The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 81. Organizing Your Blog For Success

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

Welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast!  Today, we are talking all about organizing your blog business. If you have goals and you are wanting your blog to grow, it's good to start thinking about and creating some intentional ideas of how you want to spend your time and what kind of structure you want to implement for your business. Tune in to hear more about organizing your blog business!   Thanks for listening! Connect with us on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsSave 20% off of Berkley Sweetapple's templates using code SPARK20 on her website: berkleysweetapple.comCheck out the show notes for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode81

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, welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. Today we are going to talk about how to organize your blog business. And I know that sometimes when we talk about organization, if you don't have that kind of in your veins, essentially, is what I'm going to say, then that can feel kind of challenging. Like, oh, I'm not good at this. But whether you are naturally an organized person, or you want to become more organized, or maybe you don't even realize yet how much being organized can help your blog business, I hope that you're going to learn something today. In fact, I know that you're going to learn something today. So I just hope that you go at this episode with a really open mind.

And something I want to say before Jennifer and I get started here is that we're going to give you lots of different tips. Know that when you are thinking about implementing some organization strategies, you really don't have to do all of them. That is not at all what we're getting at here today. You can still have a successful blog without having it very type A and everything totally planned and figured out. But just start to dip your toe in to find yourself successful in this area. Because this is something that Jennifer and I have done, thanks to Jennifer, truly, in 2023. I almost forgot what year it was. That's kind of ridiculous. In 2023. It does. But we've implemented this this year with the use of ClickUp. And we're going to talk about that here in a little bit. And it's amazing the headspace that it's been able to give us together, us in our business, not only for Spark, but then with each of our

own blogging businesses as well. I think that as creatives, sometimes we're resistant to creating this amount of structure in our business, because we don't want to lose the creative energy that we might have, or, you know, the feeling of getting struck with an idea and being able to like implement it because it your mind was open. But I think what we'll discover today is that your mind can actually be a lot more open to creativity if you have more structure because you're not worrying about all the little details all the time. Yep. 100% agree with that. I do think that you nailed it when you said as a creative, we don't always want that structure because we like the freedom. We like to go with the flow

a little bit. And I'm definitely not saying that's how all creatives are. But there are a lot of us out there that are like that, that like the freedom. They like to go with the flow a little bit. And I'm definitely not saying that's how all creatives are. But there are a lot of us out there that are like that, that like the freedom, they like the go with the flow kind of feeling in regards to business. But I myself am one of those people and I have found to not be resistant to this structure in place has actually allowed me more freedom. And you hear that a lot in this creative space that when you give yourselves time to kind of retreat or to take a break or whatever, then it allows your creative juices to flow a little bit more freer. And when we work, work, work, work, work, it's hard to be creative. And I really do. I have

found myself that implementing some of these organizational tips have truly helped that creativity feel like it can flow because I'm not working myself into the ground all day, every day. Yeah. There's a lot of benefits to being organized. It's not just in your blog, but just in your life in general. And we're only going to talk about it from this blogging perspective today, but it's something to really think about because there are proven benefits like better mental health, better physical health, mainly because you have less stress. You're probably going to sleep better at night because you're not thinking through all the things. If you're organized and you have a system and you're,

you know, when you get up in the morning, there's going to be a list. You're not having all of these random thoughts bouncing around in your brain all night long, keeping you awake. And there are so many other benefits. And a lot of bloggers actually find that they start to make money or they start to make more money or they start to be able to reach some of those goals once they have a really good system of organization in place. So if you are sitting here and you're like, I want my blog to grow, I have goals that

I want to meet. It's good to start thinking about and creating some intentional ideas of how you want to spend your time and what kind of structure you want to implement for your business. Because when it comes to blogging, there are so many things you can do. There are so many things you can do. You're going to listen to podcasts, go to events, hear speakers, read in Facebook groups, all the things you quote should do. But you have to be able to really sit down and make decisions about how you want to spend your time, what you want your business to look like, and what's going to move the needle forward for you. Yeah, I can definitely feel like information overload if we're not careful. And you can take in all of that information.

I mean, if you're a loyal listener to the podcast, then you know that each week we come out and we share new things that you can implement in your business. Note to self, you should not be implementing everything we're sharing because you might drive yourself mad. But honestly, just what can you implement? If you're listening to some of the things that we are sharing, for instance, say, okay, that seems like something that I can do,

or this seems like something that would give me more freedom in my business, or this seems like something that can move the needle forward. But only you know that. And so having that really clear understanding with those clearly defined goals, I think is really helpful. Why are you doing this?

Why are you blogging? I think that the first step in organization is truly to ask yourself that important question. Hopefully, you have a really defined why. That's something that we help with all of our students in the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp and actually in the Blog Depot as well, is just to really understand why do you want a blog? What are you hoping that this gives to you? When you know why you are doing what you're doing, then you can break it down further. So have clearly defined goals. Do you want to get on an ad network? Do you want to create your own products and services? Who do you want to serve?

Think about how you want your impact to show up. Maybe you want to add something. Maybe you want to add a podcast. Maybe you want to write a book. Maybe you want to do some other things like that, that honestly are all kind of in that content creation space, but can start with a blog. So when you have a list of everything that you want to do,

then kind of back it down and ask yourself, now, what can I do? What is the first step forward? Or where can I move the needle forward there? And when you take a look at that, then ask yourself, break it down even further and ask yourself, what needs to be done in order to achieve these goals that I'm choosing to focus on at this point in time? Like Jennifer said earlier, we can do a lot of things as bloggers. It can be information overload. But you have to decide at this point in time,

at this season of my business, where is my time best spent? And then break those down and be really realistic with what you're able to do. Being realistic is not the same as being lazy. And I hope that you hear that again. Being realistic is not being lazy. You might be at a season that you're only able to focus on one additional thing. That doesn't mean you're a failure, that you're not doing like 13 things that every other blogger you think is doing. You're focusing on what you can do in your business. And that's really, really important. Because if you find yourself at this space that you're trying to do all the things, you're trying to kill it on Pinterest, you're trying to grow this space that you're trying to do all the things, you're trying to kill it on Pinterest,

you're trying to grow your TikTok, you're trying to get more email subscribers, you decided to start a podcast and you have zero help and you also feel like you have zero time, you are not going to feel organized in any way, shape or form because you're going a million miles a minute in a million different directions.

And that's really, really hard to grow and be creative when you're in that space. So just be honest with yourself about not only the skills that you have, but also the time that you have available realistically to devote to the growth that you want to have in order to set yourself up for that organization. I always feel like that's one of the hardest parts for me is I'm overly optimistic about what I can get done in a certain amount of time. Yep. I think it's just a skill you have to practice and develop over time.

As you start to implement these kinds of systems, you start to figure it out. But the starting point for all of this has got to be deciding how much you're going to work on your blog. Because I think we jump into things like this and we're so excited. And we're just like, I don't care. I'm just I'm going to do everything I can. I'm going to make this successful. And we don't want to like, harness that enthusiasm. But you have to set up reasonable expectations for yourself so that you don't burn out. And so I think it's important to take a look at your own schedule and start to figure that out for yourself. Now, the beauty of blogging is that you have time freedom. So it's not like a job where you have a set number of hours that you

have to work per week or you have a set schedule. But I think it is important to set a little bit of a schedule for yourself because... Well, it doesn't mean we don't work. Yeah. You could kind of fall into two camps. You could be in a season where you're procrastinating things and letting other things always take priority. Or you could be in a season where you're working too much to the point where you're going to burn yourself out because you're so excited because you haven't put any boundaries in place. So, you know, you have to think about what you want it to look like for you and your schedule might look different in different seasons. I know for me, I have a different schedule during the school year because I have a school age daughter and

in the summer I try to work a little less. Amy, I know you have a lot of variability in your schedule too. And that's okay, right? Yeah. And I think it is knowing that that is okay. And that's something that I think we can struggle with in different seasons is feeling like, well, I'm not able to show up the way I am now the way that I have. And that's okay. That's the beauty of blogging. And when you can look at that as a positive, yes, I have my daughter going to a camp 3 days a week and my boys are enrolled in camps and things. But my goal really is to work 3 days a week this summer and fill in those days, what I can get done and take 2 days during the week off with my kids.

That's the whole reason I want to blog is so I can spend time with my kids so I can be present. So I can still have my own business, be in charge of my own schedule, and still be with them. And I know that you have similar thoughts to Jennifer about your schedule this summer. Yeah. And I think just implementing those expectations with yourself and your family that really helps. So you might say, okay, maybe you have to take it week by week, because every week looks different. Or maybe you can set a month or a season in advance and say, these are my work hours, or these are my work days. But when you set those

expectations with everybody, I think it just removes a lot of the stress that comes along with this is veering off topic a little bit, but some of that guilt that can come along with work working and having, you know, other obligations, whether it's kids or anything else. So I think you're reducing your own stress, if you can create somewhat of a schedule, do your best to create a schedule for yourself, and decide how many hours you have available in this season to work. And that way, when you start, we'll talk about this in some of the next steps. But when you start creating that list of to-dos, you're setting yourself up for success because you can look and start to see, is the list I've created for myself realistic, like you said, with the time that I have available?

Right. And I think that being realistic is important in anything when it comes to blogging, knowing that there's no such thing as an overnight success. I think being realistic is just really important in a lot of areas. And I think being willing to pivot too. So knowing that your schedule might look different at different seasons, and maybe it won't. Maybe you're at a point in your life that you really can pretty much work the same hours each and every week, like indefinitely. But we're bound to have something come up or holidays or whatever come up that things are going to look different. That is okay. I think that's the point that we're getting at here. Set a schedule for yourself. Yes. So I'll use an example. Last school year, our schedule was that we worked on Spark on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

And then we were able to work on our own businesses on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. And at first, that probably felt a little weird for Jennifer and I. But I'll tell you that when we finally had those clearly defined days that were like Spark days, and then our own personal days, I can't even tell you the pressure that came off of my shoulders with that. Because what happened was when I was working on my blog, I can't even tell you the pressure that came off of my shoulders with that. Because what happened was when I was working on my blog, I always felt like I should be working on Spark and vice versa. Or I felt like I wasn't pulling my weight with Spark, or I wasn't doing enough for my blog or whatever. So just having those very clearly defined goals and days that you're

working is important. That might look for you like if you have young kids, that might look that you're only going to work when they're at school. Maybe you're tired of working every evening after they go to bed. How can you adjust your schedule differently? Do you have to run yourself into the ground like that? Or can you readjust your goals, schedule your blog time to work on that and still find success in that way? I don't know the answer to that question for our listeners. You just have to really ask yourself, what do I want this business to look like? Let's go back to the why. What is my why? Why am I doing this? And then when you have that clear understanding, then when you go to move forward and look at your schedule, you're going

to have a better understanding of what you are willing to do and not to do. And I think that that's just really important. Also to know that your schedule does not need to look like any other blogger that you may or may not know or the ones that you see on social media or the ones that you get in your email inbox. Jennifer and I live literally three streets apart. And we blog completely differently. We even own a blogging business together. And we still blog differently. We have different processes. We have different things that work for each of us. And that's okay. It took me a long time. If you've listened to any of our episodes, you've heard me say that. I used to really struggle with that. I thought my business needed to look like Jennifer's business. And what I finally realized is that it doesn't.

I've learned a ton from Jennifer. But there are different things. I have a different niche that plain and simply is just going to need different things. And she's a food blogger. I'm not. And so that looks different. So consider your niche, consider your growth, consider your why, and have all of that in when you're really sitting down to look at your schedule and ask yourself, how much time am I realistically able to give to my blog? How much time do I want to give to my blog? Because don't forget that just because you have white space doesn't mean that you have to fill it. Because you have to be able to also recharge that creative energy within your body and to take time to go out and enjoy your family, go for a walk. All of those other things, I think,

can go into schedule. You can have an entire podcast episode just all about schedule, I think, because it's something that I think is kind of hairy for a lot of different people. Do you know if your website is protected? Did you know that your website needs to be protected? Having the appropriate disclaimers on your website is really important. And since we aren't lawyers, we had to find someone who could help us protect our blogs with the right documentation. And that's how we found Berkeley Sweet Apple and why she is our go-to gal for legal templates for your blog. Every website needs a privacy policy and a terms of use at a minimum. And Berkeley has a bundle template that will help you add these to your

website in less than 30 minutes. Don't wait until there is a reason to add these to your blog. Protect yourself from the start and make sure that you have them. Better to be safe than sorry. You can see all of Berkeley's available templates on her website, berkleysweetapple.com. And if you use code SPARK20, you can save 20%. Protect your website and your business today and let Berkeley Sweet Apple provide you the legal templates that you need. You can find the link to Berkeley's website and the code for 20% off in our show notes. us an off in our show notes. Yeah. And I think one of the important things to keep in mind as you're thinking about your schedule, or if you're feeling like your schedule is limited, is this is

what this whole episode is. It's trying to help you so that your schedule is the most efficient it possibly can be. So you may be surprised at the actual amount of things that you can get done if you implement some organization tips into your business. I think that's the beauty of it. It's like you can stop feeling limited by the amount of time and you can start feeling empowered

about how much you're getting done and still living the life that you want to live. Yeah, I'm kind of laughing because what I think to myself is you never know how much you can get done until you've procrastinated something. And then you're like, wow, I got that shit done real quick. Exactly. If I wouldn't have procrastinated that for the last four months, then I could have got that done in a less stressful way. But it's amazing what we can get done in a short amount of time if we have to.

Yeah. But what if you took that pressure off of yourself and you had a clear understanding of what you needed to do and when you're going to work on that? Just take a minute and think about that. Just envision waking up in the morning and when it's your time to sit down and work on your blog, you know that for X amount of hours, I'm going to sit here and these are the tasks I'm going to work on. And if those tasks get done, guess what? You get to shut your computer and you get to go do something else in your life that brings you joy because that's the beauty of being a blogger. You're not punching a time clock. You're not having somebody tell you,

oh, you should be working more. You should be doing more. You don't have that. So really think about the beauty of blogging. There's so many awesome things about being a blogger, and your time is one of them. Well, hopefully we've convinced you that you should at least implement a few organizational things into your business. So now we're going to dive into what you can actually do to get a little more organized. So the first thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to create some processes for yourself. And what I mean by this is start thinking about the things that you do, whether it's writing a blog post. I mean, as a blogger, that's probably

the main thing that we're all doing. And actually writing down the steps that it takes you to complete a blog post that is really important. And it may not seem like it, but it is important for a lot of reasons. It will help you review what you're doing and make sure you don't have any inefficiencies in your process. Is there something you could do differently so that you could make this all happen a little bit faster? It will give you like a set of steps or a checklist to follow every time without recreating the wheel or spending time mentally thinking about what you need to do next if you have it all written down somewhere. And it will help you in the future if you were ever able to hire out some help for your blog,

because you'll already know exactly what you want these people to do. Sounds crazy, but it is so true. I just went through the process of hiring a few people to help. And the onboarding process was a little bit painful for me because I didn't have some of my processes documented. They're starting to get documented now, but I wasted time trying to get people onboarded because I didn't have good systems in place to show them what they needed to do because they were stepping in to fill some roles that I did not want to do anymore. So processes can really help you with your overall productivity, your efficiency. It is one of the hardest things, I think, to you almost have to force yourself sometimes

to document these things because they're natural to you. It's hard to think about them in that way. But it is probably the first and most important thing you need to do when you start to think about getting organized in your business is to think about really what you're doing, what tasks you're doing, and all of that so that you know exactly what it entails to run your business. Yeah, because that also ties in with the schedule. That if you think it takes you right now like 2 hours to write a blog post, you're just guesstimating. And then you sit down and you write the entire process, you might find it takes you like 5 to 6 hours. So if you're giving yourself 2 hours to write a

blog post, like 3 days a week, and so you're only allotting six hours for blog post creation. And you find at the end of every single week that you're not making your target. It's probably because you didn't have a clear estimate for how long it's actually taking you to create the content that you're wanting to create. So I think that having these processes in place is important. And it goes back to what we talked about earlier is just when you have that schedule, then you know, this is about what I can get done in this amount of time. And having those processes in place helps, which leads us into the next thing, which is implementing a system for tracking. So whether you're going to write something down, or whether you're going to use a computer software system to help you,

you can have a much more realistic picture of what needs to be done. Now we're going to share a personal testimony here. We used to use writing it down. We had a bajillion notebooks. We are bound to lose a notebook, if we're honest. But that works for a lot of people. So if that is you, you do you, girlfriend. Seriously, you do what works for you and your business. And if that is what's working for you currently is to have your to-do list on an actual handwritten note or post-its or whatever, and that is making you happy, then you go ahead and continue to do that. What I will say is when we started using ClickUp, which is a project management software, it was a game changer for our business. And we've talked about this in other episodes.

a game changer for our business. And we've talked about this in other episodes, but it truly was. And shortly after we did a podcast episode with Casey Aikerman about that, we interviewed somebody else, one of our old students, Giorgio Smith, who said that she uses something similar as well. And it was like, okay, probably everybody else is doing this, but us. So we need to get this in place. Because for a long time, we honestly felt very chaotic in our business. And when you're feeling chaotic, you really can't grow, if I'm being honest. And I say that because we've been there. And you might be growing, feeling in that chaotic state. But what I can tell you is that you're going to feel burned out at some point. I can almost guarantee that. But just that constant rat race of going, going,

going and not really having a clear direction, it's going to lead to burnout. So instead of getting to that point, putting these processes in place and having a system for tracking what actually needs done can be so, so important. Because when you have it all in your head, what you need to do, you can actually underestimate or you can forget the things that you need to do. Forgetting was something that we did often. It was like, oops, we were supposed to do that. Or are you doing that? Or am I doing that? Or in regards to our own blogs, we would just end up putting things off like, oh, well, I just didn't get to that. So I'm just not going to. And so then it got put on the back burner. And that's not what we wanted for our businesses.

That's not what we want for Spark or our individual businesses either. So there are a lot of different project management softwares that you can use. The one that we chose was ClickUp. But some other ones that you may have heard of are like Asana or Monday, Trello. Those are a couple that just come to mind. And just look into them. And I know it might feel overwhelming, especially if your brain works kind of like mine does. And that feels a little scary to you. But we can actually link to Casey Ackerman's course on ClickUp. And that might be something that would help you just to have a clear understanding of how to set something like this up. This is not a requirement. I don't

want to give the impression that this is the requirement in order to be a successful blogger. But I do think it is a really important step, if I can be honest. I think that having systems in your business makes you more of a business. It's less of, yeah, I'm going to be successful. When you have that different mindset, when you're sitting down and you know exactly what your tasks are, I just feel like you're sitting down with more confidence when you sit down to create your content, when you sit down to work on your business. And it really helps you have a clear understanding of where you need to spend your time,

where you are spending your time and how much time you're spending doing it. So the recommendation that we have here is when you choose something, stick to it. It is going to take some effort to set something like that up. But I think when you choose something, stick to it. It is going to take some effort to set something like that up. But I think when you use it, you will be so encouraged and you will feel, honestly, just even more time freedom. I know that's how I felt. Jennifer did set it up for

Spark. And when I first initially had it, it was kind of overwhelming to just have all of our tasks to do. But then it's given us this really, I think, open mind when we think about something new that we want to do in the business. Her and I can sit down and look and say, Okay, so for instance, we just developed a new welcome series for our email list. And when we were looking at our calendar, and then we broke each email out. And when we looked at it, it was very clear. All of a sudden we were like, okay, this needs to be bumped out a couple of weeks. You guys, a year ago, we would have just done it and we would have ran ourselves into the ground and we would have been mad at ourselves and each other because we weren't getting things

done. But having that clear process in mind, like, this is the process that we need to go to. This is the amount of time that's going to take us to do it. This is who's in charge of what. I can't even tell you how freeing it feels. It really, really does. So I think if you don't have a system of any sort in place, whether you're using a pen and paper, whether you're using a calendar, whether you're using a project management software, I do think when you can allow yourself that structure and organization in that step, you're going to find freedom in your business there. Yeah, it makes it so much easier when you come up against those situations where you have so much on your plate. When you're using a tool like that, you can clearly see it and you

can start to move things around much easier because you can just reassign due dates and plot things in different spots on the calendar. And I guess my point is it really helps you with the overall prioritization of your business so that once again, you can be back sitting in that seat where you're the boss of your business and you're making decisions about what to do based on what actually moves the needle forward in your business. And speaking of moving the needle forward, one of the big goals we all have is to make some money with our blog. And so implementing these systems so that we can make the decisions that will help, again, move that needle forward, you have to start paying attention

to the impact of all of that. So you don't just want to work, work, work, check things off the list to get them done. Now it's time to take a look and say, is my effort paying off in the way that I want it to? So you want to pay attention also to your finances. So you're going to need some system in place again to keep track of that. And there's no one size fits all. We've used a spreadsheet for many years. I really like the free accounting software from wave. It's really simple to use. There's QuickBooks, there's all kinds of different options. But what you really want to do is just find a way so that every month or however often you want to do it, you are paying

attention to your finances so that you can see is where I'm spending my time, the best place for me to spend my time so that I'm getting the return on my investment. We had a podcast episode with Angela Hatchie. If you haven't listened to that one, it would be a fantastic one just in regards to your money mindset around your business. But the point here is, it's also got to be part of your system, that you're keeping track of your expenses and your income, where your time is being spent, so that you can determine where things need to shift, adjust, where you can improve, where you might be able to hire out some help. There's all kinds of decisions you're going to be able to make about your business based on those numbers that you see every month.

Yeah. And I think something to be said there too is even if you're a brand new blogger, we would still recommend this. Even if you're still not making ager, we would still recommend this even if you're still not making a dime. I would still recommend really looking at where am I investing my money? Because if you're new to blogging, you've spent money on a theme and plugins and probably email marketing. You might be paying a little bit for like a search engine tool or keyword research tool. And so you want to look at that. You want to see like, is this a valuable use of my money from month to month? Jennifer and I are always going to be the first to tell you what we think is a good value and where it's just fluff. There's a lot of people that might recommend a lot of different things. But anything that we're going to recommend to you is because we think it's actually necessary.

And we don't want anybody to just be spending money, just to spend money. There's a lot of big fancy things that we can do. And that's all great and fine. But you don't want to start a blog to go in debt. You want to start a blog to give yourself that financial and time freedom that we're looking for. And that leads us into the last thing that we want to talk about today. And that's just really looking at the big picture. What truly is your goal? And it's also setting some boundaries, knowing what you're willing to do in your business and what you're not willing to do. So there may come a time that you want help

with some of the tasks that you're doing in your business. And knowing how to get that help, I think is really important. Knowing that it's okay to ask for help, I think is very, very important too. I think that's a common misconception is that bloggers do it all, all by themselves. That is simply not true. You guys, most bloggers, when they get to a point that they can hire out even something little, they do because there is so many things that they are doing. So if you have this idea that I'm not as successful as so-and-so, I want you to just ask yourself, do you really know everything that goes in the back end of that business? And you likely don't. And that's okay. It's really none of our business the way that other people are running their own blog business. But the reason that I want to share

that with you is because you have to keep your eye on your price. And that might look different than somebody else's and stay in your own lane. Reconnect to your why. Know what you're willing and not willing to do. Know what you absolutely hate doing and you would really love some help with, honestly. Because you're going to come a time that you're going to want to do some things in your business, probably, that it's going to take you past the capacity of what you're able to do. So what could you hand off to somebody who could do it for minimal cost and help you grow in areas that you want to grow in? So we've recently had some students in the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp who really don't want to grow their social media, for example. And that's okay. I know that we are in this age of social media is all the rage still.

But you can still grow a blog today without social media. They're doing it, if I can be honest. They are increasing blog traffic each and every month. And they're not on social media because that does not bring them joy. And that is okay. So that was a boundary that they set so they can focus on other areas in their business. That's really important to have that clear understanding when you go to think about your business as a whole. And that's what we mean by look at the big picture. Look at how do you want your finances to feel? How do you want your content to feel? How do you want your schedule to feel? How do you want all this to marry one another to fit into this puzzle piece of your blogging business? And when you can come up with your own plan, your own process, that's where you're going

to find success. And it's got to be independent to you. It's got to be unique to you. And that's, like I've said, that's the beauty of blogging. because you get to create this job that lights you up, that makes you happy, that allows you to offer value to people that are like-minded and who are learning so much from you. And you get to do that on your own time. And you get to be in charge of the money that you do make and the way that you have an impact on the world. And so hopefully, these organizational tips have helped you today. I know that when you sit down to think about this, it can feel kind of overwhelming. So I just want to give space for anybody who's feeling a little bit overwhelmed. But just start with one thing. Just think about one thing that

we've shared today that might help you move your needle forward or might just take some pressure off. Jennifer, you mentioned that earlier, just that guilt. I think that's something that a lot of us feel. We feel guilt or something in some capacity, whether it's with our family or business or whatever. But how can you not feel so much pressure or guilt in an area? And how can you really increase your impact? Okay, so we hope today has been helpful. We hope it's encouraged you as always. And we would love to hear what you thought about it. You can connect with us over on social media if you want. We're at Spark Media Concepts there. And if this episode impacted you in any way, we would love for you to share it and leave a review. Reviews are really

important to the growth of this podcast. It's been amazing to watch this grow over the last year. And we're having so much fun just showing up in your ears each and every week and teaching you more about blogging. So we will see you back here next week. 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 Concept 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 waitlist for the ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.