Episode 824: … I Almost Quit. Then My Reel Reached 7 Million Views With Megan Porta

EBT824 –Megan Porta

Well, hello, food bloggers. Oh my gosh. It has been so long since I have sat down to record an episode just you and me. It’s been almost a year. So hello. If you don’t know me, if you’re new to the podcast, I’m Megan Porta. I am the host of Eat Blog Talk. I normally show up recording interviews with other guest experts, people who know a lot about food blogging or something that relates to it. But here I am today. We’re gonna talk just you and me. I’m feeling a little bit nervous because, well, I’ll be honest, I almost didn’t record this episode. I have just finished one year of creating a lot of video shorts, and I want to tell you the story behind this because I think it’ll be helpful and I hope inspiring for some of you.

For several months at first, I published every single day. Now we’re talking video shorts across different platforms. I’ll get into that in just a bit. Sometimes I even published twice a day across three different platforms. Even today, I’m still publishing at least five times a week on most weeks. When I finished the first version of this script on October 8th, 2026, so just a couple days ago, I had gained 800 Instagram followers within that year-long stretch. Yeah, I’m pausing there because that is a very underwhelming number to hear. And that was the number that kept stopping me from talking about this whole thing and telling this story. I kept thinking, who wants to hear about my video experiment when I don’t have an enormous account, or not even an enormous account, but not even a remotely medium-sized account to show for it?

So around that time, this was just about one week ago now, a reel I made about crock pot applesauce reached 420,000 views. Applesauce is not a very exciting recipe. It looks very boring. It’s very ordinary. But I presented it differently because of what this past year has taught me.

Both of those things were true when I sat down to write this script. My following had not exploded, not even close, and my ability to create content that people want to watch had changed dramatically. And then, you’re not gonna believe this, but it is true. Literally hours after I finished writing this script, something happened that I am still trying to wrap my head around.

I will tell you about that in a little bit because I really want you to hear where I was before all of that happened. Today I want to tell you how this unfolded: the experiments, the discouraging stretches, the moments when something clicked, and the things I would want you to consider if you are creating and creating and creating and wondering why your content isn’t going anywhere, why your account isn’t exploding, why people don’t seem to care, etc.

I also want to talk about what this project has meant to me emotionally through missing my son while he was on a trip overseas, a really crazy busy summer that we’re just wrapping up, and house construction that disrupted our family life. This little video experiment became a balm for my soul.

Then this past August, not even two months ago, you guys, I almost walked away from all of this. And that is the part I really want to unpack. How something that brought me so much joy became something I nearly quit, and how making room for creativity helped me find my way back.

Because while I’m recording this, I’m still in it. I am in the middle of it. I don’t have a neat ending for you, but I do have a lot that I’ve learned and I want to share with you. So let’s rewind. Let’s go back to where it started. This started with an interview that I hosted here on Eat Blog Talk in September of 2025, just over one year ago.

Pat Flynn was my guest on the show that day. He talked about his YouTube success, among other amazing things he shared with us, and how his success began with one tiny experiment. He had committed to creating shorts for 60 consecutive days just to see what happened. That really stuck with me. I thought, I can do 60 days. That is totally doable. So, rewind a little bit more. Earlier in 2025, probably in January of that year, I had already started publishing long form videos again on YouTube just to breathe some new life into that channel, into that platform.

When I had this conversation with Pat, adding shorts felt like something I could totally do. So on September 16th, 2025, I began. At first, I just filmed things we were making for dinner: homemade potato chips, ways to dress up ground turkey. I know, super exciting. Whatever was happening in my kitchen in the evening became a potential video. And I distinctly remember thinking that things are probably gonna take off pretty quickly. Within a couple months, this might explode. I might have gigantic numbers on all platforms. Yeah, super funny, especially now looking back. That is definitely not how it unfolded.

A few weeks after I started my YouTube Shorts experiment, I was at a blogger retreat and I mentioned what I was doing, what I was undertaking. A few people at the retreat immediately said, my gosh, Megan, you have to put your video shorts on Instagram and TikTok as well. I was so reluctant, you guys. Committing to YouTube, not just shorts, but doing long form as well, already felt like so much on top of all of the other things I was doing. But I knew they were right. So I agreed to just do it, to try it for a period. So I logged in to an Instagram account that I had not personally touched in six years. And I signed up for a brand new TikTok account. And suddenly my 60-day YouTube experiment involved three platforms. That first Instagram reel went up on October eighth, 2025. Remember that date. This will make sense in a little bit.

For the next several months through the end of 2025, I published every single day, sometimes even twice a day. Looking back now, I was literally just throwing a giant bowl of spaghetti at the wall. I had no idea what I was doing. My blog has always covered a lot of ground within the realm of just, quote, comfort food. So the videos I was putting up at that time reflected that. I was putting up chili, crock pot mac and cheese, holiday treats, Instant Pot hacks, cozy drinks, funny trend-based reels, all of it.

I was allowing myself to get practice. I was learning to film and edit, but I didn’t have any sort of direction yet. Then Stranger Things happened. My family was completely immersed in the final season of Stranger Things late in 2025. We loved that show. It was something we were just in together. We would sit down and watch it in the evenings with popcorn.

We loved the show, but we also loved our time together watching it. When the series ended, I was not quite ready to leave that world. If you’ve ever finished a show and felt just an empty soul afterward, you know what I mean. You become attached, you become just so connected to the characters and to the world and the experience of watching it with people you love. And being the person I am, I kept noticing the food. I’m also a child of the 80s. So a lot of that food really felt nostalgic to me. The references, the possibilities, it all meant something in my world. Making those foods gave me a way to keep playing in a world that had brought our family so much joy.

I’ve always loved taking an idea and giving it a personal spin. In 2018, I published Cookie Remix, which was basically an entire cookbook built around that very impulse. So of course I wanted to play with Stranger Things food. I recreated Benny’s smash burger, the one he made for Eleven when she showed up at his cafe. I made Eggo ice cream sandwiches, a charcuterie board shaped like a Demogorgon head, and my favorite of all, a Demogorgon pizza. That pizza performed well across all of the platforms. So I made a long form video about it as well. And that actually became a strategy I still use. When a short gets a strong response, I consider whether the subject is worth testing in a longer video. But what I remember most about that stretch is just how much fun I was having. Honestly, so much of my post-series blues came from not having more themed food to make and film. I wanted to stay inside that little creative world.

I wasn’t just trying to find a topic that would perform well. I was taking something I loved and making something new out of it. And that felt so good and refreshing. It reminded me of a part of myself that can get buried under running businesses, keeping up with responsibilities and doing all the things that need to get done in and out of my business. The part that wants to play with an idea just because it’s interesting. Looking back, that was an early clue. I’ve always loved making food playful and nostalgic and approachable and honestly just a little bit unhinged and ridiculous, with a good dose of humor thrown in as well.

The Stranger Things era for me was me starting to discover what my point of view was. After that era died down a little bit, I floundered, to be honest. I kept experimenting with food, but nothing was really taking off or lighting me up. The Demogorgon pizza had reached about 10,000 views on Instagram. And at that time, that felt enormous to me.

Around the end of 2025, I decided to make Instagram my creative focus. I loved the editing possibilities, especially the way I could weave music into the videos.

Music is so important. It can make someone feel that nostalgia. It can build anticipation for something you are going to show them. It can bring strong emotion into a really ordinary moment. A few months later, down the road in the spring of 2026, I realized I could pair an artist’s musical hook with my visual and text hooks. This was one of my epiphanies along the way.

Michael Jackson was the master of musical hooks, so I used a lot of his songs in the spring of 2026, especially those unmistakable beginnings that we all know and love from the eighties and nineties, the parts that I wasn’t hearing anyone else use. So while my opening clip gave someone a reason to wonder what I was doing, the music gave them something to recognize and feel. And that combination worked really well for me.

Okay, back to the end of 2025. My process was starting to become: create and optimize for Instagram, then adapt that same video for YouTube and TikTok, including changing music as needed. Because as you know, TikTok and especially YouTube have more stringent music requirements. At that point, I loosened up on the daily commitment, but I still published on most days.

Then in early February, something changed. I was on an Eat Blog Talk Inner Circle call, great group and great calls, by the way. And the topic of Instagram came up. A few people on the call mentioned that they had been seeing food creators open their reels with process clips. And I just remember thinking, what? Process clips? Why would anyone do that? That seems absurd. Up to that point, I had been leading with the finished food, that beautiful hero clip. Because isn’t that what people want to see right up front? How beautiful the dish ends up. But clearly, my results were not giving me much of a reason to defend that assumption. So I decided to try that process-clip-first strategy. When we were on that call, the next reel that I had been planning was crock pot artichoke dip. So I opened with the process to test this out, and it got 25,000 views.

I was shocked. That was far beyond anything I had seen on my account before. So I did it again. Instant Pot mushrooms, 16,000. Pickle roll-ups, 13,000. Note that these recipes are not glamorous, wonderful, elaborate recipes. They are very ordinary recipes. Then I started making Valentine’s Day foods, including some Instant Pot desserts that had been on my blog for many years. Again, I used those process-first openings and I kept seeing encouraging results.

This doesn’t mean that every food video should open the same way, by the way, but it did teach me to start questioning something that I had accepted without testing. Sometimes showing people the finished result immediately answers the very question that would have kept them watching.

So around that same time, our youngest son Sammy traveled to Malta with his high school band. I know, I can’t believe he got to go to Malta. I tried to tag along, but he would not have any of it. I will never forget leaving him at the airport that day. He was so happy. He was smiling, he was laughing with his friends. So excited about the adventure that was about to unfold. As Dan and I walked away, it was really sad for us, but he did not even give us a single glance. He was just so in the moment. I was extremely happy for him, but I was also so wrecked. He had never been away from home for that long, not even close. And there he was, doing exactly what I wanted him to be able to do: step into an incredible adventure, happy and confident with his friends by his side. Meanwhile, I was walking out of the airport trying to hold my crap together. I was trying to hold that happiness and all of the sadness at the same time. It is such a strange part of parenting, I’ve learned, especially as our boys have gone into the teen years. You want them to grow, you want them to have these experiences, and sometimes you just wish you could keep them close a little longer.

When we got home from the airport that day, I immediately started making crazy desserts in my Instant Pot. Ask my husband, it is no joke. I did not skip a beat. I literally walked in the door and walked straight to the Instant Pot. During that time there were still crying sessions, I was still sad, but in between those sadness sessions, there were brownies and cakes and all kinds of delicious experiments.

My feelings didn’t disappear because I had a project, but the project gave me somewhere to put some of that energy. I had something to be curious about and something to look forward to making. That season contained such a mix of emotions, of sadness, rawness, excitement. I could simultaneously miss my son and get excited about an absolutely unnecessary dessert experiment.

And this is the part of the story that does not show up in analytics. Those videos were giving something back to me, even before anyone else ever saw them. That season felt like a coming together of things I had been doing for years: remixing sweet treats from my cookbook, experimenting with the Instant Pot, and now learning to create videos.

During that time, some of those dessert videos performed well. Salted caramel brownies reached 25,000 views. Chocolate cake, 13,000. But at this point, views were pretty much my entire report card. I would publish, see how many views something got, and then I’d decide whether it was good or bad based on that number. On YouTube and TikTok, I was mostly just dumping the videos and running. I would only check back when it was time to publish the next thing. Over the course of the next few months, I kept covering the dessert basics in my Instant Pot. I did donut holes, I did frosting, pudding, cookies, cinnamon rolls, lava cake, you name it, I did it. In April 2026, I noticed that my Instant Pot fudge recipes tended to rise above the rest. So naturally I made more versions.

Easter fudge, blueberry crisp fudge, lemon fudge, cherry cheesecake fudge, triple chocolate fudge, which was yummy. Key lime fudge, dark chocolate peanut butter fudge, brownie batter fudge, strawberry shortcake fudge, chocolate cherry fudge, and seriously, so many more. Then I made my first Instant Pot dulce de leche video, and it reached, my goodness, 97,000 views. Okay, so something was happening here. I made more versions of dulce de leche after that, naturally, with different twists, of course. Salted dulce de leche, peanut butter dulce, chocolate dulce, cookie butter dulce, marshmallow dulce, saltwater taffy dulce, orange creamsicle dulce, Bomb Pop dulce, Nutty Buddy dulce, and the list goes on.

This was also when I finally started wondering what all those other numbers in my analytics were telling me. At this point, I would say it took me long enough. Do you ever look back and you’re like, wow, that took me a really long time to figure out? This was one of those moments for me. I still can’t believe that it took me quite that long to get there, but whatever. Our journey is our journey and I’m embracing it now. So at that point I started logging my data in a spreadsheet. I even recruited my boys to help me compile all of this information. I logged everything, not just the data inside of Instagram, but what transpired visually during the opening hook. Things that weren’t noted in Instagram that only the eye could see, I had everything logged.

I was fascinated with analyzing this data. I never thought that this would fascinate me, but it did. It sucked me in. I was looking at skip rates, engagement rates, saves, shares, whatever information I could get about how people were responding to my content. I also started looking for patterns across videos instead of just letting one view count dictate how I felt on any given day.

If a skip rate was higher than what I usually saw, I went back to the opening. Was it clear? Was there anything interesting happening? Had I taken too long to give someone a reason to care? If a recipe got very few saves, I asked whether I’d made its usefulness obvious or not. Would somebody actually want to come back and make this? Those numbers didn’t give me a perfect explanation, but they gave me better questions.

And this is something I want to emphasize. If you’re only looking at views, there’s probably a whole layer of learning that you’re missing. Getting deeper into the analytics changed how I created. It really was a pivotal moment. I could make a tiny adjustment and see whether the next result gave me a reason to keep exploring it.

I am such a huge advocate for this. If you are putting serious time into your content and not looking beyond the view count, please take a look. There is information there that can help you understand what you’re building.

I’m going to pause for just a minute to tell you about something that I’m loving. Since we’re talking about using data to make better decisions, I want to tell you about a tool that I love for the blog side of my business: Phynite Analytics. It brings together your Google Analytics, Search Console, and SEO data to help you figure out which posts need attention and what to update. One of my favorite features is that it estimates how long an update will take. If I have 30 minutes, I can pick something that fits that window instead of wondering where to start. It has made updating my content so much easier and so much more efficient. You can find my affiliate link in the show notes at eatblogtalk.com/meganinsta. By signing up through my link, you get your first month free just to test it out and explore it. If you’re doing a lot of updating old content, this tool is magic. I’m absolutely loving it.

Okay, now back to my story. Where were we? Right, taking a look beyond the views. There’s information there that can really help you.

Something else became clear to me over this year. I want the data to help me shape and improve an idea I care about, yes. But more importantly, I want creativity to lead the way. When I let the numbers determine everything I was allowed to make, I started losing the part that made this project feel really special and worthwhile. The dulce de leche videos I told you about often had lower skip rates, like a lot lower than my other videos, and higher views, like a lot higher than my other videos. Nostalgic treats seemed to give people reasons to share. I started putting Bomb Pops and Fudgsicles into my Instant Pot and making just totally off-the-wall ridiculous things. And those did well too.

So I kept asking, what does Instagram want from me? Is it nostalgic treats? Is it dulce de leche? Is it Instant Pot desserts? Then I would beat those concepts to a pulp.

At some point during this past summer, when I was really in it, I wondered, my gosh, how many nostalgic treats can I possibly put into dulce de leche before we all go crazy? The videos were performing well, but I was trying to understand how I could keep doing this in a way that felt sustainable and interesting. Then at the very end of July, something I’ll never forget happened. My results dropped noticeably overnight.

Even my reliable dulce de leche videos were struggling. I had not changed anything about my approach and suddenly the numbers looked very different. I still cannot give you a confident explanation for that drop, but I can tell you how it felt. It was incredibly disheartening.

I had poured so much time and energy into making those videos and studying them, nearly a year’s worth of work. And this is what happens. I thought I was getting somewhere, and then it felt as if all my work had been launched into outer space.

In August, just a couple months ago, I seriously considered throwing in the towel. I almost did, you guys. I had a few talks with Dan during that time. Tears were involved when I said, I think I might be done. I am so incredibly disheartened. He said back to me, knowing how heavily I rely on my intuition, what is your gut telling you to do? I sat with that question for a few weeks.

All of this was happening during an insanely busy season for our family. Summer had been really full. And unplanned house construction added a whole other layer of disruption and exhaustion. By late August and early September, we spent three and a half weeks out of our house while work was being done to it. My whole family was exhausted and burnt out.

So this video project that I’d started nearly a year earlier had been one place where I could follow an idea that was actually mine. It was a little pocket of creativity in the middle of so much happening around me.

I still really loved creating these videos, but the numbers were making me question whether I should keep going or throw in the towel. But Dan’s question kept lingering in my mind: what is my gut telling me to do?

I knew I needed to back off a little bit in order to hear the answer to that. So I kept publishing, but stepped away from the constant checking of analytics. I gave myself and the project a little bit of breathing room. And you guys, that was harder than I expected. I had not realized how often I was opening Instagram throughout the day or how much emotional energy I had attached to those numbers. In that white space that I created, I started remembering why I had done this in the first place.

I did not start a 60-day experiment to impress anyone. Nobody had assigned it to me. Pat’s story had sparked something in me. I wanted to see what would happen for me and no one else.

Stopping did not feel quite right. I was disappointed in the numbers, definitely, but I still wanted to create. I still felt pulled to keep exploring and my gut was telling me I wasn’t done. And I really wanted to listen to that.

I’d continued after the 60-day experiment was up because I’d found a level of creativity inside that project that I hadn’t tapped into for years. Was it fun to see a video take off? Yes, absolutely. Was it deflating when one didn’t? Yes, absolutely. But I’d become so focused on how each video performed that I was losing sight of why I wanted to make them in the first place. So stepping back really helped me to remember.

As soon as I made that decision to continue, I realized my favorite season was approaching: fall. I love everything about fall. The coziness, the weather, the colors, the leaves outside, the food, the decorations, the pumpkins. And don’t forget the apples. Apples are such a delightful little canvas to create with.

I have tons of apple recipes on my blog, including plenty I’ve made in the Instant Pot way back in the day. So in early September, I decided to let fun lead again. I leaned into making apple recipes just because I wanted to make apple recipes.

About one week into my apple experiment, we’ll call it, I had a profound realization that changed how I understood this entire experiment. I had just dropped Elijah off at school that morning. A funfetti dulce de leche reel that I had published a few days prior had reached 100,000 views, which was my very first really big result since the July drop. And I had the thought: what? Am I just an Instant Pot dulce de leche factory? That is absurd. It just cannot be. There has to be a reason these specific videos are doing better. So on the drive, I just thought through it. Maybe it has nothing to do with the dulce, because all along, you guys, I was thinking it had to do with the dulce or the fudge or the Instant Pot.

So I mentally walked through what happens in one of those videos. Okay. I pour sweetened condensed milk into a jar. My text overlay says something like, this should not work. Then the jar goes into an Instant Pot filled halfway with water. The lid goes on, pressure releases. I pull the jar out. Delicious caramel magically appears. Then comes the stirring, the nostalgic treats, the finished dessert.

Then it occurred to me that at every step before the reveal, every step of that video journey that the viewer is taking, they have a question in their brain. What is she doing with that milk? Why is it going into a jar? Is she really putting that in the Instant Pot? What is going to happen here? What is it going to look like? Is it edible? What can you actually do with it? I had been creating a series of unresolved questions without fully understanding what I was even doing.

It wasn’t the dulce de leche or the fudge or even the Instant Pot that was creating the magic. It was the process that was carrying the curiosity forward until the glorious payoff. Oh my gosh.

I went home and instantly applied this idea, this concept, to an Instant Pot caramel apple dip that I had been brainstorming. It got 8,000 views almost immediately, which was so encouraging compared with my other non-dulce videos at the time. Then I tried whole apple applesauce in the Instant Pot. I honestly did not know whether the recipe or the reel would even work. But those whole apples going into an Instant Pot gave something to wonder about. Is she leaving them whole? Will they soften? Will they explode? Is this actually going to become applesauce? How does it taste? And the recipe worked. The reel reached forty-five thousand views. Okay, this gave me a reason to keep testing the idea across other recipes.

So very recently now, just over a week ago, the crock pot version of whole apple applesauce reached 420,000 views. Not only is applesauce kind of a boring food, especially by sight, but did you notice my Instant Pot wasn’t even involved? Yes, this was huge. Not only am I not an Instant Pot dulce de leche account, I don’t even have to limit myself to the Instant Pot. This was such a freeing realization.

Across all of these experiments, I’m realizing that what makes someone want to watch goes beyond the recipe or the appliance. It’s the curiosity I create and how I take them through the video that actually matters.

The data helped me recognize the pattern, the breathing room helped me understand it, and I needed both. So here is the framework I’m using now. Curiosity earns the watch, emotion earns the share, utility earns the save, and connection earns the follow.

A nostalgic treat might make someone think, my sister would love this. Easy applesauce might earn a save because someone just went apple picking. And over time, people get a feel for who you are, your humor, your excitement, your weird ideas, and that gives them a reason to want more.

This whole endeavor has turned into a lesson in human behavior, and that is fascinating to me. I believe I’m building a really solid foundation with this approach. Do I know that for sure? Nope. But based on what I’ve learned and the patterns that I’m seeing, it’s one I’m willing to bet on. And this might not be your framework. Some accounts thrive with very different approaches. I want to be clear on that. My approach is not your approach. It could be, but it doesn’t have to be. What I do know is that I cannot rely on volume and hope as my whole strategy anymore. I lived that urge to create more and more and more of the same. If I publish enough, surely something will happen, right? No.

If I keep repeating the same choices, I can get very efficient at making videos people still don’t want to watch. I hear plenty of information thrown around all the time about using edits, choosing shorter clips for pacing, finding a good text hook. These skills are so helpful, so useful. But I wish we talked more about the time, the patience, the exploration, and the care that can go into finding your way with this.

One skill I’ve developed through this whole process is being able to see where content is falling short, including my own. And this skill has been developed because I have studied a lot of content in the past year. I can see when a clip, for example, doesn’t move anything forward, why people stop watching, when I’ve answered the question too early, when the ending doesn’t deliver.

And the word hook is great, it gets the point across, but it doesn’t quite capture what I’m trying to create. What interests me is captivating somebody, giving them an image or an action that causes a question to form in their mind. And once they’ve stopped, now what? Why would they want to stick around? That’s where the series of unresolved questions comes in, along with music, humor, or a cozy feeling that makes it enjoyable to be there.

I would love to encourage you to try this with a video you’ve already published. Watch the first two seconds. If somebody has never seen you before, what would make them want to see what happens next? Then watch the rest of the video. Where might their interest disappear? Does the ending deliver? Study your retention and engagement information and allow that info to suggest a change that you can actually test. And if you’re frustrated with stagnant growth, zoom out.

Ask yourself, why am I doing this? Does something about it light me up? Have I been experimenting and learning or just repeating? Have I left any space for new ideas to arrive?

A year passing does not automatically mean you’ve learned a year’s worth of lessons. But it also doesn’t mean nothing has happened just because your following hasn’t grown the way you’d hoped it has.

So the big question of the episode: was this year worth it for me? Up until October 8th, if we were looking only at follower growth, I could understand why someone might look at my account and question the effort that I’d put in. My brain has questioned it too, trust me, many times.

Because there’s also the business side to think about. Blog traffic, revenue, sponsored work, digital products, affiliate links. My brain chimes in here too. Shouldn’t more of this time have gone toward things that directly make money? Come on. And honestly, I’ve had to put blinders on big time over this past year, very intentionally, in order to protect this time of creating. I realize that might sound completely ludicrous to some people, but I really wanted room to explore without making every idea answer what is the financial ROI?

We hear that sentence tossed around in our space all the time. What is the ROI on this? And if you don’t have an answer, people raise their eyebrows. I recently listened to Rick Rubin on the Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett. It was like that interview was made just for me in this moment.

By the way, if you haven’t read Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act, it is one of the best books I’ve ever read on creativity. And shout out to Micah at Joy to the Food for sharing this delightful episode with me. She knew I would love it and I did.

So near the end of the interview, Rick Rubin says, don’t put undue pressure on your art. He talks about finding a way to support yourself that leaves your creative work room to develop. I heard that line and thought, yes, this is exactly what I’ve been trying to do: give this project room to become something before I demand that every part of it pays off.

I am still in it. I’m still figuring out how this fits into my bigger business. I certainly can’t point to a financial return for every hour I’ve spent making shorts. Absolutely not. But I can’t ignore what has grown.

My creative voice is so much clearer. I am more intentional about filming and editing and pretty dang fast these days, I must admit. I understand so much more about why people watch, stay, and engage. And I’m bringing those lessons into long form video now as well.

I’ve managed to tap into a level of creativity I haven’t felt in years. I genuinely look forward to making something a little weird, seeing whether it works, and watching people react to it. And all of this really matters to me. In the interview, Rick also talks about how someone else’s successful process might not be the process that is right for you. So learn from people, but listen to your own judgment. And that stayed with me too.

Sometimes I hear people talking about a more conventional approach and I get caught in my head big time. I think I’m doing something wrong. I’m an idiot. Shouldn’t I have more to show for this? But when I get quiet enough to hear myself again, this still feels right. I know my approach is not conventional. What has transpired over the past year for me has not been conventional. The fact that I’ve kept going has not been conventional. And I’m becoming more comfortable letting this approach just be mine.

Rick’s closing advice included: be true to yourself, work hard, never give up, don’t quit, just keep going. That almost brings me to tears. That brought me right back to those conversations I’ve had very recently with my husband. My gut was telling me I wasn’t done, but my brain was telling me to question this.

I will link to the interview I keep referencing in the show notes because if this is resonating with you, I think you’ll get so much out of it too.

A year ago I thought that by this point I’d be over this project. I didn’t even know if I would keep going beyond the 60 days. But now that I’m here, I feel like I am just beginning. I feel so pulled to keep going. I believe this is developing into something meaningful, even if I don’t know its final shape. I don’t even know what track I’m on.

This past summer, Sammy, my sixteen-year-old, and I rode The Voyage. It’s a wooden roller coaster at Holiday World in Indiana. And we rode this ride in the pitch darkness. You literally can’t see your hand in front of your face, and I am not even kidding. You are just in it. Taking the drops as they come, taking the turns as they come, and being surprised by every single one of them. That’s a little how this project feels. I can’t see where it’s taking me, but there’s so much joy and excitement in the experience, and I am loving it. I want to stay on this ride.

I keep coming back to this: stay curious longer than everyone else. That line came to me about six months ago. Thank God, because I really clung to that. And it’s helped me a lot.

For me, that means staying with a question beyond the point where I want to declare it solved or where disappointment makes me want to abandon it. Giving myself a chance to discover something I could not see at first. I have stayed curious, and that is paying off in the way I create, the way I understand people, and the way I feel about my work.

And now I need to tell you what happened after I wrote all of this. On October 8th, a few days ago, I finished the first version of the script around noon. It was a Thursday. I had been putting off this episode for months. I kept thinking I should record this. I kept feeling the nudge. And then I kept talking myself out of it because I didn’t have the numbers I thought I needed in order to speak on this subject.

That day, last Thursday, I finally decided I’m just gonna do it. I spent a few hours writing it out and working and thinking through it, and I felt so good about it that I went upstairs and I told Dan I was so excited to record this. I can’t believe I put this off for so long. It just feels so good and so right. Yay.

I had finally put into words why this year mattered so much to me. All of the things I have just shared with you, I believed them before what happened next.

A few hours later, I published a reel for crock pot overnight apple oatmeal. Very quickly, I could see something was happening. By bedtime that night, the reel was approaching a million views, by far the most views I’ve ever had. The shares and saves were off the charts, outlandish, wild.

When I woke up the next morning, it was at 2.2 million. And as I’m updating this script and recording this for you today, it’s at seven million and climbing. Holy crap.

People are so engaged. Some are saying it looks nasty. Of course, right? Some are saying, how could you leave a crock pot plugged in overnight? Oh my gosh. But even more are saying it looks amazing and they’re gonna try it. Some have even already tried it and are reporting back. So there’s a little controversy, a lot of conversation, and so much response to this very ordinary breakfast. I was curious enough to experiment with it.

And now I’m kind of in the thick of responding to that momentum. People are asking about my apple peeler, about my potato masher, about my crock pot. So I signed back up for the deep link tool I’d stepped away from and shared a link in my story, and I’m getting traction with that.

A collaboration opportunity already came into sight for me, so that’s coming up as well. It feels like things are moving into a new chapter and I’m trying to take it all in. I’m really excited about it.

Right before bed that first night on Thursday, when we saw that things were climbing, Dan and I were talking about the timing. Literally hours after I decided to tell this story, this happened. I do not think that’s an accident.

Then I realized something else, you guys. October eighth is the exact anniversary of the day I decided to start publishing on Instagram after six years of not touching the account. To the day, one year. What are the odds? That’s so crazy.

I can’t explain that timing, but to me it just feels like more than a coincidence. It feels deeply meaningful.

Just hours before it took off, I was figuring out how to explain why I wanted to keep going without some enormous result to point to. And I had finally realized that I did have a story worth sharing, even without the seven million views. Then the seven million views happened. I’m excited, I’m overwhelmed, I’m grateful, and I don’t know what’s coming next.

What I do know is that I want to protect the things that got me here: the creativity, the white space, the willingness to experiment and pay attention, and the joy. I don’t want the size of this number to drown out my reasons for creating again.

This seems like an incredible new piece of the story, and the year that came before it still matters just as much. Apparently The Voyage had another turn waiting for me. And yes, I still want to stay on the ride. I can keep listening to the results and to myself. That’s what I want to keep doing as this unfolds.

I had already decided this year was worth sharing before the oatmeal apple situation took off. And I want to remember that because everything this project has given me was already real on October eighth at noon.

This project has been truly a balm for my soul through a very full, unexpected, exhausting year. It has given me joy, somewhere to put difficult feelings, and a creative part of myself I want to keep making room for.

Yes, I will keep looking at the numbers, I will keep learning from them, and above all, I will keep letting creativity lead. Thank you so much for being here and letting me share the middle of this story, including a new chapter I did not see coming.

If you are experimenting with something in your own business, I would love to hear what you’re learning, especially the parts that haven’t shown up in data or ROI yet, because those parts matter too. And I know that now more than ever.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you need any encouragement or if you just want to share your story. Megan at eatblogtalk.com. Thank you for listening. I’ll see you next time.