PP 128: Curating Community and Content with Jen Monks

Website: https://lifewiselady.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.monks.98
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lifewiselady?lang=en
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/lifewiselady/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lifewiselady/

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host Kim Sutton and today I am thrilled to have Jen Monks, founder of Life Wise Lady and a business blogger here with us.

Kim Sutton: Welcome Jen.

Jen Monks: Hi, Kim, how are you?

Kim Sutton: Oh, I am just thrilled that you are here and listeners I need to tell you how we met and I’ve already told Jen how tickled I was but she included me in her blog article, 15 Motivational Podcasts for Women Who Love Business. And if you have not yet made a compilation article for your blog, I strongly encourage you to do it. And I’m going to ask Jen to share more.

Kim Sutton: But first, welcome again, Jen. Thank you so much for being here. Would you mind sharing about yourself with the audience?

Jen Monks: Well, my name is Jen Monks. I am a business blogger for women. I started my blog in 2016, and I started it because I couldn’t find a community for women my age, which is the age of over 40. I couldn’t find much of a community to help me start a new business.

Jen Monks: So I have a business degree and I’ve been an entrepreneur for years, but I stopped my businesses when I had children and I was in my mid to late 30s when I had them sSo I just came back into what I would call employable state because I had two tiny kids. And when I did try to come back, I just really wanted a community to support me and say, “Hey, you can do this, and this is how you do it.”

Jen Monks: And I couldn’t find that. So I thought, okay, I love to write, and I want to use my business experience. Maybe I will check out blogging. So I took an advanced blogging course just to see if it was doable. And it was.

I wrote a business plan and I started my social media accounts, and it really has gone very well. And I’m very pleased with my site. It’s called LifeWiseLady.com. And I have about a dozen articles out now. And it has been just one of the best experiences of my life.

Kim Sutton: Hold up, because I’ve been on your site, you said a dozen articles.

Jen Monks: Yeah, over that maybe.

Kim Sutton: Okay. And we were just talking pre-show… Your article… You already shared with me the share count, but the article that you… that you mentioned me in it had how many shares?

Jen Monks: At this point it’s almost 1200.

Kim Sutton: And you have another article that’s had about 2000. So listeners, it doesn’t matter how new or how old you are to blogging, but it is possible even if you only have a few articles on your site. Now I am curious, Jen, what was the course that you took?

Jen Monks: It’s Brandon Gaille’s Blog Millionaire. And it was a pretty… I was completely a novice, so it was a pretty thorough course. And it was very scary at first because I didn’t understand any of the terms but it was… I would recommend the course. I really would.

Jen Monks: And he is not an affiliate of mine, so I’m telling you this straight up. I think the course is really brilliant. And he has a Facebook group that is very helpful.

Kim Sutton: Oh, it’s fantastic. I must… wait. No, no, I follow his page. Scratch that.

He has. His podcast is awesome.

Jen Monks: Really?

Kim Sutton: Yeah, I gained so much insight. I actually started at the beginning of his podcast, which is what I typically do when I’m listening to a new podcast, I’ll go back to the beginning. And he filled me with so much insight that I actually shared in one of my Facebook groups about his podcast. And then I continued listening and he said, you know, if you share my podcast, I’ll give you a mention on my page. I was like, Whoa, well, I’ve already done that. So when you know he, he did, he shared one of my articles and I couldn’t believe just how much the traffic searched for a few days?

Jen Monks: Well, that’s how I got over 2000 shares on the one post that I mentioned his course. And then I told him that I had mentioned it in a Facebook group. And he shared it with nearly 100,000 followers.

Kim Sutton: Yeah, that is so tremendous. Let me tell you though, we will include the link in the show notes. And Jen, if you if you if there is an affiliate program, we’ll put your link in there. So full disclosure listeners, there are affiliate links.

Jen Monks: I’m not affiliated with anyone right now, but I might be in the future.

Kim Sutton: So… So what are the some of the biggest lessons that you’ve learned about blogging so far?

Jen Monks: You have to hook up with other bloggers that are in your niche and you have to comment and become friendly with them. And really be in a community and that way you can share your audience with each other. Because there’s room enough.

Jen Monks: You know that it’s not like you have to be competitive and say no, no, I don’t want I don’t want that person’s, you know that person to steal my audience. There’s enough to go around.

Jen Monks: So the greatest thing about bloggers is they’re usually really willing to help you out and, and tell you, “Hey, this is great. This is what you did. That was great. And this is what you did. That wasn’t great.” And you can share and comment on on their blog posts, and in Facebook communities, and it’s really quite wonderful.

Kim Sutton: Do you believe that there is such thing as competition?

Jen Monks: I have really mixed feelings about that. I understand that there’s there’s competition and I am a very competitive person. I always want to come out on top but that doesn’t mean that I have to step on other people to do it. I think that’s the main problem that I have with competition is there are so many people out there who think they have to squash the competition, rather than just be their best. And that makes me very sad. But it’s true.

Jen Monks: I mean, we’ve all seen it. We’ve all seen how companies really get on national TV and try and destroy each other and say how horrible the other product is. I don’t think that that’s what I would want to do. And that’s not really my approach and I don’t think it’s necessary

Kim Sutton: When it comes to individual entrepreneurs such as you and I do you think that that competition has anything to do with inner struggles?

Jen Monks: Hmm.

Kim Sutton: And I’m not saying that you’re struggling Personally, I am competitive but it is with myself like I am constantly telling challenging myself every day to be a little bit more productive than I was the day before. Or this might sound silly, drink more water than I did yesterday because I don’t drink enough. So it’s those I gamify my business to the point that I compete with myself and my prior performance.

Jen Monks: Well, I think that’s great. And that’s healthy, that that’s the healthy kind of competition you want, even if you have friendly competition with another podcaster or another blogger, and you say, Oh, yeah, well, I’m going to try and get to this many followers or this many listeners this month, and you have some sort of friendly competition going on. That’s very, very good for your productivity, and very good for your numbers, but it’s at least it’s not destructive, and you’re not trying to hurt each other.

Jen Monks: So I think if you’re competing and saying, okay, I want to double my followers and double my listeners in two months. That’s healthy. If you’re saying I’m going to take all the competitions readers, or listeners that’s unhealthy.

Kim Sutton: Oh, absolutely. I completely agree.

Jen Monks: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s just a matter of I want to be able to sleep, But not… and I don’t want to hurt anybody and I don’t want to take from them. I just want… I just want my business to grow to where I think, you know, I can have a good life without being driven crazy, you know?

Kim Sutton: Yes. I love that. And I was and I’ve already told you how much I love it. I love your about page which you’ve actually titled, read my story. Can you share more about your story with the listeners?

(Transcription still being cleaned up. Thank you for checking it out!)

Jen Monks: Well, yes, I have, um, as an adult, I have had a major injury where I was taking a mirror off of a wall, and it it broke and I won’t go into the gory details, but it did cut everything. And I had, I have permanent nerve damage, and it was to my left hand, I’m left handed landed on my wrist. So I had to relearn how to To use my hand, my dominant hand, by the way, not fun, but it did teach me very much that anything is possible and that I can overcome anything. I also suffered from major depression in my late 20s, all stemming from an illness that I had, and like I said before, I was extremely competitive type A, trying to get everything done at the same time, and then I got seriously ill, and it wiped me out. And I fell into a very deep depression. And it was not pretty and it was not fun. But again, I got through it with the support of my friends and family. They were so helpful, and I managed to crawl out of that hole. And now I am determined to never ever go that dark. Again, it was, it was a very, very destructive thing to do to myself, in part now, part of it external things that happen but part of it is internal and how I handle stress how I keep myself from overwhelming myself with things that aren’t as important as I once thought they were. I don’t have to be perfect, and I don’t have to

achieve everything all at once.

It’s so beautiful.

You learn the hard way.

Sometimes in life, it takes that much junk to learn some really valuable lessons and I didn’t enjoy going through any of those things. But I tell you, they teach you some really great lessons for the rest of your life.

So I have with where your life is at right now. If you were given them beam. I don’t know where I came up with magic beam. Okay, you could go back and change the course. Would you change it? Or would you leave it the same?

It’s sort of the butterfly effect. If you if you mess with it, you wouldn’t be where you are. Well, I don’t think I would mess with it just because I love the way things are. Now I have two beautiful children. I have a lovely home, I have the best husband in the world. And I don’t want to mess with that. But if I could take a couple of things out of my life that were horrible, and have them have things be the same as today, who That’s tough. That’s a tough one. Everything teaches you a lesson all these bad experiences in life, and we all have them. But they teach you a lesson. So that is so tough. Do I Do I erase these bad memories and erase the lessons? I don’t think so.

I can relate completely. I mean, there’s, there’s parts that I wish I could take out. And at the risk of him or his new wife less thing, I mean, I don’t know that I would marry my ex again, except for the fact that I have two beautiful children, none of that relationship. And also, I wouldn’t have moved to Ohio and met my husband now if it hadn’t been for that. So I can’t remove him and know that I would still be here.

Well, right. You have two beautiful children that wouldn’t be here.

Right? And just how everything lined up, I wouldn’t have met. I’m going to challenge you on the most awesome husband. Because that’s how I feel but

yeah, it’s uh,

yeah, it’s very interesting thought.

So along with you were doing construction if memory serves me, right.

I’ve done I’ve done so many things. I’ve been a personal trainer, I had my own personal training business. I have been a Mary Kay consultant, and I’ve had my own remodel and construction. company so those that’s a pretty eclectic mix and they basically taught me all sorts of things. Each business was vastly different from the others. And the the construction business that’s when that’s when I hurt that my injury

and you were doing Mary Kay at the same time that you were doing construction, weren’t you?

Yes on the weekends and evenings I you know, I was I was getting pretty grumpy and dirty during the days and I you know, I wanted to not only make a little money but keep in contact with my more feminine side and you know, wear makeup and dress up at least on the weekend sometimes. Because I was I was getting covered in in sawdust and drywall dust during a lot of the week putting installing tile and in framing and doing all sorts of things like that. So it was vastly different from the Mary Kay experience, and I loved both of them. Really.

And I can’t lie. I mean, I got into interior architecture because I loved how my, my grandfather actually he did a lot of construction and I love that dirty side even though interior architecture was totally not dirty. As far as when I was doing now I can completely relate. What were some of the lessons that you were looking to learn when you started your community and when you started your business that prompted you starting starting your blog

lessons, um, I wanted

women to help women more, and I wanted to community where, you know, we’re still only making 78 cents on the dollar to a man and we’re, we’re still struggling in a lot of ways. And I thought, well, we’ve got the power of the purse, really, I mean, women, especially over 40 we control a huge chunk of the spending. In each household, so why don’t we support each other building businesses. And that just it struck me as so important

that I just wanted to pursue it.

Something that’s inspired me since I started my very first business and that was almost, I guess it was 12 years ago was that Martha Stewart did not start her catering business until she was 38. Now, in full disclosure, I just turned 38 this year, when I have always used her as a little bit of inspiration, you know, I, I don’t know that I’m going to be as big as she is someday. I don’t know that I want to be that big. I like my privacy. And I don’t know that I’d want to leave my house and have paparazzi following me. Right.

Exactly. I can relate. I don’t know that I want to have people shuffling through my garbage.

No, absolutely not. I mean, someday when we get to build our dream house, we’re planning on having a fence around it, and it will be in the middle of nowhere in Ohio where, you know, it will take a while for anybody to find. And, you know, maybe we’ll be in the middle of cornfields, too. But what does your vision of success look like?

I would love to eventually have some sort of online course to help women start their businesses and thrive in them. I would also like to write a book. And I want to have to build more of a community just because I think that in this day and age, we’re almost so separate because of the internet and cell phones and we’re supposed to be on social media and it’s not sometimes it’s not very social. Sometimes it’s very lonely. And it’s very important to stay connected and be supportive of each other.

What are your favorite platforms for social media when you are on?

You know, I started on Twitter and I really love it. Because it’s interactive. You can you’re virtually having a conversation with somebody. But my niche is on Pinterest and Facebook, and LinkedIn. So I really have to focus more on those three, even though I started out on Twitter, and I’m doing really well on it. I have I think 12,000 followers on on Twitter, I don’t have nearly as many on the other social media platforms. But Facebook is nice, because you get to, you know, you get to see pictures of people and whether it’s personal or business. It’s a little bit it’s more personal. Now Pinterest is is basically just a pinboard and so there’s not much social about it. But I do like it for for bloggers. It’s great.

I have to agree. We were talking a little bit pre show about the fakeness. I guess that’s the best word I can come up with right now that some business owners are putting out there when they’re talking about their businesses and their success. How do you encourage any of your community members to share their stories with the world?

Well, if you go to my website and you read my About Me page, you’ll know that by the end it’s it’s not a short one, but by the end you’ll know me warts and all you’ll know the good things you’ll know the bad things. And I wish more people would do that because when when you see really glossy images online, I think we all know deep down the person isn’t that perfect, either. Even if they do make millions of dollars a year, they’ve made some mistakes. And I would love to see more people, especially super successful people talk about their mistakes, rather than saying, I can make you a millionaire in two years or six months, or, you know, 10 days, or whatever it is, I would like to hear them talk about their mistakes more. Because I think people can relate to that. And then it encourages them to keep going because you know, you fall down a lot in business. And you have to pick yourself up every time or quit. Those are your choices. And a lot of people do quit because they see all of these perfect people online and it’s very distressing to see that if you if you follow people on any of the social media platforms and you see how great they are and how many followers they have, and and you’re just struggling that’s pretty hard to to move forward and you think I’m just going to quit I can’t keep up I can’t compete with these people that to me it’s just very sad it’s you’re not seeing their their failures from two years ago you’re seeing their their so called overnight success which probably wasn’t overnight anyway.

They probably do. Yeah, no, definitely not.

And a lot of the people who do share their stories also talk about the know like and trust factor. And I would have to think, or, and I know this from personal experience, that the people who don’t share their stories don’t tend to have the trust factor from me. And I’m more likely to go and listen to and subscribe to and purchase from the people who do share those vulnerabilities and the the weak spots and the the really the hardships that they’ve gone through. I mean even Brendon Burchard has talked about How he had his whole bed covered with bills and his I think it was his now wife, very carefully crawled in underneath the covers, so not disturb anything. You know, but it was all of his bills and it was such a way in there. She was sleeping under it and he knew he had to make changes because he just couldn’t keep on living like that. And that was sort of like a while. To me, like while you’re real.

Yeah, I’ve been there too. I mean, that’s that’s part of my story, as well as being $40,000 in debt. And being shocked by by that I didn’t know that my, my ex didn’t even know how much debt he was in and he didn’t tell me until I found out six months after we were married. And I I was opening what I thought was my credit card bill and it was his credit card bill and we had kept separate accounts. And all of a sudden, I realized he was several thousand in debt. And then I looked at the rest of his accounts, and it added up to $40,000. He didn’t know it was anywhere near that, because he was paying the minimum. And it was so difficult that period of time and I, you know, like I said, type A, I pay my bills on time, I make sure I don’t overspend. I’m very precise on that. And to have that happen to me was like a ton of bricks falling on me. And it was painful. But, you know, it’s another one of those painful experiences that I don’t want to repeat. And I’m not sure if I would erase it from my history or not. It was very painful for a couple years trying to pay all that off, but but we did it and it it taught me another lesson.

I’m sure it felt like and I’m just trying to remember then the name of the company. What was it one 800 credit report. Do you remember the commercial where the guy gets married and he didn’t realize the debt that the, his wife had, and now they’re living in his parents basement while they try to.

I almost cried when I saw that commercial.

It hit a little too close to home.

I was like, Oh, no, somebody read my story.

So, you’re, you’re building your business now. And but you have the type A personality and you’re, you know, you’re really dedicated to paying your bills, oftentimes, but I do know, you know, you’re married. Is there another source of income coming in?

I’m

sorry, I know. That’s a really personal question. No, no,

right now, right now I’m working on the monetization of my blog. And that’s a very, very tough thing to do. But it’s it is completely doable. I I think People need to really consider this now. Let me just say, I don’t know if I was very clear this the whole debt thing happened with my first husband. And that was when I was 24. Right? So, years later, you know, I’ve accumulated enough savings and I got remarried. And my husband has a stable job, and we had kids and we, you know, like I said, I’m pretty planned out. We wanted to make sure that we had enough so that I could stay home for a couple of years. And now that my kids are back in school. I want to start, you know, building an income again, but right now, we saved up and had a plan to where we could rely on his income for a while and a lot of people don’t have that. But I think it’s so important for people to understand when you’re starting a business, you better have the support of your partner, and you better be able to go for a while without much income. And I really think that’s where the business plan comes in, you have to, or you’re just making your life a chaotic mess. And you could end up losing that partnership with with a person you love.

In full disclosure, when I had my first company back in 2005, it was a online craft retailer, and I made all the worst mistakes possible, including purchasing a ton of inventory on credit cards. So I do have to confess I put my acts through that, you know, but I learned many valuable lessons of my own. Including that credit card shouldn’t be used that way. I mean, I had no guarantee that that inventory was going to sell and I I’m embarrassed I don’t even want to know how much there was. I mean, there was, it was more than 40 though, I can tell you that much.

Well, you know, that’s the thing that most people most people think that I love this business I this is the business I was destined to do. It’s, it’s, it’s something that is my passion. Just because something is your passion doesn’t mean it’s going to make you money. And it doesn’t mean it’s going to make you money right away for sure. So that’s, that’s where I really emphasize having some sort of plan and getting your partner on board. Because there’s so many instances that I hear of where the partner is really mad and in six months because you’re you’re not you’re still not making it you know, you’re still not making a livable income and six months is nothing most people aren’t making much for several years. So you know, just be patient and also have a plan. Maybe you have to do something as a side hustle for a while because it’s really hard on the other person. To be the sole support, financially,

financially and timewise. I mean, I know my husband gets so much weight from the house. While I’m trying to build,

I would completely agree you have to, you have to not only have the support from them financially, and a plan, you have to also do be up whatever tasks are around that you have to do, whether it’s child rearing, or just taking care of the house, house maintenance, house cleaning, boy, you really have to make sure that everything’s clear you’re taking care of this and I’m taking care of that.

If your business started producing the income that you wanted today, plus, what would be the first expenditure that you would make Hmm,

you know, I am really big on making life easier. I would want If I could just wave a magic wand and I had plenty of money, I would love for somebody to come in and clean my house, and just clean up after my kids do my laundry for a couple hours a day, and, and leave would be the perfect thing for me. If I could have anything in the world, that would be great. And I think a lot of people would say the same thing. If they could just get these tasks out of their way they could, they could enjoy life a little more, and they wouldn’t have to take time away from their kids or their spouse because they’re busy doing laundry, or catching up on some sort of Home Repair, or just trying to finish something up in their work that they just didn’t have time to do. So that would be my personal wish list.

Oh my goodness. I was actually working on today’s blog article right before we hopped on this call and I and I was chatting or writing, chatting. I don’t know. I don’t know why I call it chatting in a blog. But I think you get the point about how I would love Mary Poppins or my fairy godmother to come in and wave their wand. And for all the dishes to be done and the laundry to be done,

won’t be great.

Oh my gosh, it would be so perfect because

you need much just maybe an hour or two every day just somebody coming in tidying up and doing these little things of laundry and dishes and maybe maybe run an errand or two and then boy, wouldn’t that make life fun?

Oh, grocery store. I mean, I’ve tried to do the online ordering before However, they are always booked out. Like two days as far as pickup. And that never works because I never think to order online my groceries until the day that I need them.

Exactly.

So waiting two days to pick it up. I’m like, No, I might as well just go and do the whole trip quick.

Yeah, and taking kids with you to the grocery store. That’s, oh, heck no, that’s you might as well just throw money away because they want everything you want it Everything and then you can’t do it very productively So,

and mine are still young enough that they are reaching out to the cart and pulling stuff in. Yeah, they are getting out of the cart and making me play tag. And when there’s three of them playing tag, oh, it’s havoc. What are some of the tools that are helping you with your business right now? What are your favorites?

Okay, well, I think for productivity, I’m using a new one called forest. And it’s just you can get this on your phone for a couple bucks, or I use the Chrome extension and it’s free. And basically, I know this is gonna sound really funny and really silly. But if if you turn this forest app on, it’s it’s a 25 minute timer, and you’re supposed to just stay on whatever task you’re on for 25 minutes, and then and at the beach. Getting at plants, this virtual seed. It’s a little tiny baby tree. And then if you make it all the way through, the app pops up and says, congratulations, your tree has grown. And it sounds really silly but you don’t want your tree to wither and die if you if you leave what you’re doing, it’ll wither and die it in so it psychologically keeps you on task. So I love that that one. I’ve been using that for a couple weeks now and it’s really cute, and it’s free.

I love that. And funnily enough, my distractions are called squirrels. I call them squirrels. So that’s perfect. I’m going to need to get that you said.

Right. Yeah, it’s forest. And I think it’s the Pomodoro Technique. That’s you work for 25 minutes and then you take a five minute break. So I’ll grow a tree. And then I’ll go you know, I’ll I’ll go do whatever, some sort of non work related task for five minutes I’ll either do you know push ups. sit ups or go do laundry or you know, whatever, because I work from home. I suppose if you work in an office, you’d have to figure out something else to do just to just so you get a break from whatever you’re doing. And then you can hit the app again and you see, see if you can grow a forest. So then, hence the name. I also use cold turkey which blocks you out of any site that you you don’t want to be distracted with. Social media is one email that you know how when you pop over to email and you think I’m just going to answer so and so’s email. It never works that way. You You just you’re trying to clean out your email box, you’re going to answer a few more than you look up and that five or 10 minutes that you’re supposed to spend on one email is 45 minutes. So cold turkey won’t allow you you can set the timer or you can set times or scheduled times. It won’t allow you to get into whatever site that you say like Facebook or or Pinterest. Post or email. So I love that because it just keeps the temptation away. I just can’t do it.

Wow, you know what takes an amazingly long time for me and I don’t understand why is writing captions for Instagram posts when I’m using later

I think something’s just take a long lot longer than I think they should. But I think putting a timer on something for a few days in a row is really good and then you know how long that task takes and then you can’t you don’t really get mad at yourself so much where you go. Why is this taking so long? it you know how long it takes after you’ve timed it three or four times. You okay, well, it takes 30 minutes to do these captions. So that’s what it takes. That’s what I have to schedule out.

I’m also

using work from and if you are somebody who isn’t chained to your desk, Get or hourly or something where you have to stay at work if your work at home, or if you’re allowed to leave and go be productive somewhere else, work from a website that will tell you places around you that are perfect for Wi Fi. Or it will tell you how what’s the experience like at a library or a coffee shop or someplace like that, that you can go and actually be productive. Other than your house, like sometimes I just want to get out of the house, but I think I’ve got some work to do. So I go to this to work from calm, and it’ll tell me the places around me that are rated by other users like Oh, go here, go to this coffee shop, go to this library go to this conference area. And this is this has excellent Wi Fi this has this place has good coffee this this place has low noise. So that’s another one that I use.

That’s awesome listeners, just in case you’re wondering, you can find all these great links and also, all the links back to Jen’s website at KIM SUTTON comm forward slash PP, one to eight.

I’m also experimenting with seemd mornings, because I find that I am a little more productive in the mornings. But I’m sort of scattered because I have so many things on my to do list every day. So I’ll schedule out themed, like, say Monday is I work on my email opt ins, Monday morning, then I write Tuesday morning, and then I’ll work on social media Wednesday morning. That way I get all these things done, but I don’t keep having the constant interruptions. Whereas if I put all those tasks every day, then I’m not getting much done. So that really worked for me too.

How many articles are you trying to write a week right now or are I’m trying to eliminate the word try from my vocabulary.

Well, I am.

I think the average now is somewhere around a week. But I’m trying to pump out some really good articles with a lot of resources for people for business people. I’m not just trying to give you my opinion, which is okay. But I see a lot of that online and I, I figure what is needed is, I’m a good researcher, I will go out and I will find apps and programs and things and I will try them out. And I’m sort of a guinea pig. And then I can report back and say this works. Try this or this didn’t work. Don’t try that. That way you’re learning from my failures, or the flops, you know, the products that are flops, and then you’re you’re also learning what works. So that’s what I’m trying to gather but that kind of Article takes a little more time. So if I can get one a week out, I would ultimately love to get two a week out. But right now I’m about one.

Do you have a goal word count that you are looking for, or are looking for quantity over quality or a mixture of both.

I’m always looking for quality over quantity. I think there’s a lot of people who pump out a lot of blog posts that don’t get very many shares, but they pump out one a day. Well, I would rather pump out one a week that got just as many shares as all five of theirs. You know that it just seems to me that you’re, you’re spinning your wheels. If you’re trying to do that you’re supposed to spend about 20% of your time writing and 80% promoting your your post and blogging. So if you’re spending so much time writing, then you’re not you’re not even promoting and nobody’s going to see your product anyway. Nobody’s going to see that great content. So I would rather put out fewer. But as far as word count goes

anywhere between 700 words and 2000 words, it’s usually more between.

Mine are usually between 811 hundred.

Thank you so much for sharing that because for a while I was feeling like I needed to write

2000 word blog articles.

It really just shut me off from writing all together. Because, I mean, maybe this is psychological, but I didn’t see how I would have time or content to come up with those long of articles.

Well, you’re supposed to do those every once in a while for, you know, your Google Analytics your for your Google ranking, I should say. It likes Google likes longer posts, but

it’s not very easy to write this As long post so don’t do it very often, you know, once every couple months is probably fine

kind of you read rework by Jason freed and David Heinemeier Hanson

No, I’ve heard of it though.

I don’t swear a lot on this podcast, but I love and I just had to pull it out. They said

cut your ambition in half, you’re better off with a kick ass half and a half asshole.

I like that maybe I’ll make some sort of quote post good.

I think that’s true. I think it’s absolutely true. I think people who are bloggers particularly but a lot of people also have blogs for their, for their other sites

for their actual

product producing sites, they just have a blog that goes with it. I think you’ve got to be you got to worry about quality more than quantity.

I completely agree. Do you have a daily routine

I do I since I told you I have switched to themed mornings, that’s kind of messing that up right now. But I do have more of a checklist I’ll do a little bit of the easier stuff in the morning. I’m when I’m waking up and I’m kind of getting the kids ready. I don’t do the super hard in depth stuff that I have to think really hard about like I’m not gonna write while my kids are trying to eat breakfast by me. There’s just no way that’s not gonna happen, but I can do easier things like, get into

my

apps that I I use tailwind to share on Pinterest and I know some people use that for Instagram. And I’ll schedule content to go out because that doesn’t take a whole lot of concentration to do that. So I’ll do those kinds of things in the early morning and then once I have my kiddos off to school, I can I can do that heavier things, things that take a lot more thought like writing. And I’ll usually do something like that in in the morning. And in the afternoon, I try to catch up on any stragglers and I don’t have a huge list of to Do’s, I have a few to dues and then I have a few things that I would like to get done. And if they don’t get totally done, I don’t stress out about it.

I love that how many of your have to do items do you have in front of you at any given time?

when I’m not working on those, I put them away. Otherwise, they’re staring at me and making me feel bad. You know, I don’t have a to do list out all the time. If I have my to do list out in the morning. Like I said, when I’m getting the kids ready, and I’ll do a couple things while they’re while they’re eating and whatnot. And then when I’m doing other things I put the to do list away But in the afternoon, I pull it out and I try and work with it. I don’t like a to do list staring at me while I’m trying to get other things done. It just, it just makes me feel like I’m not doing enough and I don’t like that feeling.

I had to cut my back because I was putting everything onto my daily to do list. Everything that’s outstanding. So I finally just started putting the items that I know I can get done today. But I am definitely going to have to go get Forrest, thank you so much for sharing that.

Oh, yeah. It’s a cute little app. It’s it’s, it’s great. It’s helped my productivity a lot.

Jen, I want to thank you so much for being here today. Where can listeners find you online and connect

on social media,

I am on Facebook at Jen monk’s life wise lady. I am on LinkedIn and Twitter and Pinterest at lifewise lady you can get to all of them. Those social media platforms through my website. On the homepage, it’s lifewise. Lady calm.

And again, this will be in the show notes which you can find at Doug KIM sutton.com. forward slash pp. one to eight. Jen, do you have any closing advice or words that you’d like to share with the listeners?

I think that if you really want your business to do well,

stop comparing yourself so much to the super successful and just keep your nose down and focus on what you’re supposed to do. And remember that everybody’s started at the bottom, even the people who are making millions, they started somewhere and they make mistakes. To this day, they make mistakes, and they made a lot of them when they were starting out, so don’t be so hard on yourself when you’re not perfect.