I’m going to tell you something I have only told a handful of people.
Everybody knows you aren’t supposed to tell anyone what your birthday wish is, because it might not come true, right? Well, I can tell you now what mine was now, because my wish IS coming true, more and more, little by little, every day.
January 3 is my birthday. I almost always forget about my birthday each year, because it lands so close to Christmas, the New Year, and my wedding anniversary. My family is good about not forgetting, though, so it works out. My family organized a time to get everyone together to have some cake and ice cream. As they turned off the lights and started to sing to me, it dawned on me that I was going to be asked to make a wish. Traditions. You gotta love ’em. I stood there listening to my sweet family sing as I scratched my brain for something to wish for. When they stopped singing all that came to my mind was this simple thought:
“I wish that the blog would be successful this year.”
I blew out the candles and smiled.
As I sat down I laughed to myself. Of all the things I could wish for, when I was pressed to think fast, what came to my mind was the blog!?
I think if I had more time, I would have come up with a long list of things, and then I would have narrowed it down to something really meaningful, that helped lots of other people, and for some reason I didn’t see the blog that way at the time. The desire for blog-related success always felt selfish, for some reason. But the truth is that this blog IS helping lots of people, and the big driving motivation really has not been selfish. I hear from you guys all the time about how this blog is helping you, so maybe it is not such a bad thing for me to dream for the blog to be successful, right?
Is it okay to dream for a blog to be successful?
It was a turning point for me mentally. It’s weird, but I had to give myself permission to make the blog a priority and not feel bad about it. I had to admit to myself, and eventually my husband, that what I really wanted was to take more time to do the blog and to make it better and better. Admitting that deep down I really wanted it to be successful (whatever that looked like) was freeing. Allowing my little “wish” to become a “dream” and then for that dream to become a sincere prayer gave more meaning to the work I was doing.
Is this what overnight success looks like?
I didn’t have any specific expectations about what “success” would look like at the time. I just knew I wanted the blog to continue to grow, so I was shocked when I saw that there was a HUGE surge of traffic to our blog in January. Jetpack is a handy little plug-in tool that helps track the number of hits to your blog. You can see where the the graph below shoots up in January 2017. It was a record-breaking month for us with almost 300,000 hits by the end of the month! I was stunned. Talk about a wish come true. January 2017 exceeded any kind of expectations I could have mustered up on my own.
A blogger’s sweet spot.
A blogger finds their sweet spot when their dream matches up with a need of their readers. I’ve said this before, but I really believe that a blogger finds its readers at the same time that their readers find them. It’s a mutual thing, and it takes time, which just makes it that much more special when it all comes together.
Now, back up a couple of years.
A couple of years ago when Sarah and I relaunched the blog, we sat down for a weekend of planning, brainstorming, and dreaming. We each created a list of things we wanted to make or do with the blog someday. We dreamed big and decided that nothing was off the table.
Somewhere toward the top of my humble little list I wrote, “eCookbook.” It felt like a really far-off dream at the time, since we had barely even begun taking pictures of our food, but I wrote it anyway.
If you want a dream to grow, feed it.
Over the past few months, I have become more focused on seeing this dream through.
It started with a phone call from my career-driven brother, who lives in California. In our conversation about the blog, he asked me if there was something I could create that I haven’t created yet. “An eCookbook” was the first thing that came to my mind. He asked how long it would take me to put one together. I told him “not long because I already had a lot of recipes on the blog.” (I was wrong about it not taking long, by the way)
My brother expressed his belief in me and what I was doing. Inspired and motivated by the end of our conversation, I was eager to get started. My brother cheering me on was the gentle push I needed to really sink myself into the idea of making an eCookbook, and I got to work right away.
I have devoted lots of time over the past few months to creating, and recreating, an eBook until it looked and functioned exactly the way I wanted it to, and I could not be more proud of how it is coming together.
It is my joy to tell you that very soon we will be launching our very first Meal Planning Mommies eCookbook!
It feels good just to even be able to type that on here! Let me say it again in a different way… very soon, we will be launching our very first 4 week meal plan/eCookbook that includes 29 of our most visited/shared MPM recipes, along with enhanced meal plan pages and recipe pages! Everything you will need you can print off with one click. No more clicking around for each recipe. That is all I will say about it, for now. Stay tuned for more information.
Special freebies you are going to love coming exclusively for our MPM email subscribers.
Starting July 15 and leading up to our eBook launch, we will be giving away some special goodies that you can only receive if you are an MPM email subscriber. I am telling you this for three reasons:
- If you are already getting our emails, be sure to read them this week. Actually open them. You’ll be glad you did. Trust me!
- If you are not signed up for our emails, sign up! You’ll be glad you did. Trust me!
- If you know someone who might be interested in getting some great Weight Watchers resources sent to their email, please share this with them. They will be glad you did. Trust me! 🙂
That’s all I am going to say about that for now.
You can sign up for the MPM emails here…
Thanks again for being my people. I love doing life with you all, and now I can honestly say that you are making my dreams come true! 😉
Susan Milka says
Love you ! Love all your efforts ! have tried quite a few of them with great satisfaction. Just knowing that all the ‘too many points’ worries have been engineered out this recipes is just the most fabulous thing. I so much want a copy of your new Meal Planning Mommies cookbook ! There has to be oodles of recipes I’ve missed.
Alisha Hughes says
Thank you Susan! Such a great encouragement. I do think it will be easier for lots of people to have some of our top recipes all in one ebook rather than hunting around on the website, (although that is good too… and free) but it always helps to hear affirmation from people who have already tried some of my recipes, had success with them, and is excited about the idea of an ebook. 🙂 Appreciate you so much.
Michelle Darby says
Hi, Alisha! I found you in the EBA 3.0 community. The one-week meal planner is lovely and well designed.
I have no interest in Weight Watchers, yet your recipes look delicious. I have a few on the menu for next week! I look forward to learning more about your ecookbook! If this one-week menu is a teaser, I can’t wait to get my hands on the book.
Great work!
Alisha Hughes says
Awesome Michelle. Thanks for popping over here and checking it out. Exciting to have a fellow EBA friend on our blog. 🙂
martha says
Wow Alisha, that’s awesome! Congratulations on all your success. Happy that all your hard work is paying off! Best of luck with your new eBook!! – Martha
Alisha Hughes says
Thanks Martha!