You’ve probably set a goal to grow your blog this year. More traffic, more revenue, maybe even turning this into your full-time income.

But here’s the truth: Your key to success this year isn’t another SEO strategy or a new Pinterest hack.

It’s stepping into the CEO role of your food blog.

I know—when you think “CEO,” you probably picture the head of Target or Starbucks. Someone running a multi-million dollar corporation with thousands of employees. It feels weird to think of yourself as the CEO of your food blog when you’re working from your kitchen table, creating recipes between loads of laundry.

But here’s what I’ve learned over the last 18 months of intentionally showing up as the CEO of my own food blog: When you shift from employee mindset to CEO mindset, everything changes.

I’ve seen more growth in this period than in all my previous years of blogging combined. Not because I suddenly got lucky or because the algorithm favored me—but because I stopped working IN my business and started working ON it.

In this blog post, I’m sharing 10 practical things you can do to start acting as the CEO of your food blog. These aren’t theoretical concepts—these are the exact strategies I’ve used to create 175+ blog posts in a year, grow my traffic significantly, and build a business that fits into my life instead of consuming it.

I know—when you think “CEO,” you probably picture the head of Target or Starbucks. Someone running a multi-million dollar corporation with thousands of employees. It feels weird to think of yourself as the CEO of your food blog when you’re working from your kitchen table, creating recipes between loads of laundry.

But here’s what I’ve learned over the last 18 months of intentionally showing up as the CEO of my own food blog: When you shift from employee mindset to CEO mindset, everything changes.

I’ve seen more growth in this period than in all my previous years of blogging combined. Not because I suddenly got lucky or because the algorithm favored me—but because I stopped working IN my business and started working ON it.

Today, I’m sharing 10 practical things you can do to start acting as the CEO of your food blog. These aren’t theoretical concepts—these are the exact strategies I’ve used to create 175+ blog posts in a year, grow my traffic significantly, and build a business that fits into my life instead of consuming it.

Signs You’re Stuck in Employee Mindset

Before we dive into the 10 things, let’s talk about how to know if you’ve slipped into employee mindset. Because honestly? It’s SO easy to do, especially in food blogging where everything feels personal and hands-on.

You might be in employee mindset if:

You’re constantly reacting instead of being proactive. You’re responding to every notification, checking your inbox 60 times a day, and looking back at your week realizing most of your work was administrative or low-level.

You never have enough time to get everything done. Your to-do list keeps growing and you feel buried under it instead of freeing up more time.

You’re checking things off but not making real progress toward bigger goals. You look back at the last couple of years and realize you haven’t made any major changes, even as the industry has changed dramatically.

You feel like you can’t delegate because no one could do it as well as you. You’re constantly creating busy work for team members instead of giving them ownership.

Sound familiar? Don’t worry—I’ve been there too. Multiple times. That’s exactly why these 10 strategies matter so much.

What Does a CEO of a Food Blog Actually Do?

Before we get tactical, let’s define what we’re talking about. A CEO of a food blog:

Makes strategic revenue decisions. The blogging landscape is constantly changing. Income sources we’ve relied on are shifting or disappearing. Making strategic revenue decisions is one of the most important things you can do.

Focuses on revenue-generating tasks. If you’re spending all your time scrolling Instagram or engaging with readers on social media, that might not be generating revenue for your business.

Thoughtfully outsources. Even small blogs can outsource tasks—whether in your business, your personal life, or by trading with friends. The key is freeing up your time to focus on things only you can do.

Stays focused. This is really hard because of the world we live in. Facebook groups, Slack channels, Instagram—they’re all good for business overall but can be ultimate distractions from the work that actually moves the needle.

Sets goals and gets accountability. Regularly checking in on goals and making sure your work aligns with your bigger strategic vision.

Does what the business needs, not just what you want to do. This is a serious balancing act. None of us want to be slaves to creating only what Google wants, but we also can’t just be creative all the time and never see results.

Now let’s get into the practical strategies.

1. Track Your Time (And Actually Review It)

This is the foundation. It’s honestly impossible to look backward and get a clear picture of where your time has gone without data. We always see things differently than reality actually was.

I use a tool called Toggl (it’s a Chrome browser extension) to track all my time. For almost an entire year, I’ve committed to tracking everything. And yes, it sounds overwhelming, but it’s the ONE thing that keeps me accountable to spending time as the CEO.

Here’s how I have mine set up:

I have different “projects” (categories) for different types of work:

• Admin – Low-level tasks that honestly my VA should be doing
• Business Development – Creating new revenue streams, strategic partnerships, affiliate programs
• CEO – Paying invoices, strategic thinking, reflection time
• Content Planning
• Content Updates
• Digital Products
• Email Marketing
• Photography
• Video
• Team Support – Answering Slack questions, training team members

✏️ Action Item #1: Set Up Your Time Tracking System Sign up for Toggl (free) and create 6-8 categories for different types of work in your business, then track everything for one full week. Review your report at the end of the week to see how much time you spent on CEO-level work vs. day-to-day tasks.

At the end of each week (or the beginning of the following week), I review a report of how I spent my time. This gives me an honest, transparent look at where my time went.

If there’s zero minutes of CEO time, that’s a problem.

You might find you’re spending 75% of your time on photos when you could outsource that to free up more time for strategy. The act of simply reviewing your time and reflecting on where it went is so undervalued within the CEO mindset.

Quick tip: Even if you’re not ready to track time indefinitely, do it for at least one week. You’ll be shocked at what you discover.

2. Create a Protected CEO Work Block

Once you’ve tracked your time and realized you’re not spending enough on CEO-level work, the next step is to create a protected work block for it.

If you don’t have this time carved out and protected, everything else will become more of a priority. Work expands to fill the time you give it. If you don’t set aside and keep the boundary of CEO time, it simply won’t happen.

For me, this looks like:

I’m in a mastermind that meets for an hour and a half every Monday. That’s my protected CEO time. I try to either start the day before that call working on my business or add time afterwards. Mondays are my most CEO-focused day of the entire week, and I love that it starts the week off this way.

Your CEO block could be:

• 30 minutes every Monday morning
• An hour on Friday afternoons
• Two hours the first Monday of each month

Whatever you can commit to—but put it on your calendar, add a siren emoji next to it, and DO NOT MISS THIS APPOINTMENT. It’s the most important time you can spend in your business all week.

✏️ Action item #2: Design Your CEO Date Template Block a recurring 60-90 minute appointment on your calendar (same day and time each week) and create a simple agenda template that includes: emotional check-in, financial review, goal progress, strategic planning, and education time. Protect this time like a doctor’s appointment you cannot miss.

3. Pause and Check In With Yourself

This might sound counterintuitive, but before you jump into actual CEO work, pause.

When you get limited time to work on something, it’s really tempting to jump in headfirst with a “getting stuff done” mentality. But with CEO time, pausing first can be incredibly helpful to set the intention for the rest of your time.

Before you dig into the work, reflect on:

How am I feeling about my business lately? Your biggest breakthroughs happen when you sit and reflect. When I’ve neglected this, those are the precursors to burnout.

What can I celebrate right now? It’s easy to always want something bigger. Make sure you’re celebrating the wins you already have, even if they feel small.

Where do I feel stuck, behind, or overwhelmed? Brain dump or journal this out. Get it out of your head to clear space for CEO work.

How is my ideal week going? Do you need to make changes? Are you not following it at all?

Where do I need support right now? This could be another brain dump opportunity or a chance to actually ask for that support.

These emotional check-ins and capacity check-ins help set the tone for your CEO time. Without unpacking these feelings first, you might find yourself distracted or feeling guilty about spending time working ON your business instead of IN it.

4. Focus on Your Financials

Use your CEO time for financial tasks—but make them strategic, not just administrative.

Pay outstanding invoices. I learned this from a coach: When you openly give money, that money will freely come back to you. It’s been a fun experiment—I regularly pay an invoice and then later find a new project has been booked or an outstanding invoice has been paid to me.

Plan ways to increase income:

• Look for and plan brand partnerships
• Think about ways to increase ad revenue (RPM optimization)
• Research new income streams
• Take action on new income streams you want to launch

Review your budget. Look ahead at income coming in. As food bloggers, we’re often working off income from a few months ago, so remind yourself of what you have coming in to plan accordingly.

Make big purchase decisions. Use CEO time to think about ROI of big investments. Sometimes we put off spending money (even when we have it) because we aren’t regularly giving ourselves time to look into what we want to do with that income.

5. Review Your Metrics (And Actually Use Them)

Metrics are great to have, but if you don’t do anything with them, they’re just numbers.

Do this at least monthly or quarterly:

Look at your blog traffic year-over-year. Has it increased or decreased? Which blog posts contributed to that change?

Look for big changes—more than 10% increase or decrease for specific posts. Dig into WHY there was that change. Was it a ranking drop? A ranking increase? Use this as helpful data to make changes going forward.

Use the same approach for social media, email marketing, or income changes.

The key: Don’t just write down a number and check this off your list. Dig into the REASONS behind the numbers so you can use it as helpful data and information for making changes.

✏️ Action item #3: Create Your Monthly Metrics Dashboard Set up a simple spreadsheet to track your page views, revenue, RPM, email list size, and top performing/declining posts each month with year-over-year comparisons. Schedule a recurring monthly appointment to review these numbers and commit to taking action on at least one insight every month.

6. Set Goals (And Check In on Them)

If you’re doing CEO time weekly, use it to check in on your monthly goals and make sure you’re making progress.

If you’re doing CEO time monthly, use it to set goals AND plan out the steps needed to reach them.

A caution: Sometimes it makes sense to spend CEO time working on tasks specific to your goals. But make sure you’re not getting sucked into day-to-day tasks like editing photos or writing blog posts. Stay at that higher level.

However, if you have tasks that are more high-level (reaching out to brands for partnerships, pitching yourself to podcasts), those can be good uses of CEO time because they won’t get buried in your regular to-do list.

Pro tip: Having a regular weekly check-in helps you adjust expectations and reset what’s on your plate so you can stay on top of goals and follow through. Without follow-through, goal setting is just wasted time.

7. Invest in Education (The Right Way)

Use CEO time for education that expands your thinking.

This could look like:

• Working through a course you purchased
• Listening to a podcast episode (or re-listening to take notes and implement)
• Watching a webinar replay
• Researching latest trends in the industry

But here’s what’s key: Expand your perspective OUTSIDE of food blogging. The food blogging industry can feel like an echo chamber where everyone says the same things or goes to the same people for advice.

If you ask a food blogger how to double your revenue, they’ll probably suggest doubling your blog post output. That’s not bad advice! But if you ask a different type of business owner the same question, they might have completely different ideas.

Resources I love for expanding perspective:

• The Nathan Barry Show (especially on YouTube)
• The Graham Cochran Show
• Books like “10X Is Easier Than 2X”

Hearing other creators and business owners think differently helps you level up and see new possibilities for your own business.

8. Outsource Thoughtfully (Not Just Everything)

As the CEO, you need to think strategically about what to outsource.

From my own experience:

I’ve outsourced almost 100% of blog post writing. I wrote maybe one post this entire year. This has significantly changed how we produce content and how we rank—because while I love creative writing, I’m not the best technical SEO writer.

I’ve outsourced photography for recipes that fit my brand but aren’t recipes I feel strongly about making. (Example: I cannot ice cupcakes to save my life, so I outsourced those photos!)

The key: Give your team ownership instead of micromanaging. Create systems around what your team does so you’re not responsible for creating work every day. Rarely create one-off tasks—focus on systematic processes they can own going forward.

If you find yourself needing to support team members often, create a container of time for that (like Tuesday mornings) rather than letting it bleed into every single day.

✏️ Action item #4: Build Your Outsourcing Decision Framework Calculate your target hourly rate (annual income goal ÷ 2,000), then brain dump every task you do and run each through this filter: Does it require my unique skills? Does it generate revenue? Could someone else do it for less than my hourly rate? Pick one task to outsource this month and create a system around it.

9. Stay Ruthlessly Focused

This is where the CEO mindset really shows up.

Put your blinders on—and only take them off intentionally. If you want to explore recent trends on Instagram, set aside an hour block to do that intentionally rather than pretending you’re doing research while scrolling.

Ignore the shiny objects. For me, this looks like ignoring most social media and specifically video production. I’ve wanted to create video content, but it’s not a wise investment right now given the time, effort, and money it would take. So I’m choosing to ignore that shiny object.

Double down on what’s working. Rather than getting distracted by what others are doing or suggesting, think about what’s REALLY working for your blog right now and do more of that thing.

Create content the business needs, not just what you want. I had to let go of all the things I thought I should do or wanted to do, and I let the data make decisions for me. I got intentional about buckets of content I wanted to work on, then found high-value keywords within those buckets. I won’t work on recipe development unless I know it’s a keyword in our target range. This has actually made me MORE creative, not less—having parameters has been freeing.

10. Get Accountability

Having accountability has been absolutely key for me.

I’ve been in a peer-led mastermind since 2016 (off and on in different seasons). When I started getting intentional about my blog again, I knew that accountability would be crucial.

Why accountability matters:

It forces you to think higher level. When I know I have a mastermind hot seat coming up, I don’t want to ask something I could Google. I want peer input on strategic questions.

It helps you level up. Being around people who think differently than you expands what you believe is possible.

It keeps you consistent. When you know someone’s going to ask “How did that goal go?” you’re more likely to follow through.

Your accountability could be:

• A paid mastermind
• A peer-led group of blogger friends
• An accountability partner
• A business coach

Whatever works for you—but don’t skip this step. The CEO role can feel lonely, and having people in your corner makes all the difference.

✏️ Action item #5: Create Your 90-Day Strategic Plan Choose 2-3 specific, measurable goals for the next 90 days and reverse engineer what needs to happen each month to reach them. Schedule weekly check-ins during your CEO date to review progress and adjust, plus a 2-hour review at the end of 90 days to assess what worked.

The Bottom Line

Here’s what I know from the last 18 months of intentionally showing up as the CEO of my food blog:

When you shift from employee mindset to CEO mindset, you stop overestimating what you can accomplish in a day and start understanding what you can accomplish in a year.

The tasks will always be there. The recipe development, the photo editing, the Instagram posts—all of it will always need to be done.

But progress only happens when you shift the way you’re thinking and start thinking strategically like the CEO of your business.

You don’t need to implement all 10 of these things at once. Start with ONE. Maybe it’s tracking your time for a week. Maybe it’s scheduling your first CEO date on your calendar. Maybe it’s reaching out to a friend about starting an accountability partnership.

Just start.

Because every single time I work with a custom web design client who’s at that established level, they end their project saying the same thing: “I wish I hadn’t waited.”

The same is true for stepping into your CEO role. Future you will thank present you for starting today.

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Ready to take the first step? Choose ONE thing from this list to implement this week. Then come tell me about it! Drop a comment below with which strategy you’re starting with, or tag me on Instagram. I’d love to cheer you on as you step into your CEO role.

Want more CEO mindset content? Check out my Blogger to CEO category on The Vine Podcast for more episodes on goal setting, time management, and thinking strategically about your food blog business.

And if you’re ready to invest in your business with a website or brand that matches the level you’re operating at, let’s chat. Our Crafted and custom web design packages are designed for food bloggers who are ready to take their business to the next level—because stepping into your CEO role means making strategic investments in the foundation of your business.

Don’t miss our Getting Back Into the CEO Mindset for even more important suggestions.

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