Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Ann Morrissey: Hey there, Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team here — you’re listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This is the second episode of our finance miniseries, and today Bjork is sitting down with Nate Coughran from Cookie Finance. Nate and Bjork will kick things off by talking about how setting up an LLC can protect your personal assets and reduce audit risk and how keeping separate bank accounts for your business makes tracking your money way easier and less stressful. When it comes to taxes, creators can claim unique deductions, but it’s important to find the right balance. Nate emphasizes staying on top of your bookkeeping throughout the year to avoid end-of-year stress. And if you’re making over $75k a year, you may want to consider hiring a professional to ensure your tax strategy is solid and you’re setting aside enough for taxes. It’s all about staying ahead and keeping things simple. We hope you’ve enjoyed this finance miniseries and that it’s helped you refine your tax strategy as we head into tax season. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Nate, welcome to the podcast.

Nate Coughran: Thank you. I appreciate you having me on.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re going to be geeking out on one of my favorite topics. Now, Lindsay, my wife, Lindsay often rolls her eyes whenever I connect with somebody and if it all gets into the realm of taxes, bookkeeping, most people would be like, I’m done. I’m out. But for me it’s like now we’ve finally gotten to the thing that I enjoy talking about and that’s the world that you live in. It’s your day in and day out. But one of the great things about this conversation is not only do you have an expertise in, one of the things that I would make the case for is one of the most important elements of running a business is the books, the accounting, the numbers, kind of your dashboard, but you have a specialty within the creator world, which is a unique world to operate in because it’s not like a business like the sandwich shop in the building that we are here. It’s not like a business, like a widget factory. It’s a very different type of business. So how did you get into the world of creator businesses and doing the accounting and bookkeeping for those businesses?

Nate Coughran: I started my career working for one of the large accounting firms, spent the rest of my career working in finance and accounting, but really the idea behind Cookie Finance started a few years ago. I have two sister-in-laws who are content creators on Instagram and while on vacation they were lamenting about just how old school their local CPAs were, didn’t understand them at all, giving them not great advice. When I did my own research on TikTok, I was like, oh my gosh, there’s so much fraudulent advice out there on TikTok and just poor advice, and I didn’t see a good unified voice of here is a CPA, an accountant who understands creators, understands that blurred wine because with creators it’s just this blurred wine of business and personal and navigating around that.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, you think of even if you have a lifestyle blog, how messy that can be because it’s like what’s business and what’s just my life? And my guess is there’s some decisions you need to make where it’s maybe not clear and you have expertise in that. So curious on the two sides. One is the old school CPA who comes from very traditional and the other is the extreme of a TikTok influencer who has these opinions on how to do this accounting hack. Do you have an example or two from each end of the spectrum that you saw as advice that wasn’t great?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, both of these are now clients. One, she does a lot of affiliate marketing through Amazon, does clothing, that type of stuff, fashion, and her last CPA said, Hey, you can’t write off any of the clothing you’re buying because it’s personal use. She made $300,000 from affiliate links through Amazon through her fashion, and when she came to us, she said, here’s my tax return from last year. My CPA said I had $5,000 worth of write-offs. I’m like, what are you talking about? You make 300,000 from Amazon. I can guarantee you spent way more than 5,000 on clothing. No, she said, I couldn’t because it’s personal, whatever. We ended up finding tens of thousands of dollars worth of deductions that were rightly owed to her, got her back $14,000 in taxes that she overpaid in because her prior accountant refused to give her some of those, I don’t even want to call ’em personal. They really are business. The business would not exist.

Bjork Ostrom: She couldn’t have done it if she didn’t have the clothes or the pieces that she was reviewing and talking about. Sure.

Nate Coughran: Yeah. The other extreme, one of our clients on TikTok that he’s a younger one. Basically, if he went out and bought a brand new Porsche, he could just write it off a hundred percent as a marketing expense. So long as he put his logo on the side of the Porsche, it’d be a hundred percent marketing expense and fully deductible. So I had to walk him through that. That’s not exactly how it works in the world of accounting. He’s like, no, but this guy, he buys all these supercars all the time and he says it’s a hundred percent deductible. I’m like, yeah, and he’s also going to get audited and have a lot of penalties and everything else. We are really here. We try to be, we’re very much in the creator space. We only work with creators, so we’re very in tune with what’s standard, what’s normal. We have creators across every platform, every niche possible making 60,000 a year to millions a year. So we really lean on that experience to help our clients navigate those deductions.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, can you help people understand, I think when you are on the outside, when you’re just starting, you think, Hey, there’s these hard and fast rules. There’s these things that I need to understand and here’s where the line is and this person said this, so it’s really that’s how it is. But one of the things that I’ve started to learn is it’s almost like there are certain things that have to be interpreted. Can you talk about on your end how you go through the process of feeling confident, making a recommendation, and even the idea of taxed law and cases that go, it’s like the IRS versus somebody else, and how those inform certain decisions to get you to a point where you feel confident saying, Hey, we can point to this. Here’s the outcome of this case, so now we know, or here’s the documentation within the IRS code that tells us this is how we can treat this. What does that look like and how do you make decisions to allow you to feel confident in the case for fashion or in our world with food, if you buy a bunch of food for recipes, how do you feel confident knowing if you can deduct that or not? As it relates to IRS and the kind of ambiguous, it kind of feels like these people who might show up at your door with a suit like in matrix and chase you down, how do you make sense of that and feel confident making the recommendations?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, so the first thing I would just tell is that the tax code is actually very ambiguous. The last real true major overhaul to the tax code within 1986, arguably the best year, the year I was born is in 1986 that has the last major overhaul to the tax code, and they intentionally have to make the tax code fairly ambiguous. It has to apply to millions of businesses across industries and niches. And so a lot of it is truly up to interpretation, which can be really frustrating for someone that’s not comfortable in the world of taxes. But pretty much every business kind of rule is if you feel there’s a greater than 50% chance that if you were audited that you would win an argument. Almost every CPA would recommend you take it because a lot of it is up interpretation. I sad, but it’s reality. It’s also up to the interpretation of the IRS agent who is auditing. You can get two cases. It could be an individual, which is frustrating. So there’s actually not a ton of law cases you were talking about. One that doesn’t really apply here, it applies to some of our clients though, like certain plastic surgery, there’s case a lot around it of you cannot detect certain types of plastic surgery and it’s gone through the courts and everything else, but most of it’s a lot opportunity. So one thing I’ll share real quick, the framework we use, yeah, that’d be great for really all creators to use when they’re thinking about is business personal is if you think about your phone, we’ll say Apple or Google, they had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing the phone, all the research development, packaging, the advertising, all of it. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop that new phone. They then mark up and then sell to you for a profit, well creators, and that’s called the cost of goods sold. All those expenses are called the cost of good sold. So people can, anyone’s like, Hey, what are your cogs? You’re like, oh, I know what that is.

Bjork Ostrom: And literally to break that down, it’s like what is the cost of the thing that you are selling? And so for Apple, the cost is all of the material parts, but also the time of the team members that maybe are building the software, but of this analogy maybe just easiest to say like, Hey, the parts of the phone.

Nate Coughran: Yep, that’s exactly right. And so for creators, what creators are selling, they’re selling their brand, their reputation, the trust, their views. That’s what they’re selling when there’s a brand partnership and a brand’s willing to pay you $10,000 to have a post or whatever, they’re buying what you have with your community. And so that’s what you’re selling. You’re selling your brands, your community, that trust, that you’ve shared with your community. And so any of those costs that you spend to build content, to build that brand, to build that trust, to build that engagement, all of those things are deductible. So if you’re a food creator, you need to spend money on kitchen supplies, on nice pots and pans and things like that. I would never be, if any of the food creators use my pots and pans, they would be zero trust. Really that’s using,

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a pancake with a little Teflon on it,

Nate Coughran: Back splashes. You need to make sure you have a nice backsplash. All those things that are helping you build that content and all of that, those are how you should think about what should be deductible for the business.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. In our case, speaking personally, it’s a little bit easier because we have an actual office that we come to and we have an actual kitchen studio, and so the line is pretty clear if we are having something shipped to the office or the kitchen studio, it’s like, man, that’s really easy to classify that as a business expense is if we have something that’s going to our home kitchen, it feels a little bit harder. What about for people who are just in a home kitchen, you are ordering a new set of pots and pans. When I think of that from a computer standpoint, I’m like, oh, you’re ordering a new computer that’s a business expense, pots and pans. It feels like, well, I don’t know, you’re maybe using it like 50–50 for home and then for business. So in a case like that, how do you make a decision as a creator? And I know we could go through the whole podcast, could be like, okay, how about when you get your nails done for a video? How about that one? That’s not the point here. It’s just maybe helping people understand conceptually how to make that. What is the framework for making the decision on is this deductible or not?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, I would say just a very quick framework to use would be would I just go out and buy this on my own if I were not making content? So would you go out and buy new pots and pans just on your own, or are you buying it because you want upgrade the look, the aesthetic, the quality, whatever it might be of your pots and pans that you’re using for your shoots? And if that’s the intent, then it’s a business expense. It might feel weird because you’re saying back to my fashion creator, it feels weird. Well, I also use these clothes on day to day, but identify those clothes. I couldn’t make the content that then makes me money. So it is the intent that this is used for business. If so, then it’s a hundred percent business, even if part of it is used for personal.

Bjork Ostrom: And I almost imagine taking the stand, not that you would do that, I’ve never even met anybody who had to do that, but could I go in front of a jury and my grandma and say, here’s why I made this business expense and feel confident in doing that. It almost for me, that helps me kind of think through, do I feel comfortable declaring this as a business expense? What about on the risk side of it? In making that decision, I think it’s helpful for people to understand what does that mean if you get audited, number one, the risk is something is flagged in your return and then you’re audited. Even within that though, I think part of what’s scary is the ambiguity of what does that even mean and what is the risk within it? And I think people might feel more comfortable taking some of those deductions if they understand what the risk inherent is in saying, I think this is a business expense or not a business expense.

Nate Coughran: Yeah, that’s a really great question actually. So lemme talk about audits in general, less than 1% of all tax returns are actually audited, and that’s a statistic that the IRS publishes and they actually break it down by income category. The more you make, the higher your audit risk is, but for most creators it’s 1% or less chance of getting audited. So that right there, it is a very helpful to know, very low chance that you’ll get audited. Now within that, most of those people who are getting audited, it’s because they have really big red flags. So a couple of big red flags would be auto deducting your car,

Bjork Ostrom: Like the Porsche example and not mileage to be clear, it’s like you bought a car and you’re deducting the car.

Nate Coughran: Yeah, no, that can be deductible. I’m not saying you can’t because a lot of our creators do, but it’s being smart about, it’s saying, yeah, I bought this new car, but only 50% of it’s actually legitimately business. The rest is personal. And it probably becomes easier if you have a catering business versus just at home as a creator if you have a need to move things back and forth and equipment or deliveries, things like that. Yeah. And if you have let’s say a hundred thousand dollars of income in 200,000 of expenses when there’s these really big weird things. But for the most part, last year we did hundreds of tax returns for our creators. None of them were audited And as long as you kind of stick that framework I talked about. But just to answer the other part of the question of what does it mean to get audited, just so people kind of understand that. So less than 1% actually do. The 1% who do get audited is usually some pretty big red flags in there, but most audits, the IRS will send you a letter and they’ll say, Hey, on your tax return you have a line item where you had $50,000 for contract labor. Can you just send a support to back up that 50,000? Usually it’s only one or two line items that they’ll call out. They don’t want every single receipt, they just want high level the big receipts and some explanations of what it was. We’ve had a couple of clients where that happened. They send a little bit of support, a quick letter to the IRS and the IRS is like, cool, we’re done. I don’t know the statistic, but it is so incredibly rare that the IRS actually goes in, opens up the can and is digging into every single expense. You need a receipt for every little thing. Where’s the receipt for this Chick-fil-A? That is so incredibly rare. The IRS is much more focused on people making tens of millions and billions of dollars. That’s who they’re focused on, not people at the lower end of that are like, did you take these Chick-fil-A fries home and feed them to your kids because we’re going to add a percentage back?

Bjork Ostrom: I didn’t even know that. I didn’t know that about the potential of even a phase one where they would say, can you give us a little information about this specifically? When I heard my vision of it was always, it just goes from zero to 100 and 100 is we’re going to dive deep and look at every line item within your business. So it’s helpful to know even that information to know that’s the most common scenario. And then in a very rare location, they would double click into all of it and open up and look line by line. So point being, it’s helpful for us to know as creators what we’re dealing with, and the intent isn’t to be, the intent is to thread the needle with being aggressive but not overly aggressive. Aggressive in the sense that you are taking the deductions you deserve within your business, but not overly aggressive where you get into considering taking things as business expenses that aren’t actually business expenses. Does that more or less define their filter?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It helps no one but the IRS to be too conservative. One of our clients, he made well over $500,000. He was a video game YouTuber and he was so scared to take any deductions in the end, the only one take $3,000 worth of deductions on, call it half a million dollars of income.

Bjork Ostrom: Wow.

Nate Coughran: And I’ll call him John. I’m like, John, you’re simply known to the IRS. The IRS is going to be like, sweet. That’s a lot of extra income. And there were so many things that we wrote out that were very legitimate, but he just was so scared to get a game console

Bjork Ostrom: TV, mic.

Nate Coughran: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Subscriptions

Nate Coughran: So anyway, so definitely don’t be so aggressive that you write up every penny of your income. Don’t be so conservative that you take nothing.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, and you probably deal with people on both sides where you have to have the conversation with somebody who’s being too aggressive. You kind of alluded to that and somebody who’s not being aggressive enough and finding that middle ground, which is what you’re so good at and why people should work with professionals like yourself because you’ve seen a hundred different returns thousands over the years and you’ve developed good insight into where the best middle ground is. And so often that’s one of the many advantages we get with working with somebody who has multiple touchpoint, but not only multiple touchpoints with multiple clients. In your case, it’s multiple touch points with multiple clients who are all in the creator space, which is one of the great things and why it’s so fun to talk to you. So switching subjects, I’m going to talk about a few years ago when I went to the dentist, and I’ll bring it full circle here. So I went to the dentist, I had a cavity, I went in to get it filled and I was like, never again. It was so miserable and I’ve had cavities before that have been filled, but just in this moment that was the breaking point for me. And so I was like, what do I need to do to never have to get a cavity filled again? And granted, I probably will at some point, but this was my plan of action. I was like, okay, I’m going to take the little floss tooth, pick things, pick floss things, I’m going to put ’em in my car. And that way when I get in the car, it is going to be easier to just have that as a routine and something that I do and I’m going to have a nightly routine that I go through every night. I’m going to go flush, I’m going to brush, I’m going to gargle with Listerine, I’m going to do all of those things. And I really locked in my system and the next time I went, I didn’t have a cavity. It was a great outcome and it felt really good. A very similar thing happened with my end of the year taxes, and my guess is there a lot of people that are listening to this can relate where we came to the end of the year and it was like, I don’t know, this was years ago, eight, nine years ago, and it was so incredibly frustrating. I hadn’t sent out, it was the first time that we had to send out 10 90 nines and I didn’t really know what that was. So it was sending out last minute, 10 90 nines. It was getting last minute information on expenses and revenue and deductions. And it was so frustrating that I had this moment where I was like, never again am I going to come to the end of the year and feel stressed and rushed. And what I attempted to do, and I’ve been iterating on this ever since, is to set up a system that allows me to get to the end of the year when we have to submit our taxes and we always file for an extension, which maybe we can talk about,

Bjork Ostrom: To get to that point and to never have to feel stressed or frustrated or this is the worst thing ever. And the biggest thing that I learned from that was I need to be spreading this out throughout the year. And so when there’s a little bit of an increase in pressure when we’re coming up to the time to submit our taxes at the end of the year in October in our case, but not anything like what it was, and my guess is there’s people who are listening who are like, I can relate to that. Can you talk us through, for somebody who is experiencing that feeling, how do you go from, this is stressful, this is the worst part of the job. I don’t want to be involved with this to, I feel like not only am I not stressed, but this is something that’s actually additive to my business and a helpful thing. Now, what are the major structures and component parts that we need to build as creator businesses to have that feeling as it relates to our taxes and our bookkeeping?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, great question. And that’s what we see every day of people stress. One of our newer clients who signed up two weeks ago when I was talking to her on the phone, she was like, I actually stopped making content at the end of this year because I was so scared of how much money I was going to owe in taxes and not knowing what was going on. I just stopped making content because I didn’t want to have to deal with it. And I’m like, Oh man, that’s not good. And so I totally get that. There’s a few things that we tell freighters regardless of how much you’re making, whether you’re just starting out in your journey or you’re established and you’ve been doing this for years, there’s a few things that you should do and put in place that really sets you up nicely for the end of the year. The first one, this doesn’t have to necessarily do with income expenses, but get an LLC, please set up an LLC. Most states it’s between 150, $250 per year for the LLC. It’s going to protect you, your personal assets, it legitimizes your business, it actually lowers your audit risk. When it comes to the IRS, it’s just good practice to get. We can talk about that later if we have time, but I’ll put that to the side, but that’s always the first things we say. Get that LLC set up. It’s really easy to do. Now in terms of the finances piece of it, the very first thing get a separate bank account, whether it’s just if you’re at Chase and you open up just another personal chase checking account or whatever you want to do. It doesn’t have to be a business bank account. It can just be like another personal checking account. Get a separate checking account, have all of your income funnel into that checking account. If you use credit cards, have a credit card that’s dedicated to the business. If you have three credit cards already, you just say, Hey, this particular Visa, we’re only going to use business expenses on this one, right? It’s separating out the business and personal. Now it goes back to understanding what is and isn’t deductible. That’s kind of what we were talking about earlier, but if you can have a separate bank account, all of your income for your creator business is going into that one account, all of your expenses are going out of that account or from a credit card that’s dedicated. Then once you get to the end of the year, it’s a lot less daunting because probably what you experienced, everything was probably mixed if I had to guess. And then you had to go through thousands of transactions that were personal and business all mixed together and you’re like, wait, was this Amazon purchase? Was this, I don’t remember. If it’s a business purchase, then you’re digging through your Amazon account of like, oh yeah, I need to pull this one out. What about this? And you’re going to miss deductions. You’re going to spend days and days and days going through thousands of transactions, try to separate them all. Where if you have that dedicated account and you’re really diligent about using it just for business purposes, when you get to the end of the year, then everything’s there together. If you are working on a CPA, it’s easy enough to be like, here’s all my bank statements now. Go make it nice and pretty in Excel. For me, that’s level one. The next one would be,

Bjork Ostrom: And real quick on that, do you have a favorite bank? So one of the things that we just recently did is I’ll tell people as we talk through, because I think it’s interesting to hear what we do. We have a Wells Fargo bank for a parent company, which is tiny bit, but then all of the operating companies we have use Mercury, which is more of an online focus bank. I dunno if you’re familiar. My guess is you’ve seen a lot of ’em. We’ve really loved that as a solution. We’re mostly online with what we’re doing, and so it’s great. There’s some things that are downside, like you can’t go into a bank location, but generally we’ve really liked Mercury and then we also use Wells Fargo personally and then for our parent company TinyBit. So that’s been great solution for us. Do you have other banks that you have noticed as great banks to work with or maybe even business bank accounts that have been good?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, absolutely. So, the big ones for us, Chase is probably the number one recommended. They are probably the best business banking solution in personal bank. They’re great Wells Fargo and Capital One. Why we love those, they’re really easy, like the online portal, everything is really easy to get all your information. There’s branches all over the place. They’re big, they’re well established. There was a banking crisis a couple years ago. It kind of exposed

Bjork Ostrom: Silicon Valley Bank. Yeah, it was like a literal run on the bank. It’s a wonderful life.

Nate Coughran: That was pretty crazy, and that’s why we really recommend clients go to those. They’re well established. We’ve had hundreds of clients use them. Mercury is also a really great one. If you want pure online only, those are the four we recommend. Actually, it’s Chase, Wells, Fargo, Capital One, or Mercury. Mercury, if you want just online only.

Bjork Ostrom: Mercury, being one that’s newer, doesn’t have the deep roots that a chase would, as an example. Yeah.

Nate Coughran: Yep, exactly. The ones that we really encourage you to stay away from would be like a local credit union. I know it’s great to support your local community and it kills me to say, don’t do that. We’ve had just a lot of clients who use kind of local or smaller credit unions or banks have a really hard time connecting those banks to different applications like QuickBooks or Xero or something like that, getting payments from different platforms. They’ve sometimes been flagged as fraudulent just because they’re smaller banks, they’re not.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s the systems aren’t as established and connectability.

Nate Coughran: Yeah, that’s usually what we say stay away from. We kind of like those bigger banks or Mercury. Those would be our recommendations.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, that makes sense. And there’s probably one of the things I’ve come to learn over the last decade of doing business is banks have, there’s different specialties that they have, and you might find that you could have a small account at a credit union, not really actively using it, but maybe you go there for a loan or there’s different banks have different specialties and so options there, but it makes sense for what we do, which is online based business, a lot of transactions that are happening online, the need to connect things with a QuickBooks account or Xero, the importance of that connectability means that you probably are going to have a company that’s a little bit more established and have those systems in place. So we have the LLC, the limited liability company setting that up to protect yourself, but then also it allows you to get an EIN, which is kind of like a business social security number. You go out, you set up a separate bank account, doesn’t have to necessarily be a business bank account, but my guess is that would be ideal.

Nate Coughran: That’s right,

Bjork Ostrom: So you have this separate bank account. Let’s say it’s at Chase, and then what you do is you start to run all of your transactions that are business related through that using the filter of, Hey, is this something that I’m buying because of the business? Yes. Okay, let me grab, I have my wallet right here. I won’t expose any of the credit card information, but my top card is a personal credit card. My second card is my business card, and what I find is my little system here is I keep my personal card when I’m just at home moving around. If I go on a business trip, I flip these, so suddenly my business card is the front one, but just earlier today went out for a business related lunch, use a business card. So then I travel, I’m going to be using the business card in one password. We have our business card saved, and in Amazon we have a business card and we have a personal card. So you start to run those separately. You start to get a system around that. My guess is that gets you quite a bit in terms of for you on your end as the person who then receives the information to be able to sort through it. But let’s keep going. Let’s say you want to continue to have things be really tight. You’ve made those changes, you are running things really clean through the separate bank accounts. What do you do to continue to level up along the way?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, so I’ll show two options. The first one is DIY. I would say if you’re going to try to do it yourself, don’t sign up for a QuickBooks type of platform. Why I say that is those platforms are great. We personally use QuickBooks for all of our clients, but if you’ve never done bookkeeping, you’re not familiar with accounting, it’s really easy to get it set up, connect your accounts, and then mess things up. We’ve had just countless clients who try to do zero on their own or QuickBooks on their own. They double count income. One client overstated their income by tens of thousands of dollars. Perfect.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like the opposite of write off. It’s a write on. Yeah.

Nate Coughran: Yeah. Because X was classifying their credit card payments as income rather than an actual payment. So it was really easy to kind of mess it up. If you are going to do it yourself, we recommend just having a simple income and expense tracker. You just lay out your income and ideally once a month you go through that bank, your bank account, you pull out all the income, you list out the date, the sorts and the amount and a couple columns over for the expenses, the date, the description, and the amount. And each month you just kind of go through and put those in. That will make taxes a breeze at the end of the year. Right? That’s if you’re going to do it yourself, just use a Google sheet or an Excel spreadsheet and just do it that way. It doesn’t honestly make sense to set up QuickBooks or zero almost guarantee you’ll abandon it after a month and then you’ll forget about the subscription and then you’re just paying for nothing.

Bjork Ostrom: And the idea is basically that’s what you’re trying to do within QuickBooks anyways, which is create a list of expenses, a list of the income, and figure out at the end of that month how much did you make or lose, and then at the end of the year, how much did you make or lose?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, exactly. So we typically tell people, if you’re making less than 60, $70,000 a year from your content creation, just try to do it yourself, right? To your point LLC, the bank account, keep a clean separation and just try to do it on your own to save yourself some money. As you’re building your business, you want to spend your money on reinvesting in the business and growing and not necessarily on a service like Cookie or someone else, but where it starts to actually benefit you to work with a professional is once you’re past $75,000 a year or you’re on track to do that in a 12 month period to work with a professional who can one, keep track of all that income expenses for you two, be an advisor to you like a sounding board of, Hey, based on where you’re at right now, we see that you’re not deducting this. You haven’t been deducting your internet, your cell phone. What about you haven’t thought about a contribution to a retirement account that could lower your taxes or becoming an S corp, which we can talk about later. There’s just a bunch of different things you want to free up your time at that point to spend time on the content and not in the weeds trying to classify things. That’s where it can become a net positive, right? If your accountant can find more deductions for you, take time off your or give you more time and be able to find ways to be more efficient with your tax structure. But those are kind of the two ways of the next level to go to. Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. We know that developing testing and publishing a blog around food can get costly, which is where Cookie Finance comes in. Did you know you can write off ingredients like flour, butter and chocolate chips that you’re using to produce content? Cookie Finance specializes in helping content creators like you maximize tax savings while handling all your bookkeeping, quarterly tax payments and personal and business tax returns. Plus they’ll help you uncover deductions you might be overlooking, whether it’s kitchen tools, camera equipment, ingredients, or even your food blogger pro membership. So you never miss out on savings month to month plans with no long-term commitments. Cookie Finance makes managing your taxes and finances simple so that you can focus on what matters most, creating amazing content ready to start saving. Book a free consultation with Cookie Finance today by going to cookiefinance.co and clicking on the Book an Intro Call button. And that was kind of where I ended up when I went through that semi crisis of like never again. What I realized is we need to bring somebody in who I think of this concept of super router as we scale up what we are doing and try to do more, there needs to be more super routing that we do. Something comes in, we don’t try and figure it out. Accounting question comes in, I’m not pausing what I’m doing and spending 90 minutes trying to figure out the accounting. I reach out now we have a fractional CFO, I reach out to them or bookkeeper like Cookie Finance as an example for anybody listening, reach out to them and say, Hey, I’m trying to figure this out. Can you help me? It’s bringing in that expert and you become a router. You’re still getting it done in the sense that the task will be accomplished, but it’s you doing less of it. In order to do more of what you specialize in, you have to bridge that gap in order to justify the expense. To your point, 60,000, 70,000, 80,000, you’re starting to get to that point where maybe you can start to allocate some of this while still having a salary and routing that to the experts. So I love that idea. And the big unlock for us at that time was going from trying to figure out everything. At the end of the year even, we did have separate bank accounts, personal and business, but it was trying to figure it out all at the end of the year, two every month along the way saying, Hey, what did January look like? Let’s review the categorization of these expenses. Let’s make sure that this is accurate. Okay, great. Is January good? Let’s close that up. Then we go on to the next month. And what happened was, and I was thinking about this, it started to develop into, we now have a dashboard, and I was thinking about this idea, if you have a car and you’re sold a car and it didn’t have a dashboard on it, you can’t see how fast you’re going, what the RPM is. You could still drive it, but you’d be at risk. And I think there’s a very similar analogy that can be drawn to running a business where your dashboard is, and it is your books, it’s the numbers, it’s the revenue, it’s the expenses, it’s what’s happening on a month to month basis. You can run your business without that, but there’s a lot of risk that’s inherent in that process. And so to the degree that we can develop this dashboard alongside somebody who has expertise in doing that, I think what happens is you start to understand the mechanics of your business more. Hey, actually why am I paying more in software now than I did last year? And at this point I’ve started developing, even just today, I did this and I’d be interested in you seeing if you have any ideas for adding to this developed a little system where we get the books now every month, and one of the things I’m doing is comparing this month to last month within QuickBooks, and then I’ll go and I’ll compare this month to this month last year, so I can see how did that change from last year? And then I’ll compare the last year to the last year before that. And so you can start to see, okay, they called the trailing 12 months, so if this is January, it’d be January, December of 24 compared to January, December of 23. And what you’re doing is you’re starting to understand how your business is moving and what impact it has, and also seeing similar to the dashboard on the car, wait, the red light is on. Why is that light on? I need to get that addressed. So let’s say somebody goes through these processes, they establish the LLC, they separate their bank accounts, they start to split out expenses in a really good way. They get to the point where they’re either DIYing it or let’s say they’ve gotten to the point where they can justify it. They work with Cookie, they do those, the bookkeeping of their expenses, and they have a good understanding each month. Once you start to get that information as a business owner, how do you then start to use it proactively? I think that’s where it gets really exciting.

Nate Coughran: Yeah. I’ll use two recent examples because I really like these and it probably makes sense for anyone listening. The first one was one of our creators on Instagram, and she, last year she did about 350,000. And her question to me was, I’m completely maxed out. I’m thinking about hiring a virtual assistant, but I just don’t think it makes sense and I’ll call her Sarah for generic reasons. And I was like, alright, Sarah, you made 350,000 with all your other expenses we’re going to take out, not include wages. You spent $50,000, so $300,000 net, how much would you pay this virtual assistant? It was like $20 an hour for 20 hours a week, whatever. We went through all the math, you kind of wind it up against your other expenses. I’m like, okay, but how much more time, if you had 20 extra hours each week to produce content, how much more money could you be making? It’s like, oh, well, I could probably easily make another 50,000. I’m like, okay, so you’re going to pay virtual assistant, call it 15, 20,000, but you can make an extra 50, 60,000. It’s like, oh, oh, right, right. Okay. That starts to make sense and the business can actually support it and you can see, and you’re not shooting the dark. That example of a dashboard, it’s not like, well, I don’t know if the business can support it, are redlining right now with the RPMs. Another good example is one of our creators, she, she’s really active with ads on Instagram. She’s a home decor before coming on board, it is all DIY. Had no dashboard, had no idea what was going on. And before she signed up, her very first question was, I’m running all these ads, but does it actually make sense to running all of these ads? And first we had to get in QuickBooks, we had to clean up all of her financials, get all the information, but then once we had the information, I’ll call her Jane. It’s like, Jane, for every dollar you spent on advertising, you increase revenue by $3.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, do that all day long.

Nate Coughran: Yeah. Where suddenly with that framework, she supercharged her ad spend and she went from doing 3 5400 in revenue last year or the year before. In this last year, she’ll do over a million. With that understanding of confidence.

Nate Coughran: That is a good decision. So much just this gut feel of it feels like it helps, but now you actually have the numbers and dashboard to back it up.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yeah, and I think that’s a perfect example of once you have that information, you can make a confident decision whether it be on, Hey, I’m going to bring somebody in. I think that will either, and I think either a case could be made for either of these, this is going to increase my revenue or maybe it might not increase my revenue, it’ll just give me back a bunch of time. And I know that when I look, I have enough money to cover this and it’s worth it for me to spend this money to get 10 hours back so I can sustain myself as a creator and not burn out. Because that’s also important is that maybe it’s not that you are buying additional revenue, but you’re just buying peace of mind or headspace or lower stress. But all of that is aided by having that dashboard that you can look at. Do you recomme, what do you recommend in terms of frequency and even, I know this sounds so basic, but how do you do it? So somebody sends you, you’re working with Cookie Finance, they send, Hey, here’s what it looks like, and maybe you can talk about just the difference between accounting and bookkeeping real quick. Can you talk about that to separate the two of those and maybe how those interplay before we talk more about it?

Nate Coughran: For most intents and purposes for what we’re talking about, we’ll use accounting and bookkeeping interchangeably. It’s accounting, bookkeeping. It is making sure you’re categorizing all the income expenses and that you have a really good clear picture of your financial health. You get a profit and lot statement. You have a really good understanding of the numbers behind your business. So bookkeeping is just the process of on a monthly basis, going through categorizing all the income expenses, putting in the right categories, make sure you are capturing every deduction. That’s what bookkeeping’s role is. And then taxes that role is then to, on a quarterly basis, make sure you’re paying as much as you should be in quarterly taxes throughout the year. It’s learn that tax liability, tax planning, tax strategies, and that’s why where taxes come in, where bookkeeping wouldn’t. So it is a common question we get of should I hire a bookkeeper or a tax person? The first step is usually the tax person, but ideally it’s combined that way you’re not going to two different people, but a tax person typically won’t do the bookkeeping and bookkeepers won’t do the taxes. So ideally they’re combined into one place, you’re not going to multiple different places.

Bjork Ostrom: And idea being that really good books help inform the taxes. And so in our story, it was the tight bookkeeping that made taxes easier. But to your point, you’re always going to have to pay taxes, and so that will have to get figured out. But whether it’s DIY bookkeeping, like we talked about spreadsheet expenses and income, or at some point bringing somebody in who can do that, they say, okay, I see these transactions, I’m going to categorize them for you. That could be the bookkeeper accounting, it seems like almost would be then the next level above that, which could give you advice to say, Hey, have you considered this or this? Maybe you get some of that from bookkeeping as well, but a little bit more of the expertise around that. And then obviously taxes being kind of the event of paying those quarterly or yearly. So that makes sense. So going back to the question, let’s say you get January wraps up, you get books sent to you books. What do you do with that? How do you use that asset wisely as a business owner to help inform decisions to help learn? What would you advise people do with it?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, there’s a couple different levels. The first one is triage. Do you have enough money to actually pay your rent to cover those basic living expenses after all the expenses you spent on the business at the end of the month, how much is the leftover for you taking into consideration taxes? That’s something that we see time and time again. People don’t set aside money for taxes and they get to the end of the year and they get hit with the tax bills. It’s like, oh no, I don’t have the money. I spent all of this. So it is at the end of the month being like, okay, this is how much is left at the end of the month and you set aside X amount towards taxes and this is truly what I have to live on. It’s like the level one is those good clean financials help you make those decisions of, okay, I can cover my basic living expenses. And for a lot of creators at that basic level, it’s when am I making enough that I can quit my full-time job into this? That’s probably the first big thing that these financials help you understand is when does it make sense? I can quit my full-time job and this can cover it. If you’re shooting in the dark and it’s all mixed together, you have no sense. It’s like, I don’t know. You’re never going to be able to make that decision confidently without having, and we’ve helped many clients make that leap. We didn’t make it for them, but because they had the information, they felt confident leaving their full-time job, then it can start to go up from there of set aside money for retirement and actually taking that money and being able to invest it. It’s understanding how much is luck over what can you be doing with that money to now grow it? What can you do with that money to then grow the business? And that’s where we can give general advice, but a lot of times it’s creator, creator specific of, oh, actually I do have enough money to do this renovation to my kitchen, and I really do think that could help with X. Right?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Nate Coughran: So it’s once again, going back to having that confidence and ability to know of what can you spend money on, can’t you, where do you need to tighten things up? Where can you be a little bit looser? Where can you invest your money, whether it’s full investments or to your own company? And then it can go much, much deeper and cooler analytics from there. But those are the foundational ones that usually people start with.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And one of the things that gets really fun, we could do an entire additional podcast on this, is when you get to that point where we talk a lot about making the transition from having a full-time W2 contractor job, and if your desire is to transition into being a full-time creator, it’s not the desire for everybody, but if that is your desire, how do you feel confident doing that? What does that look like? And then let’s say you continue to grow and build. How can you be strategic and smart about the additional income? Let’s say you surpass the income that you need to survive day to day, then what do you do with that additional income that is the best use of it? And like you said, it might be a home kitchen remodel, but it also might be investing into a food brand that is adjacent to your business, and then you become an advocate of that business and it helps it grow and the value of that grows. And so there’s a lot of really fun opportunities there in addition to just all of the 401k, all of these options that you can have another podcast for that. But one of the things that I think is important to talk about that you touched on just briefly, we’ve talked about on the podcast before, but I always feel like it’s important to mention is this idea of, so we talked about LLC and then we also talked about an S corp. That’s kind of confusing because an LLC can also have an S election. But talk to us about how all of that plays together and at what point should you at least start to learn about it or at least reach out to your accountant or CPA to say, Hey, should I be thinking about having an S selection or having this be an S corp?

Nate Coughran: Yeah, great. So at the simplest level, everyone should become an LLC. There’s no downfalls being an LLC beyond the couple hundred bucks. You need to pay each year to maintain that with the state. But LLCs are great when you become an S corp, and I’ll tell you about what that means in a second. You’ll always remain an LLC, so it’s not do I be an LLC or an S corp, everyone becomes an LLC. And then with that LLC, you can then kind of add on the S corp on top of that. And the big benefit of being an S Corp is saving what’s called on self-employment taxes. So as just a sole proprietor, if you have nothing or you have an LLC, the biggest tax you pay is the self-employment tax. It’s 15.4% that’s on top of your federal taxes and state taxes. That’s the one that people are shocked with. They’re not prepared. I talked with a new client recently and she’s like, my last CPA did my taxes so wrong. It was like I put all my income in the online calculator, it said X, I got my tax return and it was like $15,000 more than what that calculator said. And it’s because she was freaking about the self-employment tax. It’s probably the first time you’re filing taxes, whether you’re making a little or a lot as a creator, that’s going to be the big shock is that self-employment tax. So the idea is, and what the self-employment tax is, it’s social security and Medicare. If you work a normal W2 job out of every paycheck, you have social security and Medicare being taken out of every paycheck. It’s 7.65% of everything you make. What most people don’t realize is that your employer is also paying 7.65% in social security Medicare for you as well. So you combine those together, it’s 15.3%. So when you are self-employed, like are as a creator, you are both the employee and the employer. So you’ve made both halves of social security, Medicare, and that’s where you get that 15.3%. So as just a normal sole proprietor or LLC, you owe that 15.3%. It’s a gut punch and a lot of people aren’t prepared for that one

Bjork Ostrom: And to draw out from the meaning, so it’s tax. So who employs you yourself. So I think it’s helpful for us to understand that. And even within your tax returns, my understanding is if you just have an LLC, you don’t have an S selection or you don’t have an LLC and you just report it as income, like sole proprietor income, you just have one tax return because you are employed by yourself, so you don’t need a separate tax return because it’s just you, but then you’re taxed more on it that 15.4%.

Nate Coughran: Yep, that’s exactly right on top of all the other taxes you owe. That’s exactly right. It’s a great way to explain it. And so without getting too much into details, the S-Corp election essentially allows you to avoid paying up to half of those self-employment taxes. So if you are earning gross before all your expenses, if you’re earning call it $125,000 a year, the S-Corp election could easily save you 10 to $12,000 by having that election. It’s a massive, massive tax savings, but it does come with additional kind of compliance. One thing is you do have to file a separate tax return. You don’t pay additional taxes. It’s just kind of like an informational return you have to do each year. So you have to file a separate tax return. You do need to set up a legitimate payroll. We typically recommend Gusto. You need to put yourself as a W2 employee. There’s different things you have to register with the IRS. There’s different things you have to do that you definitely should work with a professional at that point. And so typically we say once you’re making consistently above 10 to $12,000 a month, call it a hundred, $120,000 a year, or you’re on track to make that in a year, it makes sense to make that election flip over to an S corp and start the process. Because even if throughout the year you paid an accountant $4,000, whatever it might be, you’re going to save significantly more than that in taxes by having that election, getting all those benefits of it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s that transition from you were self-employed, you were employed by yourself, you have this additional self-employment tax. Two, you’re no longer self-employed, employed by this. You’re a different entity. It’s a business that’s who’s employing you now, which means you have to be getting a salary from that company. So they’re paying you a salary and you also have to do a return for it because that’s a separate thing. But what it does is we don’t have to go into the weeds of why, I don’t know, but another podcast, maybe a deep dive on the reason behind the S-Corp, but tax law is written such that you get to eliminate that self-employment tax if you have that S-Corp. And so at that point, I like that. I like the a hundred thousand mark or 10,000 if you look at it on a monthly basis, or if you look at it on a yearly basis, a hundred thousand or 120,000 as a really clean marker of when you would make that transition. And to your point, that’s when you’d really need to make sure that you’re working with somebody who gets it, who understands it, who’s a professional, and can help you move forward with it.

Nate Coughran: Really easy to mess it up totally.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, and with all of this, that’s my feeling is like the cost that you are paying, not only is freeing up your time, not only is it getting you expert advice, insight, additional information, but it’s also a security against making an error, which I feel like The more that you do it, the less prone you are to having that. You have those reps, you have that experience for somebody who’s doing it for the first time, it’s almost like a guarantee that you’ll have a hiccup somewhere along the way. So that’s actually a great transition, Nate, into talking about cookie finance, what you guys do and the way that you can partner with creators. Everybody who listens to this in some form or fashion, or a lot of people, I should say. I got a message from somebody in the management company that we work with for commercial real estate, and she’s like, I just started listening to the podcast. So I’ll say vast majority of people who listen to the podcast are creators. They have creator businesses, and Cookie Finance is such a great solution for these people. If they’re looking to level up what they’re doing with their bookkeeping, accounting, and taxes, that’s all stuff that you do. So if people are interested in exploring that, what’s best path for them to follow?

Nate Coughran: So our business really takes care of everything. We’re helping you form your LLC, we’re making an S-Corp collection for you. If it makes sense. We get your QuickBooks set up, we’re organizing your financials. Even if in 2025 and you’re like, oh man, I have all my stuff from 2024, we’re here to get everything organized for 2024. It gets you all caught up and cleaned up and organized. That’s what our team does, helping you with your quarterly taxes, tech planning strategy, all of that. So the best way on our website is just cookiefinance.co. annoyingly, .com was taken.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Probably makes it more memorable though. That’s the thing, because you’ll always mention it’s do co and then everybody’s like, okay, they’ll make a mental note of it.

Nate Coughran: Yeah, that’s right. So cookiefinance.co. If you reach out, schedule time, even if you’re like, Hey, I don’t know if it makes sense, we’re more than happy to do free consultation. You can poke a time directly on our website, pretty much same day, get in contact with a member of our team and we can consult with you, talk with you about does it make sense to become an scorp, talk to you about deductions, walk you through anything, and there’s no obligation you can do that, and we’d be happy to chat with you.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. It’s a huge advantage for creators to have somebody like Cookie Finance in their corner. And like I said, the more that you can focus on your expertise, your specialty as a creator, and become a router in ways in departments that you don’t want to spend a lot of time with, I think those are the ways that you win long-term is bringing those people into your team. So we’ll make sure to link to that cookiefinance.co in the show notes, and we’ll have to have you on again, Nate, to have a conversation. There’s a ton of opportunities here and I know people want to figure out how to do it well and also want to figure out how to not have to do it themselves, and you can help them with both of that. So thanks so much for coming on.

Nate Coughran: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

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 Tools 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.

Bjork Ostrom: So here’s a funny thing on the Food Blogger Pro podcast, I don’t often talk about Food Blogger Pro membership. It’s a huge part of what we do and the reality is the majority of our time as a team is spent thinking about and working with the Food Blogger Pro members. So we wanted to take some time to remind people that if you want to take the next step, like go beyond just this podcast, you can join Food Blogger Pro. If you’re interested, all you need to do is go to food blogger pro.com. We’re going to tell you more about what a membership entails, and if you’re interested in signing up, you can just hit the Join Now button. What does that mean? Well, we have a community forum where there’s the food blogger pro industry experts, many names from which you probably recognize from this podcast. We also have deals and discounts on some of the most popular and important tools for food creators and food bloggers. We have courses that dive deep on photography and video and social media applications. We do Live Q&As with industry experts. Like recently, we had a conversation with an SEO expert named Eddie from Raptive where he talked about republishing and how to be strategic with your approach to republishing and why that’s important. We do these Coaching Callswhere I jump on with a creator and we talk about how we can look at their business and grow their business. And the cool thing is for those of you who listen to this podcast, we actually have a members-only podcast called FBP on the Go where we take some of these video lessons that we’re doing, like these coaching calls or these Live Q&As with experts and we roll those up into a podcast. So if you don’t have time to sit down and watch those, you can actually just listen to them like you do this podcast, but it’s a members-only podcast. So if you’re interested, again, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com and check it out. It’s a great next step for anybody who’s been listening to the podcast for a long time and wants to dive deeper into growing and building and scaling their business.

Ann Morrissey: Hello. Hello, Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team here you’re listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. In today’s episode, Bjork is chatting with Jaimee Campanella about time management outsourcing and how to create a structure for your business. You’ll hear all about Jaimee’s journey of finding the balance between work and family and how being intentional with your time is a game changer. From conducting a time audit to figuring out how to prioritize tasks, she explains how you can stay on track without burning out and make time for what really matters. Jaimee also talks about how you can create a joyful structure for your business, knowing when to outsource and why documenting processes is key for sustainability. If you’re ready to break free from the time scarcity trap and create a work-life balance that actually works, this episode will be right up your alley. If you enjoy this episode, we’d 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: Jaimee, welcome to the podcast.

Jaimee Campanella: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re going to be talking about something that we often hear people I wouldn’t say complain about, but as an example for Food Blogger Pro, for people who are members of Food Blogger Pro, we’ve had thousands of people go through the Food Blogger Pro program, have learned a lot. One of the things that we do is we do an exit interview. It’s a questionnaire and we say, Hey, what was one of the reasons why you canceled your account with Food Blogger Pro? Because we want to know better. What could we improve on? What could we change? One of the most common things is people say, I just don’t have time. There’s so much I have that I’m managing. A lot of times it’s people who have kids or you have a full-time job or family and a full-time job or just responsibilities and you’re trying to build this thing, you’re excited about it, but you can’t find the time. And we’re going to be talking about that today because you have an expertise and a lot of experience helping people find time to do the things that they want to do. But how did you get into this? What did it look like for you to find your own time to build a business around helping other people find time?

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah, thank you for asking and I think it’s so relatable to most bloggers out there. I wanted to start a business where I could be present with my family. I could define this experience of work-life balance that everyone was achieving. This was going to be my side gig. And while I was raising young children, and I knew that the systems and tools I had learned as an organizational expert consultant and time management strategist would help me in this field. But it was very different once I started my own business because I was experiencing all the time that I was disappointed with how much time I actually had to work on it. I still had the family, I still had the day-to-day responsibilities, and I was experiencing a lot of success at the beginning as people were referrals and different people were coming to me to work on different things. But I slowly started to lose my purpose of why I was doing it. And I started to get intoxicating. And I think this is something that a lot of bloggers talk to me about is the more I post, the more I do, the more I write, the more opportunity there is, the more money I could make. And I caught in that same cycle. I was doing more, taking on more clients, and then I was just feeling like I didn’t have enough time for all the things I wanted to do, stop my daily walks, my personal creative time, the future health of my business, and I was tired and overwhelmed and just felt burnt out by this thing I had created, which was supposed to be in support of my vision, of my life vision. So it was in this kind of stuckness, this place of burnout that I realized there had to be another way to approach this because all these amazing, I was working with people as a time strategist and consultant, and people were just suffering. And there has to be another way. There has to be another way that we’re not looking at this because we’re all successful, we’re all ambitious, smart, and yet we’re all struggling with time. And so once I kind of hit my own pitfall with it, I realized I needed to change. And once I finally did discover some of the tools and strategies which I teach people, that’s where I wanted to help people experience — that they could create the best of both worlds for themselves. You can have a successful blog, you can have a successful business and be a present parent or have that other job or whatever. The other thing is is these things that we create that we tend to let them control us. And that’s the first place I love to support people is shifting that perspective of feeling like everything’s out of my control to actually I am in control here and I can change the way I’m living.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It feels like there’s, broadly speaking, when you think of the time piece, there’s kind of those two buckets that you could put people into, one that you alluded to. I think a lot of people can relate with this idea of you’ve kind of figured some things out and you have some traction, and you start to get this feedback loop that feels really good, and it probably has some echoes of addiction, which is you do a thing and that you get this dopamine hit, and if you continue in that pattern, you will be rewarded for that. And to your point, it could be posting to social and seeing people respond. It could be landing a deal and getting money. It could be increasing page views on your site and earning more from ads. And that a lot of times can result in you doing more of that thing that is feeding the dopamine. But what it does is it creates a situation where you’ve blocked out all of these other things that oftentimes aren’t as dopamine producing, right? It’s really great for me to sit down. Last night I did, it was probably an hour and a half of stop motion with my 6-year-old daughter. She’s been really into stop motion, and it’s literally me. I have a little thing that sinks over to my watch. She moves a tiny character like half an inch, and then I take a picture and that is not dopamine producing, But it’s really valuable. And 10 years from now, I’m going to be really glad that I did that from five to six 30 as opposed to tried to land another deal for pinch of Yum, but it doesn’t feed me in the same way. So there’s that category of time and considerations. There’s also the category of people who are in the startup mode and you’re grinding and maybe you don’t have the dopamine or you don’t have that positive reinforcement yet because you’re trying to build the engine up so it’s going fast enough. So you do start to build some of those flywheels and in those patterns, and it feels like time is of equal consideration for both of those. Do you feel like your focus is more on the former or the latter or maybe both?

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah, I was going to say both because in that first scenario today you’re talking about hustle culture. The more we do, the more rewarding it’s going to be. The more successful I’m going to be if I keep churning, churning, churning and producing more. But at the end of the day, the experience really isn’t real success. Like you just said, if you’re not spending that hour and a half with your child, then you have resentment and then you have guilt. So yes, you might be making a lot of money, but the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of success is just being diminished day in and day out. So it’s like

Bjork Ostrom: A false hit. And that being success and accomplishment more broader because you do have it compartmentalized within work, but you’re speaking to, I am viewing my life as successful because, and you alluded to this for yourself because you have a purpose that is defined as being a good dad, in my case, being a good mom in your case, or could be different for everybody. But is that what you’re talking about within the context of success?

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah, there’s this intentionality that you have to put forth, if I design my dream life, what does it actually look like? Is it about the numbers? Is it about the feelings, the experiences of having? Is it the memories I’m creating with my children or is it literally the bank account numbers? Is it hitting this amount of followers on my blog? And people often just have a really big imbalance or disconnection with that. They say, I want my business to look this certain way. I want my blog to look this certain way, but I feel like crap even though I hit those goals because I’m not really living my dream life vision. I’m not really in touch with why I created this business or why I am doing what I’m doing and they don’t feel fulfilled. So that’s the imbalance. And most people are feeling when they’re fighting with time. And the other scenario, you’re creating a startup, you might need to dedicate more time at the beginning of something, but that’s an intentional choice. And that’s the kind of shift is people speak in these scenarios, like time is happening to them, time is against them. And so in both, regardless of which bucket you fall in, you have to decide what is the intention? Yes, I understand I’m going to put an extra 40 hours upfront this week for this startup and I’m going to make sure that next week I spent extra time with my children, my spouse, or doing my hobbies. That’s a proactive approach to time. You’re not resenting your startup, you’re making a conscious choice. I am going to give more to this right now, but it’s not that I’ve just given away so much or I’m exhausted and it took over. No, it’s it’s choice. And I think that’s the distinction in all these scenarios that we’re out of touch with what choices we’re making, which are actually creating the experience that we’re having.

Bjork Ostrom: And why do you think people end up there? Because if you look inward, you probably have this feeling of, this doesn’t feel great, but a lot of times we stay in that position longer than we should, knowing that it doesn’t feel good. So in your experience in working with people, is it that they lose focus or they shift their focus, suddenly they’re looking at what other people are doing and then they think they should do that? Why do you think people end up in a position where they are maybe their own boss and we all technically are when it comes down to it, but you end up in a position where you don’t like what it is that you’re doing, even if you’re kind of deciding what it is that you get do.

Jaimee Campanella: Right? Well, there’s a couple scenarios people fall into. One is just there’s a lot of clients I work with. They’re holding onto the rain so tight, they are afraid to loosen up, they’re afraid to let go, they’re afraid to outsource. It’s like their other baby. Their business is their baby and they’re so dedicated to it. And so many people are like, I work, I’m exhausted. I’m working around the clock, but it takes me longer to train somebody to do it. If I’ll just do it myself, it’s going to be quicker. Or that mentality of no one else can help me because only I know how to do this. This is my brand, this is my look. So just really holding on so tight that they’re actually preventing themselves from moving forward. So I do see that a lot, that this perfectionist mentality where they just are not willing to see where they can take help to actually achieve the experience they want. And then this other cycle is people see that they’re in that spot and then they’re looking for all these different tools or tricks or ways to get out of it, band-aid solutions or the other side, I’m just going to outsource, but they don’t really know how to outsource and then they end up losing a lot of time and money or they’re like, okay, I’m just going to revisit my goals. Or I know this one woman was like, if I could just revise my morning routine, I know everything would change.

Bjork Ostrom: I’m like, if I could put that 10 minutes of meditation in,

Jaimee Campanella: And she’s like, okay, I want to journal a weight loss journey, cold plunge gratitude. I’m like, you’ve just added 16 things to your already impossibly full day and you wonder why you feel disappointed. So they just have these expectations. It’s not a realistic perspective of where their time is going. I think that’s another big piece of it. No one is able to look in and do it really audit where their time is going. So they just feel like those days at the end you’re like, I know I did so much today, but I got nothing done. It’s this loss of perspective of how much time things take where all the time leaks throughout your day. So you’re kind of cycling through this disappointment with yourself and time. And that’s the expectation you create with time. There’s just never enough. It’s never going to change. I just have to keep hustling. I have to work late at night. There’s no other time. So this looking for band-aid solutions or multitasking, but not really seeing the results at the end.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I just had this out the other day. So we use two project management solutions, tools, software. One is a tool called Things by a company called Culture Code. That’s the one that I use personally. So it’s like anything that I’m just doing on my own, I tracking in that. And then we use Asana, but with things specifically, one of what I try and do is I build out the things that I’m doing each day and kind of create a list of what it is. And I was having this conversation, so my wife, Lindsay, we’re business partners, we work on stuff together and we’re just talking about some work stuff. And I was like, I don’t think there’s ever been a day in the past year where I’ve actually done everything that I’ve put on my list and I’m just in this perpetual state of feeling like I’m underperforming. And I had this realization of that’s not a great thing psychologically to feel like I’m never doing as much as I want to be doing. And what would feel really good is to get to the end of the day and to feel like I did what I set out to accomplish. And the realization that I had, and it sounds so obvious, is I just need to reset my expectations around what I can actually do personally. And if I can’t do all the things that need to get done, then somebody else has to help me with those things. Or maybe there are some things that I’m trying to do that actually don’t need to get done and I’m just not doing them. So I can relate to what you’re talking about, and I’m sure a lot of other people can as well, where we set out to have these expectations of we need to do this, we need to get this stuff done. And what I came out of it realizing is, okay, I only have so many hours in a day, but if we can be smart about resource allocation, resources being time and money, if we can be smart about resource allocation, there’s probably a situation and it’s actually happening right now today where we can bring somebody in to help with some things that need to get done that I don’t have bandwidth for. And so today my brother-in-law’s over, he had the day off and we hired him to do just a bunch of house projects, and we’re lucky enough to be able to have the resources to hire him to do that. It’s another thing if you don’t have those resources and you have to think strategically around it. But that’s just an example of me real time trying to figure this out. We have all this stuff that needs to get done, how do we get it done with the resources we have both time and money and being strategic about that. So can you talk about a situation, a scenario, maybe it’s a creator, blogger, social media publisher that you’ve worked with maybe a before and after comparison. I think it’s helpful for people to hear a story of what it looked like before for somebody, some of the things that they did that changed and then what the result was after that. And then we can talk about some of the specifics of how people can work through that if they’re interested in having that transformation.

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah, definitely. And the person I’m thinking of that comes to mind, her name was Lisa, and she runs a very successful blog. And when I started working with her, similar to you, she had this long, long list of things that she wanted to accomplish. She had lots of goals. She had no structure in her life. So the same experience you had is that you have this long, long list, but you never get it done. It’s dragging behind you. You’re resentful because you never feel accomplished. She was working like 60 hour weeks. She never took vacations. She was so addicted to her business and she was sad that she was missing out on her children’s life. She had three children and she was on vacation the one time. I remember the one time we finally got her to go somewhere. She was checking her phone the whole time, answering comments on the blog, just totally addicted to work and not able to see another way of running it. No systems and no structure, and just doing it all herself. She held everything in her head. The whole business she felt was reliant on her being online 24 hours a day. And it was costing her wellbeing, Her marriage, her relationships. And so while she said, I am so happy with the growth that I have in my business. I’m miserable. I’m miserable. And so that’s the starting point of a lot of the bloggers I work with, they are not ready to take help because they don’t see how much more they can accomplish or how they can really be satisfying the balance of why they started the blog to begin with because she wanted to be present with her kids similar to my own journey. And so that was her crashing point, okay, I need help. This is not working and I’m hitting rock bottom. And so the other side of it was creating structure. It’s like when you want to build your dream life, you have to start with the destination first. You have to know what the dream house looks like. What does it look like? What’s the blueprint? What’s the vision? You can’t hire those contractors and people to outsource the different tasks until you know what you want,

Bjork Ostrom: What you’re building,

Jaimee Campanella: What you’re building, what is it that you’re looking for. Otherwise, it’s like the bloggers are building brick by brick, by brick by brick, and they’re just building walls everywhere.

Bjork Ostrom: And

Jaimee Campanella: They’re like, this is not at all what I wanted. Well, you never laid out a blueprint. What do you want?

Bjork Ostrom: And so is that with Lisa? That’s what you started with is you said, okay, essentially you’re saying a year from now, what’s a life that you’re living that is

Jaimee Campanella: Ideal? And she was so clear once we finally got it out, she’s like, I want to work four days a week. I want to work four half days. I want to be producing this many posts per day. I want this much. This is what I want my business to look like, but I want to run every morning. I want to go to my son’s track meets. I want to be there for afterschool pickup. I want to have a date night with my husband. I haven’t gone out with him. I’m too tired, I’m exhausted. So once she started to create the vision for her life, then I was like, okay, we can make a blueprint from here. So then we did the audit. So first is what is the vision? What is the vision you want? And we can’t create structure for the vision until we know what’s all on the table. We have to empty the closet. We have to do that audit that I talked about earlier. So we did a comprehensive audit.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say audit, what does that look like?

Jaimee Campanella: Let’s put everything on the table, Lisa, what are all the tasks in your business that you’re doing? Writing posts, photographing posts, editing literally every single task. Let’s put them all in the table. Let’s organize them. We don’t even know where your time is going because you’re context switching all day. That’s what we discovered. One thing. She wasn’t batching her tasks alike tasks together. So of course she was distracted in between things. There was no focus time. She was just ping ponging from one thing to the next all day, holding tons of information in her head. She did not have asana before we started working together. So we did the audit personally and professionally, putting everything on the table. Let’s organize. How

Bjork Ostrom: Do you do that in a scenario where somebody is ping ponging and all over the place? How do you actually extract what they’re working on and when they’re working on it?

Jaimee Campanella: Sure. Well, I lead people through a lot of specialized exercises to get to that. So from all starting big picture, what are all the categories of your life? Let’s put, then we have to double click. We have to unpack what each and every, and that’s a hard process to do.

Bjork Ostrom: Kids, home, work, what would those categories be?

Jaimee Campanella: In-laws, vacation, house taxes, finances will think of all the big buckets of your life that you’re like, damn, I really wish I had a plan for any of these things. But we’re so insular. We’re just thinking business family, oh, got to get the dryer fixed business, this or whatever.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s this morning, it was like our windows are up, and so I’m having to reach out to the window company and it’s like I have a to-do for our water softener.

Jaimee Campanella: Right? Exactly. So all the things you probably are not categorically looking at, but they’re important. They weigh on you and then it becomes little fires that you’re constantly putting out. So it is very holistic and specialized. We go through every single category of your life. I give you examples because some people are like, oh, I can’t think of anything when it comes to that. And they’re like, oh, A will taxes, business taxes. Oh wait, all the doctor’s appointments for the kids. Of course those are all important. I do those in my sleep or all the invisible to-do lists that people hold. Oh, like the lawn care, all those annual things. So got to get them out of your mind. What’s fueling the feeling of overwhelm?

Bjork Ostrom: David Allen, who we interviewed on the podcast, I’m sure from getting things done, he talks about how terrible the brain is as a storage facility. He doesn’t use that word, but it’s really bad at holding tasks, but it’s really great at being creative. But in a situation like this where you’re talking about for Lisa, if she’s holding all of those tasks, that squeezes out all of the room for creativity. So you go through the process, all of these categories, it’s putting it down on paper, digital paper, making sure that you name it and you look at it, my goodness, there’s a lot of things that I do in a given day, week, month, year, everything from the three times, once every three year air duct cleaning to the once a week updating of plugins on my site. Everything gets documented. And are you just doing that on a Google Doc or where do you put that?

Jaimee Campanella: So when I get started with someone, it’s in a Google sheet, which they have shared access to. So this is a brain dump, it’s a glorified brain dump, getting everything out. So first is get everything out, how much time it takes you, and then we have to prioritize it, categorize it, and prioritize it. So we can look at one area of your life really holistically, and then we create structure. Okay, we have this big, big list. What is the time you actually have available? What do you want your time to look like? So for Lisa, she says, oh, I want to work four days a week from 10 to four. I have a really clear structure that we’re starting to set into place because in the ideal, she has the time before and after for other things. So we have to create the structure, create the blueprint, and then we have to prioritize all those things that we unearthed and that’s where we can make conscious decisions. These are things like, I remember she said, I hate video editing, but it takes me three hours a week. Okay, good. We’re taking that off your plate.

Bjork Ostrom: Let’s not do that. Yeah, let’s get that off your plate.

Jaimee Campanella: It’s all take it off. It’s like the first thing. What are the tasks that you enjoy doing that bring you joy, that light up your spark for why you started the, and most of the time, a hundred percent with all the bloggers, they love the creative work. She’s like, I love taking the photos. I love cooking. I just hate all the admin that goes along with it. Okay, so let’s take some of that admin off of your plate. So we go through this whole process of prioritization, then looking at the structure, the ideal structure, what fits, what doesn’t, and then we make conscious choices. What are you going to outsource? What are you going to consciously just put on hold? No more resentment. It’s just a conscious decision. This project is on hold. We’re going to re-look at it.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s not never. It’s just not now.

Jaimee Campanella: Exactly. And then we come to the time, time structure specific. You had mentioned that long list that you had, and Lisa had this similar one, and you wonder why you’re not getting everything done in the days because you don’t realize how much time these things take. So we have to put in a realistic time block for the things you are going to do. We have to create the structure that’s going to support you to feeling accomplished at the end of every day. I actually did what I set out to do. And

Bjork Ostrom: You can’t do that if you don’t have a realistic understanding of how long something is going to take. And if you’re like, I want to work four days a week, half day each day, and what your list requires of you is actually 50 hours a week, you’re just going to be in this perpetual state of time debt or project debt. So within that spreadsheet, you start to categorize and you look at it and say, okay, this is something that we know is high priority and high interest. You continue to own that. Then how long does that take? Is that the next step is trying to get accurate wtih time?

Jaimee Campanella: How long does this actually take you to fulfill to complete this? You love doing the cooking. It’s your favorite part of the business. You want to keep cooking. You don’t want to outsource that to anyone else. You’re clear, this is your passion. You need four hours a week. Great. So let’s put that as a priority time block every Wednesday in the morning for four hours, this is your cooking, you’re batch cooking. You’re not cooking a thing here, there throughout the week where you have to clean up and restart. Every week we’re going to do one big time block of cooking on Wednesdays.So then we start to create metrics, a puzzle, what are all the pieces of high priority of high interest, and create your ideal schedule. And then we see what’s left. And then we can always make different decisions, but we want to always lead with what brings you joy first. What is the priority and what is fulfilling? So we create the structure and just fast forward to the results of all of that. When I look at Lisa now, she is working those four days. She does have an amazing team. She does use Asana. We did a whole Asana build out. So she didn’t have any systems and she at first was like, I don’t know, learning something new. She was very resistant. But then now she’s like, how was I ever doing task management any other way with the team? Her income has more than tripled, literally because she was able to produce so much more for her business with people helping her that wasn’t attached to her time. So her results just, I remember the first year she’s called me, she’s like, you’re not going to believe it. I have a team. I’m working less and my business has doubled. The next year tripled. So it was just a upward growth and she’s taken so many vacations. She’s a present parent. Her whole life is completely different because she put in structure, she put in systems, she learned how to outsource at the right time in the process. Some people try to do it. What

Bjork Ostrom: Do you mean by that when you say outsource at the right time?

Jaimee Campanella: Well, some people try to outsource at the beginning, but they don’t know what to outsource. They don’t know how to outsource. So you’re looking at everything on the table and you’re like, oh, you do this, you do that. But it’s all piecemeal. There’s no system in place to even monitor that. So now you’re like, okay, now I’m managing what tasks I’m giving away, how they’re doing it, bringing it back. So if you do it too soon in the process, it’s like hiring the builder to build your house without having the blueprint laid out.

Jaimee Campanella: Just, you’re having people work and work and work, but you’re not getting the results you want.

Bjork Ostrom: So can you describe what it would be like to do it at the right time? What does it look like to do that? Well, when does it happen and what does it look like?

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah. If you think about it in this whole house analogy or in Lisa’s analogy, first you need to know what you want. What experience do you want to have? What is the vision for your time? Why are you hiring a team so that I can go running so that I can work on my pottery or write a book or whatever it is. I want to free up more time in my own life. So be clear about your why. That’s first and foremost. And then you have to be clear on the blueprint. What is your business working towards? If you’re not clear about why you want people and what they’re meant to do, it’s a waste of time and money. I had this one person come to me and say, I’m just ready to outsource. I just need a VA to give some tasks away. They paid $5,000 a month for a year, and they’re like, I didn’t even know what to give the va. I was so disorganized. I don’t all over the place. I wasted so much money because they never did an audit. Everything was piecemeal. The person was just waiting around for tasks, but they hadn’t done the audit. They hadn’t created the structure. They weren’t clear about what they wanted to do, what they didn’t want to do. So once you have, I always feel like it’s very linear vision structure, and then you can give things out very systematically. Then you can hire the builder. This is the look I want. This is the design I want. This is the goal. Now build it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Clariti. Here’s the thing, we know that food blogging is a competitive industry, so anything you can do to level up your content can really give you an edge. By fixing content issues and filling content gaps, you can make your good content even better. And wouldn’t it be awesome if you could figure out how to optimize your existing blog posts without needing to comb through each and every post one by one, or I know some of you have done this, create a mega Excel sheet with manually added details for each post that’s soon to be outdated Anyway, that’s why we created Clariti to save you time, simplify the process and make it easy. So with a subscription to Clariti, you can clearly see where your content needs to be optimized, like which of your posts have broken links or missing alt text, maybe there’s no internal links or what needs to be updated seasonally. Plus you can easily see the impact of your edits in the keyword dashboard for each post. Here’s a quick little testimonial from Laura and Sarah from Wander Cooks. They said, with GA 4 becoming increasingly difficult to use, clarity has been a game changer for streamlining our data analytics and blog post performance process. That’s awesome. That’s why we built it, and it’s so fun to hear from users like Laura and Sarah. So as a listener of the Food Blogger Pro podcast, you can sign up and get 50% off your first month of Clarity to set up your account. Simply go to Clarity, that’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. That’s clariti.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode. I think that idea of having a really well-defined outcome task project, whatever it might be that you give to somebody so they know here’s specifically what I’m doing, as opposed to bringing somebody in because you’re burnt out or you’re just tired and kind of hoping that they fix it for you. You have to create the structure that is going to fix the thing to then give to somebody to execute on. There are probably some scenarios where you’re just have somebody come in and be like, I just need you to do this. But that is almost a different hire. It’s almost like what people do when they hire you. Somebody who works with you isn’t having to come up with the process for figuring out how to shift and adjust their time. They’re hiring you as a consultant to come in, work with them to do that. There’s a premium for that versus somebody who’s going to execute on more of a playbook that you’ve created to take care of something that you’re doing on a recurring basis. My friend Barrett Brooks, he was previously the CEO or COO of ConvertKit now. Kit helped them grow from, I don’t know what it was, 3 million to 30 million or something like that. And so he went through this really interesting transition from a business, and I was having a conversation with him and he talked about this idea that businesses, startups, what we’re doing is essentially experiments and processes. And what we are doing as business owners is we’re experimenting, Hey, we think this might work with Pinch of Yum. Recently it was a new video format. Hey, there might be something here. Let’s change this up a little bit and do this experiment. Okay, now that we’ve done this experiment, do we think that it worked? Yes, we think that it did work. Now we create structure around it. We create a process around it so it becomes a repeatable thing. Here’s what the videographer does. Here’s when we shoot, okay, everybody comes in on this day. Here’s what it looks like for groceries to come in that day. And you build a system around it after you do that experiment. And I really love that idea of thinking about business as experiments and processes, or you could say experiments and systems, but the hard part is I think some of us are doing experiments, we’re learning, and then we just start grinding on them on our own without creating that process. So what does it look like on the process side of things? Even if you don’t have a team, it’s probably something you should be doing. How do you do that? Well, you mentioned Asana. I think people like to hear tools, but there’s also more probably philosophy that you could speak to as well.

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah, no, definitely. You need a system to hold the processes from your experiment for this to be sustainable and repeatable, especially if it was a success. And I think that’s the thing with the bloggers half the time they started it not necessarily thinking this was going to be their full-time business or turn into a big thing. It’s like, I just love creative writing or cooking or some people are intentionally starting it. And some people started it as a hobby and saw growth and possibility. And those are a lot of the people that I have been working with recently. And even if they don’t have the team yet, they’re holding all those processes still in their head. They’re just repeating and, oh, what did I do last time? What did I do that worked? So Asana is something I encourage people as a great project management tool to start to document it, make it repeatable, give you automatic reminders, create templates so you’re not constantly recreating the wheel every single time. You need that structure, that system to keep your experiment going. Otherwise, it’s just you feel frazzled and all over the place. And even if again, when you’re in success, you’re like, I don’t know what I did last time. Or constantly wasting so much time in your energy trying to create the same circumstances or other people were just doing everything on autopilot and they’re like, I don’t know how I’m doing it, so I can’t train another team member because I don’t know what I’m doing. So getting those systems down and making them repeatable is a huge, huge part of sustainability and growth in this area.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you feel like there’s a little bit of a decision around what type of business you want to have? Because I think of the spectrum from artist, pure artist to pure scalable systems business. And one of the things that’s interesting in the world that we operate in is it’s not people who are just operational. I want to build and scale a business, but it’s also not just pure artists. It’s not people who are just painting because they love to paint or photography because they love to do photography. Oftentimes though it’s somewhere in the middle where there is art. And so I think sometimes some people might have reservations around saying, I’m going to build a system around this thing that I feel like I’m an artist and artists don’t have systems. And I feel like that would be a hard even I think of for Lindsay, I think she’s relatively organically process oriented. Hey, we’re going to batch video shoot on this day. She’s not going to load that into Asana and use that as a project management tool that she works through. I think she’s just naturally that’s who she is. But I think there’s even people on the other side of Lindsay who the idea of creating a system around their art feels almost like it’s discrediting the art that they are creating. Does that make sense? Sure.

Jaimee Campanella: It does. And I think so when you go into business, you need to know your wheelhouse or whatever you’re doing. If you’re a creative, you’re a creative. And that’s I think a lot of the reasons why people have resistance are pushback to creating the structures. You’re like, well, that’s not my thing. Or when I talk to the bloggers, they’re like, Asana project. That’s not my thing. I just want to cook and take the photo and be creative. So I think that that’s something that’s going to hold people back from growing, from repeating, from continuing that success artists are amazing and they’re creative, and I don’t necessarily have those skills. I’m on the other side of systematization and organization, but I know where I come into the picture. I’m not going to try to say that I’m going to do the most creative piece. I’m going to stay in my wheelhouse. And I think people who want to succeed and stay in their creativity, that’s where they need to know up. My vision is not to be doing business operations. My vision is not. That’s why you have a partner who does it, or upfront, if I want to grow, I’m going to outsource the team. I want to stay in my lane of creativity and I don’t want to give focus or time to any other aspect of what it would take to run a business.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think that one of the traps potentially is there can be this transition from Maker. We could also say artist from maker to manager. And I think in that transition, you could potentially become miserable. You could free up your time and you could create systems, but now you’ve moved away from making to managing. So it seems like one of the keys for somebody who’s looking to scale an artistic or maker or personality driven business is to have somebody who is more manager than maker. You kind of alluded to it, you being an example of that, you’re somebody who’s systems oriented and operational. And my guess is there would be a thousand people who would dream of you being their partner because you would be able to create that structure and manage it without them needing to do it. And I think sometimes people fall into these partnerships by luck to some degree. An example would be Lindsay and I, I’m not purely operational, but I do more of the boring behind the scenes stuff, like a monthly meeting with our CPA and fractional CFO as an example, HR stuff, things like that, which allows her to stay more in the creative world. But for somebody who doesn’t have a partner from the get go, how do you advise them to transition into a business that has strong structure, that has strong processes, but doesn’t put them in the seat of operations and manager? Do you look to hire that person right away? How do you find those people? What does that look like?

Jaimee Campanella: Yeah, I mean, online business manager, when you get to a certain point, I mean I think at the beginning a lot of people hire virtual assistants because just someone to get the tasks done, to get things off of your plate. But then slowly that creative realizes now they are managing a team and a lot of their time is managing the VA and those tasks. And then that’s where that resentment builds. No, I just want to be in the creative. I don’t want to be people management and HR and paychecks and all those things that come with having a team. So there’s that creative who finds themselves already there and they’re like, I got to get out of here. I’m not painting anymore. I’m just leading. And so that’s where it’s very clear at that point, if you have the resources and you’re ready to expand your business, that’s when you would bring in an online business manager so that you can stay creative and you can have the right person to supervise the VAs and get all the backend processes done, create the structures, create the systems, bring in a consultant if you need to. But usually a creative is like, I want to be creative and I want someone else who’s going to oversee all the operations, who understands my vision and why I am doing this work. And then can execute on all the backend, the systems, the people management, the infrastructure, the tech, everyone’s website needs this and that. And they’re like, I don’t want to deal with another plugin. I just want to take the picture. I just want to cook the food or I want to, whatever it is. So it is important to have the right people in your team so that you can continue to stay focused on what really does make you passionate about your

Bjork Ostrom: Work. And it seems like there’s probably seasons that you need to go through if you’re interested in growing your business or evolving your business where you might need to endure a non desirable thing for a season. For example, you might be early stage and you say, I want to be at a point where I have an online business manager who’s overseeing a team. I connect with them and then they manage directly from there. But you’re not going to get there in six months. It might be two years, but you know that you’re going to work towards it. And in a season you might be the one managing, keeping track of the tasks, keeping track of the systems, even though it’s not your optimal zone of genius with the idea that when the resources become available, you can bring somebody in to help with that. But that’s where it feels like it’s important to come back to that mission, vision, purpose

Jaimee Campanella: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: To say, this is what I’m working towards.

Jaimee Campanella: And there is value in that too. When you’re growing, what goes into it, you’ve rolled up your sleeves, you’ve gotten it done, you’re doing it. What goes into being successful and running this business successfully. And now you’re at a point where you’re like, okay, I’m ready to give this all to someone else, but you’ve done it. You know what to expect. So there is beauty in in starting from the bottom of what you’re creating and making sure you’re clear about your standards and your expectations. So then when you do give it to someone else, you’re really clear what you want of them too.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. One of the things that you talk about is this idea of a time scarcity trap. Can you define what that is and how do people know if they’re in that trap?

Jaimee Campanella: Sure. So this scarcity trap is this limiting belief we have about time. And I see this day in and day out that we talked about this at the beginning of our conversation, people expressing, I wish I had more time. They don’t have enough time in the day. They ran out of time. I’m constantly late because I ran out of time or I forgot to do that. I just didn’t have time. So these common beliefs that they’re holding about time is doing something to me. Time is against me, time’s out to get me. This is constantly living in a time scarcity trap. There’s not enough scarcity, there’s just not enough time. So when I see if people will probably resonate with half those statements I just made, you wish you had more time, you ran out of it, you don’t have enough. That is you expressing that you’re blaming time. If you think about those statements, time is doing something to me time’s out to get me. I’m always running out of it. You’re acting like a victim of time. And that is what I see of people in this trap is I’m trapped in it. I don’t have enough of it, but this is just the way it is. And that was part of my impetus is getting people out of that trap, How to get back more into control of your time. I think when you hear it now, you’ll notice it more in conversations. People blame time all the time as if it’s something this cloud of time that’s just happening to you that you have no responsibility with. And so I feel that even before we talk and when I do work with clients one-on-one before I talk about structure and vision and systems, I talk about time mindset first because if you are in this time scarcity trap, it really doesn’t matter what I teach you about systems or how you’re the most amazing team in the world. If you’re in this trap, nothing will work in the long run. It’s just a band-aid mentality. So I think time mindset is the foundation. If you don’t change the way you think about time, your experience of time will actually not change.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s interesting. Yeah. One of the thoughts I’ve had recently is this idea of time is infinite. And what I mean by that isn’t for me, but there’s, well, I don’t know however many billion people in the world and they all have 24 hours. And if I have a goal to do a thing, one of the considerations is how much time does it take to do it? Not my own time, but just how much time in general. And we have friends who are building a wedding venue as an example. They’re not doing the building. There’s a huge crew of people who are taking their time to build this wedding venue. And that’s an approach to business building where they say, we think this is an appropriate risk given the potential reward. We’re going to use the collective time of these people to build a thing which we think then will be an asset in the world. And so much of what I feel like I do, and really what we do is we need to become expert traders of those two resources of time and money. And are we willing to trade our money for this time? For me today, having my brother-in-law come and help turn over the garage for the winter in Minnesota, get the winter tires out. That was an appropriate trade for me given the restrictions that I have right now. Similarly, we need to figure out if it’s worth it to trade the time that we have for money. Are we going to do this job? Are we going to dedicate our time for it? And if we can start to think strategically about where we are trading and how we are trading, it feels like that’s where there starts to be these opportunities where time doesn’t become this limited thing. I only have four hours in a day. Time is actually unlimited. If you think of it as trading, even in so far as maybe you have a recurring Netflix subscription and you’re paying $20 for it, is there a trade in your life where by canceling that you are trading up by hiring somebody for $20 a month to come and do a thing maybe. Or maybe you work an extra three hours and you’re able to have somebody come and help and do five hours of work that you otherwise would’ve been doing. It seems like there’s a lot of opportunities for us if we start to think about time differently and change our mindset around it.

Jaimee Campanella: And I would take it even a step further because when you’re talking about trading it, you already know you have a choice about it. It’s tradable. So when I think about time mindset, I even go a step further in terms of the way you approach it, because I think one of the most immediate changes somebody can make listening to this podcast today, if they really want to change their relationship with time before you even start trading, is thinking about your language around it. Like you said, thinking it’s infinite. I have a lot of it. I have enough time to do anything I want to do. You can trade it or whatever you decide to do. But if you can stop yourself from saying, I don’t have time, it really changes your whole perspective of your day and of your life. Because when you tell people you don’t have time to do something, you’re usually failing to take responsibility for how you are using your time in your day. You said we only have all have the same amount of time, but the language we use to describe our time really does shape the way we think and feel and interact with the world. So if you could simply just stop saying, I don’t have time, it’s a very powerful action in the experience you have, the more power you have to make a trade, because I know what I have, I know the value of it, and people aren’t really in touch with that. And that’s why we’re stuck in that time. Scarcity. We just keep telling people we don’t have enough of it. We believe that to be the state of affairs. So I could offer a quick tip of just how to reverse that so that you feel like you’re in more control. And it’s really simple and a simple way to replace this vocabulary by not saying, I don’t have enough time. It’s by simply saying it’s not a priority for me, or no, both of these so simple. But these statements bring responsibility back to you. It puts in your seat again how you own and control your time. It’s not happening to me. I’m making a choice about it. So if you think about the most common thing somebody might say in a week, oh, I don’t have time to exercise. If you couldn’t say that and you had to say, exercise is not a priority for me, you have a gut reaction, no pun intended, a gut reaction right away that that’s not true. Exercise is a priority for me. So if I keep telling the world it’s not, I’m never going to make time for it. I’m never going to trade someone doing this admin so I can go exercise the whole trading analogy you made. So before we trade, before structure, before systems value it, stop saying you don’t have it. It’s like the whole law of manifestation. We talk about that when it comes to money. If you speak positively about money, the more you’ll be able to manifest in your life. It’s the same of time. If you make it wrong, if you constantly think you don’t have enough, that will be the experience.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And I like that idea of wrestling with if it actually is a priority or not, because I think if you say you don’t have time for a thing, it allows you to not have to sit with your priorities.

Jaimee Campanella: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: And if you start to say, this isn’t a priority for me, and that feels incongruent, then you have to sit with it and say, if it is a priority, then why have I not gotten it done? Maybe I need to change how I’m prioritizing things. And that’s the issue as opposed to how much time that I have, which I think that mental shift is an important one for anybody, but especially for entrepreneurs who have all of these demands on time. We can’t do everything we want to do, and so we need to figure out what are the priorities, what’s most important, and how we going to get those done. Yes. You work with folks that listen to this podcast, people like this on your website. The H one says, revolutionize your relationship with time. I help moms and entrepreneurs take control of their time so they can balance motherhood and their professional life and be great at both without feeling guilt or compromising on their wellbeing. You do it in a few different ways. If anybody’s interested in working with you, can you talk about how that could happen in ways that they could reach out?

Jaimee Campanella: Yes, absolutely. So I have a lot of different programs available depending on where you’re starting, and I’d love to have a consultation call with you if you’re interested in changing your relationship with time, whether it’s through time, mindset, I have online courses available or through doing the work that I described today with Lisa. That’s my signature Time power program where we do that together, we create that life vision together, we prioritize, we create the structure so that you can actualize the blog of your dreams to have the balance of both, and it’s a really hard process to do on your own, and that’s why I love doing this, because you do see results. You do have a new sense of feeling and control. If you’re ready to outsource, if you’re ready to change the way you’re running your business right now to feel like you have more time freedom, then I suggest to you check out my website, Jaimee campanella.com, set up a free consultation, or take one of my free master classes to learn a little bit more about practical ways that you can go from feeling like you never have enough time to feeling like that, CEO who has time for everything that matters.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Jaimee, thanks so much for coming on, sharing your story. Like I said in the beginning, myself included, and a lot of people listening to this podcast are going to benefit from it because it’s such a common thing that we’re all dealing with. So appreciate your expertise and thanks for coming on.

Jaimee Campanella: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Emily Walker: Hi. Hello. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. Since we are kicking off a brand new year and a brand new month, I wanted to pop on and fill you in on what you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. We like to kick off every month with just a little summary of what you can look forward to in the membership. If you are not yet a Food Blogger Pro member, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership. To learn more about joining. We would love to have you there. We have already pressed publish on a brand new coaching call with Penny from the Generations Cook. That coaching call went live on January 2nd, and members can find it in the Food Blogger Pro membership on the Live page or on our members only podcast, Food Blogger Pro On the Go. Next up, we are really excited to be hosting a public Live Q&A with Kate Ahl from Simple Pin Media. This Q&A is open to the general public and anyone can attend. You can head to the link in our show notes to register to attend. It will be on Thursday, January 9th at 1:00 PM Eastern and 10:00 AM Pacific, and that will be with Bjork and Kate, and they’ll be chatting all about how to unlock success on Pinterest in 2025. Last up, we’ll have a brand new course on January 23rd, all about Substack. We know that a lot of food creators who aren’t as interested in SEO are exploring Substack as an alternative to share recipes with their community. So this will be a really great course to learn more about substack, how it works, how to grow your following, everything you need to know. We are really looking forward to this month. Lots of great content coming up, and we will see you back here next week for another episode of the podcast. Make it a great week.

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. Here’s the thing, we know that food blogging is a competitive industry, so anything you can do to level up your content can really give you an edge. By fixing content issues and filling content gaps, you can make your good content even better. And wouldn’t it be awesome if you could figure out how to optimize your existing blog posts without needing to comb through each and every post one by one, or I know some of you have done this, create a mega Excel sheet with manually added details for each post that’s soon to be outdated Anyway, that’s why we created Clariti to save you time, simplify the process and make it easy. So with a subscription to Clariti, you can clearly see where your content needs to be optimized, like which of your posts have broken links or missing alt text.

Maybe there’s no internal links or what needs to be updated seasonally. Plus you can easily see the impact of your edits in the keyword dashboard for each post. Here’s a quick little testimonial from Laura and Sarah from Wander Cooks. They said, with GA4 becoming increasingly difficult to use, clarity has been a game changer for streamlining our data analytics and blog post performance process. That’s awesome. That’s why we built it, and it’s so fun to hear from users like Laura and Sarah. So as a listener of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, you can sign up and get 50% off your first month of Clariti to set up your account. Simply go to Clariti, that’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. That’s clarity.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Bjork Ostrom: Hey everybody, excited for you to be tuning into this podcast episode. We’re going to be talking about all things keywords, and for those of you who are like, “Ah, I kind of know what it is, but why is it important? How can I be doing it? What’s the best software?” We’re going to cover it all. We’re going to try and cover both the basics, what it is, why it’s important, how you can strategically think about keywords as it relates to the content you’re including. And we’re going to be covering some of the more advanced things, even the different philosophies around keyword research, and trying to figure out how you can balance inspirational content with strategic content.

Bjork Ostrom: And for those of us who hate the idea of keywords and just love creating content, what are some ways that you can really lean into both the strategy, but also not let go of the inspiration. And for those of you who love to geek out in keyword research is your thing, and it’s the sweet spot for you, and that is your art, we’re going to be talking about how you can do that well.

Bjork Ostrom: The purpose of all of this, the reason that we are having these conversations is because we want to help you figure out how you can do your craft better. In this case, we speak to people who publish content online. It could be a blog, but oftentimes we are talking to people about social media, we’re talking to people about business strategy. We try and cover it all, but all in the food space.

Bjork Ostrom: And the conversation today with Aleka Shunk from Cooking With Keywords, that’s her course, but she’s also a blogger. And she’s going to be talking about how she approaches keyword research from a blogging perspective at Aleka’s Get-Together. We’re going to be talking about that. We’re going to be covering this idea of keyword research and what it is, why it’s important, how you can be using it.

Bjork Ostrom: Whether SEO is the number one thing that you’re thinking about and trying to do, or if it’s a complement to something else that you’re focusing on, all of us will be able to take away different pieces from this interview and apply them to our business. I know it was true for me as I had this conversation with Aleka. There’s a lot of inspiration that came out of it for me and learning as well. So let’s go ahead and jump into this interview.

Bjork Ostrom: Aleka, welcome to the podcast.

Aleka Shunk: Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here. I’ve listened to Food Blogger Pro Podcast for the last five years and it’s what got me started in the first place with blogging.

Bjork Ostrom: Look at that.

Aleka Shunk: So I am so excited to be here, and I feel like I checked off a box of my bucket list being here.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally. One of my favorite things for doing this as long as we have, which five years, it’s like, there’s some podcasts that started out 10 years ago, where it was like super early and we were right in the middle when people started talking about doing podcasts, why it would be an important thing, but we’ve continued to do it.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think that’s the one thing, if you look at podcasting stats, it’s like … I’m making this up. 80% of stats are made up on the spot. This is one of them, but it’s like, it’s a high double-digit percentage of podcasts make it like three episodes and then they fizzle out.

Aleka Shunk: Oh wow. Well, you should be proud of yourself.

Bjork Ostrom: So the reason I say that though, is because one of the things that’s really fun about having done something for five years and done something in the space of working with other business owners or creators is I feel like three, four, five years is the mark when it gets to the point where you can actually do something substantial.

Aleka Shunk: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: You can learn something. You can start to work on it. You can get traction. And then you can get to the point where you are, where you’re coming on, because you’ve developed an expertise, you’ve developed a skill. And it’s probably in the category of that 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell talks about that, where you’ve been able to dedicate a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of learning around a skill and now you’re able to come on and teach other people about that and also have a successful business in that space.

Bjork Ostrom: So what did that look like for you when you were starting in that early stage five years ago, listening to the podcast and now where you are now? What did that transition look like? And what were you doing at that time five years ago?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. So I think a lot of bloggers, including myself, can agree that we start off blogging thinking, or I should say food blogging, thinking that all of our recipes are going to get seen right away and they’re better than everybody’s and we’re going to be the exception and we’re going to get all this traffic immediately, which completely didn’t happen.

Aleka Shunk: I think that’s the norm, but it takes a year or so for you to realize that your recipes are not going to rank on their own. They take some work and there’s strategy behind it. And for the first year I wasn’t seeing much success at all. And I think it took me at least two years, if not three, to really get completely comfortable with keywords.

Aleka Shunk: The first, I think it was two years in, I was stuck at about 10,000 monthly sessions. And I know we’re not supposed to compare, but I would always compare with other bloggers and I would think I’m so behind, but I think that’s more normal. But I knew that at that point going on to the three-year mark, I wanted more success. My goal was to make money off of it, which I feel like everybody’s goal eventually is, and to make it my full-time job, right?

Aleka Shunk: So I started to take it a little bit more seriously and really focus specifically on keywords because I’m not a huge blogger and I feel like that is something that smaller bloggers, those that start off have complete control over, unlike backlinks to an extent, and other things involved. So only a little bit control, but keywords, if you know what you’re doing and you have the right strategies, you can really outrank a lot of other bloggers. I was like, I’m going to take this little piece of SEO and I’m going to run with it and learn everything I can about it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One thing that’s great about that, it actually ties into a question. We have a Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook group. So if anybody’s interested in joining, you can just Google Food Blogger Pro Podcast, and then you’ll see that group. I think you have to apply. I don’t know what it’s called on Facebook. But people-

Aleka Shunk: Request?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, request. Thank you.

Aleka Shunk: Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: But one of the things that we use that for is to get questions from people who listen to the podcast, because otherwise it’s just me asking from my perspective, which works out okay some of the time, but other times I forget perspectives from other people. And one of the questions from Sanilla Cammy, she says, it tied into this, how can smaller bloggers use keyword research to their advantage? And she says, what you talked about here, we know that food blogging is very competitive and there are already plenty of big food bloggers in the food niches that occupy the coveted top spots in Google.

Bjork Ostrom: So you already kind of addressed that, but can you talk about, number one, what is a keyword? We’re going to start basic. And then number two, what is keyword research? This is a three part question, which is a terrible interviewing tactic. But number three, why is it important for people in the early stages who might be beginner bloggers to think strategically about keyword research?

Aleka Shunk: Okay. I’ll try to remember all those questions.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Aleka Shunk: So first, what is a keyword? And it’s so funny you say that or you ask that because you think you know what a keyword is. I talk about it in the course, right away, off the bat in my intro, because no matter how long you’ve been blogging, sometimes you assume things, and you don’t really know, or you’re afraid to ask simple questions like that. So you don’t want to come across like … There’s no stupid questions.

Aleka Shunk: What is a keyword? It’s what users type in Google. It’s a query. And it’s something that took me a long time to figure out, it can be more than one word. Even though keyword is singular, a keyword could be two, three, four words together. So that’s something that took me a little bit to understand. And it’s something that it’s very important because the ultimate search engine, Google is what people use every day, multiple times a day, and it’s how our recipes are going to be organically found by typing in these queries, these keywords.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Aleka Shunk: What was the second question? See, I forgot.

Bjork Ostrom: So a keyword’s basically anytime that somebody’s going in and searching something?

Aleka Shunk: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: So a keyword, it could be blueberry muffins, it could be how to make blueberry muffins, it could be best blueberry muffins, it could be healthy blueberry muffins, right? We could go on and on and on.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: To your point, it’s a little bit confusing because it sounds singular, but really it’s a query that people are typing in to get a result. And to draw the full picture, as publishers, one of the strategies, one of the main strategies is figuring out how we can rank for a specific keyword and that being it’s free to get that traffic. And so if for every person that visits, you can make one penny and you get a thousand people to visit, then you’ve made $10, or a thousand page views, however the number’s you want to use.

Bjork Ostrom: So you can start to play the numbers game a little bit. If you’re monetizing the ads, if you have a product, it’s even better because you might get more money or more revenue when somebody visits. So we understand keyword, it’s keyword, it’s queries, essentially something that somebody searches using what we’re going to assume to be Google.

Aleka Shunk: Any search engine.

Bjork Ostrom: In a search engine.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah, yeah. That’s the one.

Bjork Ostrom: So then the second part of the question is keyword research. So we know what a keyword is. What does it mean to research a keyword?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. So basically keyword research, I mean, it’s hard to talk about that without talking about a tool, because that’s where we would keyword research. Starting off, I just used Google itself to do research. And fortunately, Google does provide certain things to help give you an idea of what people are searching for, right?

Aleka Shunk: So you, as a user, if you’re typing in a keyword like pizza, Google’s going to recommend keywords or other links, URLs, recipes related to that because they want to serve you as best as possible. So when I started off, I used Google itself to search what other keywords or what keywords are most likely searched.

Aleka Shunk: If you’re not targeting highly searched keywords, you’re not doing it right. A lot of people say, “Well, I’m ranking in a top position for this such and such keyword.” But if that keyword, if nobody’s searching it and the volume’s not there, there’s really no point, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Do you have an example?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. An example of a keyword that no … Yeah. Many of my recipes when I started off, my creamed corn biscuits, I talk about that in the course. Creamed corn biscuits. I loved creamed corn. It was a Thanksgiving side dish recipe, but starting off, my blog was just all bite-size food and all finger foods and I’m like, how can I make creamed corn finger food? So I threw it in a little biscuit cup and I called it that.

Aleka Shunk: Nobody’s searching for that ever. So nobody found it unless I directed them to it using social media, but organically, forget about it. Maybe I can rank for creamed corn, but that would be on the eighth page of Google. No one’s ever going to find it. And if you type in creamed corn biscuit cups, there I am at the top, but that means nothing because nobody’s searching.

Aleka Shunk: So I think that’s important to understand the difference between ranking in a top position for something that’s actually searched versus something that’s not being searched at all.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah. And maybe we’ll get here with the next question, it’s maybe a good lead in, but that becomes this complicated in between then because it’s like I could create a recipe called Bjork’s Favorite Peanut Butter Pickle Sandwich, but if only 30 people are searching that month, like one person a day in the entire US let’s say, or globally one person searching that a day, it’s not going to really make a meaningful impact.

Bjork Ostrom: But then if you go to the other end and you are trying to rank for chocolate chip cookies, there are so many people searching for that and so many sites that are really well established. So my understanding is, you have to land somewhere in the middle then. Is that then where, third part of the question, keyword research comes in?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah, for sure. The goal is to rank, put yourself in the position to rank for a recipe as quickly as possible with the most search volume, with the least competition. That’s the three things you look for. Really the two things, low search or low competition, high search volume. I think we all know that. If you know anything about keywords, I think that’s pretty obvious, but really targeting something that’s not so competitive and really focusing.

Aleka Shunk: And I know we’ve heard the term long-tail keyword many times before, but it’s basically targeting a keyword that’s not so specific, not so broad, something that will increase your chances of being found. And I talk about in the course using modifiers and really crafting the perfect title tag, because I think that is so often overlooked.

Aleka Shunk: Every word in your H1, in your title, is super important and should be used strategically and not just thrown in there carelessly. So I think that’s super … Something that a lot of bloggers … Initially, I know I did. I just crafted the title that I thought sounded good and was clever. I didn’t really focus on any strategy or any thought behind it.

Bjork Ostrom: So a couple of things that you said there that I think would be good to point out, first, modifier. So can you talk about what a modifier is and maybe give an example of what that is?

Aleka Shunk: So pizza recipe with mushrooms, the modifier can be with mushrooms or it can be homemade pizza recipe. So basically extra keywords that are not necessarily your target or seed keyword, but you’re creating that longer-tail keyword by adding these modifiers or extra keywords onto it.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Aleka Shunk: Do you know what I’m saying?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Aleka Shunk: So homemade pizza recipe with mushrooms, the modifiers will be homemade or with mushrooms or something like that.

Bjork Ostrom: That makes sense. And so the idea is that let’s say you’re just starting out, maybe it’s year one, maybe it’s year two and you’re doing a pizza recipe, one of the things you could do is you could say, hey, that would be really awesome if I could rank for any time that somebody searched pizza recipe because you’d get thousands of people visiting your site.

Aleka Shunk: Oh, for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: But what I hear you saying is you could do that, but you’d probably need to be a super established site, like New York Times is probably the number one or a site like that.

Aleka Shunk: Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: And so you need to think strategically and say, if I can’t rank for that, how do I rank for something that still might get traffic, and it still might be the same recipe, but I’m focusing a little bit more by adding a modifier. So if it was a pizza recipe for me, my favorite is pineapple pizza. And also probably long tail in that, there’s not as many people doing pineapple pizza as pepperoni pizza. And so you would add a modifier and there’d be less people searching for it, but also less competition.

Aleka Shunk: Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: The other things that you had mentioned that relate to that are being really intentional, you said with your H1 and your title tag. So can you talk about what those are?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Why that’s also important when you’re thinking about keywords?

Aleka Shunk: Sure. Well, your title tag is basically the result that comes up in the SERPs, in Google on the pages. That’s what shows up and-

Bjork Ostrom: Sorry, SERPs being, just as a real quick explainer, search engine result page?

Aleka Shunk: Yep. Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep? Okay, great.

Aleka Shunk: Search engine results. So the results that Google’s providing all the pages. And then your H1 is your actual recipe title, what shows up on your post itself. And usually they’re the same. A while ago, I would encourage people to tweak your title tag a bit to entice people, to click on your recipe by adding certain words, which sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t, but I’d encourage them to keep them as similar as possible, but crafting it so that …

Aleka Shunk: And you have to think about things, like the title tag, I think it’s like 60 characters they give you. You don’t want it to cut off. And especially if it’s an important keyword that people are looking for, if you cut off the pineapple on your pizza, people don’t see that, they’re not going to click. So trying to keep it short and sweet, but still add those long-term keywords and make it the perfect length and targeting the perfect keywords is important.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk a little bit about adding in the items that encourage people to click? Because I think that’s a little tip that not as many people know about. And is that something that you do? Is that something that you see a lot of other people doing?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah, it is.

Bjork Ostrom: And how do you do that in a way where it separates from the blog post versus a search result?

Aleka Shunk: So it’s something that I do occasionally when I feel like it’s super necessary and maybe I feel like something that will make it pop from the other results, the other 10 results on the first page. It does, for example, a word like the best, right? Well, first of all, you better make sure it’s the best. You don’t want to just throw this into every recipe title, but that, obviously if I’m the user, I’m going to probably click on the best pizza recipe, as opposed to just a general pizza recipe. It’s going to make me more interested in that.

Aleka Shunk: Easy, quick, from scratch, five minute, those are those keywords that are going to really make your result pop, stand out. And I usually will examine all the results on the first page first and the titles and see. And I don’t want it to blend in and look just like everyone else’s. So that’s usually the cases where I will add a word or something to my title tag.

Bjork Ostrom: And it reminds me of in the early days when I was figuring out what does it look like to be an entrepreneur, I would wholesale shoes from Chicago. So I’d get shoes shipped up and then would list them on eBay. And then eBay, you’d have to pay additional for putting a little star by it or getting it bold or to change the result in a way that looks-

Aleka Shunk: Gives you a leg up.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And the nice thing is with this it’s you can do that and it’s free. If you’re intentional about adding some of those things to your title tag, then it might encourage people to click, which obviously is a great thing because more people are then coming to your site. So are you doing that with Yoast and how do you do that in a way where it doesn’t also update your blog post because the title in the H1, the blog post title wouldn’t include that, but what I hear you saying is the title would. Is that right?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. I know that it’s something recently that we’re encouraged as bloggers to keep the title tag in H1 as closely related as possible, but if we were to change and add a word or something, then … And if you’re not a food blogger, I feel like with a food blogger it gets a little bit tricky. But even if you’re not a food blogger, it’s something that you can take advantage of.

Aleka Shunk: The Yoast plugin on the bottom gives you the opportunity to change it, or in that bottom window, above the meta description. And you can easily just change it there and it will not affect your H1 at all. But more recently I’ve been thinking if I’m going to add quick and easy in my title tag, most of the time, I’ll just throw that in my H1, too. Really, what’s the difference? So, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. Cool. Love the little tips, the tricks, and I think those are the things where if you add those up over time, if you think strategically about how you’re titling something, if you look at other search results and see what are other people saying, how are they structuring things, if you do keyword research and find, hey, here’s something that has the potential to have a decent amount of traffic and isn’t super competitive, all of those things add up over time.

Bjork Ostrom: And the one thing we haven’t really dug into yet, which is kind of the sweet spot of this interview is the actual keyword research process. So what does that look like? Do you brainstorm once a month, all the different recipes you could create and then go in and research ones and try and find ones that are in your sweet spot? How do you go about doing keyword research? What is it and how do you do it?

Aleka Shunk: So do I do it in advance? I wish I was that organized. I do not. I literally will keyword research words every day just because I love doing it. And if I find a keyword, and I randomly come across them every day, I’ll search it up quickly and see if it’s something I’m going to add to my … And I do have an ongoing list. Then I do it every day.

Aleka Shunk: But you don’t have to, you can do it in monthly increments because I know it takes time. To do quality, thorough, deep keyword research should take you a couple hours, and I feel like people don’t. And it does depend, the recipes. Some recipes are a little bit more to the point and you don’t need to dig that deep. If there’s more variations of the keyword, then you definitely want to spend time looking through it.

Aleka Shunk: So what I would do is, say, talk about how there’s three phases of keyword research. The first phase is the best phase to research, that is from scratch, when you don’t have any recipe idea in mind. You’re just starting with a clean slate and you have a wider net to cast of keywords and you can target whatever you want, according to your niche, and you go from there.

Aleka Shunk: And you can do your research ahead of time and collectively write down all the keywords that come up for, maybe you start with a chicken recipe and you notice that these keywords keep popping up, or this cooking method keeps popping up, or this flavor, this something keeps popping up, or this ingredient, and you’re writing it down, and then afterwards you craft and put together.

Aleka Shunk: It’s so much easier to target that way because you’re not held back or restrained by a recipe, whereas in phase two, is what I call it, is after you already have a recipe. So it could be a recipe that you’ve been making for your family over the last few weeks or one that’s been passed down and you want to share it with your users. And in that case, that phase is a little bit harder to keyword research after the fact that the recipe’s already developed and you already have a set ingredients and cooking method.

Aleka Shunk: I mean, if say it’s a chicken marsala recipe and it’s delicious and you definitely know you want to share it, what direction are we going to just target chicken marsala, because I’m sure that’s super competitive. If you’re a larger blogger, maybe you can rank for it, but definitely not if you’re starting off.

Aleka Shunk: So it’s harder to tweak the title and your keywords when a recipe’s already developed. So that’s not the ideal phase to be in, but it’s still possible. You can maybe research certain cooking methods, and if you happen to do it in a cast iron skillet, and that looks like a keyword that is highly searched for that recipe, you can throw that in your title. And it happened, coincidentally, it worked out that way.

Aleka Shunk: And then the third phase is the worst phase to be in, but it’s still possible to do research, that’s after your recipe’s already published and on your site and has been sitting there. Then you have to think about, well, I have to go back and I have to update it. And I realize it’s not really ranking for any keywords, so how can I update it and optimize it to target a better keyword?

Aleka Shunk: Do I need to change the entire post? Do I need to delete it and just start over? Do I need to just tweak the recipe title of it? Do I need to add some more subsections or maybe some other questions addressed to better optimize for another keyword that I originally didn’t think of?

Aleka Shunk: And that’s definitely the hardest and something that a lot of people ask me about when I do my coaching sessions is we go through all those older posts and think about, well, what’s worth updating? How can we update it? Is it even possible to update this and target any keyword? And if not, then we go in a different direction.

Aleka Shunk: So that’s really the ideal process or phase is the first phase from scratch. And when I do that, I use a keyword research tool. It’s a must. If you’re not using a tool, you should definitely consider investing in one. There’s Keysearch out there, which is I think $30 a month. Very manageable, it’s not super expensive, like the other ones are. Don’t buy some Starbucks coffees for a couple days and you can afford that. It’s not going to break the budget and it’s very user-friendly and just a must when you’re keyword researching. So you use that. You get an idea of the competition level and if it’s really worth going after.

Aleka Shunk: And use Google, always use the actual results to compare and see if it’s actually worth it, because I think we rely too much on keyword research tools. Although, and I’m on it every day, I’m on multiple tools, it’s super helpful, it should not be the end-all, be all for deciding whether you should target a keyword because it’s just a machine. It’s just going to tell you things based on numbers. You are going to be the best person to evaluate whether that keyword is worth targeting. And you can see if the recipes are meeting user intent. If they’re helpful, if they’re optimized well, which the tool doesn’t do that.

Aleka Shunk: So I think a lot of people just look at a score and they’re like, “Oh, there’s no way I’m going to be able to rank for this keyword.” And you do a little bit deeper research and you actually read what’s on the first page, and you’re like, “Oh, just because they have, say, a high domain authority doesn’t mean I’m not going to be able to outrank them.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So you mentioned tools and I think that would be one thing that people would be really interested in hearing about. You mentioned Keysearch is one, a lower-cost entry-level one that can do the job. What are the other ones, just so people know the lay of the land? And if you could rank order them, or are they all pretty similar in terms of what you’d need?

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Is one like a Lexus and the other’s like a Ford Focus? What is the landscape of actual tools that you’d use?

Aleka Shunk: So there are so many tools, some free, some paid, and I literally break this down in my course, the free tools, the paid tools, and I do a side-by-side comparison and a chart and tell you what the pros and cons and what I like from each tool, because I think that’s super important to understand before you invest in a tool, what it’s going to offer you and what’s going to be the best one.

Aleka Shunk: The most popular and the most used are going to be Keysearch, Semrush, and Ahrefs. Keywords Everywhere is also a tool that a lot of people use, which is an extension and is pretty reliable, but I feel like it’s not as popular. It doesn’t give you as much as the other tools do. I use a extension, Keyword Surfer, that also helps and it’s free. While you’re on Google, it’ll just give you a quick idea of an approximate search volume. And those are really the top four that I talk about in my course. Well, really just those three.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And then can you talk about data as it relates to those tools? Because I think one thing that I found to be true for myself as I started to just get more into the world of all things online was I had this belief around all data being accurate. And I think, especially in this world, you start to realize, oh, this is incomplete data. And you reference that a little bit by saying you need to check and look on your own to verify when you search that keyword, what does that look like, what are the results like.

Bjork Ostrom: So to the extent that you know, how do these tools get this data? How much do you trust it? And what should publishers have in mind when they think about using a keyword research as it relates to the accuracy of the data?

Aleka Shunk: Well, what’s recommended is Keysearch because apparently it does use Google APIs, which is basically an interface that talks with Google and gives just more knowledge and more accuracy directly from Google. I think Keywords Everywhere also uses APIs. But from my experience I’ve seen across, compared to Semrush and Ahrefs and Keysearch, which I’ve used them all and compared, just out of curiosity, they’re pretty close most of the time to each other. So I haven’t seen a huge difference in those.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Aleka Shunk: You had asked about …

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think that addresses it. Is one considered more premium than the other? And the nice thing about a tool like Keysearch is it’s created with, I think solopreneurs in mind a little bit more, whereas the Semrush, I think Semrush is a public company.

Aleka Shunk: Companies, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s more enterprisey in terms of its pricing. It’s a department that would not blink at spending $500, whereas if you’re early in your blogging, you probably don’t want to pay $500 for a tool.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. But with that said, and I agree, I think when you start off, you have a small budget and you need to invest wisely. But I do think if you really want to bring your keyword research game to the next level and you’re serious about this whole blogging thing, Semrush and Ahrefs are hundred percent worth the money, in my opinion. They can do so much more quicker, give you so many more. They have so many more features.

Aleka Shunk: My favorite thing is really I’ll very often research a competitor. So if Keysearch says you can maybe rank for this keyword, and this gives me an approximate volume, I will check out the top results, really the first or second result in Google for that keyword and then pop that URL into an Ahrefs or Semrush and see what traffic they’re actually getting, what keywords they’re actually ranking for.

Aleka Shunk: And you can do this in Keyword Explorer as well in Keysearch, but it doesn’t give you as much information as Ahrefs and Semrush. It’s really awesome, they can tell you your keyword history and if you’re trending upward and on the right track, because a lot of us wonder, should we update a post, we’re not getting traffic, where does it lie in the SERPs, is it ready to update?

Aleka Shunk: All of us are so anxious to update posts, but sometimes if you see that keyword history just going up like a rollercoaster, just hold off a little bit longer, because sometimes it takes longer than 12 months or so, which is usually the recommended time to wait before updating and it’s on its way up. And Ahrefs allow, Semrush … Keysearch is starting to allow things like that as well, but I find they’re not as user friendly as the more expensive tools.

Aleka Shunk: So I do love them. And if you can afford that, you definitely want to. And even if you can’t afford it for 12 months straight, I encourage people to just buy one month subscription and do as much keyword research in that month as you can, and then you can cancel it. At least you’ll get a good amount of knowledge or information from there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, batch it.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: And to be clear, those tools, the default isn’t $500 a month. That would be more the more expensive plans. I think they’re-

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I’m looking at Semrush and it looks like 120.

Aleka Shunk: 199.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, 119.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think Ahrefs is similar and to your point, come with more features and functionality and whatnot. This is more of a less technical, but just a curiosity. So in this world, people are doing similar things like publishing content on a blog, on social media, but they’re all coming to the table with different skills and interests. And I think for some people, the idea of keyword research is in their sweet spot. They love the idea of doing that, finding something that ranks well or has a potential to rank well, spending time creating a recipe around that and seeing it perform well. Like I have friends who, not in this niche, but they love that. That’s what they do. If they could just spend all day in Ahrefs, they would.

Aleka Shunk: Me too. Me too.

Bjork Ostrom: And then there’s people on the other side, who it’s like, “Please no. What I want be doing is I want to be in the kitchen, working on a recipe that is inspired by a meal that I had when I was traveling in Italy last week. And I just want to create that recipe and not do keyword research against that.” Do you have advice for the people who would fall in that latter camp around inspired creation? How can they still do that, to not give up on the thing that gives them joy, but to still be smart about it from a strategy perspective?

Aleka Shunk: That’s a great question. When I started food blogging, I would literally lay asleep or awake in bed at night just thinking of all the different recipe creation possibilities. And once I realized that those ideas weren’t being found and that keyword research sucks the inspiration out of us a bit, it was a little bit disheartening and made me a little bit sad about the whole idea of food blogging. I’m like, “I really have to strategize? Why can’t I just publish everything and anything that I want? Why can’t I be creative?”

Aleka Shunk: But that’s the reality of it. We are competing with so many other people, so many other blogs, so many other websites, and this is the way it is. Do you have to sacrifice all creativity and inspiration? No, for sure, definitely not, but think about maybe doing a balance. I still create and share recipes that I truly love, even though I know that there’s not much volume out there.

Aleka Shunk: I will be honest, I rarely create a recipe that has zero search volume. I will somehow try to get in some type of keyword and there are ways around it. If you’re doing the right research, you can still share that amazing, nostalgic recipe that you had when you were a child and still target certain keywords, you just have to do the right research.

Aleka Shunk: And even if it involves maybe throwing one extra ingredient in, or maybe cooking on the grill, as opposed to in a skillet or using an Instant Pot as opposed to a Dutch oven, certain things just to tweak it just so you get the traffic, it’s completely worth it. And that motivation is going to keep you going, if the inspiration is not always there. You know what I’m saying?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think that idea of balance is a great one where you’re not maybe necessarily doing things that are a hundred percent inspiration and you’re also not doing things that are a hundred percent search, unless you are somebody who loves that process, doing keyword research and creating content around that.

Bjork Ostrom: I think the other thing that’s important to point out is it’s like, what game are you trying to play? And if you’re trying to play the game of search engine optimization, but you don’t love the process of optimizing for search, then as a creator, it’s probably worth looking at a different game to play or strategy, if you want to say that.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s lots of different ways that you can be successful as a creator online, like I see a lot of incredible, artistic, wonderful creators doing Substack. Their strategy is they know that they have followers, they know that they don’t want to play the game of search and try and outrank, and so what they do is they say, “I’m going to speak to my followers and create in a way that feels really organic, and it’s an email.” You don’t have to optimize an email for search.

Bjork Ostrom: So I think it’s an important thing to point out as we, as creators, think about what is our best path. And if we’re like, our only path is search, I think it’s important that we remember there’s lots of different ways that you can play the game. Search obviously is a really important one, people talk about it a lot in this niche, but lots of other avenues to explore as well.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. I think it’s also important to point out that there are recipes that will go viral or get a lot of traffic on other social media, like Pinterest and those. It’s funny because the more unique you are on Pinterest, the more successful I found. So it all depends. If you really like a recipe, it could … I’ve had recipes that zero keyword, but Pinterest traffic is still, even though Pinterest stinks right now, I think the traffic still is coming from those pins.

Aleka Shunk: And then, if you do publish a recipe that you really like, and you had zero keyword research done, you can analyze what keywords Google thinks is good for that recipe in matching user intent and you can work off of that. And when you update it the next time, tweak it according to what Google is ranking you for.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about user intent? What does that mean?

Aleka Shunk: It’s so tricky because with recipes, and this is the biggest confusion when it comes to food bloggers and probably the most common question I’ve had in regards to certain recipes and ranking and updating. It’s basically creating what the user is looking for and what they’re expecting. So if you’re not giving the user what exactly they want or are searching, they’re not going to click on your recipe, or they’re not going to spend a lot of time on your recipe. So the dwell time will be super low, right?

Aleka Shunk: And you can check that in Google Analytics if you want, but that’s a sign that it’s not matching the right intent. Meaning, if say somebody is searching meatball sandwich and maybe you’re using maybe frozen meatballs and they don’t want frozen, they want homemade meatballs or from scratch. And you can compare with the other recipes on the first page, and if it’s not matching up, you’re going to fall in the rankings.

Aleka Shunk: And I see this so often, especially with dietary niches and vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free niches all the time where bloggers will think that they have the right keyword down, but they’re not realizing that somebody may be ranking for … What was one of the …

Aleka Shunk: I was working with somebody one on one a few months ago and the keyword was so specific and they basically took two modifiers or two long-tail keywords and put it together. And I said, “Well, people may be looking for gluten-free scones with blueberries, but are they …” Well, that was a bad example.

Aleka Shunk: Basically, the idea is that the user needs to know what to expect, and if you’re not giving them what they expect, it’s not going to be found. You got to make sure both keywords together are being found. Yes, they may be searching for this type of recipe, this type of muffin, gluten-free, but are they searching for gluten-free pistachio scones? Do you know what I’m saying? Pistachio scone recipe could have a super high search volume, but if gluten-free pistachio scone recipe doesn’t have a high search volume, the users are not going to be staying on the result and Google’s going to push you down. Does that make sense?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s almost like I think a lot of times come back to this core foundational piece of what we’re trying to do and what Google’s trying to do. And what Google’s trying to do, what any good search engine’s trying to do is successfully match a search term to a result that’s going to be the most helpful. In our world, it’s like, how do we give people the best recipe? Or maybe it’s a food process, how do we give them the best explainer for how to make tofu? And that’s what Google’s trying to do.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think sometimes we get lost as publishers by thinking about what does Google want, but that’s what Google wants is how to best serve the piece of content that is going to fulfill the intent of what the user is searching. And I think if we can keep that at the front of our minds, you can layer that with technical best practice around search, which is important, it’s foundational.

Bjork Ostrom: But I think that as an explanation of user intent, to your point of, hey, give somebody what they’re looking for. And if you are going after a keyword, just because you see it’s really good, but then the content that you’re serving doesn’t match that, then Google is going to through whatever means, figure out this actually isn’t-

Aleka Shunk: Yeah, Google’s smart.

Bjork Ostrom: Even though you’re saying by all the technical things you’re doing that this is the keyword, when it comes to it, that’s not actually what that person needs or what they’re finding helpful. And what I hear you saying is in those scenarios that will be impacted by your ranking being pushed down or not as performing as-

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. Yeah. I use the results. I mean, Google tells you what it wants, right? Just look at the results on the first page and get an idea of what other bloggers are offering. If they’re offering most of the recipe cooked in the oven and yours isn’t in the oven, yours is maybe in the air fryer, maybe that’s not what users are going to like, because either they don’t have an air fryer or they weren’t planning on that. So certain things like that I think is often overlooked by a lot of bloggers, especially in the food niche. It’s right there and it’s free information, so take your time and analyze all the competition.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So Chelsea from the Facebook group asked when should I be worried about competing with my own recipes, for example, if I’m trying to rank for blueberry muffins, shooting myself in the foot for also making a lemon blueberry muffin recipe.

Aleka Shunk: Oh boy. So that’s a great question. I feel like something that I used to always get confused, because we’re encouraged, I feel like to keep doing similar things. So I think we think in the food blogging niche, similar recipes, right? But that’s not necessarily true.

Aleka Shunk: I mean lemon blueberry muffins and blueberry muffins are very similar, but if you think about it and keep in mind that our recipes are going to rank for the same keywords, many of our recipes, and it’s inevitable. And that’s okay to happen when it happens, but it’s important that our target keywords are not competing with the other target keywords, right?

Aleka Shunk: So lemon blueberry muffins, we could be ranking for blueberry muffins with lemon, lemon blueberry muffins, blueberry muffins, just blueberry muffins lemon without the with. So different variations of that keyword. And they all could have high search volume.

Aleka Shunk: And most of the time, your blueberry muffin recipe won’t rank for lemon because that’s a key ingredient. You can see the results on Google are going to be all blueberry muffins, no lemon. And the results for lemon blueberry muffins will be most likely all lemon blueberry muffins. So there’s so much competition out there that Google’s not going to rank your blueberry muffin recipe for lemon because you’re targeting an entirely different keyword even though the recipe’s similar.

Aleka Shunk: So to answer her question, I wouldn’t be so concerned. It’s very difficult to compete unless it’s super similar. But just to be safe, I probably wouldn’t do or create a recipe that similar just because there’s bound to be other smaller volume keywords, like homemade muffins that essentially both recipes could rank for that keyword or moist muffins or from scratch muffins.

Aleka Shunk: So do you want those keywords to compete? They could. And usually we don’t want that to happen. So it depends on the recipe. I haven’t found it to be much of an issue, but it is something that you have to keep in mind. And when you can control it, try to make them a little bit more different than that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. Variety is probably going to be a good thing compared to something that is so close. You don’t want to do 10 iterations of blueberry muffins unless they’re-

Aleka Shunk: No, probably not.

Bjork Ostrom: … drastically different.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So let’s say that somebody comes to you and they say, I’ve never done any of this, I don’t know where to start. Obviously your course, which we can talk about is going to be super helpful in walking people through that, but just at a high level, where would you say the outline of how people can navigate next steps for starting to dip their toe into keyword research and start to learn a little bit? What would the outline of those next steps be?

Aleka Shunk: So I think there’s, other than purchasing a tool, Keysearch, we can start off with that, get to learn and know the tool as best as you can and become an expert at the tool because a lot of us will use the tool and we’ll only use one feature over and over again. But there’s so many things and the tools are constantly being updated with new features that you’re never going to be able to be an expert in keyword research or anything if you’re not really fully learning it to its fullest capabilities.

Aleka Shunk: And I am going to create a course on just Ahrefs and Semrush, because I feel like those two tools are super complicated and you almost need some guidance with that. But know the tool that you use. And you learn by doing and learn from your own rankings and your own blog.

Aleka Shunk: Once you have recipes that have been up and you think that you’re doing a good job of keyword research, go back and revisit them and check out your traffic on Google Analytics and see if it’s worth what you’re getting. Check out your keywords, what you’re ranking for.

Aleka Shunk: And the most important thing, a lot of us will be satisfied with ranking on the first page of a mediocre keyword that brings us decent traffic, but we fail to pursue that top, highest volume keyword and it’s sitting on the second page and we don’t even know, say it’s in the 11th spot. So it’s at the top of the second page and we don’t even know it’s there because we don’t analyze and track our keywords, which I talk about in my second course.

Aleka Shunk: It’s so important and something that a lot of people don’t just … I don’t know if they don’t think it’s worth it or they don’t know how to do it, but it’s so important because if that keyword is hanging out in the 11th spot, it’s so close to being on the first page. And once it’s on the first page, now it’s going to start getting exposure and hopefully move up.

Aleka Shunk: And you can do things like push it out, maybe promote it on Pinterest or push it out to social more or update it a little bit or add more links to it, to just give it a little boost. Don’t give up until that keyword is in the top spot on Google. Don’t be satisfied with just ranking mediocre keywords.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think that’s where the strategy piece comes in. And if you are thinking strategically, and even if you just layer in. If it’s not the kind of thing you’re super excited about doing, but hey, you’re going to get your favorite drink and sit down at Starbucks and look at what piece of content is on the second page of Google for a keyword.

Bjork Ostrom: And simply going through that process once a month, you’re going to be able to save a lot of energy around generating traffic by thinking strategically how you can move that from the second page to the first page. So I think that’s a great point. And one of the ways that you could use those tools is to say, hey, where is this sitting right now, when I look at where rankings are? And how do I strategically then lift that ranking? And that could be an entirely different podcast episode with all the strategies.

Aleka Shunk: Yes, I know, rather than just-

Bjork Ostrom: Strategies with that-

Aleka Shunk: … blindlessly updating. Blindlessly? That’s not a word.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Aleka Shunk: Blindly. Aimlessly. I combined-

Bjork Ostrom: Aimlessly and blindly.

Aleka Shunk: I made my own word.

Bjork Ostrom: Which I’m sure we can relate to feeling like we’re blindlessly working sometimes.

Aleka Shunk: Oh my gosh. But yeah, rather than just doing it with no strategy behind it. You’re wasting your time essentially. So yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So you had mentioned your course a couple times. Are there places that … Or there are places. Where are the places that people can check those out? If they want to dive deep on this, how do they do that? Would love for you to be able to give a promo on that so people can find that.

Aleka Shunk: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Cooking With Keywords is basically the umbrella of the school. So I have a keyword research course that I launched a year and a half ago. And that really is for beginner bloggers, advanced bloggers, everyone in between. It’s my master course on keyword research. And you can find that on my blog. There’s a link directly to the Teachable site.

Aleka Shunk: And then I have my second course that I launched this year on rank tracking and analyzing keywords, which I think is a nice segue from the first course. After you’ve been established for a year or so, I think that course would really be perfect for you because like we said, you have to know where your rankings are sitting or else you’re putting your effort into posts that really aren’t worth it.

Aleka Shunk: And then I also offer coaching one on one to go and go through your keywords one at a time and see what’s worth putting effort in, what keywords may need a little tweaking, what keywords really are not doing it for you, and if user intent is being matched, all of that. So all of that can be found on my website, at alekasgettogether.com.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. And we’ll include it in the show notes as well. Aleka, so great to chat with you. Thanks for all the information. Really appreciate it.

Aleka Shunk: Yes. It was so great to be here. Thank you guys so much and reach out if you have any questions.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: I want to tell you about a tool that can make a massive difference in your SEO game. It’s called Yoast. We’ve actually interviewed the founder on the podcast and we use this plugin on every WordPress site that we have. It’s really the ultimate plugin to help you get more out of your content and Yos. SEO Premium offers a powerful set of features, including the ability to optimize for up to five keywords per page, which is huge for anybody who has content that isn’t just about one keyword but is inclusive of multiple keywords. Plus, with their new AI-based suggestions, Yoast doesn’t just tell you what needs improvement, it actually suggests how to improve it, making it faster than ever to optimize your content and importantly, save time. Also really awesome is that if you’re using WP Recipe Maker the plugin, you’ll love how seamlessly Yoast integrates with it so you can make sure your recipes are not only delicious, but also SEO friendly, so they’re more likely to get found by search engines and shared by readers. And here’s the kicker. From November 28th at 11:00 AM CET, Central European Time Zone to December 3rd at 11 CET, Yoast is offering their highest discount of the year, 30% off all products. It’s a perfect time to pick up Yoast SEO Premium and level up with any of their powerful tools. You can check that out by going to Yoast, that’s YOAST.com. Level up your SEO game and head into the new year with a lot of momentum. Again, that’s Yoast.com.

Ann Morrissey: Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Ann. In today’s episode, Bjork is sitting down with Mo Bunnell who just released a new book called Give to Grow. They’ll kick things off by discussing how Mo went from crunching numbers as an actuary to diving headfirst into entrepreneurship. Along the way, he discovered the magic of reciprocity in fostering meaningful relationships and how relationships can be key ingredients for success. He also shares practical tips for making clear trustworthy offers that can open doors to high value connections, even if you’re just starting from scratch, whether you have a long list of contacts or you’re just starting out, most advice on tracking opportunities and nurturing relationships will inspire you to take proactive steps toward collaboration and growth. If you enjoy this episode, we really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share episode with your community. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Mo, welcome to the podcast.

Mo Bunnell: Hey, Bjork. I’m excited. We’ve known each other for a long time and we’ve got this cool collaboration. We’re going to add a lot of value. I can’t wait.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, long time coming. So you, we know each other through. It’s one of those rare connections where we’ve had multiple conversations that haven’t been recorded or digital. It’s like you’re one of the weird real life in-person friendships that I have in the business world. But now we’re actually going to record it. We’re going to document some of these conversations. What I love about you, and just to build you up a little bit, you and your story is you have followed this path of entrepreneurship where in the positions you’ve been in, you’ve approached them creatively and looked for opportunities. And if I remember right from your story of entrepreneurship, the door opened because of when you were at a W2 job, you started to think creatively around how can I add value here? How can I make the work that I’m doing more impactful? You created a little bit of a system or a playbook, and that grew into a consultancy where now you’re consulting the smartest consultants in the world. It’s really this incredible thing, but it all started with your work within a company, and I think that sometimes what we think about is, I want to get out of my job, I want to become an entrepreneur. But so often it starts with, and I think of conversation I had with John Acuff, another author, and he talked about how it starts with doing that within where you are within your job and thinking like an entrepreneur within your current position. Can you give us a little elevator pitch of what your journey has been like into entrepreneurship? And then we’re going to be talking about this idea of relationships and why those are so important in business.

Mo Bunnell: Well, any shout out to John. He’s a good friend too, and good vibes happen when you just mention, if you just say the words, John Acuff, you have a better life, I think.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Mo Bunnell: It’s so true. Yeah. So I was sort of an accidental entrepreneur in the sense that I build a thing for me that would be helpful to me. Turned out other people just around me wanted the thing and I realized, oh, this could be something I could charge for and create a business out of. But I had no idea that was the beginning. The metamorphosis or the change in me was I had been an actuary. I think you remember that we bond on the, you and I bond on numbers and logic and all that, and I took all the exams to be an actuary. It took 24 exams back in the eighties and nineties, like a 35% pass rate on these things. So two thirds of the people are failing, and it took 6, 8, 10 years to get through all of it. It was so hard. Well, you almost can’t do anything else but study and try to keep your marriage together, which I was able to pass the exams and keep my marriage together. So

Mo Bunnell: So, when that system spit me out on the other side, the very month I passed the last exam to be a fellow society of actuaries, my firm moved me to a relationship development role. Well, I’m like 29 or 30 years old. I’m calling on people that are 50, 60, 65. They’ve got 20, 30 years experience on me. I can’t now lead with expertise in content because my little one inch wide mile deep actuarial expertise doesn’t work when I’m calling on chief human resource officers at Fortune 50 companies, which is who I was calling. So my only real move was generosity, which is how can I learn their priorities? How can I connect them with people internally at my big multinational consultancy? How can I work with the internal folks to figure out what they could give to these high level people so that they win as well and can start relationships and new topics off? And basically through that developed a science-based system based on peer-reviewed science that I just hammered out in Word documents that I would find out, experimenting on myself. That’s what turned into a playbook that at one point had a big huge percentage of the global revenue of the firm running through the teams that I was able to lead with hundreds of consultants and people underneath. And that people started asking like, gosh, how are you doing it? And it was through that I sort of fell in love with not just relationship development, but teaching other people relationship development. And that’s when I got the guts to leave and start my own thing, and that was, gosh, it’ll be almost 20 years ago.

Bjork Ostrom: So you went through this process of getting these really specific skills. You acquired those skills, you verified that through these tests, and then you were put in a position where maybe it was valuable to have some of those skills, but really it was like you almost had to develop a new skillset. Is that right? In that new relationship development position, was that hard to let go of what felt like, Hey, I’ve done all this work to get here and now I’m kind of having to reinvent myself?

Mo Bunnell: It all came down to one moment, Bjork. So I had been leading these big healthcare consulting projects with a actuarial bent to them. Imagine the largest companies on the planet could spend at that time easily a billion dollars on their health and welfare benefits. Well, they’re hiring consultants and actuaries to figure out how should they optimize that, and it’s ridiculously complex. And I had been doing things like that. So to get ready for this new role, I wanted to be ahead of the game. So I handed off all my projects to my peers in the healthcare consulting practice. They were awesome, and curing me on to take on this new challenge. Moved offices over the weekend and got in early that Monday morning, and it was like the only time I remember in my life, I don’t have emails, I don’t have things to do. I don’t even know what I’m doing. And my boss walked in. I got there early and I did not do my due diligence even though we worked on this for a year. I made the transition thinking he would hand me sort of a playbook to learn this. If you can imagine an actuary trying to pass these 24 exams, you’re taking a couple exams every six months. Well, you click the button on which one you’re going to take, you get all these materials delivered. It’s like a foot study, you memorize it, and every six months you take a test. I thought he would give me the playbook and there was no playbook. He just sort of chuckled what I asked for and said, well, treat the client right. You’ll do great. You’ve got a good mentor, which thank God I did. But it was then through my brain was used to these six month learning cycles to pass the exams. So for some reason I put the pressure on myself. I don’t think my firm did this, but I put pressure on myself to become great at relationship development in six months. Those are the cycles of learning I was in. And instead of taking 30 years, it usually takes, so it was through that pain and pressure that pushed me to nights and weekends, build the system out or start it and then get better, better, better and better. So that paid off really well for me long term. I don’t know quite how I made it through that time period, but it worked.

Bjork Ostrom: So you had this position, the position didn’t have any documentation around like, Hey, here’s the process you should follow when you’re doing relationship development. So you took that on, you start to document it. This is a really specific question. Were you able to take that with you and did you have to negotiate that you had built this thing within the context of the company? Did you have to negotiate being able to own the IP of that? What did that look like?

Mo Bunnell: No, because I didn’t. I was anecdotally teaching it to people, but it wasn’t like there were material.

Bjork Ostrom: It wasn’t like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Mo Bunnell: So if you can imagine me starting out at a Starbucks that I was worried about a meeting the next week, I remember this specifically, the first time I started writing stuff down is I had the super high stakes meeting. I had to make it go, well, I’ll skip over the story, but I had one shot and it was very clear I had one shot. And so I wrote down, I started digging into the science of reciprocity and how do you give things away? How do you size it, how do you communicate it, how do you offer it? And it was some of that really early on research that ended up being like a three page word document that I hammered out at a Starbucks that turned a meeting that when it actually happened, started with literally the CHR at this huge company, said, I don’t know how you got this meeting, long story behind that, but I don’t need you. I forgot. I’ve been at this for 30 year. I’ve got every advisor I need. And by having a list of gifts to give her, she basically said, get out. I said, don’t you want to see? I worked for 20 hours coming up with things that we can offer you to invest in your success. Don’t you at least want to see the first one? And she said, well, what is it? And Bjork, she loved it. And then she loved the second one. She loved the third one. I had 11 offers that each were, and remember this is 25 years ago. In total it was probably $300,000 of free work or something. It’d be worth a lot more. But I had gone to all of our practice leaders and found ways that they would be willing to offer her success. And ended up, she liked 10 out of 11 ideas or whatever. I left that meeting with 10 follow-ups and it started with get out, and that’s why I drove home that day and I thought, aha, generosity is the way to go. And then of course 20 years later, we’ve trained 50,000 people. And that was sort of the beginning of when I realized giving is the way and thus the title of the new book, Give to Grow and all the things we’ll talk about today.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. And one of the things that I love about it, and we talked about this a little bit before, is this idea of it’s grounded in relationships. And I think the connection here into our world is we’ve talked a lot about how as creators, publishers, one of the focuses that a lot of people have is, Hey, I want to figure out how to get more traffic to my website and by get more traffic to my website, that means that I’ll be able to earn more from ads. And that is a system that works until it doesn’t. And a lot of people have felt that recently where there’s a Google algorithm update or a Pinterest update and suddenly you have this traffic and it goes away. So does that mean that you can’t create online, that you can’t publish online, that you can’t be a content creator? No. It just means that you have to approach things differently. And one of the things that we’re thinking a lot about and we’re talking a lot about is the importance of connecting with brands with companies and also the importance of figuring out the process of sales. But oftentimes, I think when people think about sales, what they think about is it’s all of the things that people don’t like about sales, which is pitching. It’s trying to convince somebody to buy a thing. It’s the extreme of you need to buy a used car. And what does that process feel like? You feel pressured. You feel like it’s maybe manipulative, but what I love about what you teach as it relates to relationships, sales, the kind of core business considerations is what business at its best sales at its best relationship development at its best is you giving, and it’s in the title of your book, give to Grow. It’s you thinking about and trying to find ways to help somebody else. And I love that. It is one of the things that I’ve tried to think about as I’ve started to have some of these calls with brands as I’ve taken those on more is approaching those from the perspective of how can I help? What is it that you’re after? What is it that we can do? But there is a system that you have and that you can follow within that, and I think that’s what I’m trying to figure out now and refining is like, okay, I know the spirit of what I’m trying to do, which is like help brands be successful. I think we can do that, but how do I as a salesperson now for Pinch of Yum, how do I create a system around that? And you talk about the difference between winning the work and doing the work. Can you talk about what are those two things and how are those different? Because they maybe sound a little similar, but they’re actually very different.

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, massively different. You just nailed it. And just to put a headline on this topic, we’re going to give your audience exactly how to do this stuff and do it well and do in a way that they don’t feel weird like a weirdo and they have to take a shower afterwards. If you do this the right way, it feels great. You can literally talk about what you’re doing to the other side and say, I’m giving in for these reasons and it feels awesome. And I think that hints at the idea that almost everything that’s taught about sales is wrong. It’s that used car sale thing that you were talking about. It feels awful. It feels like it’s just not how it has to be. So to your answer, your question, doing the work versus winning the work, there’s a facing set of pages in the workbook give to Grow whether, and I know you saw it, it’s the little table and it says, these are the things that are true for doing the work. The definition of that is after you’ve got the yes, so after you’ve got the mandate, the brand has come to you, they’ve signed the contracts, you’re going to do X, Y, and Z, the mindset and moves that you need to deliver on that contract or even get the website humming in the way you want to. Anyway, that’s doing of the work stuff. And that is not just different than the winning of the work stuff. It’s the exact opposites. The mindsets you need are opposites and the moves you need to make are opposites. A couple examples, do you want me to go a little deeper?

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Yep.

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, so a couple examples. One is when we’re doing the work, we should expect that branded ambassador or that agency or whoever we’re working on, they’re going to respond a hundred percent of the time. They got to get the files right. You got to get the copyright, whatever you’re doing, winning of the work, we should expect people to answer one out of 10 times. We should think 10 x not one X. We should say, I’m going to try to add value to this person. I’m deep in the relationship 10 times over the next X many months, and I’m just hoping one of these offers of healthiness will stick. So just our expectations have to be totally different. Another example is the length of emails. I know this is ridiculously simple, but emails should be long and have everything in one place when you’re doing the work. These are the seven things I need before we can get the ad up. When winning the work, our rule of thumb is 50 words or less. Why is that? That’s because that’s one screen on an email platform or client on your iPhone.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great.

Mo Bunnell: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, even as you’re talking about it, I think of my interactions with some brands and I see myself doing the work communication in winning the work. And what happens a lot of times, and I’d be interested if this is the reason why is we might not get a response because it feels like I probably put too much in there and it needs to be quick and fluid. Whereas opposed to that or doing the work, suddenly it’s like you need to get, in our case, it’s like you need to figure out what the deliverables are going to be. You need to communicate to Instagram reels and here’s how long they’re going to be, and here’s the basic premise for it. Suddenly your expertise has to be in communicating information, clearly, concisely, still, but kind of all in one package. Whereas opposed to winning the work would be like, Hey, let’s just keep this conversation going. The purpose is to get a response as opposed to communicate all the things I need to communicate. Does that feel accurate?

Mo Bunnell: You nailed it. You nailed it. If we had to get it down to one word for each of the columns, doing the work drives certainty. Certainty being the keyword, winning the work.

Bjork Ostrom: Trust is the importance of certainty. Certainty equals trust. And you were saying winning the work is

Mo Bunnell: Possibility. And what’s underneath that is if we go step farther down the road is when we’re driving possibility, what we need is momentum. We have no momentum. This particular because literally our definition is winning the work. We haven’t won it yet. We have no momentum. So we want to choose our very best offer, make it very concisely and have our call to action be the last sentence. Hey, I’m headed up to Minneapolis to work with another brand sometimes in October, little flexible on dates. Can we get together and talk about some of your priorities and see if I can find a way to be helpful? What do you think? Question done? But what we don’t want to do is like, Hey, I got this idea and that idea and do you want to join this webinar we’re having and we could come up to Minneapolis and hey, here’s a thought piece on advertising in the new world order after Google rejiggered their algorithm. And as soon as we have even more than one decision that drives pausing, not responding, I’ll handle this next week. Next week never comes. You’re just not the point of winning the work emails. I know we’re being really specific here, but it’s just to drive momentum. And so we want one thing, we want to choose our best thing and we might want to make it really easy to respond.

Bjork Ostrom: What else helps drive momentum? What are the other things along with, we talked about email as a specific thing, but how else can you keep momentum going?

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, so generally if somebody is not responding, then either our value that we’re proposing isn’t high enough or they don’t trust the value. Somebody might be offering you 500 hours of free prototyping and coding, but if it comes in a cold email from another country, you’re like, oh, this is spam. So you need value and they need to trust the value. Real simple. So around momentum, we want to do a couple things. There’s a bunch of this in the four gifts section of the book that the gifts we can give our clients. We want to prioritize the organizations that we can do the most business with and help the most. In other words, we want to think of very high value things that we can offer them so that they want to get in the room with us. In general, live sessions are going to have a lot more and in person even is going to have a lot more momentum building than on Zoom, which is going to be a lot more than say on email To have a half day workshop on what other brands are doing on our website and beyond to really drive traction, whatever. And then we want to make those offers in as trustworthy way as possible. So finding a referral in from somebody they trust that also knows us might be worth waiting a month in a cold email if we can find that way in. So that little three-step process is getting really clear on who are we for? What can we offer and how can we make that offer in a real trustworthy way? And just treating that a project you manage, that’s a winning of the work project. If you had 10 organizations and you’re trying to find out those three things, you can manage that like a project and then it becomes something that’s like random ideas popping in your head while you’re on a run versus, no, I’m going to drive growth and it’s going to be reliable and here’s how I’m going to do it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, let’s go one step before that. We talked a little bit about what it looks like to communicate with a client. In our case, a brand might reach out. I can imagine really clearly what winning the work might look like in that situation. It’s us following up. It’s probably timely. We follow up quickly. For me, it’s as often as possible. I’m trying to get on a call if it’s local. We just did this yesterday, we did a tour of a factory and met with somebody on site, which was great. To your point, so much better than getting on a Zoom call. But if they’re not local, trying to get on a call as quickly as possible, asking those questions, how can we help? What does success look like for you? But let’s go to the step before that. What if you don’t have a connection? What if it’s not somebody reaching out? Is that still in the bucket of winning the work where you’re kind of doing what I would consider to be the hard part of sales, which is trying to get that initial connection, that initial, yes, that initial response you talked about one out of 10 of those emails are going to get a response, but how do you even cultivate that pool of really early connections, contacts, leads? It’s probably industry dependent, but do you have any advice?

Mo Bunnell: Oh, I do. This is fun because Bjork, you and I are four wheeling off the main path. We’re going into the deep stuff. Great. So one of the things that we actually didn’t have room for in Gift to Grow, at one point the manuscript was 96,000 words and we had to give it to 40. So only the best stuff could be in there. And also the best stuff that’s broadly applicable. So the idea of generating leads, it was on the cutting room floor. So what we did though is we knew a lot of people would want that. So we created a train, 50,000 high end experts all over the world. Over 20 years we’ve developed the top 16 ways that people generate leads with value. How do you get the first meeting the very first time and we created an extra download. People can get for free to get that, but I can give you a quick overview now and it augments the book, it aligns with it, all that stuff. It’s just sort of alongside the book. It’s not in the book, but you can download it right away. Anyway, the top 16 ways, some of the ways that we probably don’t have time to go through all 16, but a couple, one way you can get in is to create a group of people trying to accomplish the same goals. That’s called a value group. It’s a method I think we invented. It was probably out there before, but I’ve never seen it in anywhere, didn’t have a name for it, so we had to invent it. But that is imagine if you had a group of 12 people that were non-competitive brands, but that were in charge of expanding brand marketing, whatever we would call it. And if you had 12 people, you might invite seven of your best advertisers and clients and invite five people that you’ve never met before but would love to work together. And three times a year you get on a 90 minute zoom call and you share what’s working. What’s everybody going to ask? The first time they get to the call they’re like, Hey, how do you know Bjork? Oh man, we’re having tons of success with Pinch of Yum. Here’s So you’ve literally are building included reference checks and you can pick who you include in the group. So that’s the idea.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. No, that’s great. One of the things I’ve thought about is what if we had, we talked to publishers, we to creators, how do you grow your business? What if we had an adjacent podcast or community or group all around brands and companies? How do you work with creators? How do you work with publishers? Because a lot of times I’m getting on these calls, we’re meeting up in person and these really successful companies are just starting to get into partnering with creators or influencers and they’re like, how does it work? And we’re not super confident around it and there’s an opportunity there. But also selfishly it feels like then you are the connection point. You are the center point for so many of those people. Naturally what happens, you talk about this in the book, you have these relationships and you say relationships are the biggest predictor of success, but it takes effort and you have to be intentional about it. And I think some people would look at it and be like, oh, that feels like a lot of work. And it’s like, well, it is. But the outcome of that could be pretty significant. You could get a brand deal, you could have these recurring relationships over time. Yeah. Can you share maybe one or two more that you think are kind of top of the list when you think through that list of 16,

Mo Bunnell: And I actually want to circle after that. Let’s circle back. I have a thing that I’m going to do some YouTube videos on, but I haven’t shared yet. I want to share with you. I think you’ll love it and it pinpoints the value of relationships, but let’s circle back to that later. So a couple other examples. You gave one, another one of the 16 is interviewing others. Incredibly powerful. So whether it’s a podcast or for a quote or for a thought piece, people love being interviewed, so you got to have the goods behind it. You can’t fake this or else it’ll backfire. But let’s say starting up a podcast, just like you mentioned, gosh, you might be able to just do one episode a month. You, it’s not have lift, but that’s 12 new people you get to meet per year and like us, you bond. When you’re on a podcast with somebody, you’re creating content. You have a prep call before you record it, you get a follow up later. You’re fast friends when you invite people to podcasts, even if you’d never met them before. That’s another one. A third is the multi millennia old method referrals, which we’ve hidden on before. That’s maybe going into LinkedIn, Facebook, other things and finding what are my points of connection between the people I know and the people I’d like to meet. Here’s the way to do a referral. Most people think of them as the cheesy life insurance agent version where the person leans on you and says, Hey, I put,

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it just happened to me.

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, it’s the worst. I actually fired an agent and

Bjork Ostrom: I was like, no. I was like, sorry. I was like, I’ll introduce you if I feel like there’s an opportunity, but I’m not going to cold introduce you to somebody.

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, we’re not going to disclose who the company is, but I guarantee I know who it is. It happened to me and I think they train people. They literally slide a three by five card across a table. I put my food on the table for my kids. It’s so ridiculous. The better way to do a referral though is to flush that. We’re not going to do that. It’s to offer what we call a gift to get through the referring party, to the person they’re introducing to. Maybe it’s a half day workshop, an analysis of what you see around their brand, running some numbers, a project plan for how you do a certain thing really well. The idea is you go to the person that knows both parties and say, Hey, Joe, I see Janine CMO over at X, Y, Z corp. Gosh, I think I could help her a lot because we’ve really specialized in her industry, but I want to make this a win for everybody. I was thinking we’d be willing to do X, Y, and Z for Janine. What do you think about that? I mean her, do you think that would land really well? If not that, what would work? I’d like to come up with something with you that would be really valuable that you’d feel really excited to offer her, and then you get credit for the offer. Anyway, engaging in that conversation where everybody’s going to win at every turn is really valuable. It engages a mental heuristic called the IKEA effect. People buy into what they help create. So as it’s sort of a slow down to speed up referral move, instead of leaning on the relationship like the bad version we talked about, you actually gauge in the importance of making this introduction. You get the referring partners advice and you start the whole thing off with a gift they can offer to their friend. And then I mean those have a hit rate or success rate of like 90, 95% when you slow down a little bit. Do it the right way.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. So here’s a funny thing on the Food Blogger Pro podcast, I don’t often talk about Food Blogger Pro membership. It’s a huge part of what we do and the reality is the majority of our time as a team is spent thinking about and working with the Food Blogger Pro members. So we wanted to take some time to remind people that if you want to take the next step, like go beyond just this podcast, you can join Food Blogger Pro if you’re interested, all you need to do is go to foodbloggerpro.com. We’re going to tell you more about what a membership entails, and if you’re interested in signing up, you can just hit the join now button. What does that mean? Well, we have a community forum where there’s the Food Blogger Pro industry experts, many names from which you probably recognize from this podcast. We also have deals and discounts on some of the most popular and important tools for food creators and food bloggers. We have courses that dive deep on photography and video and social media applications. We do live Q&As with industry experts. Like recently, we had a conversation with an SEO expert named Eddie from Raptive where he talked about republishing and how to be strategic with your approach to republishing and why that’s important. We do these coaching calls where I jump on with a creator and we talk about how we can look at their business and grow their business. And the cool thing is for those of you who listen to this podcast, we actually have a members only podcast called FBP on the Go where we take some of these video lessons that we’re doing, like these coaching calls or these Live Q&A with experts and we roll those up into a podcast. So if you don’t have time to sit down and watch those, you can actually just listen to them like you do this podcast, but it’s a members only podcast. So if you’re interested, again, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com and check it out. It’s a great next step for anybody who’s been listening to the podcast for a long time and wants to dive deeper into growing and building and scaling their business. So how about when it comes to, let’s say you are starting to be intentional about this. You’re thinking about, okay, we want to think about relationships strategically. We want to think about helping people strategically, but how do you start to build a system around that? Even for myself, I think about for pinch yum, we have these brands. Some of ’em are cold outreach or some of ’em are inbound. A lot of most of them are inbound now, but we also have some brands that we’d want to work with that we’d want to reach out to. We start to want to be strategic about that. But right now it’s kind of like in my head, it’s in Lindsay’s head, it’s in my inbox. I’ll think probably daily, Hey, this would be a cool thing to connect with somebody on, but I don’t have a system or a process or a tool that I’m really using to manage all of that. Do you have recommendations for people who are wanting to do this well and wanting to do it strategically around building something that keeps them accountable but also is almost like a second brain for all of their relationships?

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, I love Tia’s second brain stuff, by the way. I’m such a fan. Yes, there is. And to put a bow on something I mentioned before because it feeds right into this is what most people don’t understand, is how fast relationships grow. So if we start investing in the right people, and it’s not random, we’re not being reactive, we’re proactively investing in the right people and we’re doing that consistently over time, that’s like dollar cost averaging in the stock market. It grows exponentially. So our relationship, equity and power and trust being sort of the element of that, it can grow exponentially, not linearly. What’s interesting about relationships though, unlike the stock market, is people talk to each other. So there’s a second compounding exponential growth curve of the network effect that sits on top of all the people we’re investing in. So the reason people would want to do what I’m about to share the system part is that, but most people don’t understand is that relationship capital trust grows exponentially, not linearly with each person we invest in, but the more people we help, the more people are talking to others that could need our help or that are reinforcing it. So the benefits of this are like a double exponential curve stacked on top of each other. Here’s how you do it. So it’s ridiculously simple and there’s some worksheets that accompany the book that we can give people a link to, but all you have to do is pen and paper. You can use a CRM if you want, but pen and paper works fine and you write down two lists. One list is your list of opportunities. What are the brands I would like to work for? We think of opportunities broadly. So it can be, it’s basically any place another person or group of people needs to say yes. So if you want to speak at ConvertKit’s conference, that is an opportunity and you want other people have to say yes to that. So no matter what an opportunity is, whether somebody can pay you money or if they just have to approve a thing that you think would be helpful, you write those down really proactively. These are dreams, these there may be no momentum at all. The second thing you write down is who are the 10 or so relationships that are the most important to your future success? Notice that lens is really interesting. It’s not in really any sales book ever. All sales books are like, here are the things you want to sell, get them, do a demo, get in front of them. It’s more of a case approach, but we don’t want to have that. We want to have our list of opportunities. Then we want to have a different lens where we look at relationships and usually the number that’s perfect is 10 to 20, no more than that. If people just take, it usually takes 90 seconds or so. Just take out that pen and paper and say, who are the 10 relationships most important to my success over the next couple of years? It doesn’t take long. Those are the first two steps. You just write those down. The third step rock simple. You manage the advancement of the opportunities, relationships like a project 15 minutes, recurring calendar entry on Friday at three o’clock. People can choose Saturday morning, Thursday morning, Monday afternoon, whatever works. And in 15 minutes you just take a look at your list of opportunities. You take a look at your list at most important relationships, and for the next week you pick the three moves you’re going to make. It’s always your move. It’s always a chance to be helpful. You pick the three moves you’re going to make the next week that are going to either advance an opportunity or advance a relationship, and you do those three and that’s it. And you don’t actually do the things Friday at three o’clock.

Bjork Ostrom: You just think about ’em

Mo Bunnell: And then the next week you find time to do it. You block it off and time block and all that crazy stuff. But you want to separate the choosing from the doing because if you try to say, Hey, I’ve got two hours to do relationship develop, your mind gets all in muddy and you have to, so you want to have one block is the choosing takes 15 minutes and then your other blocks are the doing.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. So you have this time, it’s blocked off for you. Let’s say it’s Friday morning, 15 minutes, you’re looking at that list. Here’s opportunities, here are the people that are most important for me. And you are coming up with the three things from that entire list of, Hey, what can I do to be of value to this person? Is that more or less what you’re trying to think about?

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, if it was an opportunity advancement, it might be calling up the person and say, Hey, I was thinking about you. I know you’ve been thinking about doing some work with us on our website. I just was thinking, I’d like to run a pilot and I’d like to do it at no charge, like to do it over six weeks. Give me a call if you want to learn more. That might be the move. A relationship move might mean just letting ’em know you’re thinking about them. Hey, it’s been six months since we talked. I remember you had X, Y, and Z as priorities. Gosh, I’d love to get together sometime on Zoom and talk and just refresh those, see if there’s some ways I can be helpful. That might be there.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you have, oh, go ahead.

Mo Bunnell: That’s it.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you have personal non-work relationships on there as well? I know this is within the context of work sales business, but do you also have personal connections on there? Yeah,

Mo Bunnell: Yeah. We recommend four types of people. One are folks who can buy directly from you. So these would, they can actually pay you money. The next group are people inside client, potential client organizations that influence, you might call those influencers. The third group we call strategic partners. Now that’s really interesting. These are people who generally can’t usually pay you money, but they know who should. It might be somebody in an agency, it might be another person with an adjacent, but different type of website. The kind of people who know the kind of people who need you. So sometimes those relationships are more important than clients. They might be able to send you five clients a year or something. So we call those strategic partners. Definitely want to double down on those. And then the fourth group, we just have a bucket we call interesting people. Well, my nephew Spencer is on my list. I just love the kid. I say kid, he’s in his late twenties, but he’s sort of like the son I never had. I have two great daughters, but I just love Spencer and all he does. And this morning he’s on my pro to my list. A Greek word that means first among equals my closest relationships and they’re about having their first baby. And I just want to remember Spencer’s key to me. I want to text like, Hey, I did my workout today. Did you yours, by the way, any news on dilation? How’s it going? How’s Haley feeling? And he’s a priority for me more so than others, first among equals. So I think having a nice mix of all four of those types is really nice and it honestly makes it fun to have some like that.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. It reminds me a little bit, so when I was younger, I was really into cards, sports cards, I’d go and buy all these random cards at the card shop. But then I got really into sending the cards to the players at the local library. And this, it wasn’t technically pre-internet, but it’s before we had internet. I went and I photocopied all of the addresses of the different stadiums. And so I would do a self-addressed stamped envelope, take another envelope and ship these cards out to get autographs. And what was really fun was I would do it every day, 2, 3, 4 letters. I’d ask for stamps for my birthday and for Christmas. But then what started to happen was three, six months in you’d start to get back two or three of these autographs in the mail every day. And that was really fun to have a little bit of this system going where, and it kind of created this loop where it motivated me to continue doing this where you’d get home, you’d have some of this inbound mail coming in, you’d send mail out, but I imagine it to be a similar thing where you have these people that you really care about, that you’re excited to connect with, that you want to be in your inner circle and you create the system to make sure that you are connecting with them and sending an email, sending a text, whatever it might be. And then what happens is you start to open up those channels of communication and that’s just a really fun thing, but you have to have the system in place in order to keep you accountable. Do you do that? And it sounds like for you what that is is that calendar item where you brainstorm who it’s going to be, you block that out moving forward if it needs to be blocked out, if it’s more than just a simple text message and then you repeat that each week. Do you keep track of conversations or this is again maybe kind of in the weeds conversation or topic, but do you keep track within for work stuff like a CRM of where things are at and technically what does that look like?

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, there’s sort of two levels of tracking. Well, first I just have to say that story was awesome.

Bjork Ostrom: I still have the huge book of all the autographs that I had bust out.

Mo Bunnell: I’ll bet you do all that work that went into it. Look, you were a relationship developer. How old were you?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. I don’t know, 10 probably.

Mo Bunnell: You were like a world-class relationship developer at the age of 10.

Bjork Ostrom: There we go.

Mo Bunnell: No wonder you’re so successful. And as somebody who has boxes of baseball cards, I’m right there with you. So yeah, there’s two types of systems really for people to lean into. One isn’t a system of accountability that’s a little different. Then the other system is a system of information, sort of second brain if you will, accountability and then we’ll talk about information. Accountability is so darn important because your story is so good At the age of 10, somehow you had what scientists call trade self-control to such a lats, C to such a level. You were able to plow through those first 2, 3, 4 months where you’re getting no feedback and you kept going. Very few people can do that. So that happens in this world too, where fear of rejection comes in. I didn’t get a response to my email. It can be really the five, well, you saw in the book we have five lies. People have to get over in this the system.

Bjork Ostrom: And we talk about that in the context of reps. That’s the word that we use is like it’s guitar, it’s weightlifting, it’s basketball. You need to get the reps in before you get the value of whatever it is you’re trying to do.

Mo Bunnell: That’s exactly it. So we need a system of accountability. So different ways to do it. I have a spreadsheet that I track my hours that I work on the business and five buckets if how many MITs I got done from the week of before, tip on MITs most important things, the three things you choose each week, write them so they’re a hundred percent in your control. I share that to the audience, not you obviously, but that by saying, offer dinner to Jane instead of have dinner with Jane.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, right.

Mo Bunnell: That lets us get three out of three every week. It disconnects us from worrying about the outcome we move to action faster, all that. So anyway, whether it’s a spreadsheet like I use or James clears paperclip method where you have a jar of the thing, how many of the reps you want to do of the thing, and you have an empty jar and you literally just move the paperclips over. That is that tactile nature can be good. Dry erase boards with tally marks, accountability partner, whatever it takes. But having something that will push people through those first 2, 3, 4 months where you’re not getting the intrinsic motivation yet. You’re not getting the baseball cards back, the business isn’t growing. You need that. And then the other system is a system of information, and that’s just second brain stuff. Watch tia’s videos. I had Tiago and my podcast where we talked about second brain for BD that we could put in the show notes if you want. But the idea there is whether you use a notion database, an Apple note, pen and paper, somehow marking down what in writing down, what people’s priorities are, the details about how old their kids are, what they’re focused on at work. I feel like my guess is for every half hour interval where we’re with somebody, I think there’s six or eight really good things to document. They’re a 49 ERs fan. They’re headed to Africa to take their family on Safari. Their boss just asked ’em for X, Y, and Z in the marketing department. Writing those things down, even if we never look at ’em again, there’s a higher likelihood we’ll remember them and we have the ability to look at them again before our next call. Quick refresh. It’s just really powerful unlock, I think.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. So Give to Grow – the book, talk to a creator, a publisher, somebody who’s listening to this podcast. They want to understand how to do you say bd business development. In our world, it would be like partnering with brands, partnering with companies, they want to get better at it. What is the transformation that happens as you read through Give to Grow? Because I think it’s an important book for people to pick up. It’s available now. I have, this is the original copy. I was also lucky enough to get the advanced copy. We’ll save it for years, but talk to somebody who’s listening and what is the transformation they’ll go through that they can then apply to their business. And we’ll use that as kind of a last thought to share.

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, that sounds great. And we can tie back to that doing of the work, winning of the work table and mindset. So in the doing of the work we’re already hired to do, there’s almost always systems to get better and better. We’re probably in peer groups, there’s articles we’re reading. I mean, heck, just doing the work and getting feedback makes us better at doing the work. But when it comes to winning the work relationship, business development, there are not systems to get better. In fact, most people, we’ve trained 50,000 plus experts, some of the top management consulting firms, law firms, people in the world, marketing experts, agencies. There’s almost never a system for teaching how to win work at a company. You’re left to your own devices, sink or swim. Good luck. And that is crazy to me because it’s the most important thing for most people in their career is growth. So what the transformation people go through is if you read Give to Grow, you learn the best in class methods for how to think about it, how to move past the lies and the traps that will get in your way. That’s a big chunk of the book. What are the gifts and the methods you give those to the various relationships that are most important. And then the last section of the book is how do you succeed in the moment, the short term and the long term? How do you think about this over the arc of your career so that you’d be successful? So if we get all the way to the transformation, if somebody has great expertise, but they’re not good at winning work or relationship development, they’re sort of a jerk and nobody knows about ’em. Somebody’s great at relationship development, but they don’t have any core expertise fun to go to the ball game with. But that’s getting harder and harder to find time to do that these days. It’s when somebody can do both that, who are wickedly good at what they do and they’re incredibly good at making it easy for people to find them and purchase from them. Those are the people that change the world.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. And so often we hear as we have conversations with people, the questions they have isn’t, the questions aren’t around doing the work, it’s almost always around winning the work. And it’s so hard to know how to coach people through that because there isn’t really a good system for it. And I think you cover so much of that here, even in our own story. It was interesting as I was reflecting on, I talked about, hey, a lot of the stuff is inbound. When I actually paused and thought about it, it’s actually people who have noticed Lindsay talking about their brand, including the brand, saying something about the brand, it’s give to grow. It is. That’s what’s happening there without us quantifying it. Lindsay’s naturally talking about products she loves and that’s the thing that opens the door to these conversations. It’s not like, and this occasionally happens, brands will just kind of reach out randomly. But almost all the conversations I’m having now have to do with somebody being like, oh my gosh, you shared this thing on a Costco run. You did. It’s so awesome. Thank you. My response, Hey, thanks so much for reaching out. Can we jump on a call? Would love to hear about what you’re doing, the initiatives that you have, how we might be able to help. And it’s so interesting to see you talking about that and me starting to realize like, oh, maybe there’s something there and you know that because you’ve been in this world for so long. So I think for anybody who’s interested in starting to do that more intentionally, be sure to pick that up. One of the things that you had mentioned was a couple of resources. Can you talk about where people can pick those up and then also talk about where people can find the book?

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, that sounds good. Well, I can make a joke out of the resources in a way, because Bjork, if you could imagine the pressure an author feels to give things away when they write a book called, yeah, totally. It’s over the top. We gave a ton of stuff out for free with our first book and this is like 10 x that. So all the resources, we talked about the 16 lead gen methods, we’ve got the top 50 discovery questions we’ve ever heard of that are the best. We have a team launch guide to scale the resource across the team. There’s training videos, there’s just the doing of the winning is a download chart. People are printing out and sticking on their wall. Anyway, all that stuff is at Give to Grow info. I nfo and it’s all free. We made it so valuable. Unlike most book resources, we made it so valuable it could actually live on their own. So if somebody doesn’t have 20 bucks to buy give to grow the book, they could actually learn a lot at Give to Grow info and it’ll all stand on its own. That said, it’s better if you buy the book.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. That said, buy the book.

Mo Bunnell: People can get it everywhere. So Amazon’s where most people buy business books, but it’s at every single major bookstore. We landed deals in all four major airport bookstores. So if you can go through an grab a copy, indigo up in Canada is doing a huge thing at the front of their doors. They liked the book so much, and if people like audiobooks, it took me a week and 44 green teas to read the audiobook if you’re interested in that data. So it was fun as an author to read the book too. So audiobook, kindle, everything.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate your insights and just appreciate you as a person. So thanks for coming on.

Mo Bunnell: Yeah, you too. I was really looking forward to this and we’ll see each other in a couple weeks, which I can’t.

Bjork Ostrom: It’ll be awesome. Yep. Thanks Mo.

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 a food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share ’em 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. Here’s the thing, we know that food blogging is a competitive industry, so anything you can do to level up your content can really give you an edge. By fixing content issues and filling content gaps, you can make your good content even better. And wouldn’t it be awesome if you could figure out how to optimize your existing blog posts without needing to comb through each and every post one by one, or I know some of you have done this, create a mega Excel sheet with manually added details for each post that’s soon to be outdated Anyway, that’s why we created Clariti to save you time, simplify the process and make it easy. So with a subscription to Clariti, you can clearly see where your content needs to be optimized, like which of your posts have broken links or missing alt text.

Maybe there’s no internal links or what needs to be updated seasonally. Plus you can easily see the impact of your edits in the keyword dashboard for each post. Here’s a quick little testimonial from Laura and Sarah from Wander Cooks. They said, with GA4 becoming increasingly difficult to use, clarity has been a game changer for streamlining our data analytics and blog post performance process. That’s awesome. That’s why we built it, and it’s so fun to hear from users like Laura and Sarah. So as a listener of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, you can sign up and get 50% off your first month of Clariti to set up your account. Simply go to Clariti, that’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. That’s clarity.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hi. Hello, 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 welcoming back Jillian Leslie, who you may know from her podcast, the Blogger Genius podcast, and as the founder of Milo Tree. In this week’s podcast episode, Jillian explains everything you need to know about selling a product as a food creator. Bjork and Jillian discussed the strategy behind developing a product and the importance of leaning into problem solving for your audience. As recipe developers and food creators we’re always looking to solve problems for our readers, and developing a product to sell to your audience is a really great way to lean into exactly what problems you’re trying to solve and what value you provide to your audience. Julian also walks listeners through the more practical aspects of developing a product, including how to scale products and generate recurring revenue for your business and how to overcome perfectionism within your business. While this interview is primarily about developing and selling products, it’s also a really great interview about adapting to all of the changes in the food blogging space and how to think about your business to continue to be successful in the coming years. As always, if you enjoy this interview, we would love it if you could leave a review or share the episode with your audience. It makes a huge difference for our podcast. Without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Jillian, welcome to the podcast.

Jillian Leslie: Oh, it’s great to be back.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’ve both been doing this for a long time now, where we are at the point where it’s like, oh, we were on the podcast before, was it like two years ago, three years ago? Oh, it was seven years ago.

Jillian Leslie: It’s crazy,

Bjork Ostrom: And I think it’s such a testament to continually showing up every day. We talk about that a lot and the importance of that within the world of business in general, really with anything. But if you’re going to build a business, people underestimate what you can do in a decade and overestimate what you can do in a year. And you’ve been doing this for a while. You’ve been at it for a while, and there’s been many iterations off of it. So we’re going to be talking a lot about product, but I want to start by talking about the origin story of the product that you have created because you are selling that and the inception moment with that is like you are also helping your product is helping other people sell product. So we’re going to talk about how creators, bloggers, publishers can be strategic in selling product. But before we do that, take us back to the moment when you decided to create a product that you were going to sell online.

Jillian Leslie: Oh, so you mean back to our first SaaS product, which means software that we started selling? Well, just like you were sharing with me about your tool clarity, you had your own solution and you thought to yourself, Hey, if this works for us, maybe this could work for other people and that’s exactly what happened with our first product, which was our popup that we still sell called Milo Tree. And now we built out a whole suite of tools for bloggers, but what happened was we needed traffic. Facebook was turning down the spigot and we’re going, oh my God, are we going to go out of business? And this was for our first blog called Catch My Party, which is still there, largest party idea site on the web. And all of a sudden we noticed Pinterest was driving us traffic and we’re like, what is this thing called Pinterest and how do we get more traffic from it? And so my husband who can build anything built us a popup that on Catch My Party, if you go there right now, you’ll see it. And it was saying, Hey, follow us on Pinterest. And lo and behold, it started growing our followers. And I think right now we have, I don’t know, 1.7 million followers that we grew organically on Pinterest just by putting this popup on our site. And we thought to ourselves, if this works for us, chances are it will work for other bloggers. And lo and behold, we built it out and people said, we want it for Instagram, we want it for TikTok, we want it for YouTube, Facebook. So we just did that thing that I recommend all bloggers do, all entrepreneurs do, which is listen one, solve your own problem.

And I call it eating your own Jo Food, meaning we knew we had a problem, we solved it, we continued to use our own product, so we’re like updating it just like every blogger would want it to be updated. And we started listening to people and they said, this is cool for Pinterest, what about Instagram? Or I want to grow my email list with it. And we’re like, Hey, that’s cool. And that’s really the thing when you think of yourself as a problem solver, you got this sixth sense and you’re always looking, is there something that I could do that makes somebody else’s life better’s great. During the pandemic, I was lonely. And so I started a coaching group for bloggers. And what I noticed was a lot of the bloggers had big Facebook groups and they wanted to monetize them. And these are incredible content creators, but they hate technology.

And the one thing that has always been our MO is if we can create technology that is complicated on our end so we can serve it up easy to you, that is our kind of sweet spot. So all of a sudden people wanted to set up memberships and get paid, and I was like, Hey, we could do that. I just was like, Hey, let me try and figure this out. And what I noticed was I had to hack together so many different tools and it was not easy. And I said to David, my husband, could we do this? And he’s like, yeah, we totally could. And so that was the birth of our Milot tree cart product, which is where you can sell unlimited digital products easily. And this is for people like bloggers who have so many, they wear so many hats.

What we noticed was people had audiences they had people to sell to, but putting together the pieces was way too complicated. And that was really how we launched Milot Tree Card, which we now have Milot Tree Card, a tool called Milot Tree Freebies, where we enable you to offer unlimited freebies to grow your email list. And we should talk about email because I think that while it’s always been important, I think people now are really understanding the power of email and also our popup app to grow your social media followers. So really it’s all about saying people always, bloggers are always told solve problems. Okay, well what do you do with those solutions? How do you then take this idea and actually turn it into a product that you can sell to people?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think it’s one of the things that will become increasingly important in the next decade of content creation as information, especially transactional information. How do you boil an egg? If you had a site 10 years ago that was a how to site on all the food stuff, it probably would’ve done pretty well because people are going to Google and they’re searching how to, if it’s SEO optimized, and you’ll go and you’ll figure out how to boil an egg or get a hard boiled egg for the next decade is going to look very different. People are going to be able to get that information, especially when the new version of the iOS comes out that integrates with OpenAI, it’s going to become more conversational. Voice is going to become much easier. People are going to be getting their information in different ways. That’s not to say that being a creator online is going to become less valuable. I just think certain types of information are going to become less valuable. And so what we need to do as creators is think strategically, like you said, what are things, what are the problems that we are solving? And if 10 years ago the problem was getting information to people in a kind of transactional, here’s how to do X, y, Z thing, I think the problem looking forward is going to be much different. And it’s probably based on tribes. Are you somebody who’s in a similar stage of life to me? Do you have similar problems? For us, it’s like we have two girls and they are as of tomorrow, four and six, and both Lindsay and I work and we also try and sit down every night to have dinner together. And so one of the problems we are trying to solve is how do we not be stressed, number one, and still make time to sit down and have dinner together as a family. So that’s a very relatable problem. That’s a little bit abstract and a little bit harder for chat GPT to solve. We could then create free content on that. And most of what we do is that where it’s a blog post, it’s a video, it’s in an Instagram short talking about kind of what that looks like, an example being Lindsay does something called the SOS series for Pinch of Yam. If you’re short on time, it’s kind of an emergency.

What do you do to create a recipe that’s really easy? The next level of that feels like it’s then creating a product that people would pay for those people who are consuming your free content, that people would then look at that and say, Hey, I’m a part of this tribe. I am like you. I have a similar problem and this problem is significant enough that I am going to pay you to help me solve it in a more efficient manner or to the result of the problem solved could look different. It could be time saved, it could be money earned, it could be peace of mind, it could be a thousand different things. But how do you know as a content creator when to stop with free content and move into paid content? Do you have any advice for people to help to transition into that world as they think strategically about free versus paid?

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. So really, to be honest with you, information is becoming commoditized.

And that recipe that you, what’s the difference between you going to a blog for a recipe or eventually just right now going to chat GPT and saying, here are my dietary restrictions or in my refrigerator, or here’s a photo of what’s in my refrigerator, what should I make for dinner tonight? So that becomes less valuable. But in this world of AI where we feel more, I believe isolated alone, kind of like, whoa, I’m kind of floating here and I want that sense of community or somebody to connect to you become more valuable. So it’s like as you’re talking about your dinner, I want to see your dinner because maybe it looks like my dinner and maybe you guys aren’t perfect and maybe your kitchen looks like it’s a mess. Well, my kitchen looks like it’s messy too, and then all of a sudden you become relatable to me. You make me feel like I’m not so alone with my little kids at dinnertime. So it’s not just that I want your meal plan or it’s not just that I want a meal plan, it’s that I want Lindsay and Bjork’s meal plan because it’s the two of them being

Bjork Ostrom: Real struggling

Jillian Leslie: Through their dinner.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s nice of you to give me credit, but it’s Lindsay.

Jillian Leslie: Well, but it’s like to be clear, are you the dishwasher? How does that work? What is it? I’m curious. We are also very curious about other people, and so having a window into that would be valuable to me. So it’s not just that I could go to chat GBT and say, I need quick dinner recipes, but what is that extra step? So now you can, and for bloggers, especially a lot of food bloggers who like to hide behind their blogs, I’m going to say that’s not going to cut it anymore. Now do you need to be putting yourself on camera all the time and stuff? No, but you need to, I say this, have a point of view, have strong opinions about things. This is one of my strong opinions, which is, hey, what used to work might not work going forward in five years. So how do you position yourself, and I’m going to say step outside of your blog now, and B, I’m Jillian, but it’s weirdly not the Jillian show. It’s how Jillian can help you achieve your best life.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. One of the things that we talk about and think about a lot is this idea of what are the defenses against a new version of information acquisition that people have chat GPT as an example, or Gemini or Google AI overviews. And one of the ways that you can create a defense around that is what can that not do well? And it can’t be human. Well, probably in 10 years it be we’re already getting to the point of you’re crossing the uncanny valley. What is the test where it’s like human or not the test, the test. Is it a human on the other side or not? We’re there, we’ve kind of passed those points where it’s like, oh, actually this sounds like a person as I’m just chatting with a thing, but it’s still not human. And that’s one of the, for us as creators, one of the things that we have going for us is our ability to connect on a human level. And what that requires, like you said, is being in front a little bit more, being more personality. It’s interesting, there’s this long drawn out kind of conversation around people just want, in our world, people just want the recipe

Jillian Leslie: Get straight

Bjork Ostrom: To the

Jillian Leslie: Recipe. It’s

Bjork Ostrom: Like get straight to the recipe. Nobody cares about

Jillian Leslie: Your grandmother.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think we always said kind of true, but also I think some people do care about story, and I think moving forward, it’s going to be one of the things that is going to be most valuable is connection with an audience and with people who are actually following you, not just coming across your content or discovering your content. I think of our friends who have social followings, not in the food world, but they do comedy videos on Instagram and TikTok, and I’m thinking of one friend specifically who has millions of followers in this stage. It’ll come at some point. But in this stage of things, I don’t think he’s really worried about ai.

He has people who follow him, he produces content. That’s funny. People like him because they know him. His name is TJ Ethere, and if anybody wants to look it up, if we sit down and have a conversation, he’s not going to be like, oh my gosh, I’m super worried about chat GPT and my business because of it. Maybe that’ll change in five years when AI gets really good at creating video content, but it’s not there yet. So as people start to think about how to be more front and center, how to have more of their story included in the video content that they’re creating, how to build more of a tribe with opinions and a following, how are you seeing people think strategically about taking that and building a business around it? Not that you always have to do that. Sometimes you just want to do it because you want to do it or you want to do it because you want to spread a message. But for people who are interested in building a business around that following a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, how do you do that? Well,

As you start to develop following and that audience and that tribe.

Jillian Leslie: So first I want to say that our biggest customer base are food bloggers. Food bloggers have kind of figured out I need to sell something, but I don’t know what that means. And I say, sell an ebook of your best recipes. But here’s the caveat, it’s not just your 10 best recipes. It’s looking at what problem these recipes can solve. Meaning these are the recipes that you can make when your kids are having a meltdown. These are the recipes you can make when you’ve had a busy day or who knows, but wrap them in a solution, not just, these are my a hundred best recipes or these are my a hundred best. Maybe they cookie recipes because that becomes less valuable. What becomes more valuable is, oh my God, what is this problem and why is it relevant to me? Hopefully I understand this problem. I understand you having this problem so I can solve that up for you in a package of a solution. That’s great. And I have seen food bloggers, by the way, they already have the content, but it’s like, what’s the wrapper?

Initially it was like, I’ll just put my 10 best recipes together and sell it. And I’m like, that doesn’t cut it anymore. So we, for example, remember in food blogging, it was like you’ve got to be in a niche which is solving a problem, versus I just make pasta recipes whenever I want. Then I make, who knows that you have niche down? And so now it’s all about, okay, how can I hook somebody up and make their life better with my recipes? Now, are you going to buy your second home from your first ebook of recipes? No. But what you’re doing, and this is something I talk a lot about on my podcast, which is you’re looking for the connection. You’re looking for, I put this out and sell this, and people are taking their credit card and buying it because you’re onto something. I say, you’re a miner, you’re mining for gold. What you are first looking for gold specs

And where are they? And by the way, this is why your first digital product should be something you can put together really quickly and get out there. So this is why, for example, we offer, I was telling you AI generated sales pages. You don’t have to think about putting together a sales page. Boom, you’ve got your sales page, go sell it, go try to sell it. It doesn’t work. No problem. What other problem can you solve? Where can you take your current content, slice and dice it, put a package around it of I am solving a problem and sell that? And once you find gold specs, you dig deeper because guess where the gold specs are? The gold little pebbles are, and then hopefully the gold gets bigger and bigger, and then you can move up a ladder of different offerings.

Bjork Ostrom: Gold bricks, gold bathroom, gold house.

Jillian Leslie: I love that. Yes, absolutely. And then now can, I can tell you where the money is and

Bjork Ostrom: Where the money is. What do you mean by that?

Jillian Leslie: What I mean by that is yes, so lots of food bloggers, especially if they have email lists, can go to their email list and turn it on and probably make a couple hundred dollars if not a thousand dollars the first time they launch it to their list. But

Bjork Ostrom: With if they have a product, you’re saying if you have a product and you sell that product to your list,

Jillian Leslie: And I’m talking about maybe you’ve got a thousand subscribers, there is money in a thousand subscribers, there’s real money there. And if you’re not taking that money out, you should come talk to me because that’s like money for the taking. But

Bjork Ostrom: Now,

Jillian Leslie: Sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, I was going to say, I think it’s a really important thing because a lot of times we talk about email list, we talk about the importance of email list. I think people are starting to understand that becoming more and more important. But when you really start to feel that is when you have a thing and you want to promote that thing and to have the ability to send an email list that’s not going to be impacted by an algorithm, it’s not going to be impacted by SEO, it’s just going to go hopefully usually straight into somebody’s inbox. And what we’ve found is that is the most valuable resource for us in a situation where we have something and we’re hoping that people purchase that thing.

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. Email is for almost everybody. I talk to their best sales channel, even people with enormous social followings because you’re not scrolling through Instagram in a buyer’s mindset. Now you might be able to get sales from Instagram, but it’s usually not as easy as email. And that’s the real value of email, which is why again, we created our product so that you can offer unlimited freebies to grow that list because that is your group that you’re growing your customer base. So it’s like that is really valuable now where the money is in recurring revenue.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask. It’s almost like there’s a friend who lives in the Twin City series. His name is Rob Walling. He created a company called Drip. It was an email company. That email company sold to Lead Pages, which was a company here in the Twin Cities. Now he does Angel, and it’s not really Angel, but he helps bootstrap companies, SaaS companies, grow and scale. He has one of the concepts that he has is called the stairstep approach or something like that. But it often is like, Hey, start with an ebook, a one-time transaction, something that is, and that’s the first step. And then eventually you get to this idea of recurring revenue, and that’s really powerful. So within the context of information within the context of a publisher or creator who has a blog and a social following, what’s the best offering that you can have that would also tap into some of that kind of recurring revenue? Gold.

Jillian Leslie: Exactly. Well, just what you were saying, I call it a ladder. So you want to get people in the habit of buying from you, starting with a small item. By the way, another place where people make a lot of money is bundling, bundling products together. Because if I can sell you one thing, but then for example, we offer upsells, Hey, I know you’re going to, if you buy these mittens from me, from me, I probably, I bet you might want the matching hat. And that’s a very strong selling strategy because if you buy the mittens from me, I already have you as a customer. So if you go away, I’ve got to go find another mittens customer. It’s much more lucrative for me to not only offer the mittens, but also offer the hat so that’s something to keep in mind. But in terms of recurring revenue, it could be a meal plan, for example, is a good way to think about it. Another one though that I think is incredibly powerful is if there is a way that you can start a community low-key community where you are showing up with information, but people will come for the information, but stay for the community. That’s the sticky glue. It could be about parenting, it could be about meal planning, it could be about who knows what. Now, it might work in your niche, it might not work in your niche. So maybe there is a type of content you can sell consistently printables, or this works with high-ticket items, like certain kinds of coaching. Think of a mastermind. But if you’re a blogger and you’re good at blogging, go teach other bloggers who aren’t as experienced as you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and in a lot of ways it’s like that’s what Food Blogger Pro was like, we saw this need based on me at the time doing this kind of state of the blog report. We’re like, oh, a lot of people are interested in this. Like you said, it’s a little bit ear to the ground. It’s not like we had this idea out of nowhere to be like, Hey, we’re going to start this thing.

It just was an iteration off of a thing that we were already doing where it’s like, I wonder if there could be a premium level to this free information we’re doing once a month, and there was interest in that. So it’s almost like you think of that latter approach. We’re doing the first rung of the ladder already, which is producing free content and publishing it to the internet. Then it feels like the skill that we need to develop is understanding how people respond to that. Is there an interest, is there a need or people asking follow-up questions?

Jillian Leslie: Can I stop you there for one second? I would argue it’s free content to get intentionally getting somebody on your email

Bjork Ostrom: List. Sure.

Jillian Leslie: That is a very, very important step. So free content could be on your blog, it could be on Instagram, on social media. And so your next job is to figure out how do I take this person off of TikTok, off of Instagram, off of YouTube, give them something of value that they really want, that’s like the first tiny solution to the larger problem I can solve for them.

Bjork Ostrom: And the point I was trying to make isn’t necessarily that from doing free content, you’re trying to sell a product. It’s almost like free content is your first attempt at product development. It’s your first attempt at seeing can you create something that people need or that people are trying to figure out. That is, and I think of Nisha from Rainbow Plant Life and she came on and talked about her meal plans, which I think were really successful. And she talked about the number of conversations that she had with her followers to help develop that product. But I think part of what we do and what I’ve noticed as a pattern is a lot of times people come to me and they’re like, Hey, I have this idea for a thing that I’m going to create, and they probably haven’t talked to anybody else to say, is this a problem for you? It’s almost like just exploring what do I want to do? What do I want to create? Which isn’t necessarily bad, but it is bad if it’s not helping anybody

Jillian Leslie: Or

Bjork Ostrom: If nobody cares about it, well

Jillian Leslie: Nobody, nobody’s going to pay for it. So this is something I talk about inside out versus outside in inside out is this, I’m in this shower and I go, Hey, I got this great idea of our product and I can already picture myself going to Canva and making it look really pretty and what my fonts are going to be and all this stuff, and then I’m going to put it out and it’s going to sell crazy. And I say, please don’t do that. What I recommend is you build your product outside in. That means what are people asking you? Even in your email, if you put links to stuff, you’ve got recipes, what are they clicking on? What are your top recipes, let’s say, and is there a way to think of a product that way? So please don’t have that brilliant. And this is why, again, I can be controversial in that I’m going to say, do not start with a course unless you’ve pre-sold that course at least four or five times because the amount of work you’re going to spend on that course to then go, okay, I’m ready guys. Here it is and hope that people, you kind of think, but to be honest, you don’t. I mean, how many times is it that pin your number one pin on Pinterest is something you could never have imagined? You think, and chances are your hunch is in the right direction, but until you test it, you don’t know. And that’s why I say you got to iterate quickly kind of. I’m releasing a podcast this week of myself talking about B minus work, which is, remember I am a big proponent and it’s the concept that people email me the most about like, oh my God, that’s really resonated with me because I’m going to say don’t do crappy work. B minus is above average, but it’s not a plus work because a plus work, it’s not profitable, but if you can do B minus, and the way that I say you’ve got to B minus is you press like post or you put it out there and you get that cringey feeling in your stomach still because it’s a little embarrassing to you. You’ve hit the sweet spot,

Then you can start getting feedback. You can see, do people like this? Maybe they like it, maybe they don’t like it. And if you, let’s say get three sales, I say, good for you. Now your job is befriend those three people and get on calls with them.

Bjork Ostrom: What do

Jillian Leslie: You like about this? Why’d you buy it? What else could I offer you?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it feels like, and as a quick point, when we launched Food Blogger Pro, the membership component, we had three months of selling it before we actually launched it. We helped use those funds to build the first version of it, and it was a great way to validate do people actually need this and are they interested in it? A great book if people would be interested in product and selling product is called Lean Startup. It’s like a decade old now, but Eric Reese talks a lot about this idea of minimum viable product

And tell me if this feels accurate, but I would say it’s like B minus in pursuit of a plus. I think sometimes people think I need to start with a plus, and I think eventually you want to get to a point where what you are doing is incredible. It is valuable. You’re always in pursuit of that a plus, and you don’t settle with B minus. But in the early stages you have that thing that feels like a little bit early, it feels like it’s not quite polished enough, and you put it out into the world in order to then start to get feedback, like you said, to have those conversations, to take off the rough edges of it because that’s going to get you to a work quicker than going into the lab, having the door shut, pulling the blinds and working on your thing, and then eventually getting to a point where you’re like, and now it’s a plus and I’m going to show it to the world.

But if you start with B minus or C plus even, and you put it out into the world and then you iterate on that, like you said, you have those conversations, it will compress the development of the product and the helpfulness of the product by getting it in front of people. So my question is to what scale do you promote a thing once you have it? Because I think the downside of that is let’s say you produce something that is B minus, you put it out into the world, you promote it super heavily and it’s actually not helpful. Then you’ve kind of cashed in a chip, which is like your promotion chip that I think deters people down the line from feeling confident to purchase a thing again. So would you recommend doing it to a limited list? You have 10,000 people. Do you do it to a thousand people?

Jillian Leslie: Okay, I’m going to say I’ve tested this in my own business and I’ve seen other people test it. Nobody’s thinking about you. So for example, your email shows up and you offer me something, I’m barely thinking about you. I’m barely reading this email and you offer me a thing and I don’t want to buy it, but then you come to me a month later with something else, I’m not going to hold that first thing against you. You’re not that important to me. So I’m going to say go put it out. And if people don’t like you, let them unsubscribe. I’m going to push because I speak to predominantly women, and I will say that we have our own female baggage, which is we’re scared. We’re scared to be judged, we’re scared to not show up perfectly. And so I want to get rid of the word perfect and I want to say nobody’s thinking about you. It’s funny because I’ve shared this, I have a 17-year-old daughter and I’ve taught her this whole idea of nobody’s really thinking about you because at 17 you think everybody’s thinking about you.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Jillian Leslie: And she’ll catch me when I’m obsessed with something. I’ll see a photo of myself and I’ll be like, oh, that’s awful. And she’s like, ma, nobody’s thinking about you. And there’s something very humbling about that. Wait, no, you guys should be thinking about me, but it’s also very freeing. So I say, go. And then you know what? People don’t buy it. Well, guess what? Probably in your audience you have your VIPs, the people who are always commenting on your posts or interacting with you, emailing you, befriend those people, and you go, Hey, can I talk to you? Will you tell me why this didn’t connect with you of all people? I thought you would buy this. What don’t you like about it?

I say, go send the emails to your list. Please don’t hold yourself back. And there’s something I have have tons of post-Its on my desk. I have a post-it. I can’t show it to you right now. I can’t find it called cursive knowledge. And this is something where I think people I talk to struggle with and cursive knowledge is this. You and I could be talking in a very elevated way about SEO and you. I think everybody in this audience knows exactly what we’re talking about because you know it and I know it. And because we know what we assume everybody knows it. And that’s the curse of knowledge. So what we were talking about previously is what do you know that you think everybody knows that I promise you they don’t. And can you sell that?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s a term that we’ve used before, this idea of expert enough where one of your greatest advantages couldn’t be that you are the ultimate expert, but you are expert enough to speak to people who are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 steps behind you. Whereas if it’s somebody who’s a hundred steps in front of you, then it might not be helpful. An example in my world is I’m trying to learn more about health and fitness, and I was talking to a conversation or I was having a conversation with my brother-in-Law, and I was like, I think I might subscribe to jama, which is the medical journal. And he’s like, oh, you should actually look at the New England Journal of Medicine. And so it’s like, I subscribed to the New England Journal of Medicine and I’m getting it now, and I’m like, oh, this is not for me. This is for experts.

It’s way beyond. And it’s like I’ll still probably read it, might find some helpful stuff within it, but if that was 20% of what it is, that’s probably the version that I would need. And I think there are those things in the world where we are expert enough to tell somebody else the things that we know and it’s actually more helpful than if it was an ultimate expert. I think the thing that I’m trying to reconcile, and it’s specifically around a belief that I have with Pinch of Yum, which is one of the things we hear recurring is people coming to us and saying, I love Pinch of Yum because I know that I’m going to come and I’m going to make a recipe and it’s going to turn out.

And I think it’s become a competitive advantage that we have as a creator, which is those recipes are tested four or five, six times, they’re iterated on over weeks. We eat multiple versions of ricotta meatballs. And once Lindsay feels like this is excellent, she ships it out into the world. And that’s become a really great moat that we have in the world of content creation. And I think if you are somebody who does that, that’s a competitive advantage that you have, which is like you consistently create excellence. And I am trying to reconcile those two things. I think I believe both to be true. Number one, get stuff out there, publish something before it’s a little bit ready, but it almost feels like that’s more in the category of product, in service of iterating and becoming better at your craft as opposed to, I think for Pitch of Yum as an example and other maybe food creators who are listening like content at scale. I think if have Pinch of Yum had four B minus recipes in a row, I think that would be detrimental to the business. So what are your thoughts on that, just in terms of reconciling those two truths really?

Jillian Leslie: Okay. But I would argue that your commitment to your audience is excellence in food, meaning that recipe has to work. Where I’m talking about the B minus is that’s kind of your promise. What I’m talking about is maybe the website isn’t beautiful, maybe the photos aren’t perfect, maybe the copy could be improved. But for example, if I, let’s say, I don’t know, I am a psychologist and I’m an early childhood psychologist. If I give you bad information for your child, that would be bad.

I’m talking about maybe I’m going to write, I have this expertise. So you have the expertise of unbelievably delicious food that’s easy to make healthy. I mean, at least that’s how I think a picture of Yu. And so that’s your promise. Now, if I’m a therapist, hopefully I’m an expert at helping you with your relationships with your children, let’s say. I’m not going to skimp on that, but if I’m putting together my ebook and I think to myself, Hey, I could help with tantrums, bedtime, these kinds of things, my book doesn’t have to be perfect, but my information, my promise to you is I can make bedtime better and that I’m not going to sacrifice on, I’m going to sacrifice on turning this into a video series and making sure all my font are perfect or whatever. And so I don’t know if people care that much about bedtime, so I’m going to put that out there. Now, if ultimately, guess what? It starts selling like hotcakes. Okay, maybe I could record that video series. Maybe I could go through the ebook and hire somebody to make it look a little bit better.

Bjork Ostrom: So

Jillian Leslie: I would say that your promise is your promise.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that’s a really good differentiator. And I think what it feels like you’re getting at is how do you help people get out of their own way to move forward on their thing? And a lot of times what happens, and we see this in our world, an example would be somebody who’s tinkering with the logo of their website because they think that’s going to be the thing. But really it’s just like there’s this book called The War of Art, and he talks about it as the resistance,

And it feels like it’s how do you overcome the resistance, which keeps you from sitting down and doing the work, pressing publish. And it feels like in some ways it’s speaking to the resistance. How do you get past that? And one of the ways to do that is to release the tight grip that you have on having every pixel in the exact right space. What I also hear you saying is the information has to be great. If you’re telling somebody you’re going to do something, it has to be the thing that you’re telling them to deliver. But if it’s in a PDF, that if kind of crummy or maybe it’s not arranged in the exact right way or it doesn’t look super professional. And that’s been so much of our story I think of Lindsay created a photography ebook 12 years ago, and you talk about it’s not going to buy you a new house, but it paid our mortgage when we were first married and she worked on it in Apple pages and arranged things in a certain way. And to this day, we were just at a conference and writing next to somebody who had a site that was doing 10 million page views. And he’s like, that book really taught me photography. And if you were to look at that book, it’s like, it’s not super impressive. It’s a B minus in terms of the design, but it solved a problem, it solved a problem, solved a

Jillian Leslie: Problem. And

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, I feel like that’s in our world. A great example of what that looked like was we had a thing, we knew it was good information. Lindsay was good at teaching. She had the background in teaching, she was expert enough to do it, and on her own, she didn’t have a graphic design background cobbled together this book that communicated the information that actually was helpful for people. So I think that’s a really huge unlock to encourage people to show up and to confidently say, I have something that can help you. Here’s what that thing is. You actually deliver on that thing, even if it might be a little rough around the edges in terms of the deliverable landing page, the PDF, whatever it might be.

Jillian Leslie: So people will be like, we have this course conversation a lot. I have a lot with creators. And I say, okay, if you’re desperate to do a course, do it as some live workshops. Put them together and sell them. And then I said, when you do your workshop, hope that your tech fails, not in a big way, but in a small way because you don’t look perfect and be your audience. People who show up to your workshop will get behind you. And this is where I think that human piece matters. I think that my audience, like yours, I’m sure struggles with perfection. And I think perfection is poison. I think perfection keeps us stuck, makes us feel bad about ourselves and that it’s not profitable. And it’s so funny because then somebody that I was talking to did her workshop and had a technical problem and she taught cooking live and there was some dish rag in the background that she didn’t know was there, and she was mortified. And that’s that cringey feeling I recommend you get good at, but there’s something human about that. So it’s like lowering the bar.

Bjork Ostrom: Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. As you know, you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, but maybe you didn’t know that we actually have a membership for food creators and food publishers like yourself. We’ve actually had this option for 10 years. We talk about it occasionally on the podcast, but recently we had this realization of like, we need to let people know that we have a membership because sometimes people don’t know that exists. And there’s a lot of really incredible resources within a Food Blogger Pro membership. We have a community forum where we have FBP, Food Blogger Pro industry experts, a lot of people who you probably recognize from this podcast. We have a deals and discounts exclusive to members page where you can get access to discounts and some of the most popular tools for creators, a bunch of different courses on photography and video and SEO.

And then we do these live Q&As with experts. Recently we did one on SEO and republishing. We talked to Eddie from Raptive and he has years of experience in the world of publishing, and he talks about why the process of republishing is so important. I also do these coaching calls with Food Blogger Pro members that we record, and then we make available to everybody to watch and to learn and to listen. And these are one-on-one calls with other publishers or business owners to talk through the strategy for growing their business. And the cool thing about these live Q&As and these coaching calls is we actually wrap those up into a podcast that’s exclusive for members. So maybe you listen to the Food Blogger Pro podcast and you’re like, I wish there was more episodes that you could listen to and learn from. Well, you get access to additional content, additional podcasts if you join Food Blogger Pro. So if you want to check it out, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com and click the Join Now button and you get access to everything when you sign up the back catalog of all the live Q&As, all the coaching calls, all the courses, all the deals and discounts and immediate access to the community forum. So again, if you want to check that out, go to food blogger pro.com and we would love for you to not just be a podcast listener, but also to be a member.

Jillian Leslie: The other piece that I just want to say where my audience struggles and my hunch is yours does too, is saying this, I’m so used to giving my content away for free that the idea of charging for it feels weird. Maybe I’m not worth it.

Bjork Ostrom: And

Jillian Leslie: That is something I talk a lot about.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s almost like the psychology of selling a thing and behind a lot of those things. Perfection, I think on the other side of perfection is probably fear. It’s easier to be perfect than it is to publish a lot of times because perfection can keep you from publishing, and that’s a vulnerable, difficult thing, whether it’s publishing a product or an email or whatever. And I think anything, it’s a skill. You show up and you do it, whether it’s a podcast like this, publishing an Instagram reel, as you develop that skill, you’ll get better at it. It’ll become easier. Not that it ever becomes easy in general, but it’s like a skill that you can develop. And if you are interested in building a business, I think it’s going to become more important that you understand how to sell a thing over the next decade, whether it be an actual product or somebody else’s product.

The idea of income from ads, which are passive on your site, I think will live on in some form forever, but I think it won’t necessarily be a business that becomes more prevalent moving forward. I think it’ll probably become less prevalent. And so if you do have a following, if you do have an audience, it’s going to become important that you understand how to confidently sell a thing, whether it be through affiliate, through a brand that you’re working with or your own product. And if it’s your own product, I would make the argument that that can be if you land it and if it is the kind of thing where there is a need and it’s helping people and you have the audience that needs the help for the product that you’re creating, that can be one of the most profitable things that you can do. So with that in mind, how do you go from that? Let’s say it’s a PDF, it’s information, it’s an ebook. How do you go then to the next level of recurring? Do you sell to that same group? Do you only sell to the people who have purchased something from you before? And then what does that functionally look like? If you are creating a community and creating content, creating a course, whatever it might be, how do you actually pull that off?

Jillian Leslie: A lot of it is relationships. Again, when you sell those early sales, those become hopefully your VIPs,

And they kind of are like the people who want to help you succeed. So every offering and everybody’s journey up this ladder looks different. Therefore get in contact with those people and ask them what they need and what they would want from you and reward them. Buy them a Starbucks, meaning it’s okay to do stuff like that, but you’re doing all of this research. Did I ever think to myself, oh my God, David and I, when we started Catch My Party, someday we’d be selling some tool to help bloggers sell digital. Like what? No, it’s because this has evolved. Now, ultimately, again, think about is there a skill you have and maybe you could sell it as coaching, maybe you could sell it as a video series. Maybe you could sell this as a community. These are just ideas. I don’t know what it will actually, nobody follows this path directly the same way, but the people who have the most success are the people who continually, I would say this, they know what big problem they solve. Let’s say I’m going to help you get in shape. And maybe what that means is you want to lose 10 pounds and you want to gain lean muscle.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s the transformation. What’s going to be the transformation,

Jillian Leslie: And that’s what I want to sell you on is your future self that I can get you there, but I’m going to paint the picture of how good you’re going to feel when you’re there, how you’re going to look in the mirror and feel better how your numbers are going to, your blood sugar’s going to go down, how you want to be eight, like 90 on the floor with your grandkids. Those, that’s the picture that I want to paint for you and sell that to you. And then what are the little steps along the way I can sell you to get there? And so when you might be listening to this going, I don’t know what big problem I can solve, but that’s kind of, then think about it, okay, what small problem can you solve? And then what’s the next step that you can kind of lead somebody on in their journey? And so it’s like these kind of, when you’re in the shower next time, just start asking yourself, what is it that I solve? How do I help people? And one technique that I think is really helpful for selling is to put on the hat of the helper my solution. I’m not selling snake oil, I’m not pulling a fast one on you. I am selling you something that can help you and improve your life. And all of a sudden, if I can understand that in my own head and I can communicate that to you, I’m not being salesy. I’m a helper.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s interesting. I think even in my own life, I have a friend down the hall who does video, and we have another friend who’s building a, or they have a short-term rental Airbnb, some friends who are building a wedding venue, like a premium wedding venue. And I think about me within the context of them and those projects and it’s like, oh, I want to know about the business. I want to get plugged into the business. It’s hard for me, not with my friend who does video to not be like, Hey, do you need help figuring out some of the structural stuff within it? But my band is to do the things that I feel like we have created as a job for me, which is like, Hey, let’s have conversations about how people can improve their businesses. The nice thing is there’s also a need for that in the marketplace. For us, it’s Food Blogger Pro as a membership, but also then working with sponsors. And so to your point, it’s like this natural outflow of where I would already have a tendency to go, but also where people might ask questions for me. And so what you have is world’s great need and your great passion. I think sometimes we just talk about passion, but it’s like you also have that world’s great need part.

So on a very functional level, let’s say you start to figure that out, even working within a product like Milot Tree, what does that look like to connect all those things? Is milot Tree facilitating some of that? Do you check out and then do you manage the recurring membership component of it? And then do people go into Slack for that? Can you talk about just how people might set that up and what that might look like?

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. So it’s funny because we have strong opinions, and one of them is I don’t want to be your email service provider.

I don’t want to be your course platform. What I want to be is the best way for you to get paid for you to have sales pages and market your product and for you to have a dashboard to watch and manage your sales and your customers. Therefore, we integrate with all major email service providers because I can’t tell you how many people I know have a course platform that’s really expensive and they have an email service attached to it. But wait, they want to use ConvertKit and now they got to hack that together. And I don’t want you to have to hack solutions together. I want you to use best in class services. So for example, when people say, I want to start a membership, I go, great, here’s what I recommend you do. I recommend you show up twice a month on Zoom because everybody knows Zoom. And the first time you show up, say it’s the first Wednesday and the third Wednesday of the month for one hour, you hold it to one hour. You teach something in the first session. Now, by the way, you can listen to this or not. This is just where I see people, just an example, have success. The second time you show up, it’s just q and a talking about whatever you discussed in that first session. I recommend you use a private Facebook group to kind of house everything. Why people are like, no, but there are all these other cool tools. And I’m like, you think you’re going to convince people to put an app on their phone and will know to come to use this app? People know Facebook whether they like it or not, and all you’re going to do is store stuff in that Facebook group and create a place for people to talk to each other. And I want this to be as low stress for you as it is for your people. Don’t burn yourself out. Don’t burn your people out. And then you’re going to communicate them, communicate with them via email. Hey guys, we’re meeting. Here’s this month, we’re talking about this topic, and here’s the link to the Zoom. And after we do the zoom session, I’m going to send you the recording and maybe there’s a PDF or who knows, but make it simple. I am all about keep things simple. Don’t ask too much of people and don’t over provide. Again, the reason people leave memberships, a lot of times, especially if it’s something like a crafting membership is they feel like they’re falling behind.

They can’t keep up. So it’s like, let’s lower the bar and let’s show up and let’s listen. Let’s listen to what people want. So for example, remember I did a membership during the pandemic and what I did, I said, okay, we’re going to talk about blogging and these are the topics I think we should talk about. But I came up with it and I held it lightly. And what I mean by that is we’re into, I don’t know, month three, and I could tell that the people in my group were having difficulty doing the work.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jillian Leslie: So I said, okay, no, no, no. We’re not talking about, let’s say Instagram in month we’re going to talk about is strategies like the Pomodoro technique, which is where you work for 25 minutes and then you get a five minute break, and then we’re going to talk about B minus work, and we’re going to talk about the ways to get your butt in the chair so that you can accomplish this amount of work. And so therefore, if I didn’t know that this would be important, but what I discovered was this is what my people were kind of saying to me like, Hey, how do I get this done? I’m burning out or I’m losing interest, or whatnot. So it’s like you’re listening and you’re adapting, and I think that is the way to, versus I’m going to start a membership and it’s going to have all these moving parts. No, you start simply and build from there very much what you were talking about. Yeah. You want that membership to ultimately be an A. And I’m going to say that’s because the delivery is so good, but really you start, even if you think you’re starting at an A plus, I promise you, for most people it’s B minus,

Bjork Ostrom: Right? Right. Yeah. It’s just your, it

Jillian Leslie: Starts

Bjork Ostrom: Misinterpretation of it. Yeah. So with

Jillian Leslie: Milo Tree, you have all this flexibility to sell digital downloads. Again, we deliver them, just upload it to our platform. You can do coaching, membership subscriptions, recurring revenue, all that stuff. We integrate with Stripe Best in class payment platform. We give you a really nice dashboard to manage all your customers. And I’m available if you have questions, go listen to my podcast, the Blogger Genius Podcast where I’m talking about the value of offering freebies and what is a good freebie. I break that down for you. And because there is ai, I’ve got prompts where you could come up with a freebie, a really cool freebie, like a cheat sheet in what, 10 minutes. So my hope is to support you along your journey.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And I think one of the takeaways from that idea of not having, in this case Mylo Tree, not having it be all of the things is, and I think this can be confusing a lot of times for creators, publishers, I think sometimes we think the tool is the product, hey I’m going to sign up for this thing. And it’s really cool because you can do all of these things within it, but the tool isn’t the product. In the same way that if you build a home, you have a nail gun, you have a hammer, those are all tools to build the home, but the home is the product, not the tools. And I think what we are doing as creators and publishers who are selling either community or information, a lot of times both is the information back to our previous conversation around having the wrapping of the product B minus, but the actual transformation or the helpfulness of it being an A, that’s the thing that you are selling. It’s the information, it’s the community, it’s the transformation that somebody is going through. The tools are the tools, and if the information is good or the community is good, then it’s going to be helpful. I think of myself, I’m a part of a group, I don’t remember, it’s maybe like $200 a month and it’s a Slack channel.

Jillian Leslie: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you

Jillian Leslie: Care? Do you go, Jesus, you guys, it’s on Slack. I can’t participate in this.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s a Slack channel, it’s a Zoom once a month Zoom call. There could be other ones you could join as a part of, and then twice a year conference that you could opt into if you want to go. So that’s a perfect example of it’s like I never once thought about like, oh, I wish the tool was better. It’s like, no, it’s a really good community. And the reason that it’s really good is because the founder of that group, it’s called Rhodium, he’s curated that group. He has a one-on-one call with every person to make sure that they’re going to be a good fit. And so that’s the product, is the community, and he’s developed a really great process around that. And then just used widely available, oftentimes free or low cost tools to support that.

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. It’s funny, I live in Austin and we just recently, we went to a restaurant and it’s a James Beard award winning chef, and it’s the crappiest looking restaurant ever, but it’s very Austin, so it’s got picnic tables outside in the heat, and it’s got gravel on the ground and it’s Mexican like tacos.

Bjork Ostrom: What restaurant was it?

Jillian Leslie: It’s called Nixta, N-I-X-T-A. But the beans have duck fat in them. And I love this idea, which is the people in the, and it’s so delicious. And no, the ambiance is this kind of backyard picnic vibe. And I feel like I love that as a way of thinking about building your business because the food is so good, but it’s casual and it’s comfortable and it’s cool. So that’s just like where I go, it is not the tool, it’s the content of whatever it is you’re paying for. And my hunch is nobody’s leaving because it’s on Slack and Zoom,

Bjork Ostrom: Right? Yeah, exactly. That’s not a differentiator in that where people are like, oh, this would be really great if this was all fully integrated into one platform. It’s like people don’t even think twice about it.

Jillian Leslie: And if you’re spending your time having to go to YouTube to watch videos on how to use this incredibly complicated, all-in-one solution, which I was doing, I was subscribed to one, I put my course up, which took a lot, and I had to kind of be on YouTube trying to go, where’s the button for this? And I thought, oh my gosh, this is harder than I thought. And I’m pretty good at figuring out platforms. And so again, I want to take all of that away.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. You mentioned that you have a podcast, obviously Milo Tree as well, and you also mentioned people connecting with you.

Oh, I love it. And as a little teaser, I’m going to be on the podcast, I think we’re recording it next week. I dunno when it actually comes out. So that’ll be fun. So this is almost like a to be continued conversation. We’ll be able to pick it up and take it in a different direction next week. But Jillian, can you talk about if people want to follow along with your podcast, maybe a little bit about what that’s about? I’m guessing people would generally know Milo Tree if they’re interested in checking that out, and then even if they wanted to connect with you personally where the best place to do that would be.

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. Okay. So please, I love, as I shared, I really do. I love talking to people about building businesses. I started my, how many years have you been doing your podcast?

Bjork Ostrom: Gosh, I should know the date that we first launched. I don’t know, 10 years.

Jillian Leslie: Okay. I think I’ve been doing mine about seven and a half now.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Jillian Leslie: I think I’m coming up to eight years. And you were an inspiration. I was like, you started a podcast. I’m going to start a podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: Alright, love it.

Jillian Leslie: So I started my podcast called the Blogger Genius Podcast. And the truth of the matter is, I started it to support our pop-up app. But really because the great thing about a podcast is you get to talk to people, you get to email somebody and say, come on my podcast, and then ask them lots of questions. So for a curious person, it’s been really fun.

Anyway, so it’s the Blogger Genius Podcast, and I think I’m up to like 350 something episodes. Really what I try to do is get experts on like you Bjork, and pick your brain and go, what’s working right now? And also share what I’m seeing where I sit and say like, okay, here is how a food blogger can have success selling digital products. Here is how to get started. Here is why a freebie is so valuable, but what is a freebie and how should you think about it? So that’s really what it is, and I’d love you to listen or subscribe, but please, I am an open book. Reach out to me at jillian@milotree.com. You can DM me on Instagram at Milo Tree, and if you want to get on a free 20 minute call with me, because I love talking to bloggers to future customers to really see if there’s a connection there. If I can help you just go to milo tree.com/meet and there’s my calendar book a time with me. It’s not a hard sell. It’s really because this is how I do our research for what we should be building and how best to serve you as a creator, as a blogger, as the world is changing in this moment with ai.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. It’s one of the things that I’ve found to be most beneficial anytime that somebody has an offer like that. I was at a conference and somebody’s like, Hey, we do an SEO audit. It’s like, okay, I’ll sign up for it. I’ll do it. Because what I’ve found is those are some of the most beneficial interactions that I have. Those conversations. Somebody from an outside world that understands our world, but can look in and weigh in on it. And like you said too, on your end, as we talked about before, one of the most valuable things you can do in creating a product is have conversations with customers. So it’s cool to see as we wrap up, what that looks like for you saying, Hey, I want to have a conversation with you. Not only can you be helpful, but it can also inform the decisions that you’re making with the products that you’re developing,

Jillian Leslie: Which is really cool. And I’ll say, I get this a lot, which is because I’m fresh eyes on your business, and I’ll say something and you’ll be like, oh my God, she’s a genius. And I’m like, no, I’m not a genius. I’m just fresh eyes. You’re so close. And I feel that way about my own businesses. I’m so close to them. Sometimes I’m blind. So it’s just nice to have somebody go, whoa, have you thought about this? Or have you thought about that? Those kinds of things. That is where I love that moment when somebody goes, oh my God, I’d never thought of that before.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Jillian, great to talk to you. We’ll talk to you in a week next week for your podcast. Thanks so much for coming

Jillian Leslie: On. Thank you 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.

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.

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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 Elizabeth Emery from the Food Blog Vancouver with Love. Elizabeth first started blogging in 2015 as a side hustle and then took her sight full-time. In 2018, Elizabeth shares more about the burnout that she experienced in 2021 and how she really fell out of love with her job. She talks about how she worked with a business coach to adjust certain parts of her business that she wasn’t happy with, and how leaning into the joy in her business helped her both find renewed excitement about her job, but also helped her business to grow. She chats about the importance of adjusting her sources of revenue and prioritizing passive income, how qualifying for an ad network has really transformed how she thinks about her business and how she’s worked to grow her income for her blog to a six-figure business This year, Elizabeth also talks about what quiet success means for her and why you don’t need TV appearances or cookbook deals to have a successful career as a food creator.

I really enjoyed editing this episode and love the perspective that Elizabeth brings to food blogging and think you will too. Without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Elizabeth, welcome to the podcast.

Elizabeth Emery: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s an honor.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Whenever we do a podcast, we do a little bit of a check-in before and talk about some of the things that we’re going to talk about and all of the things that we recapped as we kind of built the agenda. They’re all things that I’m really excited to talk about because I think they’re important topics for a variety of reasons. We’re going to be talking about money and making a sustainable income. We’re going to be talking about burnout. We’re going to be talking about diversification of revenue sources, quiet success, that phrase that you used, but I want to start is 2021, because it sounds like that was a season for you where you had been blogging, publishing, building this business for at that point, maybe six years, seven years. You’d been at it a while, is that right?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, less full-time. I’ve been doing the blog from about 2015, 16, but full time end of 2018. Okay,

Bjork Ostrom: Great. At that one. So you’d been working on it side hustle initially and then full time, and it sounds like that was a season where you, in your words were burnt out. What did that look like? What did that feel like? Tell us about that season in 2021.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, I mean, it was awful. There’s no other word for it really. Obviously, we were still going through the pandemic, so there was sort of lockdowns in place, but by that time, I think it’s safe to say the novelty of lockdown had well and truly worn off for most of us

Bjork Ostrom: That first month. It’s like, we’re going to get so much done. Everybody’s going to exercise, it’s going to be a great thing, can watch day. Yeah. Now it’s like, oh, I just want to hang out with my friends and not feel weird about it and wonder if everybody’s okay.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah. So by that point, I think as many of us did, I’d just sort of really gone hard into work and had got to this point where I’ve realized I was waking up in the morning, just dreading the day, and that is just a horrible place to be literally waking up thinking, oh, I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to shoot this content, got to do this on Instagram, got to do this for a client, and I’d basically just completely fallen out of love with the job, I think, and it looked very different to me to what it does now. My business has changed somewhat, but it was the worst feeling I could see. I was getting sort of depressed with all of it, and yeah, the best way I can encapsulate it though was literally waking up in the morning, dreading it, not wanting to do it.

Bjork Ostrom: What do you think you were dreading? Can you pinpoint the things in your day that you were dreading or was it just kind of this general sense of dread?

Elizabeth Emery: I think it was both, to be honest. I think it was a general sense of dread, and then I think there were elements of my business that just weren’t working for me, and

It wasn’t further on that we’ll come to until I started working with a business coach that I realized it was a wake-up call for me to just adjust those parts of my business that I wasn’t happy with. I was putting too much energy into certain parts, like freelance recipe developments for clients and stuff, and it wasn’t my work. It wasn’t giving me the same sense of creative fulfillment. And I think the business coach I work with now, she’s brilliant, and she has this phrase where she says, if you are feeling burnt out, it’s always a sign that something isn’t working in your business, whether that’s a specific area that you’re giving more time to or whether it’s just something you need to stop doing altogether, not necessarily, but that for me, there were definite areas that I wasn’t enjoying, and I think Instagram, for example, was becoming a big drag by that point. It was relentless back then it was. You’d be posting every day or I was, and it was just hard to keep on top of it. I basically felt like a hamster on a wheel at that.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you feel like at that point, part of it was you felt like you had to, it was a thing you have to do and other people are doing it, and so this is what I have to do. What was it that kept you doing it? If the thing was making you feel dread or a certain level of like, oh, this is really depressing, or I am depressed doing this work, what was the driving force behind it to keep you doing it? Well,

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, I think as you say, there is definitely an element of that’s what you think, that’s what you have to do. That’s what everyone else is doing, so surely I must have to do that as well. Therefore I will do it. This is just how it’s done. I think also at that point, my business wasn’t particularly sustainable. My income was very low from it, hadn’t discovered ad revenue at that point. I was quite late to the party with that, so I was really sort of focused on sponsored content and then freelance recipe development, both of which very labor intensive, you’re, there’s no passive income there. It’s you’re exchanging your time for income, and I think that

Bjork Ostrom: Every month is a blank slate. You have to show up, you have to earn it. There’s no kind of foundational layer of recurring. It’s up and down with ad revenue, but there’s no base level of like, yeah, I know generally speaking, I might earn a couple thousand dollars this month, and then you can layer on additional things on top, which that feels different than if I don’t earn any money from sponsored content this month, then I don’t earn any money.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, a hundred percent. You’re really having to hustle and put yourself out there and do it, and I think if someone’s not been in that experience before, it’s exhausting. It’s really exhausting, and there’s no element of being able to coast at all. Not that we coast, but with ad revenue, it is kind of passive in a way, and you can take a month off and probably terrible things aren’t going to happen. You’ll still have that income coming in, and I wasn’t there at that point. It was very much all on me, and I think I really felt that pressure big time.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So let’s talk about your site a little bit. Vancouver with Love. So you’ve been working on it for nine-ish years, full-time, about half of that. Does that sound right more now, but tell us about your site and what the focus is with it and maybe anything that has evolved with it as you’ve been working with this business coach, if at all. And then we’ll get back into some of the changes that you made as you worked out of this season of burnout.

Elizabeth Emery: For sure. So my site is primarily vegan recipes, all vegan recipes, a little bit of lifestyle and plant-based travel with that, but vegan recipes are the main focus. It has been since I started it really originally the focus was vegan, gluten-free recipes because that’s how I was eating. Now all the recipes always have gluten-free options, so that hasn’t changed, but it’s primarily a plant-based focus, and that’s really my niche. I don’t specialize more than that perhaps I go more for dinner recipes and breakfast recipes, but the idea being that they’re easy and accessible for the most part because I know that my community, the audience I have, they’re not generally the people that are interested in spending three hours baking a four-layer cake. That’s how long it takes to make

Bjork Ostrom: Sure

Elizabeth Emery: They want quick and easy

Bjork Ostrom: They want, if there was one that took that long, your people wouldn’t be doing it.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, it’s not who they’re, so yeah, it’s much more simple dinner recipes, overnight oats recipes, that sort of thing. I think whatever makes plant-based, eating more accessible to people, really, that’s what I

Bjork Ostrom: Do. Yeah, and you started eating vegetarian when you were four, is that right?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, yeah, I was four.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you tell us about that? So we have a three-year-old and a five-year-old. So right around that age, was it something that your parents had done or your family had done, or were you somebody who was aware of animals and animal product and that at a young age? What was that like?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, it’s a funny story. I went to the butcher with my mom one day, and it’s weird, I can still remember it. I assume there were turkeys, birds strung up in the window, and I remember just looking at them with horror, why? What is that? And my mom was like, well, that’s meat. That’s what we eat. That’s where it comes from. I just sort of went, I don’t want to, if that’s what it is, I don’t want to eat that anymore. And she went, okay. And to her credit, neither she nor my dad ever tried to dissuade me. They were

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome.

Elizabeth Emery: Very supportive. They weren’t plant-based themselves, but I think they had been thinking about it, and I think they decided if their 4-year-old daughter could do it, they could probably give it a go as well.

Bjork Ostrom: So did they start eating vegetarian at that point?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, yeah. My dad’s still pescatarian. He still has some fish, my mom and my sister fully vegetarian.

Bjork Ostrom: Wow. What a pivotal moment in all of your lives watching. I mean, you think about what could have happened if you didn’t walk into that witch store as a 4-year-old.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, I do wonder because I think it’s very hard to make the distinction, the understanding of what meat is if you don’t have that kind of vis visual.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah. I wouldn’t have known, I wouldn’t have understood what the chicken and my stew meant. I think it’s little kids naturally I think often don’t always want that. So it felt very natural to me to say no. And I can only say I was very fortunate that they didn’t try to make me meat. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: Dissuade you. Our five-year-old who’s very aware of things and feels things on a very deep level is starting to ask questions about the food that we’re eating. Is this, I forget the phrase she uses real or made, is chicken real or made? And it’s like, oh, chicken is real. It’s like the chicken that is outside, or is bacon real or made? It’s like, oh, it’s real. And I think what she means by real is is it an animal? And so we’ve always thought she has, as she starts to learn more the potential to be somebody who makes a decision to eat vegetarian.

One more quick example, we just got a frog recently, a tree frog, and she’s been really excited about it. Its original name was tree a tree frog named tree. And then when she went to stay with my parents for the weekend, she came back, she had renamed it to Rice, so now that’s its permanent name, rice, the tree frog. But we needed to get food for it. And so we got crickets and we were bringing the crickets in and she had this moment where she stopped and she looked at me and she goes, dad, so we feed these to the frog. And I was like, yeah, that’s what the frog eats. The frog will eat crickets. And she had this long pause and she said, do you think they’re happy? And I was like, oh my gosh, and it was for me. Then suddenly I’m wrapped up in the moral implications of feeding cricket, sewer, frog, and yeah, it’s a little four or 5-year-old, you feel those things and can make those decisions.

So anyways, a little bit of a tangent, but it’s really cool to hear as part of your story and now part of the work that you do, you help facilitate that for other people. And we talk about that with Pinch of Yum. So much of what we do is driven by, Hey, we want to have a successful business, but we also want to make a difference in people’s lives. And a good example is we do meal plans and the testimonials that come out of those meal plans are empowering and motivating for us to continue to do that because it makes a difference in people’s lives. But in order to do that, you have to be at your best as a creator. And there’s this person that I followed for a long time, he’s now moved into semi-retirement. His name was Michael Hyatt, just talked about leadership and creating and things like that.

And he always talked about the analogy of putting your oxygen mask on first. And he always talked about for himself it means fitness and health and making sure that he has margin and he’s not overscheduled. And I think about what you’re doing, the success in your business as you’ve grown that over the last few years, but also the mission of the business to help people eat vegan and to do that in a way that is sustainable and not overwhelming. None of that can happen if you are at a point where you feel like burnt out or you’re not passionate about it. So when you were working with, well, let’s go to the coach first. How did you have the idea to find a coach as a way to facilitate your way into maybe a better future? And even why did you make the decision to work with a coach versus just like, I’m burnt out, I’m going to wind this down and go in a different direction?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think the honest answer is desperation. I couldn’t go on the way I was, but I knew I loved the job. I am in my late thirties. I’d done a lot of other jobs before this, and I had pretty much hated most of them, and I’d never had a career I felt I truly wanted to be doing. This was the first one I felt I could see myself doing for years to come, and they excited me. And I thought, and

Bjork Ostrom: You had tasted it, you knew you liked the taste of it, but it had soured a little bit, but you knew that there was something there that you wanted to get back to.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, I knew I could have some sort of success with it, whatever that was going to look like. I knew I could make it sustainable. So I’d got to this miserable point where I just literally was dreading the day and I knew something had to change. I wasn’t prepared to give the business up. And I thought, right, business coach, I’d followed this woman on Instagram. I’d listened to her podcast for several years, and as we know, the podcast is such a powerful method I think, of reaching people and it really made me want to work with her. She’s based in the UK and

Bjork Ostrom: What’s her podcast or the name of the coach?

Elizabeth Emery: So her name is Jen Carrington. Like I say, she’s based in the UK. She’s done various podcasts over the years. Her most recent one, I think the one I listened to was Your Simple and Spacious Business, and she’s another joint podcast called Letters From Hopeful Creative, which is a really good podcast. They’re both great. So I really knew that her style fitted me. She actually, she works with a chronic illness. She’s had a chronic illness for years, so she manages stay in her business by working around 10 hours a week. And it’s sustainable, it’s successful. She makes the income she needs to make, and I don’t have any chronic illness. I’m very fortunate in that regard. But I remember listening to everything she was saying and just thinking, that’s what I need. I need a more human approach to running this business because I’m being a hideous boss to myself. I’m forcing myself to do things I don’t want to do every morning because I feel I have to. And she takes such a more calm, kind, joyful approach to it that I thought, yeah, that’s the person for me. If this can help me find joy in the business again and joy in life really, because so much of our work is life. That’s what, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So I remember reading this book, I think it was maybe Stanford professors who had this class that was really successful, and then they put it into a book and it was called Designing Your Life.

They’ve also recently published one I think called Designing Your Work Life, which is more specific to career versus just life. And one of the exercises they have you do is there’s empty to full kind of like you’d see in a car, and they would have you go through and do an inventory of the different things that you were doing throughout the day. Does this make me empty? Doesn’t make me full. And it’s just a way to reflect on what you’re doing and how you as a creator individual respond to it. And things that I would love to do, sit down and do a finance review with Lindsay, she’d be like, please know, poke me in the eye a hundred times of the stick. But point being people really enjoy different things and get life from different things. What did it look like for you as you started this process of re-analysis or just analysis for the first time and working with a coach to get a lay of the land of what was happening, to even understand where things are at? Was there an exercise you did? Was there a process you followed?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, it was more holistic, I would say. There wasn’t a formal exercise as such, but she was great at talking me through literally as you say, what is filling your cup and what is taking away from it? And it was completely eye-opening to realize that, for example, doing a lot of client work, doing a lot of recipe development. It’s a really important part, but it wasn’t, I was doing so much, it wasn’t filling my cup at all. It was really draining me. I felt like I had virtually no time for myself in terms of creating my own content for the blog because I wasn’t monetizing it through ads at this point. As I say, I was late to the party with that. So basically all my time was getting spent on client work and then sort of brand sponsored deals all for other people, which again, great work, but I was never, ever left with any time to build up my own block

Bjork Ostrom: At the end of, so in realizing that in your case, Hey, I’m doing a bunch of client work. For some people it might be really life-giving for you. It wasn’t, but it was monetarily significant. You saw this opportunity of, Hey, I want to work on my own thing and build that. That’s important. But a lot of times we are in a situation where it kind of feels like golden handcuffs. I have this income that’s coming in, but I also want to build this thing adjacent to what I’m doing because I think the long-term return on that both for my own wellbeing and maybe from a business perspective is going to be better.

And I think the equivalent could be a W2 job or a 1099 job or a freelance job. You talked about having a lot of these in the past, and I think a lot of people could relate to this idea of I want to build the momentum with the thing that I own that is like, that’s maybe not necessarily passive, but has some passive functionality built into it, but I also have to pay the bills and I have to keep this income coming in. What did it look like for you to adjust the dials on the different sources of revenue that you had in order to focus on your site, which doesn’t have an immediate return, but maybe has a better long-term return once it becomes a little bit more passive?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah. Well, I will caveat this with saying I got very lucky with it. So because I’d had my site for quite a few years and I was sort of just about managing to do a bit of work, I’d recently learned what keyword research was totally. So actually attempting to do something with each post rather than just randomly putting out recipes, it was slowly building in traffic. And coincidentally, I think as I started working with this business coach, I hit the amount of page views that meant I was able to qualify for Mediavine. So that made all the difference. And I do think it was a bit of a fluke. I want to be very honest about that.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, and to your credit, I think luck, we say this often, luck has dressed in overalls. You also talk about being burnt out, working so hard and putting in all this effort. And so it’s not like you opened your email account and somebody said, Hey, we’ve gifted you a website and now you qualify for Mediavine. It comes from years of doing hard work and showing up and creating good content. And even freelance recipe development plays into your ability to craft a recipe in a way where people respond to it and it’s a good recipe. And so there’s always a luck component with anything that we do, but we will never get lucky to the degree that money just randomly shows up in our bank account or traffic randomly starts coming to our site. It still requires hard work and effort in showing up for 6, 7, 8 years. I want to point that out as a part of your story, but I also appreciate you being humble and acknowledging that for all of us, our success probably has some degree of luck, but also a lot of hard work. But nonetheless, you got to this point as you’re working with a coach where you’re able to qualify or Mediavine started to get some of that feeling of like, Hey, even if I don’t work this month, I’ll get a thousand dollars, $2,000, $3,000. What was that like at that moment? How did that change things for you?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, I mean, it felt like gold dust, to be honest. It changed everything. And as you probably know, when you first start with ad revenue, the amounts aren’t that high. I think it takes them a little while to figure your site out, figure out who you are. So it was sort of a few hundred dollars. At first, it was still fantastic, but it wasn’t higher numbers, but it was enough that I thought, oh, okay, this could be doable. This must be scalable. And the absolute key piece for me was being able to drop down the amount of sponsored work and client work that I was doing to a level that felt like it wasn’t burning me out, that I felt like I could manage. And then still having time to create content for the site and really, really focus on building that up and that I didn’t expect it to feel so different, but it was like night and day. It was suddenly I was actually looking forward to what I was doing. I really personally enjoy keyword research. I find that really fun. And when you hit on that phrase, that’s low competition and high search volume, it’s simple pleasures, I suppose. But I really enjoy that. And obviously it’s difficult with helpful content updates, and we never quite know what’s going to happen with Google with the algorithm. Not as you say, it’s not sustainable income, but just knowing I had that, what felt like a safety net, I think from ad revenue real game changer, for me it was the missing piece.

Bjork Ostrom: It feels like art and science. I think of the movie Moneyball, which is about the Oakland Athletics, I think baseball team. And it was the whole idea of it was kind of the first, I forget his name, but it was the first person who really came into baseball and made data decisions around players, but there’s still an art and science to it. And before it was kind of like art, you think this person’s pretty good? You can see some of their stats, but not really into data. And so much of content creation is similar in that regard where there’s an art and a science. You could come across a search term with a super high search volume, really low competition, but if you know it’s not within the realm of what your people would want to make, it’s not something that you’re going to use or if it even feels like maybe they wouldn’t make it, but it’s not brand aligned.

And so it’s almost like this additional data point that you’re able to fold in to the process to make decisions and to inform it. And sometimes that will rank, then sometimes it doesn’t. No true formula for it, but especially for people who like that type of analysis, like yourself, it’s a really great tool to fold into the process. Some people, they start with it, it’s the first thing you do, and then you go down the content production line. Some people would have a hundred pieces of content they want to make and then they’ll inform their decisions based on keyword research. Can you share just at a high level the tools that you like to use and what the process looks like for you?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah. I mean, I’ll be honest, I’m pretty basic with it. And I use key search. That was always my go-to and to be again, transparent with it, I live in Canada. I’m British, but I’m based in Canada. And a lot of these tools are based from the states and the exchange rate from Canadian to US to Canadian. It’s not kind to us at the moment. We don’t get an easy deal. So I think quite a lot of these tools are just out of the reach of a lot of Canadian-based creatives. So for me,

Bjork Ostrom: You mean US dollars to Canadian?

Elizabeth Emery: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yep, yep.

Elizabeth Emery: It’s a challenge. I know it.

Bjork Ostrom: You get like an upcharge.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, always, always. It’s a frustration for Canadians.

So for me, key search was an obvious choice just because it’s an affordable one, and I know there are much more comprehensive ones out there, but just in the beginning it wasn’t really an option for me. So I’ve had KeySearch stuck with that. It seems to have served me quite well. And more recently I started using RankIQ as well, but I use it more. I don’t really use it to write my posts as such. I’ll write the full post and then I’ll pop what I’ve written into RankIQ and if there’s any glaring areas that I’m missing out on, kind of use it for that rather than literally writing the post in,

Bjork Ostrom: See if there’s any gaps or ideas for additional things you could add in.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah. But yeah, that’s what I do. KeySearch is usually my go-to and then just Googling stuff as well because

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure

Elizabeth Emery: Can only tell you so much, can’t they?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s little things even that I feel like every day I’m learning different ways that you can approach keyword research. Idea being like for example, looking at the order of if you search a certain term, an example not in the food world would be like how to do a backflip. Not that I was actually searching that make no attempt to do a back flip, but then looking at the tabs up above and seeing what order they’re in. So I’m looking at Google right now. I search how to do back flip and it says videos, images, forums, shopping news books that informs you a little bit on the user intent around that keyword. They’re probably going to want to see a video, whereas if you do something like school bag that’s going to show images and then shopping and then videos and then news. But as we’re doing keyword research, part of it is just understanding user intent and user behavior.

And so if you do a keyword search just using Google and you see videos is close there, that might be something that helps you understand, oh, that’s an important piece of content to include a video for. So I think sometimes that we don’t give enough credit to just almost like exploration research. It’s like, let me see what’s out there and how Google is structuring things and what content, how it’s being presented around the web. And so I think it’s great. It’s the art and science with what we do. It’s understanding the data that you have, but then also you at your core are a creator, you’re an artist. And then using that to inform some of the decisions that you’re making with the things that you’re creating.

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Bjork Ostrom: To go back, you start this process of kind of rebuilding and you get accepted and are starting to earn ad revenue. And it sounds like the business revenue grows kind of adjacent to your love for the business. You’re falling back in love with the business. Does that feel like it was true that was happening in lockstep? And do you think as you fell in love with the business, the natural outflow of that, it’s like you enjoyed the work and it was able to grow and thrive, or was it actually now that you’re able to see the business growing and creating income from it, it makes it easier to invest into the business? Or maybe both? What did that look like in that season as you came out of this 2021 burnout period?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, I think spot on really. It was a combination of both for sure. And again, I will be honest, I was quite motivated by the money. I knew I always wanted to do something I loved, but I always wanted to make a good income as well. And seeing the money that you can earn increase from ad revenue is hugely motivating. I think when you haven’t really come from money as well, there’s a different sort of motivation behind you to some other people. And

Bjork Ostrom: Is that true for you? You feel that implying not coming from money?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, we never had a lot of money growing up and I think having been keenly aware of how much other people have had in comparison and things like that and just kind of growing up and seeing that around you, it’s always made myself and my partner as well really prioritize wanting to build a stable, sustainable income for us. So it is definitely been a big driving factor for me. I think it’s really influenced some of the decisions I’ve made. They’ve been more from a place of business sense rather than, oh, this would be a great exposure opportunity. For example, like writing cookbooks and stuff. I’ve gone more down the business route thus far because it’s been much more of a priority to really stabilize that. But yeah, I was motivated by seeing the income increase that was huge, but also just having more joy with it, falling back in love with business, like you say, realizing that I could take Fridays off and it wasn’t, the sky wasn’t going to fall in and just realizing I could have more breathing space. It’s all just given me the space to actually enjoy the business I’ve created and really find more joy in continuing to build it. I think.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, so much of what we’re doing I think comes down to individual priorities. And one of the things I love about your stories, it feels like you really discovering that what’s important for me as a person, as a business owner for my life, for my business, and to let go of maybe some of the things that you see happening online and saying that’s that person and that’s important to them and that’s the game that they’re playing. But really to think of it as we are in a video game and we get to decide what the, not all of the rules, but even what the rewards are within the game that we’re playing. And for some people it’s purely monetary. I want to make as much money as possible for other people. They anchor around flexibility. I want to have as much autonomy as possible, or we’ve heard people say, I want to be famous, I want to be known.

And that’s a motivator. But to really look inward and for other people’s impact and for all of us, it’s probably a mixture of all of those considerations. Not that everybody wants to be famous, but just like I actually don’t want to be known at all, and that’s one of the things that I’m optimizing for, but to really look inward and to say what are the different things that I’m after? And to center on those. But it’s hard when you look outward and you see other people doing a thing and it’s like, oh, they released a cookbook and they’re doing a book tour that looks really cool and everybody likes it, or they launched a product, I don’t know what a hundred different examples. And one of the things that you talked about as we were checking in before was this idea of quiet success and that that’s something that’s available for people is quiet success. Can you talk about what that means to you? And was that always something you were aware of or did it come up over the last couple of years as you reflected on what you want work to be?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think truth be told, I wanted all those things. I wanted the cookbook deal. I wanted, I don’t know, present TV shows and stuff. I wanted to do the high profile stuff just for whatever reason. I was not in the right place at the right time for those things. And I have worked on pursuing some of them and it just hasn’t really worked out. So I think that has kind of pushed me down a different avenue. It’s kind of shown me that, okay, well these aren’t available for me right now, so going to do what I’m going to work on, what I can control and what I can control is building a quieter business. So I don’t have huge amounts of Instagram followers, I don’t have all of these high-profile achievements, but I do feel that it’s something that isn’t modeled to people. We’re taught that you have to go after the book deal, and those things are wonderful. They’re really wonderful. The person that’s just launched this book that’s doing well and all seems very high profile, what they’re not telling you is how little they got paid to write the book and

Bjork Ostrom: Or stressful. It was

Elizabeth Emery: Exactly how they had to work nights and weekends just to get this thing done. And there’s huge, huge value in books. I would love to write a book one day, but it’s also a very specific business choice I think that you’re making often. Advances typically aren’t high, sometimes they’re incredibly low and not feasible if you have an income that you need to maintain. So I think we’re sort of fed this idea of shiny success with all the achievements, and particularly as bloggers, we’re not really told that you can build a sustainable business like ad revenue can be very lucrative. You can do occasional sponsored posts on Instagram and things, and you can charge appropriately for those. You can do freelance work. There’s so many avenues I think you can go down to build up a reputable business. You’re just not necessarily becoming a star at the same time. But I do think it’s important to say it because it was something I never saw modeled and it wasn’t shown to me that that was possible.

Bjork Ostrom: And so often it’s not modeled because the people who are experiencing that quiet success aren’t out there talking about it. It’s a natural function of being quiet is that you can’t be heard. And I think about that in the context of business, broadly speaking, that there are millions of examples of people who have different businesses that are really successful and allow incredible autonomy. And you don’t know about ’em because they’re not on Instagram talking about it. They don’t do book deals, but they’re out there just kind of in the background running their businesses. So much of what we do, it’s on Instagram, it’s Pinterest, it’s showing up high-end search results. But even in our world, there’s a hundred different businesses that you could create that are successful, and you could, whether it’s doing something with photography or small boutique workshops or whatever it might be, endless examples of different ways that you can build a successful thing.

And so I think it’s great. It’s great that we talk about it. One of the things that you had talked about is this, as you’ve started to figure out the things that bring you joy, the growth within your business happening alongside that, and slowly but surely building up revenue income from your business and being on track to hit that six-figure mark this year, which is incredible. Congratulations. Thank you. And that coming from a variety of different places, it sounds like maybe primarily ad-driven, but talk to me a little bit about how you fill in the different parts of your business to get to that sustainable income level.

Elizabeth Emery: Of course. I mean, yes, ad revenue this year is the main portion of it. It’s probably about 60% of my income I think will be coming from ad revenue. And then the remaining 40% would probably be split between sponsored content, maybe a little more sponsored content on Instagram for brands. And then the other part is the freelance recipe development I do, which I don’t do a ton of anymore. I have one client that I do it for every couple of months. It’s quite nice because it’s a sustainable income and I believe in what he’s doing. So it’s nice to work with that. But yeah, that’s pretty much the split. I have those three income streams really.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Am I looking into this correct that you are with Raptive as a Raptive publisher?

Elizabeth Emery: I am, yes. I switched to them this year and it’s different experiences for everyone. I hear different things about different agencies. My earnings have gone up certainly since working with them. I can’t deny that, but I’ve, both of them, I’ve worked with Mediavine and Raptive and had great experiences with both.

Bjork Ostrom: And we talked a lot of creators who say the same thing, have had good experiences with both. And then when you are doing the sponsored content working with brands, is that primarily Instagram and how do those deals happen?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, it’s fully Instagram for me. My TikTok account is almost nonexistent. I have about 150 followers on TikTok. Yeah, it’s primarily on Instagram. I haven’t done any blog sponsored content in years. I just find brands that anymore. Sometimes I will pitch. Sometimes it’s brands that find me. Sometimes it’s returning brands that I’ve worked with previously. I did go through a phase where I did a heck of a lot of pitching and that I would say if someone’s starting out and kind of wondering how to go about it, I do recommend pitching brands to start with because then you’ll start getting responses come back in. And that was the way I sort of did it with that. But fortunately, I do get found by certain brands now, which is really nice. So in that way, but I do think people chronically under charge for sponsored content. Maybe it’s more of a Canadian thing than a US thing, but I know some people that will charge a couple of hundred dollars for a sponsored reel on Instagram. And again, not to be sniffed at if that’s where you feel

Bjork Ostrom: Comfortable. We got our first brand sponsorship was free bags of frozen vegetables.

Elizabeth Emery: Yes. Everybody

Bjork Ostrom: Starts somewhere in

Elizabeth Emery: There. Yeah, sure. I think the first one was a hundred dollars and a couple of three things maybe. But it’s one of the things I think is actually fascinating is I have some other blogger friends that I speak to and we realize how much people don’t talk about fees, we don’t talk about money. I really understand the desire not to talk about that stuff, but sometimes I think we’re kind of just not helping ourselves because you have no idea what somebody else is charging. I know friends, like I say, who will charge a few hundred dollars for a sponsored post. I know friends that charge a few outlets, several thousand. The spectrum is enormous. And I think generally we should all be charging a bit higher because all we’re teaching to brands otherwise is that it’s okay to really be willing to pay $300, which doesn’t cover our time. It doesn’t cover the resources. And I think it’s just important to know our value.

Bjork Ostrom: I had a conversation on the podcast recently with folks from Tastemaker, and Chandice is the person who does a lot of the Tastemaker Conference. Chandice does a lot of the brand deals for them. And I asked her, how do you know what to charge? How do you figure that out? She’s generally speaking, the best way to get better at understanding what your rate should be is to have conversations with other people. Find a group of five or six people and form a Slack group or a Facebook group or get together in person and say, what brand are you working with? What are you charging? Because what it does is it allows you to see, and the example I gave is like Zillow. Would you use Zillow for Canadian real estate? Okay.

Elizabeth Emery: No, no, I didn’t know

Bjork Ostrom: That. So it’s a real estate, residential real estate application. So you’d be able to go around and look and see how much is a house in my neighborhood selling for? But they also have this thing called an estimate, and the estimate is like, what’s the estimate or what this house is worth or your house is worth based on millions of data points of what other houses are selling for every year, square feet, things like that. But we don’t really have that in the world of sponsor content or brand work. And if we did, it’d be really helpful. Then we’d all be able to see, oh, actually this person who has a million followers is charging this. And so we kind of have to form our own little marketplace and do the analysis with a group of 5, 6, 7 people just to get an idea of what are you charging? And to say like, oh, maybe I need to be charging more or to sell somebody else. Maybe you need to be charging more. How did you go about increasing your rates and then when to stop? When are you at the point that feels appropriate?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, I mean, that’s a really difficult question actually. I think I talked to friends to start with and it felt pretty good about what I was charging. Then spoke to some more friends and started to feel kind of rubbish about what I was charging because they were managing to charge so much more. I usually quote perhaps a little higher than I think some brands will go for. And then if they come down, that’s absolutely fine. If they say yes, that’s amazing, but then I’ve got that wiggle room. I’m willing to come down a bit. In terms of knowing when you’ve reached the right level, it’s really hard to say. I think what I’ve noticed in the last year or two is it is so different. The spectrum of what brands are willing to pay and what is just, it’s so vast. It can be quite hard, I think, to know what to charge. But I would say as a general rule of thumb, given that I really think most creators are undercharging for our worth, I would state charge more than you think you should be. Pick the amount you think you should be charging and then go a thousand or go several hundred over that because you’re most likely undercharging. And I hear this again and again from experts on this as well.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And one of the things I’ve learned, so we’re working with some people, anybody who listens to the podcast knows that you’re starting to hear more podcast ads. So we’re thinking of ourselves as somebody who can do brand partnerships, which we hadn’t done for years, which seems like so obvious, but it just took us a while. But one of the things that I’ve learned in working with them is they’ve really said like, Hey, you’re not just selling podcast ads. You’re able to sell this kind of holistic exposure for this brand. And so they helped us kind of expand our view of it to say it’s on Instagram, but also you could include it in an email and you can, well, for us it would be on the podcast, but you can include it in email, you can include it in Instagram. There’s all of these platforms that we have as creators.

And so I think one of the other avenues that we can all think about is if a brand approaches us and they say, Hey, we would love to work with you, or we approach a brand and say, we would love to work with you. We might immediately say, how many followers do I have on Instagram? But really if you start to collectively say, and we can send an email out and the email will include a mention, and here’s what that looks like as a line item. It costs this much, and maybe there’s a blog post and you can start to put together these packages. I have a friend who has a site smaller traffic, smaller following, a little bit more higher value in the things that they’re selling. But he talked about putting together these million dollar packages for brands, but there’d be these holistic packages that would have an event and all of these different components. And so I guess it’s just encouragement for anybody listening to think strategically, not even just about pricing within one area, but to think about all the different areas and the pricing that you can build into a package for a brand. And I think it helps communicate the value when you break it up and show how it’s going to live across the web in different ways, and then also report back on that. So

It feels like you’re in a good place, especially when you look back to 2021 and what that season was like. What does it look like for you looking forward when you think of the next two or three years, what are the things that you’re excited about and moving towards within your business?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, honestly, ad revenue is a huge part of it. Just scaling that really has been very exciting, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what I can do as we are going into Q4 and Q4 and Q1 weirdly is a really good quarter for me. A lot of people are going, I suppose, sure. But seeing what I can do in terms of scaling that, it does excite me. It’s motivating because for the first time in my business, that feels like a thing. I don’t want to jinx it, say I’m in control of it, but because who knows,

I feel more in control of that than anything else. And it’s really exciting to build that. And within the last year, I’ve seen my ad revenue start a certain figure in the hundreds, and I’ve seven Xed it in the last year. And it’s such a good feeling to do that. It really excites me to know where that could go. So yeah, continuing to make the business sustainable. I’d love to do something like write a cookbook one day. Any other higher-profile opportunities would absolutely be welcome. I actually used to have a podcast very briefly, so I’d really like to bring that back because

It would be so fun and just kind of round the business out a bit more. I think really focus more strategically on different areas that I want to. I’ve definitely taken a bit of a break from, well, not a break, but I haven’t been posting quite as regularly in the last couple of years on Instagram. So I’ve just been getting back into posting a lot more consistently on there and kind of seeing what comes with that, but just sort of continuing to stabilize and build the business, which doesn’t sound really sexy to be honest, but

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yeah,

Elizabeth Emery: It works.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s awesome. And then last question for you as we round it out. Let’s say somebody is in a similar season where they’re feeling burnt out, maybe they’re where you were in 2021, what would your advice be for them now having been three, four years out from there?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, my heart goes out to them if they are, because I remember how it felt vividly. My advice would be you don’t have to listen to all the advice that’s out there. There’s a heck of a lot of advice, and I wish I hadn’t paid attention to everything, because some of it won’t apply to you. You don’t have to do all of it. And some of the advice that is being given out by people in the know is plain wrong. I’ve found in my experience, for me, it’s not been helpful.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you have an example of something that was reached as true that you felt not to be true?

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, and I’m not going to name any names, but

Bjork Ostrom: No, yeah, just generally speaking the thought or the advice or Yeah,

Elizabeth Emery: For sure. There was a very specific example I can think of. I remember listening to a podcast once from someone who’s very well-known expert in this field.

Bjork Ostrom: And

Elizabeth Emery: Somebody said,

Bjork Ostrom: I’m nervous that it’s going to be me. That’s going to be this story. Wouldn’t that be lives in Minnesota? Yeah. Name rhymes with New York. Yeah,

Elizabeth Emery: He has a food blog. Yeah. So this well-known person, someone asked the question on the podcast and said, can you do sponsored work on Instagram if you have less than 10,000 followers? And this person kind of categorically said, no, I’m sorry. You can’t. It’s just not going to happen for you. It’s not worth trying. Focus on building up your followers. I wouldn’t bother. And I remember listening to it at the time and thinking, but I started doing sponsored work when I had just over a thousand followers. And for granted, they’re not the same types of deals that I do now. They’re different brands, but it was perfectly possible for local brands and things like that, or newer brands. All of that stuff I think is possible. And that was just an example of a time I remember listening to that and thinking, but I know that’s not true. I know that’s inaccurate. And this person was sort of flatly saying, yeah, less than 10,000 followers, you’re not going to get any more. I wouldn’t even bother at that level. And I have less than 30,000 followers on Instagram. I don’t have a huge account, but I make a significant part of my income from sponsored content. It is perfectly possible, for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Well, and even the brands that we work with, I don’t know what the count is for Food Blocker Pro 12,000 people. It’s valuable for them to get in front of that audience because it’s like B2B, a single sign up for Yost is a really valuable thing over lifetime for them. And I think of, there’s this Alex Hormozi, he’s like a sales. He was really into gyms and then got into business. And I don’t know if you ever come across Alex and I forget his wife’s name, who also does a lot of content, generally great content, but any influencer content, it’s like they’re a 200% human. The opposite of quiet success. They’re loud success. But he talked about, nobody should quote me on these numbers, but it was a Instagram person, a person who had an Instagram account, it was under a thousand followers, but was making a million dollars a year.

And he’s like, we can find it and link to it in the show notes if anybody wants to see it. But she was helping dieticians. She was an expert at medical billing, and she was helping dieticians bill and invoice to insurance companies appropriately. And it would make the difference, it’d be like tens of thousands of dollars for these dieticians that they’d be able to make more in a year. And so they’d be willing to pay per a lot of money in order to work with her. And it was this great example of, it’s not about numbers, it’s about who are you talking to and what are you teaching and what is the value that you’re creating? And you could have 10 million people, but if it’s a certain subset of people who are, it’s like 10 million people who never want to spend any money in a year that’s going to be different than 10,000 people who are billionaires. Really extreme example. But so much of it has to, there’s a thousand different variables that play into it. And so I think it’s important to point out, broadly speaking to your point, to look at every piece of advice intentionally and say, is this true? And it might not be true. And a lot of times that general advice that’s meant for everybody isn’t necessarily great advice. And the best advice really is that advice, kind of one-on-one, somebody who understands your situation in the case of a business, understands your audience.

Elizabeth Emery: And to that point, I was just going to very quickly say, the second bit of advice I would give is don’t do it alone. If you can invest work with someone like a business coach, that can really help guide you through because they’ll help you find the joy in it again. And you have to love what you’re doing, otherwise you’re not going to want to do it. You can’t force yourself point. That is your system telling you something if you’re hating what you’re doing.

Bjork Ostrom: So that’s great. I think there’s all of these different experts in the world, and I think, and I’ve talked about this idea of a personal board of directors before, who are the people that you go to get advice on health, spirituality, business, finance, relationships. We can have all these people in our lives, some in a paid capacity like a business coach, others in a friend or a mentor capacity. But I think in any situation, if we’re intentional with building out those connections or establishing those relationships or paying for those mentors over a long period of time, let’s say a decade, we will be better for it. I was thinking of in bets, and if I were to place a bet on if somebody was working with a business coach or they weren’t working a business coach, would your business be more successful in 10 years? My bet would always be somebody like, you’re working with a business coach or personal trainer, would you be healthier in 10 years or not? Probably if you’re working with a personal trainer. And so thinking in bets as it applies to a long period of time, applying that idea of a business coach, it’s like, yeah, your business is probably going to be better

And you’re probably going to be happier if it’s a good business coach.

Elizabeth Emery: It’s an investment in everything. Your health, your mind, they’re all linked. Yeah, for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So if people want to follow along with what you’re up to, where can they do that? How can they reach out to you? How can they connect with you? Let us know all the places that people can go.

Elizabeth Emery: Yeah, so the blog is Vancouver with love.com and on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook. If anyone’s on Facebook anymore, it’s at Vancouver with Love, so you’ll find me there.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Elizabeth, thanks so much for coming on. Just great to talk to you. Thank you

Elizabeth Emery: So much. It’s been an absolute privilege.

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 a food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share ’em 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.

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.

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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.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there, thanks for tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Ann, and in today’s episode, Bjork is sitting down with Chandice Probst and Abbey Rodriguez from the Tastemaker Conference team. From the days of bloggers to the rise of influencers and creators, Chandice and Abbey have witnessed firsthand how the industry has transformed, and now they’re working hard to legitimize the creator economy, to show the world that being a food creator is a real business and not just a hobby. They’ll round out the episode by sharing their approach to working with brands, and you’ll also hear them talk about how important it is to lean into the abundance mentality. 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 if you’re interested in attending the Tastemaker Conference in 2025, be sure to check out the show notes for an exclusive discount code for Food Blogger Pro members available from October 15th to the 22nd. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Chandice. Abbey, welcome to the podcast

Abbey Rodriguez: Thank you! Hello.

Bjork Ostrom: Good to be here. We live in similar worlds where we talk to a lot of food creators, food publishers, and we live in this world, which is a very fascinating world of building businesses, digital businesses focused on food. And I remember we had a team member a long time ago, she was coming back from a conference and she sat next to somebody and they were like, what do you do? And she’s like, I work for a company that does training for people who are building food blogs. And they’re like, what in the world? But here we are, and this is really becoming an industry. We’ve been doing a version of this for 14 years, way back when we started Pinch of Yum, and it was new then, but now there’s not only people who are doing it, but also businesses like yours or ours being built, supporting the people who are building their businesses. So Abbey, I know that if we roll the tape back to when you first started it, you had some intuition around this being a thing, and a lot of the work that you’re doing now is continuing to showcase the fact that no, this is a legitimate industry. So where are you at at that time when you were looking at it and you’re like, I think that there’s enough here to support a business, to support these people.

Abbey Rodriguez: Yes. So that was 2017 when we started Tastemaker and I started it and reached out to Chandice as we were about to do our first event. I was like, please come help do us, come help build this.

Bjork Ostrom: How did you know each other? Had you been working together before?

Abbey Rodriguez: So Erin from Meaningful Eats, I knew her independently from my childhood best friend who was roommates with her at college. And so Erin was like, you have to meet my friend. You too would just totally get it off your energy, all the things. So we actually met at Expo West at another food event. Yeah, I was really pregnant too.

Bjork Ostrom: So you had that connection and you brought her in, you had this idea and you brought her in to say like, Hey, I’m thinking of doing this thing, this thing being a food conference, a conference for food creators, food publishers. Would you come alongside me? Here we are, seven years later, it’s still going strong. How have you seen it change in those seven years, the industry of food publishing or the industry of food creators?

Abbey Rodriguez: So I think one of the most interesting things I find fascinating is how we’ve tried to this metamorphosis of what do we even call ourselves? I feel like there’s even been this evolution of, it started as bloggers, then it started as, and then we went into influencers. And I feel like influencer might have a little bit of a negative connotation depending on who you talk to. And creator is just, I think it’s multifaceted fits. And I think the big thing right now that Tastemaker has shifted into is really helping to legitimize the creator economy from the food perspective, but really across the board, the work we’re doing here now is really focused on that. I’m actually getting my thesis in, I’m doing my thesis on the politics of the creator economy, getting my master’s degree in sociology. And I know we had some questions about, well, what does that even mean? What are the politics? What is that? So essentially the thesis is talking about how does the creator economy operate, first of all, and what are we doing to legitimize that? And really there is this element of then arguing the case for creators to be a decentralized business model against big tech monopolies. So very, very relevant to what’s happening with ai, what’s happening with Google, what’s happening with Meta, right? Any big tech that is really influencing, and I know you were on the hill with reactive talking about that. It’s very in line with the work that I’m doing. It takes into account the state takes into account big tech. It takes into account the creators themselves, the consumers, the corporations and brands that are also helping to fund this, how it gets funded, how it operates. Really, it’s the entire ecosystem of what the creator economy is because we know what it is. But I think there’s not much by way of academic research, which that is a huge part of legitimacy within a sociological lens is having research to back it up, having at the FTC is starting, they just came out with these guidelines five days ago. They just made a press release talking about indicators for fake use of social media, the fact that corporations are spending money, the fact that the FTC is coming out with regulations that we’re able to appeal to this, to senators on Capitol Hill against big tech is just huge in terms of the growth and where this is going. So pacemakers doing a little bit of that, but yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And part of it is there are things that are happening, changes evolutions within the industry, but to your point, part of it is researching, studying, understanding those in order to shine a light on it and say, and look, as an example, if you go to tastemakerconference.com, you can see the H one, the creator economy. It says this, the creator economy industry reached 250 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach 500 billion by 2027. Just a small example of showcasing the fact that, hey, this as an industry is important, economically speaking, there’s a lot of flow of money from businesses to one business to another business. Just because you would be branded as a creator or influencer or blogger, whatever it might be, doesn’t mean that it’s not a legitimate business. Is that part of what you’re trying to do is say, remove the just between, oh, I’m just an influencer or I’m just a creator to say, no, this is a business, period. What does it look like for you when you say legitimizing a thing, at what point, and maybe the answer is never, but at what point would you be able to step back and be like, mission accomplished, we’ve done what we’ve set out to do, what does that look like?

Abbey Rodriguez: I honestly think that looks like when you sit down at the dinner table with your extended family for a holiday and you turn to your uncle who’s 70 and they say, Hey, what do you do? And you’re like, oh, I’m a creator. And they respond to you with the same amount of respect and understanding as when you say, oh, I’m an accountant, right? Sure, an

Bjork Ostrom: Engineer.

Abbey Rodriguez: I’m an engineer. What I mean by legitimizing, and some of this I think is academic speak from a sociological point, if anybody is familiar with that, the definition of what you mean by words is different from one academic and researcher to the next. And so legitimizing means that it is socially part of the social fabric that is accepted, and that is a norm essentially. And just the creator jobs, creative jobs in general, I think have always been mistrusted slightly. They’re just somehow not legitimate in some degree. And I just think that a lot of times you can prove that through revenue and economic means.

Bjork Ostrom: I was just going to say part of it that feels like such an important variable within it, and I think one of the reasons is, and I’m thinking of building this in real time, so let me know if this feels accurate, but if you’re an accountant or if you’re an engineer, chances are that you aren’t going to, most of the accountants I know aren’t going to be doing that as like, oh, I really like doing this and I’m going to also do it in the evenings, weekends, and evenings unpaid. But if you’re a musician, it’s almost like you start there. This is the thing I love. This is the thing I’m passionate about. And when you say I’m a musician as a career, as a job, the sliding scale of what that could look like is, you could be Taylor Swift or you could be somebody who’s still taking lessons and playing open mic nights and collecting tips. And that feels like part of the challenge with what we’re doing is you look at somebody who’s publishing on Instagram, well, there’s a lot of people who do that, but there’s also a subset of people who are making millions of dollars doing it. And so like you said, the thing that kind of tips over is to say like, oh no, I’m earning the income equivalent to another business. And I remember a friend who she was having a conversation, and it wasn’t until she showed her dad her tax returns that she said that was this pivotal moment for her where suddenly he was like, oh my goodness, this is a business that you’re running. But she had to prove it to him, Which to some degree makes sense. When you’re an accountant and you kind of know like, okay, you’re grinding at this job. Maybe you like the job, but it’s not something that you’re also going to do as a hobby. And I know that Chandice, a lot of what you’re doing is you’re working in that world of revenue, you’re working in that world of seeing how much corporations or companies or brands are willing to pay. And that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about on this episode is how can we be smart as creators in establishing those relationships. But a lot of the work that you do is working with these brands, these companies. Can you talk a little bit about even from the tastemaker side of things, because you’re coming to these companies and you’re saying, Hey, would you sponsor Tastemaker Conference? Would you be a partner with us in this thing? Can you talk about their mindset a little bit as they look at creators in the creator economy?

Chandice Probst: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I feel like the verbiage of letting them know our goal at Tastemaker Conference is to legitimize the creator economy and to help them work better with creators. They understand, oh, okay, and I’ll use a lot of the same phrases. I’ll say, I am sure you already know this, but influencer marketing is shown to be 11 times more effective now than traditional marketing. And they’re like, yeah, I knew that a lot of times. And sometimes

Bjork Ostrom: The marketing director is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but maybe didn’t actually know that.

Chandice Probst: Those who do really grasp it, and I’ll tell you the tech are the first ones to grasp it are it’s easy. It’s easy with those who already are working with influencers and creators, and they understand that surprisingly within the food community, I’m like, you’re going to have the best food bloggers and influencers there and influencer the food brands, it’s harder because they still have that mentality of just get in front of the sales. We just want to get as much distribution as possible. So the food is harder than the tech, to be honest with you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. So which is interesting, you wouldn’t think that to be the case, but I think of even the companies that we work with for Pinch of Yum, and there’s a handful of, we just had one of these calls today, a handful of conversations that we have where it’s like, Hey, it’s our first time doing this. Can you explain this thing to me? How does it work? And these are established brands with huge marketing budgets, but the general trend is doing more of that. I think marketers, people are building brands understand it to be important, but there’s still a little bit of a lag on them catching up to it. And what you’re saying makes sense where people who operate in tech are familiar with the digital world. Their mindset is like, Hey, we understand generally how this works. We’re going to try and figure out a partnership with you. But for a food company, what you’re saying, Chandice, is they’re just like, how do we get into Costco? How do we get into in Midwest, it’s like Cub Foods, is that what you’re saying? A little bit. That’s their mindset as a marketing person,

Chandice Probst: And I try to explain to them, this will get you distribution. You can talk to the sales manager at a show where you’re just there for sales, but you are in a space with 500 of the best food creators from around the world. These are the people that are influencing what people eat, what people buy. So if they’re talking about your product, you better believe the grocery store is going to be like, we need that product on our shelves and the demand will come. And so it’s just switching that mindset is really difficult because for so long it’s been traditional print media, traditional broadcast media, and then going into sales. And so to combine both and let them know you can use some of your both budgets to do this and overlap, it’s been fun to see those who grasped it early on. And we’ve found that a lot of the ones that have grasped it early on are the foundations, like the National Watermelon Board, for example, people who are at the grassroots of it rather than the brand. So that’s been really fun to see. Same with the Idaho Potato Commission. They understand that. So it’s fun to see that, but it’s definitely a challenge in our community, and I’ve heard that from all of, I’m a blogger, Abbey’s a blogger, and it’s always been a challenge to get those brand deals and to then be legitimized enough that they pay you what you’re worth. That’s a huge part of it as well. And one of my favorite things that watching from year one to now going into year eight with tastemaker, with legitimizing the Creator economy, you asked at what point you see that. And for me, the first year looking at the demographic of our attendees and the way they believed in themselves, I mean many did, but many still didn’t to where we are now. And the diversity is so beautiful, and so many of these people now are like, this is what I’m worth. This is what I charge, this is my trust, the confidence there. And we’ve now moved into two different tracks for our education because education is so important to us. And so we have a beginner, intermediate, and an advanced. And so bringing back people like Holly from spend with pennies and Alyssa from the recipe critic and bringing those women back and them saying, we actually have a place here we can learn too, and then also teach as well has been so fun to be able to bring in that higher tech. Like Microsoft came in and taught about AI in the creator economy, and that was amazing to watch and see. And so we’ve been trying to up it in all areas from our education to our sponsorships, to all of the things that we provide.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. I think when you talk about making sure that you’re getting paid what you’re worth, and this conversation around you are legitimizing an industry, and part of that is establishing your value on an open marketplace. You go to Facebook and you are bidding to get an ad to show up, and it’s like there’s no debate around what the cost should be because people just are transacting and it’s like you buy it or you don’t buy it. But it’s so squishy in the world of working with brands and sponsorships and partnerships like this, because I think back to our first deal was like Paula Deen’s, and we got 12 bags of frozen vegetables. It’s like, were we worth more than 12 bags of frozen vegetables? Probably. But we still felt like it was awesome. And that was important for us. It was the first step for us of working with a brand and having them send us stuff. And so for somebody, say it again.

Chandice Probst: Everyone has to start somewhere.

Bjork Ostrom: And for us it was frozen vegetables. But for people who hear that, you have to be able to get what you’re worth, how do you know what you’re worth? Sometimes it’s like you’re just starting out and maybe you haven’t crafted your product very well, your product being content, you’re still learning you as a person. Obviously we all believe people have unpassable worth, but your value in the marketplace might not be there yet. So what would your and both of you might have thoughts on this. Chandice, we can start with you. What would your advice be for people who are trying to figure out either in the early stages, what am I worth and what should I charge? Or maybe you’ve been doing it for a while and you’re like, maybe I’m worth more, I should be charging more. How do you approach that?

Chandice Probst: Yeah, absolutely. Well, my favorite concept is the abundance mentality over scarcity mentality. There’s enough to go around. So find a group of people, and we’ve seen the most beautiful friendships develop from tastemaker where these women now travel the world together, find a group of other like-minded creatives, because you need to have people like you to understand what did you do? What did you charge? And find the right ones. The ones who are willing to have the abundance mentality and be like, yeah, there’s enough to go around. I tell you what I charge. I can tell you that will be the number one helper for you. Because if you have five women in this group that you’ve created a little mastermind telling you what they’ve charged and based on their different following or page views or whatever, then you can really have a scale to build off of for yourself based on the number of or the engagement you have and followers on social compared to your page views and your newsletter. That is the best suggestion I can give you. And that one is just finding the right people, and that is goodness all around. It’s just it supplies. And then also within that goes sharing too, if you have someone reaching out to you for a campaign that you’re like, that is not my forte, but hey, Molly over at What Molly Makes, she’ll kill it for you. And be that person. Be the person who recommends somebody else, that brand will remember you and this campaign didn’t work. Maybe something else will. Or maybe they’ll have a friend in the industry that will see that this is a better fit for you. So be a person with the abundance mentality who’s willing to share and network and communicate. And that is my favorite way to build pricing. And then really just being firm in your communication with sponsors of letting ’em know, I like to say get a feel for what their budget is. I wouldn’t recommend putting the number out first necessarily, unless you have just a base where that’s your minimum, but kind of get a feel for what If they’re reaching out to you, chances are they know a little bit about your fall. They know that you’re going to be charged a certain amount. So ask what their budget is. You might be surprised. Sometimes you may have a number in your head like, okay, this campaign’s worth 7,000, and they may say, we have $11,000. Well, great, that’s wonderful. More for them. So I think talking openly with the people that you’re going to be working with as well and asking ’em what their budget is like also.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. When starting out a new business, it’s a pain to get through the LLC part forming that limited liability company. And my guess is it’s painful enough that many of you listening to this haven’t gone through the process yet. Well, the good news is that Tailor Brands makes it so much easier. Not only is it easy, but it’s also affordable to get your LLC with Tailor Brands. Tailor Brands offers all the legal requirements for LLCs such as a registered agent, annual compliance, EIN, and an operating agreement. All of these are really critical components of forming that LLC and having a nice and tidy business structure. Tailor Brands also walks you through each step of building a successful business and has everything you need all in one place, bookkeeping and invoicing, business licenses and permits, business documents, bank accounts, and so much more. And our listeners will receive 35% off Tailor Brands LC formation plans using the link tailorbrands.com/foodblogger. That’s T-A-I-L-O-R-B-R-A-N-D-S.com/foodblogger or just search, build a biz with Taylor. So get started today with Tailor Brands. I think of other marketplaces, this being a marketplace, you have a buyer and you have a seller. The marketplace of homes, and it’s like most states I think in the United States have this policy where you can see what a house sold for. I think maybe Texas doesn’t, but in Minnesota, we have a house in our neighborhood that just went up for sale, and we’ll be able to see what that’s sold for. And what that does is it helps normalize what your expectation should be for listing a house able to see, oh, this house listed for 500,000 and it sold for 5 75, so underpriced, so what’s our square footage compared to that one? And obviously there’s a lot of little variables that go into it, but what I hear you saying is a similar version of that where you’re able to create a little version of a marketplace to say, here’s where we are all at. And you can kind of normalize off of that. Obviously, the more you expand the scope on that, the more you’ll be able to see the average of what that’s like. But when you’re just operating in a silo, it’s just you. It’s really hard to quantify if you’re over, if you’re under where other people are landing, obviously the ideal would be if somehow suddenly all that data became public, but it never will. And so you have to have that trusted close community of people who are sharing what they’re doing and best practices and how they’re approaching that. Abbey, I saw you. This is, people aren’t going to see it on the audio version, but you kind of tapped your head.

Abbey Rodriguez: I was like, that’s a good idea. Yeah. What am I thinking with that? Well, that’s where, this is why and I are so great. I mean, we’re both visionary people, I think you have to be, but Chandice is very much to put it in research data terms like the qualitative person, the relationships, the nuanced things, getting those networks of people. And that’s kind of what Tastemaker is. But then you said, Bjork, there’s this whole quantitative approach. How do you actually quantify your value? What does that look like? And I think there is some, I don’t remember the creator’s name, that’s going to bother me. Maybe I’ll come back and you can put it in the show notes, in the show notes, include it in the show notes. But they have come up, I think with this app that you can go and post what you’re being paid. And so it is this aggregated.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I also don’t remember what it’s called. Yeah.

Chandice Probst: It’s useful though. And they’re quantifying that so you can see, hey, but the way they’re quantifying it is, should you work with this brand? Walmart pays you on time and they pay you a valuable rate, or this brand does not so beware in it. It’s based on user feedback that they have experienced directly. But I think the other thing I was thinking that might be a cool tool to create within the food space, getting more ideas. But yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I was just looking through my little research list because there was, now that you’re talking about it, I had made a note like, oh, this is super interesting. I need to look into it. And of course I haven’t yet, but we’ll see if we can dig it up and include it in the show notes. And if nothing else, it’ll be a good excuse for people to go check out the show notes.

Abbey Rodriguez: But we also have our brand pricing calculator too, that I think we’ve talked about even a couple of years ago. Last time we were on here, sorry to cut you off, Chandice. And that’s been a very useful tool for people because we were trying to quantify that to give you a starting point, just to be like, Hey, what am I worth at minimum? And I created the calculator and base that off of just hourly wages and give a beginner immediate advance of just maybe look at this from an hourly perspective as a freelancer of things to consider for your time. And it has different variables in there to calculate percentages of your equipment, just all those things that maybe you’re not thinking of when you’re pricing out a project that we use. So, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, example being if a brand comes to you and they’re like, our budget’s $250, and you are like, oh, I could get paid two $50 to do a sponsored reel, that would be really cool. Number one, it might be cool and it might be worth doing if it helps you build your portfolio and if it establishes you in a way that allows you to have easier conversations with other people. But it almost feels like what you’re saying is just to get a floor.

Bjork Ostrom: If you’re going to spend eight hours doing a thing, you have your equipment. And the way that I think about it often is if you were an agency and somebody hired you and your agency to create this piece of content, what would that cost? It’s always going to be multiple thousands of dollars at the minimum. And so in those early stages, you could take that agency approach. Now again, if you’re just early on and you don’t have the craft established yet, there’s still kind of that gap that you’re trying to close around photography skills or whatever it might be. There’s always the starting out point, and that’s maybe where you are getting a bag of frozen vegetables, but it’s like you want to move out of that as quickly as possible in order to get to the point where you’re at the floor getting paid what you would if it was an hourly rate or you’re an agency. And then as you build your following, and maybe this is what you’re getting at Abbey, that becomes a multiplier. So you have your floor, but then like, Hey, and I’m also going to be able to put this in front of 500,000 people, put a little bit of my brand equity on the line. There’s some risk with that. And so the cost for that then starts to get folded in as a multiplier On the work that you’re doing to create the content. So I’m curious to know what does that look like for you operationally? And I know Janice, you’re a COO, so you’d maybe have some thoughts on this. When you are having conversations with brands, let’s say you start to feel confident, here’s what our offering is now we’re going to really hit it. We’re going to hit the street, we’re going to start selling. How much of it is selling, how much of it is intentional outreach versus brands coming into you? And I ask within the context of Tastemaker, because I think it applies to anybody who’s out there as a creator as well. I think a lot of times we kind of are waiting around for the brand to come knocking on our door, which occasionally does happen, but the more that I learn about brands that are doing at scale brand partnerships, the more I’m coming to understand they’re out there pitching, selling, reaching out, doing intentional work to keep that pipeline filled. So what does that look like for you? And also what tools are you’re using to help with that?

Chandice Probst: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think part of legitimizing is creating a business that has, we have a marketing, we have a sales team, we have all of these things. And right now, maybe you’re only one person, but you’re going to have to allocate 15% of your time to sales if you want more of those partnerships. And so yes, it is sales. And one of the biggest things we do every year is we create our sponsorship deck and we set our prices and we set those based on the deliverables that are being provided. And our sponsorships are all-inclusive. So from the time you sign up till the end of the conference, so if you sign up right after the one conference, you get a whole year with us and we work together. If you sign up four months before, I mean you’re still getting the same deliverables, but we throw in a bunch more based on early sign up because we just want to reward those early adopters. So our sponsorship deck is set so similar to as your media kit would be set, for example. And another great way to do those media kits is to ask a friend what theirs looks like and let them share and kind of build off of that. So those are set. However, there’s a lot of times when they’ll come and say, this package looks great, but we also need X, Y, and Z. Okay, well we can add that on. No problem. That’s an a la carte. And not that it’s listed in the deck, but we can add it on. So a lot of times you’re building, making a personalized brand package, which is a lot of what the influencers are doing as well. They’re saying, this is the budget we have, what can you do? So you may be in between two of your packages on your deck and then build them something that works. And that’s usually a partnership that works well for everyone because you’re getting paid what you feel you should be paid and they’re getting the deliverables they want. Maybe this package has it, but this one doesn’t. And so it’s kind of a hybrid. So being willing to adjust is very helpful. I wanted to say, I wanted to note that with sales, it’s very hard. I have a very tender heart. Abbey’s a very strong, I’m strong, I’m a strong woman, but I have a tender heart.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Chandice Probst: So you have to remind yourself all the time. Abbey always reminds me business, it’s not personal, it’s fine, it’s okay, but they don’t like me. Me, she’s like, has nothing to do with the package. It’s the brand, whatever. And so I’ve learned that over the years because when we were first starting, it would be really difficult for me, Abbey, when we would get a no, it was a lot harder. And now I’m like not the right fit. That’s fine. Supposed to be here and we are not going to change what we know we are providing you and the value of that unfortunately. But what we can do is maybe you only have this, here’s what we can provide. We’d still love for you to join us. And so maybe it’s in a smaller portion rather than a full package. So keeping that mindset as you go about as a creator with sales, remembering that it’s business not personal. Your business is tied to your personal hobbies and love and passion and drive. You’re like, they don’t like my beautiful hobbies, but that’s not true. So remembering that is very helpful. The way in which we do it is I much enjoy being on the calls with people. I enjoy talking to them. I enjoy connecting and hearing what they’re wanting to do. I could literally cry when I have to do cold pitching and finding emails. It’s rocks in my backpack. That’s what Abbey and I call it. And it makes me want to just cry all day. So I don’t like to do that. And so we have an amazing sales team. They’re really good at it. Candace is incredible. I know Candace and Chandice kind of weird, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yeah. I’m tracking.

Chandice Probst: Yeah, Candace is really, really great on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I don’t even know how to use it. I updated my bio in a picture, but she’s on there finding the CEO of so-and-so and finding the people at DoorDash and great, so that’s her. She’s really good at that. And so she finds those people, she sends an initial email and then once there’s that reply where there’s interest, then I hop on a call with them. That’s where it’s a lot of fun for me. I enjoy that. But there is hours and hours and hours of reaching out on LinkedIn and Instagram and if you want partnerships, you’re going to have to do that. People are not, unless you are the very top, unless you are the very best, people are not usually just going to find you unless the real goes viral, unless you know what I mean. It’s work. And so that’s how we do it with our sales. And it’s been a lot of fun to see how that’s worked out and to try too. And

Abbey Rodriguez: We have a traditional sales pipeline too, in terms of tools that we use that are interesting. Some people use HubSpot for their sales pipeline. We actually use a company called Copper. They’re relatively new, easier for smaller businesses in terms of the sales pipeline and just like a CRM to be managing it to see, hey, here’s our sales goals and here’s a traditional sales pipeline of you have your unqualified leads, then you have qualified, then you have late stage, then you have closed one, closed the lost. And we use Asana and copper to then identify all the reasons why. So that say they’re closed lost, we have a reason why budget wasn’t there this year, or they’re just not interested or they don’t care about influencer marketing because then what that does, it allows us to revisit them the following year. So that that’s important data that we use to rework the people that we’ve already done that work to get the context. Because as Chandice was saying, that’s a huge part of that. And in terms of percentages, Chandice, how many people would you say that we are pitching directly versus those referrals versus people who approach us? I really would say those are the three funnels of how we get people referrals, hold pitches that do turn into a sponsorship or people reaching out directly.

Chandice Probst: Well, the people who are reaching out to us almost always close because they know who takes, they found us see the value. So those are our favorite. Those are really great. Isn’t that the same? The creator being like, okay, whoever wants to work with you, they’ve reached out to you. Great. So easy. The next one is referrals, which we found great success in this. So for example, just barely, Erin, you adore her too. She’s so great from Meaningful Eats. She just published her brand new beautiful linen cookbook and she was like, I have to introduce you to my friends over at FireWire Publishing. They’re so great. She introduced us one email and they’re now joining us at Tastemaker. We’re so excited. They’re amazing. And that was one email for Erin, again, going back to the abundance mentality. There’s enough to go around. And she was an affiliate for a referral program. She was in our referral program, so she got a percentage of that sale, so easy one email for her. So referrals are our favorite. I love those because the relationships are there. It’s my favorite when someone tells me this is who I worked with and they should be at Tastemaker. And so that goes into for your creators that are listening, again, a friend saying, I worked with this brand and they’re looking for another wonderful blogger to create for their holiday campaign, or I really love, they’re looking for someone who really knows how to create Peruvian food, and that’s not me, but that’s you. And so those kind of referrals are so beautiful and the relationships are built and bonds deepened with everybody. So those are great. I would say referrals and people reaching out to us, probably 45 or 50%. And then the 55% is us reaching out and finding those brands. But that also goes back to relationships. I go to Expo West every year and I meet with them in person. I’m there talking to Sarah at Roth Cheese, and I’m like, Sarah, you need to be. It’s a very relationship building. Those are the best ways to make long-term sales and fancy food show. We’re partnering with the Fancy Food Show this year with them, and that is massive for our attendees because a ticket to the show, A, it’s not open to the public, so you have to be a buyer or you have to be a sell or buy or you have to be media. And even still those tickets I think are $1,500, but all of our attendees get a free ticket to the Fancy Food Show. So they’re going to go down and visit with, I mean everyone’s there, is that how you say that? She Roth Jelly Belly, I mean everybody’s there. It’s really fun. And so those be places, connect with people. Those are the best ways to make those sales and naturally use products and tag them when you do and over. See, oh, this is someone who really does use our products all the time.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interesting. Lindsay just did shop at Costco with me and when she’s there tagged eight brands and three of them reached out. And so it was interesting for us to have like, Hey, we’d love to jump on a call with you, not to pitch anything, but just to see do you work with creators? Just a touch point. And so to your point, she wasn’t paid to do it. It’s just like, Hey, this is what I’m going to buy when I’m here at Costco. The other thing that I thought was so interesting, I had a call with a friend recently and his business is in mergers and acquisitions, and he kind of sits in the middle and he helps buyers find digital businesses to acquire. And I was asking them about the playbook that people run post acquisition, what are people doing to improve this thing? And what he said is 95% of the time it comes down to sales. These people are acquiring a business that is a good business for whatever reason. It could be an app, it could be a digital publishing company, it could be software. And what they do, he said 95% of the time to increase the value of the business is they have a preexisting sales team or they put a sales team in place. And I thought about that within the context of our worlds because I would say 95% of the people in our space don’t have a sales team. You maybe have an agent that you’re working with, which I think qualifies as a sales team, but most of your time is spent on thinking, how do I increase traffic? How do I get more followers? Which is all good, but I think if you brought somebody on instead of a blog manager, as a sales manager, there’s some really cool potential there. And you see that once you get outside of other businesses when you’re looking at your business, it’s like, yeah, of course you have a sales team and it’s a huge reason why your business is successful. If you imagine taking that away suddenly it’s like, wait, we really need that in order to operate in the way that we do. And I think a lot of it is, well, sorry, go ahead, Chandice.

Chandice Probst: Saying a sales team with massive, for any successful business, my parents just started their second brick and mortar they have in Utah, and the first thing they did was hire a really good sales manager to hit their first year goals. That was the number one thing that was their goal. Because if they knew if they do that, then they would be much better off in some.

Bjork Ostrom: And part of that comes back to as we start to have this conversation earlier, the question of if you open a brick and mortar store and you’re selling whatever it is, you’re selling widgets. People are like, oh yeah, that makes sense. You have sales, you operate within this context. People know what they’re buying. Part of what feels hard occasionally is you might be having conversations with people and the first thing you’re doing isn’t even convincing them to pick you versus somebody else. You’re almost just convincing them to pick the industry, like, Hey, you should work with us. Because like you said, working with a creator is 11 times better, ROI on your investment. So do you have any advice for creators who are either looking to hire somebody in sales or just they themselves are looking to play the role of sales around? Do you even try and convince a brand or do you just go after brands that are already convinced? It feels like it’s a lot of work to try and both convince somebody and then close a deal versus having an idea of the landscape and saying, I know these brands are already working with creators. I’m just going to try and connect with those brands.

Chandice Probst: We absolutely reach out to the brands who we know are already working with influencers because the education is so time consuming to, like you said, and that’s so great, but come to Tastemaker and we’ll educate you there and then should be done separately. And so I would recommend for anyone listening, make a list of top 10 brands that you use and love. Now, be mindful of your audience. So if you’re someone who has 15, 20,000 followers on Instagram and maybe a hundred thousand page views a month, probably not going to be reaching out to anthropology or for their dishes that you love in your kitchen all the time, or to Walmart, I mean, but maybe think of some of those smaller brands that you work with all the time and make a list of 10 of those brands that you use all the time and you already love the product. It would be an easy sell for you because you already know everything about it. You’ve used it in many recipes. It shows up on your blog when you mention, this is my preferred jam, or this is my preferred whatever. Make that list and then reach out to them personally on Instagram or LinkedIn. Those are the two best that we’ve found. Certainly you can try other places, but those are the best that we’ve found and start that conversation. Now, if you’re someone who has much more traffic, you can go after some bigger brands. And if you’re a smaller one, maybe start with some of your local brands in town. Like someone had said Lehigh Roller Mills, it’s a Utah flower brand. That’s a great place to start because their distribution is smaller and you are a local creator that can even come in and do stuff in store for them and do things like that. So that would be my recommendation for that portion of it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great.

Abbey Rodriguez: In terms of, can I answer the other part of that in terms of as a creator, what do you do to build your own team? How do you hire a salesperson? What does that look like? I think it’s a little tricky. I mean, we hired for the position of a sales manager specifically for this industry, and not a lot of people seem to have experience because it’s a very, very niche sell, which I have found to be interesting. And maybe we also didn’t have a massive budget to put it out there to the world and could have perhaps done that in a different way. But I think to your point of convincing people this is worth it is part of the battle, and that’s why both of our businesses exist, is to show people that this is worth it. And we’re using our time to educate brands. And actually Leslie from our team just helped create this sales funnel that we’re doing and really an educational funnel for brands specifically because we’ve seen a huge gap for that of brands need education. We’ve spent all of our time educating creators, but we’re like, wait a minute. Leslie’s like, well, what about the brands? Why aren’t we doing webinars and things? So we actually have, it’s a totally free thing. It’s the first one we’re doing it quarterly is on September 6th if you want to include that too, for anybody that’s a brand that wants to listen. But I think that’s a huge part of it as well, is the people who have the resources like us at Tastemaker, are you guys at Food Blogger Pro? What are we doing to be educating on the other side and creating those and facilitating that? And like Chandice said, the relationship we have with the Fancy Food Show, that is really our end goal is to facilitate that. We bring the education, we legitimize it. My personal research work I’m doing, it’s all in service of building up the industry so that more and more people can adopt this mindset of, oh yeah, this is just a natural part of our marketing plan. That’s my goal in 20 years from now, marketing teams to look at their strategy and be like, influencer marketing is a huge portion of it. And it’s not even a question, it’s just it’s what it is. And for your uncle or your aunt to know what you do and for it to just be like a normal thing. So anyway, that was the ramble answer. But

Bjork Ostrom: We always joke about how the one time that it was the most obvious moment of within our family, extended family being legitimate was when we were on the morning news segment doing a, for whatever reason TV just carries this weight where everybody’s like, oh my gosh, you’ve made it. Now you must have thousands of people who discovered you through this. And it’s like, absolutely not. I don’t think anybody came to our website because of it, but now our family all thinks that we have real jobs.

Abbey Rodriguez: So social proof is interesting.

Chandice Probst: My husband, he’s a big office fan. So when my chili got featured in Kevin Malone’s Chili Cookbook, he’s like, you’ve done it. You’ve made it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally, totally right.

Abbey Rodriguez: But I was going to say Sarvesh from Microsoft when told us that the influencers and creators that utilize AI in the proper way will far surpass those who don’t. And he explained it that, for example, ChatGPT or other, whatever you want to use, utilizing AI as a business partner. And so even having it help you as part of your sales team. And putting together, these are the recipes on my blog line site, this is what I do, this is what I specialize in. Give me a list of brands that I can reach out to that are already spending money on influencer marketing. We literally did that at Tastemaker. We said, this is what we do. Give us brands that are already spending money in this industry that we can reach out to. Beautiful list and it going and going and going. So utilize AI to help you. It’s not meant to take your pictures or create your recipes. It’s meant to serve as a business associate or

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like a research assistant.

Chandice Probst: Absolutely. And it comes up in just minutes, but don’t be afraid of that either, because that’s a great way to start building out your sales team and pipeline is through those resources.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s awesome. So this conversation is just like a little snippet of hundreds of conversations that you all are having the year with tastemaker, not only the conference, but also the webinars that you’re doing and the one-offs. And I know you also do, I just saw this incredible retreat in Italy, and I know that the overlap with our group is almost exact. Everybody who’s listening to this would be a great candidate to attend a conference or to go to one of the workshops that you all are doing. Abbey, can you talk a little bit about how people can follow along with what’s happening at Tastemaker? Obviously the conference is kind of the main centerpiece with what you’re doing, so if people want to attend that, and I think you maybe also have a discount code that you can talk about, but we would love to just shine a light on everything that’s happening with Tastemaker and let people know how they can check it out.

Abbey Rodriguez: Yeah, absolutely. So we’d love for you to join us at our conference. You can go to tastemakerconference.com and you can see our events. Just click on events and it shows you everything that is coming up. But we want to give all of the amazing Food Blogger Pro community members a hundred dollars off to the conference. It’s normally $699 for a basic business ticket. We do have VIP tickets as well and general creator tickets, business tickets, and VIP tickets, but it would be a hundred dollars off for any of that. And we also have our sponsorship and referral and our affiliate program for anybody that wants to join that as we’ve been talking about being a part of that community. And then we have a lot of free resources and things that we, we’ve talked about throughout our time here. Happy to include all of those as well. And you can follow us at TastemakerConference on Instagram too.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome.

Chandice Probst: If you have any brands that you’ve worked with and you want to just reach out to me, I’d love to connect with them.

Bjork Ostrom: What was the, Chandice, you had mentioned the referral piece. Is that almost like if somebody refers a brand to Tastemaker? Is that how that works?

Chandice Probst: Yeah, it’s really cool. So we have two facets. The first is the referral where if they have a brand that they’re like, this is a great fit for Tastemaker, and they refer us again, that one email. Then when the sale closes, they get a percentage of that and it’s 5%. Yeah, 5%. But our packages, they’re higher than, you know what I mean? So it’s a really good deal for one email, and so.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s probably your highest hourly rate you’ll ever earn.

Chandice Probst: Correct affiliate program, which let’s say that you are a blogger who actually has a part of your business where other blogger, you talk to other bloggers or creators, maybe you’re a photography expert, and so you talk to other photographers, same thing. We give you a discount code to tell people to grab their ticket with your discount code and you get a portion of the sale from the ticket and they get a discount. So we try to make it kind of a win-win for everybody.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. If people are interested in that, should they just send you an email? What’s the best way to

Chandice Probst: Yeah absolutely. Chandice, C-H-A-N-D-I-C-E@tastemakerconference.com.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Great. Abbey, Chandice, thanks so much for coming on. Great to talk to you and excited for all that you guys have going on. Thank you.

Chandice Probst: Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. Since this episode is coming out on October 1st, I wanted to fill you in a little bit on what will be going on inside the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. If you are already a member of the Food Blogger Pro community, this is a great way to see what’s coming up. And if you haven’t yet become a member, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more about our community and join us. We are kicking off the month with a new coaching call with Keanu Taylor from the food blog Taste Test Tales. He is a full-time food scientist who recently launched his food blog on the side. This is a great coaching call about determining your target market, including the possibility of posting on platforms like LinkedIn, focusing on growth, how to narrow your niche, and what kind of time you need to dedicate to your business in the early years to start seeing growth. Next up on October 10th, we’ll have a Live Q&A all about Substack. We’ll be joined by Randa Sakallah from Substack. She manages the food vertical there, and we’ll be answering all of our questions about becoming a food creator on the platform. Next up on October 24th, we will be releasing a new and improved version of our WordPress Deep Dive course. This is a really detailed look into everything WordPress. So if you are just getting started or looking to become more familiar with WordPress, it’s a great course. Of course, we’ll have new podcasts every week and new blog posts as well. But if you would like to join us in the membership, there’s a ton more to explore there. Again, thanks so much for listening to the podcast. Hope you have a great week.