Episode 812: The Secret Ingredient to Blogging Success? Other Bloggers With Kat Duncan

EBT812 – Kat Duncan

[00:00:00]    Megan Porta

Blogging can be one of the loneliest jobs out there, but it does not have to be. In this episode, I am joined by Kat Duncan, CEO of Honeycomb Media, to talk about why building genuine relationships with other bloggers is not just good for your mental health, it is one of the smartest business moves you can make.

We discuss how to find your people, why meeting in person can completely change your perspective, and how sharing your wins instead of gatekeeping can help everyone grow. If you have ever felt like you’re doing this alone, this conversation is exactly.

[00:00:35]      Intro

Hi, food bloggers. I’m Megan Porta and this is Eat Blog Talk, your space for support, inspiration, and strategies to grow your blog and your freedom, whether that’s personal, professional, or financial. You are not alone on this journey.

[00:00:48]    Megan Porta

Kat, I could not be more excited to chat with you again. Thank you for being back on Eat Blog Talk. How’s it going today?

[00:00:54]    Kat Duncan

Oh, it’s going great. Thanks for having me back. I’m so excited to be here.

[00:00:58]    Megan Porta

Yeah, and if you’re not watching on YouTube, you need to because Kat has the best hair. I was expressing my envy over your hair. I want mine to be… and then she called mine beach hair, which I’ll, I’ll lovingly accept. I like beach hair as an adjective. I’ll rock that.

[00:01:14]    Kat Duncan

Yes, it’s beachy. You have, you have a cute, like, you have your, your natural highlights and everything, and it’s wavy. I love, I love it.

[00:01:21]    Megan Porta

My hair does this natural. So I just, like, 2 months ago dyed the whole thing dark brown, like my roots.

[00:01:28]    Kat Duncan

Yeah.

[00:01:28]    Megan Porta

And it, it did this naturally just in the past few weeks. Isn’t that crazy?

[00:01:32]    Kat Duncan

Yes, those are gorgeous, gorgeous highlights. People pay a lot of money for that.

[00:01:36]    Megan Porta

I know. My husband calls it magic hair. He’s like, you got magic hair. Because look under here, it’s like all dark. This is, it’s so weird.

[00:01:44]    Kat Duncan

It’s like color changing, you know, like heat cups.

[00:01:47]    Megan Porta

Like those t-shirts.

[00:01:48]    Kat Duncan

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Love it.

[00:01:51]    Megan Porta

That’s hilarious. Well, we are going to talk about something I’m really excited about today, which is just community… not just community, more like friendship and nurturing and how vitally important this is right now in our businesses and in our lives all around. But first, we want to hear who you are, Kat, and what Honeycomb Media does.

[00:02:14]    Kat Duncan

Absolutely. So I’m Kat. I am the CEO of Honeycomb Media. We are a full-stack marketing agency that we help from email marketing, SEO, content management, all the way to social media, content creation. And everything in between really, we, we kind of do it all. We’re your tech retainer, marketing, CMO, all of it.

[00:02:36]    Megan Porta

Love it. And if people want to just get some more information about you, is it just honeycomemedia.com or what is the hand… okay.

[00:02:45]    Kat Duncan

honeycomemedia.com or its @honeycomemedia on Instagram.

[00:02:49]    Megan Porta

Okay. Awesome. Well, you have such a great topic to bring to the table today. Why do you think this is important right now?

[00:02:58]    Kat Duncan

Right. So I am, of course, have heard… I’m a friend of the pod, an avid listener of the pod, and have seen all of the fantastic analysts that you have and truly industry leaders that are talking about very analytical topics and things that are just extremely important to know from the very data-centric side of blogging.

[00:03:21]     

And I thought that I would start with the foundational tool and something that I find just as important, but not as talked about as much, which is friendship.

[00:03:30]    Megan Porta

Yeah.

[00:03:30]    Kat Duncan

And something that is truly just important to all people, but bloggers especially, because since we are such a remote world that we are doing this all from the back end of our computer and typically from our own homes, there’s no coworker to go to and say, hey, oh my gosh, this client’s so crazy, or, oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is happening, and gossip about everything.

[00:03:54]     

And we really have to build that on our own, that community and coworkers and that style of work again. So, and it is truly so important. I mean, people talk all the time about how they stay at jobs because of the people who they’re working with and not necessarily the job that they’re doing.

[00:04:10]     

So building that community is just as important with remote work and blogging as it is with in-person work.

[00:04:17]    Megan Porta

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I could not agree more. And I’m so grateful for this topic because like you said, we talk about a lot of kind of heavy things like how to Make sure your business survives and what to do on the backend of WordPress and blah, blah, blah. But this is just as important.

[00:04:34]     

And if you can’t nail this, your business still will not survive. So I think it’s lighter, a lighter topic, but also just so very important. So thank you truly for bringing this to the table.

[00:04:49]    Kat Duncan

Yeah.

[00:04:49]    Megan Porta

And we talked a little bit about this before we recorded, but the value you get from the friendships that are in person, like say at a conference or a retreat, or those people you meet that live in your city, like a get-together or whatever. There is no way to describe how different that is, even if you see someone on Zoom every week, right?

[00:05:11]    Kat Duncan

Yes. It is so important to bring that retreat, bring that girls trip out of the group chat and out of the Slack channel and have it in person. And, and it is truly electric. It’s like such a magical, glittery vibe that you get from people when you’re meeting them one-on-one in person and getting down to those vulnerable topics that you maybe wouldn’t venture to type out or to even say in a voice note that there’s something that happens with the body language and the styles of communication that you get with in-person meetings that just can’t be replicated.

[00:05:45]     

Like you said, even on Zoom. It is just so important to have those in-person retreat or just conference or just like a girls trip moment where you’re really meeting with your friends and connecting with them and sharing industry secrets or gossip or just fun things to talk about that you wouldn’t normally have in a group chat or in a Slack channel.

[00:06:08]    Megan Porta

There are so many things that I will say in person that I would never say on a Zoom call or in writing ever. But in, in person, it just, it feels so much better to relay things like, like you said, industry gossip, or like, you know, little stories that happened to me over the years that like I would literally never tell anyone here on the podcast or, you know, any other way.

[00:06:31]     

But if we’re in person, I will tell you those weird stories. And I think a lot of us are like that, and that is such a way to connect. Like, I can’t believe that happened to you, or whatever. Yes. It’s so fun to be able to do that.

[00:06:43]    Kat Duncan

Oh yeah. It really brings back old school kind of like barbershop or the salon vibes where it’s like all the women meeting together and chatting about the next door neighbor who’s doing crazy stuff or something like that. But it really, it is truly also so important for those more heavy analytical data-centered topics that the gatekeeping kind of dissolves where you’re sharing then things that really worked for you and things that really worked for your blog that you might not be as vulnerable or as open to sharing over for… with, with somebody that you have not met in person.

[00:07:19]     

And so bringing those people together, humanizing each other, and saying like, oh wait, you’re just like me, we’re just trying to figure this out, and if that thing worked for you, it might work for me, and now I can share my kind of secret, my little tool that maybe you haven’t thought about yet.

[00:07:35]    Megan Porta

Oh my gosh, that is so true. One of my favorite things about hosting retreats so I host smaller retreats here in Minneapolis a couple times a year. And one of my favorite things is just that connection you get when you open your computer and you’re like, oh, this is how I do this.

[00:07:50]     

I’ll show you. And somebody sits next to you and they’re like, I wouldn’t have been able to see this otherwise. Like, you, you know, it just wouldn’t have happened.

[00:07:58]    Kat Duncan

Yeah.

[00:07:59]    Megan Porta

And then, like you said, then they want to reciprocate. So they’re like, oh, well, let me show you this thing that I do for my images or whatever. And yeah. And then it just becomes this really cool rabbit trail of value and connection. And you learn so much that way too.

[00:08:15]    Kat Duncan

Absolutely. And it really, like you said, this domino effect where first you’re talking about industry secrets and then your blog is 10x-ing traffic because of this little thing that you turned off on your blog in your backend or the simpler way that you’re making graphics now or something like that. Having somebody in your space and having somebody be able to give you those tools and that feedback, you know, between platforms that you’re using, ESPs, and, and really any tool that you’re using, it can be so, so credible and just truly so valuable to your blog.

[00:08:54]     

And so Honeycomb has hosted a few client retreats as well. And it was just so much fun to sit and listen to the women talk about which email system and which email platform they were working they were working on. And then near the end of it, all of the women were choosing the same email system.

[00:09:10]     

Yes, that happens all the time. Yes, because we were all like, okay, we, we, us 5 women are very capable and we are very smart. We know what we’re doing. And we narrowed in on the best email system that was going to work for everybody. And it was just so cool to see that, that value come out of that, that retreat that probably wouldn’t have happened in a shared Slack channel.

[00:09:31]    Megan Porta

And not just the learning, but we talked earlier just about like telling stories and the laughter and the connection that can come from that too. Like it kind of becomes a theme, like certain things become themes over the weekend, like, oh, Megan’s encounter with so-and-so or whatever. Like you just, you bond over stuff that really to the outside world seems like super silly and insignificant, but the laughter and yeah, we get it.

[00:09:57]    Kat Duncan

And like when you get it, you really get it.

[00:09:59]    Megan Porta

You really get it.

I don’t think I even need to say this because everybody knows the healing power of laughter, right? Like, there’s so much goodness that comes from just having gut-splitting laughter. Getting home after a weekend of connection and laughing is like… there’s nothing better than that in the world.

[00:10:18]    Kat Duncan

It’s truly like medicine to something that could be lonely, you know? And, and that’s what it can be, and that’s what it can, can turn into. I mean, blogging and working remote, working from home, and this industry as a whole, it creates a loneliness that not very many people understand. And I remember my, my working from home experience, you know, as a marketing agent, I guess, as a marketing worker, service provider, that it really truly was this feeling of deep loneliness that nobody understands what I’m going through.

[00:10:51]     

I don’t have a coworker that I can turn to and just be like, this is crazy, right? And they’re like, yeah. And so actually, when I met Alex, the owner of Honeycomb Media, that just opened up such a nutshell for both of us that we connected so well on all of the things that we were doing.

[00:11:08]     

And it was one of those like soul sister moments where it’s like we both think the same things are great and awesome. We both think the same things are wild and crazy.

[00:11:18]    Megan Porta

Yeah.

[00:11:19]    Kat Duncan

And I think nothing connects a person more than when we both have this moment of like, this is crazy, right?

[00:11:25]    Megan Porta

Yeah.

[00:11:25]    Kat Duncan

Yeah. Meeting that person and having that person to turn to is truly so important that It became something that I recommend, that I encourage between our clients, which then really forcame all of the retreats that we did go through and that we did have at Honeycomb, that we need this relationship cultivated between our clients, between the greater blogging industry, that even if you stay friends and aren’t our client, that we love that.

[00:11:53]     

That is so valuable, a tool that we can bring to them and that we can bring to other people in the space, that friendship, community, connection in this truly lonely industry, um, is so, so important. And so that’s the legacy that we can provide.

[00:12:11]    Megan Porta

Oh, I love that you used that word legacy. Um, I know there’s a hangup, Kat, and I know you’re probably familiar with this. A lot of us are. I was there once where I just felt like everyone else has friends or they have their little group or a mastermind, or they have their retreat they go to, but I don’t.

[00:12:31]    Kat Duncan

Yes.

[00:12:31]    Megan Porta

How do people get over that hurdle and just like, do they have to just be courageous and reach out to one person or like, how do they go about doing that? Do you think?

[00:12:41]    Kat Duncan

Yeah, I think it does take a leap of faith. I think there is a lot of gatekeeping in the industry and there is a lot of kind of walls up because of course there are some people, especially I feel like in the early days there was a lot of kind of IP. It felt like IP theft or like theft of ideas that then worked for one person and then didn’t work for another person or something like that. And I think that it does take a little bit of grace from almost everyone in our industry that if somebody comes to you and wants a chance, that we can extend that chance because there’s room for everybody on the internet. I mean, not just room for everybody at the table, but there is, there has to be room for everybody on the internet.

[00:13:22]     

And so taking that chance and even saying, you know, come join our mastermind, come join, you know, I think you can learn and, and that everybody has a perspective that they can also bring to you that not just for nothing, that their perspective can also help a bigger blogger even in the space if that’s the concern.

[00:13:42]     

But I do think it’s an extending of grace and then also an extending of courage and bravery to be that person to step in and say, hey, I’m honestly just looking for a friend.

[00:13:53]    Megan Porta

Yeah.

[00:13:53]    Kat Duncan

I need somebody who gets it. And maybe you do have a blog that’s making millions of page views and tons of revenue, but you feel lonely. And it’s kind of like that Taylor Swift song where she feels like a giant in a little city. And if that’s how you feel, that is such a good place to start of having that courage and that bravery to step in and say, I’m looking for a community.

[00:14:18]     

I might not need the advice, but I do need something and I’m missing something here. Because really, and especially in this blogging space, I feel like we could be the best of the best. You could be the best top blogger in the space. I mean, everybody is looking to you as the blueprint.

[00:14:34]     

But without that coworker community around you, without a boss telling you that you’re doing well, without being the employee of the month, you don’t have those affirmations that are set into and kind of the blueprint of an office working job.

[00:14:48]    Megan Porta

Yeah.

[00:14:48]    Kat Duncan

That you have to have those created for you and have that amplified by the people around you. Like, hey, you really did that. And you really worked hard on that. And I’m proud of you for doing that blog post or making that crazy decision that actually worked really well for you or taking that leap of faith.

[00:15:03]     

That those words of affirmation come from the people around you. And if nobody is there to understand that they need to provide those words of affirmation, you know, you won’t get them. And, and that’s when the loneliness really sets in. And, and that’s what we need to try and combat with each other.

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[00:16:32]   Megan Porta  

And I think once we find, even if it’s just one person or a small group of people or a large group of people, I think it’s so important to nurture those relationships because it can be easy to take what you need and run or get a dose of community and then run, but give back in ways that, you know, you can.

[00:16:56]     

So whether that’s by adding information or value or just being a friend back to people, I think that takes so much intention and time and energy, but it’s really important.

[00:17:08]    Kat Duncan

Yes, absolutely. Chime in. You know, that’s, I think that’s where a lot of people kind of might seem like this is a vulnerable space that they do have to have the courage to, to jump in and offer their 2 cents. And, you know, I, I feel like I am kind of the queen of that.

[00:17:22]     

Like, I will jump into any conversation, offer my opinion, and then some people will be like, thanks, but that wasn’t helpful. And it’s like, okay, I’ll do that 10 times and then one time it’ll be helpful. It’ll be good information, you know? And, and it doesn’t matter, you know, either way you’re, you’re going to be cultivating that community.

[00:17:39]     

You’re going to be part of that community that people know, ah, that’s just Kat. She’s gonna chime in one way or another. And, uh, and, and they’re right.

[00:17:47]    Megan Porta

Yes.

[00:17:47]    Kat Duncan

And that’s okay.

[00:17:49]    Megan Porta

Can we brainstorm a few ideas for people? So I was just thinking some of the ways I met people initially, like way back in the day, was just honestly through Instagram. I just was following a few people. Um, one of them ended up being my best, one of my best friends ever, Melissa, who I run Flavor Media Summit with.

[00:18:07]     

I would, that friendship wouldn’t have happened if we wouldn’t have reached out and just struck up a connection on Instagram. So it could be as simple as that.

[00:18:14]    Kat Duncan

Yeah.

[00:18:16]    Megan Porta

And then maybe we can just ping pong. Do you have a specific idea for people?

[00:18:20]    Kat Duncan

Yeah. I mean, I would say, of course, Instagram. I think comments rather than DMs is really where it’s at right now because people will notice, I think, your comment before they notice your direct message because direct messages are getting so flooded with things like ManyChat or Grocer’s List responses. But I do think DMs is a good place to meet people as well.

[00:18:41]     

I mean, reach out to retreats. There are so many retreats that are happening between bloggers and say, I would love to join your retreat. How do I get started in that process? Or conferences, the Flavor Media conferences and all the different types of conferences that they have for bloggers. I mean, those are larger, could be larger, but you will meet people and you’ll find a space there.

[00:19:07]     

I would say even getting connected with the Facebook groups and private Facebook groups and then just posting and saying, hey, I would love a group of people that if not necessarily a mastermind, but just a friend community. I know that there used to be engagement groups where people would say a smaller bubble of people, of bloggers in the same space or a similar space.

[00:19:35]     

would say, I’ll comment on your stuff if you always comment on mine. And that flourished into a lot of friendships as well. And not the worst idea for engagement too. So I think it’s… that’s a really great place to start too, Facebook groups.

[00:19:48]    Megan Porta

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it really just like whatever the platform, it just can be as simple as just saying hi. Like, I noticed your content is XYZ. It’s so beautiful. And I just wanted to let you know. And it could something could flourish from that. And then, oh, I was going to say, you mentioned Flavor Media.

[00:20:05]     

So, we are accepting applications for Flavor Media 2027, and it’s small intentionally. We keep it very small because of this. We love for people to like honestly be able to talk to everyone at the entire conference if they want to. And there have been friend groups that have formed at Flavor Media that are still going strong.

[00:20:28]    Kat Duncan

Yeah.

[00:20:28]    Megan Porta

Now, a few years later. So if that, if you’re an advanced food blogger and that’s something that interests you, join us in Nashville. flavormediasummit.net.

[00:20:38]    Kat Duncan

You will see our application. Oh, yay. I’m from Nashville. So I would love to go back. Yes.

[00:20:46]    Megan Porta

Oh my gosh. Okay. That’s so exciting. I’m already pumped for next year. It’ll be great.

[00:20:52]    Kat Duncan

I’m not a blogger person. I don’t have my own blog, but I am, you know, on the back end of quite a few of them. So we’ll see. We’ll see. You can deny me. It’s fine. Like I said, I’ll always shoot my shot.

[00:21:04]    Megan Porta

Yeah, but yeah, I think like our message is there’s not a lack of opportunities. Just, I don’t know. I haven’t Googled the term food blogger retreat recently, but I know like Eat Blog Talk used to be one of the first sites to come up for that. We are actually on pause right now just for a little bit, but in the future, we’ll be hosting more.

[00:21:27]     

So keep that on your radar for future events, but just kind of like ask around if you have blogger friends, ask what retreats or Zoom calls, if you want to do more like a virtual call consistently, or like we’ve kind of touched on, host your own. Just find, find one or two people.

[00:21:46]     

Yeah.

[00:21:47]    Kat Duncan

Yeah. It could just be a girls weekend, you know, it could just be like, hey, I noticed that you’re a blogger just like me. Do you want to like go to Charleston for the weekend or do you want to go to Nashville for the weekend and just chitchat about what we’re going through, like what good and bad?

[00:22:04]     

And, you know, do you want to just have it? It doesn’t have to be organized. It doesn’t have to have a system involved. It doesn’t have to be anything super special or even about food blogging. It can just be a girls trip for connection, you know, and even finding bloggers close to where you live, local people.

[00:22:20]     

who might be in different kind of fields as you. I mean, local bloggers go through very different things, but very similar things from food blogs or parenting blogs or crafting blogs. We’re all kind of fighting the same bigger battles. But then, it can also be kind of refreshing to hear other people’s goals, other people’s systems, and what they’re going through in a different space too, and be able to offer some advice and offer some, some, um, perspective on, on other different types of niches and blogs that, that exist. So finding people locally can, can be good too and save a little bit on travel.

[00:23:00]    Megan Porta

Yeah. Oh my gosh. So there’s a, there’s a bunch of food bloggers and bloggers in general in Minneapolis. And every once in a while I will organize just like a dinner and we’ll go out to dinner and we won’t have anything planned. We’ll just Enjoy the food and, you know, talk and conversation.

[00:23:18]     

And that is so great. So you could do something like that. And I think something you said earlier is really important too, that there doesn’t have to be an agenda. So if you think of like planning a retreat or planning a weekend and you think that’s way too overwhelming because I need to have everything like perfect, it doesn’t have to be like that.

[00:23:37]     

Here’s a big secret. You can plan a weekend with no plans and everything will go amazingly. I’ve done it before. Yes.

[00:23:44]    Kat Duncan

Yeah.

[00:23:45]    Megan Porta

Eat Blog Talk retreats, um, insider scoop here. A lot of the time I just let nature kind of take its course at those retreats and let conversations unfold as they are supposed to naturally. I don’t plan always like, yeah, like here’s what we’re going to talk about and here’s what we’re going to do. Everything will be great if you don’t make a schedule.

[00:24:05]    Kat Duncan

We noticed pretty early on with Honeycomb retreats too, that as long as people know what they’re going to have for meals. We’re good.

[00:24:12]    Megan Porta

Yeah, food. Yep, food is the one thing people want to know. Yeah.

[00:24:15]    Kat Duncan

Yeah. Is there internal air conditioning? And what else?

[00:24:19]    Megan Porta

Is there somewhere for me to sleep?

[00:24:21]    Kat Duncan

Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And so as long as the basics are figured out, I mean, it really does just allow that conversation to flow naturally and for that natural connection to happen as well. Because that’s what we’re all really craving, I feel like, is connection. And that’s that glitter magic that we were talking about in the beginning that We just really want to be around people.

[00:24:42]     

And I think that’s a, such a basic human need that, that is needed more in the food blogging and in the blogging space in general.

[00:24:50]    Megan Porta

Yeah, I think more and more, we’ve always said that historically, when you go back to like 3 years ago, 7 years ago, whatever, we’ve always said that connection is important and that this is a lonely job. But I think now more than ever that is the case as AI is more prevalent and there’s a lot of fake things.

[00:25:10]     

It is. It’s kind of a scary world out there. So we don’t really know, like the whole food blogging industry is, it just feels a little bit shaky at the moment. So more than ever, we just need that.

[00:25:24]    Kat Duncan

Absolutely. And, and it really is that, I think that fear that is going to either motivate you or kind of crush you. And I mean, for lack of a better term, that’s kind of dramatic, but that, that fear is something that if said out loud, your fears, your anxieties, your worries, your concerns, if you say that to a friend, their first response is going to be, how can I help you?

[00:25:49]     

How can I calm these worries? How can I soften these concerns? And that is so important to your initial or your, your intentional motivation that, okay, you know, this other person who really gets it they have that proof in their life that they really get what I’m going through and they say it’s going to be okay and it will be okay.

[00:26:11]     

And that type of connection is so, so valuable, even more valuable than, dare I say, an SEO coach or that kind of thing.

[00:26:21]    Megan Porta

Yeah.

[00:26:21]    Kat Duncan

Because that becomes your soul coach, your life coach, your person who is just there because they really love you and they want you to do well. And they will, they’ll motivate you and bring you out of that little hole, or at least sit with you for a little bit.

[00:26:36]    Megan Porta

Some of my favorite friends and people in the entire world are food bloggers. And I like some of them I just met a few years ago. Some of them I’ve known forever, but there is just, I don’t know, there’s just something really special about those relationships because we’ve kind of been in the trenches together.

[00:26:54]    Kat Duncan

Yeah.

[00:26:55]    Megan Porta

And we. We, we truly get what, you know, what we do on a day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year basis. And there’s just something about food bloggers that’s unique too, and content creators, I would say. There’s like a hardiness or like, people who just persevere.

[00:27:14]    Kat Duncan

Yeah. Grit.

[00:27:15]    Megan Porta

That’s the word I’m looking for. There’s a grit.

[00:27:18]    Kat Duncan

Yeah. Moxie.

[00:27:18]    Megan Porta

Yes. Oh gosh. You just nailed it.

[00:27:20]    Kat Duncan

I was, I’m an English major.

[00:27:22]    Megan Porta

Good job. Well, yeah, I am too. I’m sad to say that I didn’t pull through like you did, Kat. No, no, no.

[00:27:28]    Kat Duncan

The dictionaries, it’s osmosis at this point.

[00:27:31]    Megan Porta

But yes, that’s it. Grit and moxie that just bonds people. Like there’s, there’s something really connecting about just being a content creator and knowing other ones and they will become your best friends for life. I really believe that.

[00:27:47]    Kat Duncan

Yes, absolutely. And really like having people who are different from you. I mean, that’s what Alex and I, uh, the owner of Honeycomb, that’s what we go through a lot is that we are both thinking very differently about the same thing, which ultimately becomes such a tool for us.

[00:28:03]    Megan Porta

Value.

[00:28:04]    Kat Duncan

Yes. That the people who are bringing a different perspective on the same topic or the same discussion, that is so important to ultimately finding the right thing to do or the best thing to do for your business or for your brand. That as long as you have a person who you can fully trust and is also thinking differently than you, Those are such important value systems to build a foundation on that you have somebody who’s in your corner and believes in you, believes in the brand, believes in the systems, and believes in building and scaling this thing that you have, whether it be your blog or your business.

[00:28:44]     

I mean, I think more people should be treating their blogs and brands like a business. And if you have that person who’s in your corner who can think a little bit differently, maybe, maybe like me, they’re wrong a lot of times, but you’re like, that’s actually wrong. And here’s the right thing to do. It helps you get there faster. Yeah.

[00:29:01]    Megan Porta

It’s so true. And I forgot to mention, I can’t believe I forgot to mention this, but we have a group, like if you don’t mind virtual, it’s a great place to start too at Eat Blog Talk called the Inner Circle. And it’s such a great group. That’s a really kind of like foot in the door.

[00:29:17]     

opportunity. It’s low cost, it’s subscription, and you get like calls every month and access to a Slack channel. And these ladies make really valuable connections. So if you’re interested in that, we offer that as well. And I think you, let’s see, the URL for that is eatblogtalk.com/focus. So you can check that out too.

[00:29:36]     

It is an amazing group of women. It is solid.

[00:29:40]    Kat Duncan

Love that.

[00:29:41]    Megan Porta

Okay, Kat, anything else to kind of wrap up? Anything we’ve forgotten or last words of encouragement for people?

[00:29:47]    Kat Duncan

Yeah. I think that I love what you said. Does it take courage? And I think it does. It takes a lot of courage to be a friend and to gain and gather those friends in our space right now. And I mean, if there’s one thing that you will ever hear from me, it’s to have that courage to do the thing that you are a little bit scared to do, but you know it’ll be worth it.

[00:30:06]     

Put your foot in the door, step into that fear a little bit and gather your crew, gather your inner circle because they’re so important. And it is It’s nothing but good that can come from it. And even if you meet the wrong friends, that’s how you know.

[00:30:22]    Megan Porta

Oh gosh, that will happen too. Trust me, that will happen.

[00:30:24]    Kat Duncan

Yes, it definitely will. And I met a sales guy once that said, if you don’t want the thing that they’re selling, you say, I’m just one no to your next yes. And I think that can happen. That can be applied to friendships too.

[00:30:38]    Megan Porta

Yes, absolutely. The no’s help you refine your yeses and help you appreciate your yeses even more.

[00:30:45]    Kat Duncan

Exactly, exactly.

[00:30:47]    Megan Porta

Well, thank you. I loved this conversation. I feel like I could talk to you probably every day and be happy. You’re just so bubbly and positive.

[00:30:54]    Kat Duncan

Did we just become friends?

[00:30:55]    Megan Porta

Yes, we did. We are friends.

[00:30:58]    Kat Duncan

I’m already your friend since I follow you. I’m your parasocial friend.

[00:31:02]    Megan Porta

I love it. Well, thank you. Thanks for being a friend, Kat. And, if people want to come visit Honeycomb Media. Tell them again where they can find you.

[00:31:12]    Kat Duncan

It’s Honeycomb Media on Instagram or honeycombmedia.com. You can even feel free to message me directly at [email protected] through email.

[00:31:21]    Megan Porta

Amazing. Well, everyone go check that out. Kat with a K. Yes. Thank you for specifying that. And thanks for this amazing conversation today. I hope it inspired and encouraged a lot of people.

[00:31:31]    Kat Duncan

Yes.

[00:31:32]    Megan Porta

All right. Well, thanks for listening, food bloggers, and bye, Kat.

[00:31:35]    Kat Duncan

Bye. Thank you.

[00:31:36]    Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If today’s episode sparked an idea for you, snap a screenshot, post it on Instagram stories, and tag me @eatblogtalk. I love seeing what resonates with you. I will see you next time.