164: Bjork Gets Interviewed: How to Level-Up Your Food Blog

In this episode, Bjork talks about income and trends in the blogging space and I chat about an upcoming free event that we know you're gonna love. Hey, hey, wonderful listeners. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast where we talk to bloggers, industry experts and business owners about the skill, processes and strategies that matter to you as a blogger, as a creator, as an influencer, and as an entrepreneur. I'm Alexa, the general manager here at Food Blogger Pro. But before we hop into this episode, I wanted to take a quick second to thank our sponsors, WPTasty. WPTasty is our sister site for WordPress plugins for bloggers. Raquel, Ann and Daniel make up the team over at wptasty, and they just do a fantastic job at listening to their users to implement updates, changes and features. They have a recipe plugin called Tasty Recipes, a Pinterest SEO plugin called TastyPins, and a fun keyword linking plugin called Tasty Links. Be sure to head over to wptasty.com to learn more. With each episode of our podcast, we like to include a Tasty Tip along with our sponsorship. And the Tasty Tip is just like a little helpful nugget of knowledge that we pass on to you so that you can take it and run with it and apply it to your blogger business business. And for today's Tasty Tip, I wanted to let you know about a super exciting event that we have coming up next week and it's called the Pinterest Traffic bootcamp. It's a one day event on Tuesday, August 28th, which, depending on when you're listening to this, is about a week away and we'll be talking all about Pinterest. You know, did you know that there are over 200 million people that use Pinterest every single month? Yeah, 200 million. That's 200 million different chances to get your content seen and shared every single month. But you know, let's be serious, it can be really hard to actually get those users to see your content. And that's exactly why we decided to hold this bootcamp. And that's to teach you practical and easy to understand strategies that you can implement to make your content perform better on Pinterest. Will be chatting with Food Blogger Pro's Pinterest expert, Kate all during the Bootcamp and she runs a Pinterest consulting company called simplepin Media. She has a Pinterest podcast. She's actually been on our podcast a few times talking about Pinterest and she just really knows her stuff when it comes to optimizing Pinterest accounts. So we are just super excited to chat with her during the Pinterest Traffic Bootcamp. So if you're interested in signing up for this event, or if you're interested in learning more, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com and we hope to see you there on August 28th. And now it's time for the episode. This is what we like to call a featured podcast episode. And that's because we actually didn't record it specifically for the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Instead, Bjork was invited to chat with Danielle and Jamie over on the Business Ease Influencer Marketing podcast. Danielle is actually our legal expert on Food Blogger Pro, and just every time she speaks on our podcast or on the forum or during an event, I just get so much useful information out of it. She really knows her stuff, and she's awesome. And as is her business partner, Jamie. Together they run two businesses. Businesses and legal. And with those businesses, they take care of you, the business owners, the bloggers, the entrepreneurs of the world with their DIY legal forms, resources, and legal services. They interviewed Bjork for their podcast a few weeks ago, and we decided to share that interview over here for our FBP podcast fam. It's kind of like podcast inception, but Bjork talks about launching Food Blogger Pro trends in the blogging space, advice for new bloggers, and much more. In this episode. Let's jump in, York.

We are so excited to have you on the podcast. I'm going to be the first person to admit I am a huge fan. You know that I love Pinch of Yum, but I'm also so into Food Blogger Pro. I remember vividly when I first started listening to podcasts. I did the obligatory Facebook post of who listens to podcasts, which ones should I listen to? And a friend said, you need to listen to Food Blogger Pro. And I said, oh, that's awesome. I'm not a food blogger. And she was like, we all know that, but you are absolutely gonna love it. She was like, and you are just gonna love Bjork. And I said, okay. And she was 100% right. And so.

Oh, that makes me so happy. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's. It's such a cool thing, podcasts. I feel like I probably listened to an hour or two of podcasts a day, and it's. And it's one of those things where you can, like, evangelize this general thing. Like, do you know about podcasts? Cause it's still it. It's not like radio. Right. It's like this thing that not everybody knows about. So I'm. I'm so happy to hear that. And we're just honored to have a very small slice of the pie. We use food analogies as much as possible, but of the podcast pie, to be able to reach people and have conversations, and it's just a great joy to do it and to be on other podcasts as well. So happy to be here.

Oh, thank you. So one thing that I love is hearing the story of how you got started in this space. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background?

I love talking about the background that we have. And when I say we, the other very important half, slash, three quarters of what we do is Lindsay. And Lindsay is my wife. And so if you rewind the tape back really far, we go back to starting Pinch of Yum, which is a food and recipe blog. And Lindsey also talks about us and life, and it's not just strictly food and recipes. So there's a lot of personality with it as well. But if you rewind the tape back to April 2010, Lindsay and I were working our normal jobs. I was at a nonprofit. Lindsey was a teacher. And this is one of the reasons I love telling the stories, because I feel like it's relatable. We weren't people that were involved with tech. We didn't have this deep understanding of websites or marketing or anything like that. I worked at a nonprofit, and Lindsey was a fourth grade teacher. And we had these kind of side hustles, things that we were interested in. And for Lindsey, it was writing and food and eventually photography. And for me, it was the broad thing of the Internet. And specifically to narrow it down a little bit, businesses that run on the Internet. And it actually, for me started a lot with listening to audiobooks and listening to podcasts and starting to learn from people that were building businesses online. And at the same time, Lindsay was interested in publishing recipes online, and she was getting into cooking. We had recently gotten married. So she got gone from cooking for one to cooking from two, which I think is a little bit more fun when you can share that with somebody. So she started putting recipes on social media. And then she was like, I wonder if there's a way that I can do this a little bit more formally. And at that time, I was listening to this book by a lot of people that are in the social media space, know Gary Vaynerchuk, who's just this really loud and smart and polarizing figure in social Media and somebody had recommended the book. So I was listening to it, and he talks about this idea of like, hey, you can do anything you want in any niche, and online you're able to reach a big group of people that you otherwise wouldn't in your small community because of the Internet. And we kind of mashed up all of those things. That idea, Lindsay's interest in food and recipes and starting a website and my interest in online business and said, hey, let's give this a shot and see if this is true, if there's actually something that we can build here and create something around it. And so that's kind of the origin story. And there's obviously a lot that goes into that and a lot that happens in between. There's eight years of time, but that's how we got started.

I love it and I tell everyone, everyone knows this, and I think even my husband probably recognizes the name. I am obsessed with Pinch of Yam because I love the videos, especially on Instagram. I just scroll through and I watch them peacefully. So ye.

They're like. It really is. That's the interesting thing about food videos, isn't it? It's like, it's part. It's partial function of like, making a recipe, but it's also partial escape of like, hey, this is fun to watch. And I like the idea of making this and it's entertaining. So it's kind of this weird in between. I think a lot of Food Network is like that as well. You know, whether it's any of those cooking competition shows or Diners Drive Ins and Dives, any of that. It's this in between of, like, something I'm actually interested in, might actually do and just kind of fun to watch.

Exactly. Because I can't execute it. So I just like to watch them. And I just sit there mesmerized, thinking, I'd like to have that for dinner. And I don't. I have, like, something that takes three ingredients and, like, no skill.

So I'm the same way. There's. There's a. Occasionally we have team members on Pinterevum and Food Blogger Pro. They will do Instagram stories and they'll feature, like, what they're making. And everybody on our team is really capable in terms of, like, developing recipes, making recipes. Recipes, except me. And so I like when my turn comes to do the Instagram stories, the last one I did was a cookie, like a fresh cookie that I would make when I was younger, which is just taking a Chips Ahoy cookie and then putting a Wet paper towel on it and then microwaving it and then taking it out, and then it's like it's freshly baked. So that was my contribution to Pinch of Yum's Instagram Stories Recipes.

I saw that one and laughed a lot because that would be my contribution, except I would probably catch something on fire in the process. Like, I'm constantly sending my husband texts. I'm like, I accidentally caught this on fire. Sorry.

Yeah.

And he's just like, again, I'm like, okay, sorry. But back to Pinch of Yum. I know at one point yours is one of the ones that I remember relatively early on. You started income reports. Why did you start those?

Sure. So if you go back, if you go to Pinch of Yam, whether on your phone or on a desktop computer, and you look on the desktop, there'll be a little tab that says income. And then on your phone, you have to click out that little hamburger icon that shows you the navigation and there'll be an area that says income. And if you scroll way back, you'll see that. Oof. I don't even remember 2011 or 2012. So it was a year or two after we had started the blog, we started doing this income report and it wasn't an original idea that we had created. There's a handful of entrepreneurs, bloggers, business owners in this thing called transparency movement. This idea that, hey, hey, we're going to be transparent. We're going to reveal what we're doing and we're going to talk about what goes into building a business. And for us, we wanted to. The original idea for it, the original name for it, super original, was called the Food Blog Money Making Experiment. There was these two conversations that had happened and that I had kind of read online where there was this one camp of people that were like, hey, with the Internet, you can do really incredible things. Like, if you are interested in recipes and food, you can create a site and a community around that and build that up into a sustainable thing that, you know, pays the bills, or at the very least, you know, pays kind of some of your hobbies, let's say. And in the other camp, there was these people who said, hey, this is something that you, if you're going to do it, you have to do it just because you love it, because there's no way whatsoever that you're going to build it into something. And so for us, it started as an experiment and we said, he do this. It was a way for me being immensely interested in all the intricacies that go into building a business and building a website to participate in what Lindsey was doing. So it was kind of a shared thing for us. And I had zero chance of participating with the recipe side of things, as we've previously discussed with my paper towel cookies. So it was a way for me to participate in it and for us to kind of do it together. I was really optimistic and I said, hey, I think we can do this. I think we can build it into something, something. Let's go through the process of doing this experiment. So that's strictly what it started out as, was this experiment and a way for me to kind of have a role with Pinch of Yum, to have us kind of have this shared thing. And the other piece with it is it was a really great way for us to stay accountable to ourselves, to continually improve and find things to do different. Because if I knew that, I had to show up every month and say, here are the things that we're learning. Here are the things that we're doing. Here are the things that we're improving on. It just. Just builds in a rhythm that otherwise wouldn't exist that continues to encourage us to level up in certain ways. And we've since stopped doing those. But I really miss the challenge that those introduced for me to critically look at the business each month and kind of open up the door and say, here's what things look like, here's how we're improving. Here's some things that you person reading this can be aware of and using that as a way to continually improve the business as well. So it was a great. It was a great experiment. It served us really well, but it wasn't something that we wanted to do forever. So this was a year and a half ago we published our last kind of closing report. And the experiment, not just in the sense of building a business, but the experiment in learning is this possible? Was a success. And my hope from that extended period of time, many years of doing that, is that other people can go and look at it and say, okay, this was something that they did. Here's how they did it. It's going to be different. Now, obviously, it's a different period in time and things work different, but seeing a little bit what goes into it and also the time associated with it. You know, when you look at those two to three pages of posts, you can look through them in about, you know, 30 seconds. If you're looking at the archive pages and it's like, oh, that happened quick. But it's like three years of showing up every day and working really hard. So my hope is that people can look at it and find some inspiration from it.

That's awesome. So tell me, you branched into Food Blogger Pro. What was the impetus behind that?

Food Blogger Pro is a membership site. And the membership site, meaning you sign up, you have a membership, and you are then part of what we call the Food Blogger Pro community. And simply put, the community is a group of people in this niche. This niche meaning people that are building and growing and learning how to start a food or recipe blog. Or as we maybe will talk about. It's not just blogging. It's other things as well. Being somebody who has an audience and is able to speak to people, but it's this community of people that are interested in doing that. And one of the things that we learned from the income reports is that not only are there other people that are doing this, but there's lots of people that have lots of questions that are very specific to a niche. And it's similar to some of the things that you guys do with businesses or legal. This is now an industry that you can serve. Yours is a little bit broader. Ours is a little bit more niche in that it's like. Like food and recipe sites, but it's a tiny little niche. It's a sliver of the Internet, but there's thousands of people that are interested in doing it. And we started to connect with and hear from those people, actually a lot of it connecting back to the income reports. And people would ask us really specific questions, like, how do I improve my food photography for soup? And it's like, you know, there's maybe some stuff out there online, but it's harder to find, and it's really hard to find in one central spot that's organized and that you can work through and where you're interacting with other people that understand and get what you're doing. Because I'm guessing a lot of people on this podcast can relate. Like, when you go to a family event and you start talking about the struggles of the Facebook algorithm, people either go blank or they're like, algorithm, like, tell me more about that. Like, I didn't know Facebook has an algorithm. And it seems so intuitive to us, where we, like, eat, sleep, and breathe this type of content and this information, but to other people, they just don't get it. And so it gives people access to other people that. That are in this world and have the same problems and are working to solve those things. So that really came from FoodBlocker Pro, came from not a brilliant idea that we had. And we're like, hey, we can create this community and thousands of people will use it. It was really from people coming to us and asking questions and being present to those questions and saying, okay, if we hear enough questions in this specific category, there's probably a way that we can build something that helps people to answer those questions. So that's really how Food Blogger Pro came about.

What sort of trends are you seeing right now with the type of things that people are? Whether it's their struggles or just trends that you see in what's happening in blogging and what's happening in the influencer.

Space, Naturally what happens is that as something becomes easier and as there's a dollar, like an economic value attached to it, that the market becomes increasingly more competitive. So if we're talking about strictly blogging, I think that's. That's one realistic trend. It's becoming a lot easier to start a blog, and it's becoming more and more possible to create an income from it. And so as people see other people, as I talk about, you know, building a blog where, hey, we have a team and we're able to create an income from it, people are like, oh, you can do that through building a blog and, you know, having a presence online, I should look into that. How do you do that? Well, here's how you do it. It's relatively easy to do, so people are coming into it. I think. I think naturally what happens then is you create this base, this foundation. And an analogy would be with photography, it became easier and easier and easier to take photographs. And so more people had digital cameras, more people taking photographs. Photography in general just became a more popular thing. So as a photographer, like if you had a small shop in Cambridge, Minnesota, where Lindsay and I grew up, you had to start to think more strategically about what your business model looked like. And I think that shift is starting to happen now. I think it's totally possible and 100% realistic for people to start something, to build up a following and to create an income from that. I think how they do that, they need to be strategic in not exactly replicating the thing that they see somebody doing right now, but thinking strategically around, okay, let's say that this new foundation, it's more common for people to have a blog. It's more common for people to have, let's say, a following on Instagram or something along those lines. How can I think strategically about building a business and either being a part of that or being on the layer Just above that meaning what would it look like to serve the people that are on that base level foundation? So the photography example, maybe you are a photographer in Cambridge, Minnesota, and you notice that, hey, a lot of the senior pictures that I've been doing are starting to go away because other people are getting photographs, you know, with their digital camera. What would it look like if I started to develop a way to help these people learn how to use their digital camera or if I started a, you know, a side business within my business to clean digital cameras? Just thinking out loud here, but the idea being that if your goal is to build a business online, think strategically around what that looks like. And, and if you feel like the market is extremely saturated in certain areas, either one, be willing to show up, hustle, work a long time over an extended period of time and don't expect an immediate payout. Or if you want to shorten that a little bit, start to think strategically about how can you serve some of those people in that saturated market. And it's a little bit like 201 or maybe a little bit heady or abstract. I would encourage people to always be thinking about that if they ever feel like, ah, the market's so saturated I'm never going to be able to do what I want to do. I think clearly defining what you actually want to do, like at the core, what is it? You might think it's blogging, but in actuality it's working from home and having some schedule flexibility. Well, be realistic in defining that and then look at the ways that you can serve different people. Maybe it's serving the people that you originally thought you were gonna be a part of, or if you want to be a part of that group, maybe it's saying, okay, I know there's going to be a little bit more work and a little bit longer time that I need to commit to this, but be realistic about that. So refining questions about that. Any follow up questions, I think that.

That is awesome advice because unfortunately I think that people tend to look at it and say, I'm going to try to follow this specific formula than necessarily looking at the market and looking at the need and their interest. So I think that that's really great advice and I know that one of the things that you have done that I admire greatly is you've really looked at what your market needs and your business has grown beyond just Pinch of yam and Food Blogger Pro, which I think many people may not realize. So can you tell us a little bit more about. I want to Talk about the other two pieces of your business. So tell us a little bit about nutrifox and what is it? What inspired you to start that side?

Yeah, so nutrifox is it uses a thing called natural language processing. So nlp look at a list of ingredients and say, okay, I can see that when you say add 1 tablespoon of salted butter, it'll parse that out and say, okay, tablespoon salted butter. And we have a database that connects to the nutrition information for that individual piece of the recipe or of a list of ingredients, pulls that all out and then it creates a nutrition label around that. Now a nutrition label in and of itself. Number one, there are some food blogs that say, hey, I don't want to include nutrition information for whatever reason, which makes sense. But if you are a site that wants to include nutrition information, sometimes it can be really manual to go through and plug all of that information in, select one drop down tablespoon, search for salted butter, and then go through and do that with each individual ingredient. With natural language processing, you just paste in the block of text and say analyze and it pulls it that, it pulls that information out. And then if needed, you refine a little bit and then you half a nutrition label that would be associated with the recipe. Now the cool thing about that is, and we can talk about this in a little bit, we have a recipe plugin for people that use a WordPress blog. The recipe plugin is called Tasty Recipes and the business is wptasty. You can use that nutrition label and just using a little id, a little number, you can copy that and put it into the recipe card. And then that populates not only the nutrition information on your blog post, but this is a 201301 tip for people. It also takes all of that data and information and this would be the tip and something to mark down kind of an SEO tip. And it communicates or translates that into schema. And schema is essentially a type of structured data that Google understands. So it's saying, hey, this is nutrition information. And Google, I want you to know that this recipe has this nutrition information. Right now, it's only valuable in that it communicates calories to Google. So if you search for a recipe, sometimes calories will be displayed alongside the recipe in the search result that comes from the schema markup. But long term, there's potential, there's no guarantee, but there's potential that Google would also start to include or other sites would start to include that additional information. Like maybe there's a site that wants to include, you know, protein or sugars or all of that would be organized in a way that, that the bots that crawl through a site, whether that be for Google or Bing, would understand it. So it's a little bit technical, but nutrifox does that as well.

I love it. So I want to talk about the plugins too, because you mentioned WP Chastity. So tell us a little bit about the plugins that you offer. And is this something that you created just because you saw you couldn't find what you needed or you saw that your audience was looking for very specific things?

Yep. Yeah, that's exactly how it came about and a huge part of it too. And this would be a takeaway that just to plant a little bug in people's ear. Terrible analogy that. I actually really hate the idea of a bug being in somebody's ear, but if we're going to use that analogy, I'll use it here. But this idea of being really present to the conversations that you see, your peers in the space or your audience, the people that you interact with, having what are the common questions or issues or struggles that you notice? Notice coming up. And for us, WP Tasty really came out of that. It was an issue we had. It was an issue other people had and we knew that we had the potential, due to where the business is at, to invest some resources into fixing that issue. And the issue for us was very specific to a food blog, but it was, we had a plugin and just to zoom back a little bit. So for those, I'm guessing most people would be familiar, but WordPress is a content management system. You can think of it kind of as a car and it's like the base of what drives your website. It's the most important piece of it, along with the content, obviously that you put into it. But with a content management system, it's going to be kind of like a base model of that car. And you might want to do really specific things with your website. And the base model isn't going to be able to do that. So you have these plugins which are kind of like aftermarket parts for a car that you can add on and you can change how that website works or in the analogy for the car, how the car works. So you might want to put in after market spree wells, which are those spinners that used to be on cars. So there's only going to be a select few people that will remember spreewells. But that was such a thing as a kid. I remember those are the coolest things ever. But we created a aftermarket or a plugin, a third party plugin for recipe cards because the one we were using wasn't being updated, it was outdated. There's some things that we wanted to do that we knew were really important for Pinch of Yum. So we spent thousands and thousands of dollars working with a team to create that plugin that we then use for Pinch of Yum. But the nice thing was then we were able to spin that out and offer that a plugin for other people. Now it's a premium plugin, which means that you have to pay for it. But the interesting thing with WordPress is you're paying both for the plugin, but really what you're paying for is support. Because there's such a burden of support. And if you're going to do it well, you want to make sure that you're able to sustain yourself over a long period of time, which we've been able to do for wptasty. So that's how it started. And then what we realized is, hey, there are things that we want to do specifically for a Pinch of Yum. We want to have, have control over these things because we want to, we want them to be around for a long time. We don't want it to be a, you know, single developer somewhere who spins something up and then travels the world and you don't hear from that person. So we wanted to create a business around it and make that really sustainable. So we started to, whenever we had a need for a Pinch of Yum, we'd say, hey, could this be a plugin? And that's happened two other times. One is for a plugin called TastyPins, which allows you to optimize a Pinterest description for an image as well as an alt text for an image which we can jump into. It's a little bit technical but important thing for people to know. And then Tasty Links, which allows you to really easily link any keyword within all of your sites. So if you have one specific thing that you want to link and you want that to link everywhere, whether that be an affiliate link or a product or the name of your dog, then you can link to a specific piece of content really easily with Tasty links. So that's the kind of the quick story with WP tasty. WP stands for WordPress, it's for WordPress blogs and it's a plugin site.

I've gotten amazing feedback on Your plugins. Like, I know a lot of people who are just like, yes, this finally has the features that I was looking for. And I see them mentioned in groups all the time. People are like, is there a plugin that does X, Y or Z? And then I see them mention it, I'm like, awesome.

Yeah, for sure. And a huge, huge shout out to Raquel, Daniel and Anne. They do the groundwork for WPTacey and just do an incredible job with it. So I'm obviously involved with it as well. Well, and have many conversations in terms of, like, the development of the products and like, hey, we want to, you know, develop this for pinch of yam in this way. But a huge shout out to them and Raquel for leading that and for a lot of the customer support and Daniel for the development. So I want to make sure to get their names in.

Awesome. So before we wrap up, is there any other advice that you have for those who are looking to succeed in the space, kind of as it is 2018?

Sure, yeah. I think the. The advice that I always come back to on podcasts, and I feel like people need to hear it as much as possible, is this idea or this concept called 1% infinity. And the concept with 1% infinity, if you break it down, we all understand one, right? So it's just the number one we all understand percent. So it's 1%. But then there's this weird part of infinity. What does that mean? Well, if you look at infinity, the symbol, it kind of looks like this sideways eight. And so if you, if you put it all out, it's kind of this cool short little, you know, these short little characters, 1% infinity. It's something that I remind myself of often and remind people of often that I talk with, is that the game that we are in is a long term game. And there's something that is absolutely critical about the hustle and showing up every day and working hard and maybe at periods of time cutting sleep and, you know, working in the margins. But there's also something to be said about the long term term. And 1% infinity really speaks to the long term in a couple different ways. Number one, it says showing up every day and getting a little bit better. That's where the 1% comes from. It's not about making these massive leaps and bounds. It's not about making these improvements that it's like you're a different person in two weeks or you do a sprint where you're working 100 hours a week for six months. It's saying no, I'm going to show up today and I'm going to get a little bit better. Better. And then the other piece to it is infinity. So this idea that it's not like I'm just going to do this for a short amount of time, I'm going to develop this as a mindset where I'm showing up every day getting a little bit better. And I'm going to view this as an eternal thing. Like, it's not a I want to in two years be doing this differently or I want to be working full time on my blog. Maybe that would be an example. I think it's important to have those goals, but I think it's more important to have the mindset of continual improvement every day over a long period of time. And the other piece that's important with this concept of 1% infinity is making sure that the work that you're doing is work that you actually enjoy doing, anticipate in a positive way, showing up for. And that's going to allow you to more easily improve because you're interested in it and you're passionate about it. I think that's why it's so important for people to distill down what is it that I actually want and that I'm trying to do. Because I think sometimes people build a thing and work on a thing that they actually don't like, like in order to get to a thing that they do like. And that an example might be you might be working really hard to build a software business because you want to be an entrepreneur. But if you are stressed out about running a software business every day and that's not an enjoyable thing, that's probably not the best path to being an entrepreneur. So make sure that as you're showing up every day, as you're improving, as you are thinking about doing that over a long period of time, that it's also so doing that with something that you feel like you're passionate about and interested in and not that you'll always love what you're doing, there will be stuff that will be really hard and it will be a total pain. But if for the majority of what you're doing or the mission that you have with it, if it's something that you can line up with and feel good about and be passionate about, it's going to make it a lot easier. So I would encourage people, in a sentence, to think about 1% infinity and how they can integrate that into their life.

I remember the first time I heard you mention that that on your podcast. And I said this. Yes. It was just like one of those sort of things that kind of clicked. And then the other piece is when you were talking about, oh, I'm afraid I'm going to mess up the title. The War of Art.

Go for it. Yeah.

Is it the War of Art?

Yeah.

And I immediately went and read. I'm a heavy reader. So I went and I read it and I was like, oh, this is good.

Yeah.

And reading about the resistance, and I was just like, you know, they are. I think that they're really important concepts and it's important for people to know it's not necessarily just an SEO trick or some secret formula that are going to set your business ahead. It's going to be this constant improvement and listening. And it's just really great advice.

Yeah. And I think such a big piece of it is. So much of it is personal as well. Like, can we get to a place where we feel centered in what we're doing and not ping ponging. Majorly impacted by, like, like you said, like, oh, there's this new trick I need to do. That feeling behind. It's like, no, let's take a deep breath. Let's. Okay, maybe there's this new tactic or trick or thing. Let's make a note of it. We can research it, we can follow up on it. But it's so much about staying the course and centering yourself. And there will be those times that are stressful and that are overwhelming and that you need to work long days and doing stuff that you don't enjoy. But there is something about just showing up consistently and being centered in what you're doing and just saying, this is what it is and this is who I am and this is how I will operate moving forward and continue to get it a little bit better over time.

I love it. Okay, so now we're gonna wrap up and can I ask you our rapid fire questions?

Love it. Let's do it.

Number one, coffee or tea?

Coffee. Super easy. If I'm especially excited about something, I will celebrate by adding a little bit of whipped, half and half and honey. But I went to the dentist and I had a. These are not rapid fire questions. These are long stories. Now, I went to the dentist and I a headache. Get a crown. And they were like, what? I don't drink. I don't drink sugar, soda. I don't drink, like a lot of sugary things. But they were like, do you put anything sweet in your coffee? And I was like, yes. And they said, you need to stop doing that. So it's only on special occasions now. And I'm like the world's most intentional flosser and toothbrusher and like rinsing with act fluoride. I do all the things and Lindsay never does any of that and she does get cavities, so I won't be as long with the rest of the question.

I think it's genetic.

I think it is too, which is a bummer.

Okay, question two. What's your favorite book? It can be business or not business.

Sure. So I was actually going to say for this war of art and would encourage people to check that out. I'm also reading a book right now that I really enjoy by a guy named Rand Fishkin, who's an SEO professional and a founder of Moz, and it's called Lost and Founder. And he's just, just incredible. Transparent, honest, good guy. And I've really enjoyed the book and would recommend people check it out.

What's the first thing you did to celebrate success in your business? What did you do for yourself?

Yeah, I was thinking about this, and I feel like we do a generally bad job of celebrating success, but if we were to do something, it would probably be going out to eat like Lindsey and I say, hey, let's celebrate. Let's grab a bite to eat at one of our favorite restaurants. So I can't think of a specific time that that happened, but that's what we would do if we were to celebrate.

Do you have a word for the year? If so, what is it?

I love when people have a word for the year. I've never had it, but I've had concepts. And this year for me, it's amplify and simplify. So it's, it's paring down the things that I'm doing and the stuff that I have. And, and when I get, when I, when I'm paring those down, the things that I do have, I want them to be better. So that could apply to, like, physical things. So getting rid of physical things, but making sure the things that I do have are really awesome. And it could also apply to tasks like, or just daily to dos. Simplifying those down, but making sure the things that I am doing are amplified and really important and significant.

Apple or PC?

I'm an Apple guy. I like live and breathe the Apple ecosystem. But I will say that specifically with phones, there's been some stuff happening with some of the Android phones that are like, oh, that's pretty cool. It's a little bit Tempting, but I think I'm just so deeply rooted in the Apple ecosystem right now that it would be hard to switch. But I'm not drawing the line. There's always the possibility the door is just a crack open now.

Tell everyone where they can find you.

Sure. Yeah. You can check us out@foodbloggerpro.com I'm not very active on social media, so that's a tough place to get ahold of me. You could drop me an email@bjorkoodbloggerpro.com and then we're Lindsay's kind of chronicling daily Life. Over@pinchofyum.com you can hear what we're up to, see occasional blog posts about our dog Sage, who's the greatest dog in the world, and follow us along over there. So I make a cameo appearance every once in a while. A while.

Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Yeah, super fun to be on the podcast. Thanks for having me.

And that is our featured podcast episode. We hope you enjoyed it because, you know, sometimes it's just really nice to hear Bjork on the other side of the interview table. And I think that Danielle does a really great job of interviewing, interviewing people, and I just think it was a very good interview. So I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you got something out of it. I always love hearing about 1% infinity. It's something that I hear about quite a bit just because I edit the podcast, but it's something that I frequently forget, that I don't need to be perfect, you know, on day one. So I think 1% infinity is such an interesting and helpful principle to apply to not only my own business, but to see other people apply to their businesses as well. I'm also here to bring you the reviewer of the week. And these reviews come from itunes, and I just go through all of our reviews, pick one out, and read it to you each week. And this one is from someone named Emily, and it says, this is an outstanding podcast for new bloggers like me. And veteran food bloggers too, I'm sure. Not only are the guests knowledgeable and offering very useful advice, but Bjork knows exactly which questions to ask to benefit the listeners. I often find myself nodding myself thinking, yes, thank you for asking that. I listen to this podcast all the time and on repeat. Thank you, Emily, for your review. I love that you listen to the episodes more than once because I have definitely been guilty of that as well. And if you'd like to be featured in this section of the podcast, in an upcoming episode. Just leave us a review on itunes. Go to itunes, search for the Food Blogger Pro podcast, and leave a And if you leave your name and blog name in the review, we'd be happy to put it in our show notes. That's it from us this week. If you have any questions about the Pinterest Traffic Bootcamp, let us know, but you can register for that again@foodbloggerpro.com Bootcamp. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We hope you join us. But until then and until next week, make it a great week.