Influencer Spotlight: A Girl in Progress

Relatable. Friendly. Empowering. Those are the three words Australian content creator Emma Norris would use to describe her blog: A Girl In Progress. By launching her blog, Norris had a mission to empower, educate, and entertain women while exploring the relationship between self-care and self-development. As a self-proclaimed girl in progress herself, Norris is consistently striving towards her goals and expanding her brand by publishing a book, hosting a podcast, and launching one-on-one coaching sessions with goal-oriented women. Before we explore her success, let’s take a look into how she got there. 

Meet Emma Norris

Growing up, Emma Norris loved to read and write. By the time she was in school, she thoroughly enjoyed writing short stories and songs alongside doing writing assignments that allowed her to flex her creativity. Around the time she was in high school, just like most teenage girls, Norris discovered she had a love for magazines. While her peers mapped out their career plans, she knew she wanted to be a writer and study journalism in order to work on magazines in the future.

In college, she ended up interning at a magazine where she got her foot in the door and got her first job at an entertainment magazine. For the next few years, Norris spent her time writing and working in publishing until she realized that journalism seemed to be going digital and that she needed digital experience to survive in the publishing world. It was then that she decided she would work at a digital publishing website/a blog. 

“It was there that I learned what was involved in running a successful blog,” said Norris. “It’s where I fell in love with the digital world, digital publishing, and blogging which led me to freelancing, copywriting, social media management, and starting my own blog.” 

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Launching Her Blog: A Girl in Progress

 Over the years, Norris started a few blogs in college. She always knew she wanted to have a blog in some capacity since she loved to write, but nothing seemed to stick. Like most bloggers, Norris struggled to find a niche and stick with it in the long term, so she decided to mix her passions and develop a lifestyle blog that covered a few different categories that she was interested in, such as career and wellness. Then, inspiration struck.

“Through working events where I was surrounded by a lot of influencers that put forward a vision of perfection, I found that I couldn’t relate. I can be uncoordinated and awkward, but at the same time, I’m very driven and goal-oriented. I felt there should be a platform for the everyday girl who’s still a work in progress but who’s so creative and wants more for herself. That’s where the concept for A Girl In Progress came from.”

From her own experiences with overcoming procrastination and doing more mindset work on herself, she realized how many other women dealt with the same issues she did. “Especially in women, we are so much more prone to perfectionism,” said Norris. “It made me sad that perfectionism stops so many women from putting their voice out there, stops them from launching that thing that excites them, and creating that life that they love. I knew I had to do something about it.”

After working on traditional blogs in the past, Norris wrote them from a personal point-of-view. But for A Girl in Progress, Norris wanted to go against the grain and build a platform for other voices besides her own by sourcing writers. However, to launch her blog, she had to overcome her own feelings of striving for perfection and overcome her own obstacles of procrastination in order to successfully help other girls on their journey.

“I struggled with a lot of the mindset blocks that you face when you’re launching anything: ‘What will the people I know in real life think?’, ‘What will the people I’ve worked with think?’. I had all of these thoughts, and I’m an overthinker, which is where a lot of procrastination often comes from,” said Norris. “I try and just remember you’ll never really know what people think, and they’ll never tell you. So, I may as well go for it and not overthink it. The self-doubt never fully goes away, but I’m a big believer in launching first and fine-tuning later, which has become a big part of the imperfect action method that I teach through my courses and my coaching. You just have to put it out there, and I’m so glad I did that with A Girl In Progress.”

Launching A Brand

Other than running a successful blog, Norris is also an author. Her book, Progress Over Perfection: A Guide to Mindful Productivity, allowed her to make the transition from a blog writer to a non-fiction book writer, but she dealt with the writing process in a similar way, writing in the same tone of voice as she does on A Girl In Progress. “I almost approached it like I was writing a blog post,” said Norris. “I wrote each chapter like it could work as a standalone blog post and I was lucky that it was similar to the type of content I post on the blog.”

Not only had Norris recently become an author, but she also launched her own podcast, A Girl In Progress, where she invites guests on to discuss productivity, launching a brand, and more. When it comes to finding her guests, she looks for anyone with a unique perspective, similar to her method when finding contributors for her blog. “It might be a common topic, but I like when someone has their own spin on it and something new to say.”

The Future of A Girl in Progress 

In the near future, Norris will be launching her one-on-one imperfect action coaching where she’ll work with creative, driven women to help them overcome procrastination, perfectionism, and overthinking and encourage them to get their message out to the world and achieve their goals. Additionally, Norris hopes to hold her first in-person A Girl In Progress event next year. As she still calls herself a girl in progress, Norris is currently studying psychology, so her followers can expect more science-based self-development and productivity content in the future. 

Takeaways from Emma

If you’re a girl in progress, there are a few things that Norris would love for you to take away after reading her blog, reading her book, or listening to her podcast: 

1. You don’t have to go all-in with everything. But if you really want something, make it a priority. Just be consistent! It’s what you do 90% of the time that matters. Don’t beat yourself up, but just keep moving forward and taking the small steps towards your goal.

2. It’s possible to work to become the best version of yourself while also accepting yourself exactly the way you are. If you’re working on yourself and striving towards your goals, it doesn’t have to come from a place of “I’m not good enough” or “I’m not enough as I am.”

3. The best advice Norris has ever received? How you do something is how you do everything. Treat your projects like it’s the most important thing in the world because you’ll never know where it’ll lead you.

4. If you want to launch your own brand – start before you’re ready. According to Norris, you’re never going to feel completely ready or that you have all the pieces ready to go, especially if you’re a perfectionist. Get it to a point where it’s complete. Done is better than perfect – get it out there and fine tune later. The sooner you get your blog out there, the sooner you’ll get your words read by the people who really need to hear what you have to say.

Keep up with Emma Norris