How to Blog When You’re Overwhelmed + Don’t Know Where to Start

I’m getting into using Trello.

That’s great.

So I want you to try and keep everything there, but I still need guidance.

Okay.

I don’t use Trello.

I am trying to learn because very soon I’m going to be hiring people and this all pen and paper post-it note calendars, you know, hand scheduling thing I do is not going to cut the mustard when I hire a team.

Right.

So I am trying to learn Trello and trying to actually use it.

That’s the thing is I need to use it.

So as I learn Trello, I will pop on here with any tips and tricks I got for y’all.

Yes.

Okay.

And then next she said also SEO, what is your step-by-step way to use SEO? And do you use your headlines and test it for SEO and Uber suggest or something? I see.

Okay.

Yeah.

I see where your confusion is coming in.

And then she said, you know, I’m always full of questions.

I literally sit in front of my computer and stare at it or procrastinate because it’s so overwhelming for me.

And I don’t know how or where to start every time I think I’ve got it.

And then something happens and I don’t girl, every single blogger in this live like 100% feels you, we have all so been there and the thing is, okay, so when you are starting your blog, it is a giant learning curve.

I mean, like an out of frame learning curve, right? You feel just, like you said, paralyzed by the amount of information.

Right.

There’s so much information.

And on top of that it’s stuff we have never done before most of us.

Right? Unless you were in like tech and you were building websites or maybe you wrote for a living like you were a journalist or something like that.

 A lot of this is stuff we have never, ever done before.

 So it’s totally foreign to us.

Learning

To build a blog, learning to blog is like giving yourself six different master’s degrees in stuff you’ve never dabbled with before all at once.

 So we have all, we’ve all been in that like super early phase where every, like every single step requires us to go and look something up.

 And then when we look something up, we realize that we have to learn five or 10 other things just to, just to go back and do that one step.

 Right? And it feels like this never ending rabbit hole.

 I can tell you that that does level off.

 Eventually you get to a state of where you know enough, right.

 To be able to walk through the steps of blogging without having to stop and figure out, you know, what the hell a web host is or what does propagate mean? Right.

 I thought that was gardening.

You know, you don’t have to stop and, and look up how to do everything.

 Step.

 It gets easier.

 You will get better at this, I will say, but the next time you level up, so you get to this baseline of knowledge, you’re putting along, you’re writing your blog posts.

 It’s no longer this thing.

 You have to relearn how to do every single time you, you got your flow down, you can sit down, you can write a blog post, you know exactly what you need to do, but then you want to take it to the next level, whatever the next level means for you.

 Maybe you want to create a course.

 Maybe you want to run Facebook ads to this awesome principle you just made or something like that.

 Right.

 Then it starts all over again.

 They huge learning curve.

 But one, I think the learning curves as you level up are a little bit smaller because generally leveling up requires adding a few skill sets in, right?

Whereas when you are just brand new to blogging, you’re adding tons of skillsets in, right? You have to add so many skillsets all at once.

 And I think that’s why a lot of people quit.

 They get overwhelmed and they they’re like, screw this.

 This is not what I thought it was going to be.

 Right.

 When you level up, usually you’re just adding in a few skillsets and there can be a really huge learning curve with those two.

 But one, I don’t think the learning curve is as giant as that initial, starting a blog phase and two, you’ve done it before you went through that giant learning phase and you came out the other side and you’re better for it.

And you, and you set up your blog and you’re rocking and rolling now.

And your brain knows that.

So it’s like, okay, I can handle this.

There’s less of a freak out right.

There might still be freak outs, but they’re, they’re smaller.

Your brain knows that it can handle an enormous amount of information and chill the F out and disseminate that information and figure out how to move forward.

Which is what we’ll talk about in just a second.

Oh, Hey, Lisa says my friend, Kara Harvey is a Trello geek and has a course and use it for everything.

I’m sure we would all love it.

If you would drop her link in the comments, Lisa, that would be right.

I would, I need to learn how to use Trello.

And yes, all of us bloggers feel overwhelmed three years in still have days.

Yeah, no, me too.

100%.

I still have days where I feel overwhelmed.

Yeah.

100%.

And the difference later when you’re leveling up again, is that oftentimes you can kind of hire, hire some things out because you’ve made some money and you can hire some stuff out, which is really, really nice up to Mina.

Definitely has problems with element or two.

Yeah.

And I think a lot, at least on my end.

So a lot of the times when I would spend like days customizing this perfect element or sales page, and then it would look right on my computer and I’d go look at it on another computer.

And it would be this broken mess.

A lot of the times I think it was my theme and my, my themes presets, not playing nice with Elementor and the things I was telling it to do.

So the things I was telling this page to do did not compute with my theme and the reason I think my homepage works so well right now is because it is an it, I think it pretty sure it’s built by the same people who built Elementor it’s supposed to be a super lightweight theme that interacts really, really well with Elementor.

So I got rid of my paid fancy theme and I use this one.

I don’t recommend doing that.

 If you’re a brand new blogger, get a paid theme, if you’re a brand new blogger and that leads us seamlessly into what I want to talk about.

 As far as you’re overwhelmed with being a new blogger and not knowing where to start part of the problem is that nobody can really tell you exactly where you need to start and what steps are right for you.

 There are basic things we all need to do, right? We all need to register a domain.

 We need to set a posting for that domain.

 And then we need to have a few basic pages for our blog, right?

So let’s head over.

Okay.

 So few basic pages for our blog.

 So we need to have a homepage an about page, a disclaimer, a privacy policy.

 The disclaimer is if you have affiliate links on your blog, right? Yep.

 Tamina says paid theme for a brand new bloggers.

 I use a free one slanty face.

 Yeah.

 If you’re using a free one and it’s, it’s working fine for you, then go for it.

 The trap that I fell into that a lot of bloggers fall into is thinking that a paid theme was not worth it.

 And by not worth it, I mean, I cannot tell you guys how many countless hours I spent tweaking free themes, trying to get them to look the way I want them to look as a new blogger.

 Because somebody told me that as a new blogger, I should not pay for a paid theme.

 And I believed them.

And so in my mind, I was like, I should be able to make this work.

 They said it was a trustworthy source.

 I still consider them a trustworthy source.

 However, I failed to take into account that they had a background in coding.

 And I did not, I do not know how to code.

 I still, I do not know how to code.

 I can center things.

 That’s about it.

 So after a year of wasting and I mean wasting countless and countless and countless hours, tweaking free themes, various free themes, trying to get them to look the way I want them to look.

 I finally bought a $50 theme and that baby looked the way I wanted it to look in 24 hours.

 So like one day of half-assed going in there and you know, customizing it myself.

 So they, and because it was a paid theme, they had support, right.

 So if I didn’t know how to do something, I could reach out to them.

 They had lots of tutorials walking me through how to do things.

 One day.

I can not tell you how much at the time I was kicking myself, I was like $50 later.

And I don’t have to deal with this crap anymore.

And I can focus on stuff.

That’s actually going to make me money.

Are you joking?

So that was a bad piece of advice I got when I started a blog that I really took to heart.

And man, I doubled down on that bad piece of advice for a year.

Yes.

Yeah.

Janet says setting up my blog with a paid theme was so much easier.

Yes.

That’s what I experienced do.

And yeah, at the time I just, I had it in my head that I w I, I should be able to make this work with a paid or free theme.

Why, why can’t I, I didn’t know enough and it wasn’t worth it.

Tamina says, paid theme.

 Sounds useful.

Do you use it with the paid version of element or so actually this is a free theme from element or I can’t even remember what’s called, but it’s, it’s one.

They, they pretty much give you in order to yes.

Get you to buy their pro version of Elementor and it’s super, super lightweight.

And then, but if I was starting out, I would not recommend this.

I knew how to do this because I was used to using ELA mentor.

And a lot of people, like a lot of web designers will tell you not to use Elementor at all.

So it’s just, it’s up to you.

Yeah.

Janice says I was listening to everyone saying, go with a free theme.

And then yeah, the paid theme.

So worth it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s exactly what I did too.

Paulette says, as an aside, I love the 7:00 AM meetings.

Oh, awesome.

I love having you at these 7:00 AM meetings.

She rides her bike, her stationary bike.

It’s always a great workout.

 I love it.

 Glad I can help you stay fit.

 Okay.

 So I am going somewhere with this stuff, like how your blog looks is so less important than you think it is in the beginning.

 Okay.

 So here let’s touch on SEO.

 SEO is too big of a topic to disseminate during one Facebook live.

 When we are also talking about other things I can help you with blog posts, SEO, and Amanda I’ll do a post later on today.

 I’ll do a post in the group with some resources for you to help you with SEO.

So trusted SEO sources for SEO as a whole Mike Pearson of stupid, simple SEO, hands down the best SEO course Neil Patel, very, very trustworthy source, and he has an insane amount of free content on SEO.

 He just has an enormous amount of free SEO content on his YouTube channel on Neil patel.

com.

 That boy gives away a lot of content for free.

 So that’s a very trustworthy source.

 And I will link out to various sources when I post that in the group for you.

 And then I’ll also link you point you towards videos and posts that I’ve already done that will help you with the blog post part of SEO, but SEO, think of SEO as a garden that you were starting from seed.

 You’re not going and buying the starts at Fred Meyers.

 They are seeds.

 Right.

Okay.

Sorry.

 I’m just checking in.

 I want to make sure I’m okay.

 Yep.

 Okay.

 so you’ve got a plot of dirt.

 That’s your blog when you start.

 Okay.

 Let’s, let’s go all out with this garden theme.

 And let’s say that getting like your privacy policy up there and your about me page and your homepage all set up, that’s like weeding and getting the soil ready.

 Maybe you have to condition the soil.

 Right.

 You’re getting it to a bare bone state that you can seeds.

Okay.

And those seeds are your blog posts because in order for SEO to work, so SEO search engine optimization.

So in order for SEO to work, yes, there’s way more to SEO than blog posts like way, way, way more, which is why I’m just, I need to point you towards Mike Pearson and Neil Patel.

Those are super trustworthy sources.

There’s way more to it.

However, for search engines to rank you in search engines, you need to give them content to rank.

They can’t rank nothing, right? So you start writing blog posts.

So you’re planting a little blog, post seed, and that is going to take time to grow.

So here’s what people waste their time on in the beginning that doesn’t matter.

Relentlessly tweaking their homepage.

I did that.

And part of that was using a crappy free theme.

I did that.

Making things look just right and by things, I mean, maybe your bolted lists look a little weird, right? None of that stuff matters in the beginning because nobody is looking at your blog.

Anyway, if you, in the beginning, if you are not sending people to your blog somehow.

So like with Pinterest or Facebook or whatever, nobody is going to organically find them and look at them and be like, wow, her bulleted list.

Sure.

Our space close together.

I’m going to leave.

You know what I mean? So the sooner you can start planting those seeds the better.

So that means the sooner you can start publishing that content, the better you need to get publishing that content, if SEO is going to be your main focus for your blog, then you need to be publishing content as soon as possible, right?

Because one you’re in the Google sandbox for six months, which Google says doesn’t exist, which makes it very mafia.

So right.

There is no mafia.

There is no Google sandbox.

No, there is.

So there’s a Google sandbox effect where they kind of just don’t even look at brand new blogs or websites.

They just kind of don’t consider them until they’ve been around for a while.

And they know that it’s not some spammy thing.

That’s there for a week and it’s going to go away because they want to provide the results they provide to people.

 The reason Google’s the best search engine is because the results they provide PR people are a pleasant user experience and solve their problems.

 Right.

 So if they send them to a kind of spammy website, that’s only going to be around for a week then that would make them being okay, let me see what you guys are saying.

Yeah, that’s true.

 No, that’s a good point.

 He said, I found it for using elementary.

 You should use a good hosting service because elementary uses lots of resources.

 Shared hosting is not good for Elementor.

 That’s a really good point.

 I have a really good hosting service.

 I use big scoots.

 Yeah.

 Thank you.

 That’s a good point.

 Yeah.

 Tamina says I did that too.

 It’s still doesn’t look right.

 Yeah.

 And okay.

 And here’s the other thing, even when people are looking at your site, y’all I have seen some really not pretty blogs that are doing really, really well, if your content is awesome and it helps people.

 That’s really all they care about.

 If so ugly is okay.

 Or even just not as pretty as we want it to be is okay.

 It’s when it’s like unusable and interferes with the user experience that people care.

 Right? So again, like how much I know web designers don’t come from me, don’t come from me.

 It’s a Tuesday.

 Leave me alone.

 I mean, when it comes right down to it, it’s more about the user experience, right.

 And of course, when things look pretty, it does affect the user experience.

 But not as much as just having good content that works right.

 If they click on something, it takes them where they’re supposed to go.

 That’s what really matters.

Yes.

Paulette says my biggest lesson was that my blog was just marketing for my product.

 Learn that the hard way.

Yes.

I know.

I remember I was gardening when I had this sort of light bulb moment, years ago, I was like, Oh, the blog, isn’t the business.

The blog is a tool for my business.

I was like light bulbs everywhere.

Okay.

So yeah, we will talk about, so right now we’re talking about how to start blogging when you’re overwhelmed and don’t know where to, where to start when you’re a brand new blogger in a second, I want to talk about when you’re a more seasoned blogger and you’ve come to a stage and you are, again, overwhelmed.

You have way too much information.

Don’t know where to start.

Janet says, I spend way too much time on images, but I do crafts too.

So it’s harder for me to find picks that I can use.

Yeah, I hear you.

I hear you.

And actually Amanda had asked about images, like what images are right to use.

I do have a Facebook live on sourcing relevant images.

Actually.

I think I have a few of them.

So later on, I’ll do a post and I’ll scrounge scrape up a whole bunch of different resources for you guys.

But yes, it is very, very easy to fall down a rabbit hole of say, looking for the perfect meme to go in your blog posts.

And suddenly you’ve spent all of your blog post writing time on looking for the perfect meme.

It is very easy to do.

That is why I do all of my images and such after my blog.

Post is written blog.

Writing time is blog, writing time.

If I want to find the perfect meme to insert in a spot I put in parentheses insert meme here.

I do.

I no longer I did in the beginning.

I no longer let myself go search for that perfect name right then.

Cause I know I won’t come back to the blog writing and then it just probably won’t get published.

Lisa says, when Faye said the blog is not the business, that was my light bulb.

Yeah.

I actually think I was listening to a, I was listening to a Ruth Soukup podcast when I finally got that this was years ago.

 So it must have been a real early one of hers.

 And she said something about the blog not being in the business.

 And I was like, Oh, that makes sense.

 So I like to think about all it says before I met you.

 I didn’t even use memes.

 If I could like spend my entire life just conversing in memes and gifs, then I would.

 So I like to think about your business being a bike, right? And your blog is one of the wheels on that bike.

 And this, this bike can have lots of wheels.

 We’re not limited to two.

 There’s lots of ways to move your business forward.

 So your blog is a tool.

 It’s a part of the bike that moves your business forward.

 It moves the bike forward.

 And I like to think of blog posts as a spoke.

 Each blog post is a spoke on that wheel, right?

DTV.

And that’s why it’s so important to have blog posts that work towards our business goals.

 Right? If you have one broken spoke, so you have one blog post that isn’t really aligned with your business goals, but you felt really called to write it.

 It’s not going to rank on search engines, yada, yada, yada that’s.

 Okay.

 Your bike will still be able to move forward.

 If all of your spokes are that way.

 If all of your blog posts are that way, you’re going to have trouble moving your business forward.

 Okay.

 I’m getting off on a tangent.

 I’m going to focus.

Yeah, I know.

I know Paula.

 Okay.

 so overwhelm, when you’re brand new dealing with it is actually very similar to dealing with it when you, when you’re further down the road and this is, this is what I do now.

 And this is what I would recommend for you guys to try, write down everything you need to do to get from point a to point B point a is where you’re at right now.

 Point B is a milestone you would like to be at.

 So let’s say that when you’re brand brand new, right, you want to get to a semi-okay looking blog with just a few of the most required pages and 20 blog posts, right? Let’s say, that’s your goal.

Write down every single step you’re going to need to take to get there and then schedule it out.

That is what I do.

This is what I do.

And it works.

It works.

If nothing else, you are going to feel really good, unburdening your brain from all that information.

You’re trying to remember and just getting it down on paper or down in a word doc or Google doc, wherever you’re putting it is going to unburden your mind to get it out of your head and on a piece of paper.

So you can focus on the big creative picture and less on these like little tasks you feel like you need to do.

I know that when you were brand new, you don’t quite know what you need to do.

And that’s part of the problem, right? That is part of the problem.

But rest assured you don’t need to, you don’t need to know everything you need to know right at once.

Okay.

So let’s say you’re like, okay, I need to get all the necessary pages up, but which ones are the necessary ones.

Right? But the, these are the sort of questions that come up when you’re a brand new blogger.

And it’s like, one question leads to another question, leads to another question, leads to another question.

At some point you have to stop the line of questioning.

Right.

And be like, okay, I am just going to, I’m just going to do what I know I need to do.

So let’s say, let’s pretend that, you know, you need to have a homepage and a privacy policy and an about me page, which for most blogs should be fine.

Right.

Maybe a contact me page.

I’m pretty sure I took mine down because all I was getting was spam.

All I was getting was spam from my, I, I think I, I got like two, maybe legit people reaching out to me through my contact me page over years and years of blogging.

I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do.

I’m not.

But yeah.

Anyway, that’s a whole nother thing.

So if you don’t.

Yeah, yeah.

To me, it says, all I get is spam too.

Yes.

That’s all I got.

 And I don’t know.

 I feel like people who want to get a hold of me for legitimate reasons, they often my email list and like reply that way.

 They know like it is no secret.

 If you guys look at you guys, look at my page, look, join the bad-ass bloggers Facebook group right here.

 Pretty much on the end of, of any video from here that I turn into a blog post.

 Like this one at the very end, there is a call to action to join my Facebook group.

 Like people who want to get ahold of me because they actually want help.

 So bloggers who actually need help know how to get ahold of me.

Cause they’re actually reading my content.

 I don’t know.

 I don’t know.

 I just got sick of the spam and I think I got rid of my contact me page.

 It’s probably still published.

 I think I just didn’t link to it.

 I don’t actually even remember anyway.

 Yeah.

 At some point you have to pick a point to start and then start on it.

 You can’t do it wrong.

 This, all this stuff has to be done anyway.

 Right? So let’s say you, you let’s say that there’s such thing as doing it out of order.

 Right? And you decided to work on your about me page before you worked on your privacy policy page.

 And somebody said that it was supposed to be the other way around, which I don’t think it matters, but let’s just for the sake of argument.

 Say that in the end, it doesn’t matter.

 They both need to be done.

 Right? You can’t do it wrong.

However, that being said, what I want to offer to you is the sooner you start publishing blog posts the better, because it takes a while for Google to start ranking them, especially when your blog is brand new.

 So it’s kind of like putting the seeds in the ground, right? Nothing will grow in your garden until you put the seeds in the ground and start watering them.

 Right? So it’s like having a blog and, and, and knowing that you’re going to rely mainly on organic traffic to to grow your blog and, you know, get your opt-ins or whatever you’re going to do with that traffic, not writing blog posts.

 When you know that that’s the way you’re going to do things.

 That’s your business plan is like prepping the soil for your garden, weeding it getting all your nice little rows lined up and then planting no seats.

 And then just looking at it and being like, why aren’t there vegetables yet?

Right.

So there are a million ways to do a blog.

There are a million ways to make money with a blog.

Well, maybe not a million, there’s a lot.

And writing blog posts.

Isn’t right.

For everybody, maybe you want to jump straight into coaching.

In which case your, your efforts might be better spent getting in front of people like this, then you can rustle up clients really, really quick without having to spend the time writing blog posts and waiting for them to rank on Google.

Right.

But if organic traffic ranking on Google is how you are going to get people to your stuff and then have them take action from there.

Then you need to be writing blog posts.

You need to be creating content.

And that is that.

Yeah.

So I’d say in the beginning, if that is your plan and you’re at the very, very beginning I would focus on content.

It is mucho important.

Okay.

And if you are a seasoned blogger and you’re feeling super overwhelmed and you don’t know where to start,

Let’s see.

I wanna, I wanna make sure that I’m talking about all the things I told you guys.

I would talk about.

We were just going to talk about how, how to blog when you’re overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.

This happens, right? Even for, even for people who’ve been blogging for years, we will either get to a stage where we’re leveling up and we’re, we’re bringing on a whole bunch of new skillsets and it can feel very, very overwhelming or sometimes we’re just burned out.

Right.

And it, and we’re getting overwhelmed and we don’t know where to start with things or restart if we’ve taken a break and it’s similar, right? Set a goal, set a milestone, brain dump.

Every single thing you need to do to go from point a where you are right now to point B that milestone and do it pro tip time.

Try to make the milestones, especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed, make the milestones small.

So if you are creating your first course, or maybe you’re just creating a course, that is going to be a little different than what you’ve done before.

 And you don’t know where to start.

 You’re feeling really overwhelmed, create small milestones for yourself that are going to walk you towards that goal.

And then

Brain dump everything you need to do to, to get that milestone done.

 So, for example, let’s say that you need to, you’re going to sell an ebook, right? So you could set the milestone for yourself, create ebook and then write down everything you need to do to get that done and then schedule it out.

 That’s a lot.

 And it might add to your overwhelm, that’s a rabbit hole you might not come out of, but let’s say, right.

 Introduction is a milestone for you.

 Just the introduction.

 We’re not worried about anything else.

 Or maybe you want to create the cover page, right? The really pretty cover page that you’re going to splash everywhere, right? Cover page.

 And then from their brains up, every single thing you need to do in order to meet that milestone.

 And in some cases where we are learning, where we’re bringing on skillsets that might include like maybe watching a canvas tutorial or something like that, right?

What are you going to use to create that cover page? How do you want it to look? Maybe you just want to pull like almost done for you cover page.

 Maybe you just want to buy one off of creative market instead of creating it.

 So your, your goal for yourself would be to go to creative market and pick one out, give yourself a time limit because creative market is like a candy store for online content creators.

 Let me tell you what you can spend hours there, if you let your, and then that moment, yeah.

 A really builds on itself.

 So like I tell you guys, when you are writing a blog posts and you, and you just are having trouble getting started, create an outline and then pick the part of your outline that you are most excited to write about.

 And start there.

You do not have to write blog posts in chronological order, right? So you could start in the middle of your blog, post on the place you are most excited to write about, and that momentum will build on itself.

 Has anybody else ever experienced that? So you don’t know where to get started on a project.

 And then finally you just start for some reason.

 And then all of a sudden you’re, you’re in a flow state and you’re like, Oh, this isn’t so hard.

 Why did I put this off for so long? That’s how I felt with the trip wire.

 And okay.

 Usually when I progress, when I am procrastinating doing something, it is because I don’t quite know where to.

 Right.

I don’t know how I’m going to do it.

And like 90% of the time, that’s me.

If I am procrastinating doing something, it’s because in my head, it’s unclear on how I’m going to do it.

And that’s why brain dumping it and then mapping it out and then scheduling when you’re going to do this stuff is so helpful.

It takes that mystery out of it.

Right? It gives you an actionable step.

So if you need, your end goal is create a course.

And you’ve never created a course before, or maybe you’ve switched platforms.

You’ve never created a course in Kajabi before.

Cause you use teachable that the unknowing part of that can hold you back.

Right.

So it’s really important to create these little actionable steps we can take to move forward.

So, Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Lisa says it builds and then I can write fast enough.

Yes, that’s right.

The momentum builds on itself.

It’s kind of like a car.

I don’t know if there’s any stick drivers and who else was raised on crappy cars.

Yeah.

I don’t know if you’ve ever jumped, started a car, but you want to get it moving a little bit first and it’s the same as anything else.

Yeah.

When you’re overwhelmed and you don’t know where to start, it really helps to pick a small milestone that is going to move you forward and then break it down into little tiny acts, actionable shocks.

Can I offer to everybody? I mean, I know I kind of started with this with the whole spring thing, but can I offer to everybody that is okay to take a break? So I I don’t know.

Some people that I really, really look up to insist that even if you don’t feel like showing up for your blog, you need to do it anyway because it’s a business.

It’s not a hobby and that’s true.

That’s true.

To a certain extent.

Sometimes you just gotta do stuff you don’t feel like doing, especially when you have a team relying on you.

Right?

When you’ve, when you’ve actually, when you’ve built out a team, it’s not just you anymore, but also I didn’t create a blog to be that freaking rigid.

Okay.

 If I wanted to have that rigid of a lifestyle where I always had to do things I didn’t want to do, I would have stayed at my corporate nine to five purchasing job.

So last week after my forced day off, I had to force myself to take a day off because I did, I realized when I was attempting to take a day off that I had no idea what to do with myself.

 If I wasn’t working, I was like, Hmm, Cal, maybe misses a good indication that you’ve been working too much.

 And not only that, but I was really enjoying it.

 I was like, Oh wait.

 By the end of the day, I was like, wait, this is amazing.

 I’m outside.

 You know, it’s okay to take a break.

 The thing is that they just need to be intentional breaks.

 So, and here’s, here’s why if your brakes are unintentional, meaning you wake up in the morning and you’re like, Oh, I have so much to do.

 And then all day you’re like, Oh, I’m so much to do.

And you’re just not doing it.

 So you’re actually taking a break because you really need one.

 But the energy you’re in is, Ugh, I have to do this thing and I’m procrastinating it.

 That is way different than I’m going to take today off and come back really restored and just on fire in my business as a way, different energy.

 So you’re still taking the time off, but one is soul set, soul sucking, and totally draining the energy out of you.

 And one is restorative and, and full of self care and nourishment and self love, right? You deserve this day off and, and as a result.

 So this is something I like to tell myself.

 Every minute I take off from my business comes back to me multiples.

The minute I take off from my business comes back to me, multiplied in time in money, in focus, in energy, in creative ideas, right.

 That comes back to me.

 And that’s why the intentional part of it is so important because taking a break that feels like I should be working is not a break at all.

 There is no restorative power in that.

Okay,

Paula? I said, drove a stick again this weekend just to make sure I still care.

 That’s awesome.

 Yep.

Lisa says my business part-time so I have to show up with the time limits and when I can, and I hear you, I, 100% hear you, but even if your business is part-time, it’s part-time for a reason because you’re busy doing a million other things I know you are.

And even if your business is part-time, you still deserve a break from it every once in a while.

And chances are that break.

We’ll come back to you multiplied again in efficiency, in focus, in energy, in creative ideas, in money-making ideas, in making money in general it’s Oh, okay.

Something I heard faith, Mariah say a long time ago, that made a lot of sense to me.

She had the same problem.

She was not letting herself take a break.

And she sat down with herself and she was like self.

If you truly believe in your inevitable success, if you really believed it, you would be okay with letting yourself take a day off.

Because if your success is inevitable, no matter what you do, inevitable, inevitable means it’s going to happen.

It is ordained.

Then you would not have a problem with taking a break.

I was like, girl, that’s some real self-talk right there.

I’ve always thought about that.

She’s so smart.

Yeah.

Paula says mental health days are a thing and I take them regularly, too many SEOs or CEOs.

I got asked to go on the brain.

Don’t have hobbies.

There’s something really wrong with that.

And if you look at the world’s top SEOs, sorry, CEOs, if you look at the, really the people we consider to be brilliant business people, they take health days.

They have hobbies.

They take time to nourish their mind, body and spirit, right? So they, they often read.

So they’re like nourishing their mind.

They’ll, they’ll read something, whether it’s related to what they do or not frequently, they often take time for their spirit.

So that’s meditation, prayer, whatever it is.

And these are like daily practices for them.

And they take care of their body.

They’re moving every day, common threads.

And I think that’s what it takes to be a high performer.

Anybody can make themselves overly busy and schedule the crap out of themselves and work all day, every day until they burn out.

 And that’s something we glorify here in the U S we glorify it like, Oh, I’m so busy.

 I’m a workaholic.

 Right.

 We say, it’s kind of like a humble brag.

Do you guys remember at the beginning of this year? I, well, I, I identified that I have this problem with time, right? That no matter how much time I have, I’m always stressed about time and I’m always telling myself I don’t have enough time.

 And I really made a sincere effort.

 And it’s a continual sincere effort to change, to flip that script.

 And the narrative in my head, I have plenty of time.

 Every that’s where that mantra came from.

 Every minute I take off from my business comes back to me multiplied.

 That’s where that came from.

 And I don’t know if you guys remember at the beginning of year, I, I like announced to the group.

 I was like, I’m going to take every weekend off just so you guys know.

 Cause I didn’t want people to think I was ignoring them if they drop something in the group.

And I kind of felt like if I told people I would actually do it well, that lasted, I don’t know, a couple of weekends maybe.

 And what I decided was that again, I was inter I was offering into my life another set of rigid rules.

 Right.

 You have to take every weekend off.

 So w you know, what I, what I landed on was you don’t have to take every weekend off.

 Cause sometimes, you know, I have a day job.

 I have a family, I have house to take care of a yard to, to attend to you know, I have a million things to do too.

 And sometimes the weekends are my best uninterrupted, quiet time to really get some like big breakthroughs in my blog.

 I get that.

 Right.

 So I feel like we get into these, these black and white rigid worlds of like, some people will shame you for not working on the weekends.

And some people will shame you for working on the weekends.

 How about we just don’t shame anybody and we let everybody like, just make sure they’re taking care of themselves.

 And that’s what, that’s the conclusion I came to for myself as well is so I didn’t really like the rigidness of having to take every weekend off again.

 I just don’t like rigidness in general, I’m a Taurus.

 What can I say? And so, you know, I told myself, you’re just going to take the time off when you need to.

Then I want to offer that to you guys as well.

Yeah.

And I talked about burnout on my show recently.

It’s not something you have to experience it simply isn’t, but we’re indoctrinated to believe otherwise.

Yes.

And I’ve gotten pretty good at recognizing the symptoms of burnout as a entrepreneur, but it still sneaks up on me sometimes.

And I think the difference is the difference as you go on is how you handle it.

So in the beginning, when you’re a new blogger, at least this was my experience.

Burnout was filled with a lot of shame and panic and panic, like shame that I wasn’t working on my blog that I had like totally, I left my, my cushy corporate job to do this thing.

And I’m not even doing it.

And man, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just do this thing? And then also panic, Oh my God, this is never going to work for me.

Right.

And Oh my God, I lost my blogging mojo.

It’s never going to come back.

Which isn’t true.

The blogging mojo always comes back.

No Pauline says birthdays are coming up for us.

Yeah, they are.

So we to see you, if I was a dog, my tail would be wagging right now.

Our birthdays are coming up Paulette.

That’s right.

I’m going to be 21.

You’re going to be 21 too.

Right? Okay.

Friends.

I hope that helps.

I know that was like really tangent filled, but I wanted to offer you guys the actual really practical thing I do when I feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.

And that is the brain dump and the scheduling that helps me a lot.

Even just the brain dump.

Even if you guys don’t do the scheduling part, even just the brain dump, just getting it out of your head.

And then also I would offer to you criticize your brain dump.

So a lot of the times when I’m like mid launch and I have it in my head that I need to do a million things and I’m getting super stressed out and then I brain dump it.

I will go through and I will slash that list.

 Cause a lot of the stuff that ends up being on that list is stuff my brain made up for me to do that doesn’t really need to be done.

 It’s not really going to move the needle forward.

 It’s just some silly little thing that I decided needed to be done somehow in a moment of anxiety ridden non-conscious thought process.

 Right?

So yeah.

 So that’s the practical side of it, right? And then the that’s like the practical action side of it.

 And then as far as like the, the mindset side of it goes, just know that you can’t do it wrong.

Right?

You can’t do it wrong.

 You got this, trust your intuition, take a break.

 When you need to really honor yourself because you are, you’re a, bad-ass doing, you built an online business, right? Even if you are at the very, very, very beginning stages of your blog and you just registered your domain name, you’ve registered a domain name.

 How many people do you know that can say that outside of this group, this group doesn’t count because, because we have, we have a unique group of domain hoarders here, but you know, in your daily life, how many people have done that? How many people wanting to start a business, have an idea for a business and actually took steps to do it.

 I can throw a rock and hit 10 people that want to start a business that have an idea for a business.

 But it’s a lot harder to find people that are actually taking steps towards that.

 You guys are doing something extraordinary and you should give yourself extraordinary credit for that.

Annie says,

I’ve started brain dumping every morning.

 Part of my daily routine.

 That’s awesome, Annie.

 Yes.

 I love it.

 Yes.

 And Annie is another great person to talk to if you were feeling overwhelmed because like Annie says, I love Annie’s outlook on launching.

 She’s like, it’s not really a launch until you’ve, you’ve messed at least four things up or something like that.

 Right.

 And it’s sort of just like, we don’t have to take this so seriously.

 Right.

 We can laugh at ourselves.

 It’s okay.

 It’s okay.

World’s not going to end because you sent out an email with a broken link.

Right.

We’re all going to be okay.

All right friends.

Oh yeah.

I’m assuming that’s Annie.

Somebody said, Aw, I miss this.

Who said that? I can’t see it yet.

I see it pop up on my on my be live comment role.

And all it says is Facebook user.

And then like a full, like 60 seconds later, it feels like I see it pop up on my phone, which is how I see, like who’s saying what? And some sort of privacy law or something.

I don’t

Know how these things work.

Crystal said that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

It’s okay.

It’s okay.

 You can catch the replay.

It was just me being me really? I didn’t miss anything you don’t see on a daily basis, Crystal.

Okay.

Friends.

I’m going to go enjoy this.

I don’t know.

Oh man.

Look at that sunshine.

Yeah.

Ignore my gross yard.

I have got, I’ve got like it’s spring.

 Okay.

It’s project time.

I’ve got like electrical cords running everywhere.

I have like tote bins full of pool supplies everywhere.

It’s not in the pretty stage right now.

Oh, thanks Paulette!

Okay, friends!

 I hope you have a great Tuesday.

 I’m going to go get out in that soon.

 You’re welcome, Amanda.

 Thank you for always asking awesome questions.

 I am going to leave myself a post-it note.

 Otherwise it won’t happen.

 See, this is what I’m talking about.

 I need to switch to Trello to put a post in the group with some resources for you to go to for SEO.

 I’ve done some resources authored by me for blog, post SEO, but then there’s, there’s a lot of other great resources for SEO as well.

 And then I’ve also done a few on sourcing relevant media media.

Okay.

 so I’m going to call it a Roundup post round up post in group.

And that goes over my sticky note that I now can take down that says how to create Facebook event, which I wrote to remind myself to show you guys how to do that this morning.

 So I won’t forget my full proof system.

 All right, friends.

 I love you.

 I hope you all have a great Tuesday.

 You have a great week.

 Reach out to me in the group.

 If you need anything at all, I’m here for you.

 Remember that? You’re a bad-ass and you’re doing something extraordinary.

 Okay … bye!