Finance Mini-Series: Investing in Your Business with Megan Porta

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week we’re going to be kicking off our four-part finance miniseries, where we’re going to be chatting all about the finance side of food, bogging, things like investing in your business taxes, how to negotiate brand partnerships, bookkeeping, and lots more. In this first episode in the series, we are chatting with Megan Porta. You might recognize her because she’s the host of the Eat Bog Talk podcast, and chances are if you listen to this podcast, you likely also listen to hers. Megan has also been a food blogger herself for over 14 years at Pip and Ebby, so she knows a lot about balancing her time between all of her areas of focus. In this interview, Bjork and Megan chat about how to approach investing as an entrepreneur.

Megan shares her strategies for making decisions about investments, how to invest in yourself, how to invest in your business, especially in the early days when you don’t have money to invest, and how these investments can help you overcome plateaus and avoid burnout. Megan also walks us through how she makes decisions about where she is going to invest her money in her business, including time tracking and reflecting on the pain points within your business. As we kick off a new year, this is a great episode to help you think about goals and vision for your business in the coming years. So without further ado, I’m going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Megan, welcome to the podcast.

Megan Porta: So happy to be here. Such an honor. Thank you for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, you’re on the other side. You’re usually the one kind of queuing people up, asking the questions because you have a podcast. Many of the listeners on this podcast I’m sure are familiar with your podcast, but for those who aren’t, can you talk a little bit about it and how that got started?

Megan Porta: Yeah, it’s called Eat Blog Talk. It’s I think very similar audience to Food Blogger Pro, just any scope of food bloggers or entrepreneurs, bloggers of any sort, looking to gain relevant information about blogging and mindset and how to tackle this crazy world of food blogging.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it really is. Especially, I mean, you could maybe say this in any year, but I feel like especially in the last year, you felt that there’s just so much happening in the world of content creation, and then when you niche down in the world of food content creation, there’s a lot happening, and yet there’s still a lot of opportunity moving forward. We’re going to be talking about that specifically as we talk about in this series, the idea of finances and within finances, there’s this idea of investing, and we’re going to be talking about today, investing in your business, investing in yourself, and why that can be one of the best returns that you can have on an investment. But before we do that, I want to also talk about, so you have your podcast. You are also a content creator, is that right?

Megan Porta: Correct. I’ve been a food blogger for 14 years now. So yeah, an og. I just started a niche site as well. Oh my gosh. It’s not easy to grow a new site, but yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So this is recently you started a new

Megan Porta: Site. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about that in so far as you’re willing to share what that is? Yeah, of course.

Megan Porta: Yeah, it’s a breakfast site, so I am honestly kind of burned out on my initial blog, which is just kind of overarching comfort food. I got tired of making mac and cheese all the time and chili and all of that, so I was like, I do love making breakfasts for my boys. They’re both teenagers. So I thought I would combine that with a new blog. So I’ve just been chipping away at it for a little over a year. It’s called Easy Breakfast Ideas 101. I have no expectations, honestly, which feels kind of good. It’s taken the pressure off, but it’s just been fun. I’ve enjoyed it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So what does that look like for you as you look at those three buckets? So you have Eat Blog Talk, you have the site that you started years ago, and then you have this new one. How do you make decisions? Maybe this can actually be our entry into that conversation around investments. One of the ways that we think about investing is investing our time. How do you think about that across all three brands or areas of focus?

Megan Porta: It is hard, I’ll be honest with you. It takes a lot of intentionality, planning, forethought. I mean, I really do think out my time ahead of time always. I do a lot of batching, so I do, one day is podcast day. I’ll do one day of one blog and then another day, another blog, and I just have to stick to my schedule, otherwise it throws everything off and I have to just hustle to get back to square one. So yeah, a lot of intentionality and consistency.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s a fitness guy that I follow and sends out an email, and one of the things he talked about today was this idea of boring being something that you have to accept in service of an outcome. And a lot of times I think people don’t understand actually how boring or repetitive certain things can be, whether it be creating content for a blog, for social media, doing a podcast. The conversations are always interesting and engaging in the world of podcasting, but it’s like the actual process of doing a lot of this stuff can be repetitive. It can repetitive be boring.

Megan Porta: I was just going to say that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. But the end result a lot of times is something really magnificent, and I find that to be true in the world of investing as well. A lot of times it’s a long period of time doing a similar positive behavior, and you could look at that with investing in real estate, investing in the stock market, but especially with investing in yourself or investing in your own business. But it can be hard in the beginning stages because it feels like there’s a little bit of risk involved or a lot of risk, even if it’s just your time you’re investing, it feels like, man, there might not be a return on this. I might not get what I want out of it, but especially if it’s money you’re investing, maybe it’s hundreds or thousands of dollars and you don’t know if you’re going to get a return on it. So as we talk about this world of finance, as we talk about investing, it feels like one of the first things that we need to address is this idea of mindset and how you even go about making decisions around investing in yourself. So based on the conversations you’ve had with hundreds of publishers, business owners, entrepreneurs, but also your own experience, how do you get into the right mindset when it comes to investing in yourself or your own business?

Megan Porta: I think looking at the people around you. So if you have a supportive network of peers, you start to see that the really successful ones are investing in themselves, especially if you follow people like Tony Robbins, like the big time entrepreneurs who make millions of dollars and who are hugely successful. I always like to think, are they investing in themselves? Of course they are. And not just that big of scope, but just people in our field, in our mastermind groups, in our Facebook groups, are they investing in themselves? And you start to see how that is paying off for them and their businesses. I think that is really important because that will give you confidence to do it yourself. And then once you take the leap and you start making those investments and they do start paying off, you see that it’s worthwhile. It builds your confidence, and you do get returns on those investments. And I think then you just kind of get the bug and you start doing it more and more and you see that, oh, it really can pay off to invest in your business and yourself.

Bjork Ostrom: So you had talked about a couple different examples of what that might look like, and I think of Warren Buffet often talks about that the best investment you can make is the investment in yourself. The example that he gives often is this idea of he was afraid of public speaking, and so he did I think Toastmaster or something like that where he got out of his comfort zone invested in himself, and how that’s paid dividends probably literally and figuratively over time for him. What does it actually look like? What are some examples for somebody who is a blogger, a publisher, a creator online who wants to invest in themselves, let’s say they’re in the early stages, they haven’t done that yet. What are some of the ways that you can actually do that? What does that look like?

Megan Porta: I think if you just look at your week and pinpoint the pain points, so what is causing you issues? Are you having issues with your web host? Does your website keep going down? Are you having issues with getting your emails out? Find that pain point or that struggle that’s happening now this week and start there and figure out a solution that you can invest in that’s going to solve that pain point. And I think starting there is such a good way to think about it because we all have pain points. There’s so much going on in our businesses and in our lives. So just finding that main thing and finding a solution for it because there’s really a solution, an investment solution for just about every pain point we encounter.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Do you have an example of a way that you’ve done that within your own business? I think, and I can share one too, I think it’s always so helpful to hear what that looks like for people who have gone through it before. So what does that look

Megan Porta: Like? You? Oh gosh. I mean, I have so many. Just three weeks ago, I was just so overwhelmed by my inbox, my a blog talk inbox just wanted to devour me every day,

And I had been feeling this pain for months. I was thinking about it on the weekends at nights. It was just ridiculous. So I thought maybe I could just have my assistant start combing through my emails and we can make it a process and see if this works, because I’ve always felt like I need to be the one in my inbox. Nobody else can do it. So we just did kind of an experiment, and it’s been three weeks now. It has been a process, but we’ve gotten to the point where it’s actually working and I’m not waking up on Monday morning, dreading my inbox. So yeah, that is just one little example that I have recently. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about specifically what you’ve learned in that process? I think a lot of people can relate with the inbox nightmares,

Megan Porta: Just letting go of control. I think that need to see everything. I don’t need to see everything. So giving control over to somebody else, trusting her to take care of it, just trusting the process, having faith that nothing is going to explode, no one’s going to get mad. That’s been probably my main takeaways from this whole thing.

Bjork Ostrom: I remember Dan Martel, who is a SaaS soft word. Yeah,

Megan Porta: I just read one of his books.

Bjork Ostrom: Buy Back Your Time, was it? Yeah. So I have a friend, a close friend who went through his program and on the first session, this is a great example of my friend Kevin, who now runs, it’s almost like a private equity firm where they buy software companies. It’s called Big Band Software. So they do great work, but he was going through Dan Martel’s Academy or whatever it is, I don’t know what they call it, but in the first session, Dan said, if you don’t have an assistant right now, raise your hand. And so half the people raised their hand and he said, if you don’t have an assistant, I don’t know what the time was. It was like, by the next time we get on a call, which is in two weeks, you can no longer be a part of this program. That’s how important it was

That how important he thought it was for the success of an entrepreneur as an example of investing in yourself. And what that does. And he’ll say, this is, and he says this in the book too, it’s not so then you can go sip my ties on the beach. So you can do a thing that is more valuable, that’s why you’re doing it. And so one of the things as entrepreneurs, and one of the ways that we can invest in ourselves is always look to level up our time and the return that we have on the time that we are spending. And the example of email I can really relate to that. It’s like, man, it’s really easy to spend a lot of time. For me, it’s like forwarding email to the receipts inbox that comes in for an Amazon purchase. And it’s like, I do that. I probably shouldn’t be doing that

If I was doing something else like another podcast interview that would be more valuable to put out into the world. And the problem set for me though, is a little bit different. It’s just a matter of me committing to it, creating a process around it, creating a system for it, because technically I can afford to do that. That’s not an issue. And I know that if I do it, I’m going to find something that’s more valuable. But what about for somebody who’s in the early stages and maybe they’re earning $500 a month, a thousand dollars a month, or no money for that person, what advice would you give them when they start to think about investing in their business when maybe they don’t know if that money’s going to come back or if there’s going to be a return on it versus somebody who’s earning 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 from their business a month and they know they should do it, and it’s just a matter of like, ah, I just haven’t gotten to it yet, and it’s their own hurdle that they haven’t jumped, but speak to the person who’s in the early stages that is hesitant to spend the money.

Megan Porta: And I get it because I’ve been there and it’s really hard to let go of your hard-earned money, not having a guarantee that it’s going to come back to you in some way. But I think this is where a trusted network of people comes in and is super handy. So if you can kind of ask around, ask your trusted peers what they’ve invested in, what has been worthwhile, and again, going back to that pain point, what are your pain points? I think web hosting is something that a lot of people skimp on. I know I did in the beginning and I had so many issues that, my gosh, I caused so much gray hair and just so much stress in my life for a while. So I think that’s one of the first things. I would recommend newer bloggers who are making $500 a month to consider investing in a really good quality web host and ask around, ask your peers who they use, ask if they have downtime on their blogs and all of those relevant questions. And then, yeah, I just think thinking about things like that, like your blog and then what else is causing you pain and

Staying within your budget, obviously and leaning on your community.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. The community piece I think is really great. And then also the self-reflection around, and it’s going to be different for everybody, but what is the thing that is the two analogies that I use, one is activity monitor. So if anybody uses a Apple computer on Mac Os, there’s this thing called activity monitor where this doesn’t happen a lot anymore with new computers, but if the fans are running super hot, you’d pull up activity monitor and you could see, oh my gosh, whatever program is taking up 110% of the memory. And so you force quit that program and then the fans cool down, and then it’s this stacked order of all the programs that are taking up more for us right now, it’d be Chrome, we’re on Riverside, we’re recording this podcast. That would be taking up a lot of the memory. But in our own world, we have those things, those programs that run super hot

And I think sometimes we don’t even notice ’em. But what you’re saying is take time to pause to reflect. It’s almost like mindfulness, like being observant of your own thoughts and saying, what are the things that are running really hot right now that are taking up a lot of figurative, but also literal memory right now? And then step two, what you’re saying is use your network. It’d be Google Plus people use those resources to identify a solution to that thing that is taking up a lot of memory and figure out a way to reduce the amount of resources that is consuming for you. The example being inbox, the second analogy that I think of is I had an operations class years ago when I was in college and they talked about this stream and they talked about the goal within logistics. It was like logistics and operations is in the stream. You’re trying to identify the boulder that is sticking out and you remove it and then the stream goes down a little bit and then you see the other rocks and then you remove those and the goal is to get the stream down to a trickle. So it’s just pebbles, it’s little things, but those rocks in those boulders are the things that we should focus on first. We get those out of the way. So the stream goes down, you identify some other ones, it goes down even more.

I’d have to look at that again because to me, the weird thing within it is like what’s the purpose of a stream going down the trickle? I don’t know if the goal is to get it to not be a stream, but that self reflection around what is the pain point for me? And then actively trying to solve for that. So what does that look like in terms of making that a priority? Because in your example, there’s the email inbox, and I think sometimes what can happen is we can think I will solve long-term this problem once I short-term get my inbox figured out. But I think what has to happen is that has to happen before when you’re in the middle of it. So how do you know when you’re ready to make that investment, whether financially you could maybe talk about that, but also how do you prioritize it from a time perspective?

Megan Porta: Yeah, I think financially, I mean that’s just a matter of knowing what your budget is, knowing what’s coming in, knowing what’s going out and making reasonable decisions. But I think if from a time perspective and a pain perspective, if something is painful enough, you are going to want to find a solution for it. And then I wanted to touch on one thing you were talking about. If you don’t know what you need to invest in or maybe what your pain points even are, a really good way to figure that out is to do time tracking. So track your time for a week, everything you do in your business, write it down. And then you can go back retroactively and just say, oh my gosh, I spent 19 hours this week in email or whatever. And then you can pinpoint and pull out what is causing you stress to work way more than you should be working, et cetera.

But to answer your question, I think the pain, just what is causing you the most stress, if it is stressful enough, you are going to want to find a solution for it. I see that all the time in just talking to a lot of food bloggers. I hear like, oh, I don’t know what to do. My welcome. I’m stressed about it, my welcome series. I don’t know what to write. I stayed up all night thinking about it. I’m like, well, that’s a cue that you should probably sit down and figure that out. So just being in tune with your thoughts and what’s keeping you up at night too. I know I can stay up at night thinking about random things. So take note of those things.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. How about when you think of people who are not so people who are doing this, you gave that example, and I think it’s important to point out as a North Star, and a lot of times it’s people who are constantly thinking of investing as a way to level up. It’s hiring a coach to help them figure out how to be more productive or somebody to help teach them photography or video or whatever it might be in our world, an example is my friend Tony Ruly, who’s been on the podcast before. He knows Facebook advertising really well. We recently hired him to come in because we didn’t want to figure out Facebook ads for clarity. That’s not something that our team was good at. We don’t have experience with it. So we knew that it was going to be better to bring Tony in to help than it was for us to figure out how to do it on our own.

And even you’re talking about this, I think of Nathan Barry, the CEO of ConvertKit now Kit, and I was at a meetup a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about working with somebody to help them figure a thing out. I don’t remember specifically what it was, but the thought that I had was I looked back and I was like, this is somebody who has over a decade consistently brought in smart, capable people alongside him and his team. And the result of that is a multi-hundred million dollar business that has been created, not just because of that, but that being one of the reasons why it is so successful is strategic partnerships and advisory and bringing people in. But how about on the other side of it? What if you aren’t investing, and what if you don’t take the time or invest financially in yourself and in your business? What do you think that result is or what happens there? Well,

Megan Porta: I can speak to this firsthand because I have been there. I avoided investing for the first handful of years that I ran my food blog. I just thought I could do it on my own. I thought I would be fine. I’m smart, I can figure this out. But that led to, for me, it was a huge plateau where I just wasn’t growing and it was so frustrating. It was that spinning wheels hamster on the wheel syndrome that just like, why aren’t I getting anywhere? I’m doing the right things I think, and you just don’t know why you’re not growing, but you’re not. So I think that is probably the first thing that food bloggers can encounter. And then if you let that go on long enough, I think that can lead to burnout, which is also something that I’ve experienced quite a bit. And it’s horrible. And yeah, I don’t recommend that for anyone. And if you let that go on, you can quit. I’ve seen this happen multiple times. I’m sure you have as well. Bjork people get so burnt out and tired of just not investing in themselves, not investing in their businesses, not getting anywhere. So they’re just done and they sell their blog to prematurely or they just leave the business altogether. So those three things, plateau, burnout, quitting, are kind of what’s in store. I think if you don’t invest in your business and in yourself,

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it buy back your time is such a great book to pair with this conversation because so much of that book is about investing in yourself and investing in your business in service of not only growing, but also in service of the work that you’re doing, being more enjoyable, being a better fit. And you talked about this showing up on Monday and not dreading it. We have our own businesses and we have the ability to control to some degree, not entirely, but to some degree control what it is that we’re doing and how we’re operating within those businesses. When you think back to reading through that book, were there takeaways that you had that you were able to implement or even concepts or frameworks that you think about within your day-to-day as an entrepreneur?

Megan Porta: Yeah, just what you said. And I actually think I got the email idea from that book where he was talking about the assistant. I already had an assistant, but you should be hiring out your inbox. It’s something that you just don’t need to do. So I’ve been thinking since I read it just about all of those things in my business that I don’t need to do that I don’t want to do, that I don’t need to do. And I’ve just been taking mental note of those because I don’t like to try to take care of every problem at once. I try to do one thing at a time so that we can take care of it really well. So the email, I want to get a handle on that, but then I have other things that I don’t really care for, I’m not probably the best at. So chipping away at those things. I think that was my main takeaway. But I agree. I think it’s such a relevant book and so good at just making you aware of things you can do to upgrade your life and your business and just be happier. I loved how he was talking about, he has a home assistant, what did he call that? Just a home manager, I think.

Bjork Ostrom: Home manager. Yeah.

Megan Porta: Yeah. And how every day the home manager has his smoothie that he likes and she basically puts it in his hand at the exact time that he needs it. Just like, oh, well. I mean that’s a goal eventually. I mean, it was just really cool to think about how streamlined his life is and how you don’t need everything in your life. Because I think we often think, like I was saying earlier, I need to be in my inbox. I need to be hitting published, I need to be doing X, Y, Z, and we don’t necessarily need to be doing all of that.

Bjork Ostrom: And so much of it is the continual process of those little level ups. And I think back to when Lindsay and I were first married moving into our condo, she had like $500 of money from babysitting. We bought a $300 Scratch and Dent Refrigerator because the condo we moved into, the one was broken. That probably wasn’t a season where we would’ve been able to strategically think about investing financially into having a home manager handoff a smoothie to us. But it would’ve been a season where we could have thought strategically around taking a half an hour out of my day and I didn’t do this. I would be better off if I would’ve. But taking a half an hour out of my day and just documenting the things that I am doing every day to not only myself, have a better understanding of what I’m doing and what the process is with it, and to have an understanding of day-to-day and what it looks like, but also then to be prepared for eventually when I did have more disposable income or we did have more disposable income to bring somebody in and to have identified that number one thing that would be really helpful for somebody to take over, even if it was just two hours a week, to then literally buy back some of the time for me to be doing something else or for Lindsay to be doing something else.

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How about in the really early stages, what can people be doing to invest in themselves if they don’t have the finances at this point to let’s say, spend $200 a week to hire an assistant, but they still want to think about investing in themselves, what does that look like? What are some things that people can actively be doing? And then let’s talk about once you do start to have those resources, what can you be doing?

Megan Porta: I think first, having the ultimate goals at the top of your mind to maybe write them down or something is really important because that gives you something to strive for. But in the meantime, what you can do is just invest in yourself. So that means maybe taking better care of yourself, setting aside two hours, one hour, 30 minutes, 15 minutes for a morning routine, and just investing in yourself that way. Like I mentioned earlier, time tracking is so huge. People are so reluctant to try time tracking because it’s kind of an effort. You have to be diligent about tracking your time if you actually want to make gains with it. But I think there’s so much power in that just knowing exactly where you’re spending your time is an investment in you and your business and then constantly tweaking it. I do time tracking all the time, at least once a quarter, sometimes. Last year I did it for six months. I was really confused about why I was so tired all the time. Why am I feeling so depleted? So I just wanted to know why am I so drained? I’m not working that much. What am I spending my time on that is draining me? So I think that is a huge way to invest in yourself as well. And then another,

Bjork Ostrom: What did you find out after those six months? Did you come to a conclusion?

Megan Porta: I did. So it wasn’t work, so I would track every minute. I was working between 20 and 25 hours a week. I was not working nights, I was not working weekends, I was not working crazy hours. What I found was that I had an increase in relationships, which was good. I mean, it was all good relationships, but I’m such an introvert. And

Bjork Ostrom: That you were drained?

Megan Porta: Yes, I was drained. I was very relationship energy drained. So I’ve spent this past summer and this fall just trying to manage that and really trying to let things go that I was holding onto. I’ll have a conversation with somebody and just kind of stew over things and then I’ll wake up at 3:00 AM thinking about it.

Bjork Ostrom: So

Megan Porta: It has been a process learning how to release those things,

Bjork Ostrom: But it was an outcome. Understanding that came out of tracking your time, seeing, oh,

Megan Porta: I’m

Bjork Ostrom: Actually getting together with people quite a bit. Generally speaking, people will be like, that’s a wonderful thing. But everybody has their own preferences and everybody operates in different ways. And for you as a realization, it sounds like, of actually this as somebody who, these are generalizations, but I can relate to this, somebody who feels energized by being alone. If you have moments where you’re with people, that’s a good thing, but it could be energy-draining. And so it sounds like, oh, need to shift and adjust coming out of that really interesting realization, how were you tracking time? Were you just putting it in a note doc or did you have an app? What did that look like?

Megan Porta: So I use Toggle. It’s T-O-G-G-L. It’s a free app. It syncs from desktop to phone, so it’s super handy if you’re on the go and want to track something when you’re out and about. You can do that really easily. And then when I’m at my computer, I just have it open all the time when I’m time tracking. And you can categorize projects too. So like e blog talk, I’m doing a podcast interview, you can really drill down and then each week you can create, or each day whatever, you can create a report and it gives you the breakdown of exactly what you’ve been doing.

Bjork Ostrom: How did you remember, because I’ve done time tracking before. The issue that I run into is remembering to do it. Do you have any tips?

Megan Porta: No.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah,

Megan Porta: It does take a while to get into the habit of it, and that’s why I say people resist doing it because they will go for four hours and they kind of forget. But I think if you can think back on the last two days, you can probably piece together most of what you worked on. So if you realize, oh my gosh, I haven’t done it for four hours, that’s okay. Just stop and assess as best you can and write down what you’ve done for the past four hours. So don’t abandon it, just fill in the gaps and then keep moving forward. And then the more you do it, obviously the more ingrained it is. I said, I have my toggle app on my computer, so it’s just kind of a blatant reminder. You need to log your time. So you could also write, I dunno, put reminders in your calendar or write post-it notes or something just to remind yourself.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. How specific did you get with, this is getting into the granular details of time tracking, but I’m interested in it. How specific did you get with the bucket of category? For myself, I’d imagine it would be family fitness, food blocker, pro pinch of Yum. What did that look like for you?

Megan Porta: Yeah, I get pretty specific. So I divide out my businesses and so for example, a blog talk, I would say recording an interview, prepping for interview, I even divide that out. And then for the blog prepping post for writer publishing posts. So I get pretty down to the nitty gritty because when I have situations like last winter that I talked about, I really want to figure out what’s going on if there’s a problem. So I like to have more data than not enough data, if that makes sense.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So in that season where you talked about experiencing this burnout plateau, what would your advice be for somebody else who’s maybe in a similar season, because you alluded to this, but the result of that can be you are so burnt out that you’re just like, I’m done. And you end up either quitting. If you have a site that maybe hasn’t been built to the point where it can be sold, or maybe you just sell it or you don’t sell it and you just let it coast, all of which financially being the series that we’re in, that’s detrimental financially, personally, it might be a good decision. It might be the best thing for you to sell. It might be the best thing for you just to step back to let something coast. But financially, if we have an asset and we can work on that asset and grow that asset, that’s going to be a really beneficial financial decision.

And so making sure that we are in the best place possible in relationship, in a high quality relationship with the asset that we have, which is our business, that can be really rewarding. And so just making the point that it’s important for us to make sure that we are as good of a place as possible as it relates to the work that we’re doing, because it’s actually a financially beneficial thing. It’s not just fun. It’s not just great to be working on things you like to do. It’s actually financially beneficial. So if somebody is in that season of burnout, if they are feeling like they’re at the end of their rope, kind of done with what they’re done with it, kind of what would your advice be to them to hopefully help somebody get through that?

Megan Porta: Don’t do anything drastic, because I’ve had that desire, just like should I sell my business? This past summer, I went through, after the energy drain, I went through a pretty long season of burnout and still kind of recovering from that. It was rough, and I had those thoughts. I was like, should I throw everything in the lake and just run for the hills? I mean, it was really bad. So I would say don’t do anything drastic. Just sit back and take care of yourself. Do what you need to do to get to a place where you’re healthy and able to run your business. Again, like you said, you want to like it and enjoy it too. But the good thing about blogging, I think, is that when you get to a certain point, you can leave your business for a little bit. You can just let it passively do its thing. I didn’t touch my blogs either of them from, I think it was mid-April of this year until the 1st of August. Literally did not. I didn’t update a plugin. Some of the plugins when I got back into it were not working anymore. They were just like,

You have destroyed your site, whatever. No, I mean, nothing was destroyed though. I mean, my income was fine. It actually went up, my revenue up. So nothing is going to explode. Just, yeah, the message is take care of yourself, step back if you need to hire people or even enlist family or friend, help if you need to minimally to keep things going, just do what you need to do to get yourself back on track. I think that is number one for advice on that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I’ve experienced seasons like that. Lindsay’s experienced seasons like that, and you’re talking about experiencing seasons like that. I think some of it is you do anything for a decade, five years, whatever it might be. I think all of us, I wouldn’t be surprised or many of us who have been doing this for a long time come up against those seasons. And I think part of it, and I’d be interested in your response to this, is that our lives change in really significant ways. I think of how different my life is today than it was seven years ago.

And yet our businesses kind of are the same. I’m still doing a podcast, I’m still working with Lindsay on Pinch of Yum, but our lives are very different. And I think part of the reason that we experienced whatever you want to call it, burnout or feeling like stretched too thin was because our lives changed in pretty significant ways. But we, or I’ll speak for myself, I tried to to operate in the same way that I was before things had changed for me. And I think there’s value in us recognizing that we sometimes are in seasons of making deposits into our business, the financial deposits, investments, whatever you want to call it, time investments, time deposits. But similarly, as we’re talking about finances, as we’re talking about investments, I think there might be seasons that our businesses need to give to us. We have invested into them in our case, 14 years, and I think it’s okay to ask of our business to invest, to give back to us in some ways in certain seasons. Do you resonate with that at all, or what are your thoughts absolutely on that? Yeah,

Megan Porta: Yeah. I mean, we do put so much into our businesses. My heart and soul has gotten into all of my businesses, and I think a lot of people listening can probably relate to that. Yeah, it’s like that analogy with just putting it in the oven and just letting it bake. Sometimes I have this thing in my mind when I start feeling guilty about the summer when I was ignoring my blogs. Every once in a while I would start to feel that guilt creep in, and I was like, no, I have worked so hard. It is okay to take care of myself. I’m just going to let bake and let it or let it simmer or whatever. Just let it do its thing on the stove, because like you said, it’s going to invest back in us at some point. But I think getting over the guilt is huge with that, just having grace with yourself and not feeling the guilt surrounding yourself with people who support that too, family or friends or peers, to just reiterate, you don’t need to feel guilty because everyone listening pours their hearts and souls into their businesses.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things as I think about investments in ourselves and in our businesses that I think is really true is that sometimes it’s hard with what we do because it all feels very personal, especially if you have a site that you’ve built as a personal brand, it feels like you are the brand and you are closely connected with it, as opposed to a business that you’ve created. Let’s say it’s a business that makes screws, it’s a screw manufacturing business, and you’ve worked really hard to build that up. And there’s a process. There are systems you can bring people in. You may or may not identify with it, but it kind of does its thing versus you are the thing

For people who are the personal brand. And I think maybe feel a need to show up in a way that you wouldn’t need to show up if you had a screw manufacturing business. How do you invest in your business in a way that you are supported to do the things that are life-giving for you without it becoming all consuming, without it becoming this ferociously burning fire that always needs to be fed and is always running hot. And it’s like you can’t step away from it. You need to throw firewood in all the time, and it feels like you have to be the one doing it.

Megan Porta: Yeah, I think this is a problem that we all face. We all feel this from time to time with social media and Instagram, being on reels and being in stories and showing up in your email and maybe YouTube. I mean, it’s like if I don’t show up in all those places, does my brand disappear? But I think that’s the great thing, again about a blogging business, is that you can step away and when you come back, people are very forgiving and understanding, especially if you’ve been through something, just explaining that to your community, grace. I mean, it all comes down to grace, knowing that people are going to have grace with you, having grace with yourself, and you can always pick up where you left off. Nothing is going to die if you take a week off or a month off or a summer. Just giving yourself that permission and seeing people like me take four months off and nothing bad happened at all. I think that’s also good to see kind of how other people in our space navigate this too.

Bjork Ostrom: I don’t remember if this is the exact post, and I just did a quick Google on it as you were talking about it because it reminded me of this. But I think of Brene Brown. Lindsay talked about this where she just talked about needing a break, and I don’t know if you follow her, but I just pulled up. So there’s this LinkedIn post, and I’ll just read it real quick. She said, I thought it was a break, but it was more of a breaking, not necessarily breaking down, but not down, maybe open. It’s been a tough season, but an important one. She said, I shared my thoughts in a post on the new website anyways, and the post is called Hard Seasons in Wild Hearts, and she talks about her mom passing away and the difficulty of that and just needing time to step back and

Megan Porta: Process.

Bjork Ostrom: But that as an example of somebody who’s kind of the ultimate leader in thought, leader in creativity, but also honesty, courage, all of those things.

And I think people resonate with it and you see it and people are like, I get it. And also maybe feel encouraged and empowered to do it on their own. And definitely if you are at that point where you have built your site to a point where you have some of that income, it maybe is passive in a way where you can step back a little bit. We talk about the idea of a train, and so often in the early stages, you’re shoveling cold into the engine of the train and it doesn’t move, and you do it the next day and it doesn’t move, and you do it the next day and it moves maybe like two inches, but after a while you’ve shoveled in enough coal where you can take a day off and the train continues to move. What if you’re in the early stages and you’re still shoveling coal, and then you show up, it moves like three inches, but you know, got to get up and shovel coal again in order for the train to move, and you’re not at that point where it’s completely passive.

Megan Porta: Yeah, I’ve been there too. I mean, that’s what the early days, early years were like for me. I mean, I’m sure you guys experienced that too, where it’s like you just have to keep showing up and you have to be consistent. But even so, I think you still are allotted grace. If you are mentally shutting down for whatever reason, there’s no other option. I mean, you’ve got to take a break and take care of yourself. If you don’t do that, your business, the coal, doesn’t matter. Nothing is going to operate ever. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. So

Megan Porta: I mean, you just have to assess how much

Bjork Ostrom: Push if the engine explodes. It doesn’t matter how much

Megan Porta: Cold you shuffle

Bjork Ostrom: In. Exactly.

Megan Porta: No, you can’t get to that point where you are burning out or you’re entering a depression or you’re wanting to throw your business in the ocean. You have to recognize the signs. Unfortunately, I’ve experienced burnout so much that I can see them and I can feel them almost instantly. I’m like, oh, here it comes. I need to do this. And then you kind of know what you do to take care of it so it doesn’t get out of control. But yeah, I mean, if you need a break, you need a break. But in those early days, that can be really hard.

Bjork Ostrom: And we all are creators to some degree, and the most valuable asset to us is our mind and our headspace. If what we’re doing is creating, and it’s one thing if you have, again, a screw manufacturing business that you can put somebody on the line or put ’em into leadership position to keep an eye on things. But if you were the person showing up and creating a thing, the headspace that you have to be in has to be a positive one. Otherwise, very quickly you’ll come to really not like the work that you’re doing. And Dan Martel talks about that. He’s like, I help people build businesses. They don’t come to hate. And I think the best way to do that is to start early by thinking about investing into your business, investing into yourself, and to build that in as a process over time. And one of the things I’ve thought about, I haven’t done this yet, but I’ve thought about what is my process to make sure that I’m investing into the business, working on the business, not just working in the business, thought about even every morning, taking a half an hour and having that half hour be the process hour or systems hour or delegation hour where I think about how to do the thing that I’m least effective and least interested in. And finding a way to bring somebody in to help with that as an example.

But do you have any thoughts on ways that we can make sure that we keep ourselves accountable to investing into our business or investing into ourselves?

Megan Porta: Yeah, I think going back to time tracking, just being really in tune with what you’re spending time on. Maybe you don’t need to do it daily, but doing something like what you’re talking about maybe once a week, just assessing how you’re feeling, what’s going on, what can you do to move your business forward and think about all the little details. And then once a month, I try to do this at the end of the month, I do kind of like a review, what worked, what didn’t work. And that’s not just tasks in my business, that’s also me. Do I need to work out more? Do I need to, did I go on a lot of walks? Did that help kind of assessing self-care as well, because it all matters. The healthier you are, the healthier business is going to be. It all matters.

And that really helps when I can be consistent with that. Just, okay, this didn’t work. I’m going to change this next month. This really worked. I’m going to implement more of this. So a lot of self-reflection, keeping in touch with your goals. And then also what we talked about earlier is just what’s causing you pain this week? Maybe that’s something to ask at the end of each week, just like, what’s my number one pain point this week and how can I alleviate it? Maybe not now, but when you have the funds or the time, maybe then.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think of Michael Hyatt who was not quite as active anymore. His company’s now called Full Focus, but had a podcast and would talk a lot about grading and leadership. And one of the things he always talked about was he has his family, he has his business, he has his wife, his kids, all these responsibilities. And he said, the most important of all of those is me. And it was kind of always unsettling a little bit to hear it, because I think what you want to hear is what’s most important is my wife or my kids. But he talks about the analogy he was giving was when you’re on a plane, they always say, and the masks drop down. If there’s something, they always say, put your own mask on first. And what he was saying is, I am the most important because if I am in a good place, I’m going to be able to do all of those other things better.

Megan Porta: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: And if I’m not in a good place, I’m actually going to be worse at all of those other responsibilities. And so my mental health, my physical health, my rest, all of those things are actually of critical importance in order for me to do the things that are really important, be a good, in his case, husband to be a good dad, to be a good leader. And so I hear what you’re saying, lining up with that, which is this idea that those things that we do are important, so important not only for ourselves, but for all of the other things that are surrounding us and all our other responsibilities. I know you’ve put together a list of ideas, not necessarily rank order because like you said, it’s going to be different for everybody, but a list of resources that people can even start to think about, what are the things that I can outsource? What are the ways that I can bring somebody in to help to kickstart this ideation process for people? So can you talk about where people can find that if they’re interested in downloading that? And then also talk about your podcast. I know we’re going to do a little podcast exchange here, but talk about your podcast and if people want to follow along with that, how they can do that.

Megan Porta: So the worksheet, it’ll also help people work through their fears if you do have a fear of investing. So you can do some maybe journal prompts or just that will help you talk through why you’re afraid of investing and what you’re afraid of. And then I also am going to include a huge comprehensive list of all kinds of things you can invest in, because as you know, there’s a ton. So if you want to download that, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/investments and the podcast, if you just go to your favorite podcast player, type in Eat Blog Talk and it should come up. Listen, we have over 600 episodes now, and then we also have a bunch of awesome groups that we run throughout the year. So if you’re interested in checking those out, you can just go to the website and that’s at eatblogtalk.com.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Megan, really fun to talk to. You we’re both in Minnesota. I don’t think we talked about that, which is so fun. It’s like the food blogging capital of the world, Minnesota. Here we are. It’s

Megan Porta: All these hidden little food bloggers live here. It’s so great. I love that you guys are here too.

Bjork Ostrom: So great to connect and looking forward to talking more. So thanks so much for coming on, Megan.

Megan Porta: Thank you so much.

Emily Walker: Hello there. Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed listening to this week’s episode of the podcast. Before we sign off today, I wanted to mention one of the most valuable parts of the Food Blogger Pro membership, and that’s our courses. In case you don’t already know, as soon as you become a Food Blogger Pro member, you immediately get access to all of our courses here on Food Blogger Pro. We have hours and hours of courses available, including SEO for food blogs, food photography, Google Analytics, social media, and sponsored content. All of these courses have been recorded by the Food Blogger Pro team or some of our industry experts, and they’re truly a wealth of knowledge. We are always updating our courses so you can rest assured that you’re getting the most up-to-date information as you’re working to grow your blog and your business. You can get access to all of our courses by joining Food Blogger Pro. Just head to food blogger pro.com/join to learn more about the membership and join our community. Thanks again for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Make it a great week.