We were lucky to catch up with Payton Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.

Payton, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?

I started PS I’m Blogging during the height of the pandemic. I was struggling to find purpose and meaning in my day-to-day life and needed a project that fueled me. After entering corporate America, I found it challenging to maintain some of the hobbies and interests I had growing up. During a time when life shut down, I felt it was imperative that I return to what always used to make me happy.

Since I was young, writing has been my way of making sense of the world around me. It is what I turned to each morning in my journal, what I majored in at college, and what I did in my free time. Creating a blog felt like the best way to fulfill that need of purpose that I seemed to have lost as I got older.

The next challenge was identifying what it was that I wanted to write about. Why not write about what I was experiencing…what so many of us were experiencing? A loss of purpose. I started documenting my everyday activities and sharing what got me out of bed in the mornings. By doing this exercise, I quickly realized a huge motivator for me was other women starting creative side hobbies. So, I decided to reach out to a few and ask if they’d be interested in an interview.

Fast forward a couple years later and I’ve interviewed over 50 women pursuing a wide range of creative side hobbies, businesses, and brands. The experience of sharing stories, talking about purpose, and learning from fellow women helped me identify what I wanted from my own life. Since then, I’ve landed a dream job, gotten married, and moved to LA. Now, my blog is about my creative journey and how I craft a successful life defined on my own terms.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a type-A, Virgo with a knack for all things creativity. I grew up in the Bay Area, California and went to school on the east coast. I landed in LA with my husband, Luke, and dog, Maisy. My day job is a global marketer for a social media company and on the side, I’m building my own digital brand.

Most recently, I started a podcast called PS We Have No Plan, which is an extension of my original concept for PS I’m Blogging. The podcast is managed by myself and my good friend, Emily McMannis, who is in the music industry in Nashville. Our partnership is great with my LA digital media background and her Nashville music industry background. We have a shared interest of telling meaningful stories, opening up about the challenges of growing up, and celebrating not having a plan and instead, following your creative pursuits.

We’re continuing to explore new ways to give back and build a community. Stay tuned for more updates by following along @pswehavenoplan and @psimblogging across all social media platforms.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my business partner online, like most modern friendships. I dm’d her because I was interested in her brand, The Girl With No Plan, and wanted to dive deeper into her story for a blog post. We stayed in touch over the following few months and quickly realized how much in common we had. I set up a brainstorm session for us to see if there was a creative pursuit that we both could collaborate on since we did share so many dreams, namely building a brand around the concept of self-discovery through creativity.

Now, we have a podcast, which we just wrapped season one of, and are expanding our brand, PS We Have No Plan. We are looking at products we can produce and new ways of storytelling that all come back to our core vision — celebrating self-discovery in its many forms and using the learnings as a way to craft a meaningful life.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

There are many necessary tools that I use today regularly that I wish I knew about when starting my brand. Canva is an ideal tool for building any visual design, logo, or social media edit. Audacity is the best tool for podcast editing. Zoom works just fine for podcast recording — fun fact: my business partner and I have never met in person. Finally, Squarespace is our favorite platform for website building. We love it!

For networking, I love LinkedIn and Girlboss. Both are my main sources to discover and connect with fellow business folk.

Contact Info:

• Website: psimblogging.com
• Instagram: psimblogging
• Other: @pswehavenoplan across Instagram, TikTok, and on all podcast streaming platforms.