Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there, Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team here. Thanks for tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. In today’s episode, Bjork is sitting down with Echo and Erica Blickenstaff from Favorite Family Recipes. In this episode, echo and Erica dive into the ups and downs of running a family business. They discovered that the key to their success was delegating responsibilities and playing to each other’s strengths. They also discussed the challenges of growing a business while staying true to your roots. After taking a hit from Google’s algorithm updates, they realized the importance of diversifying the revenue streams and not relying too much on search traffic with 2 million monthly page views and a focus on authentic family-driven content, they’ve learned to balance growth with staying genuine, whether you’re running a family business or just trying to keep things organized. This episode is full of actionable tips and inspiring insights. If you enjoy this episode, we would really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom:: Echo and Erica, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to have you here.

Echo Blickenstaff: Great to be here. Thank you. Thanks.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, we’re going to be having a dual conversation. There’s actually three people who are part of your business. You are all equal owners in the business, and the unique thing about this business partnership is you also have grown up as life partners because you are all sisters. So tell us quick about how you came about as sisters owning a business together. And I’ll just say our girls are six and four and I really love the idea of them someday running a business together. Maybe you can speak from the other side around the complexities of it, but as a parent I feel like it would be a really wonderful thing to see. But you guys have a business, you run this business together. So echo, take us through what that looked like for you to get to this point where you have a really successful business and your three sisters together running it.

Echo Blickenstaff: Okay. First I have to say, I wonder what my dad would, how he would respond to how it has been having three daughters work together.

Bjork Ostrom:: Sure, yeah. He is unofficially on the team as a mediator. Is that his role?

Echo Blickenstaff: I think at first all of us would do a little bit of complaining back and forth to him, and then we decided this is not good. We just need to separate.

Echo Blickenstaff: There are some subjects around the rest of the family that are taboo.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, this being one of them. If you’re all on Thanksgiving, you’re probably not going to be talking about SEO tactics around the Thanksgiving table. Yeah.

Echo Blickenstaff: Yes, exactly. So Erica and Emily actually started it before I joined, probably about five years before I joined, just as a hobby. And they had the idea, they’re the youngest two of the family, and when they both moved away, got married, our mom was a fabulous cook and we were all constantly, this was before the internet calling her asking for a recipe. She this cute little recipe box, all of her,

Bjork Ostrom:: One of those classic wood recipe boxes.

Echo Blickenstaff: Yes. And they had our grandmother’s recipes, her recipes. So it was the constant calling, jotting it down on a scrap piece of paper, losing it. So they had the idea, let’s start putting all of our family recipes online. And they did that for a few years and mostly at first it was just our family accessing recipes. And then we started noticing, oh, people are,

Bjork Ostrom:: Somebody else is coming. Yeah,

Echo Blickenstaff: Are coming. And I remember the first time they talked to one of them and they said we had 60 people outside of family visit. And it was just amazing. Wow, this is so cool.

Bjork Ostrom:: And it’s that time when you’re building a thing where it’s pretty magical to be able to say, there are 60 people and we don’t know who those people were. They somehow found your site. I think we get kind of conditioned as it grows where 60 becomes millions and you forget like, wow, that’s a really cool thing that somehow people found our site and discovered it. And so that’s where the name favorite family recipes comes from is because you had these favorite family recipes and you just decided to post those online. Eventually people started to discover those. And so that was in 2007. So you came on in 2012 then Echo, is that right?

Echo Blickenstaff: Yeah, and when I came on, it was kind of funny. I was working full-time as an accountant and Erica came to visit me. There was a blog conference in Salt Lake City and she had just had a baby and she asked me if I would just come hold the baby in the back of the room while was

Bjork Ostrom:: That was your first role within the company?

Echo Blickenstaff: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah. Childcare.

Echo Blickenstaff: Babysitter.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yep. Yep.

Echo Blickenstaff: Remember standing in the back of this conference room and hearing that people are making money, putting recipes online and listening to some of the processes and experiences that people had. And I thought, wait, we can do this. We can totally do this. And we talked about it after the conference and that’s when we started doing it intentionally as a business from that.

Bjork Ostrom:: And Erica, tell me about 2012. So it’s this period of time where people are starting to think about, hey, this could be a thing. There’s other people who are building online businesses and blogging is kind of a new thing. What was it like for you at that time and then in 2012, was it enough for you for all of you to go in working on it full time or was it kind of a side hustle for everybody at that point?

Erica Blickenstaff: So like she said, in 2012, I just barely had a baby and I was actually working full-time as a speech pathologist, so I kind of had my hands full and had my baby. I was actually on maternity leave and I was like, I don’t really want to go back to work. And really we weren’t making a whole ton, especially when we put ads and everything on there, CPMs and everything weren’t super high. So it was definitely a risk to be like, I think I’m going to just go all in on this and see what happens and quit my full-time job. My husband was going to law school at the time, so we were already in debt and like Echo said, we went to this conference and we were like, oh my gosh, people are putting these ads on and actually making money. Maybe we can do this and I can quit my job so I can be with my baby. And it was scary and it was a risk, but it’s one I’m so glad that I took and that Echo took and Emily definitely paid off.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah. So tell me about that early stage. So you are all siblings. I think this could also apply to friends or just generally business partners. You have this idea, you’re excited about the potential of a thing, you can see other people doing it and you go, you say, let’s go in on this together. First of all, from how do you make decisions around the company? One of the things we talk about on the podcast is I think a lot of us get into building an online business, whether it be a social following a blog, a CPG, food product, whatever the business is, we get into it because we initially think, Hey, my goal is to replace my income. But when you’re building a business and you replace that income, that income is then valuable because a business it, it’s transferable in a way that a salary. So I think a secondary thing, not always but for a lot of people is they get into it and they realize, oh, not only is it valuable because it’s creating income for me, it’s also valuable because you’ve created a business, but then you have to be intentional to say, what’s the ownership structure for this business? And my guess is a lot of people listening might be in similar conversations with a sibling, a friend, a business partner, and going through the process of trying to understand how do we go about doing this? So what did that look like for you all in the early stages or was it a pretty simple conversation of like, Hey, let’s divide the pie equal?

Echo Blickenstaff: In the early stages we struggled to get to a place where we could effectively move forward. I think so many things were coming at us and everyone who has a food blog knows there are so many different elements. They were at that time starting to push video, not dealing with, but taking care of all the social media platforms, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and then also, oh, we need to get an email going. There were so many different things and we really struggled at the beginning with all of us were creating content, all of us were taking photos, all of us were writing our own blog posts. I think a couple of us started fiddling around with trying to make video and then trying to, I think we even had to divided it up, you do Facebook posts on this day, I’ll do ’em this day. And I think that was a difficult time. It was a struggle because we’re all trying to do it all.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah. And what time, when you say that time, what season was that?

Echo Blickenstaff: This was probably 2012 to 2000, I dunno, probably the first couple of years I was still working for at least the first year, maybe first 18 months. And so I was trying to do my stuff at night on the weekends and we weren’t meeting regularly, it was just kind of like, okay, you throw your new post up this day, I’ll do this day. And we’ve kind of evolved into, okay, we should probably have a meeting, step one. And then initially I think we started evolving into each of us really focusing on what our strengths were and also our weaknesses, things that we enjoyed doing, things that we didn’t like to do because it kind of became a grind for a little while of do it all each of us individually. And we don’t live well. Eric and Emily do live in the same city and then I live about six hours away from them. So it’s not like we were physically getting together. And that was before Zoom. So a lot of it was just phone calls. So it took a while to figure out who enjoys this the most and is that their strength and dividing up responsibilities. And then the challenge was staying in your own lane, especially as sisters, I think you’re just feel more like you can be more open about things you like and everything. Yeah. A little too honest sometimes.

Erica Blickenstaff: Yeah, right.

Echo Blickenstaff: More than regular business partners. I dunno, maybe it’s just you feel more safe saying

Bjork Ostrom:: The lines are blurred.

Echo Blickenstaff: Yeah. And so we tried to establish some boundaries there too. We were talking to each other all weekend, texting, talking on the weekends, late at night, and we set some boundaries of, look, let’s make this a real business where we work business hours and we’re not taking over each other’s lives with this business.

Bjork Ostrom:: So kind of formalizing it a little bit. I just had a conversation with a connection, somebody that I know yesterday talking about for Lindsay and I, what does that look like through the years and this organic process of us realizing what departments we are in within the business and starting to own those and to not, like you said, step on the toes of somebody else who’s in that department. And I think that even goes so far in so as not a business partner, but just somebody who you hire and just letting them kind of do their thing and finding that balance of weighing in on it versus letting them work in their zone and own the thing that they’re owning. So how about, and I think of two books, one that we talked about before we press record E Myth, and it sounds like Erica, that was a book that you read that was influential. And another book that I’ve read kind of in the similar vein is called Slicing the Pie and it’s all about how you define actual equity ownership building of a business. So first, what did that look like to have the conversation around equity ownership of the business? Was that a pretty simple thing to say, Hey, we’re all going to go in on this equal?

Erica Blickenstaff: Yeah, I think that was a pretty easy decision to make because we were all working hard. We all agreed that we were all working about the same hours and we’re like, let’s just split up the equity in the business. That part I think was pretty easy. And then splitting up the roles themselves. We literally met in person halfway between our houses in a hotel room. We just got a hotel room for a weekend. We’re like, we’re done. We have to get away from our families, we have to just hash this out. And we had whiteboards and sticky notes and we all wrote every single thing that needed to be done in the business and just put sticky notes all up on this board. Drew three lines and we’re just like, let’s just put these sticky notes where they go and group them together and this is how we’re going to split things up. And then we could see as far as equity goes, all of these deserve equal partnership.

Bjork Ostrom:: These are all valuable, these respective departments are all valuable. And then when you talk about writing everything that needs to get done, it reminds me of there’s this business framework called EOS that some people use. And one of the things that’s really helpful that I learned in going through the training with EOS is this idea of you get away from an org chart. So it’s not like you have an org chart that lists people. You have a, I forget what they call it, but it’s essentially a responsibilities chart and what are all the things that need to get done. Like you said, Erica, within the business, you name all of those things. And for somebody who’s listening that doesn’t have any partner or doesn’t have anybody on their team, you list all those things out and then you are the name in the seat for that role. You are doing everything or there’s maybe something and it just doesn’t get done. The great thing about then starting to bring people in, whether it’s an employee or a contractor freelancer or a business partner is then you can go from your name being on everything to start to say, Hey, okay, this is, you own this, you’re in that seat and I own this. And you can start to separate those out. And my guess is for you guys coming out of that meeting, it was helpful to say, okay, now we’re starting to see these clear lines. If there’s an opportunity on social media, I’m not going to try and figure it out on my own. I’m going to email the idea and to whoever owns that and then they’re going to maybe look into it or they’re going to make a decision on it. Does that echo basically what came from that meeting was allowing to have some clarity around roles.

Echo Blickenstaff: Yes. I think for each one of us, we left that experience just feeling relieved. I know I did. Instead of feeling like I was responsible for everything, and I think Emily and Erica felt the same way, it was so nice to think, oh, I just have to focus on my things, my responsibilities. And then I felt like that allowed me to really dive in deeper to each of those responsibilities and learn more about, one of my responsibilities is SEO, so that’s been a huge focus of mine. So it’s been great to learn more about that and not be so scattered across so many different things. But that’s exactly what happened. And then we still meet, meet weekly and when new ideas come up and it’s not my lane exactly something on social media, we pass it on to Emily or we get an email about a new affiliate program we pass to Erica handles that and

Bjork Ostrom:: You know where to route those things, which is super helpful. We’re going to talk about SEO in a little bit in that world because everybody’s always interested in talking about SEO. But one of the things that it sounds like was influential was the book, the E-Myth. And it’s a book I’ve read. I know a lot of entrepreneurs have read it, but Erica, what did you learn in the process of reading the E-Myth that was helpful to help shape up the conversations around who owns what? And even maybe just shifting how you think about the business,

Erica Blickenstaff: It’s interesting that you say that because when I was reading the book as I was reading, it’s broken up into different roles, the entrepreneur and the manager and the technician. And as I was reading this, I’m like, each of us, all of our personalities where we line up in the family, each of us fit perfectly into each of these roles. It was not hard to decide who was each role. I mean Echo, she’s very business-minded and managerial. She obviously takes that manager role. Emily is really good being task oriented and she can complete things and get things done and follow through on different projects. And so obviously she’s a really good person to be in that technician role. And I always like looking to the future and looking for different revenue streams. And I’m just all over the place since I’m like, well, clearly I’m the entrepreneur. And again, it kind of fits in the family. I’m the youngest, I’m the one that’s

Bjork Ostrom:: All over. Yeah, birth order, you all fit.

Erica Blickenstaff: Yeah, Emily’s the middle child and so she’s a people pleaser. She just likes to get things done and just make sure things are organized and things are happening. And Echo being the oldest,

Bjork Ostrom:: She’s managing telling everybody what to do.

Erica Blickenstaff: So I’m really fortunate that there’s three of us and there are these three clear roles within the book. And so when I was reading that, just the light came on and I was like, clearly we need to step into our roles and stop crossing over these lines and beginning each other’s lanes. And once we did that, I think our productivity went so much more smoothly. And I think it went through the roof. I feel like we were working harder, smarter, not harder.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah. Yep. The impact of the work that you’re doing was probably deeper because you had a focus area, you knew what it was. There wasn’t overlapping work. Two people weren’t working on the same thing. So I’m going to try and remember the E myth and let me know if this feels accurate, Erica, based on what you remember and echo if you’ve read it as well. But the basic idea, the basic premise is it’s a pie shop owner. And the pie shop owner loves making pies, which fits well with our world. It’s easier to take that analogy and apply it to what we’re doing because a lot of people literally are making pies. But the idea is they build this pie shop and it’s successful because this baker bakes incredible pies. But then eventually that baker becomes a manager because it has grown and then they just don’t like the job because they’re no longer doing the thing that they love, which is baking because the business requires management. And the idea is that as much as possible you want to move from, if you are an entrepreneur, you want to move out of that role of manager execution and stay in that entrepreneurial role because that is unique and it’s something that can’t be offered in the world and find somebody who’s managerial. Or if you are naturally managerial, you want to find the other roles like somebody who’s more visionary entrepreneur. And then remind me the idea of the technician. So the technician is somebody who is more project management oriented as opposed to manager who would be more like people management.

Echo Blickenstaff: So the technician is the one who continues to make the pie.

Bjork Ostrom:: Oh yeah. Like implements the vision of the Yeah. So it’s almost like we think of the world of individual in corporate speak, individual contributor, the person who’s making the pie. We just went to, in Minnesota, I did this trip up north with two good friends and we went to my friend’s cabin, shout out to the Minne Stuga, short-term rental, if anybody ever wants to go up north on the way there. On the way back, we stopped at this place called Betty’s Pies, and they do pie shakes. That’s one of the things they do, which is essentially like a piece of pie and ice cream and then they blend it up into a shake. It’s delicious. But I always think of, when I think of E-Myth, I think of that story and when I looked back in the kitchen, my guess is the person that I saw, I don’t know, there were maybe 20, a 20-year-old that probably wasn’t the business owner. That was the technician implementing probably an idea that the entrepreneur that owned the place had, but it’s not like they’re the ones actually making it. And potentially there was somebody who was then managing that team of the technicians, the people who are implementing it. And so it’s fun for me to be able to think about the application of that within an actual pie shop. So what would your advice be to people who are navigating a similar situation? Echo would be interested in hearing your thoughts around how to divide their labor and divide the areas of focus within a business. And then maybe insofar as you’re comfortable, any advice for people around thinking about compensation within that? I know that’s an element as well.

Echo Blickenstaff: Well, for your first question about how to divide is that yeah, I feel like I don’t have in the business world probably the best answer for that within a family, with us working with sisters and everyone who works for us is a friend. That’s just how our business has evolved or a family member. My daughter’s worked for us and I think we’ve really tried to focus on what you enjoy and maybe that’s not always the most profitable way to do it, but what you enjoy, what you’re good at, and not that everything we all do is we love doing it, but just tried to focus on the strengths of those people. And the people that we’ve brought in are people that we are already seen those strengths in them and said, Hey, would you like to work for us? We see how this could really benefit our business and I’d love to work with you and have your input. So does that answer your question?

Bjork Ostrom:: It’s great. And I think it applies a little bit to this idea of they talk about where your great passion and the world’s great need meet is where you should try and find your work. But I think it also works within the context of a business where your great passion, the thing that you enjoy and the need for the business where that overlaps as much as possible. If you can be working within that zone, that’s great. We should all be seeking to do that, not just for ourselves, but also for our team members and the people that we work with. Because the end result of that is somebody’s going to be doing a thing that they like they’re interested in learning about, they enjoy doing it, they’re not going to dread it the next day if they have to get up and do it again. That just feels like a healthy pursuit for any business or individual. How about when it comes to, and some background on this is, so Lindsay and our friend Nate have this side hustle project they’re working on called Snackdive. And it’s like they just review snacks. It’s like a show and one of ’em will pick out a snack and then they’ll review it and rate it one through five. And it’s just been a really fun thing for them to work on. But one of the questions is what does that division look like in terms of business ownership as trying to navigate, it’s working more, who’s paying for what? There’s a lot of considerations around how to divide that up. Would you have any advice for people who are trying to navigate that? And then the secondary question within that is advice for people on how to figure out how do you get paid within the business? Then as you have partnerships or people that are working together, and you don’t have to share specifics about your scenario, but just advice that you’d have for people that are navigating partnerships and divvying up the pie and allocating the salary or the income that’s coming in.

Echo Blickenstaff: I think that is just where a lot of people, some people that we know of, and it’s just you run into trouble because it’s very hard to say What I’m doing is more valuable than what you are doing. Especially with the food blog, obviously the person who is creating content, that role is very important and very valuable because, excuse me, because that’s how we get traffic in. And then people who are working on dating posts, is that as valuable as someone who’s doing a new post? And we found that it is. And then is the traffic coming from social media maybe isn’t as much. It’s really hard. And what we have decided to do, and I won’t claim that we are perfect at it, we’ve just said we’ve just had to the three of us together decide, like Erica said, divide it up three ways and try and make it where we’re each spending the equal amount of time. And I think we probably focused on time more than the actual revenue responsibility.

Bjork Ostrom:: Well, and it’s impossible. You can get, it could be become a full-time job to manage and allocate and track hours. And so at some point you have to be like, alright, do we all generally feel like this is fair? Yes, let’s move forward knowing that we all generally feel like this is fair because if not, you can get bogged down forever in the specifics around what is the value of this hour that I’m spending here? And if you can get past that, it’s like anything in the marketplace, does a buyer agree and the seller agree, great, then a match is made. And I feel like the same could be a said for business ownership. It’s a little bit different I think when you’re navigating it with a family, but we’re just in that world a little bit. We’re having those conversations more because it’s always just been Lindsay and I and it’s like, well, that’s easy. We’re just marriage partners. And so it’s like 50/50 on everything. But now for the first time it’s like, Hey, what does that look like if we start a thing with somebody else and divide that up before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. If you’re a food blogger or if you have a social media following and you’re looking to boost your income and grow your business, you need to check out member, full member full seamlessly integrates with your website, giving you full control and ownership of your brand, which we all know is so important. You can create tailored membership offerings like exclusive content, cooking classes, meal plans, private podcasts, so much more. It’s a fantastic way to provide more value to your audience and create new revenue streams for your business. And the good news is it handles the tough stuff like content protection, payment processing, subscription management, so you can focus on what you love, which is creating amazing content. Plus, you can build a loyal community with private spaces like a Discord chat or exclusive member forums. And there’s also in-depth analytics and super easy payouts through Stripe, which is awesome because then you have these valuable insights and you also have a reliable way to get paid. And if you ever need any help, the wonderful thing is they have real humans there to help you. No chat bots guiding you through support forums. It’s real people who understand membership sites, who understand content creators, and they are there to help and to lift the burden of some of the technical stuff, which not a lot of us love to deal with. So if you’re ready to monetize your passion, take your business to new heights, head over to memberful.com/food, that’s M-E-M-B-E-R-F-U-L.com/food. Moving on. One of the things we talked about that we’re going to share about is this idea of SEO. I know that that’s an important part of what you’re doing. So tell me a little bit about the landscape of the site right now. What does it look like? If you were to say percentage of revenue, is it primarily advertising? Do you work with brands? If you can talk about page views, just tell us a little bit about what the site looks like today. And then we’re also going to talk about helpful content and everything that came along with that. And maybe this would be a question for you, Echo.

Echo Blickenstaff: Okay, I was going to ask Erica to answer.

Bjork Ostrom:: Okay. Maybe it was Erica, I didn’t know within the roles, if the entrepreneur is the one that knows the data or the manager, which one is it? Erica, we will send it to you, Erica.

Erica Blickenstaff: We both like to keep tabs on how things are going with the website. And it’s funny because earlier when we were talking about this altogether, I wish you would’ve asked us this before. The helpful content update was not very helpful to us.

Bjork Ostrom:: Well, and we’re going to talk about the before and after with it, which will be great. So let’s start with the now and then we’ll rewind to hear a little bit of the season you guys have navigated with that

Erica Blickenstaff: Right now, we have, as far as page views, we have between one and a half and 2 million people coming to our site every month. I dunno, what was your other question?

Bjork Ostrom:: Oh, in terms of the business as a revenue allocation, is it primarily advertising from the site? Do you do any brand partnerships or product or anything like that? You have cookbooks if you were to look at the pie of revenue for the business?

Erica Blickenstaff: Yeah, definitely. Very. On the ad-heavy side, that’s probably the most prominent source of income. We do have cookbooks. We actually just released our third cookbook.

Bjork Ostrom:: Cool.

Erica Blickenstaff: In October.

Bjork Ostrom:: Congratulations.

Erica Blickenstaff: Thank you. And then we have worked with brands. I feel like a lot of the brand work was more in the past. I feel like those connections and the big affiliate partnerships with brands, I feel like we did that a lot more maybe five, 10 years ago. But now we’ve become a lot more picky who we work with, and that’s really slimmed down a lot. Just the amount of work that it takes to put in to sponsored content and stuff, how much they’re willing to pay. A lot of times it’s just not worth the work. So that’s kind of how it all shakes out. I’m trying to think of any other, I mean, of course Amazon affiliate links, there’s some revenue there.

Bjork Ostrom:: So take us back a year, maybe this is a painful revisiting of the results of the Google gods, but what did that look like a year ago from a page U perspective or sessions?

Erica Blickenstaff: So since the Helpful Content Updates, which we actually hit the hardest in September of 2023, that’s when we really started to start seeing decreases. And we’ve probably gone down like 30%, but lately we have been recovering, these last updates have been helping out. So hopefully we’ll keep seeing that upward trend going as we’re going further into Q4.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, so September of 2023 before that, was it kind of just a process of continual slow and steady growth with the site? And then is this the first time that you’ve navigated for Pinch of Yum? We had this season’s pre helpful content, but we had a season of continual slow decline. It was like, oh my goodness, what do you do? You try everything. It’s like what works? It’s hard, especially after season of just kind of growing. But was that your case where it’s like, hey, generally speaking month over month, there’s a little bit more this month when compared to the same month, the year before, was it the first season of navigating an extended period of decline?

Echo Blickenstaff: Yes, it really was. So it’s been frustrating because we’ve continued to add content over the last 12, 13 years. Well, ever since in 2012 regularly ad content and update content. And I felt when you look at the numbers, we just had this gradual growth and probably most food blog we really took off during C when people were cooking at home and saw great traffic, 20 20, 20 21. And then even into 20, 22, 23, we’re still seeing growth until the September update.

Bjork Ostrom:: And can you talk about, maybe this is less of, there’s two ways to focus on this. One would be tactics like, hey, what are some of the things that you’re doing and what do you think some of the things that you’re doing that are working? The other is Headspace, mentally, what is that like to navigate that? So maybe Erica, you can talk a little bit about for that last year, you look back and you’re like, it would’ve been more fun to talk about page views in September of 2023 than we’re recording this in November of 2024. How have you individually or collectively navigated a situation where it feels like we’re doing good work, we’re showing up, we’re doing the same things we’ve always done that have rewarded us, but now that it feels like the game has changed, how have you navigated that from a Headspace perspective?

Erica Blickenstaff: And I don’t know if you feel this way, but a lot of it is just like, don’t panic, Start seeing those numbers going down and we’ll get on meetings every week and we’re like, okay, don’t panic. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be fine. We just have to navigate this and figure out what Google is looking for and supply that to our readers. And a lot of that is just doing a lot of testing and trying to be productive that way. Trying to figure out, okay, what were we doing before that doesn’t like anymore? And then just doing lots of that AB testing and trying something new. And some of it was working with different SEOs and getting advice and trying things. And I mean, you probably know this, working with SEOs some advice was great and advice was not so great.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, totally. Well, and it’s like maybe it’s the exact opposite of the advice that you got from somebody else. Hey, you need to do this. Yeah.

Erica Blickenstaff: I mean there would be conflicting advice all the time. And I think a lot of it is when you’re an owner of your blog, you just kind of know, just have that feeling and you also have to trust yourself and trust that you know what you’re doing. And there were a lot of times that we would stop and be like, listen, we’ve been doing this for 17 years and we’ve navigated this before. We are professionals. And sometimes it’s hard to admit that to yourself to be like, no, I know what I’m doing. I’m a professional, we can figure this out.

Bjork Ostrom:: Well, especially you have developed a sixth sense around what works, what doesn’t work. And I feel this way in the world of finance where it’s like I’m continually interested in learning about finance, personal finance, opinions on things. But I would say for every 10 pieces of advice I take in from a content perspective around finance, there’s maybe one that I’m like, oh, I’m going to hold onto this. And I think if it was 20 years ago, I would kind of be holding onto everything. I haven’t really developed an opinion or an edge around my beliefs as it relates to personal finance. I feel like in our world of search and content, it’s probably similar. You all have been at this 10, 15, 17 years and you’ve taken in a lot of content. And in the early stages you kind of take it all as gospel. And then over time you start to realize, wait, this doesn’t feel like it applies to either what we’re doing. Maybe it’s like industry specific or maybe just seems a little bit off, or maybe it’s a way to get a result, but it feels temporary as opposed to long-term beneficial. So you start to develop these opinions, but it takes time to your point, and you probably don’t even realize the depth of your own expertise. So from a tactics perspective, you have gone through the process of learning a lot of different things, hearing from a lot of people. Echo, can you speak to right now, what does it look like for you in terms of what you’re doing day to day and maybe some things you could point to that are working well if you do have those things?

Echo Blickenstaff: One of the tactics I think that we’ve employed over the past year is going back to our roots. And when I say that, just when we first started out, we would write about where we got the recipe, how we came up with it, add some more personal touches. I mean that’s really all it was. There wasn’t a lot of information about the recipe within the content of the post. And over time, as you know, all the changes and the things we’ve been told from SEO experts in the field do this and then the next year, no, you need to do this. And I felt for a long time we were just chasing that, oh, we’ve got to go through all of our posts and posts and change this, and then something else comes up. We’ve got to go through all of our posts and change this and hire people on to help us get everything fixed for this new way to rank higher on Google. And I think this process with the Google updates has taught us, let’s stick with what we feel good about instead of what everybody else is telling us to do. And

Bjork Ostrom:: Do you have an example of that when you say something, an example of something you feel good about?

Echo Blickenstaff: Well, I think, and I could be wrong, but I think a lot of the people who followed us, especially from the beginning, enjoy hearing a little bit. And I’m not saying the whole life story. I personally enjoy when I read on Pinch of Yum or their website where they came up with the recipe or was this a family recipe? Where did it come from? Or we like to do a lot of copycat recipes on our site and I think people would like to know why did we pick that recipe to copycat? What’s our experience with that dish and why we would go to the trouble of trying to copycat it? Those kinds of things I think people find interesting. They don’t necessarily need a repeat of a bunch of things that are already in the recipe cart. So I think that seems to be something that Google prefers to see.

Bjork Ostrom:: It’s one of the hard things is like we talked about, you have almost two decades now of running the site, and so you have an intuition around readers, engaging with readers, interacting with readers. And what Google is trying to do long-term is serve content that is most helpful for the people that are using Google. Now, there’s a lot of questions around the long-term play of AI overviews and how much content is Google going to include in their search results. But generally speaking, the goal of Google is to give people helpful content outside of the context of helpful content update, but content that is truly good fit for people that people want. But the hard part, to your point echo, is it felt like there was a long history for a couple years of creating content that it kind of felt like people didn’t want, but Google rewarded. And then the question is, what do you do? Do you do the thing that you know is working in the moment or do you do the thing that you feel like is more aligned from a user perspective that feels a little bit maybe more organic, but maybe more engaging or useful or helpful for somebody coming to a piece of content at the risk of that thing not performing as well within Google. And so you kind of are forced to make this decision around how do you want to show up and how do you create content? Do you create it just for Google? Do you create it for just for people without Google or do you kind of find that middle ground? And it sounds like that’s where you’ve landed is this middle ground of creating user forward content from a ui ux and just what the content is about perspective, but then also keeping a search engine in mind from best practices standpoint. Does that feel accurate as to what you’re trying to do now?

Echo Blickenstaff: Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do now.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah. Wrapping the content with, yeah, go ahead.

Echo Blickenstaff: I think that’s what we tried to do all along, but I think we got a little too distracted with what everybody else was doing.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah. Which is I think everybody can relate to that, especially when you see a thing and it’s working, it’s like, oh, maybe that’s something that’s worth pursuing. So as we close out here, you have been doing this for a long time and you’ve been doing it successfully for a long time. Erica, you alluded to that as you’re working with these SEOs and it’s like getting some great advice, but also then getting some advice maybe in certain situations it’s like, oh, it doesn’t feel like necessarily something you’d say, yeah, we’re going to do this, no questions asked and move forward with it. Point being, you have a lot of insights, expertise, you have a lot of success. Tell me about when you look out another five years or 10 years, how do you guys think about the site that you’ve built, the strategy that you have? Erica, you’re in that entrepreneurial role, so maybe you’re thinking ahead a little bit, looking at new opportunities, anything that you’d point out or shine a light on for other creators as you think about what’s to come down the line?

Erica Blickenstaff: I’m always looking for different ideas. I mean, we’ve been looking into different product ideas or different, just a lot of different revenue streams, especially because of these last updates, how quickly Google can just take something away. So focusing on email and just different revenue opportunities, but also doing what we’ve been doing and really providing good content for our readers because I feel like people are always going to be wanting to find the recipes that they knew when they were growing up, those true favorite family recipes that they had. And I don’t think that’s going to go away. I don’t think that’s something that AI can take away. AI has never had those feelings and experiences around food we have, and I think people are always going to search for that genuine content. And so looking down the road, that’s what we want to keep providing is genuine content. And like Echo said, maybe even getting more back to our roots and being more genuine and building more for our readers instead of always trying to please the SEO gods.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, totally. Which there’s something that’s really nice about that to be writing for readers first before search. I think especially for people who enjoy the process of less structured content that’s not 17 sections on all the different ingredients and the history of those ingredients, it feels like a good way to be creating content. Last thing that I want to ask about, it’s a section that we’re trying to talk about more. I think it’s fun for people to hear about, and part of this comes back to Echo. We were at a conference, we were sitting across from each other and you were like, do you guys know a tool that brings in Google Analytics data, Google Search Console data, WordPress data? And for a minute I thought you were joking, you essentially read off the header of Clariti, the tool that we’ve been working on. And so I was like, oh my gosh, we either need to do a better job of marketing or we need to position things better. So you don’t have to say clarity, I dunno if you’re still using the tool, but this made me think of that moment. But what are the tools that you are using in your day to day that you especially, and it could be communication tools for your team, it could be an AI tool that helps you think of new ways to create content. Anything that you’re using that is kind of a fun thing that you think other people might find helpful. Echo, you can start and then Erica, if you have thoughts too.

Echo Blickenstaff: Okay. Well we have used Clariti and we use Clariti almost every day. It has been.

Bjork Ostrom:: Okay, great. Shameless plug. Yeah, glad to hear it. Yeah, I’m glad that we, it’s the most in-person marketing I’ve ever done. It’s just like sitting across from you explaining the tool.

Echo Blickenstaff: That was such an amazing experience because it was so on my mind and I’m glad that I brought it up to you and you had a great answer for it. And it’s something that we’ve used. We were actually in a meeting yesterday and all three of us, I said, okay, you look up this, you look up, you look up this on Clariti and let’s compare. And it’s been

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, awesome.

Echo Blickenstaff: A great tool for us. So thank you.

Bjork Ostrom:: Great.

Echo Blickenstaff: We also use SEMrush, and that’s been a good tool for us, just mostly for researching keywords for new posts, trying to, if there’s a recipe that we’re wanting to explore, what are the keywords around it, what’s the volume people are searching? Is it already completely washed out on the internet? There’s no way we would ever rank for it. And sometimes we still create content even if just because we feel like it’s a good fit for our site and it’s something that we want to have on there. For example, Erica just went to Switzerland and brought back some recipes.

Bjork Ostrom:: Awesome.

Echo Blickenstaff: That have been fun that we’ve put on the site. I don’t know how they’ll do, but we’ll see.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah. Great.

Echo Blickenstaff: And then for delegating responsibilities, a tool that we’ve used a lot with our team is Asana, just the free version, and that’s worked really well for us. I really like that tool for just making assignments to the team.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah. Cool. That’s great. Erica, anything you’d add?

Erica Blickenstaff: I think she covered it pretty well. Just back to Clariti. I remember when we were at that conference, I remember Echo came bursting through the hotel room and she’s like, Erica, it’s like what I found,

Bjork Ostrom:: We talked about the tool and we created it on the spot. It manifested itself.

Erica Blickenstaff: I know. And we’re like, where was this a year or two years ago? How come we didn’t know about this?

Bjork Ostrom:: That’s really funny. And it’s so funny. It was a really fun story for me to bring back to the team, I think partly because it’s like, oh, this is the tool that’s needed for people in your position. It’s the exact tool that we built and now it’s just our job to market to get it in front of people.

Echo Blickenstaff: Just one more plug for it. Really enjoy looking on Clariti and finding broken links. That’s something one of the first steps with Clariti. We went through and fixed a bunch of broken links that we had no idea where those broken links were there. The thing we love about it is that it showed us alt tags that were missing. We thought we had covered alt tags,

Bjork Ostrom:: Everything. Sure.

Echo Blickenstaff: Everything. And that was so helpful. And just going in and changing a few of those things on a post makes a big difference in traffic.

Bjork Ostrom:: That’s great. Even for Pinch of Yum, and I feel like we’re relatively aware of all this stuff, right? It’s like I talk about it every week on the podcast, we had a decent amount of orphaned content, so content that wasn’t linked from any other post or page on the site. Obviously there’s going to be deep archive pages on the blog archive, but there was no organic text link within other pieces of content. So that’s been a huge project for us and one that we probably wouldn’t have done if not for the tool. So that’s super great. Asana, we use Asana. I’ve actually started using it personally. I’m starting to work with my brother-in-law on projects. And so it’s like my mantra is everything in Asana, all processes, all tasks, all projects, putting that into Asana. So yeah, definitely a great tool. Echo, Erica, it’s great to connect. It’s fun for me to have these conversations when I have a first touchpoint in person and then it transitions into digital. That’s a rare thing. And it was so fun to sit down with the two of you when we had that dinner at the conference. And just a huge amount of respect for what you’ve done, the business that you’ve built, and also to do it as a family. And it’s a uniquely wonderful and challenging thing. And so appreciate you sharing your story there as well. This will be the actual last question. One piece of advice that you’d have for somebody who’s interested in doing a thing for a decade, we talk about all the time, it’s showing up, getting a tiny bit better every day forever. And people underestimate what they can do in a decade. They overestimate what they can do in a year, and you’re a testament to that. Having worked on a thing for a really long period of time, echo, what would you say? And then Erica will go to you, that one piece of advice to encourage somebody to show up for a decade and continue doing the work.

Echo Blickenstaff: I think my advice would be start out with your goal in mind and then break it down. That’s a tool that has really helped me a lot in this business is starting having the big vision and returning to the big vision. There’s a lot of motivation there to keep going. And then breaking down, what am I going to do year one, year two, year three? I’m a very visual person. I like to see things mapped out. And then when that’s broken down into what does that look like every week that needs to be accomplished. It’s like taking a bite of the elephant one at a time. It really breaks it down and makes it more doable. And you see the rewards when you do that. I remember one of our first, when Erica was talking about when we kind of put all of our responsibilities into individual lanes, one of the things we did at that meeting too is we set some goals of what we wanted to see next year. And in five years, I don’t think we went as far as 10 years, but that was really helpful. And then we track, are we keeping up with what we wanted to do year one, year two, year three. So that was it.

Bjork Ostrom:: That’s great. And it sounds like something that somebody in your role should say, when you talk about, you all naturally line up with what you do, somebody who’s kind of in that manager position, that is ideal answer. Take a big vision, divide it up into manageable tasks, spread it out over a long period of time, take one little step each day. I love that. And I think it’s a great way to look at it. You can cover a lot if you do a little bit every day. So Erica, how about you?

Erica Blickenstaff: For me, I would definitely say set boundaries for yourself. When we were first starting, like Echo said, we were just working all hours and weekends and it was a lot of hard work and we were just burning the candle at both ends and it was too much. And I feel like just a couple years in, we were all feeling burnout And we weren’t being as productive as we could have been. And so drawing those lines for yourself and those boundaries and just saying, when the kids get home from school, I’m done. I’m done. I’m not going to be working on stuff until they go to bed or I’m going to focus on my family while they’re here so they don’t feel like they’re second to the business. And I found that that has brought me a lot more joy in what I do. And I think that because I set those boundaries, we’ve been able to be, I mean all of us have, I think we’ve been more successful because we’re not burning out and we’re putting our priorities in order, starting with our families. And I think that by doing that, it’s ultimately helped the business.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, totally. And there’s this idea of you give to the business, but you also want a business that gives to you. And if you’re only giving to the business, that’s going to be like any other relationship. It’s probably going to be unhealthy if you are the only one investing into that relationship. And I think about that from our relationship with the business. There needs to be situations where it gives to us as well. We can’t always just be giving to it. So that’s great. And I think a really good reminder, Erica Echo, thanks so much for coming on. It was a joy to talk to both of you and really appreciate your time.

Erica Blickenstaff: Thank you. Okay, thanks.

Emily Walker: Hello, Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. I wanted to pop in today and thank you for tuning into this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We are so grateful for you for listening. Before we sign off, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Food Blogger Pro Forum. In case you didn’t know how it works, if you are a Food Blogger Pro member, you get access to our amazing forum. It’s one of my favorite places on Food Blogger Pro. I spend a lot of time there myself. And on the forum we have tons of different topics for you to explore. We have a building traffic section, a photography section. We have an essential tool section. We chat about generating income and essential plugins, all sorts of areas for you to ask questions and chat with your fellow Food Blogger Pro members. It’s a great place to connect with fellow members, troubleshoot any issues you’re having, and brainstorm together. Our industry experts are always popping into the forum to help members with their questions. Casey Markee and Andrew Wilder are always popping in, and so is Danielle Liss, our legal expert. It’s a really great place to get access to these experts and have them help you with your concerns. The forum is also just a fantastic place to find a community in this food blogging space as you’re working to grow your site and your business. If you’re ready to join Food Blogger Pro and get access to our wonderful forum, head to foodbloggerpro.com/join to learn more about our membership. We really hope you enjoy this episode and can’t wait to see you next week for another great episode. Have an amazing week.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there, thanks for tuning into the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Ann, and in today’s episode, Bjork is sitting down with Brian Watson from Thee Burger Dude. You’ll hear about Brian’s journey as a content creator and how he has navigated his way from Instagram to YouTube, why blogging remains crucial for his success and how it can offer stability for creators on TikTok and Instagram. Plus, you’ll hear his tips for standing out in a crowded space, including smart photography setups and the value of multifunctional recipes. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re looking to elevate your content, this episode is filled with insights you won’t want to miss. If you enjoy this episode, we would really appreciate it if you’ll leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Brian, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Yeah. I’m going to lead with a question not related to food at all, because it was something kind of curious that you said in kind of the pre-interview questionnaire filling things out. You were talking about earning income from your YouTube and from your blog, and then you said in addition to royalties, I think. Is that right? So tell me, I’m curious about the royalties part, start there.

Brian Watson: Sure. Yeah, so before I started doing the food blogging stuff, I was doing kind of two jobs at the same time. My first job was doing 3D environment art for video games, and I did that 20 plus years. And then the last started around 2013, I started doing music for mostly reality tv, so all the real Housewives stuff and lots of discovery stuff, and it’s just the background music.

Bjork Ostrom: In fact, we can relate. I had a song placed on Real World in the background.

Brian Watson: Nice.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, this was 12 or 13 years ago.

Brian Watson: Do you still get royalties from it or

Bjork Ostrom: Maybe since at this point, but I mean, when I was young twenties and it was like a royalties track and I didn’t have, it was just me as publisher and writer. I remember getting a check for, at the time, I think it was maybe like 1500 each, so like $3,000.

Brian Watson: Yeah, that’s about right. That’s great. Yeah, if you can do that a bunch of times every month, you’re doing great.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And stack those up. So you were doing environmental art for video games, meaning you would design the landscape that the characters would live in

Brian Watson: The buildings. If it was like Grand Theft Auto, I would’ve done the streets and the buildings, basically the big stuff. I wouldn’t have done the small stuff like the cars and little props and stuff, but the major environment stuff, it That’s awesome. It was a really great fun job. It was very stressful. It could be very stressful depending on who you worked for. Sure. And then I’ve always done music ever since I was a kid, and I started just composing. I got into Philip Glass and I was like, maybe I can stuff like this. So I started doing that and a friend of mine who was an editor was like, Hey, music library guy I know needs some music. So I sent it to him. They said this was great. And so we basically, I just would write them stuff and just send it to them and they would get it based on shows. And yeah, I haven’t done work for them in probably since I started doing this, probably since 2019, I’d say at least five years, and I’m still getting royalty checks, which are really great because it’s literally

Bjork Ostrom: Passive money sometimes People are like, oh, you’ve built a website, it’s passive income. It’s like, actually, no, it’s very active income.

Brian Watson: That truly is, you can do something and it becomes passive. It pays royalties, which is I don’t have to do Anything. I literally don’t do anything and just, yeah, it’s really nice. I don’t know when it’s going to peter off and just disappear, but I imagine eventually it will.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So you were talking about this new business that you’ve created and that you’ve built over the last four to five years, and it really is a business. It’s at the point now where you’re earning advertising revenue both from your site, from YouTube, hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube and Instagram. This for you, it sounds like came out of a transition from that W2, or was it a W2 contractor job? It was your main gig?

Brian Watson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my main gig, it depended when I would work salary for some video game companies. I used to work for Insomniac who did the Spider-Man games recently.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, cool.

Brian Watson: But yeah, towards the end I was kind of just doing odd job stuff where I would work for somebody and help them out for a couple months, so, so I was definitely kind of in a weird spot where I was like, what am I going to do? And I was getting burned out on the music stuff just because, I don’t know, it’s like it’s a grind. I have a ADHD, so I tend to get, sometimes I get a little bored of things after a while, which I’m curious. I don’t know how long I’ll be doing this. Hopefully I would love to do this for the rest of my life, but I really have no idea if I will be.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And so there’s this job transition, and you’ve recently gone vegan, and so you’re doing a lot of burger experiments and cooking, and you’re making a lot of vegan burgers, documenting that on your personal Instagram, it sounds like there are some conversations that came out of friendships, your girlfriend, now wife at the time kind of being like, Hey, you’re doing this thing. There’s something here. Why don’t you make it a thing? Is that more or less what happened?

Brian Watson: Yeah, my wife April was like, you should just start posting this stuff on Instagram, a food account, like a separate burger account. And I didn’t know that that was a thing. And so I looked into it and I started doing that, and it just kind of grew out of there. I just started posting stuff and people would ask for the recipes. So then I actually started writing down what I was doing, and then I would just post that on the caption, and then eventually somebody was like, you should start a blog because you could actually make money doing that. And so that’s what I did. So it was, like I said, it was very unintentional. It was just kind of something I was doing for fun, and I had no idea that you could make money at it or make a living off of it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. When did you start to realize that was possible? Give us kind some high level stats around when that happened, and then maybe how many years of into it?

Brian Watson: Yeah. Well, I didn’t know that you could. Well, a few years into it, I think I started, so when I first started doing stuff, Instagram was just photos. They didn’t have any sort of bonuses or anything like that. Really the only place that you could earn TikTok didn’t even exist. And so the only place you could really earn any sort of money was either on a blog or on YouTube advertising revenue.

Bjork Ostrom: You could work with a brand on Instagram, but if you’re going to do,

Brian Watson: Right, right. Yeah. Actually, I started doing that early on too. I remember I was like, why do these people want me to do stuff for them? I definitely had an imposter syndrome, and I do to this day, but especially early Days as to all of us.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah,

Brian Watson: I did my site on Wix just because I don’t know how to do any sort of, I wouldn’t know how to do a website on WordPress. Yes, thank you. I didn’t know how to do any of that stuff, and I just thought, well, I’ll do it on Wix and I’ll figure out how to get ads on it later. I also was like, I hate when there’s ads on blogs on recipe. So you know what? I’m going to keep my blog ad-free because I just want people to be able to see that. I wanted it to basically be a place where people could just get the recipes from my videos on YouTube, and I just thought, I’m going to put all my eggs in the YouTube basket and I’m really going to focus on YouTube, and eventually it’ll pay off. And I just kind of plateaued. And I started getting worried because I was like, like I said, with the royalty money, I don’t know when that’s going to dry up, but it does.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like still there. Every time you get a check, you’re like, oh, thank goodness.

Brian Watson: Yes,

Bjork Ostrom: Still there, but maybe not next month.

Brian Watson: And sometimes it’ll go really high up and sometimes it’ll go really high down. It’s very inconsistent too. So I started getting worried that this YouTube money, there’s no way I could subsist off the YouTube money. It’s just simply not enough. And I just remember being, people make money doing this besides brand deals. I also didn’t want to do a ton of brand deals. I’m grateful for them, but at the same time, they’re not my favorite thing to do, which I think

Bjork Ostrom: Totally,

Brian Watson: I mean, everyone would say that probably. Then I saw a blog, or I saw a post by Tiffy Cooks, I don’t know if you’re familiar with her, And she was talking about how she quit her job. She was working some corporate job. She quit it and really kind of just concentrated on the blog, and she’s like, now I make five figures a month on my blog. And I’m like, how is she doing that? And so that’s when I started looking more into monetizing the blog, and I realized with Wix, it was just way too hard. So I paid somebody, a friend recommended me to somebody to essentially move my blog from Wix over to WordPress and get it up and running with Google Ads. And what was interesting was because I had been doing my blog for three years, by the time I started putting ads on it, she realized, she’s like, you’re getting enough hits that you could do. I soon did Mediavine, and then a few months after that, she’s like, now you can move to Raptive. You’ve got enough for Raptive. So that’s basically what I’ve done, and that’s actually become, I’m trying not to put all my eggs in one basket sort of thing, because I know that’s not wise, but right now the blog is kind of the main breadwinner for me. And so that is where I’m putting most of my energy. I haven’t really done a long-form YouTube video in, it’s like, six months Just because I don’t really enjoy them as much now. I like doing short videos. Like I said, I have ADHD, so my attention span is the kind of thing where I just do much better on that. Even when I watch videos, I actually prefer short videos. Most of the time. It’s something I’m very new to, and I have no idea how to make it. I would much prefer a shorter video.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interesting, I think that one of the things we often talk about is looking at holistically, what is your experience as a human and how can you wrap all that stuff into your unique offering? And I think for you, it’s like vegan obviously is a really specific thing, vegan, but also burgers. And it’s not just burgers I know now, but kind of this idea of you made a Reuben and I’m watching it and I’m like, man, that’s awesome. I’m not vegan. But we have some vegan restaurants that we really like in the Twin Cities, and it’s great, and it’s a skill that you have in making the vegan food, but also you obviously are somebody who has a history of creating a thing, and the previous version was music and buildings in a Spider-Man universe. Not that you’re doing it for that game, but that idea and what you have then. And you also have a brain that works in a certain way. And so it’s kind of looking is maybe strategic, maybe not. But just saying collectively you as Brian Watson, what does that look like for you to come up with something that allows you to create a successful thing online? And what’s cool about it is that you’ve done that, you’ve put all of those pieces together and you’ve created a thing that not only is uniquely you, but also there is a need for it in the marketplace. And it’s like you could do long form video, there’s also a need for that, but Shortform is working really well right now. And for me on the outside, it’s really cool to see somebody who’s like is surfing a wave and they’re really good at surfing that wave and the wave that they are surfing is a wave that’s relevant to how content is being produced right now on the web, which is short form as an example. So it’s cool to see all those collectively coming together. One of the questions that I have for you is with your Instagram, you have 360,000 followers, and on YouTube you have 442 followers at the time of the recording for this. And yet you talk about your site kind of being this main hub for you, at least from the financial perspective with the business. Can you talk about how you kind of view those things collectively? And do you view really the social meaning YouTube and Instagram as a channel into getting people to the site? And if so, how do they get there?

Brian Watson: I mean, yeah, I hope it doesn’t sound too cynical, but yeah, that’s kind of how I do view them because social media, especially being a vegan content creator, a recipe creator can be very exhausting. You’re dealing with comments basically. And when you’re dealing with the expectation that you put on yourself, okay, I worked really hard on this video, I really hope it resonates. I get a lot of likes and a lot of great feedback and all this stuff, and then it bombs, and then you kind of feel defeated. And I really mean, I know this is not a unique perspective, but I really don’t like that. And I was trying to figure out how can I make this sustainable? And so for me, it’s just a way to kind of quantify success, I guess. As long as the blog is chugging along and I’m doing just as good as the last month or better, I don’t really care about how something performs on Instagram or on YouTube, you know what I mean? Obviously it’s great to me, it’s like a bonus now on Instagram or YouTube or whatever pops off and does well, it’s a bonus as opposed to something that I’m relying on to be a barometer of how I’m doing. It’s just a very, it’s not a sustainable way for me to do what I’m doing basically.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Well, especially if you think about, let’s say you take the blog away and you only have Instagram or you only have YouTube. YouTube to some degree, there’s maybe some predictability with revenue, but still it kind relies on a video going up down’s, the solid

Brian Watson: Score. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But Instagram, it’s like you talked about bonuses. It’s like, we’ll, occasionally for Pinch of Yum, which is our food site and Instagram get bonuses, but it’s like maybe every once in a while collectively we’ll get over a thousand dollars a month from that, and we might be doing it wrong. If anybody knows a better way to do it, let me know. And I know there are some people who are doing long form content on Facebook and having success with that and monetizing that. So for you, if you look at the pie chart of your business income, what does that look like percentage wise? Is it like 70% revenue from the site, 30% from YouTube?

Brian Watson: Probably, yeah, close to that. I’d say 75% from the blog and 25% from YouTube right now. It’s funny because you just reminded me when Instagram first started doing bonuses and I signed up for it, and it was actually semi-decent. It was like half of what I made on YouTube. And so I was like, oh, wow, they’re actually going to, they’re actually trying to contend with YouTube. This will be interesting to see how this plays out. And then a couple months later, it just plummeted to 10% of what it was before.

Brian Watson: I think that’s the thing. What you brought up with YouTube is YouTube is pretty consistent. There was definitely a weird thing when they were doing with shorts where I was getting just an insane amount of views, millions and millions of views, and then it dropped as quickly as it started. You know what I mean? So they definitely were messing with the algorithm and trying to figure out how do we suggest things and whatnot, which is, that’s expected, obviously. But even with that, yes, YouTube is definitely the most consistent. If I was going to give anyone advice, if they were going to double down, not double down, but I see a lot of people doing stuff on TikTok and Instagram and they don’t have a blog, and I guess they’re just depending on Brandy, and some of these people have 500,000 a million followers, and I’m just, I’m like, y’all got to get a blog. You know what I mean? At least the thing that I like about the blog is it’s your thing, you control it. Obviously we’re beholden to Google, but it’s the most independent thing that you can do in this whole social media sort of stratosphere,

Bjork Ostrom: Especially people talk about this idea of comparison against, you have a garden and the garden is on land that you own, and you can kind of till that garden and make it whatever you want, versus you have a garden, but it’s on rented land, being social media, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and you can grow a crop on it, but they might come and plow it over someday and build a big building because it’s their land. They can do whatever they want with it.

Brian Watson: Especially Instagram. I mean, I don’t see it as much as I used to, but there would just be people who are like, oh, Instagram deleted my account.

Bjork Ostrom: Right? Well, it happened to us. Oh, really? Lindsay’s Facebook account, if this ever happens to anybody. We did a podcast episode on it, so it was maybe two years ago, somebody hacked Lindsay’s personal Facebook account somehow still unclear exactly how it happened. She had two factor authentication stuff turned on, but then they did something with selling ads. It was some weird stuff, weird behavior. Anyways, her personal account got shut down, but her personal account was connected to all the other meta accounts, so it was like 10 o’clock one night. She’s like, Instagram’s just gone. It’s like, what? Yeah, it just doesn’t exist. So it was a whole to do with having to get ahold of a friend that we had at Meta and they had to submit some document.

Brian Watson: That seems to be the only way you can get it resolved. I just saw something where someone was saying how their account got deleted, and she was saying that the only reason she was able to get in there was because she has the meta verified thing and they have some special customer service that if I wouldn’t be able to get it, I don’t have the meta verification thing, so I would be screwed if one day that happened. And I think about, and again, that’s why I am putting more stock in something like the blog, because hopefully no one’s going to delete my blog.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, well, it’s owned a little bit more, not that there’s ever any platform that’s completely risk free. Even with email, I remember when Gmail released some updates where they started filtering email and it was like, oh, maybe this is going to have a big impact on newsletter sends and opens. And so there’s always risk in anything that we’re doing in any business.

Brian Watson: Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Algorithm change, platform changing emails not being delivered, all of those things. But to your point, I think less volatility, or at least you own it in a different way where it’s not going to completely go away or you’re not going to lose access to it. Google algorithm change for sure, but even within that, it’s all about diversification. And it sounds like high level, a lot of what you’re talking about is like, Hey, I had this income coming in from royalties, that was great, but I felt a little bit like I needed to diversify. So I started working on this business that was the food business, but within the context of that food business, it was a little bit too reliant just on YouTube revenue. So then I looked at the blog revenue, and we’ve done different iterations of that even outside of digital business where we’ve said, Hey, what’s the ultimate contrast of what we’re building? And it’s like bricks in a parking lot. So it’s like what does it look like to have commercial real estate? So let’s say everything does go away. You have this kind of adjacent, completely unrelated business, But part of it is also very personal. It’s like some people are very comfortable going all in on a singular thing and getting really good at it, and they benefit from it. And so it really has to do with your own personal risk assessment and resource allocation, but time allocation, money allocation, all of that. So when you think of how you are spending your time today, what does that look like? You have a, let’s say, eight hour day. Do you still view yourself as a video creator or are you focusing a lot on the site at this point?

Brian Watson: Yeah, I am focusing on making the blog kind of a giant digital cookbook is essentially what I want be, and I want to just do the kind of thing where I did start with burgers, but today after we’re done, I’m going to try and do a carbonara. I’m trying to do more stuff like that just because I want it to be the kind of thing where people go to the site, they might think, oh, I want make whatever. Let’s see if the burger dude has a recipe for it. I want to do that kind of thing where it’s not, I can’t think of a good word that doesn’t sound pretentious.

Bjork Ostrom: Go for it. Just say it.

Brian Watson: I was going to say a beacon or something like that, but I just want it to be a home base for people. A destination. A destination, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a resource for people as opposed to people randomly coming across it on a search result, they maybe go there to search.

Brian Watson: Right, exactly. And like you said, I mean, it’s cool because since I’ve been doing this, I have noticed a lot more people are doing, because I think a lot, there’s still a stereotype that vegan food is all vegetables and all this stuff, which is fine, obviously. But yeah, that was the kind of thing when I was going vegan, I wanted something different. I wanted to be able to eat what I was already eating. And so it’s very niche down. You’re already doing vegan food, which is obviously a very small subset, and you’re doing more like comfort slash fast food sort of stuff, which is even more, it’s like a very small slice of the pie,

Bjork Ostrom: Basically. Yeah. It’s like vegan Raisin Canes, barbecue, shredded tofu beef. I’m looking through all the different examples. One of the things that I appreciate about your style is in our world, a lot of times you’ll see people have these kind of really beautiful, laid out, expansive. There’s the cloth in the dish and then there’s some cups in the background for you. It’s a very minimalist, it’s almost like something you would see on a really well shot menu. And it’s the plate, it’s simplistic, and I think it does a really good job of showcasing what the food item is, what the recipe is, but it’s also a departure at least from what the norm would be. And it feels like such a great example of somebody coming in yourself, in this case, unencumbered by what everybody else is doing, and maybe just kind of blazing your own path. And that working, is that accurate in terms of you saying, Hey, this is kind of how I envision it, or did you kind of have a picture of what it was going to be like coming in based on a photographer you liked or things that you’ve seen?

Brian Watson: Yeah, no, he still posts. There’s a guy, Joe’s Vegan Food, Gram, I believe his account is, and he does the same thing. It’s just a stark white background then whatever he’s shooting. So he was definitely an influence. But like you said, also when I would go to the McDonald’s site or the Burger King site to look at what they had so that I could get some inspiration, I noticed, oh, it’s just a burger with a white background or an orange background, or whatever it is. They don’t really make it look like what at Burger King, you know what I mean? And on top of that, it’s a much less romantic version or a reason. It was because I did try to do some of that stuff with plating and everything, and I wasn’t very good at it, so I just thought, you know, why don’t we just get rid of all that stuff? And it does make it a lot easier. The thing that I love about it is I white everything out in Lightroom. I do shoot on a white backdrop, but it’s not a hundred percent white. There’s still shadows and stuff, but what I love about it is I can shoot things separately and then if I need to make some sort of compose scene with multiple things, I can just do it. It was because you would shoot something that was already pre composed and you’d be like, oh, I wish the spoon was just moved a nudge to the right or whatever. You know what I mean?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah. That’s great.

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Brian Watson: Perspective? Yeah, I try to think about it from the perspective of if I was, for instance, with the carbonara, if I was looking for a carbonara recipe, a vegan one, what’s going to stick out to me? Because you go on and you Google it, and like you said, you do see stuff. It feels like everything is kind of very similar. So that’s one thing I’m trying to figure out right now is how do I make certain things? Because obviously easy if I’m doing a vegan rai canes, there’s not a ton of vegan rai canes recipes out there, but when it’s something that’s a little bit more that’s been treaded a bit more, it is difficult, I think to forge your own path and make something a little bit more of your own thing. Also, to be honest, sometimes I try and do stuff like that, and a lot of times people, you try and do something like a new spin on something familiar, right? There’s that same, the same but different. I can’t remember what it’s, I was going to do some saying, but I can’t remember.

Bjork Ostrom: My friend and I have this insight. It’s a group of friends. We have this inside joke where one of ’em was trying to come up with a thing and he said it was something of a something, and then he paused, and then he goes, it was the greatest thing ever. So whenever we’re trying to come up with something, we always go, it was something of

Brian Watson: Greatest thing ever. Familiar, but different, I think is what the term was. Sure. But yeah, it’s very, very difficult. And sometimes I think it’s cool to have that. And other times I think just make the recipe because, and don’t worry about if it’s going to be super unique and stick out. Sometimes I just want to make a recipe. I want it to be on the blog. Like I said, I want the blog to just be a digital cookbook that has My mom, I have it back there. My mom has the Betty Crocker cookbook. If you look through those, it’s like, now it’s like you look back, it’s so old fashioned. It’s like how to make meatloaf. It’s like, who doesn’t know how to make meatloaf? But it’s, some people don’t. You know what I mean? But that’s kind of what I want to do with the blog, and eventually I want to go back and do super basic stuff for people who are just starting to go vegan, even though, again, stuff exists out there, it’s easy to find, but I don’t know. I want to have that on my site. I don’t know why I, why I want to have ownership on certain things. You know what I

Bjork Ostrom: Mean? Yeah, for sure. Well, it’s like you can find a hundred different things in a hundred different places, but what’s unique about us as content creators is there are people who inevitably are going to want to come from us and learn from us similar. It’s like there’s probably, I don’t know, a hundred million songs that exist in the world, but we each have our own artists that we want to go and listen to, even though we could probably listen to something that’s pretty similar in a similar genre, but it’s like we have preferences, and those preferences are tied to people, and there’s a lot of different reasons why. So I think it makes sense.

Brian Watson: That’s a really good way to look at it. I didn’t think about it that way, but yeah, that’s totally true. You could listen to a new album for every day for the rest of your life, and still barely scratch the surface of what’s out there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. Totally. You talked about starting to do less long form, and obviously you alluded to the fact that it is just a better fit for who you are, but talk about just the focus on short form, and is there anything that you’re seeing working especially well with short form video on YouTube and Instagram? And then are you posting the TikTok as well?

Brian Watson: I am. I’m basically just posting the same, I tried doing so with TikTok. What’s interesting is they actually will pay you, or videos that are longer than a minute are up for monetization

Bjork Ostrom: With TikTok?

Brian Watson: What’s that? With

Bjork Ostrom: TikTok?

Brian Watson: With TikTok, yeah. And what’s interesting is sometimes people will complain, especially on TikTok, the culture of TikTok I found versus Instagram and even YouTube, is that they don’t want to leave the TikTok app. They don’t want to go to your blog, the recipe either in the caption or in the video somehow. So I’ve been thinking about doing longer, actually, long, short form videos, I guess maybe two minute videos where I go a little bit more in depth and actually give the full recipe in the video. But I’m sorry, I totally lost the original question.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s just kind of like what’s working and maybe a double click on the TikTok thing. Have you been able to, well just maybe talk a little bit about monetization, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, what does that look like? I talked about Pinch of Yum. It’s like, we’ll occasionally get a check for two $50 or $300 on Instagram, and I think PG VM has maybe 1.4 million followers, and Nike just posting relatively frequently.

Brian Watson: I make $0 on Instagram right now. I don’t think I’m even signed up for the bonuses. I did it and I would get, yeah, $20 or something like that. And I don’t know if maybe there are people out there that are making decent money on the Instagram bonuses. I feel like they cap it though. Don’t they cap it where it’s like you can make up to $1,500, you get a bazillion,

Bjork Ostrom: I don’t know. Yeah, that sounds right.

Brian Watson: I’m not

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Brian Watson: Whereas again, with YouTube, it’s a little bit more flexible. And I know people who, with TikTok who do fairly decent because they upload longer, they upload longer up to five minutes sometimes or 10 minutes even. And I know a few people who make a decent amount of money on TikTok, so it’s not something to ignore. But again, it comes back to that thing they were talking about banning TikTok, who knows if that’ll happen or right, and I remember now your original question was, do you notice anything? Is it working well? Honestly, no. It’s always a crapshoot. What I like to do, I’ll let you in on a weird kind of ritual that I do, is I will post a video on Instagram, then I will go on a walk and I won’t look at my phone for a half an hour, and then I open it and look at how it’s doing after a half an hour, and based off of that first half an hour, I can tell if it’s going to do well or views what’s that

Bjork Ostrom: Based on views?

Brian Watson: Based on just likes and views. But that’s the kind of thing where I will, before I look at it, I’ll guess I’ll be like, it’ll have whatever, and I’m never right. I either think it’s going to have way too many or it’s way too low. It’s almost like it’s the opposite of what I think it’s going to be. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: You should just will in your mind that it’s always going to be super low numbers and see, maybe it’s something in the universe you can start to impact it.

Brian Watson: I’m lying. So the things that do well are things that are kind of foundational recipes. So if it’s a really easy way to make a vegan chicken, it’s not a specific recipe like a chicken pot pie, although chicken pot pie does well too. But if it’s something where it’s like, oh, that’s a cool way to make a thing, I can use that to make a bazillion other dishes, those have a better chance of doing well than something that’s super specific and

Bjork Ostrom: Single ise versus multifunctional.

Brian Watson: Exactly. So if you can show somebody a new way to cook tofu that can be used in a myriad of ways, that’s going to be a lot better than, here’s a sweet and sour tofu recipe, or whatever.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, that makes sense. And then are, I think one of the things people always are curious about is timing. Do you post at a specific time? Always.

Brian Watson: I just do it at eight because they tell me that most people are online between six in the morning to, I think it’s like noon or was it seven and nine or something like that. So I just figure, oh, I’ll just post in the middle of it. Eight in the morning. Yeah, eight in the morning on my time. Haven’t really, maybe I should experiment more with posting at night or posting at five in the afternoon, something like that. I don’t know.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think Lindsay usually posts evenings, but I don’t know.

Brian Watson: I don’t know how any of this stuff works. If Instagram’s going to be like, oh, you’re posting at a weird time, we’re not going to do a video. I don’t know if that’s a real thing. Probably not. That’s probably a little paranoid, but I don’t know.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s like all of us trying to figure out the algorithm.

Brian Watson: But that’s the thing. That’s what I’m saying about, I’ve freed myself, I see so many content creators complaining about their views going down and all this stuff happening, and I’ve been working on that, not letting that affect my mental health basically.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s such a game. And the game that I think a lot of people talk about is how do you produce good content? How do you get a lot of views? How do scale? And I think to some degree, people talk about the other part of the game, but not a lot of people, which is the headspace. And I know for Lindsay, who’s primary person being in Instagram, interacting right now, she’s doing this series called the SOS series and is kind of like these recipes that are going to be easy to make when you’re in a bind and you don’t have a lot of time. And last night I was talking to her about it and she was like, yeah, I don’t know how they’re doing. I just haven’t checked. And it’s not like because I don’t care, it’s because I think she cares so much that she knows if it goes one way or the other, you ride that rollercoaster. And so part of the formula for success as a creator is figuring out how do you show up every day? And I think for a lot of people, the way that you show up every day is you protect your head space from being too impacted by metrics that you can’t directly impact. And that’s a hard thing though, because you have to be very intentional about it. For a while, Lindsay would do this thing where she’d open it up and she’d put her hand in front of where the metrics would be, where the stats would be if she had to check something. And I think people, anybody here listening or many people at least, can relate to that idea of just feeling like, man, there could always be more and it could always do better, and it’s really hard on the thing and it didn’t do as well as you could. So are there other ways that you approach that just to protect your headspace as a creator?

Brian Watson: Something that I’ve been doing, not just in regards to work, but just in life in general. I’m 47, I keep forgetting how old. I’m 47 and I’ve lived most of my life. I’ve had anxiety, depression. And as I’ve older, I remember just the other day thinking about how I’ve always been worrying about stuff. I’ve always been this, at the end of the day, none of it’s really been a big deal. Nothing that I’ve ever worried about has been catastrophic. You know what I mean? Life changing in a negative way. And I just remind myself now it’s not a big deal. And that’s kind of my mantra now is like, don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal. And just those little words in my brain for the past, I’ve only been doing it for the past month or so, it alleviated so much of my stress and anxiety about everything. But obviously I think a lot about work. And when a video doesn’t do well now, that’s literally what I think I go, it’s not a big deal, and it completely deflates it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great.

Brian Watson: That’s overly simplistic, but I think the bottom line is you have to figure out whatever that thing is, whatever, if it’s a phrase or if it’s an exercise that you do when you feel upset about something, maybe something didn’t work out the way that you wanted it to, but for me right now, that’s been working wonders.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. I think it does, and I think it’s important to talk about just, it’s a huge part of the experience, I think for people universally, but especially for people who are trying to do creative things and also putting themselves in vulnerable positions. To press publish on a thing and to put it in front of potentially thousands, tens, hundreds, millions of people is a really vulnerable thing. And I think it’s important that we as people who are doing that, have conversations around how we can show up as our whole person without getting too bent up along the way because of the implications of the work that we’re doing. It’s like 50 years ago, the dangers of work would’ve been like, and still for some people that are doing this work, it’s like you’re out in the field and you have a tool. I don’t even know what the tool would be, a tractor. And it’s like, that’s a dangerous thing to do today. It’s like we’re not in physical danger, but I think we’re much more so in mental health danger because of what we’re doing. So I think there’s some considerations that we all need to make around how do we do that well, so I appreciate you talking through that. One of the other things that, yeah, go ahead

Brian Watson: Another thing I wanted to bring up, you just reminded me of something. So when you shoot a video and it bombs, you get upset. But then one thing I would think about, I’d be like, that was a little 32 second video about pumpkin cheesecake that I made that didn’t do well. There’s people who spend years making a full length movie with hundred people spending billions of dollars and those bomb, what does it matter? And I’m like, oh, this is not a big, again, it’s not a big deal.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That perspective piece. One of the things that I think about personally is, and we’ve talked about on the podcast before, is this idea of defining the game that you’re playing. And I think a lot of times the views, the metrics, the numbers are all symptoms that play into what it is that we’re actually trying to do. And I think what we’re actually, for many of us, what we’re actually trying to do is have work that we love or to not have the Sunday scaries or to do a creative thing that makes people’s lives better. And part of that is about reach, but also a huge part of it is Lindsay showed me this picture of somebody’s center. It was her two twins, that just had these ricotta meatballs that she made. And it’s like, that feels, and she said this about the SOS series, she’s like, I don’t think the content probably is not going to do as well in terms of views, but I think it’ll do better in terms of people actually making these and having an impact on people’s lives. That’s really hard to quantify, but I think it’s an example of defining the game that you’re playing in service of detaching yourself from the metrics to know, Hey, this stuff that’s important to me is still happening. It’s going to be different for everybody. For some people, it might be like, Hey, I want to make a bunch of money. A lot of people, it’ll be like, I want to have enough to sustain me and have an impact on people’s lives. It’s different for everybody.

Brian Watson: There’s definitely been times when I have been feeling kind of down in the dumps or whatever about how things are going, and then I’ll get an email notification that somebody left a new review. And it really is like, oh, you just totally wiped away all that boohoo-ness sad stuff. You know what I mean? So definitely, you’re absolutely right. I think that sort of stuff where it’s like, I’ll do that. Sometimes I’ll make a recipe and I’ll be like, I know that not a lot of people are going to like this, but the people who do it are going to

Bjork Ostrom: Really, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep. That’s great. So you’ve been at it long enough now where you can look back and do some analysis. And one of the things that you mentioned when we were chatting before is you didn’t really get into it with the idea of, Hey, I’m going to build a food media business. It was kind of like you liked creating that content, and there’s a couple of people in your life who came alongside you and you’re like, Hey, there’s actually an entire area of Instagram that’s just food. And then somebody coming along and being like, Hey, you have a lot of followers on Instagram. You can kind of repurpose that content onto a blog and create income from that. And one of the things that you said was, if you did have that mindset of like, Hey, I’m going to build this as a business from the start, there would’ve been some things that you would’ve done differently. What would those things be if you were to go back and do it differently? How would your approach have changed if you from the onset knew that or had the idea that you were building it into a business and a source of income?

Brian Watson: Yeah, I definitely would’ve monetized the blog. I would’ve looked into, excuse me, SEO optimization. I didn’t know or care about SEO optimization when I was first starting my blog. Like I said, it was a place for me to post my recipes. It wasn’t intended to generate income. If you want to make a living at this or even just some supplemental money, that would be my biggest piece of advice is to take that seriously, look into it, educate yourself. Obviously you guys do an amazing job with some of the education that you have about it. So there’s so much stuff out there to learn about this. And it’s never ending because it’s always changing, as you know. So that would be my biggest piece of advice. And then my second piece of advice would be to not take things so seriously.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. I love that.

Brian Watson: Try and lighten up. That was the thing, is I originally did this. I enjoyed it, and I’ve always wanted a job where I was working for myself, and I didn’t have to answer to anybody. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with Internet Shaquille? I don’t think so. No.

Brian Watson: He’s great. But he did a video about, I don’t know if you remember this, but six months or so ago, there was a lot of YouTubers, big YouTubers that were quitting. They were burnt out. He did a video about burnout and how he evades being burnout. And one of the things he said was, if your whole goal is to be your own boss, why would you be cracking the whip on yourself all the time? And that really affected me. That really got me to think, oh, all this pressure that I’m putting on myself and taking things super seriously and being mean to myself about certain things, that’s me doing that to myself. I don’t have to do that. You know what I mean? So that would be my two biggest pieces of advice is be nice to yourself and don’t take things super, super seriously, but also don’t screw around and learn how to do stuff correctly. Kind of opposing things right there.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yeah. But it’s almost like being gentle with yourself, the opposite of being too hard on yourself. And Lindsay, and I think, I’m trying to remember, I think the book was Big Magic. It’s a book, it’s called it Big Magic Creative Living Beyond Fear. Lindsay and I referenced this a decent amount. I listened to the audiobook years ago, but in it, she talks about this idea of the trickster mindset, and Lindsay and I have kind of used that universally, and it’s around kind of being light on your feet. Don’t get too bogged down, be light on your feet. It’s like, don’t be a terrible boss to yourself. And so I think for, and I didn’t realize this, but she’s actually the author of Eat, Pray, Love, so somebody who is a creator, the two that we talk about Big Magic, and then we also talk about the War of Art by Steven Pressfield and these being two kind of creator type books. So good ones for anybody in that world. But I really love that idea of like, Hey, don’t be a terrible boss yourself if you’re going to be your own boss, still be strategic, still be smart. You’re just not like you’re being lazy, but it’s also you’re being gentle with yourself and light on your feet. So I love that, Brian. My guess is people are going to want to follow along with you. They’re going to want to connect with you. We have some folks in the world who in the podcast world who are eating vegan as well, and they can get some recipes from you. So best way to do that. And then best way to maybe contact you if somebody wanted to reach out.

Brian Watson: Yeah, all my social media stuff is The Burger Dude with two Es, and that was just because when I was doing my name, there was already the burger, dude.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Love it.

Brian Watson: Just add an E to it, I guess. And that’s on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. My website is theeburgerdude.com. You could contact me there. My email. Do you need my email for that or just contact through the website?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, people can just reach out. Yep. Website is great. That’s awesome. Cool. Brian, thanks so much for coming on. Great to chat.

Brian Watson: Thank you. Yeah, this was really fun.

Emily Walker: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. It is hard to believe that we are in a new month, but November is already well underway and the holiday season is upon us when we kick off the month, we love to provide a little insight into what is going on in the Food Blogger Pro membership for the month. There’s always a lot going on in the membership – new forum, conversations, new courses, Live Q&As and Coaching Calls, and we have archives of hundreds of courses and live Q&As for our members. But every month we have new content coming out too, and we like to take this first week of the month to share what our members have to look forward to. We have a busy month here at Food Blogger Pro, and we’ll be kicking off the month with a Live Q&A on November 7th, all about maximizing affiliate income. As you probably know, Q4 is a big season for affiliate income for food creators and creators in general, so we figured this was a great time for a refresher on affiliate income and how you can make the most of it as a food blogger. Again, that’s on November 7th at 3:30 PM Eastern Time. Feel free to submit your questions in advance, and we can’t wait to see you there. Next up, we have a coaching call on November 14th with Candace from Just A Bit Sweet. In this coaching call, Bjork and Candace discuss finding a niche, determining priorities, and growing an audience, and the importance of focusing on a platform rather than spreading yourself too thin. Next up on November 21st, we will have a brand new course all about getting accepted to an ad network. If you’re not yet a member of Food Blogger Pro, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the podcast, and we’ll see you again next week.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Member Kitchens. Imagine your kitchen. It’s more than just a place to cook. It’s where your creativity comes to life. It’s where you nourish your family, your friends, and yourself with food and conversation. Now imagine sharing that kitchen with the world. Imagine inviting people in to experience your unique flavors, your personal touch, your passion for food. At Member Kitchens, they believe that every food creator has a special kitchen to share, and their job is to help you swing the doors wide open. Their white-label meal planning platform is your virtual kitchen. It’s fully equipped with everything you need to showcase your recipes and brand, build a loyal community, and earn a sustainable income. As one customer said, recurring revenue is life-changing. Your kitchen will integrate with tools you already use like Zapier and WordPress, and it’s fully configurable putting you in complete control of your brand and your business, all in an easy-to-use interface. Backed up with stellar one-on-one support. So if you’re ready to share your kitchen with the world, set up your own member kitchen, visit memberkitchens.com today to learn more and start your free trial and use the code Food Blogger Pro for 50% off your first two months of any plan.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Alex and Sonja Overhiser from A Couple Cooks. Alex and Sonja are a married couple that work together to develop recipes, write content for their food blog, and have written two cookbooks together. The second of which, 100 Recipes to Cook Together comes out later this week. They first started their food blog in 2010, and their website now gets between three and 5 million page views every month. They have over 3000 original recipes on their site, so they know a thing or two about creating sustainable content that lasts. But they’ve also been really intentional about choosing joy in their business and not doing things that they don’t enjoy doing, like spending too much time on Instagram. Bjork and Lindsay have been friends with Alex and Sonja for over a decade, and it’s really fun to listen in on these friends catch up about everything in the food blogger space. Without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Alex and Sonja, welcome to the podcast.

Sonja Overhiser: Thank you so much for having us. Glad to be here. Glad to be back.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that I think about, and I’ve told this story a few times, maybe even with you guys in a podcast or q and a that we did sometime was you guys were our first internet friends that we met in person. And so some people have maybe heard this story, but I remember going to Indianapolis and Lindsay’s parents were like, what are you going to do? And we’re like, oh, we’re going to visit our friend Joe. And then we connected with these people that we’ve known online and we’re going to go over to their house. And in 2010, it was kind of still at that point of like, wait, you met somebody on the internet and then you’re going to go to their house. But it was this great connection and what’s been so fun, we only have a few people like this friends that we’ve connected with who through the years have continued to do similar work and have built these really successful businesses. And it’s so cool to see the arc of your story through the years working on what you’re doing and all of the different things around it. And so I just want to start the podcast by saying kudos to both of you for having built a really incredible thing in A Couple Cooks. You guys do really good work. And we’re going to talk about through the years, the decade plus of doing that, the different iterations and what that’s looked like. So what I want to hear,

Sonja Overhiser: Thank you to you, too. It’s an amazing thing and I feel like as I get older, I get more sentimental. And so we’re really sentimental about that time of that very first internet from connection.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think one of the things that I really like about it is you have applied conceptually the thing that we talk about a lot on the podcast, which is showing up every day and working on the thing that you’re building. And if you do that for 10 years, 12 years, 14 years, seven years, if you string together years and years of showing up and working on a thing after a long period of time, you can look back and be pretty amazed at what you have done. But also 14 years is 14 years. That’s a long time. So I want to hear from you, as you look back on your journey early on, what were the things that kept you going when you didn’t have necessarily those things that necessarily pointed to like, Hey, this will be successful one day, or you’ll have millions of page views one day. What was it that kept you showing up and producing content and taking pictures and developing recipes in the early stages? I think a lot of people are there and the idea of showing up for 10 years is intimidating. What was it for you that helped you continue to show up every day?

Sonja Overhiser: That’s a great question. I mean, I would say each other, and I know not all of your listeners have that, but for us it’s been really special to work together. And I think early on we did get very, I don’t know, I want to give up pretty much every other week, but having that other person to bounce ideas off of to be kind of a separate brain working on the same problem has been so helpful for us. So I think that even if you are a solopreneur and you’re working on your own, having that accountability partner, someone who can just say, you’re doing a good job, you are learning, you’re creating, and you just have to keep going.

Alex Overhiser: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Anything you’d add to that, Alex?

Alex Overhiser: Yeah, I’d say really early on it was pure creative joy. There was no concept of business, no concept of page views. It was I created this thing and Lindsay in Minnesota commented that looked delicious, and it was just that joy of community and doing something new was awesome. And then as we turned it slowly into a business, that’s where you started feeling like you weren’t doing enough or something because it was heartened, but at the beginning it was just all fun.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think about that and I think there’s two different opinions you hear people talk about, you need to do what you’re passionate about, do what you can, show up every day and be thankful and grateful that you’re doing. And on the other side, there’s people who are like, actually, you kind of have to embrace the grind. There’s going to be parts of any entrepreneurial journey or any job that you’re not going to love, and it’s actually better if you just accept that and have these things that are kind of passion projects that you do on the side. What has that looked like for you through the years? Because you talked about Alex in the early stages, it’s this creative outlet, and I think there are some people who we talk to and we know that that’s true. They have this creative outlet and it’s really fun for them.

And then maybe the business stuff creeps in and then it starts to be not as fun. And then you have people who approach it and they’re just like, what? You can build traffic and make money from that on a blog, but they’re not actually that passionate about it, and so then they burn out because the thing that they’re talking about they’re not actually passionate about. So how have you navigated that as it has become a business, as it has become your sole source of income to balance both the necessity of this thing in your life along with the creativity and wanting to make sure that you embrace that as well?

Sonja Overhiser: Yeah. I love that you brought that up because that is exactly the tension that we have in our business. And luckily we both love to grind as much as we actually create and have fun. So I feel like as you’re talking, I’ve been thinking more about my journey as a classical musician. So I went to school for classical music. I was a French horn performance major at IU Bloomington, and that’s how I ended up in Indiana and meant Alex and got married and this whole thing started. But I think I really learned both of those skills of having this passion but then working so hard and being so disciplined and my entire late childhood and college career was just putting in all the hours, practicing the art that I loved. And unfortunately with that, it grew to be something I didn’t love anymore. So I ended up quitting right after I graduated, and it became kind of a really hard spot in my life coming to terms with this thing that I loved so much I just totally burned myself out on. And so I think when you asked the question earlier of staying in the game and consistency, I think I could have done that. And I’ve seen people I went to school with for classical music who have succeeded because they did stay in the game. And I think that’s what I always try to encourage entrepreneurs with is having that stick-to-it-iveness or that just ability to apply yourself to something over the longterm does bring results in the end.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think of that concept 10,000 hours, and I think it was like a Malcolm Gladwell book, but it was maybe based on another study. There’s also a song, who is it that has that song? You know what I’m talking about? 10,000 hour song. I don’t know if it’s the name of it, but he has, the idea is as a musician in his case, what does it take to, it’s just called 10,000 hours Macklemore, but what does it take to reach success? And he talks about this idea in this Malcolm Gladwell book, but also in this song you kind of need 10,000 hours to get to mastery. And let’s say you think of a typical 40-hour work week as 2000 hours. It’s like, okay, you need five years of doing the same thing eight hours a day to get to this level of mastery.

And you can think about that within the context of what we do. I often use music as an example. I think a lot of people show up and after a year they’re like, ah, why don’t I have success with this thing? I’m publishing to Instagram, I’m publishing to a blog. And I think because the act of doing those things is so easy, it’s pretty easy to create a piece of content and publish it similar, it’s probably kind of easy. French horn is maybe a bad example, but to make a noise out of a saxophone, but to be really good at it, that’s actually takes a huge level of commitment. And I think the same thing applies in the world of content creation. You have to master it in order to get to a point where you stand out. And the hard part with that though is that you might burn out because of how much time and effort you’re putting in, especially if you’re not getting the traction that you want to see or that you’d expect. So do you feel like Sony in those early stages of doing this, that you approached it any different in order to protect yourself from burning out? Or was it just the luck of the work that you’re able to operate within the context of this in a way where it doesn’t feel like you’ve hit that burnout point or maybe you have and what did you do if you did for each of you?

Sonja Overhiser: Yeah, great question. I dunno how I would answer that such good question.

Alex Overhiser: I think having a partner, I am a good, I notice when the grind is getting too hard end of, we do split up tasks and do things that each of us love more. That way we can kind of balance that. And especially I think during the high pandemic when it was like you saw a nobody and if you’re a content creator, you can kind of stay in your house and work 24 7. We just got into that and then we realized, okay, we just need to pull back and start deciding how much, what is our work-life balance, what does that look like? And I spent a lot of time and gratitude for the ability to do this as a full-time career.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. We did a podcast interview years ago with Emily Perrin and this was episode number 365. It’s all about this idea of how to find your Zone of Genius. So the episode is called How to Find Your Zone of Genius and Hire the Right People. I think within a partnership relationship, the two of you have, you might be able to kind of task trade a little bit where it’s not a great fit for you, Sonja. So Alex, you pick it up or vice versa. I know that’s true for Lindsay and I in our working relationship. What Emily talks about in that podcast interview is let’s say you don’t have somebody who’s a partner in your business, a business partner or a life partner. How do you go about approaching that in order to, the goal for us should be to continually adjust the things that we’re doing. So as much as possible we’re working in our zone of genius, which are the tasks that we are uniquely equipped for but also uniquely excited about.

And if you can spend most of your time there, wow, that’s a really wonderful thing. But I know that you have done that without building a really big team. And I would be interested to hear your reflections on the decision to not build a team. You have some people who have 10 people and they’re all working on different things and the businesses maybe running itself a little bit and somebody’s in the background kind of directing it. We’ve talked to people who like, hey, they really like the idea of managing the business and it kind of runs with themselves, kind of the E-Myth of like you’re working on your business, not in your business, but it sounds like you both really working in the business and have intentionally decided to not bring in a bunch of outside employees or team members. What’s the reasoning for that and what does that look like day to day for the two of you?

Sonja Overhiser: Yeah, a lot of our colleagues have been building these great teams, which is wonderful and awesome, and I love seeing these amazing, incredible groups of people that they have assembled. But for us, we worked in business together actually outside of a couple of cooks. When we first got married, we worked for the same business, a technical writing business, and we got a lot of experience in people management. And as we’re able to transition out of that environment and work for ourselves, we said, Hey,

Bjork Ostrom: This feels good not to be managing people for sure.

Sonja Overhiser: And so we made the intentional decision of we love creating recipes, we love writing recipes, we love photographing our own food. And so we decided, hey, we’re going to keep this small. I think what we also love is spontaneity. Our creativity stems from spontaneity. And so a lot of times we’ll be like, Hey, let’s make whatever tarragon chicken today and see what happens. And I think when you have a team, you have to plan so far in advance and sketch out your days and you have people reporting to you, and if you don’t have work for them, you’re meeting up things. We’ve been through all of those scenarios, and I think for us, our dream life was completely, I mean, we do have meetings, we do have things that we tend to, but a perfect day for us is a free calendar and just get to go create and have fun.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. No meetings. Essentially you are creating the meetings that you maybe have are with the two of you talking through a thing, but the focus is creating, is that right?

Alex Overhiser: And it does limit, we realized there’s only so much we can get done in a week. And so it took us years to figure out that rhythm of how are we super efficient while spontaneous and creative so that we can get done what we need to get done and do some of that boring stuff we have to do, but be able to do it all. We understand as a max, we’re not trying to scale this business and sell it. We’re happy to max out and find our balance. And

Sonja Overhiser: I think we’ve made a lot of compromises too. It means that we can’t be really great at Instagram reels, we’re just not that good at it. And that’s okay. We decided we’re not going to spend time or energy on that because it’s not a core focus of our business. And so right now, that’s not a priority. If any of your listeners are really awesome at it and want to pitch us to us, love to hear that. But for us, we have really focused on creating recipes and then writing our second cookbook.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s interesting. I am excited to talk to you about that second cookbook that’s coming out. It’ll be just a week after this podcast goes out. When you’re talking about that, it reminded me. So one of the things we will talk about occasionally in the podcast is the idea of defining the game that you’re playing. And I have a friend here in the Twin Cities, his name is Ryan Tanam, he just released, started a new podcast called Independence by Design, and he’s interviewed probably like 400, 500 entrepreneurs, not in the world of content creation or some of ’em online, but mostly it’s like HVAC company or somebody who has a construction company or all of these different company owners. And one of the things that he realized in all of those interviews is sometimes people would set these arbitrary numbers, I want to get to a hundred million in revenue, or in our world, I want to get to a million page views or 10 million pages views or whatever it might be.

But they didn’t really have a strong why behind it. And so he created this podcast series Independence by Design because his thesis, his theory is what people usually are after. Oftentimes what they’re after is independence. People want to have autonomy, they want to have some level of freedom in what they’re doing. That looks different to everybody. But what I hear you saying is pretty clearly what you want to do and pretty clearly what success looks like for you. And that is awesome. You’ve defined the game, and then what you do is you show up and you play the game. And it sounds like you guys have done that, but have done that through some iterations. And Alex, you had mentioned it took a while, I think you said, to figure out exactly what that looks like to work efficiently. What did you figure out along the way and what does that look like now if somebody else wants to play a similar game? What have you learned that has allowed you to play the game? Well at this point?

Alex Overhiser: Yeah. I mean specifically for bloggers, I think we originally would do two posts per week, and then we realized, hey, if we do five posts per week, that’s great. And then you get more content out there and more eyeballs out there. But the thing you can’t plan for is recipe development and how many iterations it takes to really get a good recipe down. And so figuring out things like a calendar that was flexible enough to plan ahead, but not inflexible enough that you’re depressed if it’s a day need to take a photo, and things like figuring out food photography with artificial light so that we could shoot on any day of the weekend, anytime at two o’clock, only on Mondays that are sunny and stuff like that. So some of those business efficiencies helped a lot and then just communication was huge.

Sonja Overhiser: And I think saying no, I was mentioning, I mean Alex is really good at saying, no, I want to say yes to everything. And he is like, no, no, but saying no to wasting a lot of time on Instagram where that’s not a big return on investment for our particular business model, we don’t do a lot of affiliate sales or trying to sell products or that kind of thing. We really focus on our recipes and these days, Instagram is not providing a lot of traffic or click overs. It’s a great way to show your brand. It’s a great vanity metric if you want to build it really high. And I know there are a lot of people who make a really great business model around Instagram, but for us, we’ve been focused on SEO and websites. So for us, that hasn’t been a great use of our time. And Alex has been really good at saying, well, let’s not waste time on it. But I mean, that’s a trade off. And we don’t know possibly now that the algorithm update that just happened, maybe that waits your social media presence or maybe more people find out about you on social media and so they’re Googling you and then that is part of that. So who knows, that might not have been the right decision, but we just had to make some of those decisions to be like, okay, we’re going to stay in our lane and we’re going to stay focused on that. We enjoy doing,

Bjork Ostrom: It’s almost like, so we had a plumber come out this morning and had this, Lindsay lost an earing, and so it was like taking the P trap out, getting that out, which I could have done, but it would’ve been like three hours for me. And leaky toilet, they had to fix that and looked at water heater. Anyways, all these random things around our house, and I think of sometimes people would look at a house and they’d be like in a similar way that you’d look at content creation and be like, oh, building a house. You do carpentry, you do plumbing, you do electric, you put a roof on, you design it, you architect it. And I think some of us are showing up to our online business and we’re kind of trying to do all of those things as we build it. We’re trying to do the plumbing, the electric, we’re trying to do the carpentry and understand all that stuff.

And so often what I see is actually somebody who’s really good at one specific thing. Our friend TJ’s really good at comedy on short form video. Does he have a blog? I don’t think so. Is anybody going to it? Probably not. But he’s also showing up to gas stations and doing shoots with Minnesota Vikings players working with QuickTrip. And so he has that as his skillset, but he’s also really clear on what he doesn’t do. And I think that part of your story is important because it’s so easy to try and do all the things, but if you get really good at one thing, that’s what you can focus in on. Go deep on that and be okay with it. I think that’s the other hard part is the psychology of letting somebody else be good at one thing, but just embracing what you can be good at and being okay with that.

Within the context of that though, and you alluded to this earlier, you have your blog, you have SEO, and then you’ve also done cookbooks. You’re coming up on your second cookbook now. You did one in 2018. Oftentimes I’ll have conversations with people and they’ll be like, this was harder than I thought, took longer than I thought, more stressful than I thought. And you’ll have some people who are like, I did one and now I’m done. And then you’ll have other people. Danielle Walker was another interview who did, I think she’s on cookbook six. She’s written seven books total who just really embraced that and lean into it. What has your approach been on doing a cookbook and what did you learn from your first one that you applied for your second one coming up here?

Sonja Overhiser: Question. The first book was a little overwhelming. We put so much of ourselves into it, and I think we put so much emotion into it, so much of our own identity that it was a really tough process

Alex Overhiser: And we hadn’t quite had 10,000 hours.

Sonja Overhiser: We did it generally so too, if you can help it. But I do think that process, going through it and then also launching it, having press going through it all one time was so helpful for the second time. And I do think possibly back then it was helpful for SEO or at least providing some underlying backlink structure around yourself as an expert. So I’m really glad we did it, but we learned a ton from that process and this time around it has been much smoother. We actually hired a photographer this time, so we used Shelly Westerhausen of Vegetarian Ventures blog. She has a couple amazing books out there. And actually, I’ll tell the story that we, so we have this idea around covid because all good ideas happen when family and trying to dream of an escape. And so we were like, is it time? Is it time for us to think about a second book? And we went around and around, we landed on a concept and we decided we wanted to switch publishers and switch agents because we weren’t quite happy with the first go around or we were happy with it, but we had a different,

So we did that and we wrote up a proposal and sent it out to a bunch of publishers and we were all excited and it came back that no one wanted to purchase.

Bjork Ostrom: We were like, oh, when that happens, do they provide explanation? Is it like a college acceptance letter where it comes back and they’re like, thanks, we’re going to pass. What does that process look like?

Alex Overhiser: I think maybe our agent pitched to the 20 publishers and 18 just said no, two maybe said not quite the right fit or something along those lines. It was very vague and disappointing. You have to create, I mean, we spent months creating the proposal, making recipe for it, all the ideas.

Sonja Overhiser: So that was a big blow, especially to be like, well, we wrote a cookbook and we’re doing these things and trying hard and feel successful in life. And to be like, okay, no one wants to publish a book

Was really hard. So we got back together, and this is I guess where your question of staying in the game comes in. It was like, okay, what can we do to make this a feasible project? And we knew that there are some newlywed style cookbooks out there that do very well. And so we had always kind of avoided that because it felt like A Couple Cooks wedding. Good book. It feels too close, too easy. Yeah, exactly. Too easy. But we were like, okay, this is our brand. Why don’t we do something about cooking together? And we could brand it as not just for weddings, but for any two people cooking together via it, your friend or your family member or your spouse or your roommate or your kid, whoever you want to cook with, because that’s been such a big part of our story is just the joy of doing things together. So we put that pitch together, we found the publisher that we loved, which is Chronicle Books, and because we knew their books were so beautiful and giftable, and then we approached our friend Shelly, who had a couple of cookbooks with them already, and we said, Hey, would you want to shoot this book for us because we love your aesthetic and just the beautiful way you’re able to create these giftable items. And so we put that together into a specific pitch. Went to one editor at Chronicle and miraculously she said yes.

Bjork Ostrom:: Interesting.

Sonja Overhiser: So yeah, so that was I think just a good example of if something’s not hitting, and you can speak to, this works for blogs as well, if you’re not hitting that target niche, like niche down a little more or find the place where your passion intersects with what people want and what the marketplace.

Alex Overhiser: And the funny thing is, oh, sorry. No, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Just the context of the book probably aren’t that different than what the original concept would’ve been. It’s the way that we fit it and themed it. The recipes are probably pretty similar. It’s more our approach to how we talk about the recipes that change. So we’re passionate about making food that people will eat. So it was a rework to find that niche.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s almost like you do judge a book by its cover,

And so much of it is the branding and positioning. I was talking about that with a friend who’s a publisher with book publishing. He has a company called Bard Publishing, and they’ve done a lot of really successful business books. And he was talking about just the importance of a title. It relates to business books and how important that is. Obviously the book itself has to be really good, but so often in his case if people are going through the airport and quickly looking at a book that’s sitting in a kiosk or something like that. So can you talk to me about what that process was like as you have this idea, you’re excited about it, you’re moving forward with it, you spend time with it. I think a lot of people struggle with the question of how long do you continue with a thing that you think is a good idea in the world and versus how quickly do you pivot and change? And we had that recently with some marketing stuff we were trying, and it was like first or second time that we did, it didn’t really work. And the conversation that we had a team was like, oh, it’s just we haven’t given it enough time. We have to shift and adjust a little bit and change, stick with it fit.

And I think that’s often the case, but sometimes you can stick with an idea for five years and it’s like, actually it didn’t work and it shouldn’t have existed in the world. What was that like for you guys as you navigated this with a cookbook?

Sonja Overhiser: Yeah, I mean, I think we’re lucky that one got picked up because otherwise I don’t

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, well, that was the last stop on the road,

Alex Overhiser: But I think this whole book we took as a professional project instead of a personal project, I think. And so we were like, what do you mean by that? How can we make this more professional instead of, this has to be my idea that’s so important that I will release if we want to work with this publisher that sells really beautiful giftable books, let’s think about the type of books that they do and the type of zone of genius that we have and where do they mix? Instead of saying, this is my idea, it has to happen. And then as we went through the actual process of the cookbook, we treated it much the same way of taking out that layer of personal emotion and adding a layer of expertise to it.

Bjork Ostrom: In the world of product development, they talk about one of the most important things is to not hold too tightly to your right, the idea that you think should exist within the world, you need it to start, but then being flexible enough based on feedback or maybe conversations with customers to shift, nudge, adjust what the product is. In this case it would be a cookbook to get to a place where it’s like, Hey, there’s some indications that the market would be interested in this and we have some expertise and some interest in it. And then finding that Venn diagram overlap with those two things can coexist the market need and your interest and passion and using that to drive things forward versus what it sounds like you were saying, Alex, which is approaching it by saying, well, I just want this to exist and this is exactly how I think it should look. And so that’s what we’re going to do.

Sonja Overhiser: Totally. And I feel like that is the key to any creative business where it’s driven by both passion and business. It’s having that ability to change and pivot. I was just thinking about, we had a podcast at one point and you were asking about when do you decide it’s too much? It was an okay podcast, it was not a great podcast, so we just no more of that podcast. But your podcast is an amazing podcast, so it needs to exist in the world. So just I guess not getting too emotionally invested in any one of your business offerings,

Bjork Ostrom: And also to acknowledge what you said, which is the creative business. And I think those two words are really important to have in tandem because if it’s just creative, it doesn’t really matter. You just go and you create and it’s fun and you do it because that’s what fills you up. But if you have the business part, like my friend Nate down the hall, he does video and he does some stuff that’s purely creative. He’s not trying to figure out how to monetize it. And then he does some stuff that’s like creative business, it’s like documentaries, it’s things like that. And he does some stuff that’s like business. It’s like a contractor needs a video showcasing the dentist buildings they’ve built over the last 18 months, and it’s like, okay, they could do a really good job of that, but it’s not necessarily the most creative thing he’s ever going to do.

And I think for all of us, within the context of our needs, how much of the business do we need for revenue to support ourselves? And within the context of the creative outlet, maybe we have a really great W2 job and we just really need something that fills us up. And so you can lean into that creativity part. There’s a spectrum and we all have to make that decision. So one of the things I’m curious about that you’ve alluded to a couple times with the cookbook is this idea of giftable. Can you talk about that as a concept and a word, and it sounds like almost like a strategy and approach for this specific cookbook.

Sonja Overhiser: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because we’ve never formalized it really. I mean, we kind of have in the past couple months, but for us as authors, it really takes the pressure off because I think with our first book we were like, this is a great book. You’re going to love it. You should cook from it every day. You want it, you want it. And that’s a hard sell, right? But with this book, we’re like, Hey, you need a gift for weddings. You need a gift for anniversaries. You need a gift for your friend. You might not need this cookbook at all, but I know that you’re going to want to buy it for someone else. And that helps kind of take the pressure off for us. We’ve

Alex Overhiser: Also, we’re not natural salespeople, so

Sonja Overhiser: Yeah, we’re not great at

Bjork Ostrom: Sales. It’s like encouraging people to buy a gift is the sales approach and marketing approach as opposed to encouraging people themselves to buy it. And that little,

Alex Overhiser: I think this is a higher book. It’s a $40 book. And so we’re telling people, stop using our free recipes and buy this seems like a harder sell than saying, we cream you this wonderful thing that you should make recipes with your daughter. That’s a more fun concept for why you should buy a book to us.

Sonja Overhiser: And also, we have a little bit of data behind it. We’ve been, you were AV testing a little cookbook ad that we had on our website, and it has a little picture of the cookbook and a banner, and at one point it said a hundred of our best recipes or something like that. And then you can just change it to give the gift of recipes and it performs slightly better. So that’s what we right now, but when I saw it, I was like, yeah, your brain is like, oh, okay, I do want to give the gift of recipes versus like, oh, a hundred recipes I need now. There’s

Bjork Ostrom: Lots there.

Well, and part of it too is I think so much of our mindset as creators, specifically in the food space, Lindsay talks about this is what we’re selling isn’t really recipes. It’s a readily available resource. You can get it in a lot of different places. We’re actually selling the thing behind that, which is for some people it’s like a certain way of eating For other people, it’s a certain way of life. In this case, it seems like, and I’d be interested to hear you validate this one or push back against it some ways it sounds like it’s selling connection. It’s selling an experience, it’s selling or marketing, selling or marketing, whatever you want to say. That’s the thing that you’re pointing people to is like, Hey, this is an opportunity to connect. It’s an opportunity for community, whatever the word is that you use within the context. It’s not necessarily saying, Hey, these are the recipes that you need because you might be able to find those anywhere. But what you won’t be able to find is kind of like the ethos of what these are all wrapped up in. How much does that feel true as you’ve approached this?

Sonja Overhiser: A hundred percent, yes. I feel like that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do. So thank you for codding that.

I do think as you’re saying that, I think this is what all of us as content creators and food bloggers should be thinking about as we look towards the future, where we’re competing against ai, where we’re not sure if, are people going to be looking for recipes in the same ways on Google? Is AI going to be creating all of our recipes? Maybe they are, maybe robots will be, but they can’t replace us as people who are able to bring that backstory and bring that connection, the human element of cooking together. So I love that you said that, and I think that is what is going to bring us forward into the next generation of content creation.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, they talk a lot about brand, the importance of brand. I was talking to Paul Banister from iv, and he talked about this idea of the people who aren’t worried about a Google update. An example would be Disney. He’s like, Google Update doesn’t happen, and they scramble around somebody who might be would Dotdash Meredith because a lot of their stuff is not all of it, but a lot of it is, or maybe all of it, I don’t know, Dotdash Meredith would also do the magazines, but I don’t know to what degree that’s part of their business. But basic idea being you have this brand and brand is inherently bigger than just something online. And so often if you’re building a brand and that brand has a following, you have some kind of shared belief or you’re on a similar journey or you’re trying to get to a similar outcome. And so I think the challenge for anybody listening to this and for all of us as creators is what is that for us? And then you use these tools, SEO, keyword research, social media, to get in front of people, but that in and of itself isn’t the transaction. It’s not like you get a page, you and somebody comes and looks at it and leaves. You’re really trying to build this kind of experience that people are joining and becoming a part of. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

This episode is sponsored by Raptive. When it comes to monetizing a blog or a site, display ads are a fantastic passive way to generate income on the content you’re already producing. In fact, Raptive display ads are one of our biggest revenue generators at Pinch of Yum, they make up nearly 80% of our overall monthly income. riv, which is formerly Ad Thrive, is on a mission to empower independent creators like you. And to date, Raptive has paid out more than $2 billion to creators. Not only do they help creators generate ad revenue, they also offer creators many other benefits to help support them with their audience revenue and business goals. For example, Raptive creators get access to industry-leading tools like Topic, which helps creators discover opportunities to improve their content and plan the structure of their blog posts. You also get access to resources on HR and recruiting SEO email marketing, customized ab ad layout testing, and more as a Raptive creator. You can learn more about Raptive’s, creator levels and what’s all included in each level at riv.com/creator-levels. Then when you’re ready to apply, head to.com and click the Apply Now button. Working with an ad network has had a profound impact on the way Pinch of Yum monetizes our business, and by being a Raptive creator, you’re getting access to results-based solutions that can really impact the way your business runs and grows. Learn more at raptive.com. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

How do you guys think about that? And can you even speak a little bit to this idea of AI and Google algorithm updates? What does that look like for you in your conversations, and is it something you’re worried about and how do you approach that as online digital business owners?

Alex Overhiser: Yeah, it’s definitely something we think about a lot and discuss the

And use and use, yeah. Yeah, we use AI in various ways for our website as well. But the big idea I think now that we’ve been doing this for 14 years is seeing that a couple cooks as a brand has changed a little bit, but we’ve kind of existed through these different phases, and we just have to assume no matter how strong the current phase is, that there will be a new phase of internet content creation. And if we want to be a part of it, we need to be paying attention to not jumping on every trend, but paying attention to those long-term things that are changing throughout the industry.

Bjork Ostrom: I have a follow-up question on that, but if you had predictions, it’s one of the things I’m curious on asking more on the podcast, especially for people who have seen years and years, like decade plus type creators who have seen the waves come and go, you maybe start to develop a little bit intuition if feel like AI is different, it feels more monumental, it feels maybe more like a hurricane versus a wave, but would you have any guess as to what the next year or the next two years brings knowing that you are studied and researched and have some awareness of what’s coming?

Alex Overhiser: I think that there will be fewer and fewer brands that are able to get us control massive amounts of audience. And so how you can take care of your own individual audience will become more important than just that well, or well created keyword researched page. I just don’t think you can get beautiful images for free on ai. It works. If you wanted to do that and not take a food photograph, you could do hacks that made yourself show up. And I think Google’s paying attention and they’re trying to elevate these smaller pages. They’re not necessarily doing a good job yet. But I think that everybody, there’s just not going to be this singular answer to every question. If you just want a chili recipe, I think you go in a chat GT and they’ll give you a decent one. So how do we develop that brand I think will become more important. But I think the opportunity for an individual blog to just command millions of eyeballs might slowly dissipate.

Bjork Ostrom: The internet will become more fractured. In essence. It’s not like you

Alex Overhiser: Might just follow star one, TikTok star, and that’s still the place you go. You don’t have that idea that I will go to Google and I will type. A billion people are doing that per month.

Bjork Ostrom: And even you alluded to this, even for myself, I’ve noticed quite often now I’m going to get my answers from chatt PT, I have it on my phone, I have it on my computer, and I have a thought, and the benefit being that it’s a clear delivery of that content, but it’s also interactive and I can ask, follow-up questions and iterate and it’s really good and it will only get better. And I think especially once you get to the point where you can interact with voice, and I think the advanced voice stuff with OpenAI is not publicly available, but I think it will be shortly. Apple as of this recording, has released their next iPhone that will have OpenAI, chatt deeply integrated. So I think you’re right. It looks like that will get fragmented. It’ll start to exist in other places. How do you do that though? How do you make sure that you continue to serve your audience and deliver good content and when chat GPT or Gemini is able to deliver a really good recipe, which probably a year from now it’ll be at that point, you can get probably a really good chili recipe from Chachi Tea in a year. What does that look like? Do you have thoughts on how you’ll approach that?

Sonja Overhiser: Yeah, I mean, we’ve already been harping on email list for the past five plus years, and we never quite, we were like, oh yeah, email list, whatever. And now we’re seeing, oh yeah, email list. So we did switch to ConvertKit and we’re doing more emails and we have a strategy on how we kind of resurface old content. We have so much old content and just kind of bringing that to the forefront, dusting off posts and being able to come into people’s inboxes is a big privilege and we’ve been seeing a pretty good return on that in terms of just being able to give them recipes from a brand that they trust. So I think that that is going to be the key moving forward is having that brand that people trust. I’ve heard from people who are doing membership sites, some creators who have started doing that. I’m not sure if that’s something you guys have talked about on the podcast, but there will be more of that type of, I know I love a couple cooks or I know I love Pinch of Yum and I’m just going to follow them because I know that their recipes are great, and when I need to look up chocolate chip cookie, I’m not going to Google. I’m going to Pinch of Yum.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. We talk about this idea of walled gardens and how there is this idea of the internet just being open. You could search it on Google, you could access it on Google, but maybe there’s a future where you shift that a little bit. Food blogger probing an example, it’s a membership site, it’s a walled garden. Our content’s not showing up on Google. Some disadvantages to that, but also advantages in that you have this kind of community element and that’s the only place that you can get it. One of the things you talked about that I’d be interested to hear, you talked about it’s just using AI tools within your business. What does that look like? What are the ways that you’re using it and the ways that you find it to be most beneficial?

Alex Overhiser: The easiest, most beneficial is I wrote a prompt for proofreading. It took a while to get the prompt, but we just copy and paste it in and it’s really good at proofreading the entire blog, boost the recipe. I have it checked for like did we remember to put in the serving amount, all that type of stuff, and it’s very good, and so it’s a lot better. Previously I was proofing and just missing everything.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s amazing. And it does it in instant.

Alex Overhiser: Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: Two seconds. Yeah,

Alex Overhiser: So there’s that. We use it for brainstorming. We use it for boring email communications. If I need to email a problem to our web designer, and it’s a lot easier for me to speak it in the chat GBT and have it spin out an email versus me take the time to write it up. And so I use it for communication quite a bit in that way.

Sonja Overhiser: Use it to help brainstorm meta descriptions or whatever, but pretty careful about now you can tell what ai, AI likes to use Elevate or whatever.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. That as a word

Sonja Overhiser: To keywords are. And honestly now when I get personal emails that are written in certain ways, I’m like, oh, that sounds like they manage G PT first or whatever. So we’re really careful about not making it sound too AI ish, but it really does help when you’re just staring at a blank page of what is good about this recipe. Tell me,

Bjork Ostrom: Brainstorm. The editing I feel like is a great example. There’s a podcast that I listened to, his name is Jason Kani. He talks a lot about startups. He has a podcast called This Week in Startups, but he has this theory that companies are going to grow in size but not in employee numbers over the next few years because they’re going to be able to outsource a lot of the tasks that they would’ve hired or otherwise. And I feel like some of those examples are great examples of how as a small lean team, you talk about not having a team, you can create efficiencies and by writing a prompt as an example to have somebody edit it 10 years ago, that would’ve been an editor sitting down and looking through it and maybe missing stuff as well. Can you talk just real quickly, Alex, when you say write a prompt, can you talk about how somebody could do that if they want to? Maybe that one specifically, but just what it looks like to craft a good prompt and how you iterate on that.

Alex Overhiser: Definitely. So I love just nerding out with AI just to see what its capabilities are, and I found the more specific you get when you ask a question, the better it gets. And with Chad GT specifically, you can have it create a GPT that you can reuse, so it just saves the prompt and all I’d have to do is paste in the webpage and it gives me the same result every time. And so in this case, I think it says double check and triple check because if you tell it to do that, it actually does matter.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, interesting.

Alex Overhiser: You read this as my editor. You’re a copy editor for a cookbook magazine, and so I actually treat it like a person and then I say, double check and trickle check. Make a list of 12 possible typos, 12 possible suggestions, and then go through the recipe card and make sure it has all these specific things that aren’t messed up and that it spits out like a pretty good answer.

Sonja Overhiser: Not always,

Alex Overhiser: It hallucinates little things, but it finds things like, a good example is it’ll find words that are spelled correctly about using the wrong word. I’m trying to think of one that I’m use in cooking, but that it’s not a typo from just spelled wrong, but it doesn’t make sense in context and it picks up stuff like that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it feels like what it’s great for is a companion sitting next to you that can, it’s like I think of if Lindsay and I are ever on a hike it, we’re going up a hill, and if I’m ever behind her and I push a little bit, she’s always like, oh yeah, if you could just keep pushing my back a little bit, it makes it easier or vice versa. She pushes me up the hill. But I feel like that’s what it can be for us. It’s not going to do the walking, but it can do a little bit of the relieve, a little bit of the effort in certain places along the way.

Alex Overhiser: Just speeds it up a lot. Just little speeds up your task.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. We could talk for another hour, but we can’t. We got to wrap up. I know the cookbook is coming out soon. What’s the best way for people to pick that up? We’ll link to it in the show notes, and I know some people who might have some gifting opportunities in the future or just want to buy it for themselves, would love to pick it up. So what’s the best way to do that?

Sonja Overhiser: Yeah, go to a couple cooks do com slash cookbook, and we have all the methods on there. Our local bookstore is actually offering to ship signed copies anywhere in the us, which is really exciting. We’ve never had any way to sign them on the paper and ship them, so that’s a really exciting way to do it. So there’s a signed copy button and then you can get it on amazon bookshop.org. Barnes and Noble, there’s a bunch of buttons there.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. And then if people want best place to follow along with you online would be your site.

Sonja Overhiser: Yep. A couple clicks.com or they can follow our Instagram as well slash a couple clicks.

Bjork Ostrom: They just have to be prepared. You’re not going to have as many r=Reels as other people might have, but they can follow

Sonja Overhiser: Low expectations when you know us, but they can sign up for our newsletter, but that’s the best way to keep track of us. They can sign up on our website.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Alex and Sonja been so great to be friends with you through the years to watch what you’ve built and excited for this next chapter.

Sonja Overhiser: Thank you so much.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to go even deeper into learning how to grow and monetize your food blog or food business, or you’re interested in starting a food blog, we definitely recommend that you check out the Food Blogger Pro membership at foodbloggerpro.com/membership. In the membership, we share all of our course content about topics like monetizing photography, essential tools and plugins, building traffic, and so much more. We also host monthly live Q&As and coaching calls to dive deeper into the topics that food creators need to know about and have a forum where all of our members can ask questions and get feedback from each other. From the Food Blogger Pro team and all of our incredible experts, we have received lots of amazing testimonials over the years from Food Blogger Pro members.

We’ve helped over 10,000 bloggers do what they want to do better, including this one from Tammy, from the blog, Organize Yourself Skinny. Tammy said this month, after 12 years working full-time in higher education, I resigned from my position to become a full-time professional blogger. This was a decision I did not take lightly, but in the last seven months, I made more money blogging than I made in my real job and decided it was time to take the leap. I strongly believe that because of the knowledge you share within your income reports and also on Food Blogger Pro, I was able to take my blog to a professional level. I have been and continue to be inspired, motivated, and educated by the information you so selflessly and graciously share with all of us. Thank you so much for that incredible testimonial. Tammy, we’re so happy to have you as a Food Blogger Pro member. If you are interested in becoming a Food Blogger Pro member and getting access to all of the content we have for our members, head to food blogger pro.com/membership to learn more. Thanks again for listening to the podcast. We really appreciate you and we will see you back here next week.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there. Thanks for tuning into The Food Blogger Pro Podcast. My name is Ann. In today’s episode, we’re sitting down with Danielle Walker who just published her seventh cookbook called Make It Easy. In this episode, Danielle walks us through her unconventional cookbook journey and the valuable lessons she’s learned along the way, from the necessity of advanced payments to the crucial role and agent plays in the process. She also emphasizes the importance of building a strong community, understanding your audience, and prioritizing your mental health and creating a work-life balance. For aspiring cookbook authors and anyone looking to build a successful online community, this episode will be right up your alley. If you enjoy the episode, we would really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork, take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Danielle, welcome to the podcast.

Danielle Walker: Thank you so much for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: We were joking before we pressed record. We talked about you being in the thick of it because you are just about to launch into a book tour here, but this isn’t the first time you’ve done it. You’ve done this a few different times and we’re going to be talking about that today, just what it’s been like for you to write multiple cookbooks, what you’ve learned throughout the process. But before we do that, talk to me about the first cookbook that you published. So this is number six?

Danielle Walker: This is number-

Bjork Ostrom: Is that right?

Danielle Walker: Yeah, it’s my seventh book, my SIXTH cookbook, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. Okay, so seventh books, SIXTH cookbook.

Danielle Walker: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Take us back. What did it look like to write that first book to go through that process, and then what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about what you’ve learned along the way?

Danielle Walker: Great. Yes. So my first cookbook, it was self-titled Against All Grain. That was my blog back in the day, and I forget when Pinch of Yum started, but I feel like Lindsay and I got started around similar time.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. 2010.

Danielle Walker: Yeah, okay. So yeah, I think I first drafted my blog in 2008 or 2009, probably 2008. I let it sit stagnant for some time, and so I would say-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … 2010, 2011 is when I really started picking it up and doing more with it. So I think that’s when Lindsay and I probably first connected. And my blog at the time was called Against All Grain and I got offered this publishing deal and I can give a little more details on that because that sounds so glamorous.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That be great.

Danielle Walker: It sounds like it’s what everybody really hopes for. At the time as a new food blogger, I did not know that food bloggers could write cookbooks. And I’ve said this before, I thought cookbooks were reserved for the Ina Garten, Ree Drummond. Even though she did start as a food blogger but had-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … a food network show, the Rachael Ray’s, the Giada De Laurentiis. I’m thinking, “Okay, you have to A go to culinary school to write a cookbook, and B you have to be this world-famous television chef to be able to write a book.” So I was blogging a lot at the time, and I think I was putting up four recipes a week. I was on Facebook, Instagram wasn’t quite around yet, and I was thinking to myself, I’m creating all these recipes and I can’t get them published fast enough or I could, but I didn’t want to because I thought they’d get lost in the mix. And so I started looking into self-publishing just in ebook. And so my husband, Ryan and I at the time were looking into what that would look like to put it up on Amazon. I’m thinking like, “Oh, I’ll release 40 recipes all at once and charge $2 for it.”

Bjork Ostrom: Right. Yeah. $0.50.

Danielle Walker: And as we’re starting to get ready to publish that… Yeah, $0.50. Just something, I don’t really care too much, it’s just more of, I want to put all these recipes out there. And as bloggers, we were pretty used to putting a lot of free content out for free. And so I was just about to get ready to start working on that. And I got an email in my inbox from this small publisher that I’d never heard of before. Now, I probably wasn’t too familiar with many publishers at the time. I never really even flipped the spine of a book to see who published it. I think probably Penguin Random House or something like that I knew of. But this publisher reached out and her story was really compelling to me, and it was really exactly why I started my blog and why I did what I did, which long story short was I had an autoimmune disease and created anti-inflammatory recipes to go along with the diet that I found helped keep my symptoms at bay. And so it was this long email, which I was pretty accustomed to getting at that point of the story of somebody that used a recipe that it really helped their health and then it helped them feel like they were more included in different environments or different traditions. And so I wasn’t really expecting it to turn into an offer. It was the story of, “Hi, I have a child that has an autoimmune disease and he can’t eat grains or dairy. I think he was four. At his school, they have cereal day every week and he feels left out because he can’t have the milk and he can’t have the cereal.” And she went on to say, “I make your granola,” it’s grain free, glutton free, grain free and we send almond milk, and now he feels like he can be part of his class. And so I’m reading this thinking like, “Oh, this is amazing. I get these types of emails and this is really why I do what I do.” And then the last paragraph was, “I work for a publisher and we want to offer you a cookbook deal.” And so that’s really how it came to be, and it was a very quick process. We had no idea what we were doing. Thankfully, my husband Ryan had just graduated law school pretty soon before that. And so he looked through the contracts and he was like-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … “I don’t know what a cookbook contract should look like.” I think we asked a friend to look it over for us and just look at the terms. And we signed and decided to go ahead and do it. And we can talk through now being number six and having moved on actually from that publisher and understanding a little more of what the traditional publishing world looks like. This was a very untraditional publishing deal.

Bjork Ostrom: And when you say untraditional, for people who aren’t familiar with what the publishing world looked like, myself included, what was untraditional about it?

Danielle Walker: So quite a few things. Number one, I had think six months to write the book and turn it in.

Bjork Ostrom: Short amount of time, yep.

Danielle Walker: Very short amount of time. And we are talking 150 brand new recipes. And so it was going to be on shelves, I believe within 12 months I think of when we signed the contract, which is also about a year shorter than most publishing contracts. And it was the way that this publisher worked. He really jumped onto trends “At the time,” so he was the main publisher of Paleo cookbooks, then-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … became the main publisher of keto cookbooks. And so that was his business model of catching these bloggers or catching these waves and getting a book turned around before the rest of the world caught on.

Bjork Ostrom: So there’s some urgency to get it out. Yeah.

Danielle Walker: Yeah. Yeah. So that was one untraditional thing. Number two, there were no advances, and so… I didn’t even know to ask for that at the time, but I also just felt so grateful that anybody would even offer me a contract. And so, I didn’t really think through, “Oh, I have got to buy ingredients to test 150 recipes.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Danielle Walker: “I need to get some child care for my two-year-old so that I can actually get this done in six months.” And so there was no money upfront to be able to help cover some of that stuff. And we dipped into our savings and drained it honestly, to be able to write it. And it was a risk that paid off ultimately, but we didn’t know it at the time. And then I would say three or is that, I’m like ABC, no photographer. And so you were expected to [inaudible 00:08:32].

Bjork Ostrom: Because it’s all you doing.

Danielle Walker: Yeah, you were expected to style, photograph everything yourself, and then of course write and edit yourself as well. And let’s go forward. Another one, no marketing and publicity, so very small niche publisher. Most of the work was on you. They were great partner in terms of they had good distribution, they were very communicative, they were supportive. They let you write whatever book you wanted, and I can talk through some of the pitfalls of some of that as well that came afterward.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’d be great. Because it also sounds like you reference it no advance, but you said you had to dip into savings. But my guess is then, obviously you had royalties on the books that you sold. It sounds like it maybe worked out in a way where it was actually ended up being okay. Was that because you had an audience, you were able to sell, you were able to do the publicity, you proved yourself in the process, and so that’s probably why you’re on book number seven here, SIXTH cookbook because you saw the potential of it, but learned a lot in the process. So what were some of the downsides that you discovered along the way with that first one?

Danielle Walker: Yes, so speaking to that, it definitely paid off. We didn’t know if it would. I remember saying, I was hoping it would sell 5,000 copies. That was my main goal. And I do remember at the time I probably had somewhere around 20,000 Facebook “Fans,” and so that was just what I was hoping for, and that would’ve helped us, I think to break even based on the royalties that you got. It went on to sell far more than that, and it landed on the New York Times Best Sellers list, I think probably week two. And my audience did a Indiegogo, which I don’t even know if Indiegogo is still a thing, but it’s like a kickstarter to send me on tour. They paid for it because the publisher-

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, cool.

Danielle Walker: … had no marketing budget. I stood in the plaza at the TODAY Show at 05:00 am with all my own books, just my own PR representative handing them out to people. And so I really had to hustle for it to sell. I toured 25 cities. I called every single bookstore and I actually went down the list of where Ina Garten and Reed Drummond had visited on their book tours and just cold called every manager and was like, “Hi, I’m a new author. I want to come to your store. I wanted do a book selling.” And most of them were like, “No thanks.” And then I would tell them, “I’ve got an audience. It’s not huge, but they’re very engaged and they would listen a little bit longer.” And so I really had to hustle to sell it, and it did pay off. Some of the pitfalls it was a small publisher, so because of the rush of everything, there were definitely some things that I think slipped through the cracks. I will say, my very first book falls apart at the spine, and keep falling up [inaudible 00:11:05]-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah. I was just talking to a friend who published a book and he was like, “We got this huge shipment from China. And it was a bummer because we started to ship them out and people would open them and they started to fall apart.” And he said, it was because they stacked them wrong when they were shipping them in the crate. And instead of going every other like one facing with the spine one way and the spine, then the other way, they accidentally stacked them all with the spine on the same side-

Danielle Walker: Oh, interesting.

Bjork Ostrom: … and it resulted in them like falling apart. But you don’t even think about, you just-

Danielle Walker: Yeah, so we joke about it these days because it’s been 11 years since Against All Grain came out, and my audience will show me their real deal chocolate chip cookie pick pages, literally just at the seam it’s fallen out. And I have original copies. They had glued some things instead of actually binding them. And that publisher did all paperbacks. They did not do what we now know as a really nice cookbook with the hardcover spine, and it was a lot of, because of the quick turnaround time. And it kept the price down for people too. It wasn’t a-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … $50 $40 cookbook. And so that would be, I would say the biggest thing. And then just really because there wasn’t a lot of support financially or they didn’t even have a marketing department, and so we relied on me touring on me getting out there with people on the blogger community, which I would say was huge at the time. They just had this big long list and that’s who we sent books to. There was no press or media or anything like that, but yeah, it was a very, very quick and tight turnaround. And so I did one more with them and then ultimately just couldn’t justify it because it was really hard on my health, really hard as a mom, and I needed to be able to have an advance up front. And so we took my third one to them, but they couldn’t pay anything up front.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: And I just said, “I’ve got to have some sort of money up front so that I can pay for this, this, and this. And I have just a little bit. When you spend almost a whole year of your life working on something, obviously, it was a great risk and it paid off at the beginning. But the longer you get into your career and you’re building your family and your business, you can’t take those risks as often anymore.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. What I love about that story is you… I think so often people wait and they say, “You know what? I’m going to wait until the perfect deal comes through, or I’m going to wait until I have complete understanding of how this works and I’m going to research it and make sure that every little bit and bop is, I have complete knowledge of it.” But what I found is so often it’s people who instead of being concerned about making right decisions, it’s people who make decisions right. And I think what you did is you knew. My guess is, you knew that you wanted to be a published author. You get this opportunity and you get after it, and you learn a ton in the process. But what that allows you to do is you can then iterate and you can change and you can adjust. And so often it’s through those experiences that we learn and we get better as opposed to sitting back and waiting for the opportunity to happen or waiting for complete knowledge, but actually getting after it every day. And it’s messy and it’s inefficient and it’s not optimized, but what it allows you to do is it allows you to feel it in a way that you wouldn’t if you were just reading about it or learning about it. And then next time around you’re able to do it so much better. So talk about, there’s a lot in between the first book that you publish and now the seventh book that you’ve published, SIXTH cookbook. But what are some of the things that you folded into the process now for you that are part of your framework for going through the publishing process? It sounds like one of those is to be clear about asking for an advance. What are some of the other things that are non-negotiables as you enter into a cookbook deal?

Danielle Walker: Yeah. Ooh, gosh, it’s so true. And also just to add on to that, if I wouldn’t have jumped on it, I might’ve missed the boat. There were so many bloggers coming at the time, so many books being published. And so I really do feel like the timing was just what it needed to be for it to take off. So, I met with a friend who actually writes bible studies. I remember after my second book, and I just met her, she was an author and we just had lunch, and she was like, “So who’s your agent?” I was like, “What do you mean who’s my agent? I don’t have an agent.”

Bjork Ostrom: What’s an agent? Tell me more. Yeah.

Danielle Walker: Hey, what’s an agent? And so that was probably the first thing that I think hiring and finding an agent that really believed in my message that had good relationships with publishers and editors, that was the first step that I took as I was starting to figure out how to move forward and how to really elevate and take it up a notch. And so I have been with her now since my third book, and so that was probably the biggest thing. And not only that she can help guide me through the process of a more traditional publishing world about what it looks like to put together a proposal. I hadn’t ever done a proposal before. I just got this offer for that book, and then the second book I was like, “Hey, this is what I want to write,” and just started writing it. So, she helped guide me through that process. We flew to New York, we met with all the different publishing houses. She was my advocate, but also just this sounding board of here’s all these different offers. And so she really walked me through that process. And I would say, she’s a great agent and that she sticks around for a lot more than just signing the deal, which I think we hear a lot from people who go on to publish books. She has been vital, I think in this whole process. And then number two, because I knew what it was like to rush and to write a book as quickly as I possibly could, and it took up my entire life, I started to work in those buffers. So, a few things. One, I asked for guest blog posts for a while, for my first couple of years so that I didn’t just-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … let my blog go stagnant. I knew that I didn’t have time to develop for this book and then also be publishing consistently. And so I gave opportunities to smaller up and coming bloggers of, “Hey, I’ve got this platform, I’ve got this blog. Would you like to guest post on it?” And so for them it was like this exposure, but for me it was I get a week off of having to develop a new recipe. And then going forward, I started using the book recipes as blog recipes as sneak peeks and marketing fuel for the book just to start talking about it and “Leaking recipes” and then [inaudible 00:17:03] it gives me some time.

Bjork Ostrom: So in that case, you would have a recipe that was going to be included in the book, but you strategically publish it to your blog, on social dual purpose. It’s content that keeps the blog and everything online active, but also potentially like a trailer for a movie where it’s content, it’s promotion, it gets people excited about what’s to come. So, a little bit of dual purpose with that content.

Danielle Walker: Yeah. And some publishers have pretty strict rules around how much you’re allowed to either repurpose from your blog or to put out into the world before the book comes out. I think I read somewhere in one of my contracts. It could be 10% of repurposed content in a book.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: And so yeah, I started just getting more strategic about that as I’m developing these recipes, I can start putting out a few here and there and talking about the book. And then just giving myself time knowing that I need to create 125 or 150 recipes in this amount of time, and then I need to type them all up and I need to edit them. And so, really figuring out exactly what that looks like and building backwards from what the publication timeline was of, how long do I need to do this, then how long do I need for photography? How long do I need for editing, and backing up so that I wasn’t finding myself constantly in the cycle of like, “Oh, no, I just turned in the last one and now-

Bjork Ostrom: No, here we go. Yeah.

Danielle Walker: … I’ve got to market it,“ and then I got to jump into creating the next one. And so, those were the biggest things. And then really just involving my audience has been essential for me in not only getting them excited about it, but having them part of the process because… Well, they love to write books. I don’t write them for me. I mean, I could keep all my recipes in a journal and keep it in my kitchen, and so I write them for them. And so I really like to get their input as to, ”Hey, this book came out. You’ve had six months to cook from it. Now what do you want to see next? And what recipes do you miss? And what could you use more in your kitchen? What could be different?” And I really listened to the feedback of cookbooks from the past and just try for everyone to incorporate the things that they loved and to do more of that. And then if there were things that they just felt like could have been better, then I just always take that feedback and put it into [inaudible 00:19:02].

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. In the software world or the product world, they often talk about this idea of customer development where you’re having conversations with customers and they help shape the product. Well, the issue oftentimes is, let’s say, you’re building software product, you go into the lab for a year and you come back out and you launch it and everybody’s like, “Wait, we don’t want this.”

Danielle Walker: Right. Totally.

Bjork Ostrom: And I feel like feel the same thing can happen in the world of book publishing or cookbooks where you’re really excited about it, you’re passionate about it, you come back out into the world, you publish it, and then people are like, “Wait, but we wanted this thing.” And it feels like what you’re talking about is customer development at its best, where it’s having conversations with your audience, getting an understanding of what they want, and then using that to inform decisions around what you’re going to write and what you’re going to talk about, what the product is actually going to be. And it sounds like in our conversations, there’s two tools that you’ve used, Kajabi, which I’d be interested in as to what that looked like. And then I know that you’ve also recently started a Substack as a way to focus on connecting with your audience more. Can you talk about how those two different platforms or tools helped inform the process for this upcoming cookbook? And then also talk about what the cookbook is, what you learned from that process.

Danielle Walker: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So as bloggers, we’re used to immediate feedback and gratification and/or constructive criticism, I would like to call it nicely. And you publish a recipe and you immediately get people commenting. They’re like, “This didn’t work, or you forgot to put this ingredient,” and you’re like, “Oh, let me just go edit it.” But when you spend two years publishing a cookbook, that’s not an option. And so I did. The first step I did was actually asking for volunteers from my audience to test the recipes from the book, so that I could stay intimately connected. It was a small group, 50 or 60 people, they volunteered. I would send them each a few recipes from the cookbook as I was working on it, and then I would incorporate their feedback before I turned in the final manuscript. And that model worked so well, but it was definitely a lot to manage. And so I started Kajabi during 2020 as a way to connect with my audience, but on a more intimate level. And also because I have been trying to do a TV show, a cooking show for a decade plus. And finally during 2020, we have a lot of the time at home, and Ryan and I filmed and I also brought in another team later in more 2021, and we created my own just tutorial cooking show that we put out there. And the community was really tight-knit, still are. They’re absolutely incredible. And I was able to really get just feedback immediately from them, watching the videos, what they really gravitated towards, what they learned from them, what they took out of it that I just babbled and just say in my normal cooking, but that they actually grasped onto and felt like it was a teaching moment. And so, I took that and did another Kajabi. I would say, it wasn’t as much video focused, but it was meal plans and I hosted them there. And it was a subscription. We only did one year, but different quarters essentially. I had always put meal plans in my cookbooks, but they were pretty surface level. It was just-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … like a calendar. Here’s four weeks, didn’t do full extensive grocery lists. I mean at minimal, but I’d always seen people love those in the cookbooks. And so I said, “Well, why don’t we take recipes from across all my cookbooks plus my blog and give you this meal plan membership where you get the grocery lists, get make a head steps, you get all these tips. So that was while I was writing Make It Easy, which is the new book that comes out. And so I was able to, through this thing called Circles on Kajabi, was able to do Q&A’s and hear from the members on a weekly, daily basis about what they were loving, what they wanted more of. And it really did help shape this book. I originally went into this cookbook thinking it was going to be more of a meal prep book, and it really morphed into a menu planning cookbook. And it was based on the feedback of everybody that was in this meal planning membership and how much they loved it. But the one thing I heard, and because a lot of these people were, we always call them like the Ally, they were people that were in my course during 2020. They had all my cookbooks, they’ve probably been following along since 2009 whenever the blog started. And so they loved the meal plans, but they were like, ”We really want new recipes.“ We’ve made all these recipes before. We love them, but we want meal plans with all brand new recipes. And I was like, ”Well, I can’t do weekly meal plans right now while writing a book and create also new recipes for this.“ It just wasn’t feasible for me. But I said, ”Okay, well that’s what this book is going to become then.“ And I’m going to give you 15 weeks of meal plans with all brand new recipes, make ahead steps, comprehensive grocery lists plus, which we can talk about a way to be able to curate and create your own grocery lists and meal plans through the book. And a whole back section of make-ahead things, which is what they also asked for make-ahead desserts, make-ahead snacks, make-ahead breakfast, excuse me. And so those were the things we just kept getting asked for more and more in the menu or meal plan membership was, ”Oh, I have all these dinners, but I also don’t know what to do about breakfast for the week. Can I make one thing and just eat it five days in a row?”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Totally.

Danielle Walker: And so, it really was their feedback that shaped Make It Easy completely. I had a lot of ideas going into it, but I just was in constant communication throughout [inaudible 00:24:24] and developed the book based on what their needs were.

Bjork Ostrom: Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Raptive. You may be like the many other food blogger pro members and podcast listeners who are working towards increasing their traffic to be able to apply to an ad network. Raptive, which is formerly AdThrive for instance, requires a minimum of 100,000 page views and brand safe content to join the community. These qualifiers attract premium advertisers and ensure creators like you benefit from Raptive’s expansive solutions and services. But if you’re not quite there yet and you want to be, Raptive can still help. Raptive put together a comprehensive email series. It’s 11 emails in total that will help you optimize your content, understand your audience, grow your email list, and grow your traffic to help you reach your ad network goals. Pinch of Yum works with Raptive to bring in passive income each month. The ads show up on each Pinch of Yum post, and when that ad loads on someone’s screen or somebody interacts with that ad, Pinch of Yum earns money. So more page views equals more money, and it can really add up over time. That’s why so many Food Blogger Pro community members are interested in getting their page view numbers up so that they’ll be able to apply to an ad network and make money on display ads. So if you’re in the same boat and are interested in getting some traffic tips delivered to you for free, head to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive. The 11 weekly emails you’ll receive are designed for creators who have a working knowledge of SEO, keyword research, and email lists, but haven’t yet been able to crack that a hundred thousand page view mark. Go to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive to opt into this free newsletter series. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode. It’s interesting, I think so many of us will have an audience. We have people that we are speaking to one to many. You do an Instagram story or you do Instagram Reels, you can reach a big audience, but I would say fewer publishers or creators are having those one to few conversations or one-to-one conversations that allow you to really refine what it is that you’re doing to allow you to really understand what the needs of your audience are. And what’s interesting in your story is it sounds like that came from a community that was also paying to have access to these, the meal plans and to have a closer access to you. Is that true? So these people, it was like a course or a meal plans, or what did you call it within Kajabi?

Danielle Walker: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Did you call it a course?

Danielle Walker: Yeah. So there was a meal plan. It was a membership.

Bjork Ostrom: Membership, okay.

Danielle Walker: The first time we launched it, it was just a product. It was like you sign up for this first quarter.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Buy at one off. Yep.

Danielle Walker: Yep. And yes, so they were, they were paying customers and the benefits of that were those private chats and the private Q&As. And the community that came with it too, they really ended up forming their own community, which is really what I had hoped for that we could cultivate in there. Because while I do love to be there for everybody, it’s very difficult these days.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Right.

Danielle Walker: Social media, it’s practically impossible to have actual one-on-one conversations or a few on one like you said. And it’s really hard to also be able to answer everybody’s questions if they’re in the middle of a recipe and they’ve run out of an ingredient, I’m just not always available. And so I loved that they became that for each other, that they would answer questions and they would help each other through things or tell each other if they substituted something, what they swapped in. Yeah, so it was a really, really great opportunity just to be able to be much more intimately connected than on social media.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And part of it too is the value of gathering a group of people who are after a similar thing. I think in your case with people who are trying to either understand or level up, maybe have more variety in what they’re eating. You hear people talk about, “Hey, we would just love new recipes as an example,” like everybody is after the same thing. And so for you, part of what you’re doing is facilitating this community, and that’s what is of value to people. It’s not necessarily even access to you, it’s just access to a community of people who are trying to do a similar thing. And that can be a really valuable thing for people, and it doesn’t have to come from you. So I think that makes a lot of sense. We’ve been talking a lot about this idea of membership and community, especially in a world where search algorithms are changing, AI is training on creator content, people are getting their answers from different places. I think there’s something to be said about finding a way to create a walled garden where people can come into it, but you’re not necessarily going to have AI training on it or search algorithms aren’t going to change how things look. Is that something you think you’ll continue to do? I know that you also are doing Substack as a part of your strategy. So, what does that look like now with the introduction of Substack and looking forward with that community element?

Danielle Walker: Yes, I love that analogy of a wild garden. I think that’s also a very important part is that it’s really difficult to get feedback from the greater audience that follows you that might not be customers. So obviously, you have to cut through a lot of noise on Instagram. There’s negative people and there’s very positive people, and then there’s people that are just there for pure entertainment. And so, it’s really difficult to get valuable feedback when you do want to have products, when you want to have a business that’s not just creator, just focused and entertainment focused. And so I did, I started a Substack in February and I went through, I listened to every podcast, I listened to all the ones. I loved the one you did with David Lebovitz. And I just was burnout, to be quite honest. I was so burnout on social media. I was so burnout on spending hours and hours creating recipes and creating reels to have them possibly be shown to a few thousand or all of a sudden a hundred thousand or something-

Bjork Ostrom: 22 million. Yeah. Right.

Danielle Walker: Yeah. And DMs were just getting increasingly difficult to try to keep up with stories. I would spend so much time pouring out who I am, my soul, I share a lot. I’m very vulnerable online. I always have been about my disease, about child loss, about just all the process, motherhood, everything. And it’s really draining emotionally to be able to do that. And I love to do it, but when you do it and then nobody sees it, it’s hard. And it’s like you have to have that back and forth to continue to fill yourself up.

Bjork Ostrom: Or you do it and a lot of people see it and people are mean. It feels like in the best case scenario, a lot of people see it, but that means that people who don’t know you or are unfamiliar with you have some random comment that they want to make on the piece of content. Not really thinking about you as a person, like either side of the coin it feels like could potentially be difficult.

Danielle Walker: Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think as online people, we’ve gotten slightly thick in skin, but I would say they still affect you. And it is part of the process and you totally understand that. But there was a place where I got to where I just said, “I really want to keep developing content, especially as these meal plan members are asking for brand new recipes.” And I started looking into it and I just said, “I would love to keep putting out a new recipe a week in addition to my cookbooks.” And I actually think I can do that, but I also at a point where I need to not only be compensated for it because ads on the blog don’t pay what they used to, affiliate links on the blog don’t pay what they used to. Even brand partnerships, things are just different than they were. I wanted to continue that aspect of an invested community. I loved what I saw from Kajabi and from those two different products in the communities that came out of it. I have a free one. I do a free recipe a month. I do a lot of videos even for free, but I just said, I got to a point where I was like, “Okay, if you’re going to comment on something, especially if I’m sharing something as vulnerable as my medication journey or my autoimmune disease or the loss of our daughter, then I’d like you to be somewhat invested in it.” And I’d like there to be a community here. And people will still have negative feedback even if they’re a paying customer, and I’m okay with that. I like that, like the walled garden in a sense where it’s not just any random person who doesn’t even have the time to follow you as a creator. They just come on and leave a comment and then leave. And so, it felt like a safer space. I also pulled my kids off of social media. And it felt like a place… My kids love to do cooking videos with me. And so Substack felt like a place where I could almost create this TV show that I’ve been wanting to do for a really long time and have them involved, but that I own the content. It’s my space. I can decide how I want to do it and that it emails when I publish something. It’s still up to if people open it or not, but it’s not just up to Meta and to the algorithms that if I’m creating this content, I can’t tell anybody about it. I love that they put it in your inbox. If you choose to be there, you will see that I’ve published something.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. When you say you’ve taken your kids off of social media, you mean you’re not including them if you’re doing something on social media? Yeah.

Danielle Walker: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: And so this is the space-

Danielle Walker: Well, similar to you guys, box of heads, tells stories, but my kids were part of my daily social media for a long time because-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … my oldest, who’s 14 was two when my first book published. So I stumbled into the world and didn’t really realize what it all would all become obviously.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about that decision?

Danielle Walker: Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: What was that like?

Danielle Walker: Yeah. Yeah, it was a tough decision because my audience is pretty connected to us as a family. They watched us go through loss. They watched us have two kids after. They’ve always been so supportive. The kids are in the cookbooks, they’ve watched them grow up, and there was a lot that went into the decision. I would say, the biggest reason why I did it was because I was so addicted to Instagram.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: While I wasn’t looking for an opportunity with my kids that would think like, “Oh, this is going to get a lot of likes,” or anything like that. It was just all these day-to-day things that we were doing where I was like, “Oh, I could share this.” So I’m pulling out my phone and I’m videoing as-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Everything is potentially content.

Danielle Walker: Everything is content. And I really wasn’t thinking about that strategically. It was just more of like, “Oh, we’re making cookies. We should film this. I should put it on my stories.” And I just got to a point where I just said, I just want to put my phone down in general because I’m on this app way too much. And one of the biggest ways to cut down on my time being on the app is to not include my family time, and also to prerecord anything I do want to do and post it later. I took it off my personal phone and I got a work phone-

Bjork Ostrom: Work phone. Yep.

Danielle Walker: … that I have it on phone, so it doesn’t even have-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we both have work phones. Yeah.

Danielle Walker: Yeah. It doesn’t even have cell service on it, so I can’t leave the house and post anything. I can take it with me and I can get content, but I have to wait until I get back to wifi or I have to tether. I have to jump through all these hoops. And then too, we don’t allow our kids to have social media yet. My oldest is 14, and I just started to think if, I’m not going to allow them to get it until they’re whatever, 16 I think is what we’re saying right now, we’ll see. Then I don’t want them to also look back and see, “Well, my whole life’s been cataloged on social media, so why am I not allowed to get it?”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Danielle Walker: And then just with AI and all the things that we see. I mean, one of the biggest things, and I started thinking about it, somebody stole a photo. This was a couple instances, but there was one of me holding my daughter in the hospital before she passed away. And I shared that vulnerably as a mother who lost their child, and I shared blog posts about it and the grieving process, and I shared so openly and honestly, and somebody swiped the photo and used it, and the headline was, “How to be a good Dad in the delivery room,” because my husband was sitting next to me. And I’m like, “Can you not read the faces of our sorrow?” And so that was one of the biggest things that just made me start thinking about what I’m putting out there and that really anybody could have it and use it however they wanted. And while I’m okay being on there, I don’t want my kids exposed to that.

Bjork Ostrom: We’ve both been doing this long enough. And what I love about you sharing that is you need to evolve. And we change as people, we have experiences and those change us. And yet that doesn’t mean that we just put everything behind us and say, “I’m not going to do this anymore.” It does require us to look strategically and say, “Okay, how can we be in good partnership with this thing that I have, which is a business, but it’s also a creative outlet and it’s a passion and it’s also personal.” And when you come to this inflection point of feeling like I’m not in good relationship with this, which if you do it for a decade or more, you probably will get to that point. What it requires is you to reinvent and to reexamine and to spend time not doing the work, but to spend time contemplating the work to figure out how you can do the work from a whole place. And it sounds like this has been a season of doing that for you. Does that feel accurate?

Danielle Walker: Yeah. Yes, yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And-

Danielle Walker: And it’s a hard decision because when you’ve been doing it for 10 years, it’s hard because I started to get really jaded about it and angry and frustrated, but then I was like, “But wait, I do really love the community that I have there.” It’s all the things that come in and suck the life out of that community that are hard for me. And so yeah, I had to really sit and figure out, what do I want to do? What really brings me life and what do I know I’m putting out into the world that I think is really positive and life-giving for those people, and what’s sucking the life out? How do I put those things off to the side?

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. Well, and it’s interesting. I feel like more and more I’m having conversations with people who are talking about that. And if nothing else, just to normalize it, for anybody who’s listening and feels that, and maybe the hope for people to hold onto is it is possible for you to reexamine and get back to a place that feels good. Not that I feel like every day we show up there will be little things that are hard or difficult-

Danielle Walker: Sure. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: … as it’s true with any job. But what would your advice be for somebody who maybe feels like they’re in that spot or in that season and they feel that sense of burnout or jaded, and yet they have this pretty cool thing, which is maybe an audience or skills or traffic, whatever it might be. You have this asset, but yet the relationship that you have with it is deteriorated a little bit. How do you get back in good relationship with your work?

Danielle Walker: I think the phone was a huge piece for me not being constantly connected to it, because my personal phone was also my Instagram phone, my content creation phone, all the things. And so I just was on my being all the time. And everybody that works a job talks about trying to find the balance and shutting it off at 05:00. But when this is your full-time business and it involves your home, your kitchen, it’s pretty hard to disconnect from it. So that to me was probably one of the biggest pieces. And then quite honestly, starting my Substack gave me a lot of freedom. I think I had become so reliant on Instagram because it did serve me and the business so well for so long that when something would tank or something wouldn’t reach the people or something like that, it would just really deeply affect me because I’m like, “This recipe is so good. I spent hours, hours on it, and I just want it to get out there.” And I made a list. I just said exactly what I said before. I made a list of what do I love, what do I know my community loves, and what is really burning me out? And it was very clear for me. I love long-form video. I love teaching. I love to get in the kitchen and make a thirty-minute video of a recipe from start to finish. I do not making a 32nd Reel. It’s not who I am. I love to see the process. I don’t like to try to cut clips where I’m like, “Wait, but you need to see that step too.” And so, I just decided I’m going to keep making them and I’m going to put them out there, but I don’t really care how they perform. I’m like, I had to just really detach myself from it. And that’s part of it is not being able to check the stats all the time. And I can make the videos that I love and adore to do and that I know my community really enjoys and learns from, and I can put those on Substack. And that to me is more meaningful. It’s a smaller community. It’s nowhere near my Facebook or my Instagram, but I’m so much more intimately connected to that audience, and I care more about giving them what they want than a big giant audience on Instagram. I don’t know. I know that that’s probably not smart on the business side of things, but it’s just so much more life-giving for me.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, and I think so much of what we’re doing is we are trying to figure out what can we do sustainably and what can we do in a way that there is a business component to it.

Danielle Walker: Of course.

Bjork Ostrom: If that’s our pursuit. It doesn’t have to be, but for a lot of us, it’s the work that we’re doing. So there’s that. But then there’s also this piece of, what do I enjoy? What gives me life? And we’re not singularly pursuing more traffic, more followers, more numbers. What we’re pursuing is different for each person. And I think that’s such an important takeaway is everybody’s playing a different game. And for any of us to really define what it is, the game that we’re playing, and also to define within that game, how is the game played? And for some people it might be, “I want to be famous and I want as many people to know about me as possible.” For other people, it might be “I want a hundred families to be impacted and to sit around the table to enjoy a meal together.” So I love that you took this time to step back and say, “What is it that I’m after? What can I do sustainably? How can I be in good relationship with my work?” And it sounds like that’s been a good reinvention. I’m curious to know, how do you view what you do? When people ask what you do, do you view yourself as a publisher, social media? Do you view yourself as somebody who does books?

Danielle Walker: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think that’s part of it is we all talk as if we’re doing the same thing, but so often our approach is really different. Some people are like, “I’m really good at like SEO and that’s what I’m going to focus on. And maybe technical people.”

Danielle Walker: Oh, yeah. Never [inaudible 00:43:06].

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Other people are really great at short form video, and that’s what they want to do. Some people build funnels and have classes, and other people like yourself have published seven books and we’ve never published any books. How do you view what you do and what your business is?

Danielle Walker: Yeah, yeah. First of all, I’m still waiting for Lindsay to write that book. We had coffee-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Okay.

Danielle Walker: … [inaudible 00:43:29] back in 2015 in Minneapolis, and I was like, “When are you writing a cookbook?”

Bjork Ostrom: 10 years ago, still hasn’t happened. Yeah.

Danielle Walker: Yeah. Typically, when people ask what I do, I say, an author. I would say the cookbook creation process is my favorite part of my “Job.” I love to write them. And we oftentimes will joke. I’ve done other things. I have a [inaudible 00:43:52]. I love being on social media. I like doing all of that. I love the videos, I love teaching. But Ryan and I, sometimes when I’m feeling those burned out days or when feeling like I need to be with my kids more, we will joke and say, “Well, you could just write cookbooks. Just write cookbooks.” And we don’t mean it to demean it. It’s literally just more like, “I could pull back from all of this.”

Bjork Ostrom: Simplify. Yeah.

Danielle Walker: Yes. And the books are where I feel like are not only is my passion lie, but also the way that I am able to reach people the most, what I’m able to give them as something that they can use in their kitchens for years and years. And so if I had to strip everything away, I would say I would be an author.

Bjork Ostrom: That makes sense. I remember walking into Target, this was maybe three or four years ago, and it was one of those moments where in movies, sometimes in futuristic movies, you’ll be walking down the street and there’ll be these ads and they’ll be like, “Buy the da da da da da,” and it feels it’s a bad description, but it feels futuristic. But it’s this moment where I was in Target and it felt like that. And it was this in the book section, they had a really long display, so it was maybe two feet tall and it felt like 10 feet long, but it was one of your books. And it just felt like this really cool futuristic moment where I was like, “Wait a minute, [inaudible 00:45:07],” like here you are. It’s like it lights up the whole area.

Danielle Walker: I mean, that’s cool. I wish I could have seen that. They used to have this, I thought you were going to say…

Bjork Ostrom: There was. I should have taken the picture. Yeah.

Danielle Walker: They used to have the TVs in the book section. It would be like 20 TVs showing like an ads-

Bjork Ostrom: Simultaneously.

Danielle Walker: … for a book. And they had me do one. And that moment, Ryan and I were on a date. We often end our dates at Barnes and Noble or Target.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Yep.

Danielle Walker: And we were standing in the book section. We had to wait for the loop. It was like an eight-minute loop for mine to come on. And I think that moment was the moment where I was like, “Oh my gosh. I write books and I have a trailer for my book in Target on the wall, and they don’t do them anymore.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah, on 42 TV.

Danielle Walker: And I’m so sad. Just want to go ahead and see that again. But it was definitely a career highlight for me, being in Target because we love Target.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s so great. So one of the questions that I have when you are an author and that’s what you’re doing, I was talking with a friend who I just recently got to know, and he’s a publisher, but he has a unique way that he works with authors where he’s mutually invested, gets ongoing share of the books at a higher percentage, I think. Anyways, he was just talking about this idea of those compounding over time in the sense that you release a book, and in this case, he was publishing business books, so it has a big spike usually, but then it plateaus. But a lot of times it plateaus for maybe a decade. And I would imagine potentially that cookbooks could have some of that same nature. Can you talk about when you are publishing a cookbook, there’s the spike of the release, you’re doing a book tour, which we’re going to talk about. And there’s a lot of your fans, we’ve talked about Kevin Kelly a 1000 True Fans, this idea of those people who own every one of your books, I’m sure those people are out there. And so you have this bump. Is there a little bit of stacking that’s involved where then you have these other cookbooks that you published before that continue to sell, and the more that you publish cookbooks, the more of that income that you have going on in the background? Or is it mostly like, “Hey, they have a two to three year lifespan and then you have to get after it and do another one?”

Danielle Walker: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: What does that look like?

Danielle Walker: Yeah, so I would say it depends on that advance in the front end of things.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: So those first two no advances, right? And so I had royalties from those for many, many years. The first time we saw them really take a giant dip, and they’re practically nothing anymore was during COVID. And there was-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Danielle Walker: … a lot of reason for that. Bookstores emptied their inventory and returned all their books to the publishers. And so authors essentially lost all their money during that time that had that set up. In those two, they’re a decade old, like you just said, right? A Meals Made Simple had its 10th birthday last week, and Against-

Bjork Ostrom: Happy Birthday.

Danielle Walker: … All Grain, 11 years old. Yeah, thank you. And those don’t sell that they used to. I mean, they all sell, I would say, maybe 20 copies a month. We’re talking hardly anything. I haven’t looked at the statements in a really long time because it’s not like… It’s just not. And there’s been many more after that. So yes, I think every time you do… I think it can be a double-edged sword almost. If one takes off and New people or finding you, you do a segment on the TODAY Show or something like that, and you’ve got this new book, then people go on and look at your author profile and they’re like, “Oh, she’s got all these other ones.” Or they find your new book and they cook from it and they learn to trust you, and then they’re like, “Ooh, I actually want to go get the other ones.” So you can still sell in that way. But yes, I think that they start to dwindle off, and then depending on your advance that you get up front. So what that means just for anybody who’s not familiar with it is, I don’t want to call it a loan because it’s not a loan. You don’t have to necessarily pay it back, but they give you this lump sum in the beginning thinking, and they do all these calculations of how many they think you’re going to sell in a seven-year period, I believe is what they think about in their brains. And so every copy that sells from the day it publishes on, you get somewhere between a $1.50 and $3 depending on what your royalty is like per book. And that actually goes against your advance. And so you don’t see any checks or any royalty money or anything like that until [inaudible 00:49:24] out.

Bjork Ostrom: Because you’ve already been paid from the advance.

Danielle Walker: Right, right. I think it’s always really interesting for people to hear how much you’re expected to pay for. So that advance not only goes towards rescue creation and development. If you need to hire an assistant, somebody to help you in the kitchen that comes out of there, your photography budget, which can be anywhere between 40 and $80,000 comes out of that money. Some people have to hire outside publicity if they want to be able to help get it out there more. Gosh, what else is there? I mean, yeah, the rescue development, some people help or will hire an outside editor, so there’s a lot that goes. That’s why you do get paid some of that upfront is to be able to cover all the costs that come with publishing a cookbook. But all that to say is when the book comes out September 10th and it sells XYZ copies for the first week, I don’t see anything from that. It’s basically going against what I owe the publisher, if that makes sense? And then once we net out, that’s when I would start making something from it. And they look at that as a seven-year process. And I forget what the statistic is, but it’s staggering. I feel like it was somewhere around 90% of authors never earn out, so they get that money at the beginning, but then they don’t ever see anything from it going forward.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. In my conversation with this friend who does the publishing, he talked about it almost like startups, where you have a handful of any group of startups that never get their wings and fly. You have a decent amount in the middle, which are probably that 80%, and then occasionally you’ll have ones that are just mega standout and become these huge returns both for the publisher and the author. And so, it almost feels like what you’re doing is you’re having these little companies and they’re getting funded and you have some security as an author because you get that advance. Obviously, some of it goes to pay for all of the parts that go into building a cookbook. But then you also have the potential of an outsized outcome if it sells really well or gets picked up, or gets featured in multiple different places. One last thing that I’d be curious to hear you talk about a little bit is you mentioned TODAY show. What is that like to be on a TV show? How do you get those? What does it look like to wine those? Is that your agent doing it or a publicist?

Danielle Walker: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: What does that look like?

Danielle Walker: Yeah. So gosh, first of all, I love doing it. It’s honestly something that gives me… It just thrills me and it energizes me. And I’m an introvert, but I absolutely adore doing it. It’s so fun. I didn’t get my first national TV segment until my third book. And again, I was out handing out those copies, just kind of grassroots trying to get it done.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Danielle Walker: I think the publicist from the publishing house is who got me that very first segment. And so, everybody has very different experiences with the publicity within the publishing houses. A lot of times I think people find that they’re over-promised and under-delivered. I had really good experience for the first couple of books, and then I also had to hire an outside PR agency that would come in and try to pitch me for things. This book particular, it’s just really interesting because when you talk about that, if we call the book a business, it’s a business just like anything else, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Danielle Walker: And so two of my books came out during 2021 and 2022, and my tours got canceled, all my segments, nothing on TV, none of that. We couldn’t do any of that because of all of that time. And so, it’s that risk that you’re taking. This book, the first debate was scheduled on the release date, and so all my segments got canceled. So released it without any national media and any national news. And it’s TBD, if that’s going to make a giant impact or not, we’ll see. But I’m really just leaving it up to my community and knowing that it’s a good product and I’ve already seen some reviews come in for it, and I’m just trusting that they’re going to take it and spread it. And that those traditional ways of promoting it, they’re not an option this time around. And it’s just what happens, especially with live TV and cooking segments are the first to get pushed if there’s anything, any big news, but they really can make a difference. Everybody sees different things. I grew up watching the TODAY Show. I love being on there. It would be the one that I would choose if I had the option. You don’t normally get faced with like, “Here’s five shows, you pick.”

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah.

Danielle Walker: But they’re just so welcoming and they make it so easy, and they’re very in line with who my audience is from what we’ve seen. And so in terms of when you watch to see a book, if it spikes in rankings or things like that, that’s always been the show that moves it the most. And they’ve had me on quite a few times and they’re so welcoming and so I love it.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. This was years ago, there was a really small local news morning show and they had me on and I was a part of it, but I’m not really involved with any. So I was mixing muffin batter and they asked me about blogging, and somehow I’m talking about domain names and they’re like, get off of it.

Danielle Walker: They’re like, “We just want to know about the muffins.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, exactly. Lindsay’s like, “That’s the last time you’re ever involved.”

Danielle Walker: I mean, I love that though, that you guys did it together. I mean, Ryan is on very similar side with you are. He created and shopped the book, which is the companion app that goes along with my cookbooks. Tap Bio and all the things like on the technical and business side, he’s always been running alongside of me. And we’ve done a couple joint interviews, but not very often because it’s the same thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Totally.

Danielle Walker: It’s like, people don’t really want to talk about the tech of it, the HTML coding that he had to go do for my blog.

Bjork Ostrom: We did an interview with Ryan years ago that people can look up, so we’ll link to that in the show notes as well. So this interview is coming out like halfway through your book tour. If folks are in California, it looks like Colorado, Illinois, Oregon. They’ll be able to-

Danielle Walker: Yeah. Portland. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: … add some of that.

Danielle Walker: Like in that one comes out. Yeah, most of them are sold out.

Bjork Ostrom: I was just going to say, I can see… Yeah, quite a few of them are sold out, which is awesome.

Danielle Walker: Yeah, Denver though still has tickets. Portland is that Powell’s City of Books downtown, and it’s not ticketed so anybody’s welcome to come to that one. And I’m doing it with my friend Michelle Tam of Nom Nom Paleo, who’s one of our old school food bloggers. And San Diego, I would say would be when this comes out, those would be the ones that would be left.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s great. If people want to pick the book up, what’s the best way to do that?

Danielle Walker: Yes, it would be great to go into a store. I think that’s the one thing people don’t talk about a lot. Amazon’s obviously wonderful, and we get it on our doorstep and it’s cheap, but it means a ton for authors when you go and get it actually out of store. So Targets carrying it, you can get it at your local independent bookseller, which I love to support. You might spend $5 more, but it’s these little brick and mortars that are barely surviving. And then Barnes and Noble, and of course, Amazon and online at Walmart. And I think that’s anywhere books are sold typically, but…

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. What’s happening that’s different with picking it up a store versus ordering it?

Danielle Walker: Oh, yeah. Ooh. That’s a whole other discussion that we can talk about about New York Times. Very important for you to have diversity of sales, not just all at one big box. And then actually, everyone looks at what sales look like at different retailers. And so when you go get it at Target and they sell copies, then they’re more likely to A, pick-up your next book and actually put it on the shelves. My first three books were not at Target. I think they might’ve sold them on their website, and so they look at those sales and say like, “Oh, this amount of people pre-ordered it from target.com. We’re going to actually carry it in the store on the shelves.” And so, it’s really helpful for that. Just for other retailers, because they have to buy these books upfront and they have to pay. They wholesale, but they still have to buy them. And if they don’t feel like they can confidently sell them, then they’re not as likely to carry them. And so picking it up in the stores is really helpful for a lot of different things, but not only for the retailers, but for all the rankings, all the lists, all things.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Interesting. Yeah, exactly. And it’s an entirely different world. All of these things-

Danielle Walker: Totally.

Bjork Ostrom: … still you learn after you’ve published seven different books. And then how about online? Where’s the best place I would say, obviously all around the internet? Substack maybe, Instagram? Would those be the two places where you’d point people to?

Danielle Walker: I would say, I’m the most active on Substack and Instagram, definitely. I still have my blog, but there’s thousands of recipes on there. I’m just not there as often. But yes, Instagram @daniellewalker, and then Substack it’s just danielwalker.com or danielwalker.substack.com.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s great. Danielle, thanks so much for coming on. Congrats-

Danielle Walker: Thank you.

Bjork Ostrom: … on your book.

Danielle Walker: Thank you so much.

Bjork Ostrom: And excited to see what’s next. We’ll have to have you back on when you publish the next one.

Danielle Walker: Yeah, thank you. Two more years. Every two years.

Bjork Ostrom: We won’t think about that for a while. Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on.

Danielle Walker: Thank you.

Emily Walker: Hello there. Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed listening to this week’s episode of the podcast. Before we sign off today, I wanted to mention one of the most valuable parts of the Food Blogger Pro membership, and that’s our courses. In case you don’t already know, as soon as you become a Food Blogger Pro member, you immediately get access to all of our courses here on Food Blogger Pro. We have hours and hours of courses available, including SEO for food blogs, food photography, Google Analytics, social media, and sponsored content. All of these courses have been recorded by the Food Blogger Pro team or some of our industry experts, and they’re truly a wealth of knowledge. We are always updating our courses so you can rest assured that you’re getting the most up-to-date information as you’re working to grow your blog and your business. You can get access to all of our courses by joining Food Blogger Pro. Just head to foodbloggerpro.com/join to learn more about the membership and join our community. Thanks again for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Make it a great week.

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Emily Walker: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Lydie Heuck, who you might know from her food blog, Lidey Likes, her new cookbook Cooking in Real Life, her time on the Magnolia Network Show, The Lost Kitchen or her years spent as Ina Garten’s assistant. Lydie’s first job out of college was actually as Ina Garten’s assistant, and she spent seven years working as part of the Barefoot Contessa team before breaking off to grow her own career as a food creator.

In this interview, she shares more about her experiences working at Barefoot Contessa, how she balances creating content for different platforms, because right now she obviously has her blog, her recent cookbook, and she’s also a recipe contributor for New York Times Cooking. And she also chats more about why she might want to open a brick and mortar shop in the future, and what she envisions the future of her career in food looking like. Bjork and Lidey also chat about how she balances sharing her personal life on social media and how she avoids the trap in the food space. It’s a really fun interview. I loved editing it and listening to it, and I’m sure you will enjoy listening to it too. So without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Lidey, welcome to the podcast.

Lidey Heuck: Thank you so much for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’re going to be covering a lot of different things today because you have a lot of different experiences and sometimes we have conversations with people who are like, “Hey, I just started publishing stuff online and then realize there was an audience here, and so I decided to build it.” Other times we talked to people who are really strategic and they go about like, “Hey, I knew that this is what I wanted to do. This is exactly what I wanted to do, and I went after it and I built it.” And I’m curious to know what that was like for you because you had a lot of experience in the world of food content creation, working with creators, working with platforms, working with publications. And while you were doing that, were you always kind of thinking through a plan of what it might look like for you to venture out on your own and create your own thing?

Lidey Heuck: I did start to think about what I wanted to do specifically and on my own eventually, but really I fell into the food world and I kind of fell into the world of being a creator and being a recipe developer. It wasn’t something that I was even familiar with to be honest when I got started. My first job out of college was working for Ina Garten, which was a pretty incredible first job. And I really was just her assistant, and so I was involved in some of what she was doing with cookbooks and there was some recipe testing involved, but it really started out as just a social media role and something that I thought would be fun to try and a creative job out of college, but I wasn’t really focused on being in the food world at that time. I just thought I should do something fun because eventually I’ll have to get a real job and buckle down. And so-

Bjork Ostrom: How did you come across that job? What did it look like to-

Lidey Heuck: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Was it like a posting, a job posting or friend of a friend?

Lidey Heuck: It’s funny. It was through a friend of a friend essentially, but at the same time that I got in touch with Ina, I basically, long story short, wrote her a letter because I had always loved her and always loved her show. And so I’ve grown up with Barefoot Contessa and I knew that I had this third degree connection to her that was a total long shot. But I thought I just loved that she had built her own business and she sort of created her own world of work that seemed really fun and enticing, and there was something about it that really drew me in. Even at 21, there was something just, I don’t know, something about the energy of what she was doing that appealed to me, and I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it seemed worth investigating and worth taking a chance to see if she would meet with me.

And so I wrote her this letter sort of introducing myself, and thankfully I was able to get it to her. And it just so happened at the same time, she had put out an ad in the local paper looking for someone to help with social media. So there was a job posting. I just didn’t know about it. And so it was very fortunate timing and it ended up changing the course of my career. So I’m very grateful that I took that weird risk and saw that was a job that I could pursue.

Bjork Ostrom: What I love about that is, and I think there’s so many examples of this in life where there’s not a listing that you were responding. It’s not like you waited for something to happen, you made something happen. And I think so many of us could take inspiration from that to think, what am I inspired by? What am I drawn to? What do I want and how do I get after it? Versus there’s not a job posting, and in this case, technically there was, but you didn’t know about it. But to get after it and to do so in a really creative way. Another, this is completely unrelated, and I think about it in this context often where my friend worked for the professional baseball team in Minnesota Twins here in Minnesota, and he talks about somebody who really wanted a job at the Twins. She sent in her resume, printed on a cake.

And so everybody gathered around and they’re like… But it’s just this approach of creativity around the pursuit of a career or a job. And it sounds like you did that, and like you said, it was a life-changing experience. In what ways was it life-changing? What did that…. It was seven years, right? So what did those seven years do for you in terms of crafting your idea of the world or what you could build or talk to me about what that was like?

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, sure. And first, just to your last point about the cake, which is amazing and the resume, I just want to add because I think it’s helpful that when I reached out to Ina, I didn’t just say, “Can I work for you?” I said, “Here’s what I could bring to the table. Here’s what I could do to help you.” And I think if you are taking a non-traditional approach to trying to get a job or get an in somewhere, I think figuring out what you can offer and what problem you can solve for them is a huge advantage because it helps solve a problem for them rather than adding something to their, to-do list of like, “Oh, this person needs something for me,” is sort of flipping that around. So that was-

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, that’s awesome.

Lidey Heuck: … one thing that I learned. But I learned so much. I was a beginning cook at that point and I liked to cook. And so the first thing I really learned from her was the basics of what makes a good dish, how to season food, and then how to think about a recipe and a composed dish as something that someone’s going to recreate at home. And how a recipe for home cook differed from a dish that you would eat in a restaurant. And through the years that I worked for Ina, my role sort of grew and evolved, and I got a lot more involved with the recipe side of things. And so just being up close with her philosophy on recipe writing and cookbooks and really making sure that these recipes are tools for cooks of all levels and that they’re really well tested. I think just through the repetition of testing Ina’s recipes and seeing her process, it just sort of stuck and it became something that I thought was a fun challenge.

The idea of taking a recipe idea or a dish and kind of starting from scratch and then honing it and fine tuning it until it was concise, clear and perfected was a process that, I don’t know, I just started to really enjoy. And I think working for Ina was an amazing start to my career, but at the same time, I also felt like, well, where do I go from here? How do I develop my own voice or what are my next steps after working for someone who’s so good at this, who’s done it for so many years? It was a little daunting. And I just started on nights and during the weekend I started playing around with my own recipes and just exploring my own voice. And thankfully, Ina was incredibly supportive and really wanted me to pursue that and was helpful in helping me figure out what kind of food did I like and helping me with my initial recipes.

And she was eager to help connect me with people to figure out what my next step could be. So it definitely helped to have someone who was really a mentor and really encouraging. But I also think that just the way that she followed her own voice, and there are so many, and increasingly, this year there are so many cookbooks coming out. And I think one thing that I always admired and that I learned from Ina is to just stay true to who you are and don’t be kind of influenced too much by what other people are doing.

And I think that that is something that’s important to keep in mind just because we are in this incredibly crowded food space, and I think it can sometimes be a little intimidating. So that was another lesson I learned from her was just keep your eye on the prize and what you want and who you are and what you’re doing, and don’t fall into the comparison game or be too influenced by what you see other people doing, because the more authentic the food is to you, the better it will be and the more it’ll resonate with people.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. How do you do that? I think in theory we all hear that and it’s like, “Yes, that makes sense.” Do you have any advice for practically how to not compare and despair?

Lidey Heuck: One thing I do, and this is a tough one because I also want to support my friends and people who I’ve gotten to know who are in the space. I don’t want to just unfollow people, but I try on social media to follow a mix of accounts and I follow a lot of home design and travel. Things that are sort of outside food so that I’m constantly getting inspiration from other things and I’m not feeling like I’m just doom scrolling and seeing what everyone else is doing. I think it’s a very human impulse to compare and feel competitive. And I think also just being excited about the projects you’re working on and finding things to work on that you can really focus your energy on helps,. Because if you’re really engaged in something, you’re kind of less likely to start looking around and feeling like what you’re doing isn’t good enough.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So this is kind of a example of that played out accidentally in real life. So my wife Lindsay, she has a food and recipe site, Pinch of Yum.

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, of course.

Bjork Ostrom: So Instagram account connected with that. She also has then a personal Instagram account with 40 friends and is really protective of that, of this is just friends. But then she started this snack review show with a friend of ours and it’s like, “Here’s a a new version of Oreos,” and they’ll try it and rate it. But just the other night she was messaging with him, our friend, his name’s Nate, the account’s called Snackdive. And she was like, “I love the Snackdive Discover page,” because it’s like they have a shared login. And so the algorithm is a little bit innate and a little bit of Lindsay. But it’s like sports highlights and she’s just like, “It’s so refreshing to have a rollerblading fail video and a top-

Lidey Heuck: Totally.

Bjork Ostrom: … 10 dunks video.“ And she’s like, ”Please just don’t watch any food content Nate. Just keep this what it is.”

Lidey Heuck: Just pure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, purely random. But there’s something to be said about that where for whatever reason to get outside of really it’s like to get outside of the zone of work for you or creativity for you into other areas is really refreshing. And not that you never want to explore what anybody else is doing because that can also be inspiring. But maybe almost to name that and say, “Okay, for a half an hour I’m going to spend some time watching food videos to understand it,” versus being forced into it in a time where you’re maybe not in the mode of working. And that’s-

Lidey Heuck: Totally.

Bjork Ostrom: … I think part of what feels off with it is you get kind of put into work mode when maybe you’re not in work mode or you’re in work mode, but you want to be creatively inspired as opposed to triggered to be like, “I got to be better,” or whatever it is. All those feelings that we feel when we come up against that.

Lidey Heuck: Totally. I also think that the idea of starting a little side project, like the snack idea for example, something that feels connected to to Pinch of Yum because it’s food but is separate and feels, you feel freer to have fun with it and explore.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, 100%, that’s what it is.

Lidey Heuck: Anyone who’s a food creator kind of gets to this point where you’re sort of known for what you’re known for, and you want to give the people who are following you the recipes that they love and the content that they love. But there’s pressure around that and it starts to feel like work. I mean, it is work, but you’ve taken this thing presumably that you love to do and you’ve turned it into your job. And I think inevitably there’s a shift that happens. So I think finding little outlets, whether it’s reviewing snacks or trying a new skill that is not something that is really in your wheelhouse. I don’t know that I have done this, and so I’m not feeling inspired to do something myself. But just to find that something that’s pure joy, again without the pressure of it being a primary part of your business, I think is actually hugely helpful.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, you so accurately described what they are doing with that, and it’s not like they don’t ever want it to become a thing, but Nate and Lindsay are both very intentional to say, “This is fun.” The primary purpose of this is fun. And I got a text from somebody kind of an acquaintance the other day and he’s like, “Oh, this is interesting.” What’s the strategy with this? It was like, “There isn’t one, it’s just this-”

Lidey Heuck: That’s the other thing. I feel like we get so bogged down in strategy and the algorithm and how is this performing and how is that performing? And I’ve started working with a team to help me with some of my social stuff, and they always say the things that you don’t think about are the ones that are going to do really well. Or the things that are often tough and are really you and feel really spontaneous or something are the things that really resonate with people. So in some ways, thinking less and just having fun, I feel like that content ends up succeeding in a way that the things that you overanalyze to death might not. So it’s almost just turning things around and trying the complete other strategy could help.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, totally. So I’m interested to hear coming out of the experiences that you had working with Ina, like you were on The Lost Kitchen, so a Magnolia network show, working for New York Times cooking. How did all of those inform what you wanted to be doing as a creator because you were kind of able to, if not actually do some of the things that you would do in those respective positions like working with Ina to do recipe development as an example, you were also able to see what it’s like to have some of those businesses. As you’ve moved forward building your business and building your following, how have you made decisions on what to do based on what you observed or what you did?

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, I think every experience that you have professionally helps kind of inform what you enjoy and what you don’t enjoy. And I think having sort of road tested some of these different experiences, I also did a little bit of private chefing for a family. I’ve done some cooking classes. I’ve sort of dipped my toe into different areas of food, and I think, I wish I could say that I know exactly what I want to do with the rest of my life after all these experiences. But I think one thing that they all have showed me is I really enjoy interacting with people and having something that has a physical manifestation. I think one challenge with creating content online and sharing content online does feel somewhat of a disconnect from the people who follow you. And also it just feels, I don’t know, for me, having this physical cookbook that I’ve now written feels gratifying in a way that I feel like I was missing.

And similarly, I think having worked at The Lost Kitchen for a season, I’m not sure that I want to have a restaurant one day, but I love the idea of having a place, having something that is this physical manifestation of the thing that I’m working on and the food that I love and a place for people to come together, something that’s to make a pun on the book, in real life is a big element for me. And I think what’s great about sharing content online is you can reach so many more people and you can just have a much broader audience than you’d be able to have if you just had a small food business wherever you live. But I think for me, my goal one day is to be able to combine the two and have something that’s a brick and mortar in addition to online content.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, so you talk about that on the book, Cooking In Real Life, this idea of how do you create doable, practical recipes that you’re actually going to sit down and make. And for you saying, “Hey, that’s actually an important variable,” within this is the human connection a physical thing as opposed to in the world of digital. We could potentially create something for a decade. And there’s a lot of scenarios where that could not go away, but it’s like it doesn’t exist in the same way that a physical thing does. Do you have a vision of what that looks like, what that pairing looks like? Or is it still pretty-

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, I have a lot of ideas, but my current idea is to have something that’s a store because I also really love lifestyle and home decor, and I think that goes hand in hand with food and entertaining. So I think something that kind of combines the two, maybe a cafe with a store with online presence, I think would just be a really… I don’t know, that excites me and sounds fun to me. And I’m often driven by what’s that thing that keeps popping into my head that sounds intriguing and exciting. So it’s a big project and it’s something that would take a lot of work. One of the nice things about creating content is you can really do a lot from your house with very little investment and you can get going. And so I think there’s this immediate ability to start and grow, but I think growing a business is something I haven’t totally tackled yet, but it’s also something that I am really excited about. So, unclear when the time is right, but we’ll see.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. And how about with seeing the things that you’ve seen, the experiences that you’ve had, is there anything that getting into thinking and building your own following and where you want to be focusing your time, is there anything that you were like, “I’m definitely not going to do that.” Anything you’ve ruled out as maybe experiences that you had or saw other graders or people you worked with come up against and you’re like, “That’s really good for some people, but it’s not for me.”

Lidey Heuck: One constant thing that I feel like I’m coming up against, and I don’t know that I’ve totally figured out where I stand on it, but it’s the line between sharing your life and having some privacy. And I think my platforms are not so big at this point that I feel like the whole world is watching me, but I think as you continue to grow and you want to develop a connection to the people who are following you, it makes sense to share more of your life and day to day. And I think some people are really comfortable with that and good at that, and that feels like a very natural thing for them to do. But I sometimes feel unsure of how comfortable or where that line is for me.

And I also think continuing to grow my business right now, having an Instagram account and a website, everything is very tied to me and my name, and so I feel like there’s a limit to how much only I can do as one person. So I think figuring out a way to grow what I’m doing that might include other people or might be able to branch out and be more than just my name attached is very appealing to me because it allows there to be a little bit more distance between my everyday personal life and the business side of my life. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interesting. I feel like we talk about this a lot, one of the advantages with being personal is it kind of creates this quick connection. I think it’s potentially an easier follow for people if they like, “Hey, I know this-

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, totally.

Bjork Ostrom: … is Lidey and I’m going to follow her because I want to.” It’s almost like more how we operate in the real world, which is somebody and you know somebody and you connect with them and then you-

Lidey Heuck: Want to hear what they think about things and you trust them. Totally. Yeah, and I think that’s great.

Bjork Ostrom: But the disadvantage to which you kind of speak to a little bit is in creating a brand, the disadvantages, maybe it can’t grow it in the same way in terms of how quickly you would grow it. But it’s almost like there’s a certain, for a lot of people, not everybody, but a desirability in that you are able to create a thing outside of yourself. And that is really great, especially if you like the idea of creating a thing. But you don’t necessarily want it to require you in order to run it all the time. Is that any of it as you process through a part of your consideration is building a thing that doesn’t require you to be the thing?

Lidey Heuck: I mean, I don’t mind being the thing, meaning that I enjoy doing video, I enjoy being on camera. I’m not, that part doesn’t make me uncomfortable, but I do feel like it limits because it’s just me a certain number of hours in the day and anyone who is a content creator knows that there’s this pressure to be doing more, more, more, more, more.

And I just feel like for a work-life balance, I think not only could I grow a business that was sort of broader and maybe more interesting if it had different perspectives, but I also think that it would just take a little bit of the pressure off of me. And I think what I first was saying is you look around and you see other influencers and creators who are sharing every detail of their life, and I think some people feel totally comfortable doing that. And I think I feel increasingly comfortable doing that the more I do it. But I just try to be cautious thinking ahead of what’s the end goal here and how can I grow in a way that is keeping up what I’ve built but also kind of growing in different directions than just my face in front of the camera.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And thinking almost like looking ahead and saying, “If I continue to do this, what does that mean in five years, 10 years?” And not that it’s good or bad, but just thinking strategically and saying what is the end goal with the current direction or where’s the end destination? Not that there’s ever a real destination with it, I think is a great contemplation.

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, it’s an interesting question too because I feel from the time that I started working in social media, which was 2013, so that’s a little over 10 years, the landscape has changed so dramatically and it makes it hard to envision what it will be like in another 10 years.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Lidey Heuck: I guess at the same time, I don’t want to be too caught up in the future, but just every once in a while taking a step back and looking at what I’m doing big picture and what I want to be doing I think is important because otherwise it’s really easy to get caught up in the day-to-day work of recipe developing, recording video, making a post. And I think just trying to keep a little bit of perspective on, okay, what are my goals and what is this working towards? Rather than just focusing on feeding the machine, I think it just helps me kind of keep myself accountable in the big picture.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Raptive. When it comes to monetizing a blog or a site, display ads are a fantastic passive way to generate income on the content you’re already producing. In fact, Raptive display ads are one of our biggest revenue generators at Pinch of Yum. They make up nearly 80% of our overall monthly income. Raptive, which is formerly Adthrive, is on a mission to empower independent creators like you. And to date, Raptive has paid out more than 2 billion to creators. Not only do they help creators generate ad revenue, they also offer creators many other benefits to help support them with their audience revenue and business goals. For example, Raptive creators get access to industry-leading tools like Topic, which helps creators discover opportunities to improve their content and plan the structure of their blog posts.

You also get access to resources on HR and recruiting SEO, email marketing, customized AB ad layout testing and more as a Raptive creator. You can learn more about Raptive’s Creator Levels and what’s all included in each level at raptive.com/creator-levels. Then when you’re ready to apply, head to raptive.com and click the apply now button. Working with an ad network has had a profound impact on the way Pinch of Yum monetizes our business, and by being a Raptive creator, you’re getting access to results-based solutions that can really impact the way your business runs and grows. Learn more at raptive.com. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode. So we’ve talked about kind of big vision looking forward, how about, let’s zoom way in and just say today. What does a normal day or a week look like for you? You’re a contributor for New York Times cooking. You have your cookbook that you worked on, you have your site, your Instagram on a given day or a given week. What do things look like for you now?

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, I mean, every week and every day is a little bit different, which is one of the things I love about what I do, and I also love the freedom to plan my weeks around what I have coming up and be flexible. A typical day, this is not a typical day because I’m in New York for an event, but a typical day, which let’s call this next Monday, this is what I’ll be doing. Because I’ve just got a batch of recipe assignments for New York Times cooking, so I’ve got about two weeks to do those, and so that will sort of inform how I’ll plan out the week.

So whether it’s a recipe that I’m working on for my website or New York Times Cooking, I usually have a period of research or thinking before I even cook where I will jot down my ideas about the dish and kind of even sketch out an outline of a recipe of what I think it will be. I find that that helps me be a lot more efficient than if I just go to the grocery store and get what ingredients I think I need and then play around. I think I’m a little bit of a chaotic person.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Which I think a lot of creators can relate to that. It’s-

Lidey Heuck: Yeah so-

Bjork Ostrom: … almost like… Yeah, yeah.

Lidey Heuck: Forcing myself to be organized about it. So on a typical day, I might, if I’m cooking and working on things that day, I’ll go to the store first thing, get what I need, print out kind of the draft of whatever the recipe is. Work on it for a while, and then take a break and do something to clear my head, whether that’s going for a walk or even just putzing around the house and getting something done just to get out of that mode. I feel like I like to do a lot of different things in each day just to like… I don’t know. I feel like it helps me with my creative process to jump around a little bit, which might sound counterintuitive.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah-

Lidey Heuck: And I-

Bjork Ostrom: … I think it was interesting, I just had a conversation with another creator recently, and that was part of it is variety is something that almost informs their creative process was being almost strategic in being to a certain degree unstructured. Not completely unstructured, but just not super rigid, I guess is maybe the approach. Yeah.

Lidey Heuck: Totally. Variety is the spice of life.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Lidey Heuck: And I’m trying to think what else I’ll do. The other funny thing that I feel about when you’re writing recipes for a living is I’ll try to time it around meals often like, “Oh, I’ll work on this for dinner,” but then when it comes time to eat dinner, I’m not focused on it or I having a glass of wine. So for me, it’s got to be the recipe development part. I really have to be focused and I have to treat it like work. I can’t just treat it like I’m making dinner. There are two very different things in my mind, which is a weird distinction that I think happens when you start writing recipes for a living. You just think you’re in your recipe mode or you’re in, “Just throw it in the pot,” mode. And they are two different things.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, right. And the amount of attention and detail required when you are in the recipe development stage is in extreme contrast to, “I need to create sustenance,” stage.

Lidey Heuck: Totally.

Bjork Ostrom: I need something that sustains me and it’s going to be good, but not going to pay attention to ingredients or steps or jot anything down. Just a very different mindset.

Lidey Heuck: It’s funny, just kind of in line with our earlier conversation about staying creative. I think one thing that I’ve found really helps me is to dedicate a few meals a week to just playing around with whatever I want to make and not using a recipe, not thinking about it, just like, I don’t know, goofing off. I think because it’s a little bit of the fun of cooking, it’s almost more like science when you’re doing a recipe and so you’re so focused. And I think remembering my original love of cooking and just having fun and giving myself the permission to make whatever weird concoction that I think sounds good that night, I don’t know, it’s always refreshing and it’s this source of inspiration. I don’t know how many recipes come from that, but it’s a good way to kind of reset after a week of being really focused.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s like maybe this isn’t a completely fair comparison, but I think of a family friend who’s an artist, and I know that he does commissioned pieces and it feels like potentially what we are doing in the world of food content creation, it’s almost like comparable to commissioned recipe. Like, “Okay, this is what it is,” whether it’s for somebody else or for ourselves. You’re really intentional with it. There’s a specific outcome you want, and then you can just paint.

Lidey Heuck: Yes, exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: And I know he goes out and he just paints. And I would imagine that’s very different for him than doing a commissioned piece for somebody. And it’s technically the same thing that you’re doing, but it’s almost, your-

Lidey Heuck: Totally different.

Bjork Ostrom: … mindset when you’re doing it. Yeah, it’s very different.

Lidey Heuck: I also like the challenge of some of the recipes that I do for New York Times cooking are things that I’ve pitched, ideas I’ve pitched to them, and then some are assignments. They want to do a recipe for something in particular and they ask me if I’ll do it. And so even within that one job of doing recipes for them, they’re two very different kinds of projects, and I enjoy the ones that are assigned because it’s a different kind of challenge. It’s like taking this known thing and making a version of it that feels easy, delicious, satisfying, approachable, all of these things. It feels, I don’t know, it feels it’s very satisfying to do a recipe that I’m making my version of a thing that already exists.

And then on the other side of the coin is coming up with something that’s seasonally inspired and a little wacky and something that feels new, and that also has to fit in to the parameters of what they are looking for. And it’s got to be similarly doable and clearly written and everything. But there’s a little more freedom to play around. And I think the former kind keeps you on your toes and keeps you honing your craft because you are confined and constrained by these different rules. But it’s a good practice I think to be in and then to kind of apply that to the more creative recipes, I think helps those creative recipes still be really great recipes at their core.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One of the things you had mentioned before was that you’d learned from Ina was this idea of the end product being something that has gone through multiple iterations to get to where it is. It’s like the recipe development process. And my guess is to some degree, there’s kind of filters that you are passing it through. Is this going to be something that people are going to be able to understand? Are these ingredients that people are going to be able to have access to? And even when you think of the topic for your book Cooking in Real Life, my guess is the kind of ethos of that is accessible recipes. What does that look like for you in terms of those filters that exist for you that you’d need an idea to pass through in order to get to the point where, either for publishing online or within the cookbook that you’re like, “Yep, this checks out. This made it through all of the checks along the way, or all the filters?”

Lidey Heuck: That’s a great question. I think for me, and I think this is mean, of course, it’s different for every person who writes recipes, but I think for me, it’s got to be streamlined and simple. There can’t be a million sauces. Maybe I’ll have one sub recipe for a sauce. But I think of my recipes as fitting into someone’s busy day and they’re delicious and there’s something special about them, but they’re not meant to be massive projects. So first and foremost, they just have to be simple. And that’s just a gut feeling that I have. Like is this something that’s easy enough that someone would really make it? And that’s a gut check, and totally the ingredients have to be accessible. I live in the rural Hudson Valley in New York, and I have not great access to grocery stores. And as I was writing this book, that was constantly a challenge that I came up against.

So remembering that we all live in a variety of places. And then I think, I don’t know, there’s just this feeling of is it good enough that I would want to make it again, or is there something memorable about this that makes it different from, let’s say I’ve got a green bean recipe in the book with crispy capers and garlic. And it’s a very simple recipe for sauteed green beans, but there’s something about those little crunchy fried capers that makes it way better than just steamed green beans. And so I think finding those little touches that can kind of elevate something very simple and turn it into something that you would be proud to serve to your family and friends or something that feels like a cohesive special dish. That me is what I am looking for in each recipe and kind of how I can tell the line between making something really simple that still feels exciting and new.

Bjork Ostrom: And is your hope to have that be, at least in this season, kind of the through line for all the recipes that you’re creating or-

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, I think-

Bjork Ostrom: And-

Lidey Heuck: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And maybe in addition to that, was there anything that would be cookbook that wouldn’t be digital, and what is that balance between… Or maybe even what the question is, what’s the difference between producing one of those recipes online and publishing it versus the mindset with a cookbook? So two part question.

Lidey Heuck: Yeah. I think for me, the cookbook theme was these are going to be simple, delicious recipes. The tagline of the book is Delicious and Doable Recipes for Every Day. So that was kind of the main parameter for does a recipe idea fit into this book? And I think that’s really important for a cookbook to have a point of view, to have a theme. To have something that people can wrap their heads around and expect when they buy the book and then kind of deliver on that promise. What I like about sharing recipes online is I think there’s just a little bit more flexibility to do whatever kind of comes up and seems exciting at any given moment. And it doesn’t necessarily have to fit into this rubric of any one type of recipe. That’s for me at least, I think some people’s websites and blogs and social platforms are more specific, but mine is very much, as we said, it’s tied to my life, tied to the things I feel like cooking.

And so sometimes I do want a project and I feel like it’s okay to share that not everything has to be kind of fit neatly into these lines that it does for the cookbook. For example, I did… And I still, for the most part, my recipes are simple because I want them to be able to be made by cooks of all levels. But I also think it’s okay to share the occasional more project recipe if it inspires me. I did a pumpkin pie recipe a couple of years ago with a homemade pumpkin puree from a pumpkin, and I was a little unusual for me, I would usually just use canned pumpkin, but I was like, why not just give it a try? And it ended up doing really well because I think it’s something new that people aren’t used to seeing. So I think the experimentation element of sharing things online is a fun thing that I don’t think I would feel as free to do when I’m publishing something in a book that feels very permanent.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s almost like the functionality is a little bit different. And I think there’s probably different versions of this within the world of cookbooks, but part of what we’re doing with producing content online is balancing functional with novel and story and trying to wrap all of those things into one, how’s it going to be unique, novel, interesting. What’s the story behind it? And if it’s the type of content you create, how is it actually going to be helpful and functional? And it feels like that’s always present challenge. It’s not easy. It’s be novel and convenient, I guess. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, well, I was also just thinking too, one major difference between someone finding a recipe online and someone deciding to buy a cookbook is the specificity of being able to find whatever you want online. You can have something that’s more niche and people will still search for it or still get to it. And when you want someone to buy your book, you’re sort of convincing them that they need it. And so I think having something that’s more broadly appealing in a book is necessary in a way that you don’t have to do online because there’s just the discovery element is so different.

But yeah, I think that is the ultimate challenge for recipe developers is balancing coming up with something new because we all know there are unlimited recipes that already exist. Coming up with something new, but something that’s not so crazy that you’re not going to make it. I think that’s the tension. And I think my sort of, I don’t know, north Star for doing that is just trusting my own instinct and what I want to eat and what I want to serve for my friends. And really taking my inspiration from the kinds of dishes I want to make in reality and sharing those with my online community rather than trying to come up with something that is going to hit all the metrics and be really unique. And then sort of thinking of it from a more formulaic way. I think if it comes from a real genuine like, “Oh, this sounds really good to me,” that’s the thing that also resonates with other people.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. I love that. I’m curious to know what it was like to kind of be involved in a TV show. It’s so different than anything we’ve ever done other than for Lindsay and I, There was maybe two or three times that we did the local morning news show. And somehow I get included and I’m stirring the muffin batter and they ask me questions, and somehow I end up talking about domain names and websites.

Lidey Heuck: Yeah. And it’s such a blur, and then it’s over and you’re like, “Oh my God, what did I just say?”

Bjork Ostrom: What did I do? And then it’s like live TV, which different than some of the TV shows that you’ve worked on. But the other thing that was interesting with it is after, number one, it’s just like families. That’s when people felt like, “Oh, you were on Fox 9 News in the Morning show. You’ve really made it now.” And they’re like, “Wow, you must’ve seen this huge jump in traffic.” And it’s like, “Of course, not at all.” But it’s just such a different world and even TV in general has changed over the last 10 years in terms of how people are consuming TV and where they’re consuming it. And so what was that experience like and is it something that you think you personally will pursue moving forward?

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, I think going into it I… So when I was on The Lost Kitchen show, I had been on a couple episodes a really short cameo on Barefoot Contessa, barely stirring the muffin batter, if you will. And The Lost Kitchen show was, I’m not on in every scene, but I was on it a fair amount. And it is really a new skill to be, as you just said, doing anything on camera and trying to be yourself and not act all weird as soon as the cameras are on. I think that’s a really steep learning curve. And I have such an appreciation for actors and anyone who’s on TV who make it look so easy because I find it really difficult.

I think it’s one of those things where just with repetition, you just get more comfortable doing it. And I’ve never done it enough to get to that point, but it’s fun. And I don’t know, I think at the end of the day, whether it’s videos on social media or TV, video is the medium and that’s what people connect with. And so I think being on doing Instagram Reels and those short form videos, it’s all similar to TV and just getting more comfortable and pretending the camera’s not there. For me, I was also learning how to work in a restaurant when I was on The Lost Kitchen Show.

And I think that comes across if you watch it, that I don’t really know what I’m doing. So I think I just sort of leaned into that. I’m just going to try to get through my day and try to do these tasks and have a little bit of comedic relief about the whole thing. It was also during Covid when, it was during 2020 when that season of The Lost Kitchen was filmed, so this is getting into the nitty-gritty of it, but we had to wear masks whenever we were inside. And then that was a whole other element, so you can’t really see anyone’s facial expression-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, which is such a huge limiter on some of the things. Yeah.

Lidey Heuck: And I remember that being a challenge, knowing by the time the show came out, hopefully we wouldn’t be in a masked situation, but also obviously having to respect all of the CDC recommendations. So it was a particular challenge to try to be compelling on camera with just the eyes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. Right. As somebody who’s kind of also learning how to do it in general and what a complex thing that is. So when you think of the different platforms that you could create on, people can pursue a TV, they can pursue a cookbook, you can pursue building a following online, you can pursue a blog, YouTube, whatever it is. And the podcast is like, we talk about it within the context of Food Blogger Pro, but really it’s like creators. It’s like how are people going to show up and create in the world and build a following, speak to people, change lives, whatever it might be. For you, having experienced a lot of those different worlds, what do you feel like, well, I guess the question is how do you feel like you are going to move forward as a creator, and where do you anticipate spending most of your time?

Lidey Heuck: Oh, that’s a big question. For now, my book has just come out and my goal this year really is to keep ramping up my social platforms and doing video and recipe content. One thing that I have toyed with now for I feel like a year, and I still haven’t taken the plunge on, is a Substack newsletter or any kind of newsletter.

And it’s something I’m hesitant about because I feel like putting everything behind a paywall I already have, much of the work I do is behind a paywall with New York Times cooking. And I want to be accessible to people. And I haven’t yet come to a conclusion about how to, I don’t know about what to do because I think Substack are really great. There are so many of them now, and I worry a little bit that it too late to get into it, or people have sort of reached their max on how many they’re subscribing to. And I’ve just felt that that’s a really big commitment to showing up for that audience in addition to growing on the more public side of things, on social media, all of the free content. So I wish I had a really concrete answer besides, I’m just figuring it out, but I think-

Bjork Ostrom: Which is great.

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, I think that’s another reason why I’m interested in having a retail or a brick and mortar business or some other sort of side to my business is because I think it’s a difficult industry to be in, and there is a lot of competition, and I think having something that feels very tangible in addition to creating media feels like a nice way to have more solid footing going forward.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. There’s something really reassuring about having some diversification within your business and whether that be, in your case, like a retail shop, and that’s the thing, but it’s also super beneficial if it’s also content. I don’t know to what degree this would be true for you, but it feels like with what you do and the type of content that you create, that there could be a little bit of the Venn diagram overlap of you have a retail shop, but that also allows you to tell stories or to feature a product. Those two things being complimentary, not mutually exclusive feels like a great thing in that it also then provides some diversification with what income or whatever it might be.

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think that both of those businesses can create inspiration for each other because having things that I’m making or selling can then influence the content. And then the content, the beautiful dishes that I like to use for my recipes can then sort of be an influence for the store. I think that there’s a really nice relationship between those two things, and I also think it’s just a way to do something that feels personal to me. And I think, as you said, one of the reasons that we follow the people we follow is because we’re interested in what they’re interested in. And so I think beyond just sort of the influencer model of linking out to other websites, why not find a way of making that sort of part of my business where I can curate things and recommend things that I really love and be much more directly involved in that than just linking in my bio, so to speak.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yep. That’s great. Well, we’ll have to have you back on after you launch-

Lidey Heuck: Yes absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: … your store.

Lidey Heuck: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: We can hear what that process was like. Lidey, in the meantime, if people want to follow along with you, what you’re up to, what’s the best way to do that, and then we’ll include a link to the cookbook as well in our show notes. So can you let us know where the best place to pick that up would be-

Lidey Heuck: Yeah, absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: … and we’ll link to that.

Lidey Heuck: My Instagram account is LideyLikes, which is my name, L-I-D-E-Y and L-I-K-E-S and that is also my website, and I send out a weekly little newsletter where I have anything that’s coming up with events and new recipes. So that’s definitely the best way to stay in touch and get any news about my big project that I’m now committed to.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Yep. Publicly.

Lidey Heuck: Yeah. I’ve gone on the record, now I really have to do it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, exactly. Lidey, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Lidey Heuck: Thanks for having me. This was a really fun conversation. I’m really inspired. I feel like I need to go find my snack taste test, whatever that is.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Sounds good. Thanks, Lidey.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. I wanted to take a minute and just ask that if you enjoyed this episode or any of our other many episodes of the Food Blogger Pro podcast, that you share it. It means so much to us as a podcast if you share episodes with your friends and family, or if you are food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share them on social media or even in your email newsletters. It really helps us get the word out about our podcast and reach more listeners. Thanks again for listening. We really hope you enjoyed this episode, and we’ll see you back here next week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. If you’ve been frustrated trying to discover actionable insights from different analytics and keyword platforms, Clariti is your solution. Clariti helps you manage your blog content all in one place so you can find actionable insights that improve the quality of your content. Not only does it automatically sync your WordPress post data so you can find insights about broken images, broken links, and more. It can also sync with your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data, so you can see keyword, session, page views and user data for each and every post.

One of our favorite ways to use it, we can easily filter and see which of our posts have had a decrease in sessions or page views over a set period of time, and give a little extra attention to those recipes, this is especially helpful when there are Google updates or changes and search algorithms, so that we can easily tell which of our recipes have been impacted. The most Listeners to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up. To sign up, simply go to clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Ann Morrissey: Hey there, this is Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing celebrity chef and food blogger Kenneth Temple. He started his food blog called Kenneth Temple in 2017, and has been a private chef since 2009, so he’s got a lot of great insights to share with us today.

In this interview, Kenneth and Bjork discussed how he broke into the private chef industry, landed his first celebrity client, and why he chose to go down this route over working in a restaurant. They also talk about the importance of putting yourself out there and sharing your aspirations with others and the power of word of mouth marketing. They also chat about what blogging as a chef looks like and how he had to adjust his strategy after learning about SEO and searchability.

Even if your goal isn’t to pursue a career as a private chef, we find Kenneth’s advice on managing your time and promoting yourself extremely valuable, and think that you will too. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with your community. It helps our podcast so much, and it means a lot to us. And now, without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Kenneth, welcome to the podcast.

Kenneth Temple: Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, you have something that we’ve been talking a lot about on the podcast, which is one of the reasons why I’m excited to have a conversation, which is you have your business, but it’s almost like your business is split into two parts. You have your in-person stuff that you’re doing. It’s like a service-based business where you’re a private chef, and then you’re also building your digital business with your site where you’ve got traction and working with Mediavine to create ad revenue on your site. To me, that feels like a really great balance, and we’re trying to encourage people to think about not just how do you build your site, but how do you build a business potentially doing multiple things in the area that you love, and it feels like you have done that. It feels like you are doing things that you love. Is that an accurate read on the career that you’ve built?

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely. It’s not a mirage. You’re not seeing things. Yeah, so my background, I started off as a private chef. So I went to culinary school and college, got a degree in a bachelor’s in science in culinary arts actually. And so my goal when I graduated wasn’t to be a restaurant chef, because respectfully to the restaurant chefs, there’s a couple of things. I don’t know any chefs that’s on their first marriage in the industry just because of the requirement of being there. And also I’ve seen, growing up in New Orleans, I’ve seen the wear and tear on the bodies of cooks and chefs and just how depleted they are.

But then also while in school, I got exposure to doing private dinners and events for fundraising money, and I was in these mansions and multimillion-dollar houses, and the menu was always changing, so we was cooking something different every time, and it was a opportunity to just taste something different, experience something, learn a new technique, and I just fell in love with that experience and I knew that’s the route I wanted to go. And of course, in a restaurant you could do a similar thing, but in a restaurant, obviously, unless you’re in one of these new restaurants that changes the menus every day, you always have something new to learn. And that’s the thing I wanted to do. And so I worked at a restaurant for one year after college, and then I got my first opportunity to cook for my first NBA player, and that was back in 2009. So I haven’t looked back blessedly.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you share who that was?

Kenneth Temple: His name is Julian. His name was Julian Wright. He was one of the… Was is the Pelican, Hornets? New Orleans Hornets at the time before they became the Pelicans. He was one of the previous first round draft picks. So yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: How did that happen? You’re in this restaurant, is there just a connection that comes from somebody that comes in? What does that look like for you to suddenly be like… I imagine the moment where you’re knocking on this NBA player’s door and you’re like, “I’m here to make you a meal.” And it feels like that would not only be nerve wracking, but also really exciting.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, yeah. So how that happened is, like I said, coming out, I knew I wanted to be a private chef, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to have to leave New Orleans and go to Los Angeles to pursue it because obviously Hollywood, that’s where celebrities and all of that is. But one of my uncle’s clients was cooking for Chris Paul and Reggie Bush at the height of their careers in New Orleans at that time. So this is like 2007, 2008. And we actually ended up meeting because before you introduce anybody into a high profile client, you got to scan them. You got to make sure who they are. Because people are crazy.

So we had a meet and greet, we talked, we chopped it up, we had good vibes. And I told him where I was trying to go. About three months later after that, he gave me a call and said that one of the Hornets was looking for a chef, was I interested. I said, “Give me his name and his number. I am in there.” So at the time, I was only making $9 an hour on the line. And then again, that’s another thing about being a restaurant chef, your pay is very, very tough.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It almost feels like the restaurant business is similar to if you’re an artist pursuing art, it’s like it can pay really well in very narrow instances. You have to follow a very specific path. And it’s people who have a love of this thing oftentimes, but it’s not necessarily going to be the most lucrative career always.

Kenneth Temple: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: So for you, were looking to, it sounds like, finding ways to do something you really love that might be a little bit of a better paying avenue than working in a restaurant?

Kenneth Temple: Oh, absolutely. My number one goal was always to be an entrepreneur, still is to be an entrepreneur. Cooking is just a vessel that I use to fulfill that. And of course, if you make $9 an hour or you can go cook for a client and make $75 an hour, well, not even an hour, just for one meal. What are you going to take? I’m not taking the $9 an hour anymore. But it was a beautiful transition because I worked my way up off the line. I learned every station on the line. And I also was in charge of doing offsite catering with the head chef. And then they bumped me up to the back to do the prep work in the back, which was meaning…

Anybody who ever been in New Orleans and been to Zea’s restaurant, they know Zea’s grits, they know Zea’s corn grits. Phenomenal. Excellent. So I was in charge of mass-producing all of these things by myself, which was a prelude to me cooking these meals for a client all by myself, no help, no prep, just head down and swinging and having fun. And so once I got that opportunity, I went and did my demo meal. He enjoyed it. I got the job. And as they say, the rest is history.

Bjork Ostrom: The demo meal, is like you go in… Is it actually at his house?

Kenneth Temple: Yes, yes.

Bjork Ostrom: You go in, you make a meal. Does he give you any ideas of like, “Hey, here’s what I like?”

Kenneth Temple: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s almost like a little bit of a foreshadow of some of the Food Network stuff that you did. It feels like a real life version of that where you’re just competing for this job. What was that, like they give you an idea of generally speaking, “Here’s what I like”?

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely. What do you like, hate, and any allergies? And so you just make sure you make something around them. And then of course, since you’re not sure if you’re going to get the job, you’re not trying to make foie gras and surf and turf. You’re not pulling out all of those, but you just want to show them that you have a good energy, you’re trustworthy. You can come up in there, get the job done. You’re clean. You’re clean, because I’ve seen some chefs in the kitchen.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yeah.

Kenneth Temple: Whoo, stuff be everywhere. Right here, it’s all you need. This little space right here. So yeah, and then you present the food and make sure they enjoy it, come to agreement to terms, and then you start swinging.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s interesting. I feel like a huge part of it is probably… You talked about this, but you have to be somebody that people feel comfortable having in their house.

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: Not only do you have to have the skill and expertise of putting something in front of people that they’re going to be like, “This is really good,” but you also have to be somebody who people are like, “Hey, I’m cool with you being in my house,” and/or maybe actually having you around. And so it feels like this really unique skillset where you have to have these concrete skills around food and food recipe development, but you also have to have these soft skills around being somebody that people feel comfortable with and that they trust and potentially that you come into their house when they’re not there to prep a meal.

One of the things that you talked about was come to terms and an agreement. How did you know in that instance what to charge? In any industry, it feels really hard. You get a brand deal and you’re like, “What do I charge?” How do you know what to charge either like, in one instance, there’s this NBA player who’s probably making millions of dollars a year, but you’re also in a market where there is a market rate for being a private chef. But for you in that season, you’re also probably excited to get the job and build your resume. What did that look like? How did you figure out how to do that?

Kenneth Temple: Like all things, in order to get accurate depictions of what things may cost, you always reach out to somebody who’s already doing what you want to do. And that was me reaching back to Chef Pat. Shout out to Chef Patrick, by the way, and ask him like, “How does this go? Do I charge a hourly rate? Do I charge a day rate? Do I charge a per meal rate?” And he said he was doing a per meal rate of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And if I can remember, back in 2009, it was 50, 75, 100, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Breakfast being easier, lunch being a little bit harder, dinner being the most involved.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, because sometimes you can have guests, family coming through and all of that. And even to this day when clients say, “Do you charge extra for family?” Everybody eats.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, that’s cool.

Kenneth Temple: You’re reimbursing me on the grocery, so. I’m already cooking, so. If you’re going from two to eight, everybody eats, I’m not going to be, “Well, on this day you had five more people, and on this day, just…” Just keep it flowing like that. So that’s how I do. You reach back. And we’ll touch on it, but when you start to understand people are making money blogging and the Mediavine, it’s like, what does that look like? And then you figure out RPMs. And like everything in life, you have to learn a new language and understand what those metrics entail.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and I’m sure anybody who is listening to this understands, either they’re there at one point where they’re like, “What are these numbers and what is a plugin and how does it work? And what are analytics and RPM?” Like you talked about. But eventually, like any language, the more you study it, the more you internalize it, the more you understand it, the more it makes sense. And obviously people listening to this podcast, that’s part of it. It’s like the Duolingo, it’s like it’s your exposure to the language, hearing it over and over again.

So what does that look like for you now? So you’ve built this private chef business. Is that still the main thing that you are focusing on right now? And what is the split? If you look at a percentage split of your time, how much of that for you on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis is doing private-chef-based work?

Kenneth Temple: That’s a good question. Let me make sure, because actually, that’s the main focus. This is a good question. Okay, so I got the answer for you. Literally, my season just ended yesterday because the Dallas Mavericks lost to the Boston Celtics in the NBA finals. That’s the end of my season. The NBA season is over. So I just had my first client make it to the NBA finals. I was looking to be a part of a championship team.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, shoot. Who was it?

Kenneth Temple: It still hasn’t happened yet.

Bjork Ostrom: Who was it? So somebody on the Mavericks?

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, Tim Hardaway Jr. Yeah, that’s the current client. So yeah. Was looking forward to having that first championship team after being in this thing for a while, but-

Bjork Ostrom: So close.

Kenneth Temple: So close. Beautiful thing. So yeah, it’s still the main thing. I’m also looking at other opportunities out there because being a private chef for NBA players, it’s a seasonal job. Granted, you have three months off because NBA season could end in April or blessedly like we just did in June and start right back up again in October.

The beautiful thing about being in Dallas also is just such a wider market, more people, a little bit more wealth and resources out here than back home in New Orleans where in the offseason I would have to jump back into catering and doing dinner party specials and stuff like that. But since-

Bjork Ostrom: In the off-season?

Kenneth Temple: In the off-season, yes. But since I built the brand to it is now, opportunities come to me. Like you said, now you have brand deals. Now we have the blog, so. I would still say about 80% of what I do is private chef work, but the beauty in it is since I only had one client this season instead of three like last season, I have a little bit more time. And I do have a goal, anytime I go to a client house, I’m seeking never to stay at a client house longer than two hours if I don’t have to. And that’s-

Bjork Ostrom: Can you tell me about that? Where did that goal come from?

Kenneth Temple: That’s me being in someone else’s space. You’re in your home, you’re comfortable, you’re looking for food. Sure you like… Like we discussed, you want somebody personable that you like having around, but a chef.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah. Right, right. Like whenever you’re ready, you can leave.

Kenneth Temple: You can leave, dinner’s put up, dishes are clean. No, don’t kick your feet up and have a beer. And that’s just me wanting to make sure that I’m never too comfortable with a client because you can easily blur a line because of the relationship that you have. A bad, funny story. The bad part is that this is something you never do. But there was a chef, I didn’t know him personally, but when you’re in a circle you know of who people is, he was so comfortable with his client, he threw a house party at his house when he wasn’t there.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah, not ideal. It’s the opposite end of leaving when the dinner’s done is arriving when nobody’s there-

Kenneth Temple: And nobody’s there, and you throw a house party at your client’s house. That is crazy. But that’s how comfortable you can get with a client. You go out, you have some fun, you go to some games, you start having drinks, y’all build this relationship, and sometimes you think you’re the star, but handle your business and keep it moving.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s interesting. And I’m sure it’s something that people appreciate. It’s almost like customer service. It’s like how do you create the best environment for the people that you’re working with? And my guess is a lot of these people have people in their lives that want to be close to them. And if you can say like, “Hey, I’m going to do what you hired me to do and do it really well and not make you feel like I’m trying to intrude on your space,” or-

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely. Absolutely. You can say the word groupie. You can just say the word-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yeah. Or somebody that’s in his inner circle or an entourage. It’s like I’m sure there’s a level of appreciation for somebody who’s just like, “Hey, I’m going to do my job and I’m going to do it.”

This is just a curiosity question specifically for the NBA. So are they not working with a private chef in the offseason? Is it just because they’re not as intentional with their eating in the offseason?

Kenneth Temple: Yes. Unless the client stays in the same city that they play in. They go back-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, so they move and then-

Kenneth Temple: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom:Got it. And they maybe have somebody else that they would work with-

Kenneth Temple: Exactly. Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay, that makes sense.

Kenneth Temple: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s not necessarily that they’re not working with a private chef, it’s just like they’re around in this case Dallas, and then they go. Okay, cool.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: How about for somebody who would be interested in doing that? I think of… I do this meetup once a year with friends. We go to Breckenridge and there’s this private chef we work with, Jenny. She’s incredible. And we’ve worked with her for four or five years. It feels like she’s established this business now, but every time we’ve gone, I just wonder how do you get started with that and what is your advice for somebody who, hey, they love food, they want to build a business in the world of food. They also probably are interested in the digital space, building a following, but what’s really nice about this is you can potentially, and this would maybe be a question we could talk about, but you can potentially ramp up revenue faster when you are doing a service-based business like this.

And then if there is a season where you’re not working as much in this season coming up for you, my guess is now you can focus on your site a little bit more. So it’s great to have something that counterbalances service-based business that you can then backfill a little bit with. But also it’s complimentary in that your digital business helps compliment your private chef business. But if somebody’s looking to break into that industry to get their first client that they’re cooking for and they don’t have a connection, who knows-

Kenneth Temple: Who can connect them.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, Reggie Bush. What would be a good way for them to get started?

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, two things. First, your faith. You have to want it. You have to want these things. A lot of us, I don’t know how old you are, Bjork, but-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, thirty-

Kenneth Temple: At this point… Oh, so we’re same age. So at this point in life, you know that the things that you really desire and want, you’ll put the effort towards to get them. I have a phrase like I don’t believe in saying the word try because I never say, “Oh, I tried to go to the store.” If I wanted to go to the store, I’m going to the store. So first you have to want it. And then once you do that, now what I didn’t have coming up is this vast array of social media outlets. You can just showcase your skills on social media and then say private chef bookings available. And depending on where you are. Word of mouth is such a powerful marketing tool.

You may think you don’t know anybody, but somebody in your friend circle may have a friend or a boss who’s looking for meal prep, and then you start meal prep, and then he says, “Oh, I want to do a dinner party.” And then you start the dinner party, and now all of a sudden, now you have become this private chef. It just happens like that. But you won’t get it if you don’t really want it. If you just say, “Oh, well, no, I don’t really know,” you’re going to continue to float on that.

Bjork Ostrom: Sit on it.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s a difference between liking the idea of it, like, “Conceptually, this sounds like something I want,” versus actually wanting it and getting after it. And that seems like there’s not much of a gap there between liking the idea of it versus actually liking it. A comparable is in the world of publishing, I think people like the idea of having a website, earning income, working with brands. Maybe you get advertising income from it. But I think once a certain group of people actually get into doing that, it’s like, “Oh, I actually don’t like this.”

Kenneth Temple: Don’t want it. Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: “I just like the idea of it.” And what I hear you saying is you have to actually want it first because then you are going to be able to get after it, and you have to get after it in order to get it.

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a really small thing, but even the idea of what you talked about where you’re just sharing with people. One of the things I’ve been in my head about is we have a lot of… It’s a little bit of a strange example, but it’ll get around to the point-

Kenneth Temple: Go ahead. Shoot it out. I’ll pick up, pick up things-

Bjork Ostrom: Okay, okay.

Kenneth Temple: We’ll see.

Bjork Ostrom: So one of the things I’ve been trying to figure out is we have stuff that we’ve accumulated through the years. It’s technology. Maybe it’s a computer that we’re not using anymore, and it’s valuable, but I also feel like I don’t have the time to go to Facebook Marketplace and sell it, or I do have the time, but it’s probably not smart for me to spend an hour doing that versus an hour doing a podcast.

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: And so I’ve been trying to figure out what’s the best way to do this? How do we sell this stuff and what do we do? And I’ve just been in my head about it. And just today I was having lunch with a couple friends and I was like… I thought to myself, “I just need to speak this out loud, this thing that I’m trying to solve.” And so I did. I was like, “Do you guys…” And it was not like they had any expertise in it, but I just was like, “Do you guys have any ideas around this?” And the guy that I was with, Matt, was like, “Actually, you know what? My 15-year-old twins are right now trying to figure out a summer job and they would be great at this.” And I think that’s… Is that what you’re getting at, which is you need to start speaking out loud the things that you are in pursuit of, because who knows the connections that can happen?

Kenneth Temple: There it is. There it is. Now, before I became a private chef, I didn’t know any private chefs. I’m not even sure, it must’ve been the spirit of God that put it in my spirit to be a private chef. I didn’t even know that existed because I think around the time of 2007 and ’08 the word was starting to float around a little bit more, and I didn’t know anybody. But as I started pursuing it, my chef instructor who was running the school at the time was like, “Yeah, one of our graduates actually left and now he cooks for Will Smith.” I’m a proponent of don’t let me hear nothing if I can’t achieve it. Don’t let me hear nothing. So I didn’t know anybody who was a private chef, but this is the things I was speaking and talking of.

And my uncle, Who Dat Nation, you know. We used to be… Yeah, Who Dat. We were Saints season ticket holders before I left New Orleans. You know your uncle always ask you, “Son, you just graduated from college. What is it you want do?” I had no idea who his client was, was cooking for Chris Paul and Reggie Bush, but I told him, “This is what I’m seeking to do.” And that’s how it happens. And that’s why I said, if you have somebody who’s looking to get into it, first, you have to want it. Because once you want it, then you’ll start to pursue it and let people know, “I’m open for business.” Yeah, nobody’s going to know you’re open for business if you’re quiet.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. And I think that there’s naturally something that happens when you do share what you’re in pursuit of, which is people can’t help but then try and figure out with you how to get that for you.

Kenneth Temple: Yes. Especially if they’re your friends. Especially if they’re you’re real friends.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And if you’re like, “Hey, I’m…” This was an idea that I floated by Lindsay the other day. I was like, “Hey, what if we tried to visit every national park in the us?” She was like, “Cool.” And then I was like, “There’s 63.” And then she’s like, “I’m out.” But-

Kenneth Temple: I didn’t say in one month.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, exactly. But if I started to talk about that with other people, I think naturally what people try and do is they try and draw connections. And so maybe for those listening, the takeaway there is formulate what it is that you’re actually after, and then start to share it with people. Because like you said, if they’re your friends, they’re going to naturally try and figure out how to help you with that.

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

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So lets… You are in this season where you’re able to downshift a little bit in the private chef world. Does that then look like an upshift for you into the world of digital and you’re building your site and your social media? Tell me a little bit about that, how that fits into the picture, because I think it’s a wonderful compliment to what you’re doing.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, it’s definitely wearing many hats. And like I said, the beauty of it is that being a private chef, I may work a total of three hours a day per client, and then you have the rest of the day of what do I need to do? So right now, I’m in a strategy of, and like we were discussing, I was trying to test myself, see if I could write a recipe now. And so instead of me just making dinner, “Well, I don’t have a Salisbury steak on my website, so I can use that as content.” So now I’m going to shoot the reel, take the in-action photos, and now I’m going to turn it into a blog post, turn it into a reel while simultaneously having a dinner.

And so even while the season is still in full swing, I’m still seeking to clean up, especially after Google. What’s the gentle the way of saying this? Is Google abused all of our websites with tractions and speeds and updates and all of this, it’s just like your head spinning on, “What content is valuable that I need to improve? And how much of it do I need to create new content?” So it’s always this give and go with the digital space, but then also at the same time focusing on, what social media platform do I really want to grow? Because a brand reach out to you and they say, “I need you on TikTok.” And then you say, “I want the same rate I would get on Instagram because it’s the same creativity.” “Oh, your TikTok’s not as large.”

So it’s all of these things. But at the end of the day, to simplify, yes, it upticks. But then also since I don’t have a client, I’m always looking for another client. So I’m always open for business or creating a new product. I have this product in my spirit that I want to create for registered nurse and busy moms and also busy people, but I want to focus on registered nurse, RNs, because I just appreciate what they do so much teaching them how to make healthy meals in 30 minutes. I did a 21-day meal prep challenge maybe about two or three years ago, right around COVID or right before COVID. And I had people losing weight in 21 days, people lowering their ACH. I believe that’s the right thing, if it’s not the right thing. But the diabetes levels lets them know that they have diabetes, they was lowering their diabetes.

So I saw a plan, me using the knowledge I had for being a private chef, working for regular everyday people, and now with the inflation and rising prices, and people still want to have life and enjoy, I want to create this 30 minute meal thing, which I actually, the unfortunate thing is, y’all, I have all the recipes wrote down. I just haven’t tested them.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. And anytime you put something into an official published format, it’s like you want to do a couple rounds of-

Kenneth Temple: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Just double checking.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, just make sure. And I trust myself in it. I just need to do the testing and do a couple of quick photography, and then we can create that, turn into ebook, turn into a couple of audiobooks, and then maybe even have a private cooking class where I show you a couple of ways to have some fun with it. So there’s a couple of other things that I take. Like you said, now that this is done, now I shift my focus so I can keep it going because I’m a father, I’m a husband, and we all got bills.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. And like we talked about one of the nice things with a digital business complimented with another business on the side is you can do that backfill. So let’s say you have a day and you’re super busy in your private chef business, it doesn’t matter if you don’t get to publishing a blog post because that’s not your main thing. But let’s say you have a day that’s a little bit lighter, it’s maybe two hours and you get in and out, finish a meal, and then you can say, “Okay, what do I feel like I want to prioritize with the business?” And the nice thing is the… You’ve started your site and I pulled up just some information around it. It’s like you’ve had it for a while, but really over the past few years have experienced some growth with it. You were accepted to Mediavine last fall, last winter?

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, this fall. Yeah, this fall. Yeah, go ahead because I’m going to talk about that.

Bjork Ostrom: Say it again?

Kenneth Temple: I said go ahead because we’re going to talk about that.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Yeah, share. Yeah. What was that like, and what was that experience like once you do grow your site to the point where you get ads on it? Talk to us about that.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing because I started blogging because of my wife, meikoandthedish.com, ladies and gentlemen. meikoandthedish.com. Because when I met her, she was blogging, and then I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” Because the thing I also enjoy about cooking is I’m a avid learner, so I enjoy teaching too. I know some people look at cooking as a chore, as a… Sometimes they look at it as a plague, but if you understand the basic steps and fundamentals, you can make anything really delicious. And so I looked at that as my opportunity to share food. Unfortunately, for several years, because I started blogging in 2017, for several years I blogged as a chef. Now y’all might be saying, “What does that mean?” I thought, for instance, that a pineapple upside-down sticky bun sounded amazing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. Totally.

Kenneth Temple: So I created the recipe.

Bjork Ostrom: So you make it and you publish it.

Kenneth Temple: So I’ll make it and I’ll publish it. And then I learned about searchability.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Kenneth Temple: Nobody’s looking for that, Kenneth. Don’t nobody even think to put those two together. Oh, that’s something for a cookbook, because nobody’s looking for that because how I started-

Bjork Ostrom: Or social media.

Kenneth Temple: On social media, right.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah. But unfortunately, a lot of people who create these beautiful creative things on social media, it lives on social media platform. They don’t own that space. So if Instagram, TikTok, Facebook ever shuts down, everything you ever created on the digital spaces is gone. So I started food blog and also because I used to do a show on Facebook called The Hunger Trap when I used to go live every Tuesday. I need something to cook, and my audience needs someone to get the recipe. So whatever I created to cook, that’s what ended up on the blog, and that was the recipe that I shared out. And that was my motto.

But again, I was blogging like a chef because I didn’t understand search intent and all of those things. And then one of my friends, shout out to Jocelyn Grandbaby Cakes. She grabbed me by my hands and told me, “You’re doing too much. You got to simplify. People aren’t looking for this. They may be looking for upside-down cake. They may be looking for sticky buns. So you have to create those. And then you link it to this creative recipe and then let it go from that.” So it was after that twist that she told me that I started readjusting. I wrote down 100 recipes, and I knocked out 100 recipes in less than three months, and it probably would’ve been short if I didn’t have to be a private chef. Again, that’s the rate and volume I can crank out content if I’m just locked in.

Bjork Ostrom: So that was you taking pictures, developing the recipes? Wow, that’s-

Kenneth Temple: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. You probably have a skillset that not a lot of people have, which is the ability to really efficiently develop and then also create a recipe from years of working or-

Kenneth Temple: As a private chef.

Bjork Ostrom: One or two years in the restaurant, but then also as a private chef, you just develop. It’s like reps. To use the basketball analogy, it’s like you shoot 10,000 free throws and you get good at shooting free throw.

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: You make 10,000 recipes and you get good at making recipes.

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: And so that was the catalyst, the number of recipes that you made combined with the insight into moving more towards recipes that are maybe being searched. Yes. That combination was what allowed you to have that growth that eventually allowed you to sign up for an ad network, which then eventually allowed… Like we talk about is never truly passive. But the thing that feels good to me when I imagine it is you could go and you could cook all day as a private chef, and then you could also make money with your site working in the background $100 without having to do any work that day on the site. So can you talk about what that has felt like to have that as an additional backstop source of income running in the background for your business?

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, it’s definitely a rewarding stamp because during COVID, I had went to San Diego and was talking to a friend, and we was talking about one of her friends who was a food blog, and she said, “Yeah, she said she’s doing something wrong if she doesn’t earn $1,000 a day on her website.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And you’re like, “Huh?”

Kenneth Temple: I was like, “Excuse me?” She said, “Yeah, that’s what she said.” I said, “Is she classically trained?” She was like, “No.” I said, “So she’s not a chef.” She was like, “No.” “So she’s never worked in the industry ever?” She said, “No, she just creates recipes and put them on there.” I went, “I just finished going to toe and toe with a client who tried to lowball me to cook for a hundred people for less than $1,000. And you mean to tell me that she’s sitting at home passively earning $1,000 off of something probably like brown rice and Instant Pot, you telling me that’s what you’re doing?” She was like, “Yeah.” I said, “Okay, we got to look at this blog and thing from a different perspective,” because one reason why I started going live on Facebook is because I know I can be a private chef literally in the private, and no one in the public ever know I exist.

Bjork Ostrom: Right, right. Yeah. It’s like the ultimate contrast of one-to-one versus one to many, one to infinite. You could reach as many people as possible. The thing is, I feel like, and would be interesting in your thoughts on this, both of those things are good. I think there’s something to be said about having something that is one-to-one. Let’s say there’s an algorithm change. Instagram changes how they prioritize content. There’s a Google update. If your sole source of income is advertisements on a blog or working with sponsors, you are one algorithm change away from that going away.

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: And in your case, you have a little bit of security in each area. And it’s one of the things, I was listening to a podcast a long time ago, and they talked about one of the benefits of entrepreneurial pursuits, even if it’s not the thing that you were doing full-time, is that it’s like an incredible insurance policy. It’s an incredible additional opportunity that you have if you ever need to ramp that up. And we hear many stories where somebody who’s working at a normal job, it’s not a business that they have like in your case, but they have a job and they get let go, and that becomes… Maybe they’re making 1,000, 2,000, $3,000 from their site, and suddenly they’re like, “Okay, I guess this is my time to scale it up because I need to, this is my opportunity.” Can you talk a little bit about what that feels like, maybe the positives and the negatives? Are there negatives to trying to do two things at the same time, but also then what are the positives?

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, yeah. I think the negatives is just getting too busy. The negative is you’re getting too busy trying to do too many things, but you have to keep the first things first, and then as you say, each day you have a different goal and a different priority that’s going to point you to where you’re seeking to go. So if I have a week, let’s say I have a week, my client’s in town all week, then maybe I’m not going to work on the blog at all because I’m trying to make sure our menu developed. And also there’s the accounting part. You’re working with multimillionaires, but still going “Hey, why is every receipt $300?” “I want you to have nothing but the best.” “Reduce that down and give me some mediocre stuff.” Especially when groceries are reimbursed. So that’s one thing.

And then burnout, because you’re trying to do so much at a time, you can burn out. But as you mentioned that my fun skillset is that I can batch recipes with the best of them by myself. So if I have a week to myself and no distractions, we can probably do 30 recipes in five days.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, because you have that skillset of when you go to the grocery store, you know how to get what you need in bulk and line it all up, taking care of-

Kenneth Temple: Yeah. Match the recipes. Yeah, matching recipes. How many times can you reuse this? So y’all say, “What do you mean batch recipes?” So okay, if I’m going to do pancakes, say take pancakes. How many pancakes recipes, are there opportunities? And then go for them. At the end of the day, a pancake is a pancake regardless if you put blueberries, bananas, chocolate, syrup, red velvet. Still pancakes. So we’re about to have a pancake day, just going to make pancakes and execute-

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. And that’s what you focus on that day, as opposed to doing pancakes and then steak and then-

Kenneth Temple: Exactly, exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And having similar recipes that you’re doing on similar days.

Kenneth Temple: Yes. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Makes sense. So what do you feel like has been working the best for you right now? What are the things that feels like they’re locked in that… Whether within your private chef business or on the digital side, what are the things that it’s like, “Yeah, this feels like it’s working”?

Kenneth Temple: Yeah. With the private chef is the brand, the reputation. Being in it for 15 years now, because July, going on, I don’t remember that, 29. 2009 to 2024, whatever that number is, 15, 16, wherever we at with that. Being in it for this long and being able to sustain myself, having done what I have done and accomplished on the Food Network, being a Chopped Champion, doing my own series with Food Network Kitchen, and then being a author, selling seasonings. All of those things work together. And of course, I’m still… As I improve in one area, I’m always looking at something else to take away. And that’s probably also what I learned in culinary school quickly, because they was like, “Oh, you got a menu. You got all these items.” Well, there’s a star, and then there’s a dog. The star obviously is the main thing that’s selling, the dog is the thing that’s not really moving.

And it’s like, “Okay, do I want to become the next Dan-O’s Seasoning?” My savory seasoning is pretty phenomenal, but how much energy and effort do I have to put into pumping the seasoning? That takes away from the blog, that takes away from this. I don’t think Dan-O is blogging, he’s just focusing on seasoning. I don’t think Dan-O is being a private chef, he’s just focusing on seasoning. So it’s like finding that balance of prioritizing what’s important each and every day, and making sure that I’m cleaning up all the recipes. Because when I used to write blog posts y’all I, “Hey, here’s a summary, here’s a couple of substitutes, and here’s the recipe.” And I even have friends that say, “Why is y’all blog posts so long?” I say, “Blame Google.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Kenneth Temple: Blame Google. If it was up to me, you’ll just have a summary, a photo, and there’s the recipe.

Bjork Ostrom: 100%.

Kenneth Temple: But because that’s the market, you have to tell the story and give the people all of the things that they need. So my content writing has thoroughly improved. I can write with the best of them with minimum, minimum, minimum AI assistance, and then just pump out stuff. So yeah, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yeah. I love that idea of the star and the dog. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Do you view that within your work like, “Hey, if I’m going to start to do a new thing, it means I’m probably going to stop doing another thing”? And then do you have an example of what that looks like? What’s a thing recently that you started doing, and then another thing that you stopped doing?

Kenneth Temple: Oh, okay. Perfect. So started on… I was about to go on the deep dive. I promise you I was about to go. I was about to go on deep dive on creating reels and exploding my Instagram. But then I came across a video, and this is brand new news, and then I re-came across government contracts. In 2012, I was a part of it, and I didn’t really understand the opportunities that was there. So we talk about being in the down season of it. Doing that job will allow me to get more capital coming in while still being a private chef, while still being able to blog, so I was like-

Bjork Ostrom: Like a government contracted position?

Kenneth Temple: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah. Which is like maybe there’s more paperwork, there’s more red tape you have to go through. But the type of work that you eventually would get as a private chef once you get into that, is probably pretty good?

Kenneth Temple: Yeah. And I’m talking about I can sell envelopes for a government contract. That’s the type of stuff, it’s stuff like that. So you can find these different opportunities. I said, “I’m still in the food space. I know equipment. I know all of these things. Let me see if I can test my knowledge in this and then build this into a business where I can build a team and a system to work this for me while still simultaneously doing my other things.” So that’s one focus I’m about to go into this summer. But also…

So like I said, I was going to do a deep dive into improving my reels to grow my Instagram, because your viewers may know this and a lot, but the brand sponsorship market is down dramatically 2024 from 2023, and we see what’s going on in the world, so we can make that… We see. So I was like, “To shoot that up, you got to get the numbers up because that’s who they’re going after to go after them.” But I was like, “Okay, before I do that,” I scrapped eBooks off my site. I scrapped my online course off my site. I scrapped a lot of different things that I was offering and just said, “None of these things are really gone because I created them for a passion and a hobby, something I wanted to, not really anything that was solving a problem for anybody.”

The reason why I have this registered nurse idea is because a friend of mine who’s a registered nurse told me about a problem she was having and asked me to solve it. So I’m like, “How many other people in your field in your position feel exactly like this? You’re working out. You want to eat good, you want to eat clean, but it’s so many options after a long day. If you just had something simple and quick to whip up, you would attack it and then you’ll reap the benefits of what you’re working out.” I’m going to go after that.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yep. And the idea in that case, it’s like, hey, you had these things on your site, eBooks, products, courses. It’s like you enjoyed creating those, you felt like, “Hey, there’s maybe a need here.” So you put them out into the world. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, maybe it wasn’t solving the problem, a problem that existed for people. So it’s like, “Hey, let’s take those down, but,” and I think this is really important, something that we try and talk about on the podcast a decent amount, which is like… It’s almost like customer development. You hear from somebody, “Hey, I have this problem.” And anytime somebody’s like, “I have this problem,” it’s like, oh, opportunity. My example before, it’s like, how do I efficiently sell stuff that we have if I’m not the one selling it? Like, “Ooh, that’s a problem other people probably have that…”

In your case, it’s like talking to a friend who’s a nurse, and they’re like, “I work like a double and I just need to do my laundry. I can’t think about making a meal that takes 90 minutes after.” So then it’s like, “Oh, that’s a problem. There’s probably some other people who have that problem.” If you are going to prioritize that, maybe getting rid of some of those other things on your site so you’re not… It’s just like cleaning that up?

Kenneth Temple: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: The thing I’m interested in, so when you’re talking about the government contracts, that would be not in the food world. That’s like-

Kenneth Temple: No, no, it’ll still be in the food world. It will still be in the food world.

Bjork Ostrom: Government contract, like there’s an opportunity-

Kenneth Temple: Yeah, universities.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Kenneth Temple: So universities, hospitals, just for instance. They have to buy rice, they have to buy sugar, they have to buy equipment, and they have to put bids out into the world to get those things fulfilled.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see. And so it would almost be in the category of retail or E-commerce or wholesale, like there’s an opportunity for you as somebody who understands the world of food and restaurants and ordering to have this really interesting space where you potentially are working with people to fulfill some of those needs that they have. Got it, okay. That makes sense.

Kenneth Temple: Because it’s a problem that they need solved. Yeah. So that’s still on that trajectory of instead of me just putting out something that, “Oh, I’m passionate and I want to create this steak course.” I had some people signed up for the steak course, got maximum value, got transformations of it. But when I put it back out there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Kenneth Temple: Crickets. Here’s a opportunity where there’s people. Because as entrepreneurs, what we all should be focusing on is solving problems. The only reason why you create a Salisbury steak recipe is because everybody that tried five Salisbury steaks on the first page and know though they look good, they’re just not. Okay, let me create that to solve a problem to give you that old TV dinner nostalgia you may have had with your family. That’s the reason why you create recipes to solve problems. So if I can find markets and opportunities within my field of expertise to solve a problem, I need to be pursuing them, especially if it’s within my wheelhouse.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And I feel like that to draw that out even further, you’re solving such an obvious problem in the world as a private chef where you have a professional athlete who has really specific needs for their diet. You are probably one of the critical team members-

Kenneth Temple: Teammates, yes.

Bjork Ostrom: For an NBA player, because it’s like you are literally the fuel that like Tim Hardaway is going to go and play in a NBA championship game. That’s really an incredible thing. In that case, the problem is one-to-one, like we talked about. Then the question becomes, what does it look like if it’s one to many or one to a few? And it still needs to be solving a problem, which is such a great point, like what are the problems that we as entrepreneurs are solving in the world?

And one of the best ways to find those, it goes back to what we were talking about before, is just like talking to people. It’s putting it out into the world and saying like, “Hey, I’m thinking of in the case of registered nurses creating this product for people who are medical professionals who want to eat well but don’t have time. Do you feel like that’s a problem for you, somebody who’s a doctor or a nurse or whatever it might be?” And starting to get that feedback. That’s awesome and I think something that all of us could be doing a better job of, is having those conversations.

Kenneth Temple: Yeah. And most of us are so engulfed in love with ourselves, and we think, “I think it’s cool, so you should think it’s cool.” That’s not the way it works. Now, granted, like you said, it took me to this point in my career as an entrepreneur to really lock in on it, not as simplified as you just said it. Being a private chef is solving a problem, but I was seeking to create external other streams of revenue with things I thought would be cool, but it wasn’t truly solving a problem in the market. And that’s now my focus, is let’s scrap all of this, let’s rebuild. I just had a baby. Well, he ain’t a baby no more. He’s still a baby, seven months. Just had a child.

Bjork Ostrom: Congratulations. Yeah.

Kenneth Temple: Thank you. You’re moving around, you’re starting fresh. And it was like, “Okay, let’s purge these things and let’s re-shift and let’s rebuild.” And I think a lot of people have an issue with the appearance of failing. Y’all can’t see if you’re listening to audio, the air quotes, the appearance of failing just because you stopped one thing and shifted to another thing. And many times, those are the people who are successful because they didn’t keep beating a dead horse. Again, the steak course, phenomenal, but if nobody’s buying, it’s a dog. Get rid of it, get it off the menu, and focus on what’s working.

Bjork Ostrom: I love that idea too, of the comparison in the menu world. You could have a really incredible item on the menu, but maybe nobody orders it for whatever reason.

Kenneth Temple: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Who knows? But if it’s really good, it doesn’t matter if nobody’s ordering it. And so you need to figure out not only what’s going to be really good, but what are people going to order? And in our world, it’s like we need to figure out what are the problems that people have and what does it look like to create something that… If we are looking to build revenue, what does that look like for those people who will actually buy it?

Kenneth Temple: Exactly. Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Kenneth, we could go another hour here. I know there’s so much more to your story, your TV appearances and all the things that you’ve done there. So we’ll have to have another conversation-

Kenneth Temple: Hey, I’m always down for a good conversation.

Bjork Ostrom: For people who want to follow along with what you’re up to online, on your site, how can people do that? What’s the best way for people to follow along?

Kenneth Temple: Anywhere in the world wide web, from my website, to LinkedIn, to Instagram, TikTok, all of those fun places. Kenneth Temple. Just look up Kenneth Temple. Yeah, kennethtemple.com is my blog, and Kenneth Temple on all other social media platforms. I don’t have any alternate aliases going around. It’s too confusing for me to remember which alias I was using that day. I’m Kenneth Temple all the days. So yeah, just go with that. Yes sir. Yes sir.

Bjork Ostrom: Kenneth, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Kenneth Temple: Thank you for having me. I look forward to part too.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Since we are kicking off a brand new month, we wanted to give you a rundown of everything you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. We are kicking things off on the 4th of July with a brand new coaching call with Katie Wilken. In this coaching call, Katie and Bjork talk about monetizing Katie’s Instagram following. She has over 180,000 followers and whether it makes more sense to focus on sponsored content or building her email strategy. Katie also shares more about her upcoming cookbooks and Bjork shares his recommendations for growing her following on an email or membership platform before the cookbook launch.

Next up, we will have a live Q&A on Thursday, July 18th with Arsen Rabinovich, all about the state of Google algorithm updates. Arsen from TopHatRank will be joining us to chat all about the recent Helpful Content Updates, how to respond, and what you might want to keep an eye out for this fall. At the end of the month, on July 25th, we will be releasing an updated version of our Setting Up Your Food Blog course. New and improved, lots of great new information, and just everything updated. It’s going to be a really great month. If you’re not yet a Food Blogger Pro member, head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more about our awesome membership. We would really love to have you join us. And that’s it for this week. We will see you back here next Tuesday for another episode. Have a great week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Memberful. Looking to find sustainable sources of income from your blog this year that don’t include fighting against changing search engines and social media algorithms? With exclusive membership content, you can create a new source of income by turning your food blog into a membership business while creating the content you’re passionate about. Memberful has everything you need to quickly get your membership program up and running with content gating, paid newsletters, private podcasts, and much more. Plus, Memberful seamlessly integrates with your existing WordPress website, or you can use Memberful to create your own member home within minutes using their in-house tools, and with Memberful, you can create multiple membership tiers, limiting access to certain recipes, meal plans, and cooking tutorials to better connect with your most devoted followers and monetize the content you’re already producing.

By using Memberful, you’ll have access to a world-class support team ready to help you set up your membership and grow your revenue. They’re passionate about your success, and you’ll always have access to a real human when you need help. Food creators are already using Memberful to foster community within their audiences and monetize their content, and listeners to The Food Blogger Pro Podcast can go memberful.com/food to learn more about Memberful solutions for food creators and create an account for free. That’s M-E-M-B-E-R-F-U-L.com/food. Thanks again to Memberful for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from The Food Blogger Pro Team, and you are listening to The Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is chatting with Lisa Bass from the blog Farmhouse on Boone. Lisa has been one of our most requested podcast guests, and we are so thrilled to welcome her onto the podcast this week. She first started her site in 2016 and has since diversified her brand to include a podcast, a really successful YouTube channel, courses, and more, all while raising and homeschooling eight children.

In this podcast interview, Bjork and Lisa chat a little bit more about balancing her business with her family life, how she’s built a team to support her business and grow her business, and how she ranks each arm of her business in terms of what she enjoys doing and the income it contributes to her business overall. She also shares more about why she continues to prioritize YouTube and shares some insight into the tools she uses to help run her business. It’s an awesome interview and just so much fun to learn more about Lisa, so I’m going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Lisa Bass: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be on.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So this is Old hat for you. You have a podcast as well.

Lisa Bass: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: So you have your nice mic. It sounds great. You have your connection. It’s like you’ve done this before.

Lisa Bass: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s actually going to be one of the things that we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk about diversification, and the different platforms, and intentionally building in multiple places. But before we do that, it’s always fun to hear a little bit of a backstory for what brought you to this point. So take us back to the moment when you decided that you wanted to start publishing content online. Did you know you wanted to do it as a business? Was it something that you just wanted to do for fun? What was that moment like?

Lisa Bass: So I am one of those people who started it as a business. Yes, I was writing about things that I was excited about sharing, and passionate about, and all that, but I definitely was doing it to earn an income and to be a business. I started it way back in early 2016. So, in internet years, that’s like a century, basically, ago.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. I started with a blog, and then I ventured into YouTube two years after that, and then podcasting about two years after that. I’ve just continued to add things, and grow my team, and what I have going on. So that’s in a nutshell.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I love that that’s how you approached it. It’s great also if people are like, “I did it, and then I stumbled into it, and it became a thing.”

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I think what’s really helpful to hear is people who have a story of like, “I got into this because I wanted to start a business, and the business that I wanted to start was publishing content online,” and you did it. Now, here we are eight years later, and you have a successful business with the team. I would be interested in talking about the different parts that make up your business. So you started with your site.

Lisa Bass: Right. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: At this point, it’s getting multiple millions of sessions a month. That in and of itself is really successful. How did you go about building that up? Because in those early stages, it can be a grind and can feel like you’re just hustling, and you don’t really have any payback for the work that you’re doing. What was it like in the early stages, and how did you continue to show up every day and to get to this point?

Lisa Bass: Well, so when I first started my blog, like you said, I didn’t gain traction right away. I definitely didn’t understand search engine optimization. I didn’t understand Pinterest and how that could be bringing traffic to my blog. Then, I got sidetracked a bit the year after I started my blog because I got an Instagram, and I think like everybody else, but thankfully, I didn’t quit. I didn’t think, “This is where it’s at.” I saw it and thought, “Okay. This is where you’re actually supposed to be creating content.”

I didn’t quite understand how you’re going to monetize either one of those, but it seemed like everybody was trying to build an audience over on Instagram. So I got a little bit sidetracked with that, I would say, the year after I started my blog. Then, the next year after, basically, building my Instagram up to 20,000 followers, not really seeing a whole lot of return from it, I decided to go all in on the blog. By all in, I just mean I was going to publish two posts per week no matter what in that year which whatever year that was. I think it was ’17. Yeah, it was ’17.

Then, by the end of that year, I had enough traffic to get on Mediavine at that time, I believe. So then, I was earning an income like 500 bucks a month which for me was such a game-changer. Once I was able to see some money from it, it wasn’t hard for me to keep plugging away because after that year, I had a hundred posts. They weren’t really search-engine-optimized. I did not understand that at all, but they were on Pinterest, and I was making graphics that were good. So I was gaining a lot of traffic, and so I thought, “If I could have a hundred posts on Pinterest, what if I had 200 posts circulating Pinterest? What would that pay me?” So that helped me to stay pretty motivated.

Bjork Ostrom: Once you are able to get to that point where you’re earning an income, you can start to play the numbers game a little bit.

Lisa Bass: Exactly. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: You can say like, “Wow. What does it feel like to make $500 from this business that I created?” and you can look into it and say, “I see that this traffic is coming from Pinterest or it’s coming from a search engine. Okay. How do I replicate that and turn this 500 into a thousand?”

Lisa Bass: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: So what did that look like? Was it just a matter of doing the early hustle and grind of building content, starting to get some traction with it, and then from there, seeing what worked, and replicating, and building on that. What did it look like to go from 500 to tens of thousands that you are earning as you start to scale up the amount of traffic to the point where you are now because there’s a lot that has to happen between where you are now and where you were then?

Lisa Bass: Yeah. Honestly, it really has just been more of the same. I don’t have some key thing. Except for that, over the last eight years, two blog posts have been published every single week the entire time through babies being born, vacations, all… We homeschool. We have eight kids. So, through all of that, I’ve just kept going, and then of course, we have 2020, which for a blogger like me, I specialize in from-scratch food. I do sourdough. I had a sourdough starter back in 2011, and I was creating sourdough-

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. Before it was cool.

Lisa Bass: Before it was cool. So I was creating sourdough content. You can go on YouTube, and you can find my video from 2016 of me doing sourdough. So, yes, there has been a little element of luck, definitely, thrown in the mix there, but I was there with my… I mean, I have, I don’t know, thousands of blog posts at this point, and then it’s just been… It really has been more of the same. I have definitely learned search engine optimization. I’ve learned how to title posts, how to write them, what the format is, and all of that. That has definitely helped, but I don’t feel like the workload has majorly increased as much as just more of the same, and the income has definitely increased.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think there is so much to be said about that which is continually showing up over a long period of time. It’s eight years of publishing two posts a week, and to your point, every once in a while, you’ll get lucky, and some of those will perform really well, but you wouldn’t have gotten lucky if you didn’t show up twice a week for eight years.

Lisa Bass: Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I think it maybe is all of us, it keeps us all humble in that there’s Google algorithm changes or there’s events that happen that suddenly people are interested in a certain type of food, and you’re producing that certain type of food as the content. But there’s also the element of showing up, and working really hard, and being consistent, and improving over time. There’s this idea of luck wears overalls like you… Hard work often results in luck, whether it’s publishing content online, writing songs. I think some of the greatest songwriters have written 99% of the songs that they’ve written we probably haven’t heard, and then it seems like, “Oh my gosh, the only thing that Ed Sheeran does is write hits,” and it’s like, “Well, he’s probably also-”

Lisa Bass: Yeah. No.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and he talks a lot about, in the early stages, getting the bad songs out like you just have to have that repetition and continue to show up. So I’m interested to hear a little bit about the part where you talk about having eight kids, homeschooling, and doing all of this. That’s an incredible amount, and I think I even think back to before we had our kids. It was still a lot without having kids and juggling homeschooling.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So how do you do that? What does it look like on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis for you?

Lisa Bass: Yeah, and I do want to say, just on the last point, stuff has definitely improved. When I look at my photography from back then, I’m like, “Oh my Lord, what was I thinking?” But I think it is just been like over time, it just all gets better. But with the whole family, and eight kids, and all the homeschooling, it is a lot. Now, I will say my husband has been home from his job for six years, so we have been able to do this together for the last six years which means that he was home for the birth of our last four kids which is significant because we do all of this together.

It definitely takes two people. Sometimes it could probably take more, but we have a little schedule at this point, very much. We have the whole thing, the flow of the day and how it goes. We have fine-tuned that, and so we know when I can have some time to do things like this that I need quiet time in the house. But then, most of the day, it’s very much on the fly. We have our homeschool hours, and then we have a time where I have a little bit of time, and then we have family evening hours. I think the key for us is we have a lot of… or very few outside obligations.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Lisa Bass: So we don’t do a whole lot of sports, and this is just the kind of things that we’ve prioritized for our family.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Totally.

Lisa Bass: You can have everything, but not at the same time, so it’s what we’ve chosen.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lisa Bass: If we’re home and we don’t have a lot of stuff going on, it’s actually very manageable. I also have a team, of course, so I have a lot of help. My business gets worked on way more hours in a day than I actually do, so that’s… I mean, that’s completely key. I could never have a YouTube channel, a podcast, a blog, and all of this without that outside help.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I love the idea of you can do… Tell me if this is what you’re getting at. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything?

Lisa Bass: That’s the quote I was trying to get out.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Lisa Bass: Correct.

Bjork Ostrom: Where it’s like, in your case, you have a really successful business, you have a family that you’re spending time with, you’re homeschooling, you have eight kids, but you’re also not enrolling every one of your kids in soccer, and tee-ball, and in theater because you’re making intentional decisions to say like, “This is what we want our family to look like, our business to look like,” and building around that.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things we talk a lot about is this idea of defining what game you’re playing. We talk about it within the context of business, but I think realistically, it’s both business and personal like, “What do you want your life to look like, and how do you work towards that and build around that?” For some people, they might want to be really scheduled and have a bunch of stuff, but to know that that probably means that you’re not going to have as much time for other things because you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.

Lisa Bass: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I love that.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk a little bit about your team? So one of the things that I think about is for all of us, once we have the ability to work with people, whether it’s using money that’s not coming from our business to accelerate the growth of it or working on it ourselves until it gets to the point where we can invest back into it and bring people in, those, the two options from a financial resource standpoint, you get to a point in either one of those scenarios where you start to realize that you could work 40 hours on a thing, but it’s also possible that those 40 hours could be somebody that you’re hiring who then works on that thing that you need to get done.

What I’ve found is a lot of the things that I thought I was critical to be involved with, actually, there’s really smart, really capable, really motivated people who you can work with to do that, and that allows you to craft your schedule, work or life schedule differently because these people are coming in, and they’re helping you. It sounds like you’ve done that. So what does your team look like, and how have you found it to be most beneficial to work with a team on all the different things that you’re doing?

Lisa Bass: So I started investing in a team really early on. I started with a product business. So I was making and embroidering pillows, and table runners, and all of these farmhouse goods back in our old house in the upstairs bedroom, and I started blogging. I had both of these things going. I thought this will be the way I’ll earn income fast. I’ll ship out products, and I’ll have this more passive income with the blog. I quickly learned that I could not do both. I either had to give up one or the other, or hire somebody to take on one. So I hired somebody, even though we didn’t have a whole lot of extra money at that point, to come, and sew, and ship pillow covers. That way, I could focus on the blog.

It’s been like that over time. As I want to start something new, I don’t have the extra bandwidth, the extra hours in the day, so I’ll bring on somebody who, like you said, is more capable. I have somebody who’s been helping me write for the blog for, I think, five years now. She is better at so many things than me. I’m not an analytics person. I don’t log into Google Analytics. I’m just not into that. Same with my YouTube Analytics. I don’t ever keep track of any of that stuff, but she does, and she’ll track whenever I’m losing a ranking on something or something that I should be ranking for. So I have a blog writer. She’s moved into blog manager because I now have three writers, and she assigns things. She reads. We have a checklist. She reads things over before publishing them. I have somebody who manages my Instagram. So I create a YouTube video, and then she chops it up, and crops it vertically, and makes it into really cool reels. She’s so good at it. I go on my Instagram, and I’m like, “That is good. That is really good.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. “This is a good content.”

Lisa Bass: She got me 700,000 views the other day on something. I’m like, “I didn’t even think to make a reel on that.” So that’s just something I don’t even log into ever, and then I have an email writer. She also helps me create funnels for all the different courses and whatnot. I have somebody who helps me make courses. I have a podcast manager. The one thing that I do start to finish is my YouTube. That’s just because over time, I have tried so many editors, and it takes me longer to convey my vision of the video than it does for me just to do it myself. So that’s the part that I completely handle, and then all of the content branches out from that content with my team.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So you are shooting on your own, you and your husband are shooting, and then you edit as well?

Lisa Bass: Yeah, I shoot and edit every… Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Lisa Bass: Start to finish. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I think of it in the context of… So, my wife, Lindsay, Pinch of Yum, her place that she owns the Voice of is the blog, so she’s writing all those articles or blog posts, and then Instagram. But anything that’s off of that, example being TikTok or YouTube, we don’t have a big YouTube following, but those are the supported places from the original piece of content which is the vision. It sounds like for you, the way that you are manifesting your vision for a piece of content is through a video, shooting and editing, and that becomes the thing that other platforms then take and build off of. Is that more or less correct?

Lisa Bass: Correct. That’s absolutely right. So, my blog writer, I will make several things and recipes in my videos. My videos aren’t like a how-to or this one recipe. I’m sharing it in the context of a day in the life type of video. I will be making things, and then she will do the keyword research and find the blog posts that can happen from that video. Like you said, all the content from the emails to the TikTok to the YouTube Short to everything with Instagram branches out from that long-form, horizontal, 25-minute YouTube video that has a whole bunch of stuff in it. That’s how. Yeah. It sounds like what you do, except for maybe you have the starting point of the blog, and I have the starting point of the YouTube channel. Even though the blog is ultimately the better income earner, it still helps to get all the pieces and parts moving together.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and so much of it comes down to, “Where do you find yourself naturally wanting to create? On what canvas are you most compelled to paint?”

Lisa Bass: Right.

Bjork Ostrom: For you, it sounds like that’s YouTube.

Lisa Bass: Oh, yeah, 100%. Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: For other people, it’s Instagram. For other people, it’s writing, and finding what that is, sticking to that, but it’s not necessarily then throwing away these other platforms and saying like, “Hey, we’re not going to post there.” It’s just saying, “Maybe you aren’t going to post there, but you’re still going to have a presence there because it’s important to have those other platforms.”

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So how did you find these people? Were they followers that you put a job description out and they applied to it? Then, to what degree did you have the system built before versus asked them to do it, and then they built the system that followed?

Lisa Bass: So it’s totally been on the fly. It’s been one at a time. It’s been where I’ll sometimes, and I’m sure, if you guys have been having your blog for so long, probably even longer than me, I’m pretty sure, so you have experienced this, but I have definitely thought in the past like, “Oh, just handing something off to somebody and just thinking that would work without a whole lot of my direction?” I have learned over time that that doesn’t really work too well, and so I’ve had things where I’ve let somebody take something over, and then realized over time, “Oh, that’s not going how I wanted it to,” so I’ve had to make a lot of adjustments.

I have found them through a lot of things. Followers, like you said, have reached out. They’ve emailed. I’m sure you’ve probably had that, but I get that all the time. I have a whole folder in my inbox of potential VAs who have reached out to me should I ever need more, but that’s where a lot of them have come from is something like that. My blog writer, she’s a blogger herself, but she liked the extra, very dependable side income of working for me. So she’s been fabulous because she already knew everything. She already knew how blogging worked. A lot of people, I’ve trained completely from the ground up. Some have worked out, some haven’t, but over time, I’ve definitely acquired here and there a great team.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So much of it comes down to it being a skill, and I think sometimes we think like, “Hey, it should work out in a way where you hire somebody,” and then it just works out well, but it’s similar to any other skill that you develop. Whether it’s drawing, or playing the saxophone, or cooking, it’s like the skill of working with a team, communicating a vision, it’s something that you get better at over time, and it’s something that you always need to be improving on. Just like any Instrument, it’s like people are always practicing, and I think the same could be said for working with a team, working with other people. It’s like you’re always figuring out ways to do that better.

Just like in life, we’re always figuring out how to do relationships better, how to be a friend better. I think the same thing applies too when we work with people. We’re figuring out how to do that better. So I think for anybody who feels like it’s intimidating, or that it’s scary, or that it’s hard, it’s just a validation of like, “It is,” and you hear that in your story too where it’s like sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, and you learn along the way. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

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So when you think of… so you have your different platforms, you have the blog, you have YouTube, you have Instagram, how would you rank-order the importance of those to your business? It’s always interesting for me to hear people reflect on those different places, and what’s most valuable?

Lisa Bass: Yeah, and I know it’s different for everybody too. If you actually looked at the breakdown of their income, it’s totally different across the board. For me, the blog is the most important income-wise, for sure, then YouTube, and then… Gosh, I’m trying to decide if I should even put Instagram next. I hesitate to because I feel that there is so much time wasted on Instagram. I know people make money on Instagram, but just for hour-for-hour spent, for me, that’s definitely third place in importance with those. I would say that I do have course sales and affiliates that come from that, but the bulk of it, I would say definitely blog first, then YouTube for me.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm, and within the blog-

Lisa Bass: Then, TikTok is way down there.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. TikTok. We got to list it.

Lisa Bass: We got TikTok.

Bjork Ostrom: It may or may not be around by the time this episode comes out. There’s always the question like, “Is it going to be here?”

Lisa Bass: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Bjork Ostrom: For the blog, advertising being the primary income?

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Lisa Bass: Yes, the only… I mean, I guess affiliates too, but yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah. So when you think of your strategy then, I’m curious to hear how YouTube fits in because there’s advertising dollars from YouTube, but there’s also the potential of doing sponsored content. So, with your YouTube mindset on or your YouTube hat on, how do you think of that as a platform for your business, and is one of the primary benefits of it that it seeds content for the blog?

Lisa Bass: Yes. So, YouTube, I have probably an unusual strategy in that I do take a sponsor on for every video. Okay. So with the blog and with the way RPMs are, it pays so much better per thousand visitors than views on YouTube which is really weird because whenever somebody watches a commercial, you think they’re getting a lot more from that as far as advertising, but YouTube income, ad income compared to blog income, it’s not even comparable, honestly, so I do-

Bjork Ostrom: What you’re saying is essentially, if you had a thousand people, and you were to pick, “Can I have them watch a YouTube video, or can these thousand people go to my website?” you would choose the website because on average, that thousand people are going to earn you, depending on what site it is, how many ads you have, $30, $40, $50.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. It’s way more money. Right. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Versus YouTube would be… if you had a video that had a thousand views, you might make $2? What would that look like?

Lisa Bass: Something like that. I mean, I never look into analytics, but I know it’s something like that. It’s less than $10, and like you said, it’s $30, $40 for the blog. So if you’re doing… I mean, it’s still a great income. I get a lot of views. But if I’m looking at my time and how to spend it, it would make more sense just to spend all of that time on the blog, but I continue on with YouTube for a few reasons. One is, like you said, it seeds everything else. Two, I love it. Like you mentioned earlier, I enjoy making videos.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Right. It’s a huge part of it. Yeah.

Lisa Bass: It’s fun for me. If I just quit just to retire, I would still make videos because it’s a creative process that I really enjoy. So I guess I also do it because I enjoy it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yep.

Lisa Bass: Then, I take on a sponsor to help with that income a bit for the videos. I only post once a week. Then, also, I do think that it helps blog traffic. Now, when I look at my analytics, people aren’t clicking the links in my description box and heading over from YouTube, but I get 500,000 views a month on just my homepage. I don’t know if that’s comparable to other creators or if that’s high. I think it’s high, and I would say that’s because constantly, throughout all my videos, I’ll make this, and I’ll make this, and I always say, “Go over to farmhouseonboone.com. Go to farmhouseonboone.com.” So I do think it helps with my overall brand, and I really like the diversification.

Bjork Ostrom: Brand. Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Especially with all the things that people have been scared lately with Google things. I mean, I heard they’re not getting rid of cookies, so that’s cool, but I really like having that diverse business.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Totally. With cookies, you’re talking about third-party cookies, this big advertising consideration where on Chrome, desktop and mobile, cookies going away, which means that advertising is less effective. Google keeps punting that and saying like it will happen, but I think most recently, there’s some considerations around European legislation.

Lisa Bass: Okay. I don’t know.

Bjork Ostrom: Anyway, it’s getting moved further and further down, which is good, because advertising then is more effective, but there is always the consideration around like, “What if that changes and advertising dollars go down?” or as a lot of people have experienced recently, there’s a Google algorithm update, and your traffic goes down. One of the things that we continually hear and that you’re talking about as being really important is brand.

Lisa Bass: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: You are at the top of somebody’s mind not because they had a random search and you showed up as a search result for that. That probably happens, and that’s great, but to be the kind of brand where people are searching for your name and then coming to your site is really valuable. I think you’re onto something there where you have this YouTube account where you have probably millions of views that come from that. Inevitably, a percentage of those people are going to take the prompt that you have around, “Hey, go over here, and go to Google and search this recipe,” or to search your brand name. That definitely has an impact.

I was having a conversation. I think this was a live Q&A that we had for Food Blogger Pro members, and there’s somebody named Paul Bannister who works for Raptive, and he was talking about this idea of like… He said, “You know the company that doesn’t worry about Google algorithm updates? One company that doesn’t worry about it is Disney.” His point was like Disney has such strong brand. They have these characters. They have these super fans where they’re not transactional and showing up as a search result for something. They have a brand.

I think for us as creators and publishers, it’s one of the best things that we can do is we can think about what does that look like for us to have a strong brand and for people to be attracted to that brand, benefit if you can also be smart about search optimization, but even more strong if you can have the brand surrounding that. So when you think about your YouTube channel, that also is something that has experienced significant growth. What do you think has been the most helpful growth variables for you with that account over the last seven or eight years?

Lisa Bass: I think that it’s just… I’m stealing this from MrBeast because I listen… I don’t watch MrBeast, but I listen to his YouTube strategy stuff because I love YouTube. I enjoy YouTube strategy, learning to get better. He talks about how all he’s done over the last several years, and obviously, I’ve done it nowhere to the extent that he has, but is just improve the quality of his videos, always making the videos better.

Bjork Ostrom: Obsessive about that. Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. He’s obsessed with… He’s way obsessed. I’m obsessed as much as a mom of eight can be, so I can only spend so much time doing that, but I do feel that over the last six years of making videos, I mean, I’ve never skipped a week, I have improved little by little to the point where I feel now that I’m creating something that’s entertaining. It pulls people into a certain feeling. I get told that a lot. I try to create these shots that make people feel like… Even if they don’t want to make a recipe that day, it’s still fun to watch me do it because of the way I’ve shot it, or the music, or how I’ve talked about it. I try to pack in a lot of education without it being a tutorial video, but just pack it in and teach them through something that’s also entertaining so that it’s enjoyable, even if it’s something you’re not going to do today, tomorrow, or even next year. It’s like, I don’t know, an aspirational type of content. I enjoyed this. Yeah, trying to make the videos just a little bit better with each one.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s great. We talk about this idea. It’s actually our parent company. We call it tiny bit, tiny bit better every day forever.

Lisa Bass: Yes, yes.

Bjork Ostrom: You’re a great example of that is like eight years of saying, “Okay. I’m going to produce a video every week, but I’m not going to produce the same video. I’m going to figure out how do I produce this video and make it better than the last one.” What do you think are some of the… Could you point to key breakthroughs that you’ve had in terms of what makes a video better?

Lisa Bass: Well, I will say the biggest thing is I used to do… When I started, I did everything very tutorial-based instead of more of the storytelling aspect and bringing people into that story, and I think a lot about the story now. I also try to make them more beautiful. So I try to get shots that are annoying to get. For example, down in our basement… We have an old house, so we have a stone foundation. We put a little basement pantry, and I lug the camera downstairs to grab things off the shelves, and I would lug the camera into the pantry to grab the oats down from the glass jar. I make flower arrangements. I take all the things that I really love and try to do them all and make it all very beautiful. I don’t know if that’s a breakthrough. I would just say I pack more into each video.

One more thing that I will say is the first five years on YouTube, I did two videos every single week, and the beginning of last year, so 2023, I went down to one video a week. Instead of just doing maybe one or two things in a video twice a week, I pack all of those things, whether it’s I’m going to make two recipes, decorate something, organize something, make a flower arrangement. I have a formula of the kind of things I like to include in the video. I’ll pack them all into one. So, before, people used to choose. So if they followed me, and they like to catch up, they wouldn’t watch every video because they didn’t have time to watch two videos every week. So, now, instead of choosing between the two, they just watch the one, and so I ended up getting, I would say, more than double the views on the one video as I used to get on the two.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Lisa Bass: So going down to one video actually really helped my views instead of hurting it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think of the ultimate example of that being Mark Rober/Robber.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. Mark Rober. Yeah. Yeah, my kids like-

Bjork Ostrom: Rober.

Lisa Bass: He’s the CrunchLabs guy, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Lisa Bass: Rober? Rober?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. Maybe it’s Rober. Either way, my kids like him.

Bjork Ostrom: He does… I don’t know if it’s one a month, but-

Lisa Bass: Oh, not even that, I feel like, but yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Once every two months and-

Lisa Bass: High-quality. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s just like they’re so compelling, and interesting, and have such a great story. It’s obvious that each one probably takes multiple thousands of hours to produce and create.

Lisa Bass: Oh, I’m sure. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But what happens is then they get tens of millions of views.

Lisa Bass: They all get watched.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Yes, they get watched. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s something to be said about doing less from a quantity standpoint, but taking the same amount of time and just making it better and-

Lisa Bass: Exactly. Yeah, and that’s what I did, and it’s also relative because some people will say, “I do two videos a week,” or, “I do four videos a week,” and then the other person, “Oh, I only do one a week.” Then, you watch them. You’re like, “Yeah, but you put all of that effort into that one.” It’s very relative thing to say the number of videos you do because I spend as much time on YouTube now as I always did. I just pack it all into one, and it also makes me feel less bad about putting a sponsor because I’ve put… It’s like a one or two-minute spot in a 25… Not all are 25 minutes, but I try to aim for around 20, 25 minutes. So much stuff, so many recipes. I really put everything I can for a once-a-week video. It’s a treadmill, so I can only do so much. If I was Mark, I could do way more.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. I try to pack it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. How about on the sponsor side of things? How do you find those people? Are they ongoing relationships that you have, or are they people that you do work with an agent? What have you found to work best? We understand sponsorships within the context of Instagram or maybe on the blog.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But YouTube, it feels like it’s maybe a little bit different. What does that look like?

Lisa Bass: It is. It is different. So I do have an agent. Actually, I’ve switched, but I always have had an agent. Like you said, ongoing relationships are the best thing about YouTube. Most of my contracts are with a handful of brands for the year. So, at the beginning of this year, I already had half the year booked out with brands that I’ve worked with over and over, and people say like, “Oh, sponsorships. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s so much work.” I’m not saying it’s not. It does add on additional work, but with the brands I’ve built relationships with, I know exactly what they want from me. I know exactly what to say. I can set up the camera and get it all done within just a few minutes because it’s not like I have to read through the brief and familiarize myself with the product. All of that is what’s so time-consuming, but I have found some… and every once in a while I’ll do a one-off, but very rarely. For the most part, it’s brands that I know and love, I’ve worked with for years, and so it’s very easy and straightforward.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. In that relationship, is the agent going out and pitching you to those brands, and then you know the people that you want to work with, and you’re saying yes/no on the different companies?

Lisa Bass: Yes, that’s correct. So, yeah, I get pitched a lot more than what I take. I like to take ones that I know well, I can very easily endorse, and then every once in a while, for my podcast, I have a whole different thing going on. It’s the dynamic ads, and so that’s different.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Lisa Bass: For YouTube, it’s really straightforward whenever you work with the same brand 12 months out of the year which does happen.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yeah, the podcast ads. We’re just starting to get into the world of podcast ads. Anybody who’s listened to the podcast would know we’re experimenting with that. What you talked about. There’s this thing now where you can do dynamic ad insertion where you have a slot that… We haven’t done it yet, but a slot that you designate in the podcast.

Lisa Bass: We just started.

Bjork Ostrom: Then, it will run… similar to your blog, it just inserts an ad potentially based on location, or demographic, or just anybody could bid on that ad slot. Is that more or less what you’re doing?

Lisa Bass: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Yes, and it’s real easy because there’s no video component, so you don’t have to memorize the brief or memorize all the things. Brands always have a certain promo that they’re trying to… certain talking points for certain times of the year, so that can get confusing. But with the sponsorships on the dynamic ads, it’s more of a read which makes it a lot simpler, but it pays less too, of course.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Sure. That makes sense. What platform are you using for that?

Lisa Bass: True Native.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s the podcast publishing platform or the podcast advertising-

Lisa Bass: That’s the ads.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: True Native, and then you do that through which podcast platform?

Lisa Bass: Oh my goodness, I just switched. Now, I’m trying to remember. I had to switch to do the ads.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Lisa Bass: I was on Anchor, but I had to switch, so I can’t even remember what it is now because my podcast managers upload everything.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. They take care of it, yeah, which is great.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Going back to that like working with the team and capable people to help with that.

Lisa Bass: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: So how about tools? One of the things that’s always interesting to hear from people is like you are doing a lot, and it could be personal as well. You’re doing a lot in your personal life, you’re doing a lot in your work life, and my guess is that you have some tools that help to make that easier, whether it’s software, or systems, or processes, or even a framework of a mental framework that you use to make decisions. Is there anything that you would point out to people around like, “Hey, here’s a tool that I’m using that’s really helpful for me to do what I need to do?”

Lisa Bass: So my tool that I use for my team is Trello. We tried using Slack, and I just could not get in the habit of checking it all the time. So people would send messages in Slack, and then I’d miss them. So I’m kind of bad about this. I’m one of those people where whenever something works, I don’t change it even if there’s a better alternative just for… forever.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Totally.

Lisa Bass: I have to be so convinced it’s so significantly better for me ever to change. I’ll pay more, I’ll deal with some headaches just to not change. That’s how I am.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Bass: So, Trello. The way I have it set up, it’s pretty easy, but all my team logs in, and we have colors for each person. So we’ll have the blogs listed out and the pod… for each week, the blog posts, the podcast, the video, the sponsors, and then each person has a color on what they’re supposed to work on. That’s the main thing I use. For True Native, I use something called Teamwork, and that’s where I log in to see what ad reads I’m supposed to do, but that’s it. I mean, it’s basic.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. No. That’s great. How about in the video side of things? When you’re editing and shooting, is there anything that’s helpful with that?

Lisa Bass: So I use Final Cut Pro for editing all my videos. It’s very easy, very straightforward. Highly recommend Final Cut Pro. I’ve tried other things, and that’s for sure the easiest and best one, but that’s it. I use Epidemic Sound for music. I use ConvertKit for email. I mean, I use EasyWebinar. I use Teachable. So many things across my business, but to organize everybody, Trello is the hub for that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. So how about this? Let’s say that everything goes away. You wake up tomorrow, and it’s like something happened. Who knows what it was? A digital apocalypse, and you have to start building your business over again. What would that look like? How would you approach building a business in 2024, a digital content business, knowing what you know now?

Lisa Bass: Okay. So everything is gone, but the platforms… Sorry. Nobody recognizes Farmhouse on Boone?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lisa Bass: The platforms are still there?

Bjork Ostrom: All the platforms are there in this digital apocalypse.

Lisa Bass: MySpace? Wiped clear of the memory?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lisa Bass: They don’t know who I am? Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, yep, yep. Men in Black, they’ll do the flasher thing.

Lisa Bass: Yes. Oh man, I have actually thought about this a lot, and to be honest, I would do YouTube. That’s not to say that I don’t think blogging is a great opportunity. Oh my word, I’m so glad I didn’t quit blogging when other people thought that Instagram was where it was at because I’d be leaving so much on the table. So I want to say I would do blogging, but I don’t know if I have it in me to restart. Now, that’s not because I think it’s that hard. It’s because I already did it, and I would just be like, “No.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lisa Bass: But the one thing that I really enjoy doing is making videos, so I think from a perspective of like, “Okay. I’m worn out. I already did all that. I’ve been there,” because my mind hasn’t been wiped clear, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Right.

Lisa Bass: I have to still know what I know.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah. In this hypothetical. Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. In this hypothetical, I have already gone through all of this, and now it’s gone?

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Lisa Bass: The only thing I’d have the motivation to continue would be YouTube because I still enjoy it. The blog? I love the blog, but I enjoy YouTube, so I would-

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Lisa Bass: I think with what I know now, I do think I could pretty quickly become successful again on YouTube. I really believe that, so.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think so much of it comes down to what you’re talking about there which is like how do you as a content creator or business owner because sometimes for some of the people listening, they start out creating content, and they get to a point where they don’t love it anymore, but maybe they do love a different component of it. They love the spreadsheets, or the analysis, or the keyword research.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. That’s not me. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Everybody is so different, and I think one of the key takeaways is how do you get as close as possible to the thing that is still valuable and that you love.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I think sometimes people are like, “Find what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” which is true, unless what you love doing isn’t valuable, and then it’s going to be hard to justify the work, and time, and effort that you put into it. But I think what you’ve done is you’ve worked hard and intentionally to craft the majority of your day to be the thing that you enjoy doing the most with the limited amount of time that you have, and you’ve brought on other very capable people to do the things that you aren’t as excited about, but that are still important.

Lisa Bass: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that’s such an important takeaway. Does that feel accurate as a reflection of your story?

Lisa Bass: Yeah, that absolutely feels accurate.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lisa Bass: Yeah, because I mean, it would make more sense probably monetarily to put all my eggs in the blogging basket, but I can only do it so long, you know, because I just-

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Lisa Bass: I hate writing. Yeah, that’s exactly right. I spend the time doing the thing I really want to…

Bjork Ostrom: It would be monetarily more beneficial, except it wouldn’t because realistically, you do the thing, and then you get burnt out on it, and then you don’t sustain it.

Lisa Bass: Right. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So part of it, for us, is even… I was just on somebody else’s podcast yesterday, and we’re talking about the idea of starting a new thing. He’s like, “In the case of Pinch of Yum, you started Food Blogger Pro. Would there have been a scenario where it would’ve made more sense to just focus on Pinch of Yum?” It was the exact same thing where it’s like monetarily-

Lisa Bass: Probably. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Probably.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But part of it is like how do we continue to show up, in your case, 7, 8, 9 years, in our case, 12, 13, 14 years, and the way that you do that is you get as close as possible to the thing that you can do every day and actually enjoy it.

Lisa Bass: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: It might not be as monetarily beneficial, but it actually is because that’s the thing that keeps you…

Lisa Bass: Because it’s what kept you going.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Exactly.

Lisa Bass: Yeah, and I know people who are… I have blogger friends who just enjoy, at the end of the day, getting on Google Analytics, and looking at things, and tracking other bloggers. So, for them, the whole game of blogging is so fun, but that is not my personality. So, for me, I lay at night in bed thinking about videos, and shots, and different things I could make and create. So I’m driven by the fact that it’s literally fun for me. So, like you said, it is monetarily beneficial because it kept pushing me along all the time, and it gave me the starting point to hire out people to do the things that I just cannot stand.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s awesome. I know, Lisa, you also have some content where you talk about blogging, where you talk about business. A lot of places that people can connect with you and follow with you along with you online. Can you do a quick shout-out, maybe mention some of the resources you have, and then also mention some of the places that people can follow along with you, so after this podcast, they can stay connected?

Lisa Bass: Yeah. So farmhouseonboone.com is where I have… Like you said, I have some business resources. There’s a Blog Master class. I have all my sourdough recipes. So that is the main bread and butter over there on the blog.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Literally.

Lisa Bass: Then, you can find me on Farmhouse on Boone on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and then I also have a podcast called Simple Farmhouse Life.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. That’s great. We’ll link to those as well. Lisa, thanks so much for coming on. Super fun to talk to you.

Lisa Bass: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Emily Walker: Hello there. Emily here from The Food Blogger Pro Team. We hope you enjoyed listening to this week’s episode of the podcast. Before we sign off today, I wanted to mention one of the most valuable parts of The Food Blogger Pro membership, and that’s our courses. In case you don’t already know, as soon as you become a Food Blogger Pro member, you immediately get access to all of our courses here on Food Blogger Pro. We have hours and hours of courses available, including SEO for food blogs, food photography, Google Analytics, social media, and sponsored content.

All of these courses have been recorded by The Food Blogger Pro Team or some of our industry experts, and they’re truly a wealth of knowledge. We are always updating our courses so you can rest assured that you’re getting the most up-to-date information as you’re working to grow your blog and your business. You can get access to all of our courses by joining Food Blogger Pro. Just head to foodbloggerpro.com/join to learn more about the membership and join our community. Thanks again for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Make it a great week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. If you’ve been frustrated trying to discover actionable insights from different analytics and keyword platforms, clarity is your solution. Clarity helps you manage your blog content all in one place so you can find actionable insights that improve the quality of your content.

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One of our favorite ways to use it, we can easily filter and see which of our posts have had a decrease in sessions or page views over a set period of time and give a little extra attention to those recipes. This is especially helpful when there are Google updates or changes and search algorithms so that we can easily tell which of our recipes have been impacted the most.

Listeners to the Food Blogger Pro podcast get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up To sign up, simply go to clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is chatting with Vinny from Always From Scratch, and we first met Vinny when he joined Bjork for a coaching call in 2023, and Bjork enjoyed the coaching call so much that he thought he would interview Vinny for the podcast and bring this conversation to the masses.

In this podcast episode, Vinny shares more about his career journey, how he started off as a speech language pathologist. Then started his food blog in 2019. In the middle of last year when he first started with Bjork, he was thinking about taking his food blog full time. He’d qualified for Mediavine and had over a hundred thousand followers on Instagram and thought it might be the right time to take the blog full-time.

Since then, he’s decided that he’s not quite ready to do that, and he was able to use his blog and social media accounts to get himself a job that is more in the content creation industry. Bjork and Vinny chat about balancing a full-time job with running a food blog and also a family, and how to know when it’s the right time to take your blog full-time.

I think it’s a really great interview for anybody, but especially those who have kind of just started their food blog and are thinking about what their future might hold, I think it’ll be a really valuable listen. I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Vinny, welcome to the podcast.

Vinny DelGiudice: Thank you. Excited to be here.

Bjork Ostrom: We had a conversation. We do these thing called coaching calls with Food Blogger Pro, where it’s one of my favorite things that we get to do is sit down and hear a little bit about somebody’s story. It’s like what you’d imagine if you connect with a friend who’s mutually interested in a similar thing.

You jam on ideas and brainstorm and think about what’s to come. We had that conversation. I’m trying to think of when it is, would you be able to pinpoint the date of when it was, or even the month?

Vinny DelGiudice: I want to say July. It was definitely warm out.

Bjork Ostrom: It was in a warm season of the year and we’re recording this now in February. What’s great about that amount of time, let’s say it was July, it’s like a half a year, half a year plus a lot can happen if you take action and you move on things. You’ve had some significant changes in between that timeframe.

I would love to hear about those because one of the things that we talk a lot about on this podcast is essentially how do we have conversations around evolving our careers, whether that be working on our own thing full-time or just working on work that is more aligned with what we want to be doing.

You’ve made some of those transitions in a pretty significant way. Take us back to where your headspace was at in July and some of the questions that you were working through.

Vinny DelGiudice: I think in July, whenever it was, I was really focusing on this idea of I was, at the time, I was laid off for my job. I was in this moment in my life where I was like, “I need to make this food blog work or else I’m failing at it.” It really felt like it’s all or nothing. It felt like that.

Then, as I started realizing this is just not the time, I’m not ready to do this full time in terms of financially supporting a family. I tried to figure out ways where I can use the skills that I was learning, whether it was an SEO, video editing, photography, and bring that into a career or at least something that was different than what I had been doing, which was speech pathology. That’s what I did, I was able to apply for a bunch of jobs, a ton of jobs, so many jobs.

Bjork Ostrom: Where were you applying? Was it on job boards?

Vinny DelGiudice: Yeah, I did a lot of Indeed and all that stuff. Then one day, I just thought to myself, I’m going to go on LinkedIn, and I saw this guy post this job in my area for a photographer. I just messaged him and was like, “Hey, I think I’d be a great fit.” The next day I was like, I think it was two or three days later I was hired.

It worked out well because it was just in the moment, the perfect thing where I saw a photographer and I was like, “This is one I want to get better at or one of the things I want to get better at.” That’s where I was able to transition to a different job, which was cool.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that we can do to some degree, there’s always, some people have less flexibility than others, but for the most part, we can be pursuing the continual rewriting of our job description. I’m not talking about job description, you are hired into something and they have a job description and they give it to you.

That’s one of the things ways you could look at job description. I’m talking about if we are a CEO of You Inc. and your job is what you get paid to do, that can evolve over time and you can have this mix of W–2, contract, freelance passive income or business entrepreneurial income, and we can figure out what are the ways that we can shift and change.

Adjust all of the different components of those different areas to get us closer to, it’s probably never going to be a perfect match, but closer to where we want to be. When you looked at what you were doing, what was it that you knew you didn’t want to do more of in speech pathology?

It’s like you had a successful career, you had a master’s degree in speech pathology. You were really established in that career. What did it look like to let that go and how did you know that wasn’t what you wanted to do moving forward?

Vinny DelGiudice: I worked in a really specific niche. I only worked with singing voice people and people with throat cancer. I did it all virtually because I was working for a company in Nevada. When I was laid off, I was trying to find something very, very similar. I had worked in nursing homes before and I just knew I couldn’t go back to that.

I even went and interviewed at one and I walked in the building and I was just in that moment I knew, I was like, “I can no longer do this. I will not be happy.” Even I think the biggest thing was how scary switching or starting over really felt because the whole thing was really just how do you decide if that’s the right move? You just really don’t know until you switch and try something.

Bjork Ostrom: I had a friend who reached out recently and they were talking about her husband’s trying to figure out what does he want to do as a next step, potentially career change, so thinking about some of those things. There’s an acquaintance, I wouldn’t say friend, we just had a short conversation at a conference.

Her name is Jenny Blake and she has this book called Pivot Method. It talks about these career transitions that we’re in. There’s also this great book called Designing Your Life, and they have one also called Designing Your Work Life, which is for people in these transitionary periods. The reason I say that the reason these books can exist and courses can exist is because it’s common.

There’s a lot of us who are in this stage of life or stage of our career where we’re like, “We want to do something different.” We feel like there’s something out there that’s more exciting or better fit. For anybody listening, I just want to validate that that’s okay and that’s good, but it’s also hard.

For you, Vinny, as you moved into that, you knew when you walked through the door, “This isn’t going to be a fit.” People say this and it’s true, “When you know, you know.” For you in that moment you knew. The hard thing sometimes is then knowing what is the fit. Talk to me a little bit about the world of digital media.

Even creating food content because a piece of you ink right now, you are creating income from your site, which is this additional income that you get from this W–2 job that you found. How did you know that’s where you wanted to go?

Vinny DelGiudice: I knew I needed to do something that was in the same field as food blogging. I know that I enjoy creating, I enjoy content creation in general. I love doing food creation, but it wasn’t the right time for me to be full-time food blogger. What it felt like at the time was like, “I need an income and if the food blog is making X amount of money and I have to take all of that money and put it towards my family, then I can’t grow the blog and I can’t grow the company.”

That’s what, it’s a company at this point where it needs money invested every month to try to scale it and create more do audits and everything just gets more expensive the more it grows. For me, I was like, “I need to figure out something that I can do that I’m going to continue to learn and continue to grow in a way where I’m still writing, still creating.” I just started searching for digital media.

I basically used my food blog and my Instagram as my resume. I had a resume, but it all was speech stuff. Then, at the top it just said food blog and had how many followers and the site stats and stuff like that. My food blog isn’t making enough money for me to survive on, but the idea that it has got me a career where I’m getting paid each week says enough to me where I’m like, “It was successful enough where somebody is willing to pay me money now because of the food blog.”

Bjork Ostrom: It’s one of the things that I think is often that we don’t give enough credit to in the process when we are looking at metrics or numbers or money or whatever it might be is skills and skill development. What we’ve found is a lot of times what can happen when you get into the world of content creation is you find something that you’re really passionate about that you’re interested in and that you are good at or know that you can be good at.

Photography as an example, in your case or video, like the digital media side of things. For other people they’ve realized that they are really good at writing and they get into that or recipe development or even HTML CSS design. All of these are different skills. I think it’s important for us to remember as we’re getting into this, like you said, it’s not just the outcome, it’s also the journey.

What you’re learning on the journey can be applied in other ways. I think it’s one of the greatest ways to grow and to build a thing is to have something adjacent to it, which is within the realm of what you want to be learning and getting better at, and then allowing your business to just reinvest those profits back into the business.

I think like you said, it’s a business and businesses are inherently valuable. The more you grow this business, the more you have a valuable thing. It’s actually for, I’m a personal finance geek, and one of the things I’ve started doing is like, Hey, roughly speaking, what is the value of this website that we have or this online business in a similar way that you would track the value of your home because these are valuable things.

To pair something like a W-two job where you’re learning with a valuable business that you’re able to reinvest back into and grow feels like a really valuable thing. What does that look like in terms of your time? You also have family, you have time that you want to spend with them. How do you balance that and make sure that you’re having the time that you need in each category of life?

Vinny DelGiudice: I think it’s hard to balance that, and then you have to be very intentional about how you spend your time because even if I have, so I don’t really drink anymore, and if I were to have three beers on a Friday, I can’t work on a Saturday morning. Now, I lose Friday night and Saturday morning, and I really focus on it like that. Where can I get an hour? Can I get an hour on Friday?

Can I get two on Saturday? I try to be intentional about making those small units of time add up. If it’s two hours, I know I’m going to get every weekday morning and 45 minutes every night. Over a week, it starts to really add up how much time you can really put into a blog. Obviously, creating the content is very time-consuming. My wife is super awesome with making sure I have some time on Saturdays and Sundays to shoot, which is great. That’s how I separate my time.

Bjork Ostrom: It gets easier to justify when you’re at the point where you are once you get to, and you don’t have to share specifics, but the site’s getting enough traffic now to say, “Okay, this is substantial in a way where it justifies the time that you’re putting into it. It’s money that could maybe cover a mortgage. It’s getting to that amount where it’s you feel it and it makes a difference.

What was it like in the stage before that? I think some people are like, “Hey, I can justify it once I get to that point,” but you only get to that point once you’ve spent enough time getting it there. What did it look like knowing that you started in 2019? Is that right?

Vinny DelGiudice: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: What did it look like in those earlier stages when it was maybe more of a grind and you weren’t getting that initial positive feedback loop of ad income or maybe sponsor content or whatever it might be?

Vinny DelGiudice: I personally felt silly sometimes where I was like, “I’m wasting my time.” It can feel very heavy where you’re not creating an income, but you’re spending hours and hours and hours of time, especially in the beginning when you’re really trying to build up your content. One of the things I always bring up to my wife and I steal this from you guys, is the 1% thing. She comes to me with all these ideas and I always say, “I got to do one thing at a time and we’ll build it up.”

Bjork Ostrom: I’ve got one hour today, what’s the thing that’s going to make a difference?

Vinny DelGiudice: I think you have to just get past that idea of, “What I’m doing doesn’t mean anything.” In the beginning it can really feel like you’re three blogs or you’re 10 blogs or you’re 15, and it can feel very insignificant in the grand scheme when you compare to other people. I think it’s important to look at what you want to do and how you’re going to get there.

Just knowing how long it can take because it does take a long time to get comfortable creating, get comfortable in your process, and you get 50 blogs in and you look at your first five and you’re like, “What was I thinking when I wrote this? What was I thinking when I shot these pictures?” You can’t get better unless you just go for it.

As tough as it can be in the beginning, it’s really nice to be able to look back at it and say like, “Wow, look how far this has come.”

Bjork Ostrom: Part of it too is to talk about that skill development piece. It’s like what do you want to be good at? I think sometimes we can get lost in wanting to hit these certain goals, which is still important. Whether it be like, “I want to get to 50,000 page views and apply to an ad network.” It’s like, “That’s great.” I think it’s good to have those goals, but also what do you want to be excellent at?

Think about that because you will become better the more that you work at a thing, even if some of the things that are harder to control followers, page views, whatever it might be, those aren’t always the best indicators of how good you are at a thing. If you stick with it long enough, eventually once you get to a point you will get noticed, but sometimes it takes a long time, years before that happens.

For you, what was the point where you felt, can you pinpoint made it or this feels like unlock or my guess is you apply to an ad network and then suddenly you’re earning money in a way that you weren’t before. You get to a hundred thousand followers on Instagram and it’s like, “Wow, that’s a really big number.”

For some people they aren’t as aware of some of those things as others, but were there steps along the way where you felt like, “Hey, this is really cool.” It was validating for the work that you had done or even getting a job in digital media?

Vinny DelGiudice: Honestly, that was a huge one for me because I was really able to equate something to a large sum, a yearly salary as a large sum of money and something to do. I think in terms of the blog though, getting on Mediavine was really awesome. Consistent income for a small business is so important to be able to scale because when you’re relying on products and sponsored shoots.

Maybe you don’t get a lot like me, I don’t get a lot of sponsored shoots from my Instagram. It’s not enough, you have to hope for the next one to come in and you have to do a lot of reach out. I’m not good at reaching out to companies and trying to sell myself, but writing the blogs and getting that income from the ads was a big one. It was to me, I think that’s when I realized this is step one.

I just got to step one and this is only the beginning. It really felt that way when I first, because you get there and you’re like, “Wow, now I really want to grow this thing because it’s exciting.” Then with Instagram followers, you think it matters, but it’s just like you get to a number and you think you feel like it’s going to feel some sort of way, but it never does for me.

I don’t get a ton from my Instagram besides maybe views on my website is really the only way. I think the main reason I got to a hundred thousand followers was I posted a recipe that people hate it, hate it. It was an Italian wedding soup and every comment was negative, but it got me so many followers and I was like-

Bjork Ostrom: Interesting.

Vinny DelGiudice: It really validated for me how much I should just, what I should be-

Bjork Ostrom: Focusing on.

Vinny DelGiudice: … focusing on. And for me it was like, “Wow, okay, so this doesn’t make sense. I’m creating something that people seem to not like, but it’s garnering more engagement. It’s funny the way Instagram can sometimes mess with your mind a little bit.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally, and what’s interesting about that is sometimes you see that in really big accounts, not even necessarily in the food space, but can also be the most controversial. The reason that it works is because it’s engagement and it’s attention. Sometimes that controversial type of content can be really engaging. There’s other ways that obviously on social that you can grow and that you have engaging content, but you see that potentially sometimes as an outcome.

Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by CultivateWP, specifically a new offering they have called Cultivate Go. As business owners, I’m talking to you, one of the things we need to get good at is thinking about how we invest in our business.

As someone who publishes content online, one of your most important business assets is your website. There’s a problem that a lot of us run into when we think about investing into our website, and it’s that it seems like there’s really two options. You have the like DIY, figure it out on your own, get really frustrated, spend a bunch of time, or pay tens of thousands of dollars to have a fully customized design and theme developed.

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It’s that perfect sweet spot for anybody who finds themselves in that in-between stage where you want the best of the best, but you don’t want to have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get it. If you’re interested in checking that out, go to foodbloggerpro.com/go or just search Cultivate, go in Google.

For you, when you think of the evolution, you had this job in speech pathology and it’s like that’s what you’re doing, that’s what you’re focusing on. You were let go from this position and then there’s this moment of what do I do next? Initially the thought was, “Hey, let’s figure out if I can scale this blog and the income from it, this business as quickly possible.”

It sounds like in that season, and it was around where we talked where it was like, “This probably doesn’t make sense to try and scale this as quickly as possible to become a full-time income.” The next pivot was into what does it look like to have my day job be closely aligned with what I want to be doing, which was photography and video? Is that right?

Vinny DelGiudice: I mean my main thing is I like doing video. I do a lot of product photography right now and some content video, but yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: At this point what you’re doing is saying, “Okay, I’m going to have that be my main gig.” You love video and you love photography. That in and of itself, correct me if I’m wrong, feels like a win. That’s a career change that you’ve had in doing something radically different than what you were doing before as a full-time gig and getting paid to do this thing that five years ago you probably couldn’t have gotten paid to. Does that feel accurate?

Vinny DelGiudice: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really exciting because, and this it sounds cliche, every day I go to work, I am like, I’m happy. I’m like, “This is awesome. I get to read about email marketing.” I am reading in the sense that I’m trying to grow that company, the brand. I really try to stay focused on that company when I’m there.

It is a cool thing because as I’m learning about them, I’m learning about what I can do with my blog, and as I’m learning more about my blog and SEO or whatever, I’m able to influence the W–2 job. I think sometimes-

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a win-win it’s like the best win-win.

Vinny DelGiudice: I really feel that way. I never feel like now I’m doing both things all the time so I’m burnt out. They’re different enough where I get to do a lot of the things that I like throughout the day and I feel very fulfilled in how it all came to fruition.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. One of the things that I love about that too is you talked about essentially what you were doing was building an incredible portfolio and then you were able to use that and say, “Here’s the case study for why I know video and why I know photography and why I know digital media because I’ve been doing it for five years.”

Can you talk about in that conversation, if you can identify it, what the variables were with your online content that were perceived as most valuable? What was it?

Vinny DelGiudice: I think it was just the fact that I was somebody who took nothing and made it something. I think that’s when you’re a content creator, we base a lot of our value on what people will pay us or what people will give us for what we’re doing. We create a lot of stuff. When you look back at a portfolio like that, you are able to say something you really built from the ground up.

How you knew nothing and then you learned it all and were able to create something. I think that was the most valuable thing that when I was interviewing that I heard was that all the questions were leading to the point where I was able to do this from zero to go to here. Creating that I think was important.

Bjork Ostrom: I think people underestimate how valuable it is in the marketplace to take something abstract and from there, build it into a thing that people can interact with. I think for somebody, my guess is when you’re hired into a role, the one that you were hired into, for somebody to look at that and say, “Hey, that means that we could give you something abstract like, Hey, we’re interested in growing search traffic.”

You are somebody who can take that and say, “Okay, I’m going to get after it and I’m going to figure it out.” That’s a relatively uncommon thing in the world for somebody to be able to take a general direction, general thought, “Here’s where we want to go,” and work to make it exist within the world.

That’s so much of what we’re doing as creators is we’re coming up with an abstract vision of here’s what we want our site to focus on and the audience to be like and the focus for the niche. Now, we’re going to learn WordPress. We’re going to learn Instagram. We’re going to learn YouTube to build something around this and make it a successful thing in the world.

When you think of these parallel tracks, do you have a vision of what your, and if this is a chapter, do you have an ideal vision of how that evolves and what the next chapter looks like? Do you feel like, “Hey, this feels pretty good to be where I am right now. I can grow my site, I can reinvest back into it. I can create a following while also doing work that I love.”

Vinny DelGiudice: I am trying to look at it more that way where I’m very much present in what I’m doing day to day, where I felt like with speech, I was just trying to get done. I felt like every day was the same. Where now I’m chipping away and growing things. It’s just a different perspective that I have with this job and with the blog now.

I feel like the differences is that I’m able to look at it, I can grow my blog now. I can put the time in and let it grow instead of being like, “This needs to happen now and I need this to be here.” I’m just excited to see where it will go. I think there’s so many things I want to learn. When I start getting into SEO now I’m like, “I need to learn more.”

All I can do is read about it and learn about it. Sometimes I want to just be in video editing mode and I want to learn more about transitions and this and that, and I let myself go into those funnels where I just try to learn as much about one thing at a time as I can. Sometimes I get burnt out from that thing and I keep doing it, but I move on to the next thing that I want to learn. I feel like these two jobs are letting me deep dive more.

Bjork Ostrom: I’ve referenced this a couple of times on the podcast, but there’s this composer, Charles Ives, and he was this experimental composer, and so he’d have these weird songs or symphonies or whatever they would be that he would do. One of them, if I’m remembering would be like the person would come out and smash the piano with a sledgehammer, that was it.

I think he was also the one who had somebody come out and the composer would just sit at the piano but not actually play anything or a certain period of time. That was one of the songs, but he was an insurance salesman and what it allowed him to do was to release the pressures of income from the thing that he was most excited about.

I think for a lot of us, there’s a benefit to crafting our life in a way where the thing that we’re most excited about and interested in doesn’t have to be the thing that we have to fully serve. It feels like what you have is a really good balance, which is like you have this client, it’s a W–2 job that is the primary thing that you’re focusing on, which is also in the realm of what you’re interested in, which is great.

Then, you also have this kind of playground that you can create content, build a following, but it’s also revenue generating. That’s a really fun game to play when you put time into it and you see a little bit of a boost of traffic or you see more email signups, but you don’t have the pressure of, “I need this thing to perform at this level.”

If it drops, there’s because of a Google algorithm update that suddenly you’re going to lose a bunch of sleep. Does that feel accurate when you think of the balance that you have right now between those two things?

Vinny DelGiudice: Yeah, it feels like I’m just not letting everything ride on this one thing, which I think is important in anything. You never want to have everything on something like Instagram where it can all fall apart so quickly. You just never know with some of these things. I always hear your email list is the most important thing.

Lately, that’s the thing that I’ve been like, I need to grow this and that’s what I focus on or whatever. I think it’s a cool experience to be able to have something that’s growing, be able to have this competitive finance piece to it where I get to say, “Okay, here’s what I did this month. Here’s the way it created income.”

It definitely makes it a little bit more fun when you’re able to switch from your focus of followers or engagement or this when you can really pinpoint this is how much income it generated, and now we’re talking about numbers that can matter to you and your family.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. Let’s say there’s somebody out there and they’re in between. They’re trying to figure out what does my next chapter look like? They don’t know what the next steps are. After you having gone through it relatively recently within the last year, half year, what would your advice be to them as they’re out there trying to figure things out?

Vinny DelGiudice: Identifying what you’re good at is so important and being able to show somebody how that will help them. I think that’s how I was able to explain why they should hire a digital media assistant or a photographer who has no history of being a digital media person or a photographer.

I think knowing what you’re good at and being able to really tell people about it and explain why that works for you. I think you said before, trying to know or work on what skill you want to develop. That’s so important when we’re thinking about content creation because there’s so many skills that you can have and so many different ways to create.

I think identifying what you like and just putting in the hours into that can help you make those decisions when it comes to where am I going to go next? When you know, you know you said that before, you do know what you want to do or when you see what you want to do, you’ll be able to fall into place with it.

Bjork Ostrom: Identifying where you feel the pull. I think even when you sit down during the day, what are the things that you’re most excited to get to? Are you excited to get to video editing or do you dread it? Are you excited when you get to tinker with your website’s HTML and CSS, or do you dread it?

Are you excited when you get to do comments and interact with people? Using those as little indicators for where there is a draw for you I think is really great. I’m pointing up on my bookshelf, but there’s that book Designing Your Life that I mentioned before. They also have one that I haven’t read after called Designing Your Work Life.

One of the exercises they have is with each thing that you have in your day, whether it be a meeting about a certain subject or a task that you’re working on or a project writing it down and then they have a little fuel gauge empty to full, and what does it look like? What did that activity look like for you?

Was it like gas tank full or this was really great or gas tank empty? My guess is for you when you’re in the season of doing speech pathology, towards the end, it was probably a lot of gas tank empty like, “I’m getting through it, I’m doing it.” You’re probably good at it, but for whatever reason, it was draining.

Now, it sounds like a lot of the things that you’re doing throughout the day are gas tank full. I feel like in the conversations that we have, this podcast can be a success if we can help facilitate the transition that people have from less gas tank empty more gas tank full days. It sounds like you’ve pulled that off in a really cool way.

Vinny DelGiudice: I think what’s really important to realize too is that every time I edit a video, I’m not gas tank full. Sometimes I’m like, “Oh god, I would rather be in my bed than be sitting here dredging this chicken Parmesan video at 5:45. I think it’s important to recognize sometimes you don’t want to work, and this is work.

Everything that you do with your blog, yeah, you can say you love it and it’s what you’re meant to do and all this, but it’s still work and work sucks at the end of the day. Everybody wants to be relaxing. I want to sleep. I look forward to a life where I can sleep eight hours, and that’s not realistic in content creation right now where I have a full-time job.

I want to grow it and sometimes I’m psyched in about doing certain things and sometimes I’m not. I think managing that “gas tank” quote unquote to being like, today I am really writing well, so that’s where I’m going to put my energy because that’s where I’m feeling fulfilled, and maybe tomorrow I’ll get more editing done if that’s where my brain’s at.

Being able to switch it up and not let yourself be a one trick pony, I guess, where you have to be doing this thing to make yourself happy.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Vinny DelGiudice: Anything can eventually feel tough to get through or gas tank empty.

Bjork Ostrom: I think it’s a really good point. Steven Pressfield wrote this book called The War of Art. In it he talks about this idea of the resistance and he talks about it specifically for writers. I think it’s an important concept in that even if it’s something that we know we want to be doing, let’s say we know we want to be a writer or photographer or we want to do video, we can still in pursuit of that have resistance, which is like, “I really want to do this, but I’m going to do the laundry first.”

There’s this part of us that just resists the thing that we actually really want to do, and it is because sometimes it’s really hard to do. Especially, if you’re doing it in the margins and you’re trying to make it work and you have a busy schedule, I think it’s important that you called that out and totally agree that it’s not always hunky-dory, feels really good.

Vinny DelGiudice: For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: … gas tank full. That’s great. Super inspiring, Vinny, to talk to you to see your transition in a relatively short amount of time when we had that conversation whenever it was like June, July, August when it was warm out. It’s inspiring for me to see you evolve your career. If people want to connect with you, where’s the best place for them to do that and reach out, connect, whether it’s shoot a quick message or follow along with what you’re up to?

Vinny DelGiudice: Yeah, for sure. You can find me on Instagram @vindelgiudice. Then my website is alwaysfromscratch.com. You can always email me at vinny@alwaysfromscratch.com that’s where you’ll find me.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Vinny, thanks so much for coming on, sharing your story. Super great to connect.

Vinny DelGiudice: Awesome.

Emily Walker: Hey, there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode. We really appreciate it. If you liked this episode or enjoy the show, we would really appreciate you leaving a review or rating wherever you listen to your podcast episodes. Ratings and reviews help get the show in front of new listeners and help us grow our little show into something even bigger.

We read each and every review and it makes us so happy to hear when you’re enjoying the podcast or what you would like us to improve or change in upcoming episodes. All you have to do is find the Food Blogger Pro podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it’s on Apple or Spotify or another player and enter a rating and review.

While you’re there, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss a new episode. We really appreciate it so much, and it makes such a huge difference for our show, so thanks in advance. That’s all we have for you today. Have a great week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. You spend a lot of time on your blog content, from planning, to recipe testing, to writing, to promoting, but do you know if each of your posts are bringing you the most traffic they possibly can? With Clariti, you can see information about each and every post, which is automatically synced from WordPress, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console, so that you can make well-educated decisions about where your existing content may need a little attention. Think broken links, or broken images, no internal links, or missing alt text. You can also use information that Clariti pulls about sessions, page views, and users to fuel the creation of new content, because you’ll be able to see which types of posts are performing best for you. Get access to keyword ranking, click-through rate, impressions, and optimization data for all of your posts today with Clariti, listeners to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up. To sign up, simply go to Clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, we are chatting with an OG food blogger, Katie Higgins from the blog, Chocolate Covered Katie. Katie first started creating content online in 2006, and has been making a living from her blog for a long time now. In this conversation, she shares a little bit more about how she started monetizing her site, and how she has persevered through all of the different iterations of what it looks like to publish content online. Through the years, she’s been really intentional about leaning into the parts of food blogging that she enjoys, like content creation, photography, and SEO, while letting things like video and sponsored content fall by the wayside.

She has a really amazing perspective on the privilege that it is to be able to make a living from doing something that you love, and she wants to protect the things that she loves at all costs. Katie also shares a little bit about how she’s struggled with imposter syndrome through the years, and what she’s currently working on with Chocolate Covered Katie to make her brand and her business stronger and better for her followers. It’s an awesome interview, we’ve been following Katie for a long time, and we’re thrilled to have her on the podcast, so I’ll just let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Katie, welcome to the podcast.

Katie Higgins: Thank you so much, I’m really excited to be here. This is the first podcast I’ve ever done, so.

Bjork Ostrom: All right, here we go. First podcast you’ve ever done, but it’s not like you’re new to this world of creating content on the internet, you have been doing that for a really long time. You actually started in high school, is that right? Tell us about that.

Katie Higgins: So, I started right after high school, basically, it was around the time of MySpace and Xanga sites, and everybody was making those websites just for fun, and I never expected it to be a moneymaking thing at all, or a job, I was still trying to decide what I wanted to do. I was like, maybe I’ll go to veterinary school, maybe I’ll go to law school, I really had no idea. But I started this blog as… And originally it was a Xanga site.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s so awesome. I don’t think we’ve ever done an interview where somebody started as a Xanga site, I love it. My friends had Xangas, we all had this little network of, Lindsay had a Xanga, and it was essentially, how our friend group used it, was we would just post updates of what was happening in college-

Katie Higgins: Yes, exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: … and for some of us, we were still in high school. It was X-A-N-G-A, is that right? Xanga?

Katie Higgins: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Katie Higgins: Yeah, and mine was very embarrassing, I think it was blue background with lime green, at one point, text. So, it was one of those embarrassing websites that you’re glad you can’t find on the internet anymore.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. So, when we were publishing, it was essentially these little updates, life updates, was it similar for you? Or at the time, was it still around this niche of food? Or did you find that you gravitated-

Katie Higgins: Absolutely life updates, yeah. So, my friends all had them, we kind of did life updates together, and only people I knew would comment on them. I think my grandmother found it at one point, which was very strange. So, I got a comment from her. But it was definitely not people I didn’t know. And the time that it changed was, there was a restaurant in… I was newly vegan, and there was a vegan restaurant in Philadelphia where I was going to college, that I posted about their cake. And somehow,, all of a sudden these people that I had no idea who they were, they started leaving comments on my Xanga. I’m guessing maybe the restaurant posted, reposted it, or something. But then I was like, oh, that’s really sweet, so I felt like I had to return the favor and post on their websites. And the internet was so small back then, that we just made a community, where they’d comment on mine, and then I felt like I should comment back on theirs, and we became really, like friends. From then on…

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s interesting, it’s kind of like that was social media.

Katie Higgins: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like, you post something to a website, people comment on it, and then you check somebody else’s website and comment on that, and it’s like this early version of high friction in the sense that there’s not a feed, and you have to go to a website to check it. What I love about that is, I think that there’s something to be said about if you’re interested in building a thing, sometimes you should start with what are you naturally doing? And for you, it was like, it’s not like you had to be convinced to post content online, you were just doing it.

And you were doing it probably because you liked doing it, and so for us as creators in the world, I think a good place to start is to look at where do we find ourselves naturally going, and then experimenting a little bit, and saying, okay, if I post about this, what happens? It’s a little bit of a playground, and it sounds like when you posted food content on your Xanga, there was a little bit of a feedback loop that told you, hey, there’s some higher engagement, or interest in this type of content. Was that the first thing that opened the door to food as a potential subject?

Katie Higgins: Yeah, exactly. And when people ask me, how do I start a blog to make money? How do I do this full time? I never really know what to say because I did it not thinking that it was going to be a job. So, I did it because I loved it, and I didn’t make any money at all for the first, I don’t know, three or four years I think. And really, I was doing it, I wasn’t even posting about food, I don’t think I posted recipes for a while. But I’d comment on people’s sites, and they had recipes, so then I’d try their recipes, and I think that’s how it first started, was I would try other people’s recipes and take pictures of that. And then, maybe three or four years in a company called Food Buzz, they emailed me, and they said, would you like to put ads on your site?

And I thought it was spam, I was like, this is… I was going to delete it. But I saw, because I was friends with people who had blogs, I asked them about it, I was like, oh, did you get the spam message too? And they said, oh no, we’re making maybe $100 a year from these ads. And they were very not intrusive at the time. So, I looked on their site, and I was like, oh, okay, $100 a year is pretty nice, you can have a few jars of peanut butter for that. So, I put them on, and I think the first year I did probably make $100, and the second year I made a little bit more, and then I was sent a tax form, and I realized, oh, wow, this is actually making-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s official. When you get a tax form, that’s when you know it’s official.

Katie Higgins: Yeah. The government has found you. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So, was that still on your Xanga site?

Katie Higgins: No. So, I don’t remember when it was, maybe two years in, everybody else had these very clean Blogger sites, and I actually forgot about that until just now that I’m saying it. I switched over to Blogger first, and then I think a year after that, or two years after that, a lot of people were switching to WordPress, and I was like, oh, that’s even cleaner looking. And I like the clean minimalist type look. And Blogger’s fine, but the people I knew were using WordPress, and I was like, oh, I really like these features that it has, and it seemed really easy to use. So, I switched over to that, and I’ve been on WordPress ever since.

Bjork Ostrom: So, this was, just to understand the arc of it. The first time you published a blog post, let’s say it’s at Xanga, if we’re going all the way back to the arc of that, it’s 2007, 2008, is that right?

Katie Higgins: 2007, yeah. I think Xanga was either 2006 or 2007. Now, I’m dating myself, but yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And when I think back to our friend group, it’s kind around that same time. I think it was probably 2004 to 2008 is when they had those Xanga sites. Switched to Blogger, eventually switched to WordPress, you start to realize, oh, you can create $10 a month of income from putting these… And so you’re starting to get a little bit of a understanding that, hey, this can be a thing. At the same time, going to school, you’re studying, trying to figure out what’s next. At what point did it tip into, oh, actually this is actually something that I can create substantial, or create a career out of? Substantial income or a career?

Katie Higgins: Yeah. So, I started at Bryn Mawr, and then I transferred to SMU for reasons not related to the blog, but I was trying to do the blog and… The blog just for fun. I was trying to do the blog, and then also do college, and I was taking classes and things that I had no interest in, some of them. Some of the classes just because of requirements. And I’d be like, well, why am I taking architecture of the city, spending money on this class? And all I really wanted to do was make more content for the blog, which was now making a substantial amount of money.

And I didn’t think that it could be a career at that point, but I was also like, what if this is something that if I put more time and effort into it, it could become a career? But I didn’t have time because I was doing college classes, and I think I… It’s hard to even remember. I think I dropped out of college when I think I had one and a half years left. I eventually went and finished it online, because my mom was very sad that I didn’t have a degree.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Katie Higgins: But yeah, you can always go back to college, that was my thinking.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s different when you’re a student and you’re weighing the positives and negatives of, well, if I could spend an additional 30 to 40 hours a week building this thing, which is already creating income-

Katie Higgins: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: … the cost of college isn’t just the cost, it’s also the opportunity cost of not continuing to build a thing that already has some momentum. So, my understanding of your story, that continued to build, the site continued to get substantial amount of traffic. Talk about that stage, where you’ve dropped out of college, now you’re working on the site, and you have this exciting momentum, and multiple millions of page views, right? At some point it gets to that point where it’s this substantial amount of traffic that you’ve built. What was that like?

Katie Higgins: So, that is one of the reasons why I think I wasn’t as afraid to drop out of college, it wasn’t as much of a risk because the site was already making money. So, I was already making a good amount that I could live off of, and that’s why I said, if I wanted to go back to college, I could. But it was making an amount of money, and there were people who had, I remember seeing someone who said she had 700 page views a day. Whoa, that’s a crazy amount. And then, Pinterest hit the scene, I think around 2010 maybe. And back in the day of Pinterest starting, there weren’t that many people who were posting things on it.

And I didn’t even know about it, I didn’t have a Pinterest account, but someone started posting, or a bunch of people, just regular readers, started posting my recipes on Pinterest, and all of a sudden I was getting 20,000 page views just on one post from them. The cookie dough dip that I have was one of the first ones to go viral on Pinterest. And as I said, I didn’t even have a Pinterest account at that time, but it really took it to a whole different level. It was a lot of fun.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s interesting to think back to that point, Pinch of Yum was in a similar place, where it’s like, didn’t have a Pinterest account, but benefited greatly from Pinterest. There was people who’d come and pin the content, and would come back to the site, and that being a really great thing.

Katie Higgins: And I’m forever grateful to those people.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. So, one of the things I’d be interested to hear you reflect on, you’re in a similar camp to I would say us, and maybe a handful of other people, where you started publishing content in a world where… In a world that’s very different than 2024. The 2024 world of content publishing looks different for sure than 2010. But even six years ago, it looks different. Where, Pinterest maybe is a little bit different, in terms of a traffic source, it’s gone down, it’s maybe not quite as valuable, and search optimization is just a very different game than it was when we all started.

Katie Higgins: Oh, yeah, so much.

Bjork Ostrom: And yet, you’re still publishing content, you’re still showing up. How have you persevered through all the different iterations of what it looks like to publish content online? What has that looked like for you, I guess, is the question? Because I think it’s different for everybody.

Katie Higgins: Yeah. Every time there’s a change, Facebook goes through a change, I remember everybody got all upset when Facebook announced that they weren’t going to show people’s content to all of their followers anymore. We always cringe whenever social media goes through a change. Pinterest is still my main source of traffic, but I get a lot of people who are… There are a lot of people from the olden days, from the beginning. There are people who will say, oh, I followed you since your Blogger site, and I’m like, oh, thank you so much, I’m so sorry that you had to go through all of those lime green and whatever other colors I thought were a good idea at the time. Then Instagram came onto the scene, and for a while I was posting on Instagram every day, and then I realized that I’m really not getting that much traffic from Instagram, so. I’m not the kind of person who also puts herself out there, I really prefer to have the recipes be the main thing.

So, I see all accounts where the reels do really well if they’re in the reels, I’m just like, I don’t, as you can see from my video, I don’t really know video very well. So, that’s not… But I’ve had to learn in terms of advancing, every technology is always changing, and video is one thing that I’ve struggled to keep up with from everyone else. Search engine optimization is actually fun for me, because you do all the, research a keyword, and you find all the related images, and I think that’s a lot of fun. But yeah, video is something that I am struggling with.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think everybody has, it’s almost like when I think of sports analogies are always a little bit eye rolly, but I think of football, and I think of that as a team sport, and how different everybody’s skills are that play football, and yet they’re all football players. You have somebody who’s really good at kicking, and then you have somebody who’s 3% body fat, and 300 pounds, and they’re like this incredible defensive player, and then you have a quarterback… All of these different people, they’re all football players. And I think the same thing could apply to people who are content creators or publishers, where it’s like-

Katie Higgins: Absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: … we all have these very unique and different skills. And to contrast that, Lindsay loves creating content, video content, it’s one of the things that she really looks forward to, and enjoys, is what does it look like to come in with her friend Landon, who does video? They shoot two or three, four videos a day, and then edit those, and sharing those, and that’s a really fun thing for her. And if it was like, and now we’re going to do search optimization, keyword research, she’d be like, no, please, no, just soul sucking. And that is different for everybody, and so part of it is finding what is your expertise, what is the thing that you want to be an expert on, and what is the thing that is easiest for you to do? And it sounds like for you, one of those things is content creation in the world of search optimization. Is that true, or what do you feel like… What has been the throughline for you as a content creator in terms of things that you can develop expertise in, and you feel a pull towards?

Katie Higgins: I really liked the photography, which is funny because when I first started out, I knew nothing about photography, and I hated it, I always blamed my camera, because I’d see everybody else have these beautiful images, and mine were always dark, and I’d be like, oh, it’s the camera, or oh, it’s the lighting. And then I read my camera manual front to back, and I started to get better at photography. So, that is one of my favorites, but that’s also one of the reasons that I don’t like video, is that, A, I’m not very good at it yet, but B, if you have a crumb out of place or something in the video, or the colors are off, you can’t just go in and edit that, you have to reshoot the whole thing. But yeah, so I like the photography, I think one of the reasons that I’ve been able to make this a career and stay around so long is because I write about what I really love, which is… And I really just really love food.

I see a lot of people on TikTok go viral doing the, what do you call it, clickbait, and that is just not something that I want to do, but I also think they might get a hit, they might get a few hits, they might become famous for a little while, but I think people understand that they might try a clickbait recipe, I’ve seen the one for garlic, where it’s like, shake this garlic for 30 seconds and the skins will fall off. And it got 10 million views, I was one of them, I tried it, and it does not work at all. So, that guy doesn’t have credibility anymore, whoever it is, even if he has 10 million views. Whereas, what I want to do is make recipes that people will try it, and then they’ll be like, oh, this is really good, and they’ll know that they can come back to my site and have a good experience again and again, not just a clickbait type experience.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So much of it is about trust, and it’s like, it’s really easy in the world of content creation to see something that maybe is viral, that you could have, that you could cash in on, a quick hit. But some of the trust type content feels like it’s a little bit of a slower burn, it takes more time, like it should with building trust. But, like you said, what that results in is somebody being like, hey, I’ve followed you for 10 years, and I keep coming back… And there also is, in the world of publishing, direct traffic. It’s people who type in-

Katie Higgins: And word of mouth.

Bjork Ostrom: … your website, word of mouth, bookmarking, people still bookmark stuff, and that’s-

Katie Higgins: Like the app on their phone.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s all a part of what we’re doing is, in audience development, building a following is also making sure that there’s people who trust what you do. So, I think that’s such an important thing to point out.

Katie Higgins: Yeah, I know you guys are a very trusted brand too, when people see your recipes, they know this will turn out-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure.

Katie Higgins: … people actually test their recipes, they’re not just doing a… And I’ve done the two ingredient this, three ingredient that, I try not to do it very often because I feel weird putting out something that’s not actually a recipe. But if it’s something fun, like, I have three ingredient coffee truffles that have some other variations that can make them different. Those are fun, that’s not just, here’s this one ingredient… I don’t want to say anything, and throw anybody under the bus, so I’m not going to say anything. But you know the difference between clickbait and a recipe you’ve actually tried.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, totally. And you can have a really good simple recipe, like two or three ingredients, but it needs to be something that you’ve tested and-

Katie Higgins: And something that not everybody knows.

Bjork Ostrom: … you care about what it os. Yeah. Yep. So, you talked about really enjoying SEO, like researching, coming up with a plan, but also, really focusing on content that you love. And it feels like a lot of times people think of that as binary, it’s one or the other. You’re either doing search optimization and you’re finding a piece of content that you can potentially rank for, but maybe you’re not super excited about it, or you do inspired content, that maybe doesn’t have a lot of search opportunity, but you’re doing it because you love it. So, what does that look like for you? How do you balance those two things knowing that both of those things are important for you?

Katie Higgins: I think I do a lot where it’s not going to rank for anything, and I know that, and I’m like, oh, well, that’s okay, the photos will be fun, it’ll be fun to write, people will see that I really love this recipe. I’m trying to think of one in particular, I can’t at the moment. Well, the coffee truffles, that, for whatever reason, that’s on my mind. That’s not really getting me any traffic, but they were really cute. You put the knife through them, and they’re pretty. So, stuff like that I will do, cakes, I really like doing. I’m working on a vegan coconut cake that, it doesn’t seem to get much traffic, that search term, but cakes are really fun to photograph.

And then, I’ll do things like, I wasn’t really excited about yogurt dip when I first did it, but I saw that it had a lot of… I actually didn’t get anything on that, so I think I’m number 30 or something, when you Google that, so it doesn’t matter anyway. But once I started doing… The actual research is fun for me. So, it doesn’t even matter if it’s a recipe that I’m not all that interested in, just the research part itself is fun for me no matter what it is.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Even if it’s not something where you’re trying to find the ultimate SEO play, it’s still fun to look into it to understand it, and you might come out of it and say, hey, I did some research on this, I realized there’s not a huge search opportunity for it, and yet I’m still going to do it because I like it-

Katie Higgins: I’ve done that too.

Bjork Ostrom: … and it’s interesting. Yeah. So, what does that process look like? What are the tools that you use, and what have you found to be most helpful in the research and analysis stage?

Katie Higgins: Honestly, I know there are tools that you can buy, like SEM Rush or Semrush, I have not done any of that stuff. I will literally just take a term of something I thought of, like protein banana bread, and I will put it into Google, I will see what the Google says are the common search terms, and then I will see what the common image search terms keywords are, at the top of the image search. And then, I’ll add all those to a post draft, and I’ll see which ones of those will fit naturally into my post, and just go from there. And sometimes it works, like protein banana bread, I’m getting a lot of traffic from, and like I mentioned, the yogurt dip, I’m not getting any traffic from that, but I still like doing the pictures so. And it tasted good, so I found a new fun recipe that I like.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So, basic idea is, you say, hey, I have this idea for a certain recipe, and I’m going to use Google to refine it, not only maybe the actual name of it, but also what content should be included in that recipe, by seeing what additional information Google surfaces when you search for it, is that more or less?

Katie Higgins: Right. Yeah. And it gives you a starting off point for what you want to say about it too. I used to write a lot more personal, which was fun for me, but a lot of times I’m just making recipes just for content creation, not for a party, or I made this for my mom’s birthday. That is not always the case anymore. So, a lot of times my recipe blog posts will literally just be, here are the ingredients, here’s how to make it, here are the common questions… There’s no personal story. It’s really sad to me, because I loved doing the personal stories, but also, a lot of times people will write in, and they get all mad about the personal stories, which I’m just like, there are cookbooks that exist for this, if you want just a cookbook, no ads, free recipes. So, that’s frustrating for me because I liked the personal stories, but I know…

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s interesting, we’re coming into, I think, an interesting time with generative AI, content that can potentially produce some of those things, and it almost feels like there is a case to be made for story to exist, as a competitive advantage, like story connection, I think a little bit of that trust. But it’s hard when you’re trying to balance this search optimization world, where I think a lot of people have been coached on, what are the alternatives to banana bread? H2 header, and then you put in alternatives to banana bread. Because it works, that’s the hard part with it. But then, as we’re entering into this stage of some information potentially being available via generative AI search on Google, it’ll be interesting to see. I don’t think we know the answer yet, but I think there’s maybe a case to be made about the value of story coming back.

Katie Higgins: Yeah, I think you’re right. Even on Instagram, I found that… And I hate it because I really am shy, and I don’t like being the center of attention. But I found that in Instagram stories, if I make the first story a picture or a video with my face in it, it will get 10 times the engagement, and I think that’s just the algorithm being like, oh, person, let’s show that to more people. And as I said, I hate it, but it works, and so… And that’s another reason I don’t do as many personal stories in the blog post, is I don’t want Google to be like, oh, this is not relevant to chocolate banana bread because it’s talking about someone’s birthday. And it’s sad, but if you want to be a successful… This is my job, so there’s some balance. I want it to be successful-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure.

Katie Higgins: … but I also don’t want to be irrelevant.

Bjork Ostrom: It can’t just be based on what you feel like doing, it’s like what’s working, and responding based on what you see.

Katie Higgins: Yeah. But I don’t even, honestly, I don’t even know if I do the H2 header… I keep hearing people say H2 headers. I have always done H3 headers because… And it works for me, so whenever I see people saying certain things, I’m like, oh, should I be doing that? And then, I just remind myself what I’m doing is working for me, so don’t change anything as long as it’s working.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

This episode is sponsored by CultivateWP, specifically a new offering they have called Cultivate Go. So, CultivateWP, the agency or the company, focuses on designing and developing food blogs, and it was founded by Bill Erickson who’s this incredible WordPress developer, we know him, because as I’ll share, we’ve worked with him, and Dwayne Smith, who’s this incredible designer. And Bill developed a version of Pinch of Yum before we had our own internal team, and it was one of the fastest growing versions of the site that we’ve had. So, as you know in this industry, word spreads quickly about people who do good work, and Bill and Dwayne have really filled their calendar over the past few years with doing these custom websites for some of the biggest food sites on the web. You can see the list on their website. And they would create these fully custom designs, but they would cost literally multiple tens of thousands of dollars.

And that makes a lot of sense if you’re a site that gets multiple millions of page views, but what they realized is there’s a lot of really successful sites who need the best technology in the world to power them, but can’t justify spending multiple tens of thousands of dollars. So, that’s why they launched Cultivate Go. It’s a semi-custom theme design, and white glove site setup. So, you choose one of the core themes, they have multiple options, and then their team customizes the logo, the brand colors, the topography, so it matches your brand exactly. And then, they set it up on a staging environment, where you can test it out, get a feel for it, and can launch your site within just one week.

And the cost is only $5,000. And here’s the thing, you have the exact same features, functionality, and support as the themes that cost up to 10 times as much as a Cultivate Go theme. So, that means your Cultivate Go site can compete on an even technological playing field with the biggest food sites in the world. If you’re interested in checking it out, go to FoodBloggerPro.com/go, or you could just search Cultivate Go in Google. Thanks so much to CultivateWP for sponsoring this episode.

What else would you say is in that category? What are the things that are working for you, when you look at what you’re doing, on a day-to-day basis, week to week, year to year, what are the variables that you consider to be like, hey, this is something that’s working?

Katie Higgins: Oh, there’s a puppy,

Bjork Ostrom: There’s Sage. Yeah.

Katie Higgins: Aw.

Bjork Ostrom: For those who aren’t watching live, Lindsay just did a dog drop-off, our dog, Sage, is spending the afternoon with me at the office so she just snuck into the video.

Katie Higgins: Yeah, so things that are working, just in general, I get imposter syndrome all the time, like when I look at you guys, when I look at a lot of the other bloggers that I’ve grown up… Contemporaries, who I feel like, oh my gosh, they are way ahead of me in terms of their knowledge, in terms of their skills, especially with video, but other things as well. And then I just remind myself, okay, I’ve not been on Oprah, I’ve not been on The Today Show, but I’m making enough money to have this be my living, and to do something that I love, and whether or not I become the most famous blogger, that’s never what I wanted. So, right now, I’m able to do what I love, and I don’t have to change anything to do that, and that makes me really happy. And that reminds me, I guess it grounds me, it reminds me that even if I don’t have the most skills… I don’t have to have the best skills overnight either. It’s fun to just learn new things every day.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, I love that. There’s two things that I think of as it relates to that. One is this idea, it’s what we’ve named our company, TinyBit, but this idea of incremental improvement, and what does it look like to think strategically about showing up every day and saying, what are the things I’m interested in? What are the things that I want to learn? And spending time doing that, there’s incredible value beyond just financial, but a lot of times it can be financial, in moving in a direction that is the direction that you want to go. Like, I want to learn about this, I want to get better at this, and so I think that’s awesome to hear you talk about that. The other thing that I can relate to, and I think this is true for everybody, always looking at somebody else and being like, oh… It’s like this idea of compare and despair.

And I think it’s human nature to do that, and we all do it, no matter what industry we’re in, no matter, it could be a stay-at-Home dad looking at another stay at home dad, and be like, oh my gosh, how does he do that so well? Or a business owner, or blogger, publisher, Instagrammer. But one of the things that I’ve been doing that’s been super helpful is I wrote down what I’m calling Vivid Vision, there’s actually a book called Vivid Vision, but I haven’t read it, I just borrowed the title of it. And created what’s important to me, what is the game that I’m playing? Documented that, and every morning and night, I have a nightly and morning routine that I try and do. It’s not every night or morning that happens. But one of the steps is review my Vivid Vision. And it has to do with the things that are most important to me.

And some of them are like, I’m fully present with Lindsay, Lena, and Solvi. Like, okay, that’s part of how I’m playing the game. Or another one is, I’m eating generally healthy unprocessed food 90% of the time. Okay, that’s something that’s important to me. Or I’m generally not stressed as it relates to work. Okay, what does that look like, and how do I fold that in? And all of those things are to a great degree within my control, and that’s the game that I’m playing. So, you don’t have to give specific examples, but maybe you have some, for you, when you look at what’s important to you, what are some of those things that help you stay grounded? It sounds like learning the things that you want to learn is one of them. What are some of the other things?

Katie Higgins: Yeah, so similarly to you, a lot of them are things that I can control. So, for a while I was posting on Instagram every single day because I heard that that makes the algorithm like you better, and I would see other people who are posting multiple times a day, and I really, after I think a year and a half of doing that, I just burned out, and I just took off an entire month, and I was like, you know what? If I am not the best person on Instagram, I don’t have the most followers on Instagram… I have things outside of this blog that I want to do, that I want to… Like, family and friends.

And I’d be sitting somewhere at a place with friends, and I would have to stop and be like, oh, I have to do my Instagram now because it’s 1:00. And at some point, it is your job that you have to take time away from your friends to do your job, but it shouldn’t be all the time. So, family and friends ground me, and just things like… Yeah, is that… I’m trying to remember, sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, no, that’s great. It’s like, when you think of the game that you’re playing, like, in service of… And I think for anybody listening, the goal in this part of the conversation is just to help other people think about what is the game that they’re playing, and I think sometimes you can gather insight by hearing the game that other people are playing. And by that it’s like, what are the things that are important to you? And it sounds like one of those things is to have flexibility and autonomy a little bit.

Katie Higgins: Work like balance.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, balance, to say, you what? I could grow faster, I could have more followers, I could be bigger, but that’s not as important as balance, margin… And that’s an example. And for some people that’s not true, they do want to do everything they can to grow and scale and have more followers. But I think what’s important is for somebody like you, who hasn’t said that’s the most important thing, that we don’t look at them and be like, whoever that person is, that that’s not who we’re comparing ourselves against, because it’s like-

Katie Higgins: Right, absolutely.

Bjork Ostrom: … Oh, we’re playing different games.

Katie Higgins: To me, that’s not my main goal, to be famous, my main goal is to have fun with my blog. And the things that I have fun with are the photos, they’re not so much the videos, but I’m interested in learning more. I love learning. But I haven’t gone to a film studio, I haven’t hired anybody to do that stuff for me, because that’s not fun for me. Learning it myself is more fun and more fulfilling than something like buying followers, or… I’ve seen people over the years who become famous overnight, and then you learn that they paid for publicity, that kind of stuff. Which, I’m not judging anybody, they’re not taking away from me and my job, and me having fun, but for me, that wouldn’t be fulfilling because it took me a long time to slowly gain followers on certain things.

And it’s exciting for me to see the numbers go up, and be like, oh, this is because people really resonated with that recipe. And just to find which recipes people are interested in, that’s fun for me, sometimes it’s frustrating, because they’re not as interested in certain recipes that I’m interested in, or if you post something with pumpkin, people will always be excited. I really love sweet potato, but I feel like sweet potato pies, sweet potato pudding, those things don’t do as well. So, it’s like you said, it’s a balance between I’ll throw one in there every year, but I do also really… It’s fun when people are excited about your recipe, because then you get excited about it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s that fine line between this is something that I think will be really great, and this is something that I know other people will think is really great. And part of it comes back to what you were talking about before, which is like, this is a job, and so you have to figure out what are the things that potentially will get more traffic or engagement. How do you make that decision between, hey, I know this is going to do well, pumpkin as example, even though I might not be super inspired to create it? Do you have, hey, every other post is going to be an inspired post, versus an optimized for traffic post? Do you have any framework with that?

Katie Higgins: I think it’s something like that. But there’s also things where I’m not that excited about it in the beginning, like pumpkin smoothie, I was like, okay, that’s very basic, you just take pumpkin and a few other ingredients, it’s not something you have to bake, it’s probably something that’ll come out well the first time. So, it’s not really that creative. But then I actually started to do it, and I loved the photos, that was fun, I was sprinkling grain crackers on the video, and that was fun. And anything with whipped cream always looks good in photos. So, then I started to have fun with that too. And I think I dragged my feet for two or three years, which I do a lot, I’ll see something that I’m like, oh, that could be really lucrative, but I’m not really interested to try it.

So, pumpkin smoothie was one of those things, where I saw it a few years ago, I’m like, oh, I don’t have one of those, I should. Anyway, when I finally did it, people were excited about it, and as I said, it might not even be a recipe that I was initially excited about, but then when I see other people getting excited about it, that’s fun.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. That’s great.

Katie Higgins: And it is exciting.

Bjork Ostrom: So, when you look at your site right now, obviously we have our websites, and like we talked about in the beginning, that was kind of the main thing for a long period of time, and then you start to develop these other platforms, so they come into the mix. When you look at your business of publishing content, what would you consider to be the most important things for you right now? If you had to create a list of it’s one, two, and three, these are the most important elements for me right now within my business, what would those be?

Katie Higgins: Well, right now I’m really working hard, and I do not have a technology background, I wish that I did, but I used to be very technologically illiterate and I’m learning a lot every day. But my site, even for me, is sometimes frustrating with the amount of ads, and the way that it’s jumpy, and the user experience is just not where I want it to be. And I get very frustrated when I get a lot of comments about that, because I’m like, behind the scenes, I’m feeling frustrated too, so I don’t really know what to tell you guys. And you don’t always tell people because they don’t want the giant long version of everything you’re doing and why.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, here’s the reasons from an industry perspective why this is happening, yeah.

Katie Higgins: Exactly. But that’s one of the things that I really want to work on. And I’ve talked with my ad network about that, and we go back and forth, but that is one of the huge things that I want to fix. And if I knew how to fix it, I would. But there’s a lot of moving parts with that, and it’s not all about… Because people are like, oh, you’re making all this money, and that’s why you have the ads. What they don’t understand is sometimes fewer ads actually make more money because people want to stay on your site.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Katie Higgins: Sometimes with my own site, I’m just like, oh, it’s too much ads, and I understand people’s frustration, but I am working on it, I am trying to. So, that’s a big thing that I’m trying to work on, and fix right now, make the user experience better.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think a lot of people could relate to that. There’s always this balance of what does it look like to be smart about the potential to optimize for income with your site, while also being smart about user experience. And there’s this constant balancing act of, you could go all the way to having no ads or you could go all way to having-

Katie Higgins: Yeah, which I’ve thought about, not no ads, because what people don’t understand is that it takes a lot to run a big website, hosting costs are, just alone are a lot, and then ingredient testing, everything is a lot more money than people understand… Than some people understand, some people do understand it. And I get so many nice comments from people who are like, oh, we want to support you, which just makes me really happy. But yeah, I have thought about taking fewer ads, I also try to rely on what my ad network says, and their advice, because I know that they also want the site to do well and have the best user experience. So, as I said, I have to rely on them for fixing certain things because there are certain things I don’t know how to do.

But it is something that I would rather have a site that people want to go to and make less money. Still have money to have a comfortable living, but it’s not my goal in life to be super famous and super rich, I just want to do something that I love and continue to be able to do it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. So, there’s your site, obviously that’s an important piece. What about, you talked about Pinterest being a really important source of traffic, is that something that you are intentionally looking at being active on Pinterest, or is it still these people who are coming to your site, pinning, and getting traffic from that? How does Pinterest play into it for you?

Katie Higgins: It’s actually really funny, someone from Pinterest contacted me last year, might have contacted you guys as well, for a Pinterest program, and I got to talk to her once a month. And the one thing that she told me, first off, was she was like, I’m surprised at how much you don’t pin. She said, there are people who are doing hundreds of pins a day, and they’ve automated it, and I’ll do one or two pins a day. But I’m still getting a ton of traffic from them, I think because people rein stuff, because people are pinning stuff to begin with. I get traffic from old pins, I get a lot of traffic from very old recipes that people put on Pinterest originally. And I’ll be embarrassed by that, because I’m like, oh, I don’t even remember that recipe. And then I go to that post from 2010, and really needs to be updated. But yeah, so Pinterest is something that I also feel like I should work on, but I’m definitely not going to do hundreds of pins a day, I just, it’s the work-life balance thing again.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, one of the things that’s interesting about Pinterest, for anybody who’s on an ad network like Mediavine or Raptive, the traffic from Pinterest is really valuable traffic. If you look, you can go into a dashboard and see RPM from traffic source, and Pinterest is almost always the highest in terms of the amount that ad networks are willing to pay, and so, for those of us who are considering, where do we try and source traffic from? Obviously, people talk about search a lot, but if you had half the amount of traffic from Pinterest as you did Google, you could potentially still make the same amount because it’s such valuable traffic, for whatever reason. I don’t know if the buyer intent is different with Pinterest traffic, or what it is, but that’d be something for anybody who does have an ad network to go in and look at, and think strategically about, because there are some cool opportunities to try and be strategic with increasing Pinterest traffic, because that traffic is apparently valuable traffic.

Katie Higgins: I actually didn’t know that. I’m very bad with analytics, especially since Google Analytics went away, and I didn’t bother to learn the new one.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, GA4. Yeah.

Katie Higgins: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. How about platforms like Instagram? So, you have over 500,000 followers on Instagram, what does that represent for you within your business? Is it a place to drive traffic to your website? Do you work with sponsors? Is that something that you do? Talk a little bit about that.

Katie Higgins: I rarely work with sponsors, I did a few posts, or… Well, I rarely work with sponsors, years ago I would do more sponsored posts, but I found that sponsored brands in the food industry don’t have as much money to spend to make it even worth all the effort, and they have a specific idea of how they want their stuff to go. So, they’ll say, oh, we want you to post on Friday, which to me is not a very good day to post. Then I’ll try to talk them out of it, and they’ll be like, no, we really want you to do this, we really want our product in the picture in the front. And I’m like, I don’t think that’s going to do very well.

So, I just like having more control than having a brand tell me what they think is best, which, it might be best for their audience in a different platform, but I know what works well with my audience, and I’m just like, I don’t think this kind of picture is going to do really well with my audience, but if you let me do this, if you give me more creative control, I can get you… I’ve actually thought about it, and I’ve never done it, but I’ve thought about literally saying to brands that I think will do really well, like a product that I really love, hey, if I can get you this many new signups or whatever they’re looking for, people buy your product, what is that worth to you?

Because there are products that I’m just so excited about, and I really know other people will be excited about as well, but in terms of doing sponsored posts, I see so many people saying, oh, I love this product, and then the next week they’re saying that about another thing. That I’m just like, you know what? I make enough money with ads, that I don’t have the energy, I don’t have the interest, it’s not fun for me… Sponsored posts are just not fun because I don’t have the creativity, so I just prefer not to do them.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. The creative control piece, I think for anybody who’s done sponsored content would really be able to relate, it just feels so different when you’re co-creating, and trying to co-craft what the brand will look like, because it’s your brand, it’s their brand, and it’s really hard to navigate that. And I think there are those companies or brands that do have a budget, and a substantial budget, but what’s hard to find is the brand that has a budget that feels like it justifies you doing-

Katie Higgins: Right. Yeah, I should have said that. There are brands that will come to me… So many. There was a detox tea company that came to me once, and wanted to give me $20,000 to promote their detox tea, and I was like, well, that’s not something I want to do.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Katie Higgins: A big lobbying firm, that I’m not going to mention the product, but they wanted to give me a substantial amount of money to say that sugar does not make you fat, it’s not exercising.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Katie Higgins: And I was like, so you want me to say that sugar is a health food? No amount of money you could give me would be something that I would take for that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s funny. That’s great. So, if I were to recap, your focus really is on how do I create content that’s, for you, inspiring, but also for your audience, helpful, those are the two considerations. In the process of doing that, doing some light search research, by using Google itself, and saying, okay, what exists already? Where are the opportunities to create additional content around that? And your social platforms, you really look at those as either places to engage with your audience, or as much as possible, drive traffic back to your site with monetization, through ads being the main focus. Is that more or less how you think about things?

Katie Higgins: Yeah, I think the most important thing that I want is for people to see food as fun, and get excited about it, and have a healthy relationship with it. Because I have seen too much people think that they can’t have dessert, or that some food is bad, a certain food like peanut butter or chocolate, and I get really excited when people get excited about the things that I get excited about.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. And I think it’s fun to hear you talk because I think that’s one of the main motivators for Lindsay too. When I hear her reflect on creating content, it’s, I have this thing, I’m excited about it, I want to share it with people, and the most meaningful thing that happens from that is hearing from people who interacted with that thing that you created and it was equally as fun or exciting or inspiring for them. And that feels like a really good place to create content out of, because you can always access that. And then, how you monetize that, in order to allow that to be a career, is, that’s kind of another question that goes along with it.

But as long as the source of it is pure like that, that can be sustaining through a lot of different iterations and changes and algorithm updates, because you’ll always in some way be able to access those people that you can put your content in front of and then they can look at it and say, hey, this was helpful for me, this was fun for me, this was exciting for me.

Katie Higgins: I think people in general, in this day and age, what we have a lack of is people who are genuine. Especially… This is, politics, it’s leaders, it’s food bloggers, anybody online, TikTok, and just the fact that people can see that I am genuinely excited about something, I think people want genuine. I want genuine. I resonate with genuine, so… I like your recipes for that reason, you can tell that Lindsay hasn’t sold out. There’s a need for that, because people really like when someone is genuine and not just trying to shill a product.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. All credit to Lindsay for those, by the way. It’s nice that you include me, but I deserve no credit, she’s the source of all of those, and the Pinch of Yum team, and they do such a great job with it. So, what would your advice be, because we’re closing out, you’ve been able to sustain a career in content creation for a really long time, and there are people who listen to this and they’re at all different stages. They’re at the early stages, maybe it’s the first year, first month of them starting to think about what does it look like for me to create content? Or some people who have been doing it for a decade, decade plus, and maybe they’re processing burnout, or maybe they’re trying to figure out how to stay inspired. So, for you, speaking broadly to people who are content creators, what would your advice be for listeners?

Katie Higgins: My advice is to take a step back and look at is what you’re doing making you happy? And if it is, keep doing it, even if it’s not making you a ton of money at this point, maybe it will someday, and even if it doesn’t, it’s still making you happy, so that’s what’s important. And if it’s something that’s not making you happy, then really take a look at, do I really want to keep doing this? Or do I want to change, either not do it at all, or change and do… Like, what I did with sponsored posts. I took a step back, or just Instagram in general, the same thing, posting every day, and I was like, this is not making me happy, I don’t care if it’s going to get me a lot of followers, happiness is also really important, and I’m so much happier now, whether or not I have… I haven’t grown as many Instagram followers this past year, but I’m happier for it in other areas, so that’s important too.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Katie, thanks so much for coming on, really fun to connect after all these years.

Katie Higgins: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: For anybody who wants to follow along with you, and what you’re up to, where’s the… Obviously it can be everywhere, but where would you point people to-

Katie Higgins: Yeah, Chocolate Covered Katie, it’s really easy to remember, it was my middle school email address, and it’s served me well, so.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it, that’s so awesome. Lindsay and I often joke about how we have these middle school, or really early on usernames that we create, that stay with us in different forms.

Katie Higgins: Oh yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: For Lindsay and I, it’s like-

Katie Higgins: AIM.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It shows up in passwords, and all of these different versions of these things that we’ve had 20, 25 years ago. So, that’s awesome, Chocolate Covered Katie around the web, we’ll link to that, and include it in the show notes. Katie, thanks so much for coming on today.

Katie Higgins: Thank you so much. As I said, I’m seriously fangirling right now because I’ve followed you guys forever, so.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, likewise.

Katie Higgins: Thank you so much.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, this was fun. Thank you.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Since we have just kicked off a new month, I wanted to pop in and give you a little update about what you could expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. In the month of March, we have a few exciting things coming up, so let’s dive in. First up, we have a coaching call with Chelsea from Chelsea Joy Eats. In this coaching call, Bjork answers some really good questions from Chelsea, and they talk about diversifying income while focusing more on your blog, staying focused, making the most of your time, and hiring help. It’s a really awesome coaching call, and that will be live on March 7th. Next up, we have a brand new course that will be going live on March 28th, and this course is all about advanced blogging, or what we’re lovingly calling blogging 202. Food Blogger Pro team member Natalie is going to be taking everything you know and love about blogging just to the next level.

So, if you’ve done a lot of our beginner content and are ready to take it up to the next level, this course will be for you. It should be a really great one. Last but not least, we have our March Q&A, which is technically in April, but still going to lump it in with this content. So, on April 2nd, we have our Pinterest strategy call with Kate Ahl, our Pinterest expert, and this will be again on April 2nd, and this should be a really great call about just how to level up your Pinterest strategy, what Pinterest looks like in 2024, and any other news and updates from Kate who is always full of good information. So, that’s what we have coming for you in March, including some good blog posts and other content, so if you’re interested in joining Food Blogger Pro, you can head to FoodBloggerPro.com/membership to become a member, or if you’re already a member, thanks so much for joining us. And that’s it for this week, we’ll see you next week. In the meantime, have a great week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. You spend a lot of time on your blog content. From planning to recipe testing, to writing, to promoting, but do you know if each of your posts are bringing you the most traffic they possibly can? With Clariti, you can see information about each and every post, which is automatically synced from WordPress, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console so that you can make well-educated decisions about where your existing content may need a little attention. Think broken links or broken images, no internal links or missing alt text. You can also use information that Clariti polls about sessions, page views, and users to fuel the creation of new content because you’ll be able to see which types of posts are performing best for you. Get access to keyword ranking, click-through rate, impressions, and optimization data for all of your posts today with Clariti. Listeners to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up. To sign up, simply go to Clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I dot com slash food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you’re listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Erin Jean McDowell. You might know her from her Food blog, which is named after herself, Erin Jean McDowell. You might also know her from her incredible baking videos on Food52, her sizable social media presence, or her new YouTube series, Happy Baking, which is on her own YouTube channel.

She has really become one of the foremost experts in baking as an online creator, and she has so much wisdom to share with us today. Bjork and Erin chat about how her entrepreneurial journey started as a food creator and why she thinks prompts are so important in writing, and she really does love writing. She also chats more about her cookbooks and how she’s approached the promotion of her cookbooks and her strategy for creating multiple types of content all at once to avoid getting overwhelmed. She also shows more about what it’s like to create content for another entity like Food52 versus your own brand and how she thinks about her schedule and her productivity. It’s a really awesome interview. She’s just a joy to listen to, so I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Erin, welcome to the podcast.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Thanks so much for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’re going to be hitting a few different things. We’re going to be talking about cookbooks. We’re going to be talking about video. We’re going to be talking about the role of a creator and entrepreneur, and we can hit all of those things because you’ve done all of those things. You’re multifaceted in what you’ve done. I watched the, so I was preparing for the interview, your trailer for your new YouTube channel, and you go through each one of those and you talk about all those different things. So when you were starting out, usually there’s one thing that people get into, there’s their entry point, and then from that they realize there’s these branches that come off of it. I know for many people, food itself is the entry point, but what was the entrepreneurial entry point for you as a creator in this world?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Well, I wanted to be a writer. So when I went to pastry school and when I got my first jobs working in bakeries, I was actually always coming at it with the idea that ultimately someday maybe I could write recipes and I could write about food. I’d always loved writing growing up, my dad had a thing where he would ask us sometimes on our birthday what we would want to be when we would grow up, and from a young age, I said that I thought I might want to be a writer. The only thing is I could never finish anything that I started writing unless it was for an assignment. That’s what I told him when I was like-

Bjork Ostrom: You needed the artificial or not the artificial, actual deadline.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: The prompt. And still to this day, prompts are immensely helpful for all kinds of people writing and doing creative things. It’s actually really fun to give creative people a prompt and they will come up with all kinds of crazy ideas. But anyway-

Bjork Ostrom: Can you explain what you mean by that when you say a prompt?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Yeah. Like in school when you would get an assignment and it would be that you needed to write something in the first person, but it had to be something you hadn’t experienced firsthand or anything like that. One time I got a creative writing prompt where we had to draw three random words out of a hat, and then you had to just make sure you included that in the story. So that’s what I mean. And still to this day, it’s like if an editor says, we’re looking for strawberry recipes for spring, it’s even just a little prompt like that definitely gets my juices flowing in a way that sometimes pulling an idea out of the air is a little bit trickier.

Bjork Ostrom: Having some boundaries on the creativity allows you to create differently.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Definitely. And so I told him that I struggled unless I had a prompt, and he said this knowing dad wisdom, which was, “It sounds like you just haven’t figured out what you’re supposed to write about yet.” And so when I figured out that I wanted to write about food, it just felt like all these pieces were going into place. So writing was really my entry point with the goal that in order to write about food, I definitely also needed to be able to develop recipes. And then if I wanted to develop recipes, I might need to learn to be able to photograph recipes to a certain degree because that’s how I would share this information with people.

And then social media playing into that of, “Oh, hey, here’s a way that I can share all of this information. Every new recipe that I have, I can share it.” And then that leads into this video thing. And so really it all comes back to me of trying to do different things so that I can keep writing.

Bjork Ostrom: Interesting.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: I want to keep writing, I want to write books, I want to write recipes, and I want to share them with people. So doing some of that other stuff is the way that I get to keep doing that.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. And so for you, the motivation is like, I want to write cookbooks. Would you say in a sentence that’s what it is?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s what you’re passionate about, that’s what you love doing. And we live in a world now, not across the board, but in many cases where in order to do that as a career, you have to sell cookbooks. And one of the best ways to do that is to have a following. And one of the best ways to do that is to understand social media platforms and video and to build an engaged audience. Is that more or less accurate?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Yes. And for me, I just want to be really clear that it’s so many people definitely learned as I was going because it was not my intention when I started out. I was just using social media as an individual, and I just loved food so much that that was all that I was doing. And so because of some of the places that I worked in my career, Food52 being I think one of the places that, especially when Food52 was launching, they were sharing some of my images and sharing some of my recipes, and that really exposed me to a group of people as their following was growing. And so it definitely happened really organically for me, but then I saw it firsthand because I did something that I’ve even been told sometimes by publishers that you shouldn’t do, but I’ve always found it immensely helpful, which is as I was writing one of my cookbooks, I shared every step of the way.

I shared developing recipes. I shared photographs of what things looked like, I shared as I was buying pie plates and just all sorts of things. And so basically what I did in a way, without realizing it was for a full year ahead of its release, I was promoting that book. And then also when it was time for it to be released, I’d already shared so much about it that it was really easy to get those pre-orders, which was one of the things that publishers often really judge you on. So again, I just want to be really clear that this was not some well-thought-out plan-

Bjork Ostrom: Strategic, yeah.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: … that I had. No, not at all. But then you learn each time you do it and you realize, okay, this is what happened when all of those things lined up that way. So now definitely that’s the way that I think about it moving forward. But definitely it happened for me in a way that was not, I was just taking it as it came.

Bjork Ostrom: But it’s this idea that we live in a world where everything has the potential to be content and everything has the potential to be interesting. Just like if you were to sit down with a friend or family member, they wouldn’t say, “No, don’t tell me about your cookbook until it’s finished.” They want to know along the way, the ups, the downs. And I feel like so much of social media can be a reflection of how we normally operate in life, which is just telling stories and sharing what’s happening.

And it sounds like what you’re saying is that was a really great marketing tool to build up for the eventual sale of the cookbook. And the other thing that’s really nice about that is it helps to provide some coverage, I think for creators who are like, wait, I have to do this cookbook in addition to all this other stuff that I have to do. And it maybe could be that the cookbook itself is what you’re doing and you’re documenting that along the way. When you are in those seasons of writing, does it feel like you’re at 150% capacity or do you feel like you’re able to do it in a way where you have the margin you need or?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Yeah, I definitely feel like for me, it’s helpful to block schedule things. Like to have a day to meet, to create content or to try something new separate from the tasks that have to get done. And actually, as I mentioned since I wanted to be a writer, I love nothing more than sitting at my computer and doing computer stuff. I just love a full plate of I’ve got to type all day. And so I definitely find that blocking that stuff out for me works really well. But it is also tricky because I try to leave myself a somewhat flexible schedule because the actual writing part, it’s one thing to write recipes and type instructions, and it’s another thing to write head notes and introductions and things that are meaningful and are more of my chance to actually communicate with people.

So you can’t just say, today I’m writing that. I have to wait for the day that it feels and then jump on it when it happens. But if I just block out time to write versus time to create, it’s helpful. And for me, I think one of the things that it also does, which I think people are both interested in, and I also think it’s nice for me as a person who’s creating, I want people to see how much goes into it. I think that that’s a testament of something that might actually make you want to buy the book, that this is something that I’ve been working on for this long. These are all the stages that’s gone through. This is the level of care I’ve taken as I’ve been reviewing the edits. And I think that some of those things now you’re seeing more videos and more things where people are letting people into their process.

I think at one point people were scared to let people into their process. But people can’t take what makes you you. You can share all of the information, you can share absolutely everything you did and what somebody else is going to do with it is going to be completely different. So I just feel like it’s better to share within the realms that you can stay sane because also social media is-

Bjork Ostrom: You could always, sure.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: … a place where you can go crazy and you can do too much, and you can also hold yourself to a standard of, if I want to see growth, I have to post this much and I have to do that. And it’s like when you’re trying to do that and write. But yeah, I think there’s a lot of overlap and clever ways of finding that overlap is I think what creators are all about, is I am making a pie today, so how many videos can I turn that into theoretically, this one thing that I’m doing? And then also sometimes that you take these stabs in the dark and they really hit and that thing of what is going to resonate with people in the right time of day and year and all of these things, there’s so much crazy things that you can try your best to factor them in, but sometimes it just helps.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you have an example of that when you think of a thing that hit that you maybe didn’t expect?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Yeah, sometimes when I share things about my personal life, I don’t expect them to hit is the thing. I just think I’m just going to share this because it makes me feel good. There’s been a large number of things that I’ve shared that I really thought, I’m just doing this for me, I don’t really care what other people say about it. And then some of those have been the things that people really grab onto. And that makes me really happy because it makes me feel like the people that are with me, they’re with on a larger sense, because there is also an element where you get put into a box. I’m a baker, I’m a food person, so will they care about anything, a piece of equipment I bought or an outfit or whatever. And it can be scary to branch out of those other things, which is funny when you think about it because meanwhile I’m just throwing every food item to the wall to see what will stick, but I’m scared to tell you how I tie my bandana. I don’t know why that is.

So yeah, I think that there’s a lot of things like that where it’s been a pleasant surprise for me. And then also sometimes my crazier ideas where I’m just like… The first episode of my new web series, we thought it would be funny to pay homage to a 90s style sitcom intro. And so it’s just real cheesy and lots of me crossing my arms and nodding at the camera and all of these jokey bits. And what’s fun for me is that when I make content for brands or other people, sometimes I get to do some of that. But then when it’s fully in my court, I can just be like, I think that’s funny. Let’s do it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s no gatekeeper to that.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: And then seeing if it does hit, because sometimes you do something and you’re like, oh man, I thought that was hilarious and just it doesn’t… But then this 90s sitcom thing, it really resonated with a lot of people. They totally understood what I was trying to do, and I feel like it made people smile. And it’s separate from the great episode that follows it. It was just a funny little thing that we did, and it was a lot of fun.

Bjork Ostrom: Lindsay talks about this and she’s been experimenting with this sideshow with a friend of ours, Nate. And so our background, my wife Lindsay, she has Pinch of Yum, and that’s the main focus now. They’ve just recently launched a show called Snack Dive, which they just try snacks. But one of the things that she talks about that’s so meaningful with that is creating a thing that is representative of a feeling or emotion for other people. And in this case, it’s just a chance for people to laugh or smile. And I think sometimes we forget about that as something that is meaningful in the work that we’re doing in the world.

It’s like some of it is informational and if you look at what people say about what’s so great about the content that you create, it’s helpful, it’s meaningful, you’re teaching people, but there’s also a component of it makes people smile, people laugh, and that’s also important in the world. And I think for us as creators important for us to think about. It’s not just like how do we get the most views or how do we get the best, most crisp information across? It’s also like, how do we have fun both as creators and then translate that to other people who are viewing it. I think people do see that and feel that. So it’s fun to hear you talk about that.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Well, and I think that’s honestly something that I felt like when you’re a person that does things largely on the internet or even in my case, print with the books, I didn’t realize the reach that things had. And what’s funny about that is that everything is so tied to numbers. So I literally can see the reach that it has in a numerical value. But then it was after the pandemic, one of my books came out during the pandemic, so all the promotion for it was just remote and everything. But then after the pandemic, I went on a book tour for my most recent book, Savory Baking, and I got to meet people. I went to 10 cities and I got to meet people in all of these different places and it really blew my mind and it changed that very thing that you said, which is I felt like I’d been chasing numbers for a long time.

And suddenly when people were telling me what about certain things had resonated with them or what it meant to them-

Bjork Ostrom: How it impacted their life, yeah.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: … and specifically during the pandemic, I think people being starving for content, for human interaction, for so many things that it was sort of… My web series had already been out for a couple of years when the pandemic came, but a lot of people hadn’t seen it. So then they had all this backlogged content that they could go through and discover and whatnot. So that really changed exactly what you said, how I see success now. Literally when I see people saying that they made a recipe and it was successful, that is something I view as very like a marker of success. And the numbers, I find that if I pay too close of attention to what the algorithm tells me to do, what the publisher tells me to do, what anybody tells me to do, then I lose that little bit of me that is also hopefully the part that people are resonating with. So anyway, just to add to what you were saying.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s a really important thing to point out. I was just having a conversation with somebody else. Now, this wasn’t related to the podcast, but we were talking about this idea of why. What is the reason why you’re doing something? And sometimes metrics can pull us away from the why because you’re like, oh, it looks like a gummy bear hack video is doing really well right now, and it gets a lot of views. Maybe I should do a gummy bear hack video. And then it does get a lot of views. Then you’re like, maybe I should do another similar thing. And not that that’s bad, and I think some people are really great at that and it’s a fun thing. But I think it is bad if it pulls you away from the reason you’re doing something in the first place. And so anchoring on that or reminding ourselves about that.

Or even as much as possible, seeing if you can have actual touch points with people that are following as opposed to just numbers, whether that’s a meetup or a conversation that you have with somebody that emails you and you say, “Hey, would love to touch base,” or whatever it is that feels like it helps to keep you anchored around the why with what you’re doing.

One of the questions I wanted to ask you about is, so you have a series on Food52 and you have a big following on that, and now you also recently launched your own YouTube series. Can you talk about what it’s like to create within the context of a brand and also what you learned and have been learning in that to then take and create your own entity owned within your own entity, your own series? What was that like and what have you learned along the way?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Well, one of the things is that within a brand, I’m one representative of a larger group. So for one, Food52 has a bunch of different residents who are creating videos and contents, and I’m one of those residents. One of the things about creating content with them is that I’ve really been, I still play a lot of roles. I write the script, I write the recipes, I test the recipe, develop the recipes, all these things. But I also have people on their staff who are serving as checks and balances and also who take a large number of the things off of my plate. So I’m usually working with a producer and I have dedicated camera people and sound people and all of these things, whereas when I’m doing it with myself, sometimes I am all of those things or my husband is one of those things.

And so there’s a few different things. One of the things that I learned was reading the comments, really seeing what resonated with people. There were rules that I broke. One of the things on my series with Food52, it’s called Bake It Up a Notch, the episodes are quite long form, and this was just something that for one thing, you couldn’t do it not on the internet, but even on the internet, the attention spans are notoriously short. So the idea that my Pie Crust episode is an hour and 20 minutes long was baffling to many. But what I wanted to do was provide these deep dives that were essentially a real class on it, and you can’t do a deep dive in breaking it up like a standard video of like, here’s this part, here’s this part. But I did think that also what it would do was create evergreen content. And that has proven to be true.

So some of the videos in their first year, they get a million views, but in the second year they also get a million views. And they’re building like that. And sometimes in some cases, people are watching these episodes, they’re watching the layer cake episode every time they frost a layer cake and watching it and doing it in real time with me. And so the other thing is that working with resources like that, I’m able to do certain things just budget wise. I wanted really to show mistakes and to show mistakes can be expensive because I have to make three times as many things and I have to purposely mess them up. And both the hours that it takes me to make the conscious mistake, the mistakes are actually one of the hardest parts about creating those episodes, which I think is a really funny side note, but I think it’s one of the things that’s the most informative about it.

So anyway, breaking some of the rules and both working with a brand to say, okay, please let me do what I do, but also I want to make sure that I’m representing you and representing what you’re doing as well.

Bjork Ostrom: You mean Food52 the brand, or are you talking about-

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Yes. Speaking, in terms of Bake It Up a Notch, yeah, definitely. And then also into sometimes brands that are sponsoring episodes or things like that as well. But I will say that I felt a little bit more of an instinct to be professional Erin. Which is not to say that I didn’t sometimes make a joke or do whatever, but one of the things that’s so fun about doing my own thing is actually just saying, like I said, I think it’s cool, let’s do it. But also I’m learning a lot of new things because I’m learning a lot about the back end that wasn’t my job when I was doing it before. And also the budget is I’m setting the budget. So now I’m definitely thinking more about how to structure that, whereas before I had a number to play with and I would like, let’s do it. Let’s cover everything in chocolate. This is so fun.

Bjork Ostrom: Because you know that if you don’t spend it’s not like you get it as a payment, it’s just like the budget for the show. Whereas in your case, with your own show, if you don’t spend it, then that could go somewhere else. And so it just feels different.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: And it’s also, it’s really scary if I just want to be honest because today is the day actually that the very first episode came out. And one of the things that’s so scary about it is knowing that you have this following this group of people who are interested in what you’re seeing, but how difficult it actually is to get the information to them, to make sure that they click on the right thing, that they see that I’m doing something different. And that part of being a creator that is tough of the basically shameless self-promotion where I have to say every single day because only 20% of even the people that are following me are going to see the thing that I say.

You have to, and find lots of different ways to reach out to people and fresh ways that doesn’t feel like you really are necessarily ramming it down their throats. But also you are, because that’s the only way I’m going to get people, especially when it takes multiple clicks to get to something. It’s like every additional click I am requiring more faith from you that you will proceed and do that additional click.

Bjork Ostrom: Is the idea behind that with launching a new show as an example, it could be applied to anything. It could be your cookbook coming out, that you have this following of people, but there’s this understanding that somebody might have a 100,000 people who are subscribed to a channel or to a show of which maybe 10,000 to 20,000 will see a video that you put out. You’re having to, in all the places where you show up, potentially promote or mention or make sure that people are aware of this thing, because if you don’t and you only do it once and then you never mention it again, there’s a really good chance that the majority of people who care about it or would want to know about it don’t hear about it. But then for you, you’re saying it all the time, so it feels like you’re just promoting this thing over and over?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: And cookbooks really taught me to not really fear that because I have a mentor, Rosalie B. Beranbaum, who’s published 13 cookbooks and is incredible, and she spoke to me many times about how she’s still promoting all the books and that they’ll only have as long of a life as she gives them, basically. And it’s one of the most important things that she taught me because specifically my most popular cookbook, the Book on Pie, I am promoting it year round all the time. And part of the reason is because I truly am so proud of it and I have so many resources packed into it that it makes it a great reference for all the other things that I’m doing. Here’s this great recipe and if you want to know more, here’s this, all of these things, but it is continuing to sell because I’m continuing to promote it.

And so the same thing is true with anything else that you’re doing, but I think it’s also, again, if you can stay focused on making things that you really believe in, it also becomes a lot easier to promote them mercilessly, because I refer people to episodes of Bake It Up a Notch all the time because there are so many important things in there. And rather than making yet another video for social media, it’s like, no, don’t let me try to distill this into 15 or 30 seconds. Just go watch this 15-minute video and it’s going to answer that question for you. So then you’re suddenly organically promoting your stuff constantly if you really believe in it and if you build those sources. And I think the same is true with blogs and recipe collections. It’s like if you really take the time to build them out in a thoughtful way, considering everything, you’ll be rewarded with that for many years and clicks to come.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a resource forever. And so it’s not necessarily self-promotion, it’s like tool promotion. And in your case, the Book on Pie, it’s fun to see the number one bestseller in Pie Baking, 4.8 stars, which just feels like such an incredible thing, especially with over 3,500 ratings. It’s obvious that it’s something that is really helpful for people. And so it goes from trying to promote a thing that is maybe you’re not excited about, or it feels like self-promotion too, promoting something that is actually going to be helpful for people, especially when it’s so aligned. If people have questions about pie baking, it’s like it’s a great resource for that, and therefore you can point people to that. And they’re like, “Thank you for pointing me in this way because this is what I needed to know.”

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Well, I enjoy what I do very much for the opportunity to be creative and to be able to tap into that creative side of myself where growing up I just didn’t know if job opportunities I was going to have were going to let me be able to be so creative in such a way. To get to put sprinkles on everything and have… It’s such a dream. But then it’s also the real reason that I’m doing it is to share the love of doing it, to share the knowledge that I have learned that has made it more enjoyable for me. I think that especially with food and cooking, there’s so much fear and for different levels. So you have somebody who’s really actually amazing, but they’re terrified of one thing, bread or whatever it is. And I just think that if you remove that fear element, then you can have so much more fun and be more creative and have more joy.

And so then I think that that’s also how the side hustle of bringing people happiness, bringing people comfort. I don’t want somebody to think, “Oh, I have to make a cake for my niece’s birthday this weekend.” I want somebody to think, “Ooh, I get to make a cake this weekend, and what am I going to do and how am I going to pull out?” And that was the whole concept too of Bake It Up a Notch is like, yeah, make banana bread and then also learn how to make chocolate banana bread in a cool pan and just spin and riff and do all of these things and make it your own.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and I love what you said, that idea of a side hustle where it’s like the idea being you have your entrepreneurial pursuits of building a following, selling cookbooks, whatever it is, but it’s like adjacent to that is these other really important things like inspiring people to fall in love with baking or to feel more confident about something they wouldn’t have otherwise felt confident about, to learn a new thing, a new skill. And I love thinking about framing it up in that way. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

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When you think about what you do on a day-to-day basis, we’ve talked about this idea that using the Food52 example where you go in, you get a focus on being a creator or somebody who’s in front of the camera, but that’s one area of what you’re doing. You also have the cookbooks, you have videos that you’re publishing, social media following, Netflix shows. How do you view what it is that you do? I know we talked about writing as being important, it all coming back to that, but in the world of your business, your entrepreneurial pursuits, creative pursuits, how do you think of that, for lack of a better phrase, that pie chart? How do you divide that up in terms of what’s important, where you spend your time? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Yeah, on my business card it says author, recipe developer, video host. So I feel like those are the three things. It’s like kitchen time, video and the writing. But I also think that truthfully, one of the things that I like so much about what I do is that it is a rotating pie chart. Okay? I spend some seasons, so to speak, writing much more and then I spend months on end back to back in the kitchen.

And so there are these funny rhythms, and one of the things actually, I really like the way that you asked that question because I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. One of my brothers is a painter, so another non-traditional career where the times that he is able to go and devote to that are limited. And also even within those times, and maybe he isn’t feeling inspired or whatever. One of the things that I’ve struggled with is that I sometimes feel really productive at not at all typical business hours, and why does that matter in my particular case, except for the fact that I have to do so much business with brands and things that are holding regular business hours.

So this thing of is it necessarily bad that I can’t take an 8:00 A.M. meeting because I felt compelled to write at midnight last night. But I bring it up just because I do think that one of the things that is so wonderful about working for yourself, about this part that people don’t really talk about is that flexibility. The flexibility is the best part about it. Sometimes you’re so consumed by how many roles you have to carry that I don’t think you can enjoy the flexibility the way that if you had a very standard job where here are your three to-do lists every single day and you have to do them and you can do it from home. Well, that would be an incredible amount of flexibility. But in my case, I could work from 6:00 AM to noon and then again from 7:00 to 9:00, why couldn’t I do that? There’s no reason that I can’t.

So anyway, my point just being that even just breaking that societal box in my own head has been so instrumental to me feeling like I have a better handle on all those parts of the pie chart, because I used to feel like, oh, I’m not spending enough time writing, or, gosh, I wish I could be in the kitchen more. And it’s like as soon as I started blocking out the schedule to just actually fit with what made sense with what I was doing, I was in the kitchen twice as much and I was working half as much. It was better organized and better laid out, and I was able to be more productive. So anyway, I just think that it’s an interesting thing because I just think with more and more non-traditional jobs, I think maybe some people have a more natural way of doing this than I do, but for me, it was really dismantling it in my head before I could actually use that in a way that was helpful for me and my business at all.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say dismantling, you mean the traditional, you show up at 8:00 and you work until 5:00 and you fit work into that as opposed to, it sounds like part of the shift is almost for, I don’t know if this makes sense, but energy matching when you’re doing the work. Okay, I write really well from 11:00 PM to 1:00 A.M, and great. Don’t try and fit it between 9:00 A.M. and 11:00 A.M if that’s going to feel really forced and it’s also going to be more productive if that’s when you’re doing it. Similarly, if somebody’s a morning person and they’re like, I work great from 4:00 A.M to 6:00 AM to find those, yeah.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: That’s my actual situation, by the way. I don’t know why I gave that midnight example.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, sure. You’re morning.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: I am a crazy early riser and I’m freshest first thing. And so it’s like I love to be up and doing it right away and then have the afternoons to regroup or do whatever. And yes, dismantling it and being comfortable with it being not, I think we’re a productivity culture, so for some reason what was happening for me was I just kept adding more and more tasks to my to-do list, and I was becoming less and less productive while also piling more and more and more on myself.

Bjork Ostrom: Because you were working during times when you were not at peak energy or tasks that you didn’t want to do or all above.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: And yes, sometimes, and also even now, I try to even batch things like meetings and calls in a way where it’s like, man, it changes your life and your schedule when you can have one or two days a week that just like I am doing my work today at my pace, at my schedule. And obviously we can’t always all be so lucky. We often have many calls and many emails and all of these things, but figuring out a way to block that time and just not feel, I found that it helped to remind myself that because I’m doing an unusual combination of things, it isn’t a typical… If I was doing this in a normal office setting, there would probably be three or four of me. So I have to figure out a way to figure out how to get it all in there. And that striving for a better balance has really been actually helpful. Like I said, making me more productive. So I think it’s something worth chatting about.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, no, it’s great. I remember Lindsay talking about, she went into, there’s a local company here and they had a kitchen studio and they had one person whose full-time job was to import and organize the media. And it was more obviously, but I don’t know how much more. It was like, oh, that’s a full-time job is the SD card guy, and it’s like he’s importing and organizing photos and videos, and that’s 100th of job for a lot of us-

Erin Jeanne McDowell: What’s being done.

Bjork Ostrom: … on a day-to-day basis.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: I remember how it was when I actually put cleaning the kitchen on the list. That was just a thing that we do, of course. But what would happen was I never got the satisfaction of… And that’s such a silly example, but I was not putting everything on the to-do list or in the project management software or in the whatever that I was actually doing. And that made it seem like, man, why am I not getting this stuff done? And it’s like, actually, it’s because you did 15 things before you even started today. So anyway, that productivity thing is so real, and I think it just contributes to so many other negative things like imposter syndrome, comparing yourself to other people because you suddenly are like, it all collides in a firestorm if you’re not careful.

Bjork Ostrom: I’m taking this course right now, speaking of a culture of productivity, it’s a course called Pillars of Productivity, which is so, really internet business. But one of the things that I really appreciated about it is that the course, it’s by a guy named Tiago Forte, and I’ve read one of his books and he has a YouTube channel and stuff like that. But one of the spirit of it isn’t like, how do you just get a bunch of tasks done? The spirit of it is we have so much coming at us from all of these different places, not just email or DMs or messages. That’s one thing. But we also have a ton of information coming in more than we’ve ever had. And one of the things that I appreciate most about the course is the spirit of part of what we need to do as creators, business owners, really anybody who’s spending time online and having all this input. Our job is really to take that in and to prioritize the things that are most important, knowing that we’re not going to do all of the things.

And I think that’s one of the key pieces of it, is not how do you get all of it done and more, it’s how do you decide out of all this stuff coming in, what are you not going to do and what are the things that you are going to prioritize? And it was like one little 32nd clip where you talked about that, and I was like, oh, yeah, emails that come in don’t all need to get responded to within a day or a week. You take that and you say, how does this fit into my priority within the day? And what it allows us to do is think about what are we trying to do? What is the message we’re trying to spread? What is the mission that we have and what are going to be the things that we can do in our two hours, four hours, six hours, eight hours, 10 hours, however much time we have in the day to most effectively spread that? And it was strangely reassuring to me because it wasn’t about how do you brush all of your tasks.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Did it all in.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: And I think that’s even what I mean by saying, putting some of those things on the list that I formerly didn’t even deem as list worthy. They were just things that had to get done, but arguably that’s the stuff that should always be on the list. Because if I wasn’t making time for silly things, but importing files or accounting, but all of those things, I can’t move forward if I don’t do those things. So yeah, I think that’s the one thing that I wasn’t planning to be when I started all of this, is a business owner.

I wanted to write books, but of course to write books, you work for yourself. So that wasn’t the way that I went about doing it. And that part for me has definitely having to, especially I think working in professional kitchens and restaurants and the hospitality world, there’s I think an special both extreme productivity and sometimes long hours. And I just think that there were certain things that were so deeply ingrained in me of what a job was that I was… And especially as I’ve started to create more things, realizing that I do also need help. That it is so helpful to have a producer for my new web series. It’s so helpful to have a video editor to lean on when I can’t edit every single thing myself. So yeah, stuff like that.

Bjork Ostrom: Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

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Can you talk about that shift that you had? You talk about getting in as a creator, as a writer, but then also realizing that you’re a business owner. What was that like, and what advice would you have for people who are maybe coming up against some of those same things? They know that they’re creator first, and it’s not like they’re super excited to get in and do accounting.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: I think identify your strengths and your weaknesses, and even when there isn’t a lot of money to spend, one of the very first things that I spent money on was an accounting because I know that isn’t my strong suit. So it was like that, I know I need help there right out. And the stress that relieved from me of not having to have all of my eggs in that particular basket and being able to rely on somebody else. And so even very early on in my career, that was one of the things where it was like, if I could have help with taxes, that would really make me feel better. And I think that is still the advice I would give myself today. Also learning a little bit about the tax situation and what is going to be best for… I talk about this all the time actually, that I don’t understand why they don’t give us the very basics of that in school.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Just feels like that would be such helpful stuff to go over.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s so practical.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Yeah, literally, I took Calculus two, and I don’t use that at all, but I would love to know a little bit more about taxes. And so anyway, that’s the advice. Even now when I’m working with young people coming into the food media world, and usually the first thing I say is, let’s talk taxes. Because that was the first thing that terrified me, and it was just like, oh my God, that was really when the switch happened was, I’m not just an artist. I’m not just a creative person. I’m not just a writer. I am a business owner. And it was that realization that I had all of these things. And then also I think setting up a good system for yourself. We were just talking about how now I’ve figured out scheduling and a blocking, but whatever that system is, as long as it makes sense to you, it’s wonderful to be so organized and thinking ahead that you can create a system that then when you can bring other people in that you can share that system.

But I think at the beginning, it’s not so much about that and you don’t know what it’s going to look like. I think it’s more about just tracking everything in a way that makes sense for you. Keeping a paper trail. I am a notebook person, so I have one of these digital pads now that has really changed my life because I can digitize everything. I can hand write, it’ll convert it into a document for me on the computer, or I can access it for my phone even if I don’t have that pad on my person. So having a system, something that works for you, tracking it so that as you start to notice patterns… At a certain point I realized like, oh, I need to raise my prices. But it was because I was tracking everything so clearly that it really was. It’s also like I knew what content to make because I was tracking all the feedback I was getting. So it really ends up being a huge time saver to take that time from the get-go, I think is that advice I would give.

Bjork Ostrom: To create the system to create the process. It’s going to be less efficient to start more efficient later on. Even for yourself if you don’t bring somebody in. But also if you do bring somebody in, all the better because then they can look at it and say, okay, I get this and I understand this. It’s almost like I think of this idea of being a router, a super router, and things come in and then who do we route them to? Whether it’s like request or a task, so you have something accounting related, eventually you get an accountant and you can route it to them. That’s such a relief when you get to that point where you have a, whatever it is, a 1099 that comes in and you know where to go with it. You don’t have to question what to do with it, but it also applies to information.

And what that allows us to do is you get information that comes in, here’s this new tax consideration that comes in. Okay, in one story, you are the person that then has to go figure that out. It’s like, oh, shoot. But if you have that person, like in your case, the accountant, you can still receive that information, but you don’t have to solve it. You can pass it off to them and they can solve it, which I think is so great. But then there’s also the things that you own as the ultimate expert. And for you that’s baking. You are the ultimate expert on baking. You’re not routing that somewhere. And I think all of us, to some degree, need to be the ultimate expert on something. As creators, we own that and we are the expert on it. For you, that’s baking. That’s what you know, that’s what you’re really good at. And you’ve created these things around you to support you in that. How do you go about becoming an expert in a thing? What does that look like for somebody who wants to be best in class in a category?

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Well, it’s so lovely to hear you say that. I think I actually still really feel uncomfortable with the word expert because I feel very much like I’m still a student. I do understand what you’re saying, and certainly I am a baking resource, and that is how I positioned myself. But I think one of the reasons that I am a good teacher, it is even hard for me to say that about myself, and I know it’s true, but that is an interesting thing. I literally stumbled with the word. But one of the reasons I know I am a good teacher is because I am a good student, because I like learning. And so when I learn something that excites me, it is easy to communicate that same thing to somebody else. And I think I’m good sometimes at digesting it for people in that way. So for me, in my case, the way that I went about becoming an expert is by really studying as much as I could and continuing to open myself up to study.

And I also think that one of the things that’s wonderful about the internet in particular is you can actually somewhat track my experience because I have been sharing things for more than 10 years at this point. And so in one of my earliest things I ever wrote about pie, I said that I love glass pie dishes, which now is not true at all. I do not like glass pie dishes. They’re my least favorite. But I like that that article is still there. I don’t feel compelled to go back and change it because I think it actually shows the exact timeline of what I think to be true, which is that I believe that there is not just one right way to do things. There are lots of right ways. So one of the best ways to be an expert is to learn as many of those right ways as you can.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: So if you’re wanting to write, read a lot, and if you’re wanting to make movies or content, you do need to consume a good amount of it. But I also think that it’s just as important. As much as I love it, it’s truly a passion. I don’t watch a lot of television shows and things about food mainly because I think I can get that in my head about, oh, that’s already been covered. You start to maybe think some of your ideas aren’t as strong as they are. And so I think that you have to have this balance of both consuming a lot and also giving yourself space to create. But I think learning and always learning and being excited about learning and realizing that, man, even if I think I make great videos, that then I’m going to see some other thing that’s going to inspire me, that’s going to make me think, man, I got to learn how to do that. That’s completely different. So I think that flexibility and everything is part of at least the success that I have found, at least.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. I almost think about just the teachers in my life, and I think the best teachers have, number one, wanted to teach and then are also continually curious. And when you pick up on that, you know that somebody is a good teacher. They’re anxious to tell you the thing, and they’re also learning a thing that they want to tell people about. And it also feels like the best way to get better is to learn and to teach. And I think it helps us refine the craft of what it is that we’re trying to do. So that resonates a lot. There’s a lot of ways that people can learn from you. You have your three cookbooks. You have your show on Food52, your show. As of the recording of this, this will come out a little bit later that just launched on YouTube. Erin, can you talk about where people can follow along with you online? Maybe pick up your cookbooks. Just a little chance for you to do a shout-out and we’ll link to those in the show notes as well.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Definitely. So as you mentioned, I have three cookbooks, The Fearless Baker, which covers a huge array of baking topics. The Book on Pie, which is a New York Times bestseller. And also Savory Baking, which is my newest. And it is a great time of year to be baking from Savory Baking, everybody, because it is full of so many comforting, yummy things. And you can definitely check out my web series, Bake It Up a Notch, which has over 70 highly Bingeable episodes on Food52’s YouTube channel. But please, please, please check out Happy Baking, which is my new web series. It is on my own YouTube channel, Erin Jean McDowell. And all things Happy Baking and videos and everything you can find on my website, Erinjeanmcdowell.com. Can follow me on Instagram @Emcdowell or TikTok @ErinJeanMcDowell. And I would love to have you join my community of Happy Bakers where we’re dusting things in Sprinkles and sugar 24/7.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Erin, thanks so much for coming on.

Erin Jeanne McDowell: Thanks so much for having me.

Emily Walker: Hello, hello, it’s Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Before we sign off, I wanted to hop on here to chat a little bit about the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook group. So the Facebook group is a great way to continue the conversation outside of the podcast, connect with other podcast listeners and get the latest info on the podcast. Members of the group are the first to know about new podcast episodes, and we often do open calls for interview ideas and questions for upcoming guests. We’d love for you to join us on the Facebook group. It’s free and easy to join. Just head to FoodBloggerPro.com/Facebook and then request to join. We so appreciate your support of the podcast, and as always, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week.