Blogging Lessons 2 years later

99Finds is TWO today!!! Its been an adventure and challenging in some of the best ways, here’s what I learned.

Starting Something New:

Starting something new from scratch is hard. If you are unclear on the vision, goals and driving force its hard to stay consistent. With a full time job, you have to make time for what is important to you, once you carve out the time consistency comes right along with it. Your first blog post or video is never going to be perfect but you need to start in order to reach your goals. It will get better over time.

Staying Consistent:

This was especially tough for me because what I share is based on my personal experience, so figuring out the timing/creation of posts and videos in relation to when I was having the experience was a struggle and often led to breaks in my posting. In the beginning this felt like the biggest failure to me. The algorithm and all the content creation gurus tell us that we should be posting 1-3 times a day depending on the app. My formula isn’t perfect right now and that has to be ok, this year I posted more regularly than ever and for that I am proud of myself. One day I’ll have scheduled content for my breaks but right now stories on Instagram and TikTok is the best I can do. I am a human, I have seasons just like everyone else so holding myself to someone else’s expectation of me is not realistic. The internet is a pit of comparison, creating content feels like you are dancing along the rim everyday. If you fall into the pit, its ok dust yourself off and refocus on what is important to you: for me this was making content that is authentic to my brand and experience.

Open To Change:

99Finds has evolved and will continue to change as I do. Over the years, the way I create videos, how I share/post content has changed and probably the biggest shift in my process has been shamelessly promoting myself to strangers in real life. I carry merch all the time and when the opportunity presents itself I am prepared with my elevator pitch about the blog and how there is something for everyone on 99Finds. This was a huge challenge since the blog is about my life but if I am not promoting it with a smile then how will it ever grow. There will ups and downs with every adventure, how you manage those changes is what determines your growth in the process.

If there is one thing you take from this - You don’t know 100% of what is happening with anyone (even when they post every day) the internet is a carefully curated highlight reel NOT real life.

My sincerest Thank you to every person for following along on my journey to create a blog that documents everything that brings Balance, Ease and Efficiency to my life.