How ‘I Quit’ Opened Major Doors For Travel Blogger Tom Kuegler

Laila Zouaki
Aug 24, 2017 · 6 min read

Tom Kuegler is a young, energetic and impressive travel blogger. He is a contributor to the Huffington Post, and created The Post-Grad Survival Guide, a Medium publication to give inspiration, encouragement, career advice and entrepreneurial content to try and satisfy all those needs. There’s an article there for every college graduate.

To get here, it has been quite a journey, which he was happy to share in Success in Failure.


What happened?

“Let me depict one of my worst experiences of my life for you.

I had a full time remote job as an email marketing coordinator at a remote IT company in Canada. Basically, they wanted me to manage the email marketing for their 50+ clients.

It was nuts, I was working myself to the bone everyday just to get 5 clients done, hopping on calls all the time. It was just a crazy crazy time of my life. I felt pretty uneasy about my job, not only because I was managing so many clients, but because my boss was being a real jerk to everybody. He was overworking all of us — he should have doubled the amount of workers he had, at least.

I had wanted to travel for quite a long time, and decided to do a road trip across the country. That’s why I had taken a remote 9–5 job, so I could have the financial security and feel comfortable going on that road trip.

So, I decided that I was going to go on this trip for about 4 months. I was literally going to be working from my laptop in random places for the forseeable future.

I eventually made it to San Francisco, which is where my best friend lives, intending to stay there for two months. That’s when I started to realize that this job is not going to work out. I really needed to quit. I needed to find another job. I needed to figure something out. So I quit. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I just thought my time would be better spent trying to get another job. I was already contributing to the Huffington Post, I thought that my resume looked pretty good, and that I would get another job within the next couple days or weeks.

I expected them to pay me $800 for my last week of work, but my boss decided to cut ties with me and never talk to me again. He blocked me on everything, and did not pay me what he owed me, and that really was a huge hit to me.”


How did it make you feel?

“Turns out I did find a new job and everything worked out. But it was very very tough for me. I was making $300/week sometimes, and that’s just very tough especially living in a place like San Francisco, not to mention you have to plan a whole road trip back. It was extremely difficult for me.

I remember going to Twin Peaks, and sitting at the top looking down on the Bay Area.

What am I doing here?

I can’t really recall a time I was more depressed than that. It was just a very tough time of my life.

I consider it a huge failure because I did fall back on my responsibilities at work, because I should’ve asked for the money before I left, I should have done something, or I should have been able to handle the workload.

It was just a massive massive failure in my life. I felt terrible.”


Retrospectively, why was it really important for you to go through that? What did you learn?

“It showed me how strong I am.

I ended up getting through the entire situation just fine and having the best return road trip of my life. Coming back, I saw Glacier National Park, I saw Arches National Park, I saw Yosemite, I fell in love with someone in Salt Lake City.

It forced my back against the wall and I clawed my way out of it. It made me so much stronger and so much more confident in myself. I know that if I’m forced up against that wall again, I’ll be able to get through it.”


How you feel when you think back about it today?

“In the end, that’s why I’m doing my thing right now with my publication. I’m trying so hard to monetize it in any way that I can. I am trying to make enough that I can live off of this and not have to work for anybody else, because I know that I can handle it. I know that putting myself in a tough situation actually works in my benefit. It puts me in a place that makes me work 10x harder. It makes me want it all that much more. It makes me want to prove people wrong. I think that that experience was a major turning point in my life.

It was a failure, but I learned from it and I wouldn’t be who I am today without it. I would probably still be working at that email marketing job, and I wouldn’t have even started the The Post-Grad Survival Guide, among many other things.”


A massive shout-out to Tom Kuegler to share your experience so genuinely. You are most definitely an inspiration source for me! Thank you for all your support.


Please checkout the amazing work Tom Kuegler is doing with The Post-Graduate Survival Guide!


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Success in Failure

Start. Build. Learn. Fail. Learn. Repeat

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Laila Zouaki

Written by

24. Product manager. Yogi. Writer. Painter. Connector. Awareness junkie. Published on Thought Catalog.

Success in Failure

Start. Build. Learn. Fail. Learn. Repeat

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