Episode 657: Your Brain is Not a Project Management System – How to Boost Productivity and Reduce Overwhelm in 2025 with Kara Myers

EBT657 – Kara Myers

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. 

[00:00:54]  Megan Porta 

Kara Meyers she is my good friend and she’s such an awesome blogger and she is a systems and automation and organizational guru. She’s the blogger at Sweetly Splendid. She joins me in this interview to talk about all the things organization that are going to change your life this year. She does not hold back at all.

[00:01:17]  Megan Porta 

In this interview she gives all her best secrets about where to start if you need to get organized and what the next step is and what that next step is. She gives all the details. We also talk a lot about goals and how to set goals that you can achieve and how you should review your previous year and track your progress over the course of the year in order to stay on track.

[00:01:43]  Megan Porta 

And of course being flexible and having grace with yourself along the way is super important too. There’s so much more in the episode I couldn’t even tell you all of it. You just have to listen to the magic yourself. You are going to devour this episode and you’ll probably want to listen a couple of times. It is episode number 657. Enjoy.

[00:02:01]  Sponsor 

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[00:02:57]  Megan Porta 

Kara is the recipe developer, photographer and voice behind Sweetly Splendid where she shares comforting Southern and text Mex recipes. She is a sixth generation Texan and has a passion for nostalgic flavors that bring people together. Her work has been featured in outlets like Women’s World and Food and Wine. She is a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple successful businesses and specializes in helping others streamline their workflows and build efficient processes. Kara likes to use the approach of combining real world experience with actionable insights for creators looking to grow and thrive.

[00:03:25]  Megan Porta 

When she’s not working, Kara loves camping, reading, and spending time with her daughter and dogs. Kara, I could not be more excited to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today?

[00:03:35]  Kara Myers 

I’m doing very good. I’m excited to be here.

[00:03:37]  Megan Porta 

Yay. It’s so good to see your face again. It’s been a while and I miss seeing you. Since we did our Mastermind calls together a few years ago. So, so great to see you.

[00:03:47]  Kara Myers 

I know I’m used to seeing your face every week.

[00:03:49]  Megan Porta 

Oh yes. Okay. And you’re joining us at the Mastermind retreat next week, which is super exciting to talk about this very topic that we’re talking about today. So I get to see you in person soon. We are going to about just creating an organized, streamlined systematized year ahead. By the time this episode is published, it will be about the end of February.

[00:04:12]  Megan Porta 

But that still gives you plenty of time to infuse some organization into your life. But before we get to that, do you have a fun fact to share?

[00:04:20]  Kara Myers 

The thing that I forget that people think is a fun fact is that I have peacocks. I have a whole little cluster of peacocks at my house.

[00:04:29]  Megan Porta 

That is. That is unique. I don’t see peacocks unless I’m at a zoo, but they just roam around same.

[00:04:37]  Kara Myers 

Until I moved to this home. They kind of came with the property. But I’ve learned all kinds of things about peacocks since then. We have probably 30 plus of them. So what? Peacocks are just a normal everyday part of my life now. It’s. We have to keep them out of the car. They.

[00:04:53]  Kara Myers 

They’re so nosy. They’re like little nosy birds. So they always want to get in the car, try to get in the house, stuff like that. So it’s always kind of just managing peacocks around here.

[00:05:02]  Megan Porta 

Okay. Do you have one fun fact about peacocks that people might not know?

[00:05:06]  Kara Myers 

That a group of peacocks is called an ostentation.

[00:05:09]  Megan Porta 

What are you. Did you just make that up?

[00:05:12]  Kara Myers 

I did not.

[00:05:13]  Megan Porta 

OSTENTATION I have never heard that word.

[00:05:16]  Kara Myers 

Like I said, I’ve learned a lot of things since having them.

[00:05:20]  Megan Porta 

Okay. My mind is blown. I don’t even know what to say from here. Okay, well, you stopped me in my tracks. Also, you do have tarantulas. I remember seeing a really disturbing picture of this on your Instagram feed.

[00:05:34]  Kara Myers 

Yes. And it was right around Halloween, so I would have loved to say that it was a Halloween decoration, but it absolutely was not. It was a real Halloween.

[00:05:41]  Megan Porta 

I showed a lot of people that picture. I was like, you’ve got to see this. And everyone was like, no, no, you. Do you know this person? Like, yeah, yeah, it’s real. Yeah.

[00:05:52]  Kara Myers 

I live in Texas, so we have all the snakes, all the spiders, all the critters, all the scorpions. We have all of it. It’s like a little mini Australia over here.

[00:06:01]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. You guys are like a little zoo that nobody to go to.

[00:06:04]  Kara Myers 

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:06:06]  Megan Porta 

Okay, well, that is ostentation. I’m gonna have to remember that very intriguing, fun fact. So I would love it, Kara, if you just talked a little bit about your blog. Tell us about Sweetly Splendid when you started your niche and anything else you want to talk about.

[00:06:22]  Kara Myers 

So I started blogging in 2013 and it kind of came about because I’ve been cooking since I was little, but I had hit a point where people would always ask me for recipes. So I’m the kind of blogger that came into it from. I started this as a way to just share my recipes with my friends and family.

[00:06:41]  Kara Myers 

And then it grew from there very quickly. I started out more of a broad level, like dinners, breakfasts, all of that sort of thing. But in the last couple years, I kind of felt a little disconnected from my blog and so I wanted to be a little bit more kind of in tune with what I wanted to put on my site.

[00:07:01]  Kara Myers 

And so I niched down to just pretty much Southern and Tex Mex food. So any. All the food you would find in the south in Texas. So everything from enchiladas to chicken fried steak and stuff like that, that’s. That’s what you’ll find on my blog. So. And I’ve really enjoyed narrowing it down to that, so I don’t feel too trapped in.

[00:07:21]  Kara Myers 

In too small or narrow of a space. But it feels closer to my heart and I feel more connected with the recipes that I’m actually sharing instead of just sharing for the sake of sharing. So, yeah.

[00:07:34]  Megan Porta 

And if you haven’t checked out Kara’s blog, you have to. I’ve always thought your blog is so beautiful. Just the graphics, the design, the photos, everything is put together in such a just lovely eye appealing way. So love it. I love that you niche down too and that you have embraced that. Have you noticed that your traffic has gone up after niching down?

[00:07:58]  Kara Myers 

It actually did go up. It went up quite a bit. That’s when I sort of started to see the incline more drastically. And one of the things that I’ve really liked is that it feels more of a connection with my audience. So even on socials and the type of comments that they leave and things like that, it feels more connected, it feels less generic.

[00:08:19]  Kara Myers 

It feels like my Texas sheet cake they talk about. This is exactly like my grandma used to make it growing up when I would visit her. And I get comments like that. Since niching down versus how it was before, it was a lot more abroad. It was like, yeah, this casserole is good.

[00:08:31]  Kara Myers 

Now it’s. It’s kind of that nostalgia factor for people as well that we. It feels like we share it. So I like it a lot.

[00:08:39]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, that’s awesome. I haven’t heard a bad story yet about niching down properly, like when it aligns and everything. So I think that that really is a key right now. Just finding what aligns with you and your people and finding that niche. So I’m really glad that worked. For sure. Yeah. So alongside being an amazing blogger and talented photographer and all the things, you are also an expert in organization and creating systems for your business.

[00:09:09]  Megan Porta 

I’m always amazed at how freaking organized and systematized and automated and just on your crap. You are. You blow my mind, Kara. Seriously. So give us your secrets. What would you say? People need to know if. Okay, this is a lot of people, by the way. If they’re thinking, I need to be more organized this year.

[00:09:32]  Megan Porta 

I want a system for my business, but I have nowhere to start. I have no idea where to start.

[00:09:37]  Kara Myers 

So one of the things that I would highly recommend they do is to get organized. So one of the things that as bloggers and what I’ve noticed, especially with my coaching clients, is if they’re bloggers, but they’re also caretakers, whether that’s for children or parents or whatever that is. They have so much in their brain at any given time, so much more than they even realize.

[00:10:00]  Kara Myers 

So I’m a huge advocate of finding some sort of project management system that you can put all of that information that’s in your head and let it be somewhere else. Let. Let it sort of take that part of your brain for you. So instead of having to remember so many things and feeling so overwhelmed by all the different pieces and parts, letting a system kind of help you do that along the way.

[00:10:26]  Kara Myers 

I always say everybody’s brain works differently. All of our brains, we all kind of function differently. So it would be easy because I use ClickUp to say use ClickUp. It’s great. And I think you use Airtable, right? So it’s easy to say use Airtable. It’s great. The thing is, we’re all so different, so what works best for each of us is going to be a little bit different.

[00:10:46]  Kara Myers 

But going in and finding these systems that just try them out, do a trial. They all have free trials. So do a free trial. Some of them have free levels to them as well. Try them out. See, kind of which one feels right to. To your brain, because it shouldn’t feel like extra work.

[00:11:04]  Kara Myers 

It should feel like it’s helping you with your work. So kind of looking and seeing which one feels right, which one feels like it flows the way your brain flows, that makes the most sense to your brain, whatever that system is, just kind of start learning a system like that and letting it take some of it off your plate.

[00:11:24]  Kara Myers 

One of the things when we’re really overwhelmed, and as bloggers, it can be so easy to become overwhelmed because there’s so. There’s so much. When I. Some of my clients, when I say, I need you to write down, when we’re working on templates, I need you to write down every single thing from start to finish that you do for a blog post, it gets them overwhelmed because they think, I did not realize I did this many things like, and that’s just a new blog post.

[00:11:48]  Kara Myers 

That’s not even all the things that happen after the fact or before the fact or at the same time in conjunction with it. So I always say there’s so much. So let it take some of it away from you. And whichever one feels like it flows best with your mind, let it. Let it have some of that burden so that you’re not constantly trying to remember.

[00:12:10]  Kara Myers 

Oh, yeah, I shot chocolate chip cookies. But have I done the keyword research for it? Okay, I did the keyword research for chicken and rice casserole, but have I done the pictures for it? And then we’re all kind of guilty. Something I laughed about at Flavor Media Summit last year is I asked, raise your hand if you’ve taken photos of a recipe and it never ended up on your site because you forgot you had it.

[00:12:32]  Kara Myers 

And Nearly everyone raised your hand.

[00:12:34]  Megan Porta 

Everyone? I. Yes. Yeah.

[00:12:36]  Kara Myers 

So it’s kind of like little things like that, like let it take that part from you. So finding a system, and maybe that is just Excel spreadsheets for you. Maybe that’s. Maybe that’s what it is. But finding something that fits feels right, that you can kind of share everything that’s in your brain.

[00:12:54]  Megan Porta 

Do you ever encounter clients who have stuff scattered everywhere? So part of it’s just in their head, Maybe part of it’s in an Excel sheet, part of it’s on their blog, part of it’s in Trello, and if so, what do you tell them to do?

[00:13:09]  Kara Myers 

So the first step, I always firstly, yes, that’s actually the case for a lot of people. They have stuff in their notes in their phone, but then they have stuff in spreadsheets. But then they’ve also kind of started to use Notion, but then they’ve kind of also started to use Airtable, but then they also have like Google Docs over here.

[00:13:29]  Kara Myers 

So it’s very common for people to have stuff sort of spread everywhere. But the one thing I tell them is try to get it all in one place. So when you have your ideas list, stop writing ideas on paper and in the notes in your phone and in an Excel spreadsheet. And in this other place, try to take small steps at a time.

[00:13:52]  Kara Myers 

So start with just your ideas. And maybe an Excel spreadsheet makes the most sense for you because you like to put them in categories or whatever it is. There is an app that takes you straight to Google Sheets. You can have an app for that on your phone. So instead of going to the Notes app on your phone, go to the Sheets app and put it in there.

[00:14:10]  Kara Myers 

So little things that will help you sort of condense it into one place. So instead of looking everywhere for all the pieces and parts, try to just take little sections of your business. Whether that’s ideas, whether it’s the posts in progress, whether it’s the content updating or whatever it may be, try to have it in one place and try to condense that just that little section into one place to start.

[00:14:37]  Kara Myers 

And then it’s kind of like, well, you actually bought me this book, Atomic Habits. And if you can habit stack that kind of using that same concept of taking little pieces at a time. And if you can get all of your ideas in one place. Okay, cool, you’ve got that taken care of.

[00:14:53]  Kara Myers 

Now let’s work on your post in progress. Let’s have all of that in one place, whether that Means having a checklist or having a Google Document or whatever it is, or some project management system. Have it in one place, and then as you do each of those parts, you can kind of over time, start to condense them all together to where they all live in one place.

[00:15:13]  Kara Myers 

So it doesn’t feel so overwhelming to have to do a whole system, because it can. When I joke that when I switched to ClickUp, I kept saying I need a project management system to set up my project management system, it felt so much. So I always say, like, just try to take it in little pieces and parts so that you don’t just flood yourself at one time.

[00:15:35]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. So step one, get your stuff all in one spot. And I know people tend to think ahead too far. Like you were saying, like, this whole thing is too complicated and overwhelming. I can’t possibly get to the point where everything is in ClickUp. Well, first just get it into a Google sheet or Airtable, and then I think intuitively, you know, kind of what to do from there.

[00:15:57]  Megan Porta 

Like, the next step will lead you in the right direction, but first you got to get stuff out of your head, and you have to get stuff from all the different places. I talk to so many people who are like, yeah, most of it’s in my head, but I have this here, and then I have some stuff here.

[00:16:16]  Megan Porta 

And it just like, oh, it makes me a little bit crazy. Like, how do you do that? I don’t know how people function like that, but it adds so much clarity to your business and your mind. Right. When you can do that, it does.

[00:16:28]  Kara Myers 

The one thing about bloggers specifically is we’re creatives, and we need that space in our brain to be creative. When we start filling it with all of the other stuff, it doesn’t leave any space for that creativity to flourish and actually do what it does best and be creative. And so it’s really, really helpful if you kind of give thinking of it as kind of a container that’s full of stuff.

[00:16:55]  Kara Myers 

If there’s no room for creativity and you’re filling it with everything else, it makes blogging in general harder. It makes writing harder. If you do your own writing, it makes the writing harder. It makes the photography harder. It makes coming up with ideas harder. It makes, even if you’re just taking the pictures of it, just trying to style the food, it makes it harder because there’s just no basically room for the creativity to breathe.

[00:17:18]  Kara Myers 

So you’re forcing everything at that point. So if you can take extra things out of your brain to kind of give it that room. Your whole blog sort of pays off by having all of these little organization things in place where you’re not having to manage them in your brain the whole time.

[00:17:35]  Megan Porta 

And your mental health, I think it helps you mentally so much.

[00:17:39]  Kara Myers 

Yes.

[00:17:40]  Megan Porta 

So in a nutshell, get everything in one spot, even if it takes time, just set it, set aside the time to do it. I remember when you switched to ClickUp and you were like, oh, my gosh, it was kind of an undertaking. But you were so happy when it was finished. I mean, it literally changed everything for you.

[00:17:59]  Kara Myers 

It really did. It’s my entire blog essentially lives within ClickUp right now. I mean, every piece in part. And people will ask me, well, how do you coordinate that with Google Docs? Well, it integrates with Google Docs, so I can still use those things, but I don’t have to go anywhere other than to ClickUp.

[00:18:18]  Kara Myers 

When I start my day, I can go to ClickUp and I can start everything from there. I can see that. Where everything is, the status, I can see kind of where I’m at. My schedule is in there. And it all does integrate with other things, which a lot of these systems do. They’ll integrate with your Google Calendar.

[00:18:34]  Kara Myers 

So if it makes more sense to you and feels right to look at your Google Calendar instead of a project management system, you can do that. They integrate with each other. But the cool thing is if you have it all in one place, you’re not going and searching for all of the stuff.

[00:18:48]  Kara Myers 

And it’s crazy how much time a lot of people spend just looking for stuff, just trying to find the thing that they did or the thing that they wrote or the research they did or whatever it may be.

[00:19:01]  Megan Porta 

So those minutes add up.

[00:19:03]  Kara Myers 

Having it in one place is key.

[00:19:04]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. So once people have their content and all the information stored in one spot, that’s easy to access. What do they do from there to get organized?

[00:19:14]  Kara Myers 

I would say looking at. It’s kind of being honest with ourselves. Where is your downfall? Where does. Where do things bottleneck? Where do you kind. Where do things kind of go off the rails? Where do you feel like every time I go to write, it takes me five hours to write, or it shouldn’t take me this long to do.

[00:19:36]  Kara Myers 

Xyz, it shouldn’t take me long to do this. Being honest with yourself of what is that hiccup? What is that spot? And how can you sort of think of it as like a wrinkle? How can you iron it out so that you’re not going over the Humps and it’s just kind of a straight, smooth line through it.

[00:19:52]  Kara Myers 

So really looking at one thing I like to recommend is write down what takes up the most amount of your time. Is that content updating? Is that your new posts? Is it posting to Instagram? Is it working on your Pinterest? What is that spot that you just feel like is always eating up all of your time?

[00:20:10]  Kara Myers 

So let’s say it’s post in progress. Go in there and say, okay, what do I do from start to finish when I do a post? And then the thing I like to tell people is just do it. But time audit yourself, don’t do it any differently than you would otherwise. There’s tons of apps that you can use to just track your time that are super simple, super fast, and just go through and time yourself.

[00:20:33]  Kara Myers 

And you’ll notice as you’re looking at your time audit patterns and you’ll see I spend so much time doing this one spot. And a lot of people that I find it’s very, very common in my coaching clients is they will. It’s their writing. They say, writing takes me so long, and I feel like it shouldn’t take me this long.

[00:20:54]  Kara Myers 

So you have, you have two options. You can either improve how you’re doing your writing in that process of how you’re doing it, or you can hire it out. I’m a big advocate for both. You know, whatever makes the most sense to you. But writing the common theme that I find is so they’ll talk about, okay, this is my process.

[00:21:11]  Kara Myers 

I decide on the recipe that I’m going to make and then I do the keyword research and then I take the pictures and, you know, do all that, do the editing, and then I write it. But what they’re doing is when they go to write it, they’re doing keyword research again. So they didn’t actually do the keyword research in its entirety in the step that what they thought in their brain was, I already did the keyword research, I’m done.

[00:21:37]  Kara Myers 

Well, when they get to writing, what they’re actually doing, why it’s taking so long, they’re not just writing, they’re writing, but they’re also redoing keyword research again in that same time frame. So it’s kind of being honest with yourself and seeing, okay, how could I, instead of me doing the keyword research twice, go through and say, okay, when I do the keyword research the first time, I’m going to make sure I pick my title, I pick my main keyword.

[00:22:03]  Kara Myers 

However, we all have different methods for our, our SEO, but whatever it is, you’re doing it to completion in that moment and stick with it. When you go to write, don’t say, well, let me redo the whole thing all over again. And really, as you think through your process, being honest with yourself in okay, where is my hiccup?

[00:22:23]  Kara Myers 

And we all have little faults. Mine is editing video. I don’t enjoy editing video. So if I look at my bottleneck, that’s where it is every time. And I’m guilty of it. And I know I’m guilty of it. But what I’ve done is I’ve gotten very organized to where I can have others help in those tiny little steps in between that always get me caught up.

[00:22:41]  Kara Myers 

And stop that forward motion. So kind of just looking and time auditing yourself because you’ll be able to see, okay, I’m really organized in most of this. And this is where that stops. So most people think I’m just. My whole business is unorganized, my whole process is unorganized. And that’s usually not the case.

[00:22:59]  Kara Myers 

It’s usually a small step within that whole timeline that is where the hiccup happens. And just sort of ironing out the wrinkles in that little step, you’ll start to realize, okay, I’m actually very organized up until this point. So what can I do? What are the little systems I could put into place?

[00:23:19]  Kara Myers 

Is it because when I go to write, I have my keywords on paper in a notebook and in Excel and on a Google Doc. Okay, let’s condense them into that one spot thing. One of my friends, you’re familiar with her, Brittany Roche, she will. She laughs because I say the one notebook. Quit having a bunch of notebooks.

[00:23:36]  Kara Myers 

Have the one notebook, the notebook. So quit having multiple notebooks if that’s what the. But you’ll really notice there’s little things you can do to improve the organization and your system as a whole. If you just time audit yourself and see what’s the hiccup.

[00:23:52]  Megan Porta 

There’s so much power in the time audit, and it is amazing. I even am victim to this. When I before I time audit, I always think I know what my issues are or where my time is going. And then after the time audit, I’m always shocked, like I had no idea. And that’s after doing it.

[00:24:12]  Megan Porta 

I do that at least once or twice a year, if not more. If I’m having a tough year. Even after doing it so many times, I still get shocked from my time audits. I think it’s so revealing. It’s almost like you’re learning about another person. You’re like, what? I spend my time on, that I did that.

[00:24:32]  Megan Porta 

That’s my issue. It’s so crazy.

[00:24:35]  Kara Myers 

It is. Because what you’ll also notice is some people spend a lot more time on tiny tasks than they realize. So one that I always point out is people always ask about hiring out for a va. What do I tell my VA to do? And I say do a time audit because you’ll realize all the tiny things they could be doing that you’re actually spending more time on than you realize, like alt text or filling out your recipe card or, you know, just little things like that or the format of your post on the back end.

[00:25:07]  Kara Myers 

Like if you have a. If you have a. Some sort of template that you’re using, let your VA put the template on the post for you. Let them choose the categories, let them do that. And then once you’ve uploaded your photos, let them do the alt text, let them put the recipe card in.

[00:25:21]  Kara Myers 

Little things like that that in a time audit, you’ll really see. Wow, I spent an hour putting my recipe card in. Yeah, I thought I spent five minutes doing that.

[00:25:33]  Megan Porta 

So I know.

[00:25:34]  Kara Myers 

Yeah.

[00:25:34]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And if you do it for a week, or I always say, like three to seven days. Seven days is ideal to capture an entire week, but if you do it for a full week, you can capture all of those little moments, and it’s shocking to see them all added up over a period of time.

[00:25:50]  Megan Porta 

I think everyone listening should absolutely perform a time audit on their business to start the year, just to have a baseline. So, you know, like what you’re saying, Kara, find those bottlenecks, find the issues, find the things you need help with, and then that really helps you move forward.

[00:26:08]  Kara Myers 

Yeah. Because you’ll really. You. A lot of people go into it with just. I’m so disorganized. I’m so all over the place. But what they’ll find once they do that audit is they’re a little bit more organized than they realize. It’s just. It’s just little pieces that.

[00:26:22]  Megan Porta 

Just one or two things or something that.

[00:26:23]  Kara Myers 

Finessing.

[00:26:24]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. Okay. So once we have our content somewhere, we have done a time audit, we feel a little bit more like we have a handle on where our gaps are, where we need to. What things we need to fix, what do we do from there?

[00:26:38]  Kara Myers 

So what I would say is that’s kind of the point where you utilize something like a project management system. So this is kind of the big step. But I definitely want your listeners to know if you do the tiny steps leading up to it, this doesn’t feel like such a big step. If you do these other small things beforehand, that would be the step that I am a huge advocate.

[00:27:00]  Kara Myers 

Use some sort of project management system. And this is the step where you would do that. Because now at this point, you know, kind of the process that you follow through most scenarios when, whether it’s a content update, whether it’s posting on Pinterest, whatever it is, you kind of know your process at this point because you’ve done a time audit, you’ve kind of gotten everything in one place, you’ve kind of assessed and been honest with yourself about working through those things.

[00:27:25]  Kara Myers 

So you go into using some sort of management system. The biggest thing I tell people is know the differences between them. And a simple example of that is Airtable versus ClickUp. So Airtable is a database management system where ClickUp is a project management system. So ClickUp is going to take you through the whole project from start to finish and it’s all going to be connected.

[00:27:51]  Kara Myers 

Airtable is going to manage all of your data for you. So if you’re somebody that your brain is like, I just need it all in one place and organized in a really good system, Airtable will probably be your jam. It would probably work really well now if you’re somebody, like the way my brain works, I’m like, hey, I want you to tell me what I need to work on today.

[00:28:09]  Kara Myers 

I just want to log on and you tell me what I need to be working on. ClickUp works really well for that. Asana works really well for that. Notion works in a little bit of a different way. It’s got a lot of lists and checklists and things like that. So if that’s sort of the way your brain works, going that direction works as well.

[00:28:24]  Kara Myers 

But that’s the step, I would say, really dive into some sort of management system. A lot of bloggers live in a lot of spreadsheets and it’s really fine for a while. But we all sort of hit this point where it’s like, I’m in so many spreadsheets, I can’t keep my head straight. So I would say is as intimidating as it might feel, dive into a project management system.

[00:28:49]  Kara Myers 

And some of them are very inexpensive. ClickUp has a free plan. It also like their lowest plan I think is like $7 or $10, something like that. So they’re really cost effective too. And I know when you’re a smaller blogger. It can feel like every little expense is just, it is just a lot.

[00:29:06]  Kara Myers 

But I would encourage everyone to think about, yes, you might be spending the seven to ten dollars a month, but you are going to be so much more productive. You’re going to be able to put out so much more content, you’re going to be able to be so much more organized that your business will naturally grow and it will have so much more success than being so spread out so that the $10 is worth it.

[00:29:30]  Kara Myers 

It’s worth, it’s very worth it. But that’s the major step and it’s the big one. But it’s, it’s, it feels a little less hard whenever you’ve done all the. Baby steps leading up to it, getting over that big piece of it.

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[00:29:50]  Megan Porta 

I don’t use ClickUp, but is ClickUp and also Asana Are they fairly easy to use and learn to learn?

[00:30:10]  Kara Myers 

No, I’ll be honest about that. It’s actually why it’s a service I offer for bloggers is to set theirs up for them. Because some people say I just want to use it, I don’t want to learn it, I just want to use it. Just if somebody else can set it up, I’ll get in there and I’ll start using it.

[00:30:25]  Kara Myers 

But they’re so robust and Asana’s I feel personally a little bit easier to set up than ClickUp, but they’re so robust that they can feel very intimidating. You can feel like I don’t even know how to set this up. And one of the kind of hurdles with it is that blogging businesses are so different than other businesses that it it needs a little bit of a different setup.

[00:30:49]  Kara Myers 

What might work in all these YouTube videos and the help articles that you find it might kind of be like this sounds like it might work but I don’t know how. This would really help me with a blog. It’s really how you set it up that helps. And the one thing I would encourage people to do is if you are going to use ClickUp as a blogger having different sections for the different sections of your business.

[00:31:10]  Kara Myers 

So for me personally I have new posts in one section, content updates are in another section, social media is in another section and kind of just have automations that interlink them but it keeps them organized in kind of a folder structure that makes more sense for a blogger. Because as a blogger, we touch so many pieces and parts, whereas in other businesses they have a marketing department and an accounting department and this person doesn’t deal with the billing or whatever.

[00:31:36]  Kara Myers 

We touch everything in our business from start to finish. So keeping in mind having them as sorted out in just different sections of the business, even though you’re the person touching all of them, have them sorted out in different sections. It will make setting up those systems a little bit easier.

[00:31:54]  Megan Porta 

So once you’ve gotten that big hurdle out of the way and just you have everything in a project management system, you feel organized. Really. It’s about maintaining it from there, right?

[00:32:05]  Kara Myers 

It’s using it is the thing. Not just maintaining it, but using it. So what’ll happen a lot of the time is they’ll say, okay, I’ve got it all in there. And then it’s like, okay, but that’s just another thing for me to do. So I don’t, I don’t have time to do it.

[00:32:19]  Kara Myers 

So then they don’t end up utilizing it. So that’s one of the reasons I say use the one that works best with your brain, because it won’t feel as like an extra step, but using it. So in ClickUp, one of the big things is I say, assign things to yourself and give yourself due dates.

[00:32:35]  Kara Myers 

You are the boss. You can change your due dates. There’s nobody over you telling you that you’re late. You can’t do this. You can always change your own due dates. But by assigning things to yourself, using the due dates, actually putting the information in there, it becomes this usable system. And in the first couple of days, it feels like, okay, all I’m doing is just this is just adding an extra step in here.

[00:32:59]  Kara Myers 

But as you start using the system a little bit more and a little bit more, you’ll start to realize, awesome. I don’t have to remember that I already took the pictures of my chocolate chip cookies. It remembers it for me. And because I put the dates in there and all of that, it tells me when I need to do my next step.

[00:33:15]  Kara Myers 

So one of the really cool things I like about it is if you really utilize them, you don’t have to think about, what do I need to work on today. They kind of tell you what you need to work on today, and it keeps you on track and on schedule and kind of in line with your goals.

[00:33:31]  Kara Myers 

And so using it, that’s the biggest step.

[00:33:33]  Megan Porta 

Use it. Yes. And just taking all that Stuff out of your brain that does not need to be there. Put it somewhere where it’s actually effective. And like you said, it’s going to remind you so you don’t have to remind yourself. I think that’s the hugest piece. So actually go in after you’ve set it up and use it.

[00:33:51]  Megan Porta 

Even if you’ll. Even if it feels awkward or overwhelming. This in itself is a system. I mean it’s a huge system in your business. It’s probably the baseline system. Do you have other systems you use that help you in your business? I mean we could get into so many things, but just any that come to mind.

[00:34:11]  Kara Myers 

So another thing I love to use, it’s a, it’s an email system called Superhuman. It’s. It is not free, you do have to pay for it. But it’s a little system that I use because. Which, you know, Megan, I had emails.

[00:34:25]  Megan Porta 

For days and days galore.

[00:34:29]  Kara Myers 

I could do emails as a full time job at one point.

[00:34:32]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:34:32]  Kara Myers 

And so I just could not get ahead of my inbox. I couldn’t no matter what I did. And I do have multiple businesses so that plays a large factor into the amount of emails that I receive on a daily basis. But I just could not get ahead. So one of the projects I made for myself, it was towards the end of 2023, was I have to find some way to manage these emails.

[00:34:54]  Kara Myers 

I need some sort of system that can help me manage these because the way my businesses work, I can’t have someone else managing my email for me. So I needed something to sort of help out with that. And I was doing a bunch of research and I found this program called Superhuman. And it was a little of an adjustment at first, but the way it functions really does save time in my day.

[00:35:20]  Kara Myers 

And it’s its own little system. So it divides my inboxes out into various inboxes. So for me I have. They automatically do important and other. But because I have coaching clients and I do a lot of meetings and things like that, I have an entire inbox dedicated to calendar. So anything related to my calendar that comes in, it goes into that inbox instead.

[00:35:41]  Kara Myers 

And then there’s. I have various different ones set up. Invoices is another one I have set up. So anything that’s an invoice goes into this inbox so that I can see they don’t get lost in the shuffle. I, I can quickly see, okay, these are the invoices. This is what needs to be paid.

[00:35:57]  Kara Myers 

They don’t get sort of lost in the weeds. But one of the systems that I set up for myself was in order to be able to get to inbox zero was switching from I need to get through my inbox to does this need to be answered today? When does this need to be answered?

[00:36:13]  Kara Myers 

Do I need to do this today? And Superhuman was really good about that function. Now Gmail also has that function. I’m sure I don’t use anything else, but I’m sure other ones have that function as well. But I can basically say, remind me of this tomorrow at 12, because I know I don’t need to answer this today.

[00:36:29]  Kara Myers 

And it gets it out of my inbox but brings it back in tomorrow at 12. So I actually am able to get to inbox zero days. And I don’t have just emails sitting in my inbox that are like, okay, but I do need to get to these, but not right now. I don’t have those sitting in there just staring at me at the end of the day.

[00:36:49]  Kara Myers 

Because that’s another one.

[00:36:50]  Megan Porta 

That’s the worst.

[00:36:51]  Kara Myers 

It sits on your mind and you’re. You’re like, I need to get rid of this. So, yeah, that’s one of the systems I put into place. I’ve also done little things, like for my coaching clients, it’s reoccurring, invoicing. A lot of people think, well, I only spend a couple of minutes doing this.

[00:37:05]  Kara Myers 

I only spend a couple of. There’s just a little bit of time I spend on this. Well, that little bit of time really starts to add up over time. So even on my coaching side of my business, I have automated invoicing set up so that I don’t have to sit there and do those manual invoices each month.

[00:37:22]  Kara Myers 

So anything that’s outside of ClickUp, I have lots of little pieces here and there.

[00:37:27]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I think anything you can find that saves you those minutes. And like you said, those minutes truly add up. They. They really do. And especially if you do a time audit, you will see that like, five minutes a day might actually be 28 minutes a day. And then when you add it up over the course of a week, oh my gosh, that could be hours that you could be spending on something else.

[00:37:51]  Megan Porta 

So, yeah, those minutes are important. And how does goal setting play into all of this? Because for me, that helps me stay on track. It helps me keep my mind focused on where I’m going and what I’m doing each day and each week. How do you handle your goals?

[00:38:10]  Kara Myers 

So I have kind of a system that I use that’s a little unique. When I set my goals, a couple of things with my. When you’re setting them, I always say you have to look at your previous year. You can’t look at at the next year without looking at your previous year. Where did you land?

[00:38:27]  Kara Myers 

And I always tell people, look at your monetary, but also your traffic. Look at all of them, big and small, because every growth you’ve had matters and it helps you to. It helps motivate you to set your goals for the upcoming year. So I’m a big advocate that when you set your goals for the following year.

[00:38:44]  Kara Myers 

So let’s say you’re setting your goals for 2025 to not just set a monetary goal or just a traffic goal or just a growth goal or whatever it is, set multiple types of goals in kind of different categories, and then you’re going to break them down further after that. So let’s say that you decide you are going to do a traffic goal and it’s going to be, I don’t know, I’m just going to pull a number out of, out of the air.

[00:39:10]  Kara Myers 

But let’s say you want 12,000 more sessions over the course of the year. I know that’s a smaller number, but let’s say 12,000 more sessions over the course of the year, that’s great, but where are those sessions coming from? So looking at it from a perspective of what source is that coming from?

[00:39:26]  Kara Myers 

So instead of just saying 12,000 overall, what was your traffic for 2024? How much of it came from Google, how much of it came from Pinterest, how much of it came from socials, all the email, all the different channels. And think about the increases per channel that the traffic came from. Because what you’re going to do there is how you’re going to grow your traffic on Pinterest is different than how you’re going to grow it through email, than how you’re going to grow it through Google.

[00:39:52]  Kara Myers 

So what that does is by breaking it down a little bit further. Okay, so you’ve said 12,000 for the year. Let’s say that breaks down to a thousand a month. Okay, the split of those, what’s that account for? Okay, whatever the percentages of that, that’s Pinterest. All right, how am I going to grow my Pinterest?

[00:40:09]  Kara Myers 

Does that mean more fresh pins? Does it mean I’m going to repin more? Does it mean I’m going to utilize a different plugin on my site? What is that? That all of these goals play into your daily and your weekly calendar, and they start to pile up on you very quickly. So I always say, have a few different goals.

[00:40:29]  Kara Myers 

And I’m a huge advocate. I tell all of my coaching clients, make a goal that is a work life balance goal as well. And that is. That’s because of you. You told me to do that in the beginning.

[00:40:40]  Megan Porta 

I remember that.

[00:40:42]  Kara Myers 

Yes. And so I always say, have a work life balance goal as one of your goals for the year. This year, I’m very guilty of working every day. So my work life balance goal this year is to have one day a week. I don’t work at all.

[00:40:54]  Megan Porta 

And you deserve that.

[00:40:57]  Kara Myers 

I hope I can do it. It’s hard, but I hope you can do it.

[00:40:59]  Megan Porta 

You can do it, you can do it.

[00:41:01]  Kara Myers 

But it seems like, okay, that’s easy. You’re just going to take a day off in the week. Well, now I have to prep for that. So I once again have put a little bit on myself. And all of these things add up into your weekly and your daily tasks. So even if you want to grow your Instagram, well, are you going to post more?

[00:41:17]  Kara Myers 

Are you going to be on your stories more? Are you going to whatever. So it’s always going to add tasks to your daily and weekly workload. And how are you going to track that? So by being organized, you can say, okay, in order to grow my Instagram, I’ve decided that I’m gonna post three reels a week, one carousel, and I’m gonna be in my stories three days a week.

[00:41:39]  Kara Myers 

Okay, that’s great in theory, but number one, can you execute it? Number two, how are you going to track that? You’re actually doing that in an easy and sustainable way. And if you’re organized, you can do little things like, okay, well, my content. This is the content I’m coming out with. And there’s three of those.

[00:41:56]  Kara Myers 

So cool. I’ll have my three reels. What do I need to fill in the carousels with? Okay, that’s what I’ll put there. And what do I want to talk about on my stories? It allows you a little bit to plan ahead and manage your workload a little bit better. So instead of being disappointed with yourself in August that, well, I’m not doing all, I’m not meeting my goals, I’m not reaching what I thought I was going to.

[00:42:17]  Kara Myers 

If you break them down in the beginning, you can see your workload, you can be organized with them. So that I’m doing all of these steps to build up to achieving this goal, and is it realistic and does it fit in with my schedule and am I able to actually do this? A lot of us are really quick to be like, I’ll post seven reels.

[00:42:37]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:42:39]  Kara Myers 

And if we’re able to actually look at it from a perspective of, okay, here’s how much time I have in my day and in my week, can I realistically meet this? And it helps us sort of work through that. And by kind of doing all the things we’ve talked about, having those time audits, having an organized system, doing all of those things, you can easily start to incorporate the steps you want to take to reach those goals versus just having them as an unattainable list that sort of sits on the side.

[00:43:06]  Megan Porta 

I’ve been there, I’ve done that in the past. Where it’s like, I’m going to post 9 million new recipes this year. And then you get halfway through the year and you’re like, wow, I am nowhere close. So doing what you’re saying is so smart. Do you have a system for tracking your progress along the ways?

[00:43:23]  Megan Porta 

So I don’t know, like quarterly, monthly, how do you go about doing that?

[00:43:27]  Kara Myers 

I actually review mine monthly. So at the end of each month I decide the steps I’m gonna take to I. After I break out my goals, I decide the steps I’m going to take to achieve tho those goals. And then at the end of January, I’ll review and say a couple of things.

[00:43:43]  Kara Myers 

Did I reach sort of the growth that I wanted to reach on that? And were the steps I took to get there sustainable? Because a few things, a lot of times we’ll get kind of down on ourselves because we’re like, I’m not reaching the goal when you’re reviewing it in June. But did you give yourself realistic steps, sustainable steps?

[00:44:06]  Kara Myers 

Has your life changed? For instance, did you get pregnant? Did you have a death in the family? Have, have things. Have you had changes in your life that dictate that you can’t still do the same steps that you could before when you made that initial plan. And we’re really quick to just get down on ourselves of reach it.

[00:44:24]  Kara Myers 

This sucks. I didn’t reach it, but instead I review mine monthly. So at the end of January, I will go back and I’ll say, okay, did I have the growth I wanted to have in whatever the goal is? Did I meet that and where the steps I took sustainable? And if I didn’t reach it, I’ll look at things like, can I change my steps up a little bit?

[00:44:44]  Kara Myers 

Is there something different I can try Do I need to do more? Do I need to do less? Do I need to swap something out? A big change for me that’s happening this year a lot. I had a big platform on TikTok and that’s going away. So I’m making a huge shift over into Instagram.

[00:45:00]  Kara Myers 

And what that means for me is I’m taking the time dedicated to that over into Instagram. But had I not known in advance that TikTok was going away, I could get to June and be like, well, I lost the TikTok traffic, so what a bummer. But by reviewing monthly, you’re able to see, okay, I need to shift this a little bit or change my steps or change kind of how I’m doing things.

[00:45:21]  Kara Myers 

And it might be something as small as. If you’re looking to grow your email list and your opt in isn’t working at the end of January, you can say, okay, why is my opt in not working? That was one of the things I was really hoping to bank on. What can I adjust here rather than getting to June and being like, well, I’m not even close.

[00:45:36]  Megan Porta 

So, yeah, yeah. I think what you said earlier is so important. Just having grace for life too, because all of us happen to be human and humans experience setbacks, grief, depression, burnout. I had that in 2024, was not expecting that. So to reassess occasionally and to keep that in mind and not to hold yourself to those standards that you set in January because they’re not always going to be the same.

[00:46:09]  Megan Porta 

So to have just so much grace with yourself and I think celebrating wins along the way is really important too. You kind of touched on that, like, what have you done? And okay, sit down and look at what you’ve accomplished and really just being proud of what you’ve done despite being a human and having things happen.

[00:46:29]  Megan Porta 

So I’m really glad you brought that up. Yeah, that’s a huge part of it. There’s not a year that goes by, I think for any of us that we’re not like, oh, I didn’t see that coming. Things happen all the time. And just knowing that you’re not going to have a perfect year ever, ever, and being okay with that.

[00:46:47]  Megan Porta 

So you track progress monthly. I love that. Should we talk a little bit about ways to automate? You talked about ClickUp a little bit and how you can kind of integrate ClickUp with other platforms. What are some of your favorite ways to automate?

[00:47:03]  Kara Myers 

So I will say my number one favorite automation is inside ClickUp, but I have to share it. Is that my content updates tell me what I need to update versus me doing all of these, like all a bunch of analyzing of my posts and all of these things. I have an automation set up that at certain intervals of time it brings up the post for me to review it and me to update it.

[00:47:28]  Kara Myers 

That’s my favorite one because that’s the thing I’m so quick to put at the bottom of my list that I, I say, okay, I don’t want to deal with this content update right now. I’ll look at it later. But by having it fed to me in an automation, it’s so much easier for my brain to be like, okay, cool, this is the one we’re working on right now.

[00:47:47]  Kara Myers 

And I don’t have to feel like I’m analyzing everything and having to go into a huge process. So that I will say that one’s within ClickUp. But if you can do some sort of system that, that gives you your content updates that you want to work on rather than having to analyze them every time, it’s such a time saver.

[00:48:05]  Kara Myers 

It, it saves so much mental space. I love it. I have other automations. When I used to type my blog posts in Google Docs, there’s a system called Wordable and it will automatically put it over into WordPress for you, which was great. I use a couple of different systems that go through Zapier.

[00:48:24]  Kara Myers 

I think Zapier is a really good system to use so that your information is just going for you. There’s a plugin out there that will automate your alt text for you. That one is really great. You can tell it your keyword and then it will help you with the alt text to save you the time of typing all of that in.

[00:48:42]  Kara Myers 

I am an advocate for anything that will send you a reminder, bring it back up for you where you are not spending the time analyzing stuff. And so anything that can sort of give you a calendar or a schedule of things I’m a huge advocate for. But little things a lot of people are like, I don’t like automations, I don’t use automations.

[00:49:06]  Kara Myers 

Well, if you use automatic bill pay, you use automations. Yeah, and little things like syncing your bank account if you use QuickBooks, if you use Wave, if you use Xero, sync your bank account with it, little things like that, they all add up. So if you can find any little way to have an automation in your system, it pays off tenfold.

[00:49:28]  Megan Porta 

And if you can have say 10 automations, think of all the time you’re going to Save there?

[00:49:32]  Kara Myers 

Yes.

[00:49:33]  Megan Porta 

If you have Zapier. I always like going through Zapier and looking at the examples. Like in my mind I’m like, I don’t really know what is possible to automate. So going through some examples really helps me like, oh yeah, I could do that. There are some pretty amazing things that you can automate through Zapier.

[00:49:52]  Megan Porta 

And I think there are other automations. Tool automation tools as well, correct?

[00:49:56]  Kara Myers 

There are. I’ve tested a couple, but Zapier is the one I kind of always fall back to. But little things like do you always run reports or do you always want to see your traffic in a certain way? So for me, full transparency. I use finite analytics now, but prior to using that, I was spending so much time doing like custom reports in GA4 and I was finding that I’m looking at the same information every time, just with different dates.

[00:50:20]  Kara Myers 

So I actually set up an automation to where it would pull information from. For me, over into a Google spreadsheet so that I could see into a Google spreadsheet because I was pulling the same information every time. But the time I was wasting going into GA4, even with saved reports and everything, it was really just take eating up my time.

[00:50:41]  Kara Myers 

And that was one of the things I used Zapier for beforehand, before I was using Finite. But I would use Zapier for that just to pull it. So all I would need to do is open the spreadsheet versus going into GA4 and pulling up each one of those individual reports. Because even though they were saved, it’s still going into each individual one.

[00:50:59]  Megan Porta 

Absolutely. And that’s something so little that you wouldn’t typically think to automate, but research it. I say if there’s something little you do, there’s probably a way to automate it. If it’s one of those absolutely repetitive things that you do all the time.

[00:51:14]  Kara Myers 

Absolutely.

[00:51:15]  Megan Porta 

Okay, Kara, what have we not covered? If there’s anything you’re thinking of that people need to know if they are looking to get more organized, systematized. Those are big words, by the way. Organized, systematized, automated, complicated title. I know, yeah. Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you think is really important to mention?

[00:51:35]  Kara Myers 

I would just say it’s really important to give yourself some grace. Like you’ve said, give yourself some grace. And remember, you probably are a little bit more organized than you think you are. It’s just areas you’re not organized in. But the biggest thing I would say is even if you don’t feel ready to go to like a full project management system or anything like that.

[00:51:59]  Kara Myers 

Finding little ways, finding that little hiccup and finding little ways to work through them is going to make such a difference in your workflow as a whole. It’s going to make such a difference in your entire process. In probably one of the things this is kind of everybody’s got their own opinion on it, but I would love to mention it because I think I see the biggest change in people when they work on this.

[00:52:23]  Kara Myers 

I’m not a batch person. I don’t like to batch work. It just doesn’t really work. It doesn’t flow well for my brain. The only thing I batch is photography, and that’s because I batch things that go well together. But that’s the only thing I batch. I don’t. I don’t. My brain doesn’t function well on.

[00:52:38]  Kara Myers 

I’m going to spend this whole week writing posts and this week I’m going to do keyword. I don’t do well on that. But the one thing that I will say is planning your content in advance will make the such a big difference in your organization. Even if you’re a person that says, I just want to make what I want to make when I want to make it, getting that small organization piece of planning your content in advance will help you so much.

[00:53:04]  Kara Myers 

So even if you’re somebody that, okay, I just want to plan a little bit at a time, that’s great. At the beginning of January, decide what you’re posting for February. At the beginning of February, decide what you’re posting for March. And keep it as simple as that. I say probably planning a quarter at a time is going to give you a really good leg up.

[00:53:24]  Kara Myers 

I plan a year at a time, but I know that’s not for everybody. But what that does is it allows you to be more organized in your entire process leading up to creating that content. Even if you’re somebody that. Because some people like prefer. Some people like to do a blog post from start to finish.

[00:53:43]  Kara Myers 

They want to go from start to finish before they start the next one. And that’s totally fine. But knowing what you have coming up helps you to organize your day, organize your weekly workflow, know what you have coming up, giving yourself that grace because life happens, you know, hey, I can. This is what I’m working on next month.

[00:54:04]  Kara Myers 

So having that little thing in your pocket of I know what I have coming up will help alleviate so much of that chaos feeling and that unorganized feeling because. And it’s just a Small, simple step. And even if you’re somebody that’s, I can’t plan too far in advance or I lose my momentum or I want to change everything, I say you’re your own boss.

[00:54:27]  Kara Myers 

If you decide you want to change what you’re posting to your blog, that’s your choice. You can totally do that. But give yourself that little leg up of planning a little bit in advance and planning your content just a little bit in advance because you’ll really, really notice a huge difference in how you can get organized leading up to it and you can work on different things.

[00:54:49]  Kara Myers 

A huge thing I’m an advocate for is you have big energy days and low energy days. So on those big energy days, you can say, okay, the hard parts of these things I’m working on in February, I’m going to go ahead and do them today because it’s a big energy day for me.

[00:55:03]  Kara Myers 

And then let’s say you have a low mental energy day, you can go in and say, okay, what are the easy things on those posts I can knock out today and work on in advance? And you can go in and do those because you have that small step done.

[00:55:15]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:55:16]  Kara Myers 

So I, that’s like the biggest takeaway I would want people to try. At least try.

[00:55:20]  Megan Porta 

I love it. And I think once you try it, even just dip your toe in the water, you kind of get addicted and you’re like, ooh, this feels really good. Being ahead of schedule feels amazing. So then you’ll probably want to do more. Do you find that with your clients that they want to do more of it?

[00:55:36]  Kara Myers 

Very much so. I have people that are like, absolutely not. I cannot plan. I don’t want to do that because it’s going to take all of my creativity away. I cannot do that. I’ll want to change every single one. It’ll feel too robotic. If once I’ve convinced them to just do one month, they’re they’re like, okay, I got to, I finally got to schedule a post, which is also an automation, I should say, or it’s a system.

[00:55:57]  Kara Myers 

If you schedule a post, it’s automatically going live for you. They’ll say, I actually got to schedule a post. I didn’t have to do it live right then and there. I actually got to schedule it. I got to schedule out my email. I got to schedule out this. So it makes such a difference.

[00:56:14]  Kara Myers 

And it will. You don’t realize like how much you’re putting on yourself on a day to day basis by not having it decided. And some people will say, I have a list. I just pull from a list. I decide this is my list and I’m gonna grab one. I just encourage you look at the list and pull the ones for the next one.

[00:56:33]  Megan Porta 

Right? Yeah. Test it out. You’ll probably fall in love. So with all of this, Kara, with getting organized, getting systematized, getting automated, the bottom line is that you’re going to have more time, you’re going to have more mental space, you are going to have more money, probably because you’re going to have more time to work on important things.

[00:56:55]  Megan Porta 

Is there anything I’m missing?

[00:56:57]  Kara Myers 

No, I would say that’s pretty much it. And being organized, once you do get to a point where you can hire out, it’s a lot easier to hire out. I always tell people, does it need your brain or a brain? If it just needs a brain and not your brain, you can work to get organized, to outsource those things.

[00:57:14]  Kara Myers 

And being organized makes it that, that stuff even easier. So. But I will say you will make more money being organized. I, I promise, I can promise everyone, every listener in this, you will make more money if you are a little bit more organized.

[00:57:31]  Megan Porta 

Totally. I totally agree. And I’m so grateful for you being here and taking the time for us. Kara, as always, you delivered. It’s amazing. I know you’re going to inspire a ton of people to get organized. Come on, we can do it this year, right? We’ve got this together. Do you have a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?

[00:57:50]  Kara Myers 

The inspiration I’d want to leave them with is, I know it can feel big, but you can do it. I have faith in every single one of the listeners in this. You can absolutely do it. Just take it a tiny piece at a time. Even if you feel you are so all over the place, you can absolutely do this and give yourself the courage to do it because you.

[00:58:08]  Kara Myers 

I fully, fully believe. I’ve seen the people that say, I don’t want to be organized, I can’t be organized. Go to even just a little organized and seeing the growth in their business. So you guys can do it. And I believe in each and every one of them that they can do it.

[00:58:22]  Megan Porta 

Oh, love that so much. Going to put together a show notes page for you, Kara. We’ll put everything we’ve talked about in the episode in your show notes and you can find that at eatblogtalk.com/sweetly splendid. So head there and check it out. Also, Kara, tell people where they can go to find you.

[00:58:40]  Megan Porta 

And I know that you have an offer for some group coaching, correct? So you can mention that as well?

[00:58:47]  Kara Myers 

Yes. So they can find [email protected] or if you’re interested in my coaching, it’s slash coaching. But because there is a wait list for that, I decided in 2025 that I’m going to offer two eight week group coaching sessions. And so for the Eat Blog Talk podcast listeners, I’m going to offer a discount to them for that.

[00:59:06]  Kara Myers 

So they can just use a discount code. That’s. That’s Eat Blog Talk.

[00:59:09]  Megan Porta 

Awesome. Thank you so much. That’s so generous of you. And if you guys need help getting organized, Kara is the best. You are in such good hands with her. So I hope that your group coaching is a huge success, Kara. I know it will be. Thank you again, Kara. Tell your peacocks hello and tell your tarantulas.

[00:59:27]  Megan Porta 

I do not say hello. Yeah. And thank you for listening, food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

[00:59:40]  Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to rate and review Eat Blog Talk on your favorite podcast player. Thank you. And I will see you next time.