We’ve been tracking down some bring it on champions to get some inspirational tips and advice on achieving your goals, today’s interview is with Magda Knight.
Magda Knight is the editor of Mookychick, a website that describes itself as an online finishing school for alternative girls and women. Magda co-created the site with Miss Amanda in 2006 and the site now gets 200,000 hits a month. We chat to Magda and find out how she made the website a success.
What personal characteristics do you think have helped you get to where you are now?
I’ve found life’s better if you keep an open mind. The great thing about keeping an open mind is that anything is possible but only if you allow yourself to be flexible and actually do something about your passion. Also, and this doesn’t work for everyone, what’s worked well for me is listening to advice from those that care. This makes me a follower, not a leader, but I’ve always listened to the good advice of both the advice of my parents and the advice of my inner freak.
If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
If I was a dude, not a lady, I’d like to call myself Crash Gritfist. I don’t want to be a dude, but I almost would if I could be called Crash Gritfist! It’s a name just brimming with testosterone.
What was your childhood dream job?
Secret agent. I still can’t figure out why it never happened… Or did it?
When did you work out what you really wanted to do with your life?
I was on the right track in my teens, when I knew I wanted to be an author. It was later in life, in my early thirties, when I knew the writing dream was for real. I set up a website and community for people that thought like me, who could write and tell other people what made an alternative outlook so inspiring. Setting up a website is great because it’s so cheap. Making it happen takes a lot of work, a lot of time and patient friends and boyfriends. I thought it would get about two readers a week. It gets 200,000 a month. But that was being an editor, not a writer. This year I thought I’d better get on with it – so I wrote a novel in a week. You can do a lot more than you ever imagined if you just get on with it.
What three things do you wish you had known before you started out?
1. Every passion should be shared, not kept to yourself.
2. Be brave. There are people out there who will love what you do.
3. What a semi-colon is; apparently it’s useful now and then.
If you had a personal motto, what would it be?
Never distill life into one sentence.
If you could give one piece of advice to someone trying to be successful what would it be?
Do your passion small to start off with, but don’t be afraid of thinking big. In my (equally awesome) day job I work for Best For Film, an independent UK film site. Yesterday we set up a petition to Save the UK Film Council. In one day it got over 10,000 signatures and important people are talking to us about major changes. Be prepared for your passion to get big and don’t be afraid to accept responsibility when that happens.
What one word do you think best embodies the bring it on spirit?
What’s that word the Spanish use to mean ‘later, later, some other time, I would do it but I can’t quite be bothered’? Oh yeah – Manana 
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