#002: How To Build a Multi-Brand Business With Dayna Abraham
Welcome to episode 002 of the Blogger Genius Podcast. My guest is Dayna Abraham from the blog, Lemon Lime Adventures.
Table of Contents
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Dayna has a successful blog, an online store, and is an author of multiple books on parenting (including an Amazon best-seller). She started each business separately, and only later figured out how they all fit together. Listen to her story and how she created each of her businesses.
In this episode we discuss how to build a successful multi-brand business and find the throughline.
Resources:
- Lemon Lime Adventures
- Superkids Activity Guide To Conquoring Everyday (affil)
- Sensory Processing 101
- Project Sensory Store
- Deep Work (affil)
- Bloggy Buddies Facebook Group
- MiloTree
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Transcript – How To Build a Multi-Brand Business:
Jillian: [00:00:03] Today I have Dayna Abraham on the show, who is a good friend that I’ve met a couple of years ago. And she is an author, a blogger, and an online entrepreneur. So welcome, Dayna.
Dayna: [00:00:24] Hi Jillian. I’m so glad that you have me here.
On building multiple brands
Jillian: [00:00:27] I was just about to say that your blog is called Lemon lime Adventures and that that was your business. And you said, Well that’s one of my businesses.
Jillian: [00:00:37] So can you share what you mean by that?
Dayna: [00:00:41] Yes so I started a blog Lemon Lime Adventures, when I first started, and never knew that it was going to turn into what it has. They are all connected in some way now but we have multiple books. Some are under the Lemon Lime Adventure’s brand and some are not. So we have a book called Sensory Processing 101, and it’s with my good friends at the Inspired Treehouse, and Sensory Processing 101 has turned into its own brand. We also started a store a year after the blog, and it’s called Project Sensory, and it’s its own brand as well. A lot of times they don’t even cross over. People don’t know that we’re the same people.
Dayna: [00:01:21] Well could you go back though when you started Lemon Lime Adventures? What was your vision for it? And then can you explain what sensory stuff is and why you got into that?
Dayna: [00:01:31] OK. So when I first started blogging, I laugh at this, but I started blogging and I did not know what a blog was. I had no idea I’d never read one. And I had come home to stay home with my kid who no longer fit in the public school system, and I just had this inner need to do something to help the family. Even though my husband said, You don’t have to, I have a good job. He worked as the I.T. as the CTO at a trading firm at the Board of Trade. So he had a great job, and he was like, you don’t have to help the family. And I was like, No I do I need to make enough money to pay for my box wine, and he said you don’t have to buy a box wine you can have bottled wine, it’s really OK. I was like, No I don’t have a job. I really need to do this for myself. So that is how Lemon Lime Adventures started. And the blog itself Lemon Lime Adventure started because I was researching stuff for homeschooling my son, and researching blogging, and researching just life at home, and things like that, and how everything I found everything was so Pinterest perfect, and you might appreciate that because I feel like your site is so beautiful. And then you have MiloTree. But everything was so Pinterest perfect because that’s what comes up on Google. I knew nothing about SEO at the time, and everyone had their stuff together.
Dayna: [00:03:02] And I had to start a blog called, I Don’t Know Beep, but then someone told me that you can’t monetize a site that has a curse word in the title. So I was like, OK I’ll just call it. I Don’t Know Jack, but that didn’t end up working out. So I came up with a better name.
Jillian: [00:03:22] Lemon Lime Adventures is like for home schoolers. And that’s what it started as.
Dayna: [00:03:31] It started as this real life look. I wanted to make sure that it was really clear that life isn’t perfect, and sometimes life is really sour, really ugly, really messy, and so much so that you don’t feel like you’re going to get to the other side of it.
Jillian: [00:03:50] And Dayna, I have to say that is when we first met, I feel like that was what we connected over, it was just I love your level of honesty. I really responded to that.
Dayna: [00:04:05] I feel like we connected immediately.
Dayna: [00:04:10] We’re sitting on the bus just like talk talk talk.
Jillian: [00:04:13] Yes. OK. So then explain how you went down the path of sensory.
Dayna: [00:04:25] So my oldest son has struggles with sensory at the time, we weren’t sure about everything that it involved, but he was highly explosive as he was would get really angry. He had a mix of emotions he had a big struggle with regulating his emotions. So he would have these big explosions and meltdowns. He also was really sensitive to noises and light and taste and things like that. So we started learning more about how to support him and help him. And as I started learning more about that sensory processing disorder, I started learning how we have more than five senses which is what most of us were taught growing up, and how those senses aren’t just, oh we see things and we take things in and we feel things. It’s really how we integrate everything in our world. It’s how we respond. It’s why some of us get carsick and some of us don’t. It’s why some of us love going on roller coasters and some of us would rather just sit on a bench. You know it’s all our sensory system, and once I’ve figured that out I wanted to kind of tell the world.
Starting an online store
Jillian: [00:05:39] So then did you start your store.
Dayna: [00:05:43] The store was a funny story, too. So I was part of a blog hop, which I don’t even know how many people actually do those anymore. You know a bunch of us got together, and we were doing a back to school blog hop.
Dayna: [00:05:56] And I decided to do my DIY sensory tool kit. All the things that we gather in our house and take with us that have helped him when we go to the grocery store or when we go to the doctor’s office or we’re in the car or anything like that.
Jillian: [00:06:16] And so I posted my DIY and I linked to Amazon as any good blogger would. So you can get the Amazon affiliate link in there. And I had people e-mailing me asking you how to get the backpack and so I had to explain to them all, this is how Amazon works. You just go over and put them all in your cart and buy it. And people didn’t want that. They wanted it all put together the way I had it together. And so we started down the path of seeing if that was a possibility. And then it morphed into its own brand and what that brand is Project Sensory.
Dayna: [00:06:52] So Project Sensory is my baby. It is not a gigantic moneymaker for us. We break even maybe make a little bit here and there, but it’s my baby, and I love it, because ultimately I would love to be able to donate those kits to kids who can’t afford them or families that can’t afford them. But more so, I’d love to have a Project Sensory kit in every classroom in the world because a lot of times teachers don’t know about this, and parents don’t know about this, and if you had a kit that could support the kids in your class with different behaviors and different things, then our kids would be so much more successful.
Creating books
Jillian: [00:07:40] So how did the books come about?
Dayna: [00:07:47] So the very first book came about, that’s Sensory Processing 101. It came about because again I was told all good bloggers do interlinking. And so when I wrote my blog post about my son, I wanted to be able to link back on my site about sensory processing, and I had nothing and I didn’t feel like the expert, didn’t feel like I knew what I was talking about. So I reached out to another new blog and they were occupational therapists and physical therapists doing this blog with kids activities. So I reached out to them and asked if they would do a guest post on my site about sensory processing, and they said nope we won’t because we don’t have anything on our site about sensory processing, but what if we did some sort of series.
Dayna: [00:08:39] So we came up with a series and it lasted an entire year. Once a month we wrote about one of the senses. They wrote the technical side and what it looks like when it’s healthy and what it looks like when it’s dysregulated. And I wrote about what it looks like as a parent and an educator, and I made these little printables that went with it, and told my story.
Jillian: [00:09:04] And you were posting these on your blogs?
Dayna: [00:09:08] On Lemon Lime Adventures. And they posted theirs on theirs. I posted mine on mine and we would link to each other. And those were the first posts that really got a lot of traction everywhere. You know on Pinterest and on Facebook, and both of us were growing because of these posts.
Dayna: [00:09:28] And at the end we both kind of got on the phone and said well, what are we supposed to do now? And we decided to turn it into a book. And it took a whole, another year to turn it into a book because we wanted to do it right. We wanted it to be a book that we could be proud of, that could stand up with all the other books out there on the subject at hand.
Jillian: [00:09:48] I wanted to just say, you can tell me if you agree with this, which is when you want to take on something like a book, and you think, Oh we’ll just do it in a weekend, things take much longer than you think. And that’s not a bad thing, but sometimes you read about a blogger who put together this seven figure course overnight, and you think what’s wrong with me? Why is that not happening to me? But it is much harder. So like I would say you have to think about how long something’s going to take. And then double it.
Dayna: [00:10:25] If someone tells you that they created a seven figure course overnight. They are not telling you about all the things that went into creating their platform and their audience and their list.
Dayna: [00:10:38] They’ve been thinking about that product for years, working on it, and even if it’s just that they had it all on their blog, and they put it together as a course, or they work really really fast. But at the same time, you’re missing something to the story. There is no, I always tell my kids there is no easy money out there. Nothing is free. Nothing is easy. You’re going to have to work at it. But then it’s like when we got on the phone earlier you’re like, oh you’re just doing all these things. I said I think on the outside, it looks so much better than what it looks like on our side, because on the outside, to other people, it’s going to look like you did it overnight, or you’re doing all the things and that’s just not the case.
Jillian: [00:11:29] It’s funny because for Catch My Party, we have grown it into the largest party ideas site on the Web, and people will say to me how did you do it? What’s your magic bullet? And I say if there were a magic bullet I’d be using it. We grew it in a very slow and steady way and there isn’t any quick answer.
Dayna: [00:11:58] Right.
Jillian: [00:11:59] Pinterest for us has been a huge traffic driver. We built MiloTree to grow our Pinterest following and it worked. So for us that has been this really nice feedback loop. But is it like one day we woke up and wow this was our traffic. No way. It is a long slog.
Facebook strategy
Dayna: [00:12:24] Yes. It really is different for everyone. You know for bloggers that are listening, thinking oh there’s so much information out there, who do I believe, which is the one thing that I’m going to do. It’s going to be different for everyone. For me, Facebook is my love. Facebook is a thing that sends me the most traffic. So I really love that. And I give my Facebook so much attention because of that. Whereas there are some brands that Facebook isn’t going to be that for, and so you just kind of have to figure out where is it going to come for you.
Jillian: [00:12:59] Yes. And Facebook, by the way, after I met you, and we talked about Facebook, and we tried everything for Catch My Party to get the kind of traffic and real excitement that you get on Facebook, and it doesn’t work for us on Facebook. But for us our sweet spot is Pinterest and it is that thing of try everything, and then continue to go toward what’s already working right.
Dayna: [00:13:27] So on Facebook. It’s a social place, and people want to be able to if they want to share something they want to share it and then go right back to being social and scrolling. They don’t really want to get caught up in something for a long time. And so with you, with all your things being so visual, and just being pictures people can scroll right past them and be like oh wow that was pretty, right. Oh that’s awesome. Yeah. And they can scroll and never have to share it.
Dayna: [00:13:54] So for you, video will probably be your turning point, if there are wayd for you to make the video quick. Like a one minute engaging. Oh you have to see this! That’s probably what’s going to be your game changer for Facebook.
Jillian: [00:14:11] Right. But even with that, it doesn’t tend to translate into clicks back to our site.
Dayna: [00:14:17] No it won’t. Probably not unless you do a printable. If you do something where they need to print it. Yes. And I hear this all the time. People are like, oh well, that’s great that your video got six million views but what did it do for you? You know, and what traffic did it bring you, and my highest viewed video actually brought me no traffic at all. It was a sponsor. It brought the sponsor a little bit of traffic, but it was name recognition. They came back and offered me another video, of course. My page loves videos and I can post videos and they do well, so when my new book came out, and I posted a video, and it went viral, it did relate to sales. Yes.
New book
Jillian: [00:15:10] So let’s talk about then how you translated your first book, that you worked on with this other blogger, to now your new book, which has done really well on Amazon.
Dayna: [00:15:27] Yes it has done really well online for sure. So there were a couple of books in between the sensory processing 101 book. I’ve done a STEAM book, and a Lego book, and just a couple of collaborative projects with other people, and I was actually talking with a publisher last year, and we were going to work on a science book together, and that fell through. And when it fell through, a friend of mine was finishing up her book with her publisher, and she said well what if I introduce you. So I got a call, and we talked about what sensory was. And then the book kind of just morphed. And the idea kind of just fell out of my mouth. And so that’s what happened. I didn’t want to do a sensory book because I knew from Sensory Processing 101, that if I marketed a sensory book, my mission of getting the world to know that this is something that every person has in their body wouldn’t happen.
Dayna: [00:16:41] So can you tell everybody what your book is?
Dayna: [00:16:43] My new book is The Super Kids Activity Guide to Conquering Every Day. So it’s a mouthful and it is a book of 75 crafts and activities that basically help kids and parents find a common ground and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. So it’s written to children and it walks them through all their sticky parts of the day. So getting out the door in the morning, eating dinner without wiggling and moving around and being picky.
Dayna: [00:17:19] And even homework, and going to bed, but its purpose is to change the kid’s perception of themselves, and then therefore change the perception of kids from a parent’s perspective or a grown ups perspective.
Jillian: [00:17:35] What I like about it is how it normalizes the behaviors that as a parent drives you nuts.
Dayna: [00:17:43] That is exactly what it is supposed to do.
Jillian: [00:17:46] So it gives you a whole different perspective on why your kid might be like this and how to change the narrative instead of… you’re driving me nuts.
Dayna: [00:17:56] And I actually use the language from my readers and from people that I hear my friends and everything and myself even. I use that language and kind of poke a little bit of fun at the grownups in the kids’ lives. So every activity has a trainer or adult section and it basically is like you know I bet you’re grownups say, calm down.
Dayna: [00:18:18] I mean don’t they know if you could calm down you would? And so just little phrases like that, where I’m kind of poking fun, but then I’m also saying that this is why you’re grown up is saying that, they’re saying that because they don’t know what you’re doing. They don’t know why you’re doing it. Then they’ve forgotten how hard it is to calm down when you’re seven years old.
Different Business Revenue Streams
Jillian: [00:18:39] With all your businesses, I would say that bloggers today have multiple revenue streams. Yes. So could you talk about all the different ways you guys make money?
Dayna: [00:18:56] So we actually have this gigantic whiteboard in our kitchen and we have it’s divided up by all of our revenue streams, so it’s really funny, and it has like a massive to do list for them. So we have Sensory Processing 101, Project Sensory which is a store, so its physical and digital products.
Dayna: [00:19:18] We have a course.
Jillian: [00:19:21] We haven’t even talked about that.
Dayna: [00:19:24] So we have a course, which we first see more courses coming in that same realm. We have, of course, ads on our for page views. So we have ads, we have affiliate income. We also are part of Young Living Essential Oils. So we have the MLM income. My husband does consulting work, and so that’s actually a stream of revenue for us. And what am I missing?
Dayna: [00:19:55] The new book. So there are lots of streams. So if one was to fall off right then would be OK.
Jillian: [00:20:09] What about your business are you most excited about moving forward?
Finding the common thread
Dayna: [00:20:15] So I’m actually really excited that we’re starting to find the common thread between all of them. And I feel like this last book really did that for us, The Super Kids Activity Guide kind of wraps up the elevator pitch of all these different brands that we have. They’re all about misunderstood kids or being misunderstood or finding something you’re passionate about. So even the work that we do as bloggers, or the work that my husband does, it’s all about taking a passion and then turning it into something else, or seeing things in a different way, and not being alone, and not feeling lost and afraid. And so that kind of excites me… how we’re going to continue to build our brands and all of the different kind of legs of the brand.
Jillian: [00:21:11] What I love about this is you started with one thing, and you didn’t know where it was going to take you. And you discovered a blog post where people wanted what you were linking to, and you said, hey we could turn this into a business. And then that led to you connecting with this other blogger about writing blog posts, and then that turned into a book, which turned into other books. And we talked briefly about your course. You were saying you’re relaunching it.
Creating a course
Dayna: [00:21:43] Yes. So we we do an open-close cart.
Jillian: [00:21:48] What does that mean?
Dayna: [00:21:49] I love product launches. Like that’s one of my things, so they really excite me, launching a product excites me. And so opening and closing a cart on a product really increases the income that comes from it.
Dayna: [00:22:10] First of all, but it also just increases excitement, the excitement that goes along with it. Our friends told us one day, when we were talking about launching the book. He was like, just make every day an event. And I love that. And I would do that. And so during this open-closed cart you can do it even with products that stay on your site and still continue to be sold. It’s just during this open-close period, when the cart is open, there’s something special.
Dayna: [00:22:45] Is there a special price, or a special bonus, or or it’s only available during that week? And so for our course, we actually keep it closed, where no one can get in except for two times a year. And when we open it, we give all of our attention to all of the incoming people, and then we close it.
Jillian: [00:23:10] What is the course about?
Dayna: [00:23:11] So it’s called the Worries Workshop.
Dayna: [00:23:16] This is about helping parents and children understand emotions and self-regulation and getting through their day, those negative emotions and things like that.
Jillian: [00:23:27] And how does it work?
Dayna: [00:23:31] We’ve actually just recently started changing the language to it because it is available lifetime for them. You have lifetime access, and we used to call it a four-week course, but then these parents are feeling so overwhelmed already. And then they feel guilty that they’re not getting it done. And so now it’s just work on your own time. We’re going to drip it to you over the next four weeks, but you have time to come back to this anytime you want.
Jillian: [00:24:02] I like that because I know personally, when I have bought courses, and it’s like hurry up and you got to get to it. It starts to create anxiety for me, that I almost go, I can’t buy any more courses because I just don’t have the time.
Dayna: [00:24:19] Right. That time factor is huge. But the course actually comes with a quick win every day. So they even just did the quick win videos that take two minutes a day then that at least buys them some time.
Working with your husband
Jillian: [00:24:37] I love that. So you work with your husband. I think that also bonded us because I work with my husband. I do I think we first met I had just started working with my husband. And how is that partnership?
Dayna: [00:24:51] It has really turned into a true partnership now. But again it’s kind of like when we were talking about people that say that they overnight created a seven figure course. It’s like the people that say that overnight their husband came home and everything worked magically.
Jillian: [00:25:07] And you doubled your income.
Dayna: [00:25:11] That is not what happened here. So what happened here is the first year was a hot mess. And we didn’t have defined roles. He just he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do for the business. He considered it my business and he was just helping with all the little mundane stuff, and he didn’t like that because his brain wasn’t getting used and we were also dealing with life with our our oldest son. And so we were in like probably the worst place personally that we’ve ever been in. And so that was really hard. And so we didn’t double our income. And so this then last year was his second year and something turned.
Dayna: [00:25:59] I mean we almost shut it all down last summer. Not a lot of people know that. So we almost just quit it all because it was really taking a toll. It wasn’t that the business was taking a toll. It’s just that we didn’t have defined roles and he didn’t feel like it was his business. And I knew we couldn’t keep going if he was going to be home and not consider it his business because I needed him.
Jillian: [00:26:22] I would say that for my husband and me. The thing that you just said has been incredibly important which is we have very specific domains. My husband is the technologist. He is that guy. And I do all of the interacting and the marketing and stuff, but then we come together with for big decisions.
Dayna: [00:26:44] Yeah I think that come together part is the part we didn’t make time for or have time for. And so now we powwow, I mean people probably outside of our little world think we’re nuts. But if I said this to someone on the street or someone at my daughter’s school, but we have powwow meetings like every morning, and we say, OK what’s your number one thing today? OK what’s your number one thing today?
Dayna: [00:27:09] And then on the weekend we look at our white board and we see if we can take things off, and we can add things on, and we look into the calendar for the next couple of months and see if we can come up with somethingIt’s coming up to the end of the month. And so I really wish our income was a little bit more this month. We only have one more week. What could we do that could increase our income this week?
Dayna: [00:27:34] So we brainstormed and I came up with a list of things that I could try to do this week to increase our income.
Jillian: [00:27:41] We too have a ginormous white board and we’re constantly writing on it and figuring stuff out. And the funny thing is my husband and I work in the same office in our house and yet we will have to go get coffee in order to get ourselves out of our work mode, so that we can strategize. Yes and we sit there with a notepad and we take copious notes. I think it’s very easy to get caught up in the day to day. And it’s hard to have that time to step back and go OK but where are we headed? What is the long term strategy? And that’s what our coffees are about.
Dayna: [00:28:27] Yes I completely agree and the white board also is really helpful because just in passing we’ll be like oh we should really try x y z and and then we forget about it because we’re just in passing because we’re also partners, like we’re also around each other all the time. And it’s hard to turn that off sometimes. But it’s turning into something really cool, so you said what are you most excited about, and this is one of them. I mean I’m really excited about where our business can go now that we have a little bit more time, because our kids are starting to be in school and we’re we’re actually planning ahead. You know the launch for the next course is in six weeks and we started our pre-roll for it two weeks ago, with doing Facebook lives. So we’re so far ahead of the game on some of the stuff that it feels really great.
Work schedule
Jillian: [00:29:24] So how many hours a week do you and your husband work on your business? I know that’s a hard question because it’s hard to count the hours because life is also working.
Dayna: [00:29:42] So that is still morphing because you asked this week instead of asking last year. If you asked me last a year I would have told you that I work for two hours while my daughter is in preschool and I go to a coffee shop and I go three to four days a week, and that’s my only time now. And my husband was staying up at night. So after all the kids go to bed, he’d do all of the tech and all the stuff he does at night. And now that the kids are back in school, we’re only three weeks and so this is still very very new. So the time just isn’t as defined. I’d say we’re both getting closer to you know 20 to 30 hours a week. But it’s just not 20 to 30 hours of sit down, really great creative time.
Jillian: [00:30:34] I agree with that. There is a book called Deep Work that I recommend, and it is about doing the deep work where you are actually thinking and writing and really in that zone. And when you are an entrepreneur especially with children, you have to recognize that a lot of it is answering emails a lot of it is kind of crappy or you’re just jumping in to do something. And for me I really try to carve out some small time for deep work but most of the time, it’s… I always say like it’s not puppies and rainbows. No it’s a big mess.
Dayna: [00:31:14] It is. It is. And last year it was just working in the cracks. I mean that is 100 percent the way that I would describe my life. Last year was just working in the cracks, and I don’t know how we even survived it, but we did. And so for anyone else that’s out there and they’re like well I don’t have time. It means when you go to the bathroom you send an e-mail or when your kids are playing for five minutes by themselves, your scheduling out a couple of post on Facebook, and I’ve heard people say well I don’t want to live like that. And that’s a life choice. Like I knew it was for only a short time we were going to have to live like that. But I would have gotten nothing done if I didn’t work in the cracks.
Dealing with jealousy in the blogging world
Jillian: [00:32:00] Yes. I think that’s great. So I want to touch on something that we were talking about off line that we bonded over when we first met, and it is that chances are if you’re a blogger you’re in a niche. So I am in the entertaining party space and there are other bloggers who are in my niche, and in in many ways we help each other. So we’re in share groups or Instagram pods and we know each other because of course our space is not that big. But there’s also a negative side to this which is it can cause a lot of jealousy or weird feelings. And so Dayna, will you share what your experience has been like?
Dayna: [00:32:52] This is a touchy one.
Dayna: [00:32:57] Because we’re in these niches it’s like we’re all working in a coworking space with cubicles. We’re all in this one building together, and we each are doing our own thing, but we also are kind of peeking around and seeing what the other person is doing, and we know those people so well or think we do. And we only see, like what we were talking about before, or like you don’t see what people are doing on the backend. Nobody knew I was working in the cracks. Nobody knew that we were falling apart, and we were going to shut everything down, and you just don’t know those things. You only see the stuff that’s coming out. On the other side. And even when things aren’t coming out on the other side nobody realizes that. Nobody is taking notes on, Oh it’s been a long time since Dayna published a post. No one sees when I’m not publishing a post. They only see when I do publish something.
Jillian: [00:33:55] I took a break from Facebook. I read an article that Facebook can kind of make you feel bad. So I decided to do an experiment and figured out that, yes, when I’m on Facebook a lot of it actually makes me feel bad even though I’m not conscious of it. I’m not sitting here going, Oh my God, these people have such better lives. But you can’t help it because we are these these people who have lived in tribes, that you can’t help but look at your tribe mates and go, oh my God, do I measure up?
Dayna: [00:34:34] And because of what we, and the people that we know. I mean I feel like you end up knowing these people that are simply amazing, and brilliant, and you start looking at them and you’re like, oh she just published a book and she’s new York Times bestseller, and oh, well I’m not a New York Times bestseller. And you don’t mean to, but you start degrading the things that you have done.
Dayna: [00:34:55] Even though if you stepped outside of your blogger life or your entrepreneur life, you would have never thought these were things you would have ever done. Never ever thought I’d write a book, I would never.
Jillian: [00:35:08] I’m starting a podcast so I totally agree with you. So what would you recommend for people who would so that they don’t spiral into this negative headspace?
Dayna: [00:35:23] I think that one of the best things is finding one person that you can rely on, as kind of your go-to blogging buddy that you can trust with these feelings of spiraling, and you can say, I’m feeling like this. And they can just bring you back. I have one friend who is my freakout friend, and when I am just like when all of my pictures for my book were gone from my heart my SD card. So things like that. Big things right. But also these little things. But I go to her and I say OK how long do I have to freak out and she’ll set a timer for me. And and then by the time that timer’s over I’m starting to come up with strategies and solutions and feel a little better but also should just remind me of all the things that I am doing and the things that I would have never done if I was on the outside you know. And that’s really helpful to remember.
Jillian: [00:36:27] And to add to that, because I think that that is so powerful. I would I always try to remind myself that the Internet is a really big place, and that there is room for everybody. We believe we get into this weird scarcity mindset, that if somebody is doing well that must mean I’m not doing well.
Dayna: [00:36:52] That’s exactly what I remember so well.
Dayna: [00:36:55] And that actually is one of the things that I remind myself of. When I met Jillian, she told me, but the internet is so big.
Jillian: [00:37:03] These people that you think are so important. Most of the world does not know them, does not think about them. Before this I wrote movies in Hollywood, and I was so wrapped up in my career and what everybody thought of me, and I went on my honeymoon with my husband, and we were in Cambodia and I had this momentous realization that people in Cambodia just didn’t care about Hollywood, and it was like this really weird thought, because I was in my little bubble and in my little bubbles seemed so important. And then I get out into the world and you go, wow what I think is so important is really not important. And so for me it’s always about trying to find that perspective. And for me it’s about turning off Facebook from time to time so I can be IRL.
Dayna: [00:38:04] Yes. I think that that’s really good. I love your reminder. Yeah I think that those are the perfect ways to get through it.
Jillian: [00:38:15] So OK. If you were starting out today, what do you wish you knew then that you know now?
Most important lesson: It doesn’t have to be perfect
Dayna: [00:38:27] Well that’s a good one. You know I wish I had instilled in myself that it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Dayna: [00:38:39] That getting it started, getting it out there into the world, is much more important than waiting for the perfect timing or waiting for the perfect printable image. Or waiting for the perfect template of a blog post for SEO.
Dayna: [00:38:59] Like I just wish I had known then, so I could remind myself any time I was stuck on a project, or stuck on something. Then I also wish I knew that you never know where things are going to lead you. So go ahead and put out that blog post that isn’t going to bring you very much traffic. Go ahead and put out that craft because you love recycled toilet paper tube crafts, even though it’s not going to do that great on Pinterest, not going to do a great on Facebook. It doesn’t matter. Go ahead and put it out because someday someone may come to you and say, hey we want you to write a book on recycled toilet paper crafts? And I think even now looking back, I didn’t publish so many posts because I’ve told you I love Facebook. And I’ve had many viral posts, and so I got to this point where I didn’t want to publish something if it wasn’t going to go viral. Well that really stopped me from telling my story. So now I’m four years behind in telling the full story with my son, and I actually have just gone back and started a live series on Facebook and I’m telling the nitty gritty, not viral story, of everything we went through.
Jillian: [00:40:23] How I love that. In fact on our white board, we have the words “Imperfect action every day.” I feel like “done is better than perfect” every time.
Dayna: [00:40:39] Yes, we say that all the time. We say done is better than perfect all the time.
Jillian: [00:40:43] And I think as women too, we hold ourselves to such a high standard that people are going to judge us, and we judge ourselves so we edit ourselves because again, we want to show a side of ourselves that is so polished, that look so good on Facebook. And it is about taking those risks, and it is about putting yourself out there, and it is about people not necessarily liking everything you do right.
Dayna: [00:41:09] So what’s funny is my whole brand is about being true to who you are, and having these messy moments, and having this ugly reality sometimes. But what’s funny is when you want to succeed as a blogger, things are pretty. Things have a certain way about them. Your images need to be pretty. You have to have SEO, you have to have these headings and these subtitles, and you have to get the right tags, and you know there’s there’s a certain nuance to your headlines and you get lost. It’s so easy to get lost. I need to write a good headline, sometimes you just don’t even write the things that you want to write about. So that’s the biggest thing that I’m still teaching myself. To go back and say no this story has to be told. I said I wrote a post about the school pickup line because my that’s like the worst time of the day for me, that 20 minutes of waiting to find out.
Jillian: [00:42:10] The pickup line at the end at school when you pick up your son.
Dayna: [00:42:14] Yes. End of the day is the worst time of the day for me. And and I thought I’m not going to write about it. How is this even a blog post? And I went ahead, and published it and it touched enough people even if it was one person who commented and said This is exactly how you feel. That’s enough. That’s all that matters. And I think if we can remind ourselves that done is better than perfect, and that our story and our “why” is more important than perfect
Jillian: [00:42:44] Yes. And to trust the process . So Dayna, I always love talking to you. I just love what you say, I love your honesty. So for our audience to connect with you, what are the best ways that they can reach out to you, so that they can find what you’re doing and be part of your journey.
Dayna: [00:43:08] So we have a Facebook group for bloggers. It’s called Bloggy Buddies. So that’s one place that they can reach out. But they’d have to message us so that we know that they’re trying to get in because we kind of are we… It’s our favorite like secret place on the Internet.
Jillian: [00:43:25] I love that you’re always popping in with really useful information and tips.
Dayna: [00:43:33] It’s a unique place. If you are part of Bloggy Buddies you’re open willing to share your blogging superpowers with other people by jumping in and going live or sharing your tips.
Dayna: [00:43:46] But you’re not there for a purpose of self-promoting or growing your own brand or growing your own business. It really truly is a place of learning and a place of growing and helping others and kind of putting that good karma out into the world that you’re going to help other people in the end. So one of the rules is that you have to know somebody to be in the group. So if someone is listening they’ll have to message us and say, oh I was listening, and they know you, so if they’re friends with you then they’re friends with me.
Jillian: [00:44:18] OK and then go through all of your like your web sites and your books and all the stuff.
Dayna: [00:44:26] OK so we have Lemon Lime Adventure’s is our main blog. There’s also the books: Sensory Processing 101, the Super Kids Activity Guide. If you’re going on Facebook it’s actually called the Super Kids Movement, because it turned into something a lot bigger than just a book. You can find us at Project Sensory, which is our store. I think that might be it.
Jillian: [00:44:53] Well I have to say Dayna, thank you. You are always such a breath of fresh air.
Jillian: [00:44:59] Well it has been lovely speaking to you. I could talk to you all day.
Dayna: [00:45:03] Me too.
Jillian: [00:45:05] All right. Well thank you.
Dayna: [00:45:07] Thank you.
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