134: FBP Rewind: Creating Success with Sally McKenney

Hey, friend.

You're listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. You may have noticed that this is not Bjork. No, this is Alexa, and I'm part of the Food Blogger Pro team. And I'm also the editor of the podcast. And I'm coming here today instead of Bjork because this is a really special episode. This is our first ever FBP rewind episode, and I'm really excited to share one of our past episodes. Actually, it was our third episode ever, published all the way back in 2015. It's one of our most popular episodes of all time, and it's with one of my personal blogging idols, Sally from Sally's Baking Addiction. And in this podcast, Sally talks about comparison, her rapid success, her cookbooks, where her traffic comes from, and so much more. So even if you have listened to this episode before, or maybe this episode is brand new to you, the advice Sally gives is totally timeless. So I think you're still going to find a lot of really helpful advice from Sally in this episode. Are you ready to rewind? Let's jump in.

Sally, welcome to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast.

Hi. Thank you.

Yeah, we're so excited that you're here, Sally. You know, we've communicated back and forth via email, but we've never been able to jump on an official call like this. So I think this will be super valuable for people that are listening. And then also, selfishly, I'm just really excited to talk to you a little bit. So let's just go ahead. Let's jump in right away. Take us back to December 11, 2011. I did a little searching on Sally's baking addiction. I scrolled back and I went deep into the archives, and I saw that that was the first post ever on sba. Just curious, what were you thinking at that time? What was your thoughts going into it? You know, that's a big commitment to start a blog, to publish a post. What were you thinking when you did that first post? What was in your mind?

Well, I really just wanted to share a couple recipes with my friends, and I followed food blogs myself, and I thought to myself, you know what? This would be really cool. This would be a great way to share my recipes with my friends and family. Everyone's always asking me about, you know, those cookies that you made for work that one day, or what about this cake recipe you made for this birthday party? So I really just wanted somewhere to put all of my recipes, and I thought, okay, a food blog is a good kind of online recipe journal of sorts. I Could definitely, you know, do that in my spare time. And it was really just a hobby when it first started. And I would post, like, a couple recipes in one day. I mean, I had no blog followers. It was just my. My, like, few friends and my mom, really, that was the only people that ever, you know, read my blog. But it was just very, very, you know, not professional at all. Just really just a fun hobby for me.

I think that's good for people to hear. Lindsay and I share that kind of similar story where Pinch of Yum, my wife Lindsey's blog, started and was really something that was just an enjoyable process, and I think it's really good. And I've read some of your blogging posts where you talk about the fact that, like, it really has to be something that you enjoy doing first and foremost. And I think that's really wise because, as you know, there's so much work involved with it. So you started out, it's something that you enjoy. You were posting maybe a couple times a week, Is that right?

Yeah, it was very. It was like, very, very random. It would really only be when I had time or when I made a recipe for something. I wouldn't, you know, just be making recipes for my food blog. It was when I was genuinely making recipes for this on the weekend or this to bring into work or things like that. So it was very random. I think it was really just a couple times a week, if that. Yeah.

And it was functional recipes in the sense that you were bringing it somewhere or. Which is a great point, I think, for people that are looking to just get started, that it doesn't have to be something that you commit to. You know, three posts a week. Like, if you're just interested just getting started, it can be the recipes that you're making. And maybe you have a family dinner and you take some photographs of it and you put it up on your blog. And I think that makes a lot of sense. So that first year in, you're starting to, you know, post a little bit more consistently. It's all recipes that you're using in different places. At what point do you have the thought, hey, I wonder if this is something that I could turn into something or that I could take kind of more from a hobby to maybe a business, or not even a business, but maybe just kind of like side income or kind of create something in it. Do you remember if there's a point where that happened?

I can't remember an exact point, but I do remember all throughout that first year, just looking at all the other food blogs around me. And not even just food blogs, just any kind of creative hobby blogs that I was seeing. And everyone had such beautiful photography and everything just looked so professional and nicely done. And I said to myself, I can do this too. I really wonder if this could ever, you know, be profitable for me. And it was at a time where I enjoyed what I was doing. I was an associate for a team of financial advisors at a insurance company and I liked my day job, but it wasn't where I felt I belonged. I would just kind of go to work, go through my jobs and tasks, go home at 5, and that was it. It wasn't really fulfilling for me. And I think that's kind of what inspired me to really research and look into my different options for making this little hobby food blog a source of income for me. And I really just researched it for a while and I kept seeing, you know, if you have a food blog, you really, in order to grow it, you really have to, you know, improve your food photography. And that's when I, that's when I first realized, okay, I need to get a little more serious about this if I really want it to become my full time job and make some sustainable income from it. So it was probably around the spring or summer of 2012, so maybe about six months after I started, I began to realize that this could actually be something that I do that could support me one day.

Great. And I want to go back actually to something that you'd said before that I think is really important. You had talked about seeing these other blogs or websites or creative spaces and really appreciating what they're doing. And I think one thing that's so important with that is to not get totally discouraged with it because it's so easy to do when you go to another site and you see how beautiful something is or how well done something is.

I was doing that. I was comparing my little baby blog to this successful, you know, millions of readers blog. And I just, I shouldn't have been doing that. But you know, that's what you do.

And it's so sad and discouraging and in some ways it's completely demotivating. But I think what's really insightful in what you said is that you kind of research number one, which just makes a lot of sense, but also that you're able to look at it and say, okay, what is it about this that is making it successful? And then to break that down. And the reality is if anything's been done it can be done again. Right. And so if somebody has a big following on a social media site, or if somebody has a beautiful blog for those that are listening, for you to know, that's something that's totally possible for you as well. It's not easy, but it's possible. And I think it's an important reminder. So about six months in, maybe, let's say six months to nine months in, you're starting to have these thoughts of like, okay, I think this is something that I kind of want to explore a little bit.

Yeah.

And then you start to turn the dial up a little bit. Is that right? In terms of the work and time and energy, yes. Was that an intentional decision? Was that kind of like boiling water in the sense that it took a while to heat up up, or once you made the decision all in, it.

Felt like it took a while to heat up. But looking back the big picture, it did not take long at all. Once I started to really hone in on my food photography and really practice and hold a camera as much as I could and take as many photos as I possibly could and really practice and learn about my dslr, which I was actually borrowing from my boyfriend, then husband, or now husband, Kevin. He was taking a photography class at the time, so I was able to borrow his camera. But once I started really getting into food photography, I started seeing my traffic really increase and I was sharing my photography on the social medias like Facebook and Pinterest. And I noticed my photographs being shared more, you know, the better that they were, they were being shared more. And once they were being shared more, that was just more eyes seeing them and being directed to my blog. And that's kind of when I really saw the traffic start to take off. And I was using food photography sites like Food Gawker and Taste Spotting, which I actually still use today. I noticed that if you have really, really good food photography that, you know, you'll get more views and website visits that way. So I think the practice, the time and the willingness to learn with my new camera, my completely foreign camera, I had no experience whatsoever with a dslr, but I think that the willingness to learn and to pull and the time I took to practice and really read the manual and get to know my camera really, really helped my food photography and then therefore helped bring traffic to my blog.

Yeah, Lindsay talks a lot about that. The time that she spent transitioning from just the automatic settings to having a little bit more control of the camera using manual settings, starting to pay more attention to light and all of those things that go into learning food photography and, and especially when you're first starting out, totally overwhelming. But a huge part of it is the learning, but then also just the time that goes into it. So kudos to you for doing that. That's awesome. Another thing that I think is important to note about that is that with the food photography, one of the things we think about people that will pin recipes or share content and I think it's the consumer, but for people to think about the fact that it's also a lot of times there'll be people that have huge social media followings, maybe on Pinterest or something. Like their desire is to look as awesome as possible to their people. So they're looking for photos that are beautiful that they can share to their large following. So it's kind of a win win in the sense that the people that are coming to your blog as just readers are more likely to share it, but also those people that want to have really beautiful photos to share to their social media will share it as well. So it's a win win. So you're kind of making this switch and you're turning up the dial a little bit. But there's this reality that you still have a full time job, right? It's not like you can just be like, I, I want to do this full time and now I'm going to put in my two week notice. There has to be some in between. What did that look like when you were working at a full time job? 40 hours a week I would assume. But then also spending what I would assume is a lot of time building your blog and doing recipes and photography and writing all the stuff that goes into that. How did you do that?

Oh my gosh, I don't think I slept for an entire year or that's what it felt like at the time. Well, as my blog traffic really began to increase and new opportunities were arising and I got new followers and things like that, more comments, more emails, I found it more and more difficult to obviously keep up with it all. Like right under my nose. I had started this blog, which quickly was turning into a profitable business. I had ads on my blog, so that's how I was able to earn some side income. And with more and more readers, I put more and more pressure on myself to deliver the best possible content that I could. And when it was truly difficult to juggle both, like I said before, I would cut back on sleep, I would turn down social invitations with my friends so I could get things done for my blog on the weekends or on the weeknights. And it was around that time that I really, that I realized that I could truly support myself on the income I was making from my blog. And that's when I decided to leave my job in the corporate world to really make this blog my career. But in between then, it just took a lot of dedication and a lot of time and a lot of late nights and a lot of sacrifices. But I knew that I wanted it to become a reality, so I just. That's what kept me going.

And it's, it's funny, you know, we were talking before this as I was doing research for this podcast. I dove deep into the email archives here and I pulled up an email that you had sent. It was November 8th of 2012 and you'd said some kind things. And then there's a part here where you said, I enjoy reading the reports each month. So on Pinch of Yum, we do kind of business of blogging reports. And you'd mentioned you're kind of one of your goals is to increase, increase your monthly income so that eventually you could quit your full time job someday. And it's not uncommon for us to get those emails. But what's fun with your story is that just a few months later in April, that was the time when you transitioned into doing your blog full time. Is that right?

Yes.

And at that point, had your blog income met what you were doing with your full time job or did you know that you could kind of see the upward trend? And so it was a little bit of a le.

Yeah, I could see the upward trend. I wasn't making as much from my full time job, but I was making enough to support myself. I was making enough that I could pay rent each month and I could have some savings and some money for personal expenses and things like that. That's when I realized that I could actually support myself from my blog. And that was really, really an incredible feeling.

Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about that? What was that day like? The first day that you didn't wake up to go into work, you woke up to work on Sally's baking addiction.

It felt so strange. I felt like I was just on vacation from my work or something and that I was supposed to go in the next day. It was very, very weird because the only times that I would work on my blog prior to that were like weeknights and early, early, early early mornings and weekends and to wake up on Monday morning. I'm a natural early riser. So I wake up early no matter what, but I woke up early and I just said to myself, I don't have to straighten my hair and put on makeup and wear office clothes today. I can gradually, you know, answer my emails and comments and get in the kitchen. And that's what my day is going to be like. And that was so, so incredible.

That's awesome. And you know, you say it was kind of like a vacation and I want to, I feel like it's maybe a twisted vacation because I know how incredibly hard you work and I know that, you know, you're maybe able to do things a little bit differently and spend more time with content and to be a little bit more intentional with certain things. But I also know that you work really, really hard. And I'm just curious right now for you, Sally, what does it look like in terms of your daily routine? You know, is it, is it working kind of from sun up till sundown, or do you have a structure?

I work from the moment that my eyes open to the moment my eyes close. I am always working. But what's pretty cool is that it doesn't feel like work. Well, let me rephrase that. When I'm not writing a cookbook and maintaining my blog content, it does not feel like work. When I am writing a cookbook and maintaining vlog content three or four times a week, it definitely feels like a job. But right now I'm not writing a cookbook at this time. So yes, my days are packed.

So you've written two cookbooks, is that right?

Yes.

Can you tell us a little bit about what that process was like? I'm interested to hear how that developed in terms of you being able to do those. And then after that, kind of. As a follow up question, I'd love to hear how you maintained your blog while also doing those kind of like you talked a little bit about. So can you tell us a little bit about the process for the cookbooks, how those came about?

Well, it came about from actually one of my blog readers who is actually my editor. She was a blog reader in the beginning of 2013. So right around the time that I was itching to quit my full time job, she sent me an email. She found one of my recipes from a Google search. She happened upon my blog. She really loved it. She started reading it every day when I had a new recipe go up. And she sent me an email in the early spring of 2013. So right around the time I was about to quit my full time job. And she introduced herself and said, I made this recipe. I'm actually an editor of this publishing company and I would love to chat with you about possibly writing a cookbook book. And I read that email when I was at work at my full time job, and I almost fell out of my chair. I actually took a deep breath in and I swear people around me were like, what is wrong with her?

Is she okay?

Yes. And I think I like screamed inside. It was just so such a crazy thing. And then we got to talking and I was really lucky in the fact that I didn't have to hire an agent or write any kind of proposal or anything like that. She was naturally just a blog reader who enjoyed my content and thought a book would a great step for me. So that's really how it came to be.

That's awesome. And I think one thing that's really cool about that is, you know, I think you, you do a really good job of connecting with your readers and you're really intentional about that. And I think that goes a long way. Sometimes it'll. You'll be helping somebody just to help somebody, and that's a good thing. And sometimes you'll be reaching out and connecting and helping somebody that is also going to be able to come back to you and say, and I have this, you know, and in this case, it was somebody that was able to help you get a connection for the cookbook, which is really great. And you've done two, which is incredible.

Yes.

Not just one, but two. So congratulations on that. Can you, can you talk a little bit about what it was like to maintain your blog while also doing the cookbook, what your routine was and how you continued to produce content for the blog as well as for the cookbook?

Yeah. So the first cookbook that I wrote was in the summer of 2013. So it was after I quit my job. I was just beginning, you know, this full time vlogging thing and my traffic was pretty high, but I wasn't really on a set schedule in terms of blog posts. I would really just. I would definitely post three recipes per week, but it would be really random. You know, one would be on a Monday, the next would be on a Tuesday, the other one would be on a Friday. So I wasn't really on a set schedule. It was much different when I was writing the second cookbook, which I wrote this past winter, Sally's Candy Addiction. But when I wrote both of them, it was definitely difficult keeping up with both and having enough creative energy to get through all of the content. I had to Produce, because it's almost like having two separate blogs, two separate very large scale blogs that you have to run at the same time. It's pretty difficult. And what's also difficult is with my blog recipes, I can make it in the kitchen, I can photograph it the next day or two, I can put it online, and I can chat with my readers about it. With a book, you have to keep it a secret for so long and you just have to hold onto it for so long and then you finally get to release it. And it's just the best feeling in the world. But during the time of writing them, it's really challenging to have enough time to really get everything done. And you just have to be very strict about your schedule. And I had to write down a schedule for every single day and I had to stick to it. And I, you know, I really never give myself days off now unless I'm going on vacation or something. But I just had to say no to some things. And even though I work for myself, I was just, just still very strict with my schedule. I would write down what I had to do each day and I would prepare every single night before going to bed. I'm going to do X, Y and Z first thing tomorrow morning. And then, you know, for my blog, and then I can check in with my cookbook and do cookbook recipe testing and photographs the rest of the day. And then at night I can sit down and check back in with my blog and then I can write the recipe for my book. And it was, it's just a lot. It's a lot. I'm just like, not gonna sugarcoat it. Yeah, it's a lot of work.

Yeah. And I think that's important for people to hear because from the outside, sometimes it can seem like we follow these people, whoever, if it's a food blog or, you know, social media star or somebody on YouTube. And it seems like they're able to do all of these things, you know, without any work or it seems pretty seamless. But the reality is like, like a lot of times it just comes down to being a lot of work and a lot of time and pushing through creative roadblocks and doing something when you don't want to do it and continuing to do that over a long period of time. So congratulations on getting those two cookbooks published. I think that's incredible. And obviously a lot, a lot of work with it. One thing that you had mentioned before was you said that your traffic had started to grow a little bit. Can you talk a little Bit about maybe just in general over the past few years, if you're willing to share traffic numbers from your blog and as each little bump happened, if you can say, I think it had to do with this, or tie it back to a certain reason, maybe we can always tie it back to something. But I'd love to hear the different stages that you'd say Sally's baking addiction has gone through, traffic wise.

Well, I started my blog at the very end of 2011, so I really was only blogging for two weeks before the end of the year. And I'm being very honest when I say that my only blog reader was my mom. So that that was a wash 2011. It was really just my mother reading the blog. 2012 was my first full year blogging and the beginning of it was very slow. I, you know, didn't. I didn't follow any schedule like, you know, what I said before. And I had about the entire year, I had 3.5 million views, which is a lot for a first year of a blog. And I think that really has to do with the second part of the year is that's when I really start to practice my food photography and read as much as I could about it and really spend a lot of time and energy into perfecting my photos that I share on my blog and also just producing readable content. And I do that just by being myself. And the words that you see on my blog are exactly how I talk in real life. And I'm just completely 100% myself on my blog. And I think that's what drew people in in the first year of my blog. And then, you know, they've kind of just stayed. Well, hopefully. I'm pretty sure they have, but I think that the first year's number of around 3.5 million was. Most of it was the second part of the year. And that was when I really started to pick up my DSLR and get to know it.

Great. And did that continue on then in terms of traffic growing into the next year?

Yes, yes, absolutely. So at the very end of 2012, so about a month after I sent you that email asking you how. I don't even remember that email asking you how to really take my blog to the next level, I actually had to switch website servers. My website was being hosted by bluehost. And all of a sudden, one day, I think it was December 12th or something. So exactly one year after I started my first blog post, this was December 2012. Yes. I was getting such high traffic on my blog that My server could no longer hold me anymore. So I had to switch servers overnight in December of 2012. And I think that the spike of traffic at the end of that year, during that time was really decent, you know, holiday baking. Everyone's looking for recipes to bake for the holidays. And I had a lot of, I had a good amount of readers at that time. And then I think that they were sharing it with their friends or on their social medias and that's just kind of how it snowballed from there at the end of the year. I mean, holiday baking has a lot to do with it.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So that's, you know, my busy. Yes, my busy time of year. So. And then it really didn't slow down with, you know, January, February, March. It just kept going. And more people were on my blog. That means more people were sharing my blog, more people were baking my recipes. And then I was getting higher and higher on the Google, you know, search. So that's. And that's how my editor found me was on Google search. So that's. Yeah, great.

And so today, if you'd be willing to share, and no pressure at all, but in a typical month, um, Sally's Baking addiction. Is there a range of page views that, that you can expect to see now in 2015?

Yes, it's about 7 to 8 million per month. Page views per month. Yes.

That's awesome and really, really incredible. A huge kudos to you, Sally. And I know that that's, that's 7 to 8 million. That's, you know, it might look like one, one shot that it's just this one month, but just all the work that goes into that, that over a long period of time. So huge congratulations.

Thank you.

We're going to do a quick break for our show sponsor, which, believe it or not, is Food Blogger Pro. So it kind of works out nice for us that we sponsor ourselves. So Food Blogger Pro, for those that don't know, it's a membership site, but really we view it as a community. So we have at this point a little over 900 people that are all in the food media space. So it's called Food Blogger Pro. But we have people, we have a few people that don't have a food blog at all. They just have a blog and they're part of the community. But it's mostly food bloggers or people that are doing food related content online. And you know, Sally's talked a lot about food photography. So an example of something that we have on Food Blogger Pro is a course all about food photography and lots of tips and tricks. And that's taught by Lindsay, my wife. She does pinchofyum.com and with Food Blogger Pro, there's kind of three elements that we have. There's the educational stuff, so we have the food photography tutorials. We have learning WordPress. We have deep dives into different plugins that are specific for food bloggers. And then last and maybe most importantly, we have this community forum where people that get it get the world of blogging. Sally and I talk here, and we both get it, but for the vast majority of people, they maybe don't have people that get what this space is all about. We have the community forum where people can share questions that they have and provide answers. So that's Food Blogger Pro. And if you're listening, one of the things that we want to do is say thank you to Sally. So we've set up an affiliate link for Sally, and she's volunteered to come on and give some tips and share some insider info about Sally's baking addiction. So if you're interested in signing up for Food Blogger Pro, we'd love that. And if you do use this link, it's foodbloggerpro.com Sally, and we want to make sure that she gets credit for those signups as a way to say thanks for coming on the show. So I want to say that because you're on. Because you're on the call right now. Thank you, Sally, for being a part of this.

You are welcome. Thank you.

Yeah. And let's jump back in. I want to talk a little bit more about the traffic piece. Can you talk about the general percentages of traffic for Sally's baking addiction? You know where those are coming from right now, the different traffic sources?

Yes. So most of my traffic comes from search engines online. So I'm high. I'm ranked high in that. And I get a lot of people, you know, who are just typing in chocolate chip cookies or just typing in vanilla cake or carrot cake or, you know, whatever, then they're linked. You know, they get directed to my blog, and that's where a majority of my traffic comes from. The next tier down would definitely be Pinterest. I am all over Pinterest. I myself am obsessed with Pinterest, and I feel like I planned my entire wedding on Pinterest. I just. I personally love it. And it's funny. I have my friends, they text me or they call me, and they said, I know this is your recipe. I saw your hand in this photo. And I knew it was you before even clicking through to your blog. Your recipes are everywhere on Pinterest, and that's really where I get a lot of my traffic from, is just people sharing and pinning my recipes to their boards. And I try to be very active myself on Pinterest because I know that a lot of my traffic comes from there also, because I genuinely love it. But it's just such an easy social media. Well, not easy, but it's the easiest of all the social medias because it really doesn't take much thought at all. You know, you grab a recipe that you like on your own blog or on another blog and you put it on your board, and then all of your followers can see it and they can share it, and then their followers share it, and then their followers share it, and it just kind of snowballs from there. So Pinterest is definitely my number one social media in terms of traffic, and my number two in terms of overall traffic that comes to my blog because search engines are number one. And then after that, it's really just all my social medias together. I mean, Pinterest is a whole world of its own. But then I get a lot of traffic from Facebook, my own Facebook page, facebook.com SallysBaking addiction. And then from there, it's really just all direct traffic right from my blog. So people are just typing in Sallysbaby addiction.com or they subscribe to my blog and they follow me on bloglovin or things like that, and they just directly go to my blog. But number one is search engines.

Great. So you had mentioned in there that you spend a lot of time on Pinterest is something that you really like in terms of. Of this might be hard to do percentage wise, but in terms of a normal day for you, how much time are you spending doing recipes versus social media versus writing content? Could you rank those in order of like, I spend most of my time doing this and then this and then this, so.

Well, every single day is different. But if I were to pick a day where I did everything so I was in the kitchen, I also photographed. I also spent time on the computer. I also did social media. If I did all of those in one day, I. Which, you know, is common, but not every day, I would have to say the most time I dedicate is to photography. So it's to. Sorry if that does not answer your question.

No, it does.

It's not social media. Okay, yes, it's photography. It's setting up the shot. It's taking a billion photos. It's looking at them on my computer, deciding I don't like any of them and starting all over. It's editing the photos, it's uploading the photos to my blog, seeing how they look, you know, deleting them because I don't like them anymore, then trying it again. And the photography is where I put the most pressure on myself because I feel like I've put myself in a position where I am uncomfortable sharing less than my definition of perfect on my blog. So I spend the most time on photography. That's absolutely number one.

And I think that's good for people to hear. You know, I think sometimes we wonder where, you know, maybe people are on Pinterest all day or maybe they're on Twitter interacting with people. And the reality is, I know this is true for Lindsey as well. The photography stuff takes a really long time. And it takes, like you said, sometimes you have to redo a shoot or just really spending a lot of time arranging cookies, which is the craziest thing in the world. But it's the reality of what it takes to get a really good shot that's shared a lot and that people find engaging. So I think that makes a lot of sense. I want to talk a little bit about maybe some like soft skills that you have to develop with blogging and I think this stuff is really important and it's maybe things that we don't really think about a lot. But I'm curious, as you've been doing this a really long time, I think you've probably had to, or I would assume that you've had to develop some mindsets and some different ways to maybe view the world or view a job that you have as a blogger. Can you talk a little bit maybe about some of the mindsets you've had to develop over the past few years?

Well, I always try to be positive and I think that really is reflected on my blog. I have a lot of, you know, down days and I think that those mostly come from, you know, recipe fails or, you know, I get a mean comment or someone hates my cookies or I hate my photography that day or things like that. I just always have to remain positive and level headed and grounded and remind myself why I'm doing this in the first place. And the sole reason I'm doing this in the first place is because I love to share my recipes. End of story. That's the number one reason why I do this. And I need to remind myself when I'm down, when I'm having a bad day, when I do not want to write this cookbook anymore. When I do not have a post for tomorrow ready to go, and I would rather just sit on the couch, I remind myself the reason why I do this is because I love to share my recipes. And I repeat that to myself.

That's great. And I think that it's important to remember because sometimes we can get caught up in the end as opposed to the means. And one thing that we found as we've continued to do this type of work more and more is that the more that you can enjoy the process and the less that you can think about what you'll get from it, I think the more enjoyable it can be. And we've had conversations with people that have built really incredible things, and a lot of times they've even been able to sell those things. Maybe it's a website that they've built and they've sold and are no longer a part of it. And. And a lot of times they're like, I realized that I actually really enjoyed that. It was the work that I enjoyed, not necessarily this end goal that a lot of us have in mind. I think it's really important to have those goals and to strive to achieve big things. But I think the more that we can think about enjoying the work and the reason behind the reason for why we do it, like you said, because you enjoy sharing recipes, there's not a number behind that. There's not something really tangible. It's a really soft feeling. But it's something that can help you focus on stuff, which I think is really cool.

And I think that has to do. I think that if you really want to grow your food blog and you really want it to become successful, you have to genuinely love what you're doing. That is so important. If I didn't love what I do every day, it would feel like work. I wouldn't want to do it. I wouldn't be motivated to keep going. I wouldn't be motivated to do all the things that I do during the day to make my blog successful. So it really comes down to, you have to love it.

That's great.

You really have to love it.

Great. We're coming to the end here. Sally, I did want to ask one more question of you. So for those that are thinking about doing this, they kind of have the idea, you know, maybe it's not even a food blog. Maybe somebody's listening right now that knows you or that's been following along and they're interested in kind of pursuing their passion or. Or Starting a blog to talk about food, share the recipes or maybe something else. What is something that you would tell that person that's listening right now? Or maybe it would even be, well, no, ask that and then I'll ask one more follow up question. So what would you tell that person?

I actually was on the phone with someone earlier or last week. It was one of my mom's friend's sons who wants to start his own business and he wanted to chat with me about how I did it. And basically what you just asked and I told him, I said work harder than anyone. You know, look at the people around you, see how hard they work and double that. You have to work as hard as you possibly can and you really have to push yourself. And it takes sacrifice and time and dedication to build, you know, a quality product, whatever it is, especially one that you know, you want to earn a stream of income from and you just really have to keep going and you really have to love it.

That's awesome. So my final question, similar, but a little bit different. If you were to go back, we're going to and where we started. If you're going to talk to Sally from December 11, 2011, oh my God. What do you think that you'd tell her if she was, if it was, if it was your past self and not me on the other line, what would you say?

I would say stick with it. Stick with it. It's going to get hard and you know, you, it's going to get tough and it's not always going to be easy, but stick with it, Sally. You can, you can do it. You can get through it.

That's awesome.

You have the capacity to do it.

So that's awes Sally. Really, really appreciate you and your time here on the podcast and I think that people will really get a lot out of it. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

And thus concludes our first ever FBP rewind episode. We really hope you enjoyed this new kind of episode and if you did, you should let us know. So either email us@podcastoodbloggerpro.com or you can leave a comment on the show notes for this episode@foodbloggerpro.com blog. And I'm also here to give you the reviewer of the week. And this review of the week comes from Theodore Leaf from TheodoreLeaf.com and he says, honestly, I don't even know how to recommend this podcast and food blogger Pro. Enough. Listening to this helps me to continue learning and discovering every Tuesday and most importantly reminds me that I'm not alone. Thank you all so much for the hard work and dedication that goes into this, and thank you, Theodore and all of you guys for listening. And if there's one thing I want you to take away from this review, it's that you too, are not alone. If there's something you're struggling with with your blog, or if you're really struggling making ends meet by monetizing your blog, know that you are definitely not the first first blogger in that position. So hopefully you can take some comfort in the fact that you are not alone in your blogging journey and that we are here to help. So, from all of us here at Food Blogger Pro hq, make it a great week.