Roundup | Best of October 2022

This has been one of my favorite Octobers of all time. The leaves in Tennessee are absolutely gorgeous. Madelyn’s personality is so precious and we are just having the most fun with her. We are hitting our groove as parents and our groove working together in the business. 

October is such a special month for us because it kicks off a season of celebration—My birthday! Our anniversary! And then the Holidays! After a year of extreme change in 2021, it’s been so nice to be more settled in our new home (October 25th was one year!), a new church home, friendships and new community. It’s also fun to get our Fall and Halloween decor out, plant spring-blooming bulbs in the garden, and enjoy a less chaotic season of life.  

October Highlights: Business Edition 

These past few months I have been focusing hard on creating original new content. We were so excited to see a 4x in our website traffic 👀 this month! While it’s still too early to tell, it was fun to see these numbers and share them with our email insiders crew a couple weeks ago. 

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June Google Analytics Report (Website traffic). This was prior to the podcast (consistent content creation) or sending regular emails.

vs. the past 30 days Analytics Report (web traffic). After 12 consecutive weeks producing the podcast, and 14th consecutive weekly email.

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​The Results:

*hear me say, we are still too early to tell here (cashing the check before it’s written) but it was cool to see these numbers so I wanted to share.

Website Traffic : Users 1208 vs. 329. 4x users.

Sessions: 1.76 per user vs. 1.35

Page Views: 4269 vs. 788

Session Duration: 3:12 vs. 1:40

Takeaway? People are coming back more often, and staying longer. THANK Y.O.U.

While I probably won’t get to it before the end of this year, one of my goals for 2023 is to continue upping our Pinterest game to help more people find our website and content! 

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Grateful for:

So fun to have my sis-in-law on the podcast this month! And of course, love spotlighting our students in our “money makeover” series! This month Andrea of SoiréeSmith shared her story! 

Grateful for our guests on the podcast this month and the honor of hearing their stories: Emily Jeffords, KT Merry, and the lovely Laylee Emadi! 

Coming Soon!

We have a big November in the books with a second beta launch of our new membership program (currently only available to students but opening to the public in 2023!), we are bringing back My Blueprint Year with a brand new business binder companion every business owner needs on their desk in 2023! And a HUGE PROJECT we’ve been working hard on launching Black Friday!! If you want in on the secret, make sure to hop on my email insiders list to get sneak peeks and early bird offers! 

October Highlights: Home Edition 

As I mentioned in last month’s roundup, Kyle is a big fan of Halloween while I simply tolerate it! However, this year’s festivities definitely buttered me up! To see the amount of joy Kyle gets out of Halloween decor, even going to the extreme of building his own fog chiller (look for a patented design coming to a Shark Tank episode soon *wink*), is so fun. Plus, Grandma Mable would be proud that her sewing lessons weren’t for not. Madelyn’s owl costume for sure won best costume at our neighborhood party (no prizes were actually awarded, but we all knew). And little Madelyn was so cute trick or treating! 

Favorite Memories :

Madelyn is seriously a bookworm. In case you missed it, I rounded up our favorite Halloween Themed Children’s books and the ones currently on our wish list! (snatch em up for next year). The little princess has officially entered the “what’s that?” phase and points to all.the.things! Her vocabulary is expanding, my current favorites are “pun-kin” and “cook-E”.  We have been practicing “trick or treat” which ends up sounding a lot like the Friends episode of Joey speaking French. Couldn’t be cuter! 

We had a Fall Festival at our church and Madelyn loved feeding the goats. I was prematurely patting myself on the back for birthing such a brave human, because after 30-minutes waiting in line to ride the ponies (of which I was sure she would be thrilled) I was met with a hard “NO.” so, you win some, you lose some!

Neighborhood walks, crunching leaves and saying “punkin” will never ever get old. Dollywood’s Great Pumpkin LumiNights did not disappoint and I will die on my southern hill that Apple Butter from the Apple Barn is the greatest. There’s just nothing like October. 🧡

Currently Listening to : The Lazy Genius Podcast. A friend recommended this podcast and I’m loving it! This is one of my favorite episodes so far. 

Currently Watching : the new season of Dream Home Makeover.

Currently Obsessed with : these long sleeve shirts from Target. 

Around the House:

Blame it on Target, Joanna Gaines, and Studio McGee— Holiday decor is on my mind. Here’s my most recent Holiday haul : these cutie tree appetizer plates, these pillows are gorgeous from Studio McGee collection (pillow collection: tree lumbar, tree square, patterned square), and yes I totally already ordered our matching family Holiday jammies (we open these on Thanksgiving night!) 

Happy November! Turkey season is on 🦃.

xo.

S

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