Episode 430: Take Back Control of Your Time and Design the Life You Want with Jaimee Campanella

EBT430 – Jaimee Campanella

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I’m Megan Porta and I’ve been a food blogger for over 12 years. I understand how isolating food blogging can be at times. 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. 

This is one of my favorite topics of all time, in the world, in the universe, to talk about. It is so important and it’s something that gets shoved under the rug a little bit because we are so busy. The topic we discuss in this episode is the time mindset and how some of us tend to almost blame time for not being there for us, when in fact, we need to recognize that there’s time for us to do whatever we want to do. It’s just the way that we think about it and prioritize it. Jaimeee Campanella joins me in the episode. She is from Jaimeeecampanella.com. She is a time strategist and she is a productivity consultant. She has so many great solutions and strategies for those of us who find ourselves in that mindset sometimes that we don’t have enough time. I love this episode. I hope you guys love it as much as I do. It is number 430 and it is sponsored by Rank IQ. 

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Megan Porta: Jaimee Campanella is a time strategist and productivity consultant who mentors and guides parents, professionals, and entrepreneurs to take control of their time. She is the creator and principal facilitator of the Time Power Program, which gives people the essential tools and strategies to avoid overwhelm and tame chaos to regain control of their time for good. Jaimee, how are you today? 

Jaimee Campanella: I am so good, Megan. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be chatting with you today. 

Megan Porta: Yes, I love this topic so much. It’s something that food bloggers commonly struggle with, myself included. So super excited to get into this with you. Before we do that, though, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

Jaimee Campanella: A fun fact. Yes. I was just thinking, many people, one thing people don’t know about me is that I used to work on a cruise ship. I traveled around the world studying hospitality and systems and tasting lots of delicious foods from different places. So yeah, traveling the world and working on a cruise ship, I think it’s a really cool, fun fact that a lot of people don’t know about me and could contribute to my skills and background in a really fun way. Pre business owner, pre kids, pre mom. 

Megan Porta: There you go. You had all the freedom in the world. How long did you do that? 

Jaimee Campanella: For six months. 

Megan Porta: Oh, wow. Yeah. That’s so fun. I think we all have that dream of just being on the sea and just letting life unfold. That sounds awesome and delicious because they have such good food on cruise ships.

Jaimee Campanella: Yes. 

Megan Porta: All right. You are here to talk about time mindset today and how we can tweak this to make our lives a little bit easier. Do you want to just give us a little bit about your background? Like, why are you interested in this topic? 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. As you mentioned, I’m a time strategist and a productivity consultant, and I shifted into this realm of supporting people and managing their time and creating the time power programs because I myself went through this journey of fighting with time. So much. I come from a professional background, 20 years in helping large corporations and not for profits, managing these events and turning all this chaos and complexity into structure. When I became a mom and I started running my own business, my experience of time changed drastically. The whole reason I decided to create a business, which I’m sure so many of these bloggers listening can relate to, is because you want to have some sort of experience of work life harmony or work life balance, a feeling of you’re in control of your time. You get to put in as much as you want into this business. You’re in control of it. What happens is, quickly that reverses. You feel out of control with your time. You feel like this business is running you. You went from feeling like I’m going to be an amazing CEO of this blog, this company to feeling like you’re an employee of the business you created. So this was my journey. My business and my family began to grow and I was constantly feeling like I was fighting with time. I was disappointed with how much time I had. I started to work long, long hours. I would take work calls when I was with my kids. I was creating content here and there. While my clients or my kids seemed happy, I stopped doing things that were for me and for my business. Taking my daily walks or I no longer had creative time. I no longer was thinking about the future health of my business. I was constantly cycling through overwhelm and burnout. I was experiencing success. I was running a very successful business and I know a lot of bloggers are very successful, so the money is great and it’s intoxicating. The more content you create, the more work you do. The more money you make or the more successful you think you’re becoming. But in that same arena, I started to see how many areas of my life were slipping and I was losing my purpose. So once I was in this rut of feeling, wow, I’m successful on one hand. But I am feeling so unsuccessful on the other hand. At the time, I was running a virtual services agency. That was the service I was providing. I saw firsthand how what I was experiencing were the problems of so many other people. Including food bloggers, who would come to me. They didn’t have enough time. They were working 12 hours a day and I would give them assistance. Here’s someone who can help create content here. Someone who can do automations. All these things. But I realized that none of us were talking about the underlying issues or challenges that I was experiencing and everybody was still complaining about. I’m too busy and too tired and I don’t have enough time. I tried every solution, better system structures. But I personally felt like I was always running against the clock and just disappointed. It was in that place that I discovered the pillars of my time power program and the time mindset that I teach. That was that we needed to shift our relationship with time. Instead of constantly fighting with it and feeling like there’s not enough of it, until we built in a healthy relationship with time, none of those systems were really going to work in the long run. So that is the essence of where I landed. I could have so many innovative tools for time management and productivity, but if I didn’t change how I approach time, it always felt like it was in control of me.

Megan Porta: Wow. So you truly know. It sounds like you’ve been through this time and time again. You feel our pain as an entrepreneur. I’m curious. How do you do that? How do you actually get to the point where you’re shifting your relationship and not fighting? You used that term a couple times, fighting with time. Which when you’re fighting with anything, it never goes anywhere, right? That’s resistance and that never turns out well. So how do we shift our relationship? 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. So my whole essence of what I teach is mindset. I do structures and things after. Most people go into this starting with the structure of the systems. So my unique approach to time management and productivity is to work on the way we think about how to actually change your relationship with time. That is through mindset changes. Is how to get yourself out of a time scarcity mindset. This is the essence of living a life with intention. I want to just say, like I’ve mentioned earlier but with food bloggers or people who own their own businesses, I get it. It’s like another baby. You’re so dedicated to it, you’re so enmeshed in the work of it that you lose sight of how much you’re losing yourself in the process. We often are willing to sacrifice that because maybe we’re making good money. We’re getting new partnerships. We’re getting great collaborations. We feel like we’re being more successful. But without getting our mindset in check, without getting our structures in check, I have not seen many succeed in the long term.

Megan Porta: It’s just going upstream. You can do as much as you think you need to do, but you’ve got to go back to that mindset piece and just restructure that.

Jaimee Campanella: Absolutely. So many of my clients come to me experiencing that time is in control of them or they just feel out of control of time. They express they don’t have enough time to do everything. It’s the number one thing people say. They don’t have enough time to work or be with their family or self care, their household, recipe, testing, photographing, whatever it is. So I help people see, analyze and audit their time because so many people are not even aware of where their time is going. They constantly feel like they don’t have enough of it, but have a lack of awareness. I remember one food blogger that I was working with. She was working 12 hours a day, 60 hours, never took vacations, was all the time, responding to comments and this and that. When we did the audits, she said she was doing six hours of video editing. And I was like, does that something you enjoy doing? She was like, no, I hate it. These are things that we need to look at. What are the things that are filling up your time that are not even in alignment with things that bring you joy? You started your business probably because you’re creative. You like doing recipe testing. You love creating beautiful things, but then you didn’t realize how much operational work goes into this. That’s where you feel like you don’t have enough time and you lose that sense of creativity. 

Megan Porta: So how did you help her navigate that? We all have those things I feel like, that we say I don’t enjoy that but I do it a lot. So how do we go about that? 

Jaimee Campanella: So there’s two parts of this that you know, there’s the mindset and then there’s the practical systems and structures. So with this particular client and where I start with all my clients is this platform, the base, the foundation of the way you think about time. Helping you understand that you are actually in control of your time, whereas you’re coming into this, probably feeling like, what is she talking about? Everything is out of my control. I’m sure you can relate to this. You feel like you wish you had more time. You don’t have enough time in the day to do this or that. You’ve run out of time, or maybe you’re constantly late because you ran out of time, or you didn’t get to that because I didn’t have enough time. In the way that we’re operating in this time scarcity trap, the common beliefs and statements that you’re essentially telling yourself all day every day is that time is doing something to you or time is against you, time is out to get you. In all these statements, you’re blaming time. We’re acting like victims of time. So the first shift that is so important is supporting business owners to understand that they have to change this belief. This way of thinking. Because it’s not serving them.

Megan Porta: So changing the language we use and the thoughts we have is step one. 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah, and I can break that down because it’s such an important first step to feeling more in control. So the first thing that anyone listening to today, if you want to shift your mindset when it comes to time, is exactly what you just mentioned, changing the way you speak about time. Because this will affect how you essentially enjoy your time and how you attract time. This is a concept that we talk a lot about when it comes to money. Money abundance, having a good relationship with money, the more you treat your money, the more money you’ll receive. I believe time is more valuable than money. But we don’t often talk about these same values when it comes to time. So one of the most immediate changes you can make in your language around time is you can stop yourself from saying I don’t have time. So when you tell people that you don’t have time to do something, you’re usually failing to take responsibility for how you’re using your time. I believe that language shapes the way we think, feel, and interact with the world. So if you simply stop saying, I don’t have time, this can be a very powerful action. Because again, the more we tell people we don’t have time, the more we believe that, the more we just think that is fact, and we’re constantly living in a state of time scarcity. There’s just not enough time. Yes.

Megan Porta: I heard a while ago, a couple years ago, someone say this line, if you’re saying I don’t have time for this, you’re really saying this is not a priority for me.

Jaimee Campanella: Exactly. 

Megan Porta: I love that. That’s so true. It’s, I love what you said. We are the victim. We’re blaming this thing that is time, when that isn’t fair, right? 

Jaimee Campanella: Exactly. I always say to people, I don’t believe in time management, in the traditional sense. Because I can’t give you more time. We all have the same 24 hours. I can’t stretch it. But I can teach you how to manage your mind and how to manage your lifestyle within time. We can’t bend it. We can’t extend it, but the way we think about it, the way we speak about it and the way we choose to live our life within time is where you have the power. So going along the lines of what you had just said about the priority, it’s exactly that. If you can’t say, I don’t have time and you have to replace it with something else, you can replace it with truth or something that reflects more responsibility back on you that you do have control of. You can say, no, it’s not a priority for me. You can say just a simple, no. You can say, yes, I would love to do that, but maybe next month, next week, next year. Because by saying that, I don’t have time, you’re blaming something external that you feel like you have no control over. But when someone says to you, Oh, actually, that’s not a priority for me this week. You’re like, Oh, wow. Yeah. She knows what her priorities are? Oh, she’s in control. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Oh, gosh, that’s such a different vibe, right? If you hear someone say, oh, I don’t have time for that. I’m just exasperated or that is not a priority this week for me. It’s so honest and I would totally respect anyone who said that. So this is where I invite you to step one, take I don’t have time out of your vocabulary. Two, find statements of responsibility that you can replace it with. The third part of this is actually a really good check and balance for yourself. Because if you have to say, for example, it’s not a priority instead of, I don’t have time. You can pretty much know right away if it’s true. One of the number one things people say is I don’t have time to exercise. So if you say exercise is not a priority for me, you feel it in your gut. You’re like, Ooh, that’s not true. I better realign here. Or the other people who say, I don’t have time to play with my kids or I don’t have time to feel present with my kids. If you say playing with my kids is not a priority, bleh. Of course, you know that’s not true. So when we start to use more positive and accurate language that reflects responsibility, if you have to say it in your head first, you know where your priorities truly lie.

Jaimee Campanella: It reveals so much about how you actually prioritize the things in your life when you start talking about it in an honest way.

Megan Porta: Exactly. So this is a great, simple way to start feeling in more control of your time, because then you’re making conscious choices. I think a lot of our time, we’re in reactive mode versus proactive mode. We’re just dealing with what’s coming at us. We’re just dealing with the next thing on our to do list. This is very reactive and our time gets filled up with that versus proactive. What is a genuine priority for my business? This week, this month, this year. Is my time in alignment with that? If my priority is writing a cookbook while doing seven hours of video editing, that’s totally not going to take me forward in my journey.

Jaimee Campanella: Do you prioritize your life and your self care and your family and downtime over work is what I’m trying to say. Do you put that into your calendar or? Do you like to set that schedule first? 

Megan Porta: Yes. So it used to be the other way around. That I would okay, everything I need to do in my work week and then fit in with my family around it. That didn’t work. Because I still had a family dinner, but I was checking my emails under the table. Like I said, I didn’t exercise or I didn’t do the things that I knew were important for me because I let my business run my life. In this process of hitting the bottom, I realized I needed to do things very differently. Now when I set my calendar, I put in all my personal obligations, my personal goals, things I want to be present for with my children first. Then I developed my business schedule around that. I’m very clear. I created my business so I could experience time freedom. So therefore I want my business to serve me in the lifestyle that I want. I’m not an employee of my business. I have to stay in my seat as the CEO and then things will continue to flourish. 

Jaimee Campanella: It seems counterintuitive, but it works. I know it took me a long time to get there too, but I do the same. I prioritize downtime and I block those times out on my calendar and let the work fill in around it. It works so well. It’s amazing. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. That’s designing your life. That is assigning your schedule with intentionality, which is the practical side of what I teach. So there’s this mindset of work, which I believe is the supreme foundation, but then there’s the practical systems and structures that are going to support the lifestyle you want. You have to be clear what those goals are. So some people are not in touch with that. Do you want a four day work week? Do you want to work on weekends? How many vacations do you want to take a year? What is it that you want to be present for in your personal life? We need to be clear on your vision. Then we can create the time blocking. We can create the structure that supports that. Again, going into proactive mode versus reactive mode. 

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Megan Porta: I don’t know if you’ve read this book, Jaimeee. It’s 10x Is Easier Than Two X. The author is Dan Sullivan. He’s the same author as The Gap in the Gain, and I think he wrote Who Not How, as well. I’m reading it right now. He takes us a step further and he figures out how many days off he wants to take every year and when the year starts, he blocks all of those days off in his calendar, and I think it’s 180 days or something. It’s non negotiable. He doesn’t have the option to work on those days. Then he does like what you said. Do you want to work weekends? No. So then in addition to that, he’ll block his weekends off or whatever, and design his work around that. I thought that was so smart. That’s my next step goal for time mindset. 

Jaimee Campanella: It’s so funny because I did a whole series of posts about just that. I got my kids 2023, 24 school calendars for the year. They’re the only ones who have a calendar for the year ahead events. I went through my calendar. I blocked out every single day that my kids have off of school, winter break, spring break, every break, every holiday, Monday, they’re off. I blocked all those days. Plus I block off Fridays. I don’t work on Fridays or the weekends. It was such an amazing experience. Wow, I’m really designing my year. I am in complete control. It was well over 200 days. I was like, wow. But I was so proud of that. I was so proud that I could create my life around my family schedule. Because that was, that is my goal. I want to be present for the younger years. My kids are both under five. I want to be a present parent. By filling in my days with work, that’s not the solution. I do need to be successful. I have systems that support that, but giving more and feeding into the hustle culture is not actually what’s going to mark my success. I feel when I write the story of my life, being a present mom, being a successful business owner, that it doesn’t look like being a workhorse.

Megan Porta: Yes!

Jaimee Campanella: So many of us feel like we have to do so much more and the idea of blocking time off for nothing is scary, but it’s so crucial to your success. I always say this with bloggers, you guys are so creative. Food and taste and design and presentation, it’s such a creative thing. When you’re burnt out, even the things you love doing the most no longer can be enjoyable. So to stay in that creative zone, you have to protect your time and energy and even in a bigger way. 

Megan Porta: Oh, that’s so true. You’ve used this term a couple of times, which I love, design your life. We all have the ability to do this. Even if you feel like your to-do list is suffocating you. Everyone listening has the ability to design their life. So I was going to say like, where do you start with that, Jaimeee? If someone is looking at their to-do list right now and thinking, I don’t even know. This is crazy. I have so much to do this week. Where do they start? Do they do an audit like you mentioned? 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. No, definitely an audit is such a key part of any of the work that I do with people when we get into that kind of practical side of things of designing it. Because like I said, you don’t even know where your time is going. So without knowing, getting a better sense of the data, you always feel misaligned. Really, I sometimes will tell people to do this exercise and make a list of all of your goals or wishes or things that you really want to be dedicating your life towards. Then, if you do that, and then I say, okay, go look at your calendar and just tell me what you’ve been doing for the last two weeks. 99% of the time, everything you’ve been doing is not even connected to that wishlist. So without having that perspective, that kind of initial audit of wow, my time is not even going towards what I want or seeing the invisible gaps, but then it’s really hard to proceed. So the audit is a huge part of it. Also the vision is the other big piece of it. Getting clear what you want. Why do you have your business? What is the lifestyle you want to have? Is it like the book, The Four Day Work Week, do you want to have the summers off to be with your kids? I don’t know. Everyone’s vision is so different and that’s why I feel like time management and productivity in my world is so personal and customized because this is one of the problems people have is they’re trying to fit into templates. I just feel like templates don’t work when it comes to time. Because time looks so differently based on how many businesses you run, your personal circumstances, your household, your extended family. Everyone has different things happening that affect their time. So getting clear on your vision for life, your goals, the audit, where’s your time actually going? Then we make the structure. Then we create the time blocks, the calendar, the project management tools, whatever it is that you need in your world. We can’t create structure without knowing your vision and also having that audit done first.

Megan Porta: Yeah. That’s a really good point. It’s not one size fits all. Because I remember years ago I heard a blogger talking about, I think she was taking a significant time in Q4 off work. While I thought that was really cool and inspiring, I don’t really yearn to take Q4 off. I want to take my summers off when it’s nice in Minnesota. So I had to get over that first. Oh, she took Q4 off. I thought in my brain that I should be doing that. Then I did what you were talking about, which is my own vision, my personal vision, and then got into that and figured it out and started planning my life around that. So if you hear something, if you hear someone talk about their vision, that doesn’t have to be your vision. Figure out, maybe it’s just that I want to stop working at five o’clock every night. 

Jaimee Campanella: Or I want to have a date night? 

Megan Porta: I want to take a walk at lunch every day or something as simple as that.

Jaimee Campanella: Exactly. Especially blogging is so competitive, everyone’s comparing, everyone’s trying to do what the other person has, or, jump to the next level. But you really have to ask, what works for you? What is the life experience that you want to be having? Like I said, one of the bloggers that I worked with, she was working around the clock, responding to every comment we’re doing everything herself. She was a perfectionist. She felt like it’s her business, it’s her name. How could she loosen the reins a little bit on what she’s worked so hard to create? But then on the other hand, she was miserable. She wasn’t spending quality time with her kids. They would go on a family vacation and she was on her laptop the whole time. Her health was also impacted; stress, anxiety, physical. I mentioned her because it was such a remarkable transformation when she went through this process and found her true vision and was then able to outsource wholeheartedly and be present with her family. The best part of the whole scenario, which she never even thought was possible, was that her literal business income doubled and she worked less than she ever had because she was so clear about her vision. We were so clear about the audit and then we created a structure and plan that truly served her and her business. I never forgot how she said, I need to keep working to make more money and now she’s working less than ever and making more amazing things than ever. 

Megan Porta: I love stories like that. I’m sure you just get filled up by those two there. 

Jaimee Campanella: Absolutely.

Megan Porta: It’s so cool to hear that. I have a question about email because this seems to be a common theme for me. I’ll feel like I Finally have a handle on how to manage my email. It’s not taking all my time. Then I just get sucked back in and it’s this constant cycle and I think I’m not alone. I think a lot of people can probably relate to this. Do you have any advice about that? 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. So remember when I was talking about being in reactive mode? It’s emails or Slack messages or, the never ending communication cycles. We get sucked into those. We get the notification, we go respond. We get the alert, we go address it. We read it. We might not even respond to it. But basically our energy is leaking when we’re just going to play fetch. Someone’s throwing something at you and you go get it every single time. So what I try to teach people when it comes to email management is having designated time in your schedule for checking emails. Not doing it all day, every day in between. You have to batch to be productive because if you’re writing a content piece and then you stop to go check the email and respond to that email and you come back, your focus is completely being derailed and everything takes a lot more time when you’re in that mode. So emails are a part of business. It’s a part of life. It’s part of how we’re managing communications. So you also just have to have boundaries with it. So for some people it’s okay, first thing in the morning, midday and the end of day. But not a hundred times in between. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. I hear you. But for me, it’s like a mindset thing that I need to shift because I’ll be really good, like I said, for a week or so. Then I’m like, Oh, I have to go check that email. It’s like your time thing where I don’t have enough time. I’m telling myself something that’s actually not true. I don’t have to go check that email. So I feel like I need to find something that replaces that. 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. It’s two things. One is, if you do practically schedule time, say once a day, twice a day, three times a day, depending on how often you feel like you need to do it. When you’re in the middle of doing something else and you hear that thought coming, I have to go check my email. You can say to yourself, I have time scheduled later to take care of all emails. I give myself permission to give my full focus to this other thing. I have time scheduled later for that. So when you schedule time, you start to build assurances with yourself that you do have time. I do have time later to do that. So why am I stressed about doing that right now? 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Okay. I love that. 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. The other thing is remembering like we’re going back to this whole hustle culture mentality. We feel we have to respond to everything now. Right now, immediately. We’re just sitting at our desk just so we can respond to every single thing as it comes in. But the truth is, that’s not going to serve you. It’s not even going to serve the other person. So many times I’d go to respond to something right away and I’m like, God, I wish I had just given that a little more thought.

Megan Porta: Yes. 

Jaimee Campanella: But we’re in this got to do it right away. That makes us look good. Respond. I remember someone saying to me, Oh, wow, I always noticed that you respond to my emails between nine and 10 every day, even regardless of when I send them, you always seem to respond around the same time. Yeah, that’s because I’ve blocked some time to do it. If this is when I do it, this is what I choose to dedicate my time to communications. Now you have to remember emails are other people’s agendas for the most part. You’re basically, answering or responding to and dealing with a lot of things for other people. So you also have to be mindful, like what’s dictating your time. Everyone’s business is a little different, but if it’s responding to and I’m thinking like a blogger, okay, my emails are from some of my team members. I need to review the email marketing. I need to review content or whatever. Fine. Then you need to do task batching. Every day at this time is when I’m doing reviews for my team members. Giving yourself structure will make you feel more in control of that time. Not like you’re just dealing with what’s coming at you. The other thing with email is misused so much. It’s not a place to supervise teams. What are you using your email for? Is that the best place for it? Should you be in a project management tool? Should you be in some other way to manage your work? Inboxes are not a place to manage work. That ends up being how they’re used for the most part.

Megan Porta: Yeah. That’s a lot of food for thought. I love it all. What other struggles do you see? I know you’ve had a few food blogger clients specifically. What struggles have you seen with them that we haven’t mentioned? 

Jaimee Campanella: So perfectionism, I think we talked about. Feeling like you, most food bloggers, it’s their baby. They don’t feel like they can delegate because they want it to be done to their look and style. I appreciate that. But I just also want to say that you have to be mindful of the things that are taking your time that are not in alignment with your creative or your wheelhouse. So just being mindful of that. Being okay with delegating. I think another problem is people delegate before they’re clear about their vision. So a lot of people struggle because they bring on team members to do some of that stuff, but then they’re not even sure how to delegate, what to delegate and how to supervise. So that’s a huge time suck where they feel like they’re now the HR department of their business and that’s not at all their skillset. So when you take on things that are not your skillset or not your zone of genius, they will take a lot more time. So learning to recognize what those are. And that’s the beauty of working with someone like in the work that I do with these people, because when you’re in it, like I was saying, you, you can’t see so much where you’re struggling. That’s the beauty of having a coach or the beauty of having a facilitator help you go through these types of processes, doing the audit, doing the vision, creating the structure. Because you can’t see what you’re doing wrong. You can’t see where you can make improvements because you’re so in it already. So taking the help of a professional is so important. A lot of bloggers feel like they’re fine. They got this. They’re doing it okay. They don’t need help. But to really scale, succeed, and be successful in this field, you do. I have seen day in and day out, that you need an objective perspective and you need the right tools in place.

Megan Porta: I’ve gotten used to noting the feeling I feel when I’m doing something that just feels off. I shouldn’t be doing this. It took me a lot of years to get to that point. Like you talked about your client who did the video editing for hours and hated it. I would do that sort of thing endlessly. I hate this. Why am I doing this? But now I’m to the point where I’m like, okay, this doesn’t feel right. This feels misaligned. Somebody else would be better served doing this task. So I think over time, you can train yourself to do that. But if you can somehow recognize it before spending 10 years, like I did, training yourself, that would be even better. But that’s a big thing right there, what you mentioned. 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. The other thing is that, I see with food bloggers that they’re multitasking. It’s not really serving them. They’re trying to cook, write content. They’re just not managing their time and the energy that it requires to do certain things. One person was saying that they were doing all their cooking on Fridays. They hadn’t really looked at their week. They were so tired by the end of the week, but that was their favorite thing to do. But then they were doing it with their lowest energy. So we have to shift part of this process that I do. It’s a time and energy audit. When are you most energized? Where do you feel your best? That’s when we should be doing the work that you enjoy the most. That’s where you’re going to get the most beautiful results. That’s another area that I think people are blind to is, when they have no energy after lunch is when they are trying to be creative. That’s not going to work. So people think audit is just like, where’s my time going, but it’s also where does your energy lie? How are we ensuring that your time is in alignment with that?

Megan Porta: I feel like it’s constantly evolving. As you’re talking, I’m like yes, been there, done that. The energy thing is huge too. So just to have grace with yourself too, as you move through figuring all of this out, because it’s not something I feel that you can just sit down and nail right off the bat, right? This is a constantly evolving journey. 

Jaimee Campanella: Absolutely. That’s the ebb and flow of our businesses. We’re learning more, we’re learning what we enjoy more. We’re learning what works, what doesn’t work. By the season, by everything. So that’s why I feel like nothing is hard and fast. You have to find systems and structures, but you have to be willing to adapt to them and based on different goals and focuses at different times of your life. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes. Okay. You have given me a lot to think about today, Jaimeee. This was amazing. Is there anything we’re forgetting that you feel like food bloggers should know about time mindset before we start saying goodbye?

Jaimee Campanella: Just that you’re in control of your time. You’re in a very unique position. You own your business. You started this business for a reason, don’t lose sight of that. Get help, read a blog post about how to do this. Book a call with me. Do something. But I just feel like I see so many food bloggers suffering and it is so disheartening because you started your business because you love food. You love cooking. You love bringing in this beautiful bounty and then it becomes something you resent if you don’t stay ahead of the game and feel in control of your time and your system. So just remember you do have the power to make a change regardless of what stage you’re at. 

Megan Porta: Oh, yes. Love it so much. Thank you so much. This was amazing. So appreciate having you here today, Jaimeee. 

Jaimee Campanella: Thank you. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. So I like to ask all of my guests whether they either have a favorite quote or words of inspiration. I know you just delivered amazing inspiration. Do you have a quote that you like to share? 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. I’m trying to think of the one that would be the best for this group. I think one of the quotes that I love to share with people is when you take control of your time, your life is gold. This is the treasure. I feel like the gold is the treasure of your life. You get to experience the richness of your life when you manage your time. 

Megan Porta: Oh, yes. Amazing. It’s that simple, right? But not simple. 

Jaimee Campanella: Exactly. 

Megan Porta: It is. Once you figure it out, you’re like, Oh, that was really easy. But it seems really complicated before you get there. We’re going to put together a show notes page for you, Jaimee. If anyone wants to go look at those, you can head over to eatblogtalk.com/JaimeeCampanella. Jaimee is spelled j a i m e e. Do you want to share where everyone can find you, Jaimee? 

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah, absolutely. You can visit my website, Jaimee campanella.com. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook at Jaimeecampanellaco for some awesome time management inspiration. I have lots of great free resources available on my website and some great products. So I hope that if you’re inspired to take your mindset to the next level, how to really treasure your time and or if you need support on the other side of it with the auditing, the vision and the structure, that I have amazing resources to help you on all fronts. I’d love to connect with you.

Megan Porta: Great. Everyone go check out Jaimee and all of her offerings. Just thank you again, Jaimee, for being here today. We appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode.

Outro: 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.