271 | Organizing Your Blog for Long-Term Growth

You know the saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? Well, you know, we need to follow that up with, if it's broke, fix it. It's okay , we're talking about long-term growth and you cannot have long-term growth without being organized. That may sound like a bold statement, but I'm willing to stand behind it 100%.

And you know, inside shift our membership program, I am really able to dig into the behind the scenes and structure of our members' businesses. And one thing that I have helped several members with over the years is figuring out a system that works for them. Just as you can grow your business differently from others, you can also organize your business differently from others.

So if you are 100 percent all in on blog page views and an email list and have nothing to do with social media versus somebody that is going crazy on social media and currently has minimal page views and both of you are super successful. Amazing. Same thing comes to organization. The key is that you have to get organized and you have to be organized on digital.

I'm going to say it and I'm probably going to make somebody upset. But friends, if you are listening to this episode, that means you are in this for long term growth. You don't want to just have your business for a year or for two years even, and then say, peace out. I'm tired of doing all that hard work.

I don't want to do it anymore. I'm done. No, no, no. We're growing businesses that are going to last because of that. We need to get organized digitally guys. I love my paper planner. I've literally got it right here. This is number six of my golden coil. I order a new one every single year and I love it. I'm a paper girly, but I cannot run a successful business on paper because I now have team members and they would hate me.

Like if I had to send my VA, here's a picture of my planner and what I'm thinking, she would hate my guts versus if I'm organized in a digital way that she can see and that we can communicate together and I can see what she's doing. She can see what I'm doing and we can work together. That is what you have to have.

So I'm going to walk you through real quick what I'm doing for digital organization and maybe that'll inspire you. Um, I know that I'm not the only one that sometimes has to shake it up. I literally just did because what I was using from personally myself on digital was not inspiring me. And that is a reason enough.

If you need to change things up because it's not inspiring you and you hate using it, change it. It's fine. It's totally fine. What I will say is don't spend a shit ton of time on it. Don't spend days and weeks. Don't let it take over your life, playing with all these tools and not doing the other things in your business.

Now, does it take a little bit of time to get things set up? Yes, but don't let it take over your life. So quickly. I am using three different tools. It sounds a little crazy. I was only using two and I just introduced a third one and I'll tell you why in a minute. So first one that I'm using with my team is Asana.

I use this for communication with my assistant. We have a project manager project within Asana that houses Just a lot of like storage things if we have future ideas that I can't get to right now. I'll dump things in there I've got something started in there for my bio and headshot if I need to send it to somebody because I'm guest Speaking somewhere.

I'll put it in there I also have our editorial for our podcast and blog housed within Asana because it's super easy to communicate with a team in there. And I've got two different people helping me. Our podcast manager, Haley, Hey girl. And my virtual assistant, Ashley, hello, um, are both in there and checking things off, asking me questions, clarifying things, and that's how we all communicate.

Now the second one that I'm using is Airtable. I use this for forms. instead of Google forms. I just like it a lot better. It's so much easier in my opinion to see everything and to make things work and to organize things. And then just first general spreadsheet organization. So if you head to our shop, you'll see a digital partnership bundle in there.

That's got a couple different things. And one of them is a, Database that we've created in air table for working with brands that makes it so easy for you to just sort things. We've done all the work for you. It'll automatically sort based on if you need to follow up, if you need to pitch, if you need to do the work, if it's under contract, love it.

Um, we also use this for our memberships. If you're inside of shift or PBS, you know that we use this to collect information from you, collect data for your work reviews and get you feedback. The third one that's coming to play for me. is Notion. Notion is a beast. It's, it's kind of like a blank slate and it's why I avoided it for so long, but I am now loving it and I am really using it as my play space for creativity.

I'm using it a bit more than my paper planner right now. It's just how my life is working right now. And I've also, I'm not using it for my team except for one thing that I'm just now creating. That's the thing with with Notion is it takes a long time to build things out. But if that's what works for you, it's what's energizing me right now.

I'm going into my creative CEO era. And so I am also have built out a template for storyboards that I can use in real time with my team because my team is All over the place, like I've got an Instagram coach in Chile and I've got my assistant in Canada And then I've got my podcast manager in Tennessee like my team is we're global And so I wanted a place to be able to storyboard with my team Digitally and so I made that in notion because I didn't want to pay for another tool and I'm currently using the free notion plan I'm not paying for a sauna air table or notion y'all so it may sound like a lot You And it kind of is, but it's also really working for me right now.

Notion is new, but that's because I had my CEO board in Asana and it just wasn't working for me anymore. It may work for me again in the past, but I'm going into that creative era. And so I wanted to lean into it and I played around with it and had a lot of fun. So it's inspiring me right now. Things were broke.

And so I fixed it. So like I said, if it's broke, fix it, don't spend a lot of time on it, but get yourself organized for long term growth. We are having conversations about long term growth all the time inside of Shift. It's our high level, personalized, tailored to you coaching program, and I would love to talk to you one on one about this program.

I've just opened my calendars. I never get on calls. Ask anybody that knows me personally. I am not a cals gal. But! I'm really wanting to talk with more of you guys one on one and I feel like it's something that's really important to me right now. So I'm leaning into it again, like lean into what feels good and this feels good.

So head to thrive together. blogslash shift, fill out the form and I'll shoot you an email personally so we can jump on a call or you can just DM me over on Instagram and tell me you want to learn more about shift. And I will also personally shoot you a message over there so we can chat. All right. See you guys back here in a couple of days.