Hello! I'm Michele

What Makes You Shine: A Guide to Celebrate You

As a small business owner, you wear so many hats—sometimes, it’s hard to see your true strengths and what makes you shine when you’re caught up in the daily grind. When this post goes live, it’ll be Thanksgiving here in the United States, my favorite holiday. Thanksgiving is about gratitude—being thankful for what we have and who we are. This year, I want to honor you: the entrepreneur, the risk-taker, the one who works so hard to make things happen.

Today, we will celebrate you and the gifts you bring to your clients, your community, and your business. Honoring what brings you joy and makes your heart shine. On this day of thanks, let’s celebrate you and what makes you shine.

Remembering My Uncle Jim

As I mentioned, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Once, during an icebreaker, I was asked what my favorite meal was. This was a question I did not need to think about for a second, I blurted out my Uncle Jim’s Thanksgiving feast.

Jim would create the most delicious meal for all of us, blessed to grace his table.

Thanksgiving always brings back memories of my Uncle Jim. He made Thanksgiving shine for our family by creating the most amazing feast, year after year. Cooking was his way of bringing people together, his way of showing love and care. He had a gift and didn’t hesitate to share it with everyone around him.

All the efforts in the kitchen came along with a smile and laughter. Without a doubt, feeding all of us made Jim shine. Writing these words brought tears to my eyes as I outlined this post.

There will always be a special place in my heart for this memory. Each Thanksgiving, we gather together, all attempting to recreate the beautiful feast Jim once provided for us. While we still have smiles and laughter. We miss the wonderful man I called my Uncle, and I pray for him and all the others I miss dearly.

I remember Jim telling us year after year about his dream of opening a restaurant to share his love for food. He did this! He built the restaurant himself around a brick pizza oven. He built this structure while working full-time. The restaurant was beautiful, with big windows allowing you to enjoy the landscape. He was proud to take us on tours to show his progress as he built it. His restaurant sits just outside town on his family’s land, nestled into the bottom of a bluff covered with trees and foliage.

He brought his dream to life and left his 9 to 5—making our community better and brighter.

I’m thankful Jim was able to bless many with his culinary skills and warm personality. He welcomed everyone to the table, and many times, we gathered together around a table, giving thanks for our blessings.

Do You Take Time to Recognize What Makes You Shine?

When was the last time you stepped back to recognize your unique strengths? So often, we’re focused on what isn’t working or what needs fixing. But today, I want you to focus on what is working.

Appreciate all the uniqueness that you bring to each aspect of your life. Pause to celebrate what makes you shine.

If not, I’d like for you to do this. Spend time learning the unique qualities, knowledge, skills, and experience you bring to others in your life and business.

Celebrate Without Judgement

What are your God-given talents? Please do this without judgment. I get it; we can see your flaws easily. Today, I want you to look for what makes the light shine on you as an entrepreneur.

Do this from the place of understanding there are no “good” or “bad” qualities, only who you are.

Think from your heart: Where do you sparkle all over people because you truly understand your value?

Your Path is Unique

Here is good news for you. Your entrepreneurial path is unique—no one else has had your experiences, faced your challenges, or discovered your solutions. And that means no one else can offer exactly what you do. It could be how you connect with people, the passion you bring to your work, or the attention to detail that makes your services exceptional. These strengths are not small—they are exactly what someone out there needs.

Book A 1-Hour Virtual Session

Discover the Secret to Effortless Content Creation –

From Overwhelmed to Thriving: Your Content Creation Simplified Journey Starts Here!

Book Now!

Embrace your uniqueness

What makes you different from everyone else is your knowledge, interest, relationships you create, and what makes you smile.

Are you courageous enough to celebrate who you are without the “but” that quickly follows our greater qualities?

You know what I’m talking about, that “but” you put behind the thing you shine at doing.

Whatever makes you shine, take time to celebrate it. Find ways to appreciate all that makes you unique, and be grateful for all the ways you make a difference in your clients' lives. Celebrate your strengths, and let them shine through.

Please DM on Instagram with what makes you shine as a business owner.

If you like this post, be sure to read Be Your Own Cheerleader!

Thank you for your time! I appreciate you, and I hope you have a wonderful week.

← Content Repurposing Ideas You Can Try 5 Easy Ways To Increase Your Productivity & Manage Your Time →

Content Repurposing Ideas You Can Try

by Michele | Content Creation, Content Marketing

Content Repurposing: Amazing Ideas You Can Try to Grow

Repurposing Long-Form Content: A Smarter Way to Grow

If you're putting in the work to create amazing, fresh content for your online business, why not maximize its potential? Repurposing long-form content across different platforms can extend its reach, connect with new audiences, and ensure your message sticks. Let’s explore some strategic content repurposing ideas to grow your brand and make all that hard work count.

Repurposing Basics: Make Content Work Harder for You

Think of content repurposing as taking your original content and reshaping it for different formats and audiences. Whether you’re creating for YouTube, a podcast, or a blog, following the rules of each platform is crucial. But here's where content repurposing comes in: after your initial content is live, you can adapt it strategically to ensure it gets the visibility it deserves across all channels.

I've been repurposing content before repurposing was even a thing. It all started because creating content for social media was draining me. I realized that if I was going to invest a lot of time into creating great original content for a podcast, blog, or YouTube channel, I needed to make sure people actually saw it. Some of the very first repurposing I did involved taking pieces of my video content from YouTube and putting them on Instagram TV—back before TikTok and short videos changed the social media game.

Ask Yourself: Are You Spreading the Word About Your Content?

When you publish a blog post, a podcast episode, or a YouTube video, do you share it with your email list? Do you let your audience know via social media platforms? Often, we focus so much on content creation that we forget the key step—promotion. Repurposing content saves time and ensures your audience sees your message in different places, increasing its impact.

Repurpose Content for Social Media

The social media landscape is vast—but remember, you don’t need to be on every platform. Instead, choose the platforms that resonate most with your ideal client and strategically repurpose your content to maximize its impact.

For instance, take the main points from your blog post and turn them into an Instagram carousel. You can easily repurpose those carousel slides into Pinterest pins. Or take a key segment from your podcast episode and turn it into a short video clip to share as a YouTube Short, TikTok video or Instagram Reel. These bite-sized pieces of content keep your audience engaged without you having to create everything from scratch.

Caption Library for Easy Reuse

When I began my business in 2016, I found a simple yet effective way to make repurposing even easier. I used Google Calendar to store my social media captions, setting them to repeat every 90 days. Whenever I felt stuck or uninspired, all I had to do was check my calendar and select from the captions I'd already written. Over time, I had built a small library of options that I could tweak as needed. It was an efficient way to reuse content in different ways without always starting from scratch.

Today, tools like Notion or Airtable are a great way to make this process even smoother. You can create a dedicated caption library to store, categorize, and easily find the captions you need. Not only does this save time, but this repurposed content is now evergreen content to help maintain consistency across platforms.

Use Your Content Everywhere

Email Newsletters: Don’t overlook your email list. You’ve already built a loyal audience, so make sure they hear about your latest content. Pull out key insights from your podcast episode or blog post and turn them into a valuable newsletter. This is also a great place to promote new content and drive readers to your blog or YouTube channel.

Blog Posts: If you recorded a podcast or a YouTube video, transcribe it to create a blog post. Just be sure to edit the transcription so that it reads well—adding relevant keywords and enhancing readability. Not only does this help with SEO, but it also reaches those who prefer reading over watching or listening.

Old Blog Posts: Give your old posts a content upgrade. Even your best content could use a bit of new information. Search engines or Google love it when you take your old content and add new ideas to the older content to make it relevant again. The easiest way to do this is to turn a popular post into new formats such as a podcast or video for YouTube. Then use the Yoast SEO plugin to rewrite and republish the original blog post with the link to the podcast or video. Use this to update the blog content and drop the link in Google Console to have your refreshed content become a new piece of content by having it reindexed. This is a favorite repurposing strategy for myself and my clients.

Creating a Repurposing Plan

To avoid falling into the “content hamster wheel”—constantly churning out new content without ever pausing—create a plan to reuse and recycle what you’ve already produced. Here's a simple content repurposing process to try:

Transcribe and Edit: After recording a podcast or video, transcribe it to form the base of your blog post. Edit it to ensure readability and include SEO-optimized keywords. If you struggle to write SEO-optimized content try out the tool Rank IQ that Katerina talked about in last weeks episode. You'll be creating great content in less time.
Break Down Key Points: Pull out the main points of your content and compile them into a Google Doc. This will serve as your “gold nuggets” guide, making it easy to create social media posts, newsletters, or other types of content. The feature with Descript saves you so much time with the ability to highlight short clips and turn them into a composition (Descript term) that can be repurposed for all the different social media channels.
Mix and Match for Social Media: Repurpose these nuggets into social media posts, like Instagram carousels or TikTok clips. Change up the visuals using tools like Canva to keep your posts fresh and engaging. If you have the Pro version of Canva you know how easy they make it to resize into various formats.
Use Different Formats: Turn the content into multiple formats—Instagram Reels, Pinterest Video Pins, YouTube Shorts, etc. Repurposing is all about taking one piece of content and delivering it to your audience in different formats to suit their preferences.

The 90-Day Repurposing Rule

After you create and publish your content, schedule it into a 90-day content calendar. The initial weeks can feature more frequent posts to maximize reach, and after the first month, move the content into a 90-day rotation, revisiting it to keep it relevant. Scheduling helps take the pressure off while ensuring your audience continues to see your amazing content.

Practical Tools for Repurposing

To make repurposing easier, set up templates in Canva for your content formats. For example, create templates for Instagram posts, Pinterest Pins, and even Facebook graphics. These templates can then be used repeatedly to save time and maintain a consistent brand look. As a quick side note this content strategy is the best way to bring on team members to help you!

Also, keep everything organized with a project management system like Asana, Trello, or ClickUp. Linking your “gold nuggets” Google Doc to your project management software can help you stay on top of what needs to be repurposed and when. This is especially important for avoiding burnout and keeping your process manageable.

Book A 1-Hour Virtual Session

Discover the Secret to Effortless Content Creation –

From Overwhelmed to Thriving: Your Content Creation Simplified Journey Starts Here!

Book Now!

Time To Wrap This Up With Key Takeaways

Your time and energy are incredibly valuable. Instead of always creating something new, leverage the long-form content you’ve already invested in to reach different audiences in a strategic way. A solid repurposing content plan helps you be everywhere your ideal client is—without exhausting yourself.

So, which of these repurposing strategies have you tried? Do you feel you could simplify your content workflow by creating a structured plan to recycle your long-form content? Please send me a DM on Instagram with your thoughts, and let’s make sure all that hard work continues to work for you!

Thank you for reading, and remember: repurpose strategically, market consistently, and reach wider audiences effortlessly!

From Social Media Burnout to Sustainable Growth with Katerina Kormas

by Michele | Content Marketing, Content Systems

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by social media and wondering if all the work is worth it, this is for you. I had an incredible conversation with Katerina Kormas, a mindset and confidence coach, about her journey from social media burnout to creating a more sustainable marketing strategy. Let’s talk about how you can achieve business growth without sacrificing your peace of mind.

The Social Media Trap

When Katerina started her business, social media seemed to be the only path to success.

She jumped from Facebook to Facebook groups and then got lost in Instagram. She spent countless hours creating posts, going live, and keeping up with trends. It was a cycle—one that never let her look up from her social media app.

Here’s the interesting part: all that effort wasn’t bringing her clients. Her clients weren't coming from there despite spending almost all her time on Instagram. But she kept going because it’s what everyone else said you’re “supposed” to do.

This social media addiction can lead many entrepreneurs to feel a constant pressure to always be “on” and produce new content.

A Wake-Up Call

It’s funny how sometimes life gives you the wake-up call you didn’t even know you needed. For Katerina, it came when her dog was sick. When he passed away, she found herself too emotionally drained to keep up with her social media content. She decided to take a break. What she didn’t expect was how much better she felt the longer she stayed away from Instagram.

Without the constant noise, she could finally hear her own thoughts again.

Now, this is important: Katerina realized that she had lost her own voice while trying to follow everyone else’s strategies. The social media cycle wasn’t working for her. At the end of the day, she knew in her heart that all the social platforms were not giving her a return on how much time she was investing. This deviating loss was the first thing that allowed her the excuse to step back to help her see that.

The Risk of Social Media Burnout

Social media burnout is real, and many social media professionals and small business owners face it when trying to maintain their online presence. The constant stream of information from multiple social media platforms and the pressure to keep up with trends can lead to emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion, and even small business owner burnout.

It's important to recognize the signs of social media burnout—feeling drained, the inability to disconnect, constant comparison, and even negative feelings about your business.

For Katerina, her burnout manifested in feeling like she wasn’t even growing her business despite all her efforts. She was spending long hours on her social media tasks and to-do lists, focusing on her social media accounts, without realizing that her return on investment wasn’t there. It’s so easy for social media to take over daily life when you aren’t mindful. She lost her work-life balance and even felt like she missed out on real-life moments with her dog, Chocolate.

Social media platforms are designed for instant gratification, which makes it difficult for users to set boundaries. Katerina struggled with setting specific time limits on her social media usage and noticed that her productivity began to suffer. She was falling into a cycle of burnout, spending hours on her mobile phone and losing out on meaningful connections in her daily life.

Finding Sustainable Marketing

Katerina made a shift—she went back to what she loved: blogging, promoting with Pinterest, and emailing her online magazine to her list. She didn’t want to play the short-lived content game anymore. She wanted to create content that would keep working for her over the long haul. She went back to writing blogs and sharing them on Pinterest. The best part? Her email list became more engaged, too. People were replying to her emails, and her content had more impact because she wasn’t forcing it.

Instead of relying on social media to reach potential clients, Katerina opted for a more sustainable approach. Blogging, combined with strategic Pinterest use, became her primary form of content marketing.

These platforms allowed her to create content that worked for her consistently over time instead of the short lifespan associated with social media posts. Pinterest became a great way for her to reach her target audience without the stress and risk of burnout from managing multiple social media platforms.

People can feel it when you’re genuinely excited about what you’re doing. Katerina found tools to help her along the way. Tools like ChatGPT to help with content topics and Pinterest descriptions and Rank IQ to make sure her content was SEO optimized. She embraced productivity tools that allowed her to use her time more effectively.

Katerina's focus on high-quality content and keywords through her blog posts meant she could reach people for years after the content was originally published. Her goal shifted from chasing likes and followers to building a sustainable library of resources that kept working in the background.

Social Media Isn’t the Only Way

A big takeaway from Katerina’s story is that social media doesn’t have to be the centerpiece of your marketing. Pinterest, blogging, and email marketing became her main focus, along with understanding keywords' vital role in getting found in searches.

She shifted her energy into doing what she loved, creating long-lasting content that could work for her without the constant churn. And guess what? It worked.

Katerina’s clients still find her through blog posts from years ago. Her Pinterest traffic continues to drive leads, and she’s reconnected with her email list. She’s creating content on her terms, in a way that feels right and is more sustainable for her business. It’s not about keeping up with trends—it’s about doing what works best for you.

Many small business owners feel the risk of social media burnout because they believe it’s the only way to grow. The good news is, it’s not. When you embrace different types of content that are aligned with your values, such as blogging, audio or video content, you create more opportunities to connect with your audience in an authentic way.

Katerina realized that her long-form content—blogging, email marketing, and Pinterest pins—was the best way to make a lasting impact. Unlike a fleeting Instagram post, a well-crafted blog post could continue to bring people to her business for years to come. The key was to create content that had a significant impact without adding more stress or pressure.

Productivity and Balance

Katerina also shared how she balances everything without feeling overwhelmed. She uses time blocking to ensure she’s spending time where it matters—whether with clients or simply repinning content on Pinterest while having a cup of coffee. It’s about working smarter, not harder. She emphasized the importance of creating a schedule around the life you want, not waiting for some “perfect” future moment to make time for what’s important.

She schedules content creation and marketing tasks during her most productive times so she doesn’t feel drained or overwhelmed by tight deadlines.

Her daily routines are built around clear goals, prioritizing her personal time and business growth.

Katerina also uses time-tracking tools and Google Calendar for time management, ensuring she doesn’t overextend herself.

Productivity tools like ChatGPT and Rank IQ have been essential for automating her content creation process and keeping her on track with her marketing strategy.

These tools helped her regain her time, allowing her to focus on high priority areas of her business, her client relationships, and developing her monthly online magazine, The Journal.

Now, this is important: Social media doesn’t need to control your life. You can protect your mental health while maintaining a successful business by setting boundaries, taking regular breaks, and using tools to simplify your workload. Katerina took the first step by building a business that allowed her to step away from the screen and truly enjoy her life.

The Power of Blogging and Pinterest

Instead of the constant hustle of social media, Katerina decided to leverage blogging and Pinterest to drive traffic and leads. Pinterest has a unique user base that looks for content that is inspiring. It is the perfect marketing for small business owners trying to avoid the negative impact that social media platforms can have on mental health.

By focusing on Pinterest, Katerina was able to avoid the constant pressure to churn out content and instead spent her time creating valuable blog posts that aligned with her expertise.

Katerina mentioned how blogging was her initial passion, even before she got caught up in social media marketing.

By returning to blogging, she found her voice again and started creating long-lasting content. Her blog posts are a form of social media marketing that provides more value and engagement than a quick Instagram story or a one-off Instagram post. This type of content can be repurposed across different platforms, shared in her email newsletter, and used to build authority in her niche.

The shift to Pinterest and blogging allowed her to reduce her reliance on social networks that were having a significant effect on her well-being.

Pinterest became her favorite tool for driving organic traffic because it didn’t require her to engage constantly. She could create pins for her blog posts and let them work in the background, driving traffic for months or even years to come.

The Importance of Real Life and Work-Life Balance

One of the most significant shifts Katerina made was focusing on real-life experiences instead of constantly being glued to her mobile phone, managing social accounts, and keeping up with the latest trends. She emphasized that building a business should not come at the expense of living your life.

Social media can create a lot of role pressure, making small business owners feel like they need to be available 24/7. This leads to negative feedback loops, where people feel guilty for not being constantly online. But the truth is that setting boundaries is essential for a healthy relationship with your business.

Katerina emphasized taking off the entire weekend, setting time limits for social media use, and ensuring her time remains a top priority.

For Katerina, embracing productivity tools like time-blocking schedules, Pinterest, and ChatGPT was a game changer. These tools helped her clearly distinguish between work hours and personal time, allowing her to be fully present during activities that bring her joy. By managing her time effectively, she achieved a sense of psychological balance that made her work far more rewarding.

Katerina also pointed out that this kind of social media fatigue or burnout isn't limited to small businesses—social media managers and marketers at larger companies also experience job burnout.

Book A 1-Hour Virtual Session

Discover the Secret to Effortless Content Creation –

From Overwhelmed to Thriving: Your Content Creation Simplified Journey Starts Here!

Book Now!

Time To Wrap This Up

I hope that you found this powerful message from Katerina valuable. The best things in life sometimes come when you are at your breaking point. An important thing to remember is to check in with yourself on a daily basis and ask what is working and what is not working in your business.

Thank you so much for reading; I appreciate you. Be sure to check out Katerina at http://katerinakormas.com and grab her free resource, BECOMING Quarterly Journal and Planner https://katerinakormas.myflodesk.com/vhbzuv5sg4

← Lead generation through content: 5 content strategies that work to generate leads Content Repurposing Ideas You Can Try →