The world’s flipped upside down during this global pandemic, and I know a LOT of people are suddenly working from home.

Maybe you’re asking yourself questions like:

How do I do this? My dog/kids/significant other keep interrupting me; how do I stay productive? What apps could make this easier? Are they free or paid? Do they work on my Mac/PC? How do I stay organized? What if I need to ask a coworker a question; do I have to email them & wait? Surely I don’t have to use my personal cell phone to communicate via text or phone call. HALP.

I get it. I was in your shoes once, many moons ago.

About 10 years ago, I was working in an office in Georgia (US) while my my then-fiance went out west to attend college in the mountains of Wyoming (US). He came home for summer break and proposed! About a year or so later we decided we didn’t want to wait the additional two years that I had remaining to graduate, so we bumped up the wedding and I decided I’d move out to Wyoming with him and finish college there.

That meant I was “quitting” my job, but when I told my boss that I was moving, just for shits and giggles, I gave him the option of keeping me around as a remote employee. I had no idea if they’d go for it, but since they seemed to like me a lot and I’d already been there over a year at that point, I was completely trained on everything. Plus, as a design student I already had the Mac & design software I needed to do the work at home anyway (because I hated being in the lab to work on homework 😆).

They went for it! So after we got there, got our internet hooked up and all that fun stuff, I began working from home. It was kind of a culture shock for me, never having worked at home before, but the office I’d been in only had 2-3 people in our small branch, so after I got used to a routine it really didn’t feel all that different. The General Manager was an old, friendly Grandpa type, near retirement; he and I had always gotten along really well.

I ended up just signing into the iChat or whatever it was called at the time & video chatted with him while I worked, for a few hours a day. It helped me feel less like I was the only human being in the world during the workday, –because even introverts can feel that way, eventually– and it let me ask him questions as I needed to without phoning in.

BUT there’s a better way!

Since I started doing freelance work, I’ve tried a TON of apps, soooo many different processes and found what works for me. Not only with my own long distance clients, but also implemented some of what I was learning at my 9-5!

These are my top tips for staying productive while you work from home.

There’s a lot to be said for pretty emails these days. It can make you stand out from the crowd, for sure.

But what’s the cost? If there is any.

If you’re in the entrepreneurial space at all, you may have heard about FloDesk: the beautifully style email marketing tool that doesn’t limit you to a subscriber amount. It’s one flat fee no matter how many subscribers you have, which sounds great. So what’s the catch?

Feel like maybe I’m about to give ya some negative feedback? I am, actually! And it doesn’t seem to be the popular opinion, but here goes.

If you’re new to blogging or want to start, but you’re not suuuper tech savvy & computers sometimes make you want to wring somebody’s neck, –then blogging on Squarespace will probably be a good fit for you.

If you’re already blogging on Squarespace, but you feel like the posts are disorganized, or you can’t figure out what should be tags or categories, then read on, ma’ friend!

I’ve had several questions about this lately, so it’s time to address it for you all! And it’s not super complicated, so don’t freak out –just jump right in!

When you first launch the website, you’re likely wondering how things are going right?

How many people are seeing it? Which pages are people going to? How are they finding me?

These are all good questions to ask!

You’ll want to link your site up to Google Analytics for the most accurate & detailed information, but until you do Squarespace has built-in analytics that will still be helpful for you to collect this kind of info.

Maybe you’ve seen it in the home menu in your account, and maybe you’ve even clicked on it before to see what’s there, but got overwhelmed or don’t understand the terminology.

I totally understand! So let’s walk through it together; it’s not as scary as it sounds, I promise!

My older sister’s gym website was one of my first client sites that I built on Squarespace. Actually, I set up the basics for her and she took it over from there, transforming it into whatever she needed it to be.

So, imagine my stupid moment, when a couple years later, I realize she doesn’t like the long string of navigation links across the top. It was like that because she didn’t realize Squarespace has the ability to create drop-down menus, or how to do it obviously.

I dropped the ball on that for her, not that she was pissed about it, but I felt a bit bad about missing that detail. We’re actually in the middle of a total site redo anyway, so it’ll be fixed going forward. 🤦🏼‍♀️

That situation made me realize that I had taken my own knowledge for granted & assumed she knew, but it’s actually not an obvious thing.

Since it’s not obvious, even to the technically savvy like my sister, I’m sharing this quick tutorial with you! Let’s get to it.

People always want to know how to pick a Squarespace template, or which is the best template.

While it does depend on what features you actually want to have on your website (whether you want a side bar, pre-footer, full-width banners, buttons & content on your banner images, etc.), my go-to is still the 7.0 Brine family of templates.

Want my thoughts on the new 7.1? Keep reading.

If you’re a designer who uses Lorem Ipsum placeholder text, chances are you’ve at least heard a comment from your client like this: “I see the draft and it looks great, but the text is all in another language.” Haha!

Tired of explaining what Lorem Ipsum is? Maybe it’s time to try one of these placeholder text generators instead!

My family is full of problem solvers. Solution finders. Fixers. Loyal people who work very hard, give everything 1,000% effort and who you can trust, absolutely. I always thought that was normal, until I began adulting and realized it wasn’t.

So it’s no wonder that I am the way I am, though I must admit, reading it in black and white was both affirming and kind of shocking.

My Enneagram test results (and yes I took the paid test to get the 23 page breakdown on my top 4, bc I literally can’t half-ass anything at all 😂) described me with perfection, from my faults to my challenges, to what I’m really great at.

And I must say, it’s really odd reading about yourself like that! I know they didn’t write those results FOR me specifically, but it’s kind of nuts how accurate it is.

Reading my results helped me understand how my brain works & why I do the things the way I do them. Learning what the driving forces behind my decisions are & understanding why my challenges are challenging and why I’m good at certain things.

If you’ve taken the Enneagram test too, have you found that you’re wondering what type everyone is?

I totally am! I’ve discussed it with all of my immediate family (and then some) and found that most of us share one or two types, which is pretty neat. Must be why we get along so well. HAHA!

With that shared curiosity in mind, let’s find out what type(s) I am and see if you can relate!

Are you manually taking a screenshot from your tablet/phone/laptop/desktop to get these kinds of screenshots? Are you piecing together multiple pages yourself to get the full page? 🤦🏼‍♀️

There’s a much better way, thankfully. It’s not hard, or lengthy, or terribly complicated, so let’s walk through it.

Let me start by saying to all of you, as I write this on Thanksgiving morning while my husband sleeps in & I’m feeling particularly happy & grateful:thank you for following along and being part of this journey with me. I love & appreciate all of you!

Rebranding for yourself is so tough, especially for designers. Why?!

You’d think, because we have the capability, the software, the hardware, the knowhow, –and yet? It’s still so damn hard.

But why is it so hard for us? Why did I make the decision to change my branding or my brand colors (so many times)? Let’s investigate.

I’m a solopreneur & that means it’s just me around here. I don’t have a VA or any other team members, so it’s a do-it-all-myself kind of routine around here, which I actually don’t mind, for now.

That being the case, I write the blogs, I schedule the emails, I write & schedule social posts, I update the website, I do all my own graphics, I do all of my client work, etc. etc. etc.

For my newsletter, I started (back in 2016) with ConvertKit. While I could plainly see how robust it is, it was WAY more juice than I needed with just 12 people on my list. 😂

So I switched to MailerLite, which I used for free until early 2019 when they changed their pricing structure. I built my list with MailerLite, and I do still like their platform, …but it was just lacking some design-y features I wanted.

Cue FloDesk. Y’all. It is effin’ gorgeous!

Easy to use. Simple, clean UI and the site is mobile friendly too! I tried it out with the free trial and liked it, even though it’s missing a few things MailerLite does, but FloDesk is still in Beta. So it’s new & it’s still evolving, which I actually like.

Then I found a coupon for 50% off and I decided to jump in, head first. Why? Let’s dive in!

The Summary Block is one of the most versatile blocks Squarespace has to offer.

Want to display a list of new posts, events, or shop items that automatically include new additions when added? Meaning, you don’t have to go back and add the new post/event/shop listing everywhere, every time.

What about those nice rotating reviews with the arrow navigation? Yep, that too.

Let’s walk you through how to set these up (or check out the video at the end of the post)!

Truth Bomb: I’ve been feeling stuck for a long time.

I’m sure you can relate if you’re reading this.

There’s so much out there saying blog X times a week, start a podcast, start a YouTube channel, send X emails to your list every week, create a course, start a membership, post to Pinterest X times a week, post to Instagram at least 1x day, create a Facebook group, stay active on social media, show up in the DMs, do Insta Stories ––on and on and on.

Well as you can see, perhaps, that’s a lot of shit to be keeping up with. #amIright?

Frankly, I don’t want to do most of those things. They just don’t resonate with me and the things I have fun doing are just hard for me to do consistently with my current schedule.

So, I’ve been listening to #allthepodcasts and I just picked up Marie Forleo’s new book Everything is Figureoutable (love it, btw!) and I’ve been punched in the gut a few times with some realizations.

Ya know, stuff “we already know” but aren’t doing anything to fix/adapt/change? Yeah, that stuff.

Because those “Ah-ha!” moments hit me in the face with a truth bomb I needed to pay attention to (yes we’re all still learning!), I wanted to make sure I could share those Ah-has with you!

People love the idea of Squarespace, because it's so easy to edit. No developers are necessary; therefore, longterm, you save time & money in investing in Squarespace, whether you hire out the original design or DIY.

The one thing that people worry about is whether their site will look too much like the template, or too much like everyone else's Squarespace site, because of this template-based system. 

The way around that? Get creative! With the right creative mind and the right tools, your site doesn't have to look like anyone else's –and I'm not even talking about using some code to customize it.

Let's investigate some other ways we can use the Image Block in Squarespace to make your site stand out!

‘I added an image to the page, but it’s HUGE! How can I make it smaller without cropping it?’

Questions like those pop up in my inbox a lot, and for good reason. There’s not an obvious answer!

If you’re new to Squarespace, or even just new-ish, you probably don’t know some of the multifunctional qualities of their most useful block elements. So over the next few posts, I’ll go through them one by one and spill the beans for each of them.

Now, let’s dive into the 4 other ways you can use a Spacer Block on your website (besides, of course, just adding space to the page between elements)!