271: Serving Your Subscribers - Running a Subscription-Based Business in 2020 with Melissa Lanz

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Welcome on and welcome all to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Alexa and we are so excited that you're here today that you decided to tune in today's episode. We are actually talking about subscription based businesses and whether you know it or not, I'm guessing that you use quite a few subscription based businesses. Florida for example, things like Hulu or Amazon Prime, Dollar Shave Club or even Food Blogger Pro. They're all subscription based businesses and they can be a really great way to diversify your blogging income and get some recurring revenue from your business. And that's what we're going to be talking about today with Melissa lands from the fresh 20. And it is, as you may have guessed, a subscription based business. And she's back here on the podcast. We actually had her on the podcast way back in 2015 to talk about how you can help your read with a useful subscription service. She'll help you understand the best way to find and serve your people, identify your audience's problems, and then offer solutions with the content that you produce. Subscription based businesses can be a great way to create a sustainable income as an entrepreneur and serve your audience along the way. So you'll learn how to in this episode and without any further ado. Bjork, take it away.

Melissa, welcome back to the podcast.

Hey, good to, good to be here again.

Yeah, it's so fun to have these conversations where we check back in with people that we've interviewed years ago. And it's crazy that we've been doing this podcast for five years. You were one of the first guests that we had on or really early guests. And it's been great to check in with people to see what's different, how things are evolving and in this case kind of get a little industry update on the world of subscription businesses. But before we do that, let's, let's have you look back a little bit and say, you know, five years ago, let's say it's summer of 2015. I don't remember exactly when the podcast was recorded, but we'll use that as kind of a rough estimate. What's different now today than what things look like for you five years ago?

Yeah, I mean one of the things that's different is everybody's on the Internet, I think five years ago or 10 years ago there was some 10 years ago, certainly some early adopters in the space. And now my mother in law is on the Internet all the time looking for resources. So the market itself has just opened up audience wise, which also means that the market competition wise, has opened up and exploded as well. So you know, five, ten years ago our competition was, was limited. And now I find that every day I'm finding someone else out in this space, which to me is encouraging because I'm one of those people that believes that there's enough pieces of the pie to go around to everyone. And it just shows me that there's a constant need for consumption of information and resources and tools. So the market has really, really changed from an audience perspective, from a competition perspective. The other thing that's really change is the big guys have gotten into the market, right? So it's really interesting to see the big corporations, the Fortune 500 companies in media and publishing and they've had to get in to the game not only in the food industry, but everything else from grooming to pet to apparel. And it's really telling because you know, subta, which is a subscription organization, just put out some numbers that by 2023, 75% of companies that are selling direct to the consumer on the other end of their computer will offer subscriptions.

It's interesting, I remember reading a book three, four years ago from John Warrilow and he it's essentially what you're saying. If you are a business that sells to people, you should have a subscription component to it. I think it was called subscription, I won't remember what it is. And automatic customer, that's what it is. And in that book he's saying essentially what you're saying, which is like, hey, if you're an H Vac company, you should have a subscription model. If you are a blog, you should have a subscription model somehow. But just how important that is? Can you, from a business perspective, can you talk about why that's important and why more businesses are starting to have, at least as a portion of their revenue, a subscription model?

Well, I mean, think about it. We as a society have moved to online living. So if it's really one of the only ways to, you know, gone are the days where I spend the majority of my, my, my day out in the world gathering, gathering things, you know.

And so errands or shopping. And that looks different now.

It looks completely different. So if you think about it, if we, if we kind of break down an average day of a consumer, right. They wake up in the morning, they get on their peloton, they're, you know, did or their whatever, you know, Apple.

One subscription for fitness. You see that, Right, right This week.

Yep, exactly. Then they get ready and read their New York Times subscription or whatever news subscription they're on. And then they might shave with something that came in the mail from a subscription, like $1 shave. Then they go into their office or they do whatever and they're listening to Spotify on music or whatever music subscription they have. Then they take a P of their dog and it uploads to an icloud cloud drive, which is another subscription for bandwidth. Then they get a pack, they go home, they have a package sitting there from Amazon prime, which is another subscription. Then they go home and they're getting ready for dinner and hopefully using the fresh 20 for their meal planning, which is another option. And then they sit down and after dinner they watch a little Netflix, which is another subscription. So there's no way to get around your day in this new consumer age without having a subscription. So if you're a business and you're not part of that mix, it doesn't make sense. And just one other thing I'll throw out there. Like traditional businesses are especially, subscriptions started with the newspaper industry, right? Like in the 17th century in Europe. They're the ones that started all of subscription madness, right? And it's come full circle now. But the New York Times gets 60 to 70% of their revenue from subscriptions now, not digital subscriptions, not even mailing the newspapers to people anymore. So the shift for like digital subscriptions has really, really been massive. And it's so important for businesses of any type of. To consider it as part of their. Part of their business offerings.

Yeah, it really makes sense when you think of, in one sense, the fatigue, which sounds like a weird word to use when you think about buying stuff as if buying things is such a tiresome process. But the fatigue around decision making when it comes to certain things, like you mentioned dollar shave Club. It's like, wow, I can just have that solved for me by whatever it is every three months having one of these shipped. Or fatigue around needing to go to Redbox and picking out a DVD to rent and paying for it and deciding, am I going to pay for this? And in some sense, I think subscriptions not only solve the decision, it also solves the need for you to remember 100%. Yeah. But on the other side, one of the things that I sometimes hear about is this idea of subscription fatigue. And suddenly there's Disney and Netflix and Hulu. Do you see any statistics or there's an organization that you mentioned that sounded like maybe a data company around subscriptions that there's any level of subscription fatigue? Or do you think we still have a long ways to go until we hit that ceiling.

I think we have a long ways to go before we hit that ceiling. I definitely think that. I think subscription fatigue is for. Of course some people have it that are forced to move some of decisions to digital online. But the people that are really embrace this idea of their, of their lifestyle being around a subscription are literally the same person that go into Target to buy one thing of toothpaste and come out with an entire car.

It feels like that's the minimum. Grocery cart checkout or cart checkout for Target is like $65. It's like I went in to get like party hats for my daughter's birthday from the dollar section and somehow bought a new pillow.

So I think it's the same thing with subscriptions and setting up your life. Once you kind of find what like how you were saying that the decision fatigue, once you realize that something is a resource for you and can stop that choice of constantly having to think about something else, it's kind of addicting to then find the next thing that's going to do it. And in my house, certainly you. A lot of subscription companies, you know, they talk about retention and lifetime value of a subscriber. And I think about it because I have two teenage boys now and I have been getting a dollar shave for probably four years just for my own razors. And I was gonna cancel and then my 14 year old picked up my razor one day and said, can I use this? And I said no, you can't use mine.

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I know. So now that lifetime value is now extended because my teenage boys are now using that subscription because they don't have to go to Rite Aid or CVS and figure out which shaver to use. They are just now we just ordered two more handles and now the razors come like every month into our house. And it's just something that is integrated into life. So the lifetime value of a subscriber is even being, you know, as one. As one person stops using something, another person's starts using it. Which is what Disney figured out if you think about it. Because Disney figured out that we're going to lose these parents once their kids start to get older and don't want to watch all these other things. So when they launched their streaming service, they made sure to market in a way that it was not just for the toddlers so that they could extend the lifetime value and offer streaming of amazing things that adults would want to watch too. So it's really. I don't think it's going. And I think that. I think the fatigue comes from when you get a bad resource or a bad service and it's not giving you the needs that you need. And then you get frustrated, and then you start going out and trying to find an answer for that in the real world. And then you're like, oh, this is just. I don't. This is not great.

Yeah. One of the things that. That's interesting as it relates to. Well, I asked this question first. One of the things you had mentioned was this reality of competitors. And as a market becomes larger, there is the potential for the early, the people who enter that market early to make more. When somebody makes more, that means there's room for competition. So then more people come in. What is your stance as a business owner when you think of the fresh 20? And as more and more people are creating meal plans, is your stance as it relates to competitors to say, hey, I know those are going to come. They're going to be out there. I'm going to stay focused on what I do and what I do well and not get distracted? Or are you trying to keep an eye on what competitors are doing and stay competitive as much as possible by seeing the offerings that they have? How do you balance that?

Great question. I think for me, because I was one of the early on the scene and I innovated rather than imitated for the first five years of my business, I was very, very confident. And then you start to go and you start looking around, and I think more that you look at the competition, the further away you get from your own business goals. So sometimes in my head I get taken out and I go, oh, that's really cool what they're doing. But then I realized that my core audience, and I think that gets to the thing about being a transactional company or being a relationship company. When I start to think about shifting towards a direction of one of my competitors, I have to go back to my core audience and the people and my fans and the people that have been with me seven and eight years and think to myself, is that a good shift for them? Right. So you can always be taking it back to who you are trying to serve. So we've had to make a lot of decisions at the fresh 20 about what we were going to do and what we weren't. And I stay pretty close and pretty true to my original vision because I know that other people are out there in the market doing other things, and that's fine. Like, I'm happy for them, but I don't think constantly shifting your business to the newest technology or the fanciest design or moving into an area. I'll give you an example of that without outing anybody. But there's several meal planning services that got swept up in creating apps for their services. But it was just because there was this huge app boom, let's say three or four years ago. And I think that some people kind of looked at it and said, okay, let me figure out how to do an app that is going to deliver on the original business promise I made. And then some people just built an app to build an app, and now their app is gone and it didn't serve their purpose and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an app. So I think that whatever new thing or new technology or new feature that you add to your business shouldn't steer you away from your core business principles. And if it does, I think that's a mistake.

Yeah. And point being not that subscription service in a certain category would be wrong, or an app would be wrong, or a content site would be wrong, but it would be wrong if the only reason you're doing it is because you see somebody else doing it and then you're like, ah, I'm going to do that too, without sitting and thinking, how does this help the people that I'm serving? How is it going to be aligned with the goals that I have? And using that as a starting place as opposed to seeing somebody else do something, scrambling to do it, and then realizing, wait, like, this isn't the core kind of the heart of what I do. I was just kind of chasing after something that I saw somebody else doing.

And it happened to me. I'm going to be really transparent right now. It was a huge fail for us at the fresh 20. We started on an app because I wanted to. I was like, oh, everyone, you know, everyone needs to have an app. And we spent about $100,000 in starting to develop an app and lay everything out and change some of our backend systems to make it work and all of that. And about, you know, halfway through the process, I thought to myself, this isn't what my subscribers are really asking me for. And so I cut bait on it and I stopped. And, you know, it was $100,000 loss, which wasn't easy to swallow. But I really realized that what they wanted was a way to shop, right, to have a shopping list inside of their phone. They didn't necessarily want an app, that they would have to then purchase my product through an app store or they would have to like that the app would be, you know, mobile based. And then when they got back to desktop, it would be, you know, difficult to link the two and all they didn't want that. What they wanted was, I want to be able to access on my desktop your information, but when I go to the grocery store, I want to be able to carry that shopping list with me to the market. So that's again, getting back to, like, what who are you serving? And does any innovation that you're getting ready or imitation. Right. That you're getting ready to do serve them best? So sometimes as business owners, we jump at something because we're excited about it, but then we always have to. I think in the end it was a more successful decision to say, okay, let's cut bait on this because it's taking us really far away from where we need to be.

Yeah, it's such a relatable story in that you're solving a problem that is a problem and that's important, but doing it in a way where it's not as. It doesn't need to be as complex as how you're doing it. And I think as business owners, a lot of times we can look at a certain solution and build something really complex when in actuality, what our readers or customers or users are looking for is not something fancy and cool and that helps, but it's just something that solves the problem. And sometimes the problem is really simple, whether that be a PDF or the ability to log in on the website on their mobile phone, or there's different solutions to that problem. How did you, in that situation, come to realize that was what it was? Are you having conversations with users and customers and asking those questions?

I definitely was having. You know, I have a few very trusted users that have been with me for a long time, so sometimes I lean into their experience with the company and to get some information and best serve them. But I think that I was having difficulty making decisions and it just became something where it was constantly a battle to get to the next phase of development. And that's when I just kind of clued into my intuition that if I'm having this. If it's this complicated and I'm having this much of an issue, like just trying to develop it. And it doesn't seem clear to me as the owner of the company, that my subscribers were going to be even more confused. And I think that's where, you know, that concept of decision fatigue or subscription fatigue comes in. The more we complicate things, the time More tired. It makes our audience. Yeah, yeah.

So there's something to be said about that. I think about that with copywriting, and I've heard it said that as in relation to copywriting, the more words you have, the less people read. And I would imagine that there's parallels to that from a purchasing standpoint, where the more options you have, the less people actually purchase, or the more decisions that people have to make, the less they actually decide.

I think there's something to that. I mean, listen, we're both consumers and just think about how we make decisions and how we do things. We're not so unlike our audiences or our clients. And I need things to be clear to the point, you know, really tell me up front what the. You know, that give me a really straightforward benefit analysis. Let me know what features I can rely on to be helpful and solve my problems. And if it doesn't, and it gets into, you know, a lot of complicated things, it's really, really difficult. And I know that there's. I've seen a couple of products out there lately that in the food space, that there's, you know, you go to their page and there's tutorials on how to actually use their product. And I think if someone needs a tutorial to use it, it might be a little bit more complicated than necessary.

Yeah, I remember hearing that about Uber and how they tried to get the only thing that you do on Uber down to just one thing, which is pressing the request a ride button and simplifying it as much as possible. And that's so inspiring to think about and so hard to do in a really effective way. But a good challenge for us to think about a way that that translates for content creators is having really simple call to action. So if you have an email, don't include three different things like, hey, follow me on Instagram, visit this blog post and buy this ebook. It's like one really simple call to action that you're directing people to and maybe even mentioning it a few different times. Not to be unnecessarily redundant, but just to be really clear and explicit in what you're trying to guide people towards. So I think that makes a lot of sense. One of the things that you had talked about coming into this was when we were chatting a little bit, this idea of starting to realize the importance of content. And one of the things that I think is so interesting about that is I think there's a lot of people who listen to this podcast who are really good at content, have thought a lot about content, but haven't thought so much about building the business component, whether that be subscription, product, service, whatever it might be for their business. But in your case, it sounds like it was kind of the opposite. You had built a pretty solid business, you had that engine and then later on decided, hey, you know what? I think content is important to support this. Would that be an accurate statement?

Yeah, that's really accurate. When I first started the content, and even to a largest extent today, the content that we deliver on a week, week basis with the fresh 20 is all behind the paywall. And we did that and we tried to make that as good as we could and as simple as we could for years and years and years. But with the opening up of market and with new competition and with, you know, the advent of an attention to SEO, I think that content becomes really important to create a hub and be a resource for people, even if they're not buying your product. So that's something that we're adapting to even now that we didn't really adapt to early on. And I think it's. I don't know how I feel about it because I feel like if I had gone the content route first, that I might have been too generalized. And now when I think about developing content and resources, I think about being very focused and specific with that content. So not just being, you know, a general recipe site. Right. I don't think I, as a fresh 20 need to be posting like tons of, you know, recipes across the board on my, on my blog. And so where we're kind of shifting because they're everywhere. Right. Where we're shifting to. And what I realized is part of what makes us a resource is that we distill information down so that it's usable so. And consumable. So for me, an example of that. Yeah, absolutely. So for me that means that if my primary product is. Or information. Let's just say if you have content right now that you're distributing and if your primary content is in one area, all of my supplemental content. Right. To match my service or the blog that I have. For us, that means that we gear our content towards meal prep, towards planning towards, instead of just releasing more content, that's just recipes really to give people a guide on, you know, stocking, pantry, all of those things that make it so that it's within the lifestyle of somebody that wants to cook healthy at home. And I think if I had done the content first, I would have just been publishing recipes.

Yeah, it's one of the great freedoms in Business. And whether that be a content business or a product business or subscription business, one of the great freedoms is boundaries. And I think one of the challenges as a creator, as a business owner is putting boundaries on yourself in order to create a focus. Even when you have great ideas or interests that land outside of those boundaries, knowing that single piece of content or that new focus, it might be a good idea, but it's going to potentially dilute kind of the laser like focus that you have. And it sounds like a little bit of what you're saying is because you started a business subscription business where you had to have a focus, whether that be on the type of meal plan or just meal plans in general, then naturally when you started creating content, it's not like you would have these vast categories of recipes that you could post to. You had these boundaries in a really positive way that allowed you to focus on the type of content. And I think that whether you are just doing content or content to support a business is really helpful. Can you talk about your content process? So my guess is you would also come at it a little bit different in regards to maybe a category of people who listen to this podcast in that this is a business, it's the fresh 20, and you're creating content to support that business. Are you creating all that content? Do you have a team who creates it in a process around that? Because I think one of the things that people sometimes potentially feel burdened by is the never satisfied content monster that just continually wants to be fed food. And it can be exhausting if it's just you that's doing that. So what does that look like for the fresh 20 and for your content process?

Before I answer that question, can I just give an example? Because I know. Because can we. I want to give an example of what it looks like to go from a content.

Yes. Oh, thank you.

To a paid strategy.

I'll hold on that rabbit trail that I just went on and we will go.

Yeah, no, I totally want to address.

That because I think all the way to the end of that rabbit trail that we had started on.

So. So a way that someone set up content in the beginning, to be very specific is one of my favorite sites is Sally's Baking Addiction. I don't know if you know it, but every time I go to bake something, I go to Sally's Baking Addiction. So there's an example of someone that really set up a focused content and just delivers consistently on being the resource, providing quality content that is around a particular area and then where I would take that is now monetizing that in a way. So I don't think she has and I don't know her, but I'm a fan. So Sally, if you're listening, I've got great ideas for you.

And she has. She was actually just on the podcast. So episode. It was one of these exact same kind of recap episodes. So episode 269, if people want to check that out, you can go to floodbagapro.com 269.

So for someone like me looking at that, I look at it and they say, okay, she has this amazing thing now, what are some additional products and services that she could charge for? Right. Maybe it's holding an online class about how to make something that's very difficult, especially right now. People are looking for online courses, they're looking for online entertainment. So you know, what if she hosted a Sunday brunch, you know, baking challenge and people opted in with payment to be able to come come into her kitchen and do that on a Sunday morning where she was making something like croissants or something. Right. Which is. I would, I personally would absolutely pay for that. To have somebody guide me step by step in real time in a community based situation. Another example of that would be something like the Blender Girl, Tess Masters, who I think you know as well. Tess has so much content on her site, like, and it's all around healthy, gluten free, vegan. And you know, she wasn't monetizing it in any products or service ways. But you know, I've been working with her to try to like say, okay, what are the products and services that can come out of that? And she has a monthly cooking club now which is, which is growing and that is like taking all of those things so someone can come into her world and get access to her information. But there's also an opportunity for that same person, whether it be Sally's baking addiction or the Blender Girl, to kind of come up with a membership or a subscription that people are having access to them live and being able to ask them questions live. So that's a way that it's like flipping the model of content first and then going into some type of subscription. So I just wanted to mention that because any, anybody that's out there with really solid content, solid following, but they really haven't figured out how to turn it into a business. I think you've done an amazing job at creating something focused with content. And those people that are out there, your followers would love to join you in something that was a little bit more intimate and community based. So I just wanted to mention that.

Can you talk about that, that last part? You say intimate and community based. And I think one of the challenges, we hear this a lot is people get really good at content. They get good at Instagram, they get good at creating content for their blog, they maybe get some traction. And one of the things you hear over and over, a few, few different kind of mantras like content is king. So you got to deliver, you got to have incredible content. And you also hear the importance of email. Like you got to get people to sign up for email. I think it sometimes breaks down or becomes difficult to understand. At what point does content become like content is king. And that's how you market by creating really good content. But then what's up? What's above that? And if you're creating really good tutorial videos, at what point do you say, hey, I'm going to transition this into something that's paid, like for a content creator? Where is the top of really good content that is free? And at what point does it tip into content that somebody actually has to pay for? And then my follow up question for that is going to be around email.

So I, you know, for someone that started out as their content being paid, I think there's, there is no tipping point. It's just a decision that you make. And so if you are producing great content and you have that feedback and you have an audience, then what I would say it's just a decision of how you can serve that audience with a, a product or a service. Right? There is no tipping point. At any time someone could decide that, you know, all the recipes on their site were going to be free, but their tutorials were going to be in a library that somebody, you know, paid $25 a year to be a part of that library and get any tutorial that they wanted. Right? There's no like, oh, I'm going to wait until this happens to be able to do that. And so I think content is king, but I think the way that people imagine it to be is a little bit problematic if you're starting out or trying to decide what to do best. Because content does not just mean like a blog post, right? So I know that there's many bloggers that have gone away from three posts a week to one post a week, but they're showing up in other areas. Like they might be showing up in Instagram live and doing a live cooking there. And that's, that's content. Right. So I think the idea of content creation can be more in real time. It can be more organic, which might take people out of that. The dread of I have to produce so many blog posts. I don't think that that is the model anymore. I think that people are moving. I know a lot of people in the fitness and wellness industry, especially like yoga instructors and fitness trainers, you know, they don't have time to produce online, like online blog posts, you know, video content. So they're just taking it to a live model and being able to share what they know and share their resources and that, that works for them because they couldn't back into the model of having a website doing blog post three times a week, you know, managing an Instagram. So I think the idea of content creation is really a personal choice. I just want people to know that content creation can mean wherever you feel best and the best way that you feel presenting it. You know, some people have YouTube channels only, and they don't even have a website, you know, so if that, if that fits for you, because you love to do videos, but you don't want to manage a website and manage comments and build a community on a website, then by all means produce content firstly, where it's most comfortable for you to produce it and what naturally fits your personality and your product. And then secondly, produce content where your audience is. Right. So people in the wellness industry, their audience aren't necessarily blog followers, you know, I mean, that's a mass generalization, of.

Course, but YouTube or Instagram or.

But they're. You're right, they're following in a different way. So I would. If I was a wellness person, I might have a landing page, but I wouldn't be producing content to be read and consumed by my audience, because that's not. They're. They're up and active, they're not sitting down. They want content that they can have while they're walking. So I think the idea of creating content, my biggest thing that I tell people, is make your content consumable to that one audience member that you're trying to reach. And consumable doesn't always mean, you know, it can mean anything across any platform. Facebook, Pinterest, you know, Instagram, YouTube, blog posts, like. And so that would be my content spiel.

Yeah, no, that's great. And I think that what it comes down to is communicating on the best platform for your audience and also the best platform for you. And I think sometimes people can get pinned down into thinking the best way to do it is a way that they've seen somebody else do it really well. But the thing is, chances are very high that that person is doing it really well because it's a platform that's really good for them. And I don't post many blog posts personally, but I do a podcast every week and I've done it for five years. That being a great example of a platform that looks a little bit different. And it's a medium and a way to deliver content that is consumable for people who have food and recipe sites, they're able to listen as they're working out or maybe preparing a recipe or whatever it might be. They can listen in the background. So it works out really well.

I think that's really important. It's really important to not overwhelm yourself with trying to be everywhere all at once. And that's the part about looking around at, you know, up and comers and competition or perceived competition, whatever you're thinking in your head about what's going on in the marketplace. It's really hard to look at people that are on their, you know, day 2005 and you're on day one and you look at them and you go, I have to have this and this and this. And it's like, no, overwhelming. And the way that they did it was to do it really well in one format before they moved on to the, to the next.

Yes, 100%. We see that all the time, both in hearing from people saying, I'm overwhelmed, I can't do it all, and in seeing kind of X ray into other businesses and knowing that usually people are good at one vertical and then the others kind of draft off of that. So like really good at Instagram and then the others kind of support Pinterest, YouTube, you know, Twitter, whatever. It might be really good at YouTube and then the other places kind of draft off of that really, really common. So one of the things that I want to get back to before I get too far away from it is this idea of email and calling out that one of the hard things if you are just content is you can build an email list. You can get a lot of people subscribing, but if you don't have anything to offer those people, there's kind of this question mark around, why am I doing this? And I think one of the great things about a subscription or a product or something that you're able to offer your audience is that it then offers you a really clear thing that you can leverage email for. So can you talk about some of the ways that you used to market the Fresh 20 and what you're doing now and maybe advice for people who are kind of curious around how they can market something that they are building other than just producing a lot of content.

So I used to only speak to my audience and my subscribers when it was like, here's an offer, here's a sale, here's a code for a sale, you know, and I didn't really talk to them. And in a way of like sending out, being resourceful every single week and being like, okay, like you're struggling with getting dinner on the table this week. Here are some, here's what's happening in my week and where I'm struggling. And so I'm kind of moving away from that idea. And I really want to move our content into a thing where every single week is something that somebody can open up and get a takeaway from and that we're in that transition right now. We haven't quite gotten there, but it involves being more personally invested in the messages and the content that you're putting out in your email. I just got one this morning that was amazing from, from a marketer and it was really interesting because I was like, this is. I would open this every single week because she just gave me, you know, like, she gave me information, she gave me additional resources, she didn't ask me for anything. She. It was just such a well written email that had so many resources for my lifestyle that I was really, really impressed. So I hope that to get the fresh 20 to that, that place in content creation where we're just complementing someone's lifestyle in a way that's valuable and useful. And so that when it comes down to email, you know, I was again, one of the failures that that happened in our company was we were just using email to push information, right? And now I would like to utilize email to support the lifestyle of my audience and the subscribers, which means probably linking out to lots of other different resources as well. And so I think that I still believe that email is the best way to build a business. You know, I think I have been one of the last people to adopt the social media. I'm not that great at it. I'm trying to be a little bit better. I've hired people to try and teach me about it. But email, I'm still collecting emails like, you know, thousands every month. So I, because to me that I own the email and I think I said this before five years ago and nobody can shut me down or take it away or, you know, anything. So. But the way that I'm using email is now it's. It's less about a promotional tool and more about, okay, like, what's up in my community this week? What. What can I. How can I serve them this week? What can I tell them that's going to make their week better, even if it doesn't loop directly back to my product?

I heard you mentioned that idea of transactional versus relational. Is that kind of getting at what you're referring to when you say that?

Absolutely. I think that. I think five, 10 years ago, as businesses started online and there was less distraction and less choices, it was easier to be a transactional company. I have this, you pay this, you get a welcome email and your login and best of luck. And then I think that companies overall, and certainly the fresh 20 kind of realized, oh, wow, to really have retention, you know, we need to build relationships and have our not be so transactional, but really invite our subscriber into this world of healthy living and planning ahead. And how can you do these things better so that you're thriving in the kitchen? Right. Because there's so many ways to do that just outside of just our subscription, that now I want to invite them and I want to of find out from them, like, what is going on? You know, it's kind of interesting. When I first started the business, like, maybe the first year, every single person that bought from me, I googled them to find out who are you.

A friend of a friend. Yeah. And then you start ego, Right?

Exactly. And then you start picking up steam and then you have, you know, tens of thousands of people and you can't do that anymore. But. But somewhere along the way, I feel like I lost that connection of like, oh, who is this? What are they doing? What's their biggest problem? What are they challenged with? Like, you know, how can they help them? Like, why did they raise their hand to have ours? And so I feel like from a content perspective and from a relationship perspective, I'm going back in that direction of like, well, shoot. Like, who is following me? And I didn't know. And it was really interesting. About a year ago, I posted something and there was this whole conversation going on on one of our Facebook groups and my customer service, one of the customer service gals shed said, you have to get in here. Like, this is really. This is really hot. Like, it's really. And what I realized was I had people that had been following me for eight years, and I didn't even know.

That Right, right, right.

And. And I kind of felt like, wow, how did I. I thought, you know, my lifetime value of someone was like a maximum two years. And then after. After three years of getting, you know, that. That's 150 meal plans, like, why would they ever continue to get them? And so that was a really aha moment for me that my. So much of my business was transactional and not, not, not founded in relationship and that. So a year ago is when it kind of clicked for me and I was like, oh, okay. Like, this is not okay that I'm this far away removed from what's happening with my community. And so I kind of made that switch and I'm going back towards that relational relationship factor in understanding and in doing that.

Are you thinking of a personal brand? Or would you say a brand that is personal? Because I think that's a really big consideration for a lot of creators. Pinch of Yum included is. Right now, Pinch of Yum is kind of a personal brand. It is Lindsay posting content to the blog. But the hard thing about a personal brand is it doesn't scale. Like, there is a really clear ceiling, and it has to do with the amount of time that the person who is behind the brand has to dedicate to the things that are clearly attributed to that person. And for Lindsay, it's like writing. It's probably recipe development, it's probably photography, but those are all the things that we're trying to figure out right now to see how personal can we continue to make it while also not having Lindsay get crushed under the weight of her being the brand. So what is your take on that for the fresh 20?

I mean, for me, it's a brand that's personal. So when I think about building to scale, for me, it's also building for eventual acquisition into, I would love to be absorbed by a health care provider or something like that, where my reach could be really massive and help more people adopt a healthy lifestyle. So I can't be the person. While I can be that, the leader of the brand, and I can inspire the brand as much as I want with my personal experiences, I have to remove myself from being the only force of nature that moves forward. So to me, that looks like how you bring others into the team, into the fold and invite them to have the conversations with your clients or subscribers, how you really tap into what the needs are of your people, how you spend the night, first 90 days onboarding somebody into your environment. So, I mean, that can be work that can be done on the upfront kind of create a campaign, if you will, of how you're going to tap in and give them resources and apps for their feedback during those first 90 days. That while being the same for everyone, it can definitely bring that personalized, personalized edge into their experience. And then I think you just, you have to think about, okay, what aspects, you know, I don't mind getting on Facebook and seeing what's happening in our group of subscribers and things like that. I just can't be the person that I like to go in and talk to people, but I don't want to be the person that is. Okay. We have to post 7 things in this group today, and we have to write stories around it. And I have to do that. That's just not organic enough for me. So I'm very off the cuff. I'm very like, the way that I participate socially is very organic. So knowing that I'd have to bring in team members that are a little bit more the nuts and bolts and things of doing things, and then I think it allows me the freedom to do what I'm doing is trying to build the business, but then also come in and look around. Somebody that does this really, really well is Marcia. And I might pronounce her name wrong. Kilgore. She is the CEO and founder of, of Beauty Pie. And it's a massive, massive company. But the way that she does it is by like the monthly check in with Marcia. And she's constantly giving, you know, advice. Even though it's from afar. It's very much vetted in helping her customer. So she's very aware of. Of who her customer is and what their needs are. So she can come in and check in and write pieces of content very sporadically. But her whole team is trained to kind of have relationships with the customers. And even to the point of, in her Facebook groups, she has like three or four advocates, right. That are answering questions on behalf of the. And so I think there's a way to, you know, when you have really great, great fans that have been with you for a long time, that there's a way to invite them into the fold and have them start being community leaders.

That's great. One of the. My favorite books around this topic is called Delivering Happiness. So, Tony, she started Zappos and it talks a lot about just how important customer service is and tell stories of like, you know, people asking customer support at Zappos for help, ordering a pizza and them doing it and kind of these funny, quirky stories. But how that was the Competitive advantage that they had being a shoe store at the time, it was like, well, you're selling shoes, that's a transaction. And it's interesting to hear you say, like, starting to realize the fresh 20 maybe was trending towards transactional and quickly correcting that, towards relational, knowing that there's a competitive advantage there. And Amazon acquired Zappos for like a billion dollars or something like that. And they talk about that being their, you know, competitive moat, for lack of a better word, being that they had such a strong culture and such strong customer support and therefore such strong retention for people who use Zappos because it was such a good experience. So I think it's a really important concept and takeaway for people who are building something.

I think staying the visionary, right? So, you know, Lindsay's the visionary and you know, she started it and she's shepherded, but she, there's a way for her to stay the visionary but then invite other people in to participate. And I think that, that once you get to a certain audience or you get to a certain level, it moves away from you being the frontman and then just becoming the visionary. That's like, to transition that people can make and still stay really, really strong to the core values and business mission.

Yeah, that's awesome. So last question that I like to ask in these kind of revisiting interviews that we're doing is what if it all went away? Like, I know it sounds overwhelming and maybe a little bit sad, but also maybe a little bit exciting. So you wake up tomorrow and you still have your knowledge, expertise, insight and the wisdom that you've gained from running a business for the past 10 plus years. But you didn't have any of the actual like assets, website team. What would it look like for you at a really high level to start and in what direction would you go?

Yeah, well, I think the choices are really, you know, there's so many multiples now, right? You've got subscription boxes, you've got, you know, media streaming, digital subscriptions, membership. I think that I would go back to using one social media tool, right? Picking one and really building an audience. And I would go out and I would tap into the conversations that were happening around my industry and my field and my particular area of focus. So I'll give you an example that is happening for me right now. I really decided that, you know, as a coach that I wanted to focus on wellness entrepreneurs. And so that wasn't a focus before. So I do have to build that from scratch. Even though I know that you Know, I'm a strong coach and I, you know, teaching passive and recurring income. But now I have a focus of, well, I really just want to help wellness entrepreneurs get to a passive recurring income because there's typically such an offline thing and I do have to kind of start from scratch. So I'm going in to groups, I'm having conversations with people about how is it hard to transition, especially during current circumstances. How is it hard for you to be like a physical therapist and have to figure out how to move online and, and really tapping into the conversations and trying to identify the biggest problems that they're having because if you can come up to solutions with those problems, you can scale very quickly.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, that's how I would do it, tap it. And that's how I'm currently, currently working on it. I'm tapping into those problems and really talking to people and getting in that conversation about the struggles that they're having and I'm building solutions for them. And that I think is the beginning of any good business, man.

I think that concept of really understanding a problem from a specific group of people and then doing whatever you can to help them solve that is such an important nugget for listeners to tuck away in a pocket and to keep with them because that's what we do and that's what, at its best, I think that's what business is, is helping people solve problems in the most effective, efficient and hopefully enjoyable way. And you actually referenced that in that last little section. We talked a lot about the fresh 20 and people can obviously Google that and follow along on the website or check that out as a service. But you're also doing coaching and have programs for people who are interested in, you know, starting to build out subscription elements for what they're doing. You kind of of mentioned it in passing, but can you talk a little bit more in depth about how people can connect with you and who might be a good fit for you if they're interested in working with you in that capacity?

Absolutely. So you know, you can always reach me@melissalands.com and I'm trying to make that like very current in real time. You know, there's been years I didn't update it, but now I'm like, okay, Melissa, get with it. And then also I am doing something called the subscription lab, which is, it's a three day workshop and it's really getting all of these questions answered and working on things like really identifying the problems that people solve and trying to get people to come from an offline environment where they might have built up a business either offline or through a blog. Or really teach them like how to make that a recurring revenue stream. Because like I said, I just, I really feel like that is a most direct path to creating financial stability is to have something that's passive income, that's recurring. And so the subscription lab really, we walk through all of those things so that by the time they leave at the end of those three days, they not only have they have their avatar mapped out, they have their offer mapped out, they have their marketing strategy mapped out and their technology stack. How are they actually going to present this to their audience? And I think that's one of the things that mainly a lot of coaches leave out is they teach the sales and the strategy and they don't teach the actual technical implementation of how to do it. So that's also something that we do in the subscription lab. So I'm doing that. The next lab is October 22nd, 23rd, 24th, but I'll continue to have them as long as people continue to be interested in building recurring revenue businesses.

That's awesome. And we'll be sure to link to any of those in the show notes so people can check those out really quickly. Melissa, so great to connect with you again. I always learn a lot and I know our audience will as well. So thanks for sharing everything that you've picked up for the first part of your business and then again over these last last five years and hopefully we can do it again a little bit sooner than five years from now. So thanks.

Would love to.

Would love to. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

And that's a wrap on this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thanks again for tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed this episode. With Melissa here hearing from her again after five years, it's pretty interesting just how subscription focused society is right now. There are a lot of subscriptions. While she was going through like the types of subscriptions that a typical consumer or some consumers have, I just thought that was really interesting because it kind of opened my eyes to how many subscription services that I use and how it could be a really great opportunity for a business. Food Blogger Pro included a WPT Tasty and nutrifox. We're all kind of included in that subscription bubble. But it could be a really great way if you find a way where you can help solve your readers problems with a subscription based business, it could be a great way to monetize. So I just love that episode. A really great reminder, and we hope you got a lot out of it. And if you did and you want to leave us a comment, you could either leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it really helps the show get in front of more people, or you could leave us a comment at the show Notes for this episode@foodbloggerpro.com 271 thanks again for tuning in this week. We'll see you next time. And until then, make it a great week.