Our Blog Goals, Plans and Dreams for 2014
In the same breath, we're big believers in the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
We love A Beautiful Mess and over the past six and a half years it's slowly transformed from a just-for-fun hobby of mine to the backbone of our growing company. We're content and committed to what we do. It's literally our dream job.
So with that said, we want to share with you our goals, plans and dreams for this blog in 2014. We're not reinventing anything, but small changes and tweaks are what keep us growing and moving forward. It's exciting to find that balance between change and focus. Both are needed. Both are important.
Our Team: Earlier this year we shared our "state of the biz" in which we shared lots of details about our growing company. Over the past few years Emma and I transitioned from a two-person-operation to a team. We hired our first two full-time employees!
While we never expected our blog to take this path, it has proved to be one of the best choices we ever made. One very exciting change 2014 brings is Laura Gummerman, who we originally hired as a Project Assistant, is now also a writer for ABM and will be sharing her beautiful ideas and projects here on a weekly basis. So, to clarify, Laura will be helping with behind-the-scenes work as well as writing some of her own original posts. We love her unique perspectives and style, so we expanded her position here. She actually already started last month! Here's us at Emma's bachelorette party. We love you Laura!!
Our Schedule: In 2013 Emma and I worked too many weekends. Almost all of them. And while that will always happen from time to time, we want to work harder to protect our days off in 2014. Give our minds a little more time to replenish. It's weird how doing something we love too much at once can inhibit us from doing the very thing we love, you know? Anyway, one change that will help us solve this problem is that we will be closing comments on the weekends. The reason we chose to do this is because we moderate comments, which means that someone always has to be working 7 days a week to make sure your comments are getting published. So this small change will enable everyone on our team to unplug and enjoy their weekends. There will still be scheduled posts, but the comments will be closed just on Saturday and Sunday posts. We'll be sharing things on the weekends that don't necessarily need comments like roundups, wish lists and announcements. :)
What's Evolving?
New E-Courses: You may have noticed that our old e-courses are no longer for sale. That's because we have new courses coming soon. We're writing new 2.0 versions of some of our most popular courses like Blog Love, Blog (Design) Love and Dream Job as well as adding a ton of new courses in areas like photography, goal setting, sewing and more! There are more exciting details and additions we will share with you soon. I promise we won't make you wait much longer, full details are coming later this month!
More Focus: This is the first year in two years that we aren't writing a book behind-the-scenes on top of writing the blog. We do plan to write more books in the future, but a small break was much needed. That means that Emma and I will be able to focus more creative energy on what we love the most, this blog! We're going to take advantage of this year and really focus on building the content that we are most passionate about, Food and Home. We love writing about a variety of topics here, but those two areas are where we want to invest our time, energy and resources this coming year. The possibilities are endless!
What's Next?
A Whole New App (!!!): More details to come. In addition, we have another fun little A Beautiful Mess App update in the works.
New Product Collaborations: Emma and I have collaborated with a few of our favorite companies this past year on products that we can't wait to wear, use and share with you!
We also plan to add to/change up how we feature fashion here on the blog. Adding a full time photographer to our team next month we feel will really enable us to be in the front of the camera (instead of behind) just a little bit more from time to time. :)
I can't help but feel like I'm probably forgetting something important, but I guess that's it for now. ;) Cheers to a new year and renewed energy and passion! We love you guys, we really really do. xo. Elsie (and Emma too!)
Credits // Author: Elsie Larson, Photography: Janae Hardy and Sarah Rhodes.
