This week, we’re celebrating 100 episodes of The Unconventional RD Podcast! And what better time than our 100th episode to get a little personal, right?
In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes to share what a typical week looks like for me as I juggle motherhood, marriage, and entrepreneurship.
I’m letting you in on my work schedule, my habits, my routine, and how I’m able to maintain a good work-life balance.
If you’ve been curious about what my life and business look like these days, I’m ready to shed some light here on this podcast episode today.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy this fun {and personal} episode!
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Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Unconventional RD podcast where we inspire dietitians to think outside of the traditional employment box and create their own unconventional income streams. We’ll talk all things online business to help you start, grow, and scale your own digital empire.
I feel like it’s been a little bit since I’ve done more of a personal podcast episode. And I thought, Hey, what better time than when celebrating 100 episodes of the unconventional RD podcast. Right. That’s right. This is officially our 100th episode after nearly three years of podcasting. Yes. If you do the math, that means I have not always been totally consistent.
I started off strong publishing weekly episodes for pretty much the first year and three months of this podcast until I broke my dominant hand while four months pregnant. And then I stir Ruggles to keep up the pace. I was essentially unable to use my right hand for about six months. And then right as I started to regain function, I had my first child and we ended up facing quite a few health issues for those first several months. And then to cap off that year, we closed it out with a move from Los Angeles, back up to the bay area where we have a lot more family and support.
So. Needless to say the podcast took a bit of a backseat for 2021. I think I averaged maybe one episode a month for a large portion of that year. Then in 2022, I slowly started to unbury myself from the overwhelm of new motherhood. I hired a part-time virtual assistant for the first time. So, yay. Shout out to Caroline. She has helped keep the ship running through 2022, and we have some big plans together for 2023.
And with her help, I was able to bump my podcast frequency back up to weekly episodes by the final quarter of 2022. So that’s the story of how we finally reached a hundred episodes over the course of three years here. And if you couldn’t tell, I do put a lot of effort into the show and I try really hard to make sure that each and every episode we put out is super valuable and leaves you feeling like, wow, I’m so glad I chose to spend an hour with Erica in my ear this week. And my goal with this show is to inspire you to dream big showcase stories of unconventional online businesses.
To challenge some of your limiting beliefs or preconceived notions and knowledge bomb you with helpful tips that you can apply in your life in business. We switched things up over here, rotating between guest interviews behind the scenes episodes with me timely online business news and actionable tips that you can use today.
And at the time of recording this, I think 98 of the episodes have officially been released because we do try to work a couple. Weeks ahead over here. So at this time we have had over 117,000 total downloads for the life of the show. And if you do the math on that 117,000 divided by 98, that means each episode has had an average of nearly 1200 lifetime downloads.
And while that may be a small number in the grand scheme of all things podcasting to me, that is so cool. I mean, that’s basically the equivalent of hosting. Let’s say a weekly webinars, something like that. And having over a thousand people attend to hear what you have to stay. And what’s even crazier is that the podcasting world is still relatively small compared to other spaces like blogging YouTube or definitely social media.
In fact, according to the latest stats, if your podcast episode gets over 386 downloads in the first seven days after release, you are in the top 10% of podcasts in the world. And if you get more than 938 downloads in that first week, you’re in the top 5%. If you get more than 4,683 downloads in the first seven days for one episode, you are in the top 1% of all podcasts. So my seven day average after releasing a new episode right now is about 450 downloads. So that puts me squarely in the top 10%.
And if I can double that, I will be close to cracking into the top 5%. And I think getting to 1000 or more downloads for each episode within the first seven days of release is a really good goal for myself and my team in 20, 23 and beyond. So I will be sure to check back in, in the future and let you know if we accomplish it.
Uh, because to be honest, I kind of feel like one of my weaknesses in my business right now is that I’m not great at promoting my content after it is released. I do work my podcast episodes. Into my evergreen email funnels. So we get a lot of lessons over the long run. It’s not like people only listen to the new episodes. Like the older episodes get a lot of playback over time.
Uh, but I don’t really have a good system for promoting myself on social media right now. So those are some of the things that we will be working on next year. But anyway, I feel like my audience right now is pretty tightly niched down to food and wellness professionals, a large majority of which are dietitians. So it’s not like I have a thousand randos tuning in each week. I know that the people giving me their time and attention are the exact people I’d like to reach and connect with. And even though podcasting can be a bit of a one-way street since you can hear me, but I can’t hear you. I still feel an invisible thread of connection to my audience that I truly don’t think would be as strong as it is without this show. So yeah, that, that’s a bit of a ramble, but before I dive into some of the details of what my day to day work looks like, I wanted to say, thank you for listening, whether you’ve listened to all of my episodes, or this is your first one here today.
I am so grateful that you have chosen to tune in. So let’s get into it. The real thing that I wanted to talk to you about today is what the heck a week in my life looks like as a mom wife, an online business owner. No behind the scenes, if you will, of how things might go on any given week, we can talk about my work schedule, my habits, my routine mindset, whatever.
I don’t know about you, but I often look at really successful online business owners and entrepreneurs. And I wonder how are they spending their time? Are they working 24 7 or they barely working at all? Are they in the trenches? Are they mostly high doing higher level work and delegating a lot? Do they love what they do or are they totally frazzled all the time?
Do they get to spend time with their family and friends? Like what type of work are they doing each day? And how much of their time is dedicated to serving customers, content creation, sales, social media, et cetera. Obviously the answers to these questions can be so different from business to business. And that’s part of why I really love interviewing business owners on this podcast. But in case you’ve been curious about what my life and business look like these days, I’m ready to shed some light here on this podcast episode today.
And full disclaimer. I don’t think I’ve ever done an episode exactly like this before. So there’s nothing really to go back to and directly compare to, you know what my, my schedule is like now. But I just want to be fully honest. The way that my life looks right now is vastly different to what it looked like before I had a kid.
So I do want to be transparent here. I work from home throughout the week, but if I’m being honest, it’s a pretty lax routine. In contrast before I was a mom. And while I was really striving to figure this whole online business thing out, I was for sure, a full blown workaholic. I really genuinely love online business and entrepreneurship. So when I essentially had no other responsibilities in life,
I worked most days of the week. Those crazy hours probably did help me grow my audience to the point where it is today with a Facebook group of over 13,000 people, a podcast with over a hundred thousand downloads, a highly engaged email list of about 6,000 people. And a small social following of about 5,000 across Instagram and Facebook.
Honestly in the grand scheme of online business, those numbers are still pretty small. There’s definitely a lot of people out there with hundreds of thousands of followers and way larger email lists. But I hope that this episode and the transparency, I hope to provide shows you that you can have a pretty awesome life doing things your own way and leaning into what’s working for you numbers. Don’t tell the whole story by a long shot.
So what does my business look like right now? For context? Right now I am only formerly selling one thing. And that is my SEO made simple course. I’ve been offering this course at a price point of about a thousand dollars. Since 2021, and it will be increasing in price to $1,997 in 2023. So from just selling this one course exclusively through my email list, we’ve been able to generate over $250,000 in sales.
In 2022. And I also make a pretty decent chunk of income from affiliate marketing. When I recommend tech stuff to my audience, or include affiliate links inside
social posts, blog content, or emails to my list. Of course not all of that income is profit and I still have to run the numbers for this year, but my guess is that I will land somewhere around the 180 K to 200 K mark in profit this year. And for some of you that may seem like a really awesome number.
Others of you may be thinking that’s relatively small potatoes. Uh, I don’t share these numbers to brag or make anyone feel uncomfortable. I’m sharing in the spirit of transparency and letting you fully know what my life is like running my business at this very moment. Obviously cost of living varies extensively across the country and throughout the world.
But we are currently living in the bay area, which does have a pretty high cost of living. So while this amount of income is absolutely wonderful. It’s not yet enough to buy a house here. So that is my next immediate goal in the future. And one of the main reasons I feel excited and ready to lean in and work on expanding my business over the next couple of years.
It’s still mostly me doing the work in my business at the moment. As I mentioned, I did hire a VA in 2022, who helps me every week with things like podcasts, editing and uploading, creating some podcast related social media posts and scheduling them on various platforms and prepping my slides and emails for office hours.
For my course. We’ve been working together for maybe three quarters of a year now and are at the point where we pretty much have our current systems down and we’re ready to try something new. So be on the lookout for perhaps a stronger presence for me and Caroline in 2023. But anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is that I see myself as sort of a middle of the road entrepreneur.
Like, I’m not technically a solo preneur anymore, but I’m also not working with a giant team or anything. It’s still me who pretty much is fully in charge of my content production course, content and updates and student support. So that’s where the bulk of my time is going right now. I do think that I am the bottleneck in some ways in my business.
So that might change in the future. As they get more clarity on my content production systems and goals and gain a better understanding of what I should consider outsourcing to free up some more of my time. So to give you some perspective here, I honestly worked very, very little from summer 2021 to summer 2022.
Essentially during my son’s first year of life. Since moving back up to the bay area. About a year ago, we were able to gain some childcare help two days a week for my parents. So I was using those days to get things done in my business. But otherwise I was the primary parent while my husband was out doing real estate related things.
Um, most days of the week. And if something else came up on the days that we had help or if our help was unavailable during a certain week, and I had to shift gears away from work, I always chose to do that. So my business stuff was definitely on the back burner for about a year, primarily by choice.
I was honestly in coast mode during this time tend to just soaking in the first year of my son’s life and enjoying the fruits of that evergreen webinar funnel I put into place before my son was born. Thankfully all that work I had put in upfront. I created an evergreen sales system in my business that was generating multiple six figures in core sales without having to do any stressful live launches. I was able to solely focus on supporting my students, producing podcast episodes and engaging in my free Facebook group. Knowing that as my audience reach grew, my email list and sales would grow automatically as well.
So for a full year, I coasted on that setup. I’d say it was right around when my son turned one that I started to get the itch to work a little more throughout the week. I felt like my son was just starting to be able to be a bit more independent. It was breastfeeding less often. And I just started to feel that little creative itch, wanting to dive back in and create something new and also improve what I already have.
A few months ago, I upped my podcasting frequency backup to weekly episodes, and I’ve been working on my, on updating my course materials so that I can relaunch my SEO course in spring 2023 with updated and expanded content and a new, higher price point. My plan is for the SEO course. Sort of stay there at that price point as my signature product, and then work on expanding and creating other supporting offers to go alongside it. So that’s where my head’s at right now.
We are also working on trying to double my business in 2023 so that we can fully replace my husband’s salary and allow him to be a stay at home dad while we have a young family. If we can achieve that, we will be able to have 100% location independence, and we’d be able to have one parent home to care for our son while he’s little and just, oh, so cute.
Instead of needing to pay for daycare. So as of a few weeks ago, I have actually started working four to five days per week, depending on how much help we have in any given week. So that is the schedule and typical quote unquote week in the life framework that I’ll be sharing with you today, but just know that this is a super, super new schedule and all the kinks aren’t really worked out yet.
And prior to that, I was only working two days per week or sometimes less. Uh, for the last year. So I hope that provides a good background as we dive into what my typical week looks like these days. So to summarize. I’m currently wanting, running one evergreen online course that sells via my email list. I’m publishing weekly podcast episodes, and I have one part-time VA that helps out with admin and tech stuff.
So what does my typical week look like? Right now I’m working Monday through Friday and taking Saturdays and Sundays completely off. And this is a really big deal for me since, for what feels like forever. I pretty much had no boundaries and did at least some kind of work seven days out of the week.
But now that we have a family, it’s really important to me to have two dedicated family days on the weekend. So currently I’m only working on the weekdays from about 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. And once I’m done relaunching my SEO course, I hope to cut that back down to four days per week so that I can take a mid-week mommy baby day with my son.
But I have a lot of work to do in revamping the course content. So that probably won’t happen for maybe four or five more months. On a typical weekday. I wake up with my son whenever he wakes up, usually somewhere between six and 7:00 AM ish. And I am the on-duty parent from whenever that time is until 9:00 AM.
And then when 9:00 AM hits, I quote, unquote, leave for work. AKA go to the back room of the house and work on the spare bed in my pajamas sometimes with Netflix on, in the background. And, anyway, during the morning time before 9:00 AM, I typically will wake up and, you know, put on my contacts, brush my teeth with my son. Um, make some coffee, that’s an essential. And then me and my son have breakfast together. We have some snuggles and playtime.
And not gonna lie. I often check my blogging stats while he’s eating breakfast. Usually look at Google analytics to see how much traffic my site is getting and the position changes metric in SEMrush to see how my keyword rankings have fluctuated over the last 24 hours. Then once 9:00 AM hits, my husband comes out. Usually he’s in the back room, you know, sleeping in a little bit, having some personal time, meditating, journaling, he’s really big into having like a centering morning routine to help set him up for the day.
Um, so he has his, his, you know, time to himself in the morning while I’m with the baby. And then we S we flip-flop and he takes over at 9:00 AM. So at 9:00 AM I go into the back room and officially start work. I tend to rebel against myself if I try to set up too strict of a work schedule. So I do best if I have a running to-do list for the week on a note on my phone. And then I slot in those activities throughout the week, based on what else I have on my plate that day.
And my personal energy levels, because one thing’s for sure, having a young child makes it super hard to plan. And if I was up all night soothing, my teething toddler, there’s no way that the next day is going to be the day I record videos for my course. Like no matter what my initial plans were instead, I’d probably focus on something that’s less energy intensive, like doing some keyword research, drafting out some podcast, ideas, booking new podcast, guests, et cetera.
So what type of activities do I typically have on my plate every week? The biggest recurring task on my plate each week is getting a podcast episode completed. I try my best to alternate between solo episodes and guest episodes. So really, I only have to record a solo episode every other week because those are the ones that really take me more time. But it feels like I’m always doing something podcast related regardless. So for example, this week I’m scripting out this episode and then recording it.
I’m honestly, not really good at winging things. And my brain does much better in formulating cohesive thoughts when I’m writing, rather than just talking off the cuff. So I essentially write out all my thoughts, almost like a blog post, and then read it to myself while recording. So this means I probably spend way more time than most people working on my podcast each week. Cause I’m sort of effectively doing it twice.
Once while writing and then once while recording, but that’s just how my brain works and I’m okay with that. Since it does tend to lead to a really good final product. I also try to batch record guest episodes during a few weeks, every quarter, so that I end up with a backlog of recorded interviews that I can slot into the podcasting schedule throughout the upcoming months.
And I do a good amount of prep work for those interviews. So on the weeks where I’m not recording a guest interview or solo interview. My time is spent outreaching to people to be future guests. I have a super cool process for this that maybe I will elaborate on in a future episode. And then I also spend time writing interview questions so that I can make sure I don’t forget to ask anything super important or relevant for my audience when I’m talking to someone.
I dig into my guests backgrounds. I looked at their, I look at their LinkedIn check out their websites, their social profiles and what they’re offering in their business. Especially if I’m not super familiar with them before we talk, I do this so that the interview is super high quality, and it’s not just a generic set of questions that I ask everyone. And I think that really makes a difference in the quality of the episodes and the quality of the tidbits and information that I am able to pull out of my guests.
So once an interview is recorded and I know where the conversation went. I also go and record an introduction solo by myself. And sometimes an outro for the episode as well. And then once those pieces are in place. I upload everything into Descript and my VA takes over from there. She edits. The episode creates the show notes on my website, creates a few pieces of social media content to go with it, write some captions that I then review and then schedules the content out onto my social media platforms. And that whole process usually takes up maybe like.
Two days out of my week on average. And honestly, since this process does take up so much of my time each week, one of my goals for 2023 is to get better at creating podcast content that aligns with my business goals and making sure that I’m including calls to action on each episode. And coming up with better systems to share the content on my platforms.
This podcast doesn’t directly make me any money. So I’ve also considered into looking into other podcast hosting options. Uh, some of the other platforms allow things like dynamic ad insertion, so I could make money. From ad revenue from people listening. But we shall see. In addition to working on the podcast.
Each day. I also spend at least 30 minutes to an hour in my students, only Facebook group, responding to student questions. I probably spend another hour responding to emails depending on the day. And if one of my monthly office hours calls is coming up, I will spend maybe half the day on the day prior looking through all the questions that have been submitted.
And making sure that I have good in-depth answers, ready to go for all of them. I did forget to mention that earlier this year, I opened up a few additional offerings in my business that I haven’t really promoted at all. And one of those involves website and SEO support in exchange for a monthly fee.
Right now I’m offering quarterly SEO strategy sessions and feedback and website tech support for $500 per month. And I do have one person enrolled in that service right now. So every week I spend some time keeping her website up to date, responding to her questions and providing tech support as needed. And then once a quarter, we meet on video to review her SEO progress and plot our strategy for the next quarter.
I actually really enjoy this work. And my initial intention was to eventually outsource most of that work if there was enough interest, but I’ve sort of found myself in this awkward spot where there’s not enough, people signed up to justify outsourcing it. So it’s really, probably more of a time suck than it should be. And I can see myself possibly chatting this offer down in the future to focus on what I’m really good at and what my students really love, which is my online courses. And as you may know, I am also working on another blog right now called nutritionist answers.
That I’m running with an RD partner. So she does most of the content creation. I’m sort of like the higher level planner. I do all the keyword research. And sort of plot the course for where we want the business and the content to go.
So each week, I’m not typically the one creating content, but I am the one looking for backlink opportunities for that site. So I browse, uh, help a reporter out emails. I look in Facebook groups for opportunities, but I try not to spend maybe more than an hour each week, replying to stuff. I pretty much only reply to things that I already have an answer for.
Ready to go. I also spent a few hours each month. Editing blog posts that my partner writes. Uh, formatting the post, adding affiliate links, internal links, et cetera, and then publishing them on the site. I also do the social media scheduling and content planning as well. And then I’d say maybe like once a quarter, I write a post myself.
Usually when I’m trying to experiment with a new format of post that we haven’t written before. And I want to come up with sort of like standard operating procedures for them. So an example would be, I wrote a review post for a product and kind of formulated how that would look moving forward. The next one that I’m going to write is like a product comparison repost where I review a bunch of.
Similar products at the same type and like say what our official recommendation is. And I’m going to come up with sort of a standard operating procedure and format for that type of post as well. And finally, I also probably spend a few hours each week keeping up on the latest SEO and online business news.
By reading the latest updates from various websites that I follow in my feed reader. Feedly. And then I probably also spend a few more hours each week trying to learn something new that I want to implement in my business. I’m a huge fan of just in time learning. So I avoid procrastinate learning at all costs.
If I come across something really cool that I want to try in my business, I bookmark it or save it depending on where I saw it and come back to it only when I’m actually ready to implement. There’s something about hitting that save button. That makes me feel like I’m still accomplishing something in my business, but it prevents me from wasting time learning about something that I’m not actually ready to take action on at the moment.
So at the time of this recording, It’s also around the first of the month. And I always spend probably half a day on the first of each month doing some bookkeeping, bill paying. And tracking my blog and social media stats. This is honestly something I probably should outsource, but it’s actually one of my favorite tasks. I really like to track metrics and see the progress in my business. So I really enjoy it. And it’s hard to want to hand that off.
Uh, and, oh, there’s one more thing. I almost forgot writing emails every six weeks or so. I write a new email series for my email list. That includes four weeks of emails and there’s two emails per week. So a batch of like eight emails plus a sales pitch series for Masio made simple course. And I alternate between sending people to either my free webinar that leads them to buy or letting them head straight to the sales page to sign up.
During those sales pitches. And those biweekly emails that I put out. So that twice a week, emails, I guess I should say. Are super short and sweet, like usually less than 10 sentences each. And they contain links to pieces of my content that I think my audience will enjoy and find valuable. They’re usually links to my podcast episodes since that’s my main form of content creation in the business right now. But I have done a few valuable Facebook videos that I linked to on occasion as well.
And at this point, I think I’m only like one email sequence away from having a full year of automated content in place. So once I have the full year, I’m not going to keep adding to it. People will just like start over again after the one year mark, at least that’s how I plan to do it at this moment in time, since guaranteed, most people are not reading every single email that you send out.
So they won’t even remember something you sent out a year ago. Uh, and am going to go back and evaluate the stats on those email sequences and swap email content out if something was underperforming. So the next cycle won’t be exactly the same as the first cycle. Because anything that didn’t really do that well, I’m going to swap it out with other content, et cetera, other subject lines, whatever it is, rewrite the email, anything that was underperforming until I have a full set of epic, highly performing.
You know, 52 weeks worth of content for my audience to enjoy. And anytime I am writing an email sequence, it usually takes me maybe half a day or so, but I do it pretty infrequently. So I almost forgot about it when I was writing this, you know, what a week in my life blurb. But. Those are the tasks that I typically spend my time on each week or month. Um, but then on top of that, I usually also have like a larger project looming in the background that then gets slotted into all the extra hours that are left over.
So right now that project is going through my SEO course videos and making sure that all the tech tutorials are up to date, adding new content or content upgrades, and basically making the SEO course the best it can possibly be before it gets rereleased again in 2023, of course that’s a huge job, but how I’ve made it more manageable is that I’ve mapped out what I need to accomplish each week for the next three or four months in order to make it happen.
Personally, I work best with deadlines. So I try to artificially create them in my business to get myself to actually do things. So for example, maybe I put a target date in my mind that I want to relaunch the SEO made simple course in the first week of March. Let’s say. So I’ll go in and I’ll figure out how many weeks I have until that date and exactly how much content that I need to review and update by then, plus how much new stuff that I have in my mind that I also want to create. And then I slot those activities into each week. That way, as I enter each week, I don’t have to waste time wondering what I’m supposed to be working on.
I already have my plan mapped out and I just have to execute it. I do the same thing for my blog and my podcast schedule as well. I have content calendars that I bulk fill out months ahead so that I can just pop in, do the work as efficiently as possible and not have to waste that brain space floundering around thinking, oh, what was I supposed to be doing for this part of the business it’s already planned out.
For my podcast, the topics are mostly based around things that would be relevant to SEO, blogging, online business, et cetera. And I just come up with those based on what I think would be of interest to my audience and what is in alignment with my business goals. And for my blog, I based the content around keyword research and I do the keyword research in bulk maybe once per quarter and then plan out.
You know, a quarter’s worth of content. I know that I could and probably should do the same thing for social media as well. Like create a social media content calendar, and then figure out how my podcast stuff can be repurposed on social media. But I haven’t gotten that far yet. So that is one of the main things on my to-do list for 2023, coming up with a better system for repurposing my content on social media. So I will be sure to share that with you once I have my methods in place and have some feedback on how it’s going.
So, yeah, that’s pretty much how my days and weeks look around here. I’m trying to think if I’m forgetting anything. I guess I should mention that I have two standing appointments on my calendar each month that require video calls and everything else I do on my own time in my pajamas. Usually. And those two calls are one hour of a live office hour call for my SEO core students. And then one monthly check-in call with my assistant.
So my assistant and I do weekly check-ins via email, but it’s also helpful to catch up face-to-face each month and make sure we’re just sorta on the same page for everything moving forward. And I will also say that. I changed my schedule sort of on a whim relatively often. So for example, sometimes I’ll pop into the kitchen and have lunch with the family, which I really enjoy, or other days I’ll decide to stop, work a little early to join the family and our dog on there.
Daily walk around the, the local lake. You know, if there’s other random things that come up like an illness or a doctor’s appointment, I don’t hesitate to drop my work and be there for my family. And I’ve actually become really good recently at stopping my work for the day as well, which is something that I used to be absolutely horrible at.
Once 4:00 PM hits. I closed my laptop, head into the kitchen and start making dinner while my son hangs out in his learning tower and helps and taste tests, everything. After dinner, we do a bath and playtime and clean up. We put on pajamas, we read books and then I do the put down every night. So after 8:00 PM or so my husband and I typically have some time to ourselves.
We’ll try to spend some quality time together. Maybe catch up on a show or something. Lately, there’s been a lot of extracurricular things to do like Christmas shopping, online, or planning the Thanksgiving menu. So that doesn’t always happen, but we try, he also has a newish video game that he’s really into. So sometimes he’ll stay up a little later playing that and I go to bed early and read and get some extra sleep.
Because if you didn’t know, I love sleep and having bad sleep has been one of the hardest things about parenting so far, honestly. Uh, I try to spend 30 minutes or so reading for pleasure in bed before I fall asleep, that’s been a habit of mine since I was a kid. And it really helps soothe me to sleep.
Right now I’m reading cryptonomic con, but I’m almost done. And I’m definitely on the lookout for my next read. I just have one rule that I can’t read any business or entrepreneurship type of books before bed, because it gets me way too jazzed up. And then I can’t sleep afterwards. Like my brain goes crazy thinking about how I could apply all this stuff to my business. And it’s just a recipe for bad sleep. So I tend to gravitate towards historical fiction science fiction autobiographies, or, you know, sometimes trashy reads that are currently trending.
Like I definitely read all the Twilight series back in the day when that was a thing. So that’s what I’m into, but yeah, I mean, overall, I am really. So, so grateful. For the life that we’ve created. The other night after dinner, I was laying on the playmat while my son played with his trucks. My husband was washing the dishes. He had Christmas music playing, and I was just thinking how awesome this moment was and how was everything that I hoped parenting would be. Obviously not every moment is like that, but I really feel so blessed to be able to earn a great living while still having pretty excellent work-life balance and a lot of control and autonomy over my time. Uh, so that’s pretty much the gist of my life right now. As you can see, it is a lot more relaxed and go with the flow than maybe it has been in other seasons of my life.
I don’t really have a strict, I do this task on Monday, this task on Tuesday type of schedule. It’s a lot more free flowing based on how the week is going and what the highest priority tasks are for the week. I know this episode was a little more personal and laid back and less strategy focused than usual, but I hope that it satisfied that little nugget of curiosity that might exist in your brain where you’re wondering what it’s really like to run an online business from home as a mom.
And if this type of lifestyle seems attractive to, you know, that it is definitely achievable with the right strategy and consistent action over time. I want to be clear that I started my first website way back in 2010. And I’ve been in the online world for a long time. I launched the unconventional R D brand five years ago now. So all of this has been a long time in the making and it was far from an overnight success. And I say that because I know there were many, many years.
Where I struggled to keep it together, working like 50 million odd jobs at weird hours, never having any money left over at the end of the month, there was a period of time where I went like two years without getting my hair done. Like my sister-in-law definitely cut my hair in the living room on Thanksgiving one year, because that was all I could manage to get done.
Um, I wasn’t buying any clothes. Like my only clothes I got for a few years where gifts for birthdays or Christmas. Or if I happened to earn points for clothes on my credit card. That was tough for someone who usually enjoy staying up with the trends and being fashionable, et cetera. It was hard to like put that part of me aside. But in the end persistence and improving a tiny bit each day compounded over time. And now I really am earning more money than I likely would be working anywhere as an RD.
And I have wonderful work-life balance on top of it. So the journey was worth it for me. And I hope if you envision an online business for yourself too. Hold that vision in your heart and know that you will get there in time. And it probably will not happen overnight. In fact, it will probably be several years in the making, but when you look back after those few years at har how far you’ve come.
You’ll be like, wow, I’m so glad I got started when I did. And didn’t give up. And if you’re looking for a community of like-minded people to connect with, I’d love to invite you to join my free Facebook group, the unconventional R D community on Facebook. It’s a wonderful space to connect with over 13,000 other food and wellness professionals.
Who are interested in unconventional career paths and online business. I work really hard to foster a positive and supportive space there. So please feel free to share inside the group. There’s even a cool feature now where you can post anonymously in case you’re worried about people, you know, reading your thoughts and feelings about your business.
You can find us by searching for the unconventional R D community on Facebook and requesting to join. And I highly recommend leaving your email address when you join so that we can stay connected and you can get all of those juicy 52 weeks of emails that I have written out every week has something helpful and actionable for you.
And being on my list is currently the only way to get invited to join. My course, SEO made simple the next time it opens for enrollment. So hopefully. I’ll see you in the Facebook group and connect with you via email.
Have a great rest of your day and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
Erica Julson is a registered dietitian turned digital marketing pro. She has over 12 years of experience blogging and building online businesses and has taught over 900 wellness professionals inside her signature program, SEO Made Simple.
