The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 63. How Systems Can Build Success with Kaci Ackerman

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

Today we are excited to have Kaci Ackerman, a ClickUp and systems expert, on the show! Kaci helps people save time and build efficiency in their business so they can build their business around their life versus letting their business dictate their life. If you are looking for tools to help organize your business, you don’t want to miss this episode! Thanks for listening! Connect with us on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsYou can join the Blog Depot for $9 a month using code: BLOGGER. Sign up HERE!Get 20% off of Keysearch Starter Plan using this link and code: KSDISCJoin the waitlist for The Ultimate Blog Bootcamp, our online course and coaching that helps you build the blog that you have always dreamed of.SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode63

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm, and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Hey there, and welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. Today, Amy and I are super excited to introduce our next guest, Casey Ackerman. She is a ClickUp and systems expert, and this is something we are so excited to learn more about. So welcome to the podcast, Casey. Hello. Thank you so much for having me, ladies. Yeah. Would you like to start out and just tell our audience a little bit more about yourself,

what you do, and kind of how you got into this? Yeah, of course. So again, my name is Casey Ackerman, and I live in Idaho Idaho and I'm a ClickUp and systems expert. And really what that means is I help people save time and build efficiency in their business so they can build their business around their life versus letting their business dictate their life. I got into this in 2020 thanks to COVID and I just love everything organization. Small tidbit about me when I was high school, I used to daydream about being an office admin

person. And that has definitely just evolved into what it is today. But I literally just forever have loved paperwork and loved little systems and organization and stuff. So it really is something I am very passionate about and just love doing. And I love just helping business owners be able to see that time and freedom back in their week so that they're not just burnt out all the time. It's like you know who you're talking to. It's like you know that a lot of business

owners feel all those things. They feel disorganized and burned out. And you took a passion of yours and then turned it into a way to help those people who feel like that. I think that's really awesome that you did that. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. For people like... I mean, I know there's people out there like us that need a little bit of direction. It's not to say that we don't have some of our own systems, but it's always really helpful, I think, to see a totally different side of how somebody does something. And you can have those aha moments. And I think that we are going to have a couple of those today. So you're a ClickUp expert. First of all, for anybody who doesn't know what ClickUp is, can you share what ClickUp is? Yes, of course. So ClickUp is a project management tool. So if

anyone is familiar with Monday, Asana, Trello, all of those different pieces, that is what ClickUp is. It helps you manage your tasks, your day to day. It helps you manage your clients, the back end of your business. So basically think of taking, if you write on a pen and paper, like notebook, or if you use sticky notes, think of putting that into a digital organization that will send you reminders and tell you that things are ready to be done, and also allows you to offload those tasks that you really don't need to be doing anymore. And what is it about ClickUp specifically that you like over all those other tools that you mentioned? So I actually hate answering this question. And it's because the most important tool for someone

to use is one that they will actually use. That's the true answer. Now, obviously, people have different preferences. There's lots of people out there that love Monday or Asana and hate ClickUp, whatever. The most important thing is using one. But I will say the reason I dove into ClickUp and have chosen ClickUp as my area of expertise is because of how robust it is and the ability to grow your business with ClickUp. So oftentimes, most businesses, I would say, start out with Trello. It's a very easy way to kind of get some organization going. But then they also see that they quickly outgrow Trello because they get a few team members and they have no idea how to organize team members. Trello has a lot of

stuff in your face. You can't really close things out. So my point is you start to outgrow other platforms. And with ClickUp, you don't outgrow it. It actually grows with you. So as you start to build a team or as you start to build out maybe passive products or a course or different things, you can actually do all of that inside ClickUp and not have to go anywhere else. And so that's why I've chosen ClickUp as my hub and my expertise, because I just feel like you can use it in a very simple way, but then you can also grow and use it in a very robust way. I think you answered that question perfectly because you said, you just have to pick something and you have to stick with it.

And I think that can be one of the challenges of being an entrepreneur and kind of being out on your own is you're always looking for the next best thing. And so you never really get anything in place because you're constantly switching and looking around and all of that. So I like how you put that, you pick it, it's going to grow with you. It's going to have what you need. Are there other options? Yes. You obviously chose one. You're all in and that's

what you're teaching people. And so I think you could spend all day trying to figure out the best thing, but really you're just picking the best thing for you. So let's say somebody is a new blogger and they're like, I can just use a paper planner. It's fine. I'll just use a paper planner because I don't know how fast I could actually grow. Would you recommend that somebody who is in the beginning stages of blogging, go ahead and just set up something like ClickUp to where it can grow with them? Or is it something that you feel like you have to do in time? Basically, my reason being for asking this question is I think a lot of people who start blogging

kind of don't take themselves fully seriously out of the gate. And I wonder if this is a way to put some of those time management pieces that are really important into place out of the get-go. And so first question, do you recommend that somebody would do that from the start? Is it too robust that they couldn't do that, that it wouldn't be a good fit? Or is it something that you feel like a beginner blogger could even start utilizing in a really simple way out of the gate? Yeah. I always recommend immediately. The moment you start your business, you should have a project management tool. And my biggest thing that I tell people is build systems for where you want to be, not where you are right now.

Oh, that's good. We talk about it all the time. Even you've mentioned it. Your business blows up overnight. I don't know how it happens, but it does. It's happened to literally every single person I know. It happened to me. And when it blows up overnight, if you don't have these things in place, you are like me, which is crying to my husband on the couch, not knowing what the heck I'm going to do and literally turn money away, which obviously the goal in your business is to not turn money away. So, and also another thing you said there too, is not taking yourself seriously. And I think that that is also kind of a mindset thing of like being in a CEO and like immediately

treating your business like you are a CEO and really setting yourself up for success. Because when you have a pen and paper, it's great. You know, like that is awesome. You have that. But there's been things that happen where once you flip the page on your little notebook, you probably don't go back. And then you're relying on your brain power and energy to remember all the things you wrote down. So then it comes two o'clock in the morning and you wake up because you forgot to do the one thing that you need to do for the blog. And you're like, oh man, I need to remember to do that. So it's a domino effect, if you will. And then also, you have so many pieces you can outsource in a blog,

almost all of it, which is amazing. And so the moment that you are ready to hire, you should be able to do that and not feel stressed out of like, well, I don't know what they would do. There are so many things they can do. They can format the blog. They can edit the blog. They can add all the links into the blog. You could put in talking points and then they help you write the blog. There's so many pieces that you can have help with. But if you are stuck in this area of writing a pen and paper of like, write two new blogs, how is anyone ever going to help you with your blog as your business grows? Yeah. I like that you said a couple of things here. One, be the CEO of your own business. And two, your business blows up overnight. So I think what I was gathering from that when you

were saying it is, it doesn't matter how much money you're making right now. I don't care if you're not making any money. You are still the CEO of your business and treat yourself as such. Just because you might not be making a bajillion dollars yet doesn't mean that you can't take yourself seriously. And I think a lot of times that is what holds people back from putting some of these systems into place because they're like, well, I'm not really successful yet. So I'll just wait till I am. And then I can put all these into place. But I think what you think about, you bring about. And if you are batching your work and taking yourself seriously and having this content management system put in place and things like that, it's bound to happen because you have a

plan. And I think at the end of the day, this is something the longer that we're in business that we learn is without a plan, you're just floundering. You don't really know if you're being successful or not because there's no benchmark because you haven't done the work of seeing where you've been to where you're going or what you want to do and what you need to do to get there. And so I love that you're saying that, like, start from the beginning and be the CEO, no matter what dollar amount is hitting your checking account, you know, every single month. Yeah. Well, and also, you know, being the CEO, like you said, I love that you're saying like, regardless of dollar amount, I totally agree with that. Because here's the thing. Another piece that I kind of like to talk about is building

your business to be sellable. And that does kind of like to talk about is building your business to be sellable. And that does not mean that you're going to sell your business at all. It means that at some point in your life, you can walk away from your business and know that it's not going to catch on fire. You can literally remove yourself from almost all of the business and it's running like a well-oiled machine. And if you wait until you're already there and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm going to rip my hair out. I'm working 12 hours a day. And I don't understand how this happened. And my notebook just is getting bigger and bigger to-do list. It's getting longer and longer. If you wait until then to get systems in place, it's honestly going to be harder and way more overwhelming.

And you're going to get stuck in this vicious circle of, I don't have time to put systems in place because I have all of these to-do lists to do. Right? I am laughing because we are there. Casey, we need you. Seriously, though, just a moment of vulnerability here. I think that that's where we are. And I keep to myself laughing because you keep talking about the pen and paper. And we talk all the time, I lost my notebook. It's written in a notebook somewhere that I have no idea where the notebook went. Story of our lives. So I think I want to hear that too. We're being really vulnerable there and just saying we do have some systems in place, obviously. But could we be better at that? Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Could we be better? And every year we learn more. And so that's something I think is something to consider too.

Yes, you're saying start from the beginning. But know that as you grow, your systems need to grow and adapt too. Yes. That's okay. So what are some basic systems that a blogger could put into place? Let's use ClickUp. So with ClickUp, because this is ClickUp free to use. Yes, it is. Okay. So it's a free system that you can use. And then what are some basic things that bloggers could maybe put into place as they begin? So I definitely think starting with just some simple task lists, that's like the perfect way to start with ClickUp. So you just have a folder with a list and you just have your tasks that recur. So really what that looks like is you decide, I want to write two blogs every

single week, right? So we're going to make a little recurring task there in ClickUp where every Wednesday I write two blogs. And now you're not waking up every single Wednesday having to remember that you need to write those two blogs. ClickUp just tells you that. And so thinking about all the things that you do in your business on a weekly, monthly type basis and dropping that stuff in there, so you don't have to remember those things. And then also having an area for one-off tasks. So if you know that like next week, you have some different things that don't necessarily go into recurrence,

you can drop that stuff in there and assign due dates. And the reason you can just start really simple and small is again, you are now building yourself a very manageable workload. So you are not also on Monday thinking about all the things you have to do all week long and trying for some reason to do it all on Monday. I've even done that where it's because if you don't have it planned out, you're like, well, I need to get all of it done. So I might as well

just do it all right now. But then Tuesday comes around and you have a whole nother list of things that you apparently need to get done. So having just a simple task list in there, especially if you're just by yourself, you don't need to like get super fancy with it. The other thing that I absolutely love getting started with is your content. So not the blog, but like your Instagram, your Facebook, wherever you're gonna be marketing things. If you have an email,

if you're growing an email list of some sort. So having a marketing just process in there. And that just means that you're creating the content, you're writing your captions, and you can do that ahead of time. I personally have stuff on a monthly basis. So I'm going to give an example of what my content process looks like. So on the first Monday of every month, I plan out the next month's content. So the first Monday of January, I planned February's. The second Monday of January, I went and I created any of my carousels or graphics or whatever. The third Monday, I write captions and the fourth Monday, everything gets scheduled.

So you're a genius. Thanks. But it's taking a very overwhelming process and breaking it into those bite-sized pieces so that you are not like the last Friday of the month saying, I have no content going out. And maybe with blogs, since you are not writing that far in advance, maybe you break this down into a weekly thing where you have, create next week's content or create, you know, two weeks ahead content or something. So you build it definitely for what works for you. But those small pieces, I know they sound like, oh, I can just do those, you know, like when I need to ask yourself this, how many times have you came up on a Friday at five o'clock and you're like, dang it, I don't have any content. So I guess I'm just not going to post that today. Or on a Tuesday, you're like, oh, I need to do a training reel, but I haven't planned anything.

So maybe tomorrow I'll get to it. So it sounds really simple, but it makes a really big difference, especially when you're by yourself. Yeah. I mean, you said it right there. It sounds simple, but it makes a big difference. So don't discount what one simple change could do for your business. Exactly. Yeah. And it comes down to, again, being that CEO, thinking big picture, thinking about where you want your business to be. So I love thinking of this. Most of my clients have clients. And so the way I like to explain this too, and you guys can put this in blog terms for me, but what you're doing right now with one client is working, right? So like they email you tasks or you have a weekly meeting with them, all these different things.

But then ask yourself, what happens if I have like 10 clients? How many emails would I be getting from 10 clients? How many weekly meetings would I have to deal with? That is not sustainable. So figuring out like if you... Again, maybe you could put this in blog terms so I can help kind of think of ideas here. I think even if you started working with some brands, say you're a blogger and you wanted to start working on some sponsored content.

So it's kind of the system of creating content for your blog, but you might have multiple contracts going on at one time with different due dates that you might have to manage. Yeah. Okay, perfect. So if you have one brand, doing everything manually is like, oh, this is fine. I got this. But what happens when you have 20 brands that you're working with and you're still trying to keep everything in your head? And it also comes into like a lot of fatigue. So you start to get burnout. You're on the couch working. You're not present with your

family. You're skipping dinner and you're eating at your desk or you're just, there's no time for like your actual life. And so these seriously, these small pieces add up to so much. And I've been there. So I'm not just like, you know, this person that has all this wonderful news for you. Like I've lived it in January of 2021. I legit was crying on the couch because I didn't have the systems in place. I had like way too many clients I could handle. And I took the time to set all of it up, but it really came down to like allowing me to offload things. And what comes with that though is having systems in place, having written SOPs, having a task, a project management task, because unfortunately when you hire someone virtually, they can't see your notebook.

They can't, you know, they can't read your mind. They can't see your notebook. Maybe they can find it. Right? Maybe you need a little ping for your notebook. One of those tiles. Right. Yeah. But like, so thinking about like where you want to be and really building something. And of course they do evolve. You know, my systems are evolving, even where I'm at now they evolve, but at least thinking about like, okay, I can't sustain having 15 meetings a week. So how do we make this to where we can eliminate meetings weekly with people? Or I can't sustain writing and formatting and posting so many blogs. How can I put this

together where I can hire somebody to come in and help me format and post and schedule out blogs, or create the graphics for blogs or get the links ready. There's different stuff like that. There's so many pieces that you can get help with as your business grows, but you're not going to be able to do that, again, if you are trying just to open your computer on a Google Doc and write a blog. write a blog. If you are ready to start your blog, we have an exciting deal for you. You can join our beginner course, the blog Depot for only $9 the first month. The blog Depot is for you. If you are thinking about starting a blog, but you need more info, or maybe you aren't sure what you want

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If you are tired of sitting on the sidelines, join the blog Depot today, but hurry because there is a limited number of spots at this $9 rate. The link to join us is in our show notes. We'll see you on the inside. And I'm just relating to so much of what you're saying. And I think I've felt either resistant or maybe just like it was unnecessary at different points to really document what I'm doing because I'm the only one doing it. So I think you've made a lot of good points there. I think the one thing we could maybe expand on a little bit is like, what exactly is a system? I mean, we've kind of talked through some examples, but at a really basic level, what is a system? Is it essentially just

setting up a list? Like they could just start with maybe a list of recurring tasks. Is that kind of a system in and of itself? It is. Yeah. Because you've taken the time to set up those recurring tasks. And so now the system is every single Monday ClickUp is reminding you of that recurring task. And then, you know, maybe like setting up some subtasks, a checklist, if you will, of what goes on with that task. So if you have just a blanket task, I love to always think about breaking that down because there's so much more. So if you have write and process blog as like one task, that's really overwhelming because there are so many pieces that go into that. So the system is uncovering all of those steps. And the way that I love to do it is actually record yourself

while you're doing it, because then you're like, oh, wait, I need to do this or, oh, wait, I need to do that. And so kind of talking it through while you're doing it. And the best thing too, is you can actually give that to somebody when you, when you hire someone for help, like, sure, it's going to be like probably a 20 minute mess, but they'll figure it out, you know, and you can refine it and stuff. But just thinking about all the pieces that come along with actually processing a blog, it's not just processing a blog. It's probably like 10 steps to process a blog, right?

So the system is all of those steps. And another way that I love to explain systems is a morning routine or any sort of like home routine. So your alarm goes off, you get up, you start the water for your shower, you brush your teeth. Now, when we're talking about systems though, you get even more granular. And so like, how do you turn on the shower? You turn the knob. How do you brush your teeth? You get your toothpaste and. And so like, how do you turn on the shower? You turn the knob. How do you brush your teeth? You get your toothpaste and you put it on, you know, you open the cap and you put it on. So like getting very granular about all of those pieces, that's where the system comes into place. And you can start to see like, wow, there's so many

steps that I potentially could not be doing, which in return allows you to connect with more brands or whatever your goal may be. Connect with different ways, sponsorships, or having different links on your blog, affiliate type stuff. There's so many different things that you could be doing rather than uploading the blog and scheduling it. I love how it really forces you in a way to really, really think about what you're doing, what steps are involved, how much time it's taking. It's making you really be mindful of what you're doing so that, like you said, you can either hire out tasks. Maybe you're doing tasks that don't even make sense. You're really thinking about the amount of time it's taking you. And I would think overall, my initial thought in creating a system like this would be,

oh, that's going to take time. But I'm guessing you're going to say it's going to save you a lot of time. You're going to work a lot less if you have your systems in place because you're going to know what to expect, what you're able to get done, how long it's going to take. It's probably well worth it to take the time to set these up. Exactly. Yes. So I always say that to people because it is a very big thing where people are like, oh, well, it's just faster if I just do it. Why do I need to do all these other things? So it may be faster if you do it right now. But then again, we're going back to the idea of if you were ever to hire somebody, how are they going to help you do it? We go back to the idea of, sure, it's faster right now. But if you were to automate the process, how much time are you going to save?

You know, I in 2021, in January, and like December of 2020, I was working like 40, 50 hours a week, which was not what I signed up for. For me, why don't I just go back to a nine to five at that point? So now I work roughly about 20 hours a week. So that is the difference right there. I have been able to scale so much back. I've been either able to offload things to a VA or I've been able to automate pieces with ClickUp or Zapier or a CRM to where I no longer have to be at my computer 12 hours a day. But I think that probably started with

mindset that you treated this like a business and you treated yourself like a CEO of your business from the start. And I think that we can talk about systems all day, but you have to take yourself seriously. And that's exactly what you did. And what a great example for us and anyone listening that your success and your time freedom is 100% in your hands. Oh, yeah. You can take that and utilize that and make it what you want. Or you can continue digging in the weeds where you are and not really feeling like you're ever going to see the forest through the trees. So I'm really glad that you're being very vulnerable about that. I appreciate that when somebody says, I was working 40 to 50 hours. And by implementing systems and allowing others to come into my business and help me be successful, now I get to spend the time where I want to spend

my time. Not saying you don't want to spend your time doing this. Obviously, you love what you do. But I think we can have both. And I think that's a lie that we're told is that you can't. You either have to be somebody who works all the time or you don't work at all. But actually, there is a gray middle area where I find a lot of people find a lot of happiness

in other portions of their lives. But it doesn't need to be this black or white or all or nothing thinking. You can actually have both and have success in both areas. And I think it starts with being a CEO, but also boundaries. Yeah. So what are some boundaries that you've had to put into place too as these systems come up that you've had to say, okay, I'm going to back it down. Backing it down 20 to 30 hours a week, that had to take boundaries along with those systems. So do you have any examples of boundaries

that you had to set? Yeah. And I first do want to touch on the CEO part. So I definitely changed when I decided that my business was no longer a side hustle. And when I started to see my business, as you said, like a CEO and understanding that like, I want this long term, not this like side hustle thing where when people ask me what I do for work, I'm like, Oh, well, I just kind of, you know, do this or that. It's not really a business. I don't have a real job. No, I do have a real job. I'm the CEO of a company. And so that was the first piece of it. But then the second part of it is yes, boundaries are really big. And the first thing I started with is honing in my schedule. So that meant when people could actually book time on my calendar. And so when I first started, I was very side hustle, you know, mentality, all of that.

And my schedule was open Monday through Friday, eight to five or whatever. And people could just book whenever they wanted. And so a big boundary that I set was deciding that I was only going to allow meetings Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So Mondays and Fridays, I no longer allow any meetings whatsoever. The other thing I did was, and this is where I had clients. So you could think of this as brands for bloggers as well. But what I did as well is I had a dedicated day, which a lot of people like to call it a CEO day. So on Mondays, I focus on my business. And the boundary I had to set with myself is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I did not work on my business, which is really difficult in the beginning, but it actually brought so much freedom to me because

I was able to realize, like I said, with that content process of like every week I do a piece of it, it allowed me to actually start to break things down a little further and not be so overwhelmed of like creating a month's worth of content in a day. I know you see the social media marketers out there that are like, I just did all of this in one day. They're lying to you. Agreed. They have a process and the way their process works. Yeah. Anyway, but I figured out what works for me. And then on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I'm very client focused. I have meetings. If I don't have a client on that day, or if I don't have any meetings, I get to do what I want. So I reserve that for maybe I work a little bit more on my business, or maybe I do some client outreach or whatever it may be. And then Fridays, I don't work,

or I do if I want to. I kind of have that as like a flex thing. I will say I love my business. So there are Fridays where I'm like, oh, I want to do a few things. But the difference is with those boundaries in place, I don't have a overflow of all these tasks now need to be done on Friday. Because I have everything set up on a schedule of day theming, I'm able to reserve Fridays for what I want. So, you know, a massage or I go to any doctor's appointments and stuff like that. I get my hair done. Those different things are reserved for Friday. And if I don't have anything, then maybe I want to work. Maybe I don't, you know, it just depends on what I want to do. But holding boundaries with yourself is interesting,

I will say. And the other piece of it too is like boundaries with brands or clients. So what I mean by that is not allowing them to email you 20 times a day or having, I have an email responder turned on. So when people email me, they're notified that I will not respond until 48 hours usually. So like having those different boundaries as well, setting expectations when you get with a client or a brand around what's going to happen with this blog process and what that's going to look like and understanding you work a certain way and they need to agree to that. Because if they're not agreeing to your boundaries and expectations as well, you're going to fall back into the chaos of just working all the time.

And you're not building your business. They're building your business for you. And that's kind of like having a boss. And that's not why we're entrepreneurs. We're entrepreneurs so we can be our own boss. We can set these boundaries. We can say, I don't want to work on Fridays. Or if I do work on Fridays, it's because I want to.

I think Jennifer and I both feel that way. We both really love what we do. So it can be very hard to shut the computer, walk away from the desk, because it's fun. And it's an uplifting thing that we enjoy doing. But I think it is really important as creatives to step away too. Because when we are constantly in it, then it's hard to ever feel creative, I think. And so stepping away by having those boundaries is important. You might have the time to do it, but do you really need to spend the time doing it if you have all these other systems in place? And I've just loved everything you've said today. This has just been, oh my gosh. Oh, thanks. Another thing, I just was talking to somebody recently and they

typically creatives have a hard time with like structure and visionaries have a hard time with like day theming or time blocking because it feels very restrictive. But I was just talking to somebody that had a really hard time with it. And she finally started doing it. And she said to me, she's like, I have so much more freedom in my mind. I know that I don't have to worry about my podcast if it's not Wednesday. I know that I don't have to worry about my business unless it's Monday. So that alone is what I call is light structure, if you will. So like just having some day themes of like Monday is dedicated to my business. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is client stuff or, you know, blog brand related stuff.

And then Friday is a flex day, if you will. So that allows you to still have creativity, you know, in the mix of stuff, but you at least know anything that has to do with your business is going to happen Monday. Yep. And anything that has to do with other stuff, you know, is dedicated to other days. We implemented that starting last fall because what we were doing was,

so we have Spark Media, but then we each have our own blogs independently as well. And so it felt like we were working on Spark all the time. And for like one to two years, like our own businesses kind of got put on the back burner because we were only doing Spark. And so we said, we have to create these boundaries. Like we have to find specific days that are Spark days

to where then on the other days when we need to work on our own businesses, we don't feel guilty that I'm working or she's not or vice versa. And that, I like that you said light structuring because that's generally me that needs the light structure. But it has been, just like you said, so freeing in regards to my schedule and everything just to know like, I don't plan anything on Tuesday, Wednesdays. Those days are for podcast interviews,

they're for coaching calls, they're for anything that we do with Spark. And then on those other days, I get to do with my own business what I want to do. And that has been incredibly freeing. I know for me personally. So I think that's really great advice just to and to hold firm with it and to know like there's going to be kind of a shift. I remember like the first week or two we did it. I think it was a Thursday or something. We're like, we're not supposed to be working on Spark today. Like we shouldn't be doing this right now. We're breaking the rules. But I think it does.

It offers you that freedom that you need, you know, to work in other areas that are just as important. Yeah. And it also, so with that, you start to realize that your to-do list is not meant to be done at the end of every single day. Oh my gosh. Thank you for saying that. I think that's such an entrepreneur problem, in my opinion. Because we could literally never

walk away from the computer. And so we feel like, oh, I'll just get this one more thing done. And I'll just get this one more thing done. But it's okay to leave the list. Yes. And plan it out. So also for people that love pen and paper, I don't tell you guys to stop using them. Still use it, but then plan it and click up. So brain dump, like if you want to take, you know, every Monday for an hour, just to brain dump all the things that you need to do for the week. Amazing. Do that.

But take it one step further and actually plan it into ClickUp. So then you're not looking at this insane, overwhelming brain dump on a Monday, feeling like you have to get it all done by the time your kids get off school, which is like three o'clock, you know, 3.30. So planning it is the next step there, right? the next step there. Right. Implementing keyword research and competition analysis into your content strategy is a surefire way to improve your chances of people finding your content.

And we love how simple KeySearch makes it to find keywords we actually want to use in our posts. KeySearch is a powerful keyword research tool that makes finding relevant, low competition keywords for your blog simple and easy. If you think optimizing your blog and doing keyword research has to be hard, think again. Give this powerhouse tool a try and see how much easier it will be to create content for your blog. Not only is it reasonably priced, even for beginning bloggers, but you can use our code for 20% off your subscription. Click the link in our show notes to learn more. I love just the idea of getting it out of your head, getting it somewhere else where it becomes

more of a rule versus like, okay, I'm going to sit down at my desk and like, what do I do today? Because there's a million things in my head and I don't know how long they're going to take. Like you've really thought it out and you know exactly what you're supposed to do. I would think you're going to get a lot more done in the long run by doing it this way

than by just working as hard as you can all day long, every single day, because you're probably not even working on the most effective things every time. Yeah. Another thing that I mentioned too is oftentimes you work 12 hours and then you leave your computer and you're like, what did I do all day? You literally have no idea what you did all day. Oh my gosh. Seriously. Sometimes that...'re just talking about this like two days ago. She's like, sometimes I just write it down just to see what I did just to prove to myself that I didn't just stare at the computer all day. It's so true. But that also turns around to what Jennifer said of like, you're not doing the most effective things because you have no idea what you're doing. There's no direction.

Yeah, there's exactly. And so also what I love doing is usually on Mondays, I plan out my week. So I kind of look at the tasks and I just take, you know, 15 minutes to drop in around different meetings or whatever's going on in the week. And that allows me to feel really good and confident that I'm going to get that to do list done. And I'm going to be efficient about it and productive to where if I only want to work four hours a day, I'm putting my to-do list within four hours every single day and I'm spreading it out. I'm not thinking like, oh, I'm going to get all these super easy tasks done and then I'm going to get all these hard tasks done. You can't get all the hard tasks done on one day. It exhausts you. You're going to go into like super burnout very quickly.

Yeah, you have to have a couple like fluff things. Yes. It's kind of like just like a pep talk, you know, like, oh, look what you just did. Exactly. Exactly. You're killing it. You're killing it. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think this makes so much sense. And I think that we can be resistant to it because it's change. If it's different than the way that we've done things, then it's different. So we started utilizing ClickUp with our podcast, actually. Our podcast manager uses it. And at first it was like, oh my gosh, I am one of those that can be very resistant to structure. But if I have somebody who's going to explain it to me, then I will utilize it. But I'm going to probably need it explained. And now that we've been using it for a while with the podcast, it does. I was telling Jennifer, I'm going to click up every day now. And it is nice to see I have a very planned schedule. And you know, it's ironic that I'm sitting here saying this out loud.

I am the most organized in regards to the podcast. And it's the only thing that we have in ClickUp. But I am really organized with my podcast and our podcast. I do too. But it feels very organized because probably because it's all in ClickUp and everything that I need to do for it is there. Yeah. And your podcast manager has a system built. So you have your part and then she has her part. And I'm sure it always gets out when it's supposed to because ClickUp has due dates and every person is responsible for the piece of the puzzle that builds and produces

this podcast. So ClickUp allows you guys to not stress out about like, oh, I need to record podcasts and I need to get this to my manager and I need blah, blah, blah. It's already just in there. It's already like she's able to even say, hey, I haven't got your podcast yet. I need it before X date or whatever. So yes, it's because she has a system in there and it allows her to stay organized because I'm sure she has more clients than just you guys. But having it in ClickUp allows her to see everything that's going on with all of her clients at all times and figure out where everybody is in the process. I am so appreciative of just your vulnerability today and your willingness to share how this

has helped your own life. I think that's always helpful when somebody can come on and say, I was at this point in my own business. And instead of staying on the couch and crying, I decided to turn it into something better and then in turn help other people with it. So thank you for sharing your story in that way. Because I think that there are a lot of content creators who have had their moment on the couch crying because they feel disorganized and they can't keep up. Because until you are a content creator, you don't realize the behind the scenes. I think that goes to show with a lot of things. And so I think that it can feel very overwhelming, all the things that we want to do and need to do

for our business, but to have like, kind of a clearer path for what can I do realistically, and then you can make important decisions after you know, you know, what's on your plate. So thank you for sharing about this tool. I think it's going to help a lot of people listening today. Yeah, thank you for having me. I want to also mention one last thing. We talked about being vulnerable and crying on the couch and stuff, and all of those problems were stuff that I could probably have not dealt with. The thing that I want to mention here is when something life-changing happens, so an emergency, maybe something happens in your family and you need to step away, being able to have these systems in place allows your business not to die if you have an emergency and you have nothing going on with your systems, no one's able to help you. No one's able to jump in and

kind of take the reins while you deal with whatever's going on. And I think it's just really important to think about that as well, because we can plan all day long for growth. We can plan for vacations. We can plan for maternity leave. We cannot plan when an emergency happens. So thinking about that too, what would you do if an emergency happened? What would happen to your business? Yeah. I think that's an excellent thing to be thinking about too as entrepreneurs, because a lot of us, there's only a handful of us in the business or solo. I mean, I know there are a ton of people listening to this, that it's just them and their business. And so that's just really excellent advice, I think, to plan for that.

And it's not a topic that we want to talk about, but it's inevitable because at any given time it can happen. We can be in a situation that we would need to have that plan in place. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Okay.

This has been so awesome. And if people would like to connect with you, Casey, where can they find you? Yeah. Okay. This has been so awesome. And if people would like to connect with you, Casey, where can they find you? Yeah. So I am at CaseyAckerman.com. Instagram is Casey Ackerman and I'm most active on Instagram. So definitely come there, send me a DM, say hello, ask questions. I'm very open to helping people when they need it and what would be best for them. I have templates. I have a course. I have, you know, VIP services.

So if you're looking for, you know, a way to get started, I can definitely help there as well. So I would love just to connect with everyone though as well. Thank you so much. We're going to head to CaseyAckerman.com right now. Yeah. We're going to go check this all out and dive right into it. Thank you, Casey. Thank you, ladies. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly

newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the wait list for the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. The link to join the wait list is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.