Episode 651: The Hidden Costs Draining Your Business (And How to Stop Them) with Amy Roskelley

EBT651 – Amy Roskelley

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Supercut  00:37

You are going to want to download our bonus supercut that gives you all the information you need to grow your Instagram account. Go to eatblogtalk.com/Instagrowth to download today. 

Megan Porta  00:52

Wow, wow, wow. My mind is so blown after recording this interview with Amy Roskelley from Health Beet as a more experienced, advanced food blogger, I feel like I’m in the exact same boat she was in when she decided to have a no spend year in her business to bring some of that money and put it in her pocket, instead of giving it to other people and resources and tools and courses and people that help her in her business. This episode was very inspiring for me. I took mad notes about all the things I want to check in my budget so I can consider either canceling them or putting them on hold for a time so that I can see more money in my pocket. She tells her incredible story about her no spend year and how that turned out. It’s great spoiler. She talks about the very specific things that she eliminated and cut back on, and how she did that. Some of them are very creative, by the way, and things I would not have thought about. I think you are going to find massive amounts of inspiration here. This is one of the favorite episodes I recorded in a long time, feeling super inspired and excited right now. It is episode number 651, I hope you love it. 

Sponsor  02:10

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Megan Porta  02:50

Amy Roskelley is the owner of the online nutrition resource, Health Beet. Health Beet is a resource for nutrition educators and families with a goal to improve their health through diet and exercise. Amy has a bachelor’s degree in Community Health from BYU and a master’s degree in business from the University of Utah. Amy is a certified personal trainer, published cookbook author, certified personal chef, NPC competitor and marathon runner. She’s also the mom of three kids. 

Megan Porta  03:19

Hello, Amy. Welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you here. How are you today?

Amy Roskelley  03:24

I’m so good. Good to see you, Megan. I’m excited to be here as well. 

Megan Porta  03:28

Yeah, we’re gonna have a fun conversation today. This is something we’ve literally never talked about. You had a no spend year in your business, and it changed your life. Super eager to get the details on this, but first, I always ask my guests for a fun fact. So do you have one to share with us?

Amy Roskelley  03:46

Well, my fun fact, I actually think it’s the opposite of fun so so it’s not necessarily a fun fact, but it is a fact. So my family loves to do high adventure things like white water rafting and scuba diving and rock climbing and all the things. In fact, my all my kids and my son in law and my husband are all certified river guides, and so they live on the river, and every summer, we do a couple of river trips, and I post them to social media, and with a big smile, we’re having so much fun. I love like the river, blah, blah, blah, but the fun fact is, I actually don’t like it at all. In fact, you would never know if you saw my social media, but all the fun we have as a family is kind of terrifying to me, I hate being cold and I hate dangerous things, and I the whole time I’m just like, white knuckling it down the river, counting down the turns until it’s over. And once it’s over, I’m like, so relieved. But you would never know, if you looked at my Instagram, you would think I would love Thai adventure, but I do not find it fun, but I do have to say I will keep doing it every summer, because the only thing that matters to me is spending time with my family and wherever they are. I will go. I’ll jump off of cliffs. I will go down the most dangerous rivers just to be together.

Megan Porta  05:23

Same way about my family. I don’t care what they do, I just want to be with them. And as you were talking, I was thinking, this is just proof that on social media, you can get one picture of a situation and not have the full story, right?

Amy Roskelley  05:38

Yes, it’s so true. So true.

Megan Porta  05:41

I love it. So where do you guys live that you can do this frequently?

Amy Roskelley  05:46

We live in Utah. We have lots of mountains and lots of rivers. In fact, my husband is when I say they’re all certified to be river guides. My husband, in the summer, actually works as a river guide, and so does my youngest son. And so, yeah, we’re always, always on a river somewhere in Utah. It’s

Megan Porta  06:06

probably good that you’re pushing yourself, or that they’re pushing you a little bit to get out of your comfort zone. I think that is healthy. Probably, you

Amy Roskelley  06:15

know what? That’s true, and I have learned a lot of coping skills in getting through these things. And one thing is, especially on the river, that the more comfortable I can be, the more I’ll enjoy it. And so I’ve actually spent quite a bit of money on a clothes for the water that keep you really warm and dry, and it has made all the difference. If I have a dry suit on and I don’t have to get wet. It’s a much better experience for me. So, yeah. Anyway, whatever I can do to make it more comfortable and more enjoyable, I will spend the money to do it.

Megan Porta  06:51

Absolutely. I love it. I love your persevere, perseverance. Amy, to tell us a little bit about your blog, which is called Health Beet, B, E, E, T. So give us the scoop on Health Beet.

Amy Roskelley  07:05

Okay, so if we want to go way back, I actually started blogging in 2007 and I started a blog about kids and health and nutrition. My undergraduate is a health education degree, and I really loved food, and so while I was raising my kids, I just wanted to teach them like how to eat more fruits and vegetables and just your kind of classic healthy eating for kids. And then, because, well, after about 12 years, 11 or 12 years, I actually sold that blog because my kids grew up and moved out of the house, and I no longer cared about making fun broccoli fun for children, or, you know, hiding it in muffins anymore. So I sold the first blog, and my rebrand into Health Beet was all because, like, I was just at a new stage in my life where I cared more about my own nutrition, my own fitness goals, my own health goals, and and it looks a little different than feeding a family. In fact, as an empty nester, most of our meals are just for two people or just me. And so the new blog Health Beet just became a way for me to share the low calorie, high protein meals I was making for myself, and some of my fitness goals and just things that can help other middle aged women eat better and feel healthier, nice.

Megan Porta  08:32

So you have a long standing history with blogging. That is a long time to have been a blogger, 2007. What’s the math on that, like, 17 years? Is that right?

Amy Roskelley  08:42

17 years as a blogger, a food blogger, nonetheless. Yes, I do. I just love food and I love, I love everything about food blogging. So once I sold that first one, it was really hard for me to stay away. I thought I wasn’t gonna get back online, and within a year, I found myself just taking pictures of all my food still and making recipes. And, you know, I just thought, Okay, I can’t even though I wanted to get off the internet forever. That was my plan. I just couldn’t stay away.

Megan Porta  09:16

Once a food blogger, always a food blogger, right? I think so. I think so. So you have this amazing story with a year that you were realizing, like, Where’s all my money going? I am just going to stop. And you had a no spend year in your business. I want to hear the story.

Amy Roskelley  09:34

Okay, so I actually reached out to you initially, because I think I saw on Facebook you were looking for just specifically how to avoid burnout, or to get over burnout in blogging, which I think is was kind of the impetus to me having this no spend year. I was getting really tired, just I could tell I was slowing down. I didn’t create as many recipes. I wasn’t showing up on social media. It was just kind of this, like slow burnout phase of my career. And then I remember doing my taxes, and, oh, I think it was 2022 and realizing how much money my blog had made. And to be fair, I don’t make all that money in blogging. I also sell a product, and so there’s a lot of expenses tied up with having a physical product as well. And with that, I also had a couple full time employees. I have one that does all my shipping. And so while it is blog related, she doesn’t work on my blog, but anyway, so I had all these things going on, and I was just my goal for the last like two decades has been to not have any personal expenses. I didn’t want a mortgage. I don’t want credit card payments. I don’t want car payments. I just wanted a simplified financial life so that if I ever died, it would be easy for somebody to just step in, and there would be nothing to worry about. So I saw I had made all this money, and yet my personal salary that I take from my blog hadn’t changed in like 15 years. I was making like the same amount every year, and I was just doing as my accountant told me, just like, have a smallish salary and you can pay yourself in bonuses, because, you know, that’s just the best tax advantages you can get. Except I would never pay myself bonuses, because I always found something that my business needed to spend money on anyway.

Amy Roskelley  11:43

So I thought, okay, if I get to the end of my life, not even end of my life five years from now, what am I gonna like wish my life looked like, and it was definitely gonna be no, no mortgages, no monthly spent expenses, nothing that I was like tied to. I didn’t even want a Spotify subscription like I wanted nothing that was recurring that I was responsible for. So I just thought, Okay, I’m I think if I cut all the spending out of my business, and I actually pocketed even half of this money. I could pay off my mortgage. I could pay my car insurance annually instead of monthly. I could, you know, do all the things I needed to do and so like that right then and there, I combed through all of the past year of expenses in my business, and I put them all on a spreadsheet, and I just highlighted the ones I think I could get rid of, and then in another color, I highlighted the ones that I think I could just reduce the amount. And after I did that, I kid you not. Megan, there was 1000s of dollars left over, and I’m like, man, if that money was in my pocket, or I invested that money, I could make more money, like in a dividend paying index fund, than I’m bringing home in my ad revenue. And I thought, If I could turn the table here, I don’t have to rely on Google to give me traffic, I don’t have to rely on Raptive or MediaVine to pay me every month. I don’t like I I like. It just felt like there was this burden that I wouldn’t have to just feel anymore. And it got me really excited. So I, so I started that, and I and I think the biggest thing I want to do today is just talk specifically about the things I got rid of, but just to finish the story, I was able to pay off my mortgage, and I have a my dream home, like I really do. It’s like big and beautiful, and it’s like the perfect place that I can entertain my grandchildren someday. I also did a full kitchen remodel that I paid for in cash. And most recently, we just paid cash for another business that would just bring me some extra passive income every month. And so, like I’m investing in businesses, I’m investing in the stock market all the money that I get from my blog now, instead of turning it right back into my blog, I’m diversifying it in other asset building places, so that I don’t have all my eggs in this one blogging basket. So it like, even after that year where I committed to no spend, there was a lot of things I didn’t bring back. I’m going to say most things. There are some things I brought back just because of convenience and and I like it, but a lot of stuff I’m I have no regrets. I’m so glad that I got rid of some of those. And so if you want to talk about the specific things I stopped spending money on because. Think that’s where the gold will be for your listeners. I just have to say, like, the reason I think that it stopped the burnout is because now I create content just out of the pure love of creating content, not because it’s a key word, not because it’s gonna bring in some affiliate money, not you know, all those things doesn’t matter anymore for me, and the creativity truly came back, and my passion for blogging really came back when I wasn’t trying to feed the algorithm or offload some tasks I didn’t want to do.

Megan Porta  15:37

I just wanted to say quick, how inspiring this is, and I think a lot of more advanced food bloggers who have been doing this, I don’t know, six years or longer, kind of are at this point that you were at where it’s like, where is all my money going at the end of the year, when we do taxes and we see how much we’ve actually earned in revenue, oh my gosh. Like, where? Why don’t I have all of this, exactly what you went through. So I’m so inspired by this.

Amy Roskelley  16:06

I think one of the problems too is I love that we have communities and Facebook groups and all the ways we can connect with other food bloggers, but at the same time, it makes you feel like you need to like spend the money, spend your money in the same way other people are doing. Like, if everybody is hiring a certain Pinterest agency, like, Oh, I better hire them too, or else I’m never gonna make it on Pinterest. Or if everyone’s buying a keyword course, you think, oh, you know, if she got that keyword course and she’s killing it on keywords. I should get it too, you know, I think we just get it wrapped into these ideas that if you spend money on something, that it’s going to help your blog grow. And you just, you really have to look at the numbers, like when I and this is where I’ll start talking about where I cut expenses, you really have to look at what the ROI is on this thing. So like, for example, I had, I’d love that it well. So I was with MediaVine before. I’m with Raptive today. But when I had with, since you’re able to look at how much revenue you can make for a specific blog post, it’s easy to see or or revenue you make from a specific platform. It’s easy to see if you’re wasting money. So let’s take Pinterest, for example. If I see in the last 30 days from Pinterest, my blog brought in $3,000 but yet, I’m spending $3,000 on a Pinterest agency, then it would make sense that that’s like that. That’s not making you any more money. Like and that’s a bad idea, example, because I don’t know what Pinterest agency would charge that much, but you can see for each platform. So like, if I’m spending $50 a month on smarterq to auto publish to Facebook, but my blog income is under $50 a month from Facebook, then I’m spending too much. I’m spending too much on that auto publishing when if I dialed it back and just posted once a day myself and still made the same from Facebook, then I should probably stop paying for Smarter Queue or whatever the case may be. I think what drives me the most crazy is see seeing questions in blogging communities where somebody is like trying to hire somebody to create recipes for them, except when you get when they get down to it, each recipe isn’t making them more money than what they would make from the ad revenue for that recipe. Then it doesn’t make sense. So I know a lot of recipe developers will charge like 250, $300 for a post. But if that post brings you in $10 a month, then you shouldn’t be you shouldn’t be spending the money on having somebody else create your recipes. 

Megan Porta  19:14

What about the potential, though, and and when you’re starting out, when before you’re monetizing, you have to invest a little bit in order to gain that momentum. So what if a post doesn’t make, you know, the $300 that you invest in recipe developer, but it has the potential to do so? 

Amy Roskelley  19:34

Yeah, there’s a time and place for that. In fact, when, when your income from it is in a better place if you’re if you’re just trying here, I’ll say this, so for one year, I put all the money in my pocket instead of somebody else’s pocket. Great, great year for me, I was able to invest that money in other places, pay off things, but now I can go back. Back, and now I can because I’ve already paid off my mortgage, because I’ve already paid off all the things that I wanted to pay off. Now I can go back and it’s okay that I’m not making a profit off of hiring somebody to do that, like it’s not a forever thing. And I think that’s what kept me going, is like I thought, This isn’t forever. I just need to do this until my goals are met, and then I can go back to it. Here’s another example I was I have a lot of digital, I would say… I have a few digital products that make great money. The revenue was good, but I’m like, wanted to make more, so I thought, Okay, I will hire somebody to run Facebook ads for me. And I was very excited about it. And she’s amazing, and I love her for Facebook ads and but I was spending as much on the Facebook ads and her fee as I was making, maybe a few dollars more. And so you could look at that as like a even trade, like I was spending as much as I was making, fine, but at the end of the day, if I wanted to keep the money, then I needed to cut out the advertising and get creative and get organic and just try bootstrapping it for a while. I think when I as soon as I hired that out, I started ignoring it, and I stopped being scrappy. I stopped being creative. I’d let her do it all, and I think after I tried that, and then I stopped spending the money on ads. I was still making money on my digital products, but now I was like, finding more creative ways to find people to buy it and made more money that way. I’ll probably go back to ads later, but when it’s a break even thing, it just created more customer service for me, you know, and it made me disconnect from from those things. And I think it’s fine too if you just want to build an email list, and it’s fine too, if you want to get your branding out there. But if you just for one year, stop doing it, you can bring it back. 

Megan Porta  22:10

Okay, I like that. That’s a great perspective, especially if you’ve got money flowing in, you’re in an ad network, and you’re creating that income, it’s there. So just test it out. Is what you’re saying, and you pocketed a ton of money for one year.

Speaker 1  22:25

So let me tell you some of my best savings. Well, I couldn’t believe how much I was spending on email, my email platform. I was with Active Campaign, which I loved. I had honestly been with Active Campaign for probably 15 years. That’s how much I liked them, but their prices just kept going up, and I kept adding things to it, like their CRM and their integration to my shopping cart and all the things, just so I had all the data. And it was good for that, but it was, it was over $1,000 a month already, and they had just sent me an email that said it was going up again. And I was like, You have got to be kidding. And what I know, it’s a lot, it’s a lot, right? And you can and and luckily, I have the data I can see from my integrations. And with Raptive, I can see exactly how much I make from my emails. I can see how much I’m making in my blog ad revenue, and I can see how much I’m making through my digital products. And I thought, okay, I could keep paying this and keep getting behind every month because I’m not quite making $1,000 from these things, and it was a problem because I wasn’t sending emails often enough. So that was also a problem, my problem. But one of the things that stopped me from switching was all the opt ins that I have everywhere on my blog. Nobody wants to redo the opt ins and your automations and your welcome series, and, you know, it just was too much. So determined to save money everywhere. I figured, okay, I can’t get the same ROI with probably any email provider. Like, if I was spending $200 a month on email, then I really would be making a profit. I’d be making $800 a month as a profit. And so I ended up hiring a guy on Upwork to redo all my opt ins. And I looked for someone specifically who knew WooCommerce, Active Campaign and mailer Lite. And I just said, I just need, I just need everything moved over. And I don’t even want, I don’t even want to help you. I just, I want you to do it. Yeah, just do it. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t care how much it costs. I ended up spending probably $1,200 for him to do it, and honestly, he did it in a weekend. I just was shocked. It would have taken me months to do it. He did it in a weekend. I spent $1,200 but I moved to mailer light for $250 a month. So that guy I hired has paid off in the first month and a half because I was saving so much money from switching away from Active Campaign.

Sponsor  25:22

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Amy Roskelley  26:56

So there was lots of things like that that I just found a way to reduce the cost another one, he probably got the email that Canva teams, they were gonna start charging you more per user for Canva. And so I’m like, Okay, well, I only know of two of us who are actually using this, so let me just kick out all the rest of my users, because I don’t need to pay $5 a month for every single user that’s not actually using it. So that was just another way to reduce my expenses, rather than totally eliminate contractors. There’s like, I feel like the biggest savings are contractors who were doing work that I could do myself. But I just was, I’ll just say it too lazy to do it. I know that we’re busy as bloggers, and there’s so many things we can do, but I think once we start hiring contractors to do all the things we just don’t feel like doing, I think that takes away some of our well, it takes away some of our skills, but it takes some of our attention away from those things. I’m sure you’ve been here before where you’ve hired something out, and then you just give yourself permission to ignore it for much too long. And then when you when you start paying attention again, you’re like, Oh my gosh. Like, I had no idea my Pinterest was dropping this fast, you know, and but when you’re the one working in it, then you have your eye on the pulse. You also use every platform like a user would you see the problems like, nothing helps my business more than getting in my business myself, and not just hoping somebody else is managing it well.

Megan Porta  28:46

Yeah, there are so many things like that. You mentioned Pinterest, but really, any management of any platform, social media, I can imagine that it really can take away from your business if you don’t know what’s going on for a period of time? Yeah, I’m super curious about the things that you completely got rid of and have not gone back to. 

Amy Roskelley  29:09

There were several part time employees that I actually got rid of and never went back to, and not because I didn’t love them, and not because I don’t think that they were so valuable, you know, to me, but for that very reason that it just gave it, it just kind of took away some of my creativity, my connecting with the community. You know, when you have somebody responding to your emails, then you really just get disconnected from from your community, and you don’t, you just don’t have your finger on the pulse of what they want. So I haven’t brought anyone back to to manage my emails. What have I not brought back? Oh, I had the paid version of Zoom. I had the paid version of everything. And so there’s a lot of software I did not bring back. There’s some photo editing apps I rarely used that I didn’t bring back. I had a bookkeeper that I didn’t bring back, because I always, I just found I was always going back and editing like what she categorized all of my spending at. And also, that’s another one where you if you stop paying attention, you don’t realize where all your spending is going if some if you have a bookkeeper doing that all for you. So that was probably one of the best things. I’ll never take. I’ll never hire again, because I like going in once a week, and I use QuickBooks just tagging every category and where every expense happened, so that I can pay attention better. I probably, like all bloggers, I was renewing domains that I would never intend to bring back, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why, like, I just let them auto renew, and I’m like, Why did I even buy that domain? Like that domain I’ll never write on it. So let’s get rid of that. My biggest one, I think, probably where I spent the most money with the most regret is courses like, if people are talking about a course, I’d buy it. In fact, well, one of the ones I didn’t regret was a culinary course that it was really expensive. It was like $10,000 but, and I really loved it. And I mean, I don’t, I can’t say that. I regret it, but at the same time, I’m like, you could, probably could have found a cheaper course, like you probably could have found somebody to teach you cooking skills that didn’t cost $10,000 but it would that would? I think that was the hardest one to cut out, is it? Because when people talk about, oh, this course is going to change your life, and you’re going to make so much money from it, I would just have major FOMO and, like, I have to see what’s in it, and then I’d pay for it, and I’d get in. And there was always a letdown. It was always like I knew all this already, like, Why did I think that they’d have some magic formula that I hadn’t considered before? 

Amy Roskelley  32:09

Another thing I got rid of that I didn’t realize I was paying for is I told you I have a girl that does my shipping. I had her I had on UPS, a daily pickup from her house, and I didn’t realize it was like $60 a week. And I’m like, that’s $240 a month. And we could change to three times a week and cut that in half, and people aren’t going to get their products any later. So I mean, a little like one day three times a week is fine. I also lowered my phone bill by just, you know, realizing I don’t need unlimited hotspot. I don’t need, you know, well, that was the big thing unlimited hotspot, because I’m always on Wifi. I don’t need hotspot to, like, charge me an extra 50 bucks a month, or whatever it would be. Another one was because I’ve been blogging so long, I have a lot of like, duct tape, like type fixes for things that can be more efficient now with new software. So for example, when I was when I started selling my digital products I had to use. I was using WooCommerce that connected to Zapier, or no that connected to LeadPages that connected to Zapier, that connected back to my email, like so it was like this five step process, and then LeadPages raise their price again this year, and Zapier because of how many hits I was having for my checkout process, like I was using up all the credits and then extra, and it was just all these expenses, and it occurred to me I was paying probably $120 a month between LeadPages and Zapier. And I just thought, well, that means I would have to sell an extra 10 products a month just to break even on this. Or I could find a way to connect WooCommerce straight to MailerLite and cut out the other three. Oh, and I hired somebody to copy my lead pages onto a sales page so I wouldn’t have to pay money for lead pages anyway. That saved me $100 a month, just just in getting rid of the Zapier LeadPages integration. And I just didn’t know.

Megan Porta  34:39

How do you get rid of Zapier because this just happened to me as well. I like, reached my limit, and it was like, while you’re paying, I mean, it was hundreds of dollars, and I was like, I don’t want to let go of because I think it’s connected to my save the recipe subscribers that I get on my blog posts. So I couldn’t, yes, I couldn’t figure out. Out on the spot how to do that. So do you have a fix? 

Amy Roskelley  35:03

Yeah, I do. So where my connection? I just started reaching out to the tech support of everybody involved. So through WooCommerce, or that was one of them. There was who was else was connected mailer. I guess it was just Mailer Lite and WooCommerce. I reached out to their support and said, Hey, I’d like to connect my WooCommerce straight to mailer light without Zapier. Do you have a way to do this? And I Oh, sure, just, you know, here’s the API key, blah, blah, blah I also use. And I never, I never got rid of this expense because it’s one of those that I know I would have regretted, and I’m glad I didn’t, but I use Grayson from imark, he’s great to, like, figure those kinds of things out and help me to connect things. And also, there’s so many things that I thought I would have to pay somebody on Upwork to do, but that Big Scoots would do for me without paying like, you know, setting up a new WordPress install or fixing my deliverability of my emails, Big Scoots has been like, fantastic. I think that their support is so responsive, like I could get a response within 60 seconds most times I reach out, yeah. So I just look at all the tech that’s involved and reach out to their tech support and say, Hey, can you show me how to do a direct integration here so I can leave Zapier? They’re like, Sure, here it is. 

Megan Porta  36:37

There’s always a way, right? There’s always a way around those techy situations. So just dig a little bit. Yes, okay, anything else that comes to mind? I don’t want to cut you off before you get through all of your things that you were able to get rid of. You can see I’m passionate. I’m writing down like lead pages courses. Check on those. I have a few little subscriptions that I just let renew month over month that I don’t use all the time. So I’m like, Okay, I need to get rid of that. So thank you. This is inspiring. Is there anything else you can think of? 

Amy Roskelley  37:07

And switching if you are using something month to month, but they have a better price to do it annually. Freeing up all this money actually helped me spend better in that way, things I couldn’t get rid of that I would just pay for annually. Sometimes that saves $20 a month, which, which, it really adds up. And that’s what I had to remember during this whole thing, is like every dollar counts, like, I don’t care if I’m sending saving $1 that is $1 towards my mortgage that I don’t have to work an extra day in at the end of, at the end of this journey, you know, I just want people to get back to where you love blogging, and it doesn’t have to be a big expense. It could go back to being a passionate hobby that brings in great money, and you’re not tied down to making payroll every month. You’re not, like, stressed about paying your taxes, because those are going to come due. You know, all the little things that make a passionate hobby or career stressful, like we don’t. We don’t need that. We don’t need the stress of it. We just, we just want to be creative, connect with the community and provide great things without worrying about, you know, making sure that you’re not gonna bounce a check or whatever. 

Megan Porta  38:33

So you mentioned tech support is was one of the non negotiable things to keep was there anything else that you were like, I absolutely cannot cut back. So, like, Big Scoots apparently, like they’re so great, I’m, I’m assuming you did not cut back on them. Is there anything? 

Amy Roskelley  38:48

Correct? Okay, so I’m, I’m looking at my budget right now, so I kept, just, obviously, a cheaper version of email. So mailer lied, of course, I’m gonna keep an email platform. I have the most expensive QuickBooks subscription because I run payroll through it, and it’s just, it just keeps everything so organized for me. So I’m spending almost 280 a month on just QuickBooks. But I also have saved because I’m not using, well, I do have an accountant, but I’m not using a bookkeeper to keep all my things. I kept, you know what? Really, that’s about it. I kept the smallest version of Canva because I use that a lot. I have I have insurance. I have business insurance that I didn’t cut. I use Google business suite and the other thing I did was I highlighted all the expenses that I had that were doubling as personal expenses, so like my phone and my internet. And all these things. It was more like I was gonna have it anyway. And so I and I want, I’d rather my business pay for it. So I kept all of those things, you know, some of our grocery budget. I kept, oh, another thing that I stopped spending money on was props for my food. Or even, like, when everyone would be talking about a new lens for their camera that, like, changed their world, then I would buy it, but then I never would use the lens. Or, you know, all the things that are associated. I also am a sucker for books, like I if somebody recommends a book, in fact, you just had, okay, so now I’m back to spending you just had Kim Espinel, How to Make Your Food Famous. So like, before I even finished the podcast, I bought it, like through Amazon.

Megan Porta  40:57

Nice. I do the same with books. I’m the worst with books.

Amy Roskelley  41:02

So, yeah, that’s come back, but it’s okay now honestly, like, I can, I could go on and on about this, but now that we’re empty nesters, I have gotten our personal expenses down to $600 a month. And that doesn’t include food, obviously, because we spend a lot on food. But if I lost this whole business today, we’d be fine. You know, that is a great place to be. I have taken, I took, like, the whole month of December off because we just had a lot of family things going on. I had a trip to California. We went on, like, you can just it, just it, just, it just gets rid of the burnout. That’s what I want to say. It gets rid of the burnout. It brings back your creativity when you stop spending on things that you think you’re is essential for your business, but it’s not. You can start creating from passion again.

Megan Porta  41:56

Oh, I love this so much. This is so inspiring. I imagine when you got to the end of your year, you felt like you were more in tune with your business, and things were much more streamlined. Is that right?

Amy Roskelley  42:07

Oh my gosh, so much. And another, another thing I tried, like another idea I had the whole year, was the whole reason for me to do this was to simplify my life. I did it. I like digitally, financially and even my physical space. I just wanted everything to be I was tired of feeling like chaotic and like, you know, like every day, like scrambling to, you know, make sense of things and getting everything done I needed to get done. I just maybe it’s my age. So I’m 51 now, and I just want, I just wanted things to be more simple. I just want to, like, enjoy more of my I am. I’m having my first grandchild, and in June, July. Sorry. Thank you. Yeah. And I really want to set up my life to be able to not have to stress about, you know, making all the bills that I am on the hook for. 

Megan Porta  43:09

I’m at the same place as you Amy, I’m just a few years behind you, but this is something that’s on my goal sheet that I look at every day. Just simplify and and slow down a little bit, instead of, I’m not in that zone anymore where it’s like, hustle, hustle, speed up, do all the things I want to actually sit back and reflect and slow my life and sometimes. So I think for anyone else who’s in that boat, this is such an appealing concept. Do you have recommendations for this sounds like, yes, I want to do this. Where does one start?

Amy Roskelley  43:46

I think the only place you can start is to if you’ve set up your business so they all your spending goes through one bank account, or all your spending goes through one credit card to just pull up your last 12 months of bank statements, and just look at it just like say, Okay, where am I spending money that I think I could get rid of? Like I said, I started a spreadsheet. I put all the categories where I was spending money, and then I highlighted the ones that I thought I could just reduce the cost, not even get rid of, just reduce. And then the next thing I looked at was, where, what are all the things I can get rid of with the idea that I can bring it back if I want to someday. So I think, just like opening your eyes, paying attention, seeing where it’s all going, I think is a good place to start, and realizing that you know, if you don’t, if you don’t hire that agency to take care of something for you, what can you do? What can you do on your own that’s going to get you, like bare minimum, that can get, still get you the results you need, and stop thinking that the next course, the next product. The next contractor is going to turn your business around for you, because nobody can do it, but you.

Megan Porta  45:06

There are so many services that have popped up in the last few years that it seems to be like a trickle effect, like one blogger will do it and be like, Oh my gosh, this is creating magic for my business. And from my perspective, I’m like, hold on. Just you don’t need to do it, just because other people are doing it. And it kind of drives me a little bit crazy, but it happens like, it’s like, this just string of people following. It’s like the lemmings walking off the cliff. Like, okay, I’m gonna do this too. And it’s like, big investments, like services that are very big investments.

Amy Roskelley  45:42

Let me tell you one more story. Like, right, when I sold my first blog and I was starting this next blog, I thought, okay, like, I know how to do this, like, I just need to do what I was doing before. And I thought, Okay, well before I was getting a lot of great traffic from Pinterest. So let’s start there. So then I start looking at Pinterest courses and tips and tricks and how to get, how to get more traffic from Pinterest. And I was like, wasting time just doing this. And then it occurred to me, I’m like, Amy, you don’t even have content to pin like, you gotta start there, like, start creating something, and don’t waste your time on, like, tweaking the pin to perform the best. Or the other thing I have, I have a friend. Well, I shouldn’t say that. Maybe she’ll listen. Okay, I’ll just say it. I have a friend. She’s always asking me questions about keywords and like, Okay, do I pick a keyword that has low difficulty, high volume? Blah, blah, blah, am I you do none of that. You first create content, and then from your content, you can see from Google what keywords that they like will associate with you, but don’t. Don’t start using it. Don’t start paying $100 a month for a keyword tool. If you haven’t written any articles. And I’m just like, people are getting this backwards. They’re trying to find the like this specific trick or the tweak that is going to help their content shine, but they’re wasting time with that. If they don’t have enough content to tweak.

Megan Porta  47:27

Don’t put the cart before the horse Right. Or, I think that’s how it goes. I’m really bad with sayings. I always get it wrong.

Amy Roskelley  47:33

Or even don’t let the little things get in the way of the big things. The big thing is, let’s write a recipe. The little thing is, should I have text on this image or no text? You know what I mean, like, let’s write the recipe first, and then we can worry about the text on the image later.

Megan Porta  47:52

And when you simplify, it becomes clearer how to do that. But when your business is humming along and you’re trying to do all the things, it’s so easy to just want to do everything and to be in all the details. So I get it, but yeah, this is, this is a refreshing approach. Thank you, Amy, for all of this. Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you want to mention before we start saying goodbye?

Amy Roskelley  48:16

Let’s see. I feel like, I feel like we touched on it all? Yeah, I guess the last thing is, because I’m a health food blogger, you can imagine the emotional roller coaster I was going on, when traffic would rise and fall. For example, December is always my worst month, because nobody wants to eat healthy in December, and then my traffic literally doubles in January, and so so for years, I have this like, Oh, my blog is gonna, is dying. I’m gonna, like, I’ll never make enough money. And then January comes my blog’s amazing. Everyone is coming to it like, it’s just an emotional roller coaster. But once you get to the place where it doesn’t like, you’re fine, if it rises and falls, then the emotions go away. You’re just like, it’s fine. It’s fine. Yeah,

Megan Porta  49:15

it does take time and patience for that, but yes, I love getting to that point. Well, thank you. This was so valuable. I think this is going to inspire and encourage so many other food bloggers. We really appreciate you sharing everything you did today. Amy, do you have a final quote or words of inspiration to share with us before we say goodbye?

Amy Roskelley  49:33

Okay, so the quote I have been living by for the last, I don’t know, six years I saw on the front of a journal one one day that was live the story you want to tell, and that it’s like that for me has kind of been a litmus test for decision making in my life, like I’m interested now in just living an interesting life. I just want to do interesting things, meet interesting people. I just want the next 50 years to be like something worthy of a story at my funeral, like not not getting to my funeral and having people say, Well, she watched all the episodes of Breaking Bad. You know, that’s not interesting. So live the story you want to tell. It’s gotten it’s gotten me out of bed so many days like just the desire to live a story that they’ll want to say at my funeral that will be interesting.

Megan Porta  50:38

Oh, that’s so awesome. I love that so much. We’ll put together a show notes page for you. Amy, you can find at eatblogtalk.com/HealthBeet. And remember beet is spelled B, E, E, T, tell everyone where they can find you, Amy?

Amy Roskelley  50:51

Yeah, that’s where it is. Health Beet. I’m on Instagram at Health Beet. I’m on Facebook at Health Beet, and my website is Health Beet. You can go.com but it started as a.org but it’ll redirect.

Megan Porta  51:05

Awesome. Go check Amy out everyone, and thank you so much for listening. I will see you next time. 

Outro  51:12

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you posted it to your social media feed and stories. I will see you next time you.