggers, entrepreneurs & creatives). As a community, we help people take action towards their greatest goals. We empower each other to conquer the overwhelm and offer individual courses for content creators.

Enroll in Kristen’s free class, “Finding A Blogging Balance” here.

What was your first move towards working in a remote capacity and/or becoming a military spouse entrepreneur?

I took the long road. Not long after marrying my husband, I realized that my intended marketing career was not going to lend itself well to military life. I became a licensed massage therapist, selected from a list of jobs described as “portable” at a seminar I attended. I quickly ran into licensing issues during our next PCS. When I found out I was pregnant during my PCS, I embraced the opportunity to pursue photography (which had been a lifelong hobby). I built a successful photography business, but that also fell victim to relocation. In 2013, I sold my blog and began to find freelance writing opportunities. I recognized the potential for a truly location independent career and started to build the needed portfolio and expertise to leverage my content marketing experience.

What is your definition of military spouses as an ‘untapped resource’?

The opportunity, and challenge, of military spouse unemployment, lies in the truly incredible diversity.

What would you tell other military spouses looking to start a professional career?

A career and military life are compatible, but it may require creativity and flexibility not expected of someone outside the military community. More than anything else, embrace opportunity. Allow yourself to evolve professionally, as well as personally, and be open to professional broadening experiences.

If you were put on a panel involved in an initiative to improve military spouse employment opportunities and corporate awareness of the MadSkills that professional spouses bring to the workforce, what suggestions would you make?

We desperately need to change how we talk about “portable” military spouse careers. The emphasis is so strongly on traditional “caretaker” professions: medical, teaching, child care services. Instead, we need to look at where the economy is growing, especially the information economy which lends itself to location independent opportunities so that relocation does not impede career growth. Military spouse career programs should emphasize how to identify these growth areas and find opportunities within them. On a parallel track, we need to build programs/resources that equip those military spouses on more traditional professional career paths with the tools to successfully navigate relocation. Better education and support about licensing issues would empower military spouses to continue their careers and help reduce the amount of lag time created by a PCS.

At the same time, I believe we have an obligation to educate and prepare military families who choose to have a spouse out of the workforce. Those spouses need to know how to plan financially for things like retirement savings/investments and life insurance.

Connect with Kristen at klsmithcreative.com or blogginginblance.com.