The Traveling Barista: "I Work 6 Months A Year To Buy The Other 6 Back"

Claire didn't like coffee until she was 24 — one espresso and her "whole system said no." Today, she's a specialty barista who gets flown from Madrid to Vienna to Amsterdam to make coffee at events across Europe. Her explanation for how that happened is deceptively simple: follow what excites you, and don't argue with it.In this episode, I sit down with Claire — barista, visual creator, writer, and founder of IMMÄ Studio. She's the definition of multi-passionate: she's used hospitality jobs to travel through Switzerland, Australia, and Spain, managed one of Madrid's most respected specialty coffee shops, works in advertising production, and is now building a creative community rooted in one skill most of us avoid — being honest with ourselves.In this conversation we get into:— How do you figure out what you actually want when you could do anything?— The "research phase" most new creators skip — and why it costs them years— Why 90% of creators quit in the first three months, and the daily reflection habit that keeps Claire going— How to travel the world with a "low-skill" job (and why hospitality is the most underrated travel hack)— Why connections are made in the DMs, not the comments— The story behind IMÄ Studio — and why "you already are what you are" is the whole point— Plus: Claire ranks every coffee drink, and the latte macchiato does not surviveClaire's honesty about the slow, unglamorous version of the creator journey — the one where your online income doesn't pay rent yet and that's okay — is something almost nobody talks about.Follow Claire:Substack: https://claireisonit.substack.com/ @imma__studio  no distraction:Get weekly anti-letters: https://abbidogan.substack.com/Abbi's world: https://linktr.ee/abbiDogan