276: Featured Podcast - Scaling Your Business & Providing Massive Value with Bjork on the Irie Lemon Podcast

Foreign. Hello.

Hello. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. I'm Alexa and we are so excited that you've decided to tune in today. Today's episode is actually a little bit of a different one, and that's because it's a featured podcast episode. And what does that mean? Well, it means that we're resharing an episode from another podcast, and that is the eerie Lemon podc. Liz from the food blog, the Lemon bowl, and Vincent from the restaurant Erie Kitchen started this podcast as a way to talk through their different perspectives and business models as entrepreneurs. They interviewed Bjork a few weeks ago, and that's the interview you'll hear today. You'll hear stories of how Bjork and Lindsay form their businesses, how Bjork stays inspired, and how he hires and delegates. It's a really good one. We're excited to share it with you. So let's dive in.

Okay, guys, let's get started. Episode 49. We're getting close to the one year mark.

All right.

And we've got a really special guest today, our friend, Bjork. My friend. Well, I should say soon to be friend.

Yes.

All right, Bjork, why don't you tell exactly. Tell everybody who you are.

Sure. So our kind of quick story. 10 years ago, over 10 years ago, which is crazy, my wife Lindsey decided that she wanted to start a website, a blog, and we kind of brainstormed together what that would be, how it would work. But it worked out really well because the things that Lindsay loved doing were things that I didn't necessarily love doing. She loved writing, she loved photographing, she loved recipe development. So we knew that the focus was going to be on food. I loved a lot of the stuff that maybe people would consider boring, the behind the scenes, the technical elements of running a website, monetization, even just the general business building functions. It worked out really well for us to partner. Lindsey took on the content, really learned how to do that well, and I took on a lot of the functions of the business that I really enjoyed. Together we started working on Pinch of Yum. And Pinch of Yum today still exists. Lindsey is in the studio office kitchen that we have right next to me right now, working on some recipes with Krista, our shoot assistant, who's so incredible as well. We've worked on this together over the last 10 years and throughout the process have realized, hey, not only are we interested and want to start a food and recipe website, Pinch of Yum, but we realized along the way there's a lot of other kind of correlated businesses that we could start. So we started a membership site for food bloggers called Food Blogger Pro. We have a podcast that we do on a weekly basis for Food Blogger Pro. We started a WordPress recipe, a WordPress plugins business for like recipe plugins or Pinterest optimization. Because we were doing that, we realized other people would need to. That's called WP Tasty. A nutrition analysis website called nutrifox. So we've kind of created these businesses along the way as we've seen a needle. And now those all live under a parent company that we call tinybit. And tinybit is all about kind of the ethos for how we operate in the world, which is showing up and getting a tiny bit better every day. Oh, yeah, call that 1% infinity. That's kind of our quick story.

I love that maybe it wasn't the first time you mentioned it, but I do remember it was many years ago. I was on a walk with a newborn baby, so had to have been a while ago, six or so years ago, when you talked about 1% to infinity.

Yeah.

Just remember I do take that with me every day and I'm certain that's been a huge part of my success. So thank you for that.

Yeah, for sure. I feel like it's. You know, I'm actually just started reading this book called Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Oh, I love that book.

And getting into it, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is exactly the same or generally the same concept. Which looking at it, when I see the word atomic, I think of like atomic bombs. So I think of like huge, like a big thing. But actually what it means is atomic, like an atom, like really, really small. And how do you make small changes that have a really big impact? So a great book to check out if people are looking to add something to their reading list. It's something that I've been getting into, but it matches up really well with the idea of tiny bit and kind of how we operate as people and as a company.

I agree with that.

So 10 years ago, were you in business or were you doing something totally different before you?

Yeah, it's totally different. Yeah, totally. So Lindsey was a fourth grade teacher and I worked at a nonprofit. So the nonprofit that I worked at was called Youth Frontiers. And Youth Frontiers really came out of Columbine. And this realization that for schools, one of the most important things isn't just if kids are getting an A in life or kids are getting an A in class, but also an A in Life and schools having this realization that culture, respect, kindness, courage, all of these characteristics that are really soft, hard skills to grade on, right. But super important skills for people to develop culturally and as individuals. So we would go around and we would do presentations with like a class of seniors or a class of fourth graders, and we'd talk about these things. Kindness, courage, respect. So I was able to do that and I loved it. But one of the things that happened was they had this position open up 10 hours a week to help troubleshoot the computers and work on the website. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm super interested in that. Can I help out doing that? So that was really my introduction in a professional setting doing computer and tech. And it was super enjoyable and I really loved it. And it kind of kicked off what already was an interest. Like, I was always the first friend to get an ipod back when it was like an actual hard disk and you could hear it spinning, hard drive inside. And my brother started a window washing company and was like, can I create a website for you? I was always interested in that. But my nonprofit work was really stepping into, like actually getting paid for that. And really where I started to learn a lot. And then that's where we kind of started the side Hustle. So Lindsey, early morning, late night, over lunch, she'd work on the site. Same with me. You know, I'd be learning things. It was listening to podcasts anytime that I'd be driving. And it started out like if you were to look at the, you know, 80, 20 split of time, it was probably like 5% of our time was on this side hustle and 95% was full time work. But that started to shift over time. And our story of transition was really one of slow, slow, slow transition from 10, 90 split to like 50, 50 to 40, 60 to eventually where we're working part time on our quote unquote, normal jobs full time on the businesses, and then eventually realized, hey, if we're going to do this, we got to eventually fully transition over to working on this full time.

So for people that are listening that might be wondering about that slow transition, how many years in were you with Pinch of Yum until you were able to quit your job, so to speak?

Yeah, for sure. So started Pinch of Yum in 2010, worked on that as a part time thing, both Lindsey and I, through 2014, 2015. So it was probably like four to five years of really consistent work on that. One of the things that's worth pointing out is that we were really early in our careers and working at a nonprofit and Lindsey was teaching, and we had actually just gotten back from a year overseas in the Philippines working at an orphanage. So the lifestyle adjustment that we had to make wasn't super huge because we weren't used to a corporate salary or we weren't used to this inflated lifestyle. So that was one of the things that was really helpful. We didn't have kids at the time and it allowed that transition to be a little bit easier because we knew that the expenses that we had weren't going to be as high as they would be now. Like when we have a house in the suburbs and we have our daughter and we have a dog and suddenly all of these things that add these recurring expenses, those didn't exist early on. So that was a piece of the equation. It wasn't just how quickly were we growing the business, but what did it look like for the businesses to sustain us. And in those early stages of our life, it was a lot easier for that to happen just because we still had the lingering college mindset in terms of budget and spending.

Yeah, it's always nice when you can kind of grow, you know, your family and all your other aspects of your life grew with your business. And as more things came into your personal life, you know, your business kind of grew with it, which is sort of. I have the same, you know, started in 2010, same thing. And, you know, I didn't have kids for three years and ironically didn't make money for three years. So, yes, point, it's easier. There wasn't, I think, that push to replace perhaps right away a six figure salary and that, you know, a month, you give yourself a month to do it. And yeah, yeah, pressure was not there, which in hindsight, pretty glad I wasn't.

Yeah, yes, totally.

So in that four to five years, did you guys ever think about quitting? Your family was like, what are you guys spending your time doing? Like, why you want to nonprofit? Or was everyone kind of supportive? Or you guys were just young? Like, what was like kind of like, what's going on?

Yeah.

Anyone that's listening? I think that could help them.

Yeah, totally. I think that. So part of our story was really early on with Pinch of Yam, I started publishing these reports. They started as just income, but then we started to publish Traffic as well. So it was this experiment where I had heard from. It was kind of like two fictitious characters on my shoulder. And one was this kind of genre of people who are saying like, hey, you can. You can kind of build anything online and create a community around that and create income around that. And the reason you can is because you can access the world. And chances are, if you're interested in it, other people are going to be interested in it. There's the Kevin Kelly, A Thousand True Fans. And that concept is like, hey, if there's, if you can get 1000 true fans, there's a really good chance that you're going to be able to create a sustainable business. If you're a musician, you know, if you are somebody who's opening a restaurant, if you are publishing content online. So there's, there's that character and then there's this other kind of character which is like, hey, if you're going to publish stuff online, especially if it's about food, there's no way that you can expect to make money from that and create a career around it. So it started for us as an experiment, like, hey, can we do this? Almost the motivation of somebody saying, no, you can't. Suddenly for us became like, well, I think we can. And so we started and it was like, we're earning $21 in the previous month from one ad that we had on the site. And as we started to figure out what it looked like to create an income from a website, as we started to figure out what it looked like to increase traffic, that started to go up. So it went from 20 to 50 to 100 to 1,000 to 5,000. So for family, I think who had been following along with the blog since the very beginning, they started to see that and they could understand this was developing into a business. I think where we found the most disconnect was like, when we moved, people were like, what do you do? And we were like, we have a blog. And it was almost like people didn't know how to respond. And there's part of it which is kind of like, it seems like I'm saying that as a, as a, like joke or to be self deprecating, but it was really true. Like people would, wouldn't know how to respond. And it was almost like it was us saying like, this is what we're doing until we figure out what we're doing next. And so people didn't know. Yeah, yeah, like people didn't know, do we ask more questions about it or will you be embarrassed to talk about it? So we had to kind of develop our pitch for what it was that we did when we would talk to people. And for us that developed into for people who didn't, wouldn't Necessarily understand it. When I'm talking to both of you, when I'm talking to this audience, people will understand it. They get it. But some people wouldn't. And so we had to pivot how we would talk about it. So we started to talk about it as like online magazine. So like, what do you do? Oh, we have an online magazine and there's this weird type of.

I should have done that the last time.

Right. But. But there's something about traditional media for a certain group of people that comes with a level of validation that doesn't exist with, with online media. Which makes sense because anybody can start a blog really easily. Anybody can start a website pretty easily. And so people don't know how to qualify. Yeah, people don't know how to qualify the success of something. But when we would change how we would talk about that, it would impact people's impression. One last story on the family side of things. It was really for extended family. It was really when we were on the local morning news that it solidified us as like, we've made it. And it was funny. Yes. And it's so non impactful.

I was just gonna say the least impactful thing. But that probably did impact your relationship and dynamic maybe with the family.

Yes, for sure. And I think our immediate family would get it. But like the general like not super connected family and friends. It was like once you're on the morning news making like pumpkin muffins or something, then it's. Gosh, it is. You know, we'd get messages, people would reach out like, it is so cool to see. And it's, they're like, your traffic must have gone through the roof. None of that stuff happens. But it's a type of validation in traditional media that allows people to say like, oh, I can see what you're doing. And now in my mind, this is a level of success that I deem like worthy of a text message.

So one thing that I've always admired about you is that you really do pull back. You know, you pull back the veil so people can really see what goes into running an online business. Because in addition to showing the income, which I know so many people are drawn to that and like, oh my gosh, blah, blah, blah, equally you showed your expenses each month, which I always appreciated because I don't think the average person, nor should they really understands that running an online business, especially one that's growing, the expenses grow too. And you know, expense lines were quite a few. And I think that was just so cool. So my question is what inspired you to really pull back that curtain and let people in and to really teach and educate others? I know Lindsay is a former teacher. I don't know if that was part of it, but I have a feeling this was your idea and I want to hear what inspired really show that.

It wasn't an original idea. There's a group of entrepreneurs who are doing kind of like this broad transparency movement, like, hey, we're going to talk about our business and have that be completely open. And you see that now with like for SaaS businesses, software as a service. So any business you pay a subscription fee for. There's a SaaS metrics company called Bare Metrics. They have a dashboard that shows a bunch of different companies and how much money they're making. So like ConvertKit is one that a lot of people might recognize. They show their own Bare Metrics dashboard. They talk a lot about what it's like to build a business. The ups and the downs of that buffer is a company that is that in a similar way. We'll talk about their. They have open salaries, they have all of their company documents exposed. The actual income report kind of structure was a business blogger named Pat Flynn who had a site called Smart Passive Income. So it wasn't something that was new to us, it wasn't something that I thought up. But what was new was maybe applying that to a brand of non business first type media. So a lot of those companies, they were like businesses for businesses and we were a business for consumers and talking about that process. So I think for me it's just something that I've always been interested in. I'm just fascinated by finance. I'm fascinated by personal finance. Those are the podcasts that I listen to, the books that I listen to, the books that I read. It's just something that's really interesting to me. And so naturally it was like, hey, if Lindsey has this category of thing that she's really good at, recipes, photography, writing, there's this thing that I'm really interested in. And it was like, would it work to kind of put this on the same platform that we currently have? And for a long time it did. And it was really fun to do that and a really fun experiment. But it got like a lot of experiments too. It got to the place where it was like, you know what? I feel like what this started out as isn't what it is right now. And it got to a point where the business had a certain level of success. But like anything, what gets you to where you are isn't going to get you to the next level. And what we found was the problems that we were starting to solve were problems that were, like, not super tactical and more like generally boring and uninspiring, especially for people in the early stages. So it was things like, what does it look like to hire a team? And that's super exciting for us, but maybe not as exciting for somebody who's in the early stages or just getting started. What does it look like to create a company handbook? Like, that's one of the things we're working on now. Really important. It's foundational for a team to have that, but not something that will probably spin up. And people who are following along with how we started our food blog would be really interested in learning. So it kind of got to the point where it started to feel like there's this concept with people who have success as a band and who don't iterate. They talk about you becoming a cover band of yourself where essentially you're covering your own songs. And I worried about those reports becoming a version of that for us where we weren't iterating and evolving. And suddenly it became like we were a cover band of ourselves. We were just using the thing that had made us successful to keep us successful in a certain category. So, like an example, being Food Blogger Pro really came out of a lot of people writing to us and saying, like, hey, we'd be interested in learning more about this. So from those income reports came Food Blogger Pro. But we wanted Food Blogger Pro to stand on its own. So at some point it's like, hey, this has run its course. We don't feel like they're as helpful as they are. We feel like it's maybe like lands weird to put these next to recipe content. So we started to move away from those. But it was really helpful for us kind of in the early stages to talk about that process, to talk about that transition, and to kind of do that as an experiment publicly.

Yeah.

Yeah. I love it. I was just telling Liz the next thing that I want to do is have that aspect to it is being transparent. Because I think, one, it helps you bring business in. Two, it helps you communicate to people who are just starting out.

Yes.

And then you can build another business like you have on the back of that. So it's a great marketing thing, but in America. And I think it's so weird to talk about money. It's so taboo, like how much money you don't have to how much money they make or how much Money, you just don't. Right. And I think a lot of people don't do business because of that. Cause they just, they're so stuck on the numbers.

Right.

And it's like, okay, well whether 50k a month, 100k, that doesn't really matter. But it is cool to show somebody like the process of $21 to that point. It took 10 years.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Because what happens a lot of times is you're now this big blogger guy. Your wife is this big blog woman. Oh, it must have been easy. Must have been overnight you're like, well, not necessarily like it started with $21. Right?

Yeah.

I think there's so many learning, especially for anyone that's young trying to start a business or just new into it. It's like, how do you do it? Like, how do you even price out? Well, they did it like this, so maybe I should kind of follow it.

Right?

Yeah, Blueprint. And I think that is inspiring to hear that you do it, that you did it and encourages me to do it for my next project. For sure.

Yeah, it's great. And I think the key thing to point out with that is when we were doing those, one of the things that people said a lot was like, oh my gosh, you must have ton of traffic on Pinch of Yum to those posts. And when you pull it up and you would look at it, even when we were doing those consistently, it was like low single digit percentage. Like it was really, really low. And Pinch of Yum. And that's one of the great things about kind of separating those out and us continuing to move Pinch of Yum into its own as like we are a food and recipe website, we talk about some like blogging and business things, but it's kind of standing on its own. One of the things though, if you are interested in doing that, that's important to point out is Pinch of Yum wasn't successful because of those things Food Blogger Pro was. And if somebody's thinking about building some type of like content or whether it be marketing content, whatever the category you'd put that in, make sure that you have something correlated to that that you want to support that. And for us that was Food Blogger Pro. And it kind of created this thing that then for me it's like, great. The thing that I love talking about business analytics metrics now this is the thing that I can kind of own and Pinch of Yum through this content marketing that we're doing, there can kind of support that. But it wouldn't have Been the same if we did that. Just siloed for pinch of yum. Because it's disconnected. And that's why you see companies like Bare Metrics or Buffer or, you know, any of these companies that are doing transparent type content. It's a type of content marketing that then brings in other businesses. So I think that would be the one, the one piece to it to consider if anybody else is kind of interested in doing that, is having something connected to that and also to make sure that it doesn't become, like, at its worst. I think it feels gimmicky and I think that's where it started to feel.

Towards the end, not feeling gimmicky in my mind because of your podcast.

Sure.

You had established trust. You had. I felt like, so I felt like I knew you, so that helped me. It didn't, you know, on Instagram you see like a random pop up for a course or a program. But yours. Yeah. What did. I'm sure you took some active measures to not be. What were those?

Oh, I think it maybe did to people towards the end. Especially, like, I think, I think once you lose the story of it, then there's a disconnect there. And I think that's as it got to the end. It's like, this is no longer an experiment. And that kind of ties into what I was talking about before. It's like the experiment has kind of been proven like you can build something in the category of food and recipe content that is exciting and interesting and a profitable business. And so at that point, then it's like, what is the experiment and what are we doing with these? And I think it became a really good way to introduce people to Food Blogger Pro. But I think if people didn't fully understand the roots of where it came from, then very quickly it started to feel like, why are you doing this? And like, this to your point, this isn't something that people normally talk about. So it felt uncomfortable in that way. I think in the early stages it was like, wow, this is really interesting to see how you went from $20 to like $2,000. And I can apply that. But once it got to a point where it's like, hey, the site made $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000, there starts to be a disconnect of like, why are you doing this? What is the reason for it? How does this apply to me? I think there still were takeaways, but there's. I think at its best, there's the takeaways and people have something where they're like, great, I learned this, I'm inspired. Maybe it's like a four minute mile. We've heard those stories where people are like, oh, wow, I realized this was possible and now I could do it. That's like the sunny side, the bright side, that would be the reason to continue to do those. But the dark side that exists in all types of social media is people feeling like what they're doing isn't enough or like they'll never get to that point and they're being discouraged by that and that I think the dark side of those was strong enough to let go of the light side and say, are there other ways that we can be doing this that has more light than dark? And it's not to say that it was a complete throwaway, that it was only bad. Maybe it was like 40, 60 good bad. Maybe it was like 55, 45 bad good. But it was enough where it felt like the majority, whatever that is, the majority of this has shifted at the point that we decided to stop into not being helpful as opposed to being helpful. So that was kind of the reasoning behind deciding to wind those down. But for me, I want to continue to talk about all things like business, self improvement. When I think of my mission, it's like, how do I help people, individuals become better and groups of people, teams become better. And if I can figure out ways to do that, great. And I'm not going to do it 100%. Like I'm going to show up and I'm going to fail. But that's what I want to try and figure out. And felt like for the at that point, it was like, I don't think this is in complete alignment. So that's the really long explanation of kind of the story of those, I think all tying back to the validation with family. Is that what those came out of? Like the question from 40 minutes ago.

That you asked, this is my biggest point. Like me, Liz been talking about, I feel like every entrepreneur there is that kind of chip or you do something different and it's not always negative.

Yeah.

Kind of. More like as human beings and in modern culture, we need things to validate ourselves. Right.

Yeah.

No longer a wheel and fire.

Yeah.

I was good enough way back in the day.

Totally, totally Fish.

I won the day. I could live off that for two years.

Yeah.

As a man, are you taking care of your wife and your daughter or your son?

Right.

Like, are you doing your job? As a man, is she doing her job? It's. There's so Much more. And I feel you're an entrepreneur and you're authentic and you're on the good side, right? Not the dark side. You are trying to be honest and trying to be good, but, you know, you can't deny that. Like, yo, like, I want this thing to work and I want it to be good, you know, that's why I'm doing it. And there's a little darkness that comes from there. Like maybe not your uncle not giving you a pat on the back until you run local news. You know.

It really is true. It's one of the things that I've been thinking about as it relates to my use of social media and the why behind that. It's a little bit different for me because, like, for Pinch of Yam, there's a really clear use for it. You know, for some of our other brands, Food Blogger Pro, there's a clear use of it. But for me personally, it's one of the things that I've wrestled with. Like, why do I have an account? And I think a lot of it, if I get to the core, for me personally, it's showing other people what I'm doing and some form of validation that comes from that. And one of the things that I wrestle most with is I think a lot of times as we share our highlight reel, it creates a contrast to the worst realities of life that never get shared that other people see. And I think, you know, it's one of the things that we have to struggle with as creators is how do we do that in a way that doesn't make people feel like the only thing we're sharing is our highlight reel. And to go back to the reports that we were sharing, it kind of felt like there were some parts of it that talked about, like, hey, here's the things we did that didn't work. But it kind of felt like sharing our highlight reel in a way that contrasted the realities of what it was to live life or to run a business. And so part of it was not wanting to contribute in that way. But that's a hard problem to figure out and to solve. It's like the social dilemma, which is the Netflix documentary.

I'm afraid I haven't yet. I'm scared.

So I have a question. You may not know how to answer this. How do you find your why and what matters most to you? And I noticed since you started, since you got on the call with us, that you, you are very story driven. You are very passionate. It isn't. What's the word? I'M looking for it is. You're not. It's not a facade.

Right.

So, like, how do you know? How do you find that? I think a lot of people struggle. Like, people always ask me, well, how do you know? I don't know how to answer that question.

Have you.

Do you know how to answer that question or have you found how you got to those? What's your steps?

Yeah, for sure. I think it's an everyday thing and it's. And it's a continual evolution, at least it has been for me. I kind of referenced it earlier, but what I've come to is to skip to the end. It's like, if I can show up and figure out ways to try and help people get better or groups of people, teams, that's a pretty clear why for me. I think there's two parts to this next statement. I think I feel pretty confident that no matter the level of success achieved, that it will never be enough to validate me internally. And so I think that has to come from like, the four or five or six people in my inner, inner circle. And it's immediate family, it's maybe like three to four friends. It's Lindsay, it's my daughter Solvi. It's. It's that group that when you distill it all down like, that's. That's what's going to really matter. In terms of what does that look like for me to have an impact on them and them to have an impact on me? I think once going outside of that, then the question is, what does it look like to show up and do work every day? And I think if I can be doing work that is twofold in an area of interest and passion and feasibility to pay the bills. So, like kind of the functional part and the category of a need for it in the world, and as much as those things can overlap, then, then all the better. And I feel like some days I feel like I'm really aligned with that, and other days I don't. An example would be, I'm interested in commercial real estate. What does that look like for those two things to overlap? In one sense, it could be numbers. And you can purchase a building and it can create income and can have tax incentives or. And this is what I've been trying to do as I think about commercial real estate, and I'm not there yet, but I continually remind myself, what does it look like to create a building environment that for a retail shop owner or a restaurant they're proud of, it's continually updated it's clearly communicated what's happening. It's a fair lease. And that's where that overlap starts to happen. It becomes not just about numbers, but how do I create something that allows somebody to be their best self or group of people to be the best version that they can be in terms of what it takes to like, the steps to go through to get there. There's a book called Designing youg Life. And one of the exercises that they have in that is to go through each activity that you have every day and do like a little gauge of. Of. Is this draining me? They have it as like a fuel, like empty to full. Like, is this full or is this empty? And so on the side of passion and purpose and fit, I think that that's an exercise that you can do. One of the things I've been thinking about is this concept of every day enjoyable. How do you make every day enjoyable? And there's always going to be things that aren't enjoyable as part of your day, but to the degree that you can make it possible, how do you make every day enjoyable? I enjoy talking to both of you. Okay, so that's interesting. How do I figure out how to do more of that? I don't enjoy reviewing contracts for like sponsored content. Okay, how do we make sure that that's not something that I'm doing a lot of? That's like the passion side of things in terms of like figuring out your why? I don't know. I think it's. It's been a continual wrestling for me. I'd be interested for both of you what that has looked like. It's kind of flipping the interview. But I do have a podcast, so I feel like I can use one reverse question. But what does that look like for both of you to think about your why behind the work that you do?

I mean, for me, it was certainly having achieved weight loss 15 years ago. Once I realized I never thought I would ever achieve weight loss success or being a healthy weight. And if I can do it, I just feel like empowered to show that anyone else can do it and also show people that it is manageable long term and it doesn't need to be with any sort of fad diet or getting rid of entire food groups. I just want to show people that you can live a healthy life and still travel, go out to eat and have a social life. So that just like my biggest why was I'm so happy and feel so good physically and mentally. I want others to feel that too. And if I can help you know, if I can help others vibrate at that same high level like I do, that would be a big why. And obviously, of course, now I have children, so of course you, you know, with kids it's like you just want to show up and be present and be there for them. And then of course, you know, this year has been crazy and we're together constantly. So I'd be lying if I said every moment was like a precious moment. But I think right now I'm just trying to show them that it is possible to follow your dream and to live the life of your dreams. I feel like I have designed the life of my dreams. If I can show my kids that and that it's possible. That huge to me, ironically, yesterday I went through everything I do because it's been a few years and I basically checked off. Does it require my expertise? Do I enjoy it?

Yeah.

Do I not enjoy it and does it not require my expertise and everything that didn't require my expertise and I don't enjoy. I'm creating a new position for it. So it's funny that you mentioned that.

With the contract and I feel like totally. The hard part with that is like there is a period where you just kind of have to eat dirt and do the things that you don't. But then I think what the interesting observation is like, there eventually becomes a time where you're eating this dirt and then you're like, wait, there's like this other person who. This doesn't taste like dirt. This tastes like chocolate, chocolate pudding. And it's so good to them. And it's like. And then you realize, wait a minute, this isn't dirt, this is pudding. And I just don't like the taste of it. But, but so you can bring that person. Person in, but for a while it's like you have to do the things that you don't enjoy. And that's, I think it's worth calling out as I think about for myself too. There was that period of time where as I'm designing my life, it's like, hey, this takes a lot out of me. Contracts being an example. And I still need to do it. So for those who are listening, if you are in that stage, know that it's not like for me, at least for our story, that it's like you figure out how to get rid of that right away.

I mean, it's like exercise. There's certain things that I still hate to exercise, but humans are like the only species can delay short term gratification and for long term benefit. So obviously those contracts provide many long term perks. And anyways, not everything in life. But to your point, if you can find someone that it tastes like chocolate pudding. All right, Pum's your why.

So I think we are both three fours. You said something like, it may never be enough, but certain people validate you.

Right?

And my favorite artist is Drake. And he has a line that certain people need to tell me that they're proud of me.

Say it again.

He said, certain people need to tell me that they are proud of me. And so I have that where like 100 people can tell me that they're proud of me and does not connect. But like, my sister says it to me. That's it. That's all I needed.

Right.

And so I think as threes, we struggle with finding out really deep what it really is. Because people always asking. I'm like, yo, I don't know, like. Because like, you're saying commercial real estate, like, for me, it always going to be something else that I can build, right? And it's not really a house, and it's not really a car. It's not really a chain. That's not what I'm doing it for. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I don't know why. It's just kind of who I am. I kind of related it down to the point where there's some sort of chip that has happened in our youth. Like, you just want to do it.

Yeah.

You just want to win. It's instilled in you. And it could be a kid made fun of you. It could be the girl you wanted said, no. It could be you, like, winning early on. It could be, oh, I got the first ipod and I heard it spinning. And that made me want to be like Steve Jobs. Like, we don't really know what sparks it, but once it's lit, it doesn't go out. Like, yo, I don't know what it is. I'll never stop. You know, first I felt guilty for it, but Now I'm only 24, but I don't feel guilty like, I'm going to be.

What do you think changed in order for that to happen? Not to feel guilty about it.

I realized that, like, it's who I am and I can't feel for who I am.

Yeah, yeah. Because.

And then what happened, honestly, is that, like, I was trying to maybe mimic in. In a gimmicky sense, other people that I thought I wanted to be like, Right. And I don't know, this is true for you, but you get around them, you realize, I don't want to be anything like them.

Yeah. They say, never meet your idols. Is that right?

So, like, never meet your idols.

Right.

And then I realized that I don't want to be second or third anybody else. I don't. I don't want to because, like, you're always trying to fit into a box that wasn't meant for you. You might be a triangle you're trying to fit in a box that's like, you're not going to fit in that box, you know?

Yeah.

And also, I just think, oh, go ahead.

Well, it's interesting when you say that. I think there's something to be said as creators about having those people that you can emulate in order to understand who you are. But I think you kind of need that. It sounds like that's part of your story is having those people to aspire to in order to realize how you will be similar or different. And I think music is a really good example of that. Like, when you're first getting started out as a musician, it's like you play like John Mayer riff or Jimi Hendrix riff, and you try and do it exactly like John Mayer did or exactly like Jimi Hendrix did. And then eventually you kind of can add your own flair to it. And you realize it has been a bridge to get you to the point where you can solidly stand on who you are and what you're about. But that can take a lot of time. And it sounds like that's been a journey that for you, in some way have kind of gotten to a point where you're like, hey, I have a pretty clear understanding of who I am as this current version of myself, if I be honest.

Like, it grows every day. I think, yeah, maybe as anagram threes. I don't know that you can chalk everything up to that. I just think we're just so used to emulating. And eventually you're like, well, I don't like dirt.

Yeah, right, right, right.

I do not enjoy this dirt thing.

Yes, totally.

No one's. No one's really watching. No one really cares. Like, the people you're doing it for in your head. Right? Like, in your head, I'm doing it for you. They don't care about that. Then you're like, well, then what am I doing?

You know?

And so. But it does take a while for you to get to that point. I feel like.

Right.

Like, yeah, you need to under. Like, you need to do it someone else's Way before you want to do your own way.

Yes, for sure. Yep. Yep. And one of the things that's been helpful for me that may or may not be helpful for other people is, and it kind of kind of sounds morbid, but like, this extreme clarity and understanding around the reality that I will be forgotten. And that is at its worst, really sad, but at its best, really freeing. Because no matter the level of success that I achieve, like, it will never be enough for people to remember me. Even my own family passed two or three generations. And I think that has allowed me to be to slowly and not immediately and always moving towards better, but move towards a more genuine version of who I am, knowing that I'll be forgotten. And that doesn't mean that the things that I'm doing won't have an impact, like how I love my daughter, how I love my friends, how I love my family, the work that I put into the world, this conversation that we're having can have deep and lasting impact on people. But in terms of, like, me as an individual legacy, the legacy of Bjork Ostrom, like, that will very quickly evaporate once I'm away. And being okay with that is a version of, like, freeing and foundational to the process, I think, of understanding yourself. At least it has been for me.

Yeah. Okay, I have a question for you. So we're both 10 years into our blogs and other ancillary businesses, so one question I have for you is if you could touch upon your transition from Solopreneur, where it was pretty much just you and Lindsey, you didn't have a huge team of people and into becoming entrepreneurs. And were there any sort of maybe pain points you had to break through or lessons you learned from that? Because I find that that's certainly something that I'm going through right now. So any advice you could offer for people that as they are growing their businesses and adding to their team, what was that transition like for you?

Yeah, a few quick things are off the top of my head. So you had talked about this, Liz, but like, going through the process of things I do, things I don't do. And a couple categories for those boxes would be things I'm good at, things I like, things I'm not good at, things I don't like. If you have things that you don't like and you're not good at, those are great things to get rid of right away. And then it's probably goes to things you're not good at, but things you enjoy. So if you're not Good at them, you should get rid of them. And then it would go to what, what would it be the opposite of that? Things.

He doesn't need your expertise or.

Yes, exactly. So, and then what does that look like to pass those things off? I think it's what we found in the early stages was the best place to connect with people would be like friends of friends or friends in a contracted position. Contractor versus employee. So an employee would be somebody who's like a W2 team member. You have more kind of. There's a lot of IRS regulations for those in the US around what an employee versus a contractor is. Contractor would be more. They don't have hours, they use their own computer, they have kind of a general assignment and they kind of move towards it versus really specific tasks they have to do. But in the early stages, hiring somebody in a contracted role, you don't have to take care of taking their taxes out. You maybe pay a project fee or an hourly basis to say, hey, you know what? I'm going to hire friend of a friend. Maybe they're in college and they have 15 hours a week to help with this category of things that I'm not good at and I don't enjoy doing, but that need to happen for my business. That's a great place to start. It's going to be the easiest to kind of onboard in that way. I think the next question that you should ask yourself if you're working on that is, do I want to make the transition fully or partially from maker to manager? Because once you start that process, it's not like it gets away from you and then you're off and you have to be a manager. But once you start the process of building a team in some capacity, you are going to be a manager. And that is, you might have passed off one thing in order then to add another thing that you're not good at and you don't want to do, which is managing people. And I think sometimes as it relates to job satisfaction, people feel this initial spike of like, oh my gosh, I don't have to do this anymore. But now I have to help create accountability around this new function that has to get accomplished. And that might be a new stage of dirt eating, which is managing until you get to the point where you potentially have somebody who comes in and kind of acts as the manager of people. But I think more than anything, it's understanding that that will happen and that will feel different and it's a new version of who you are. It'll be New skills that you have to develop. It'll be new systems, and in a lot of ways you'll be starting over. And I think the question is, are you comfortable enough starting over and are you committed to building this thing, whatever it is, to the next level? It might be okay to say no. And you're going to stay at that certain level. You're not going to scale and you're going to hit capacity for what you have, and you're going to be comfortable knowing that that's the best version of what work looks like for you. But you might also fall into the category of saying, you know what, I'm okay in service of building this thing that I'm building. Starting over again by thinking about how do I build a team, how do I recruit really well, how do I create clear deliverables and find people who are aligned with work? But it's a very different category. And I think when it comes down to it, then it's finding people who are a good fit within the structure of the thing that you're building, which is really hard to do. It's a hard thing not only to find those people, but to find people and to continue to grow along with them within your business. Because if you find good people, those are going to be people who are growing, and if they're not growing within your business, they'll quickly realize there's a cap to this and there's other opportunities to grow more beyond that. But I'd be interested. Do you feel like there's certain things that you're coming up against? I could name off all the things in our journey too, but.

Right.

Yeah.

So right now I'm at the point where I have quite a decent sized team of contractors and I find that I'm spending too much of my time just managing that whole team. So I'm getting to the point where I would like to find someone almost like an operations manager, just to kind of oversee the whole crew of people, you know, make sure that deliverables are being done, you know, make sure things are getting accomplished. If there's questions that come up, you know, I don't necessarily. I feel like right now I'm like the bottleneck that has to, like, I know, has to answer every question that approves everything, etc. So I'm actually taking right now an entrepreneurial management course, which we can link to the show notes here. It's through the Life Coach School podcast. And it basically walks you through the transition essentially from solopreneur to entrepreneur, where now I'm becoming really more of a CEO. It's going to help me create the structures, the systems, even in terms of hiring and all that stuff.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Not like, of course there's certain many aspects of this that I've touched, but I think it's always good. I'm at that 10 year mark to kind of step back. My business has grown. I now have Ivory Lemon, we have a podcast, we have a mastermind. So my business looks very different now than it did three, four, five ago. So I think it's time to go back to school and really create those structures and systems and even just back to like reshaping my mission and all that. Like, you know, it's like going back. I mean, this is the kind of school I want to go to. Like, this is my totally. I'm like an entrepreneur in spirit and spirit and I mean, I gave up my photography for the blog and you know, year four or five. So I'm okay with relinquishing some of that content creation. I really want to be an entrepreneur. So I think I'm just right at that point of trying to figure out how to best structure the company and the team, you know, hiring and all of that stuff. So I'd be curious from you in terms of as you've grown your team, what are some of the roles? I mean, obviously so many bloggers, we go right to finding someone to handle social media, but what are some of the roles you brought on board that maybe people don't even like? For example, it wasn't until recently I even knew I could hire an operations manager.

It even been like, oh my gosh, this is a role. Yeah.

Oh my God, that's what I need. So what are some roles that you have that have been hugely impactful to kind of helping you, you know, scale and grow and even just keeping your balance, you know. You know, you have one to come and you have a daughter that's younger than mine. So, you know, you probably maybe even want to shift that work life balance a bit. So what roles have been super impactful for you that maybe people don't even realize? P.S. you can hire out.

Yeah, Well, I think a really interesting case study that we've just gone through the process of transitioning is with Pinch of Yum. So we have Tinybit, which is kind of the parent company over these other companies. And my role is kind of leading Tinybit, whatever you want to call that, as like manager, president, CEO, CEO. Feels like a little bit like you put it on Your business card. And then it's like, we still have a really small team.

So it feels weird to say that.

Yes. So I've always really struggled with what that title is. I think it's essentially leader. Leader of tinybit. But tinybit has a position of general manager for any of the operating entities. We'd call them. So Pinch of Yum Food Blogger Pro, WP Tasty. And the interesting thing with Pinch of Yum, looking at that as a case study is we have Jenna on our team, who's general manager of Pinch of Yum. So the transition we just went through, technically, like if you were to look at an org chart or whatever you'd call it, Lindsay would have a role under Jenna as like director of content or kind of content lead. So her focus is on recipe development, it's on photography, it's on writing, it's on kind of like pulse. Like, what are the things that would be good to write about? We did. Just did the We. I had zero to do with it. So we is really generous. The Pinch of Young team created a instant pot roundup recently that was really awesome. Like, brainstorming around that stuff is within Lindsey's wheelhouse. But Jenna is kind of, whether we call it operations or like Day to day, is now really overseeing that. So again, it's important for people who are listening in the early stages to know this is year 10 for us. And we just made this transition. So it's not. It could be something you're doing early on, but the point is with that kind of back to the earlier conversation, it's focusing on the things that are your core competency. And in going through some of these exercises, realized like the things that if we did a test of get it wants it capacity to do it, which is a part of, kind of similar to what you're talking about, a framework that we're doing called eos. We did that test with Lindsey. Get it wants it capacity to do it. She gets it has the capacity to do it. But for the role of general manager for Pinch of Yum didn't want to do that. That's not what she wanted her day to Day to be. And so then it created this problem for us in the best way possible. Like how do we solve for this in order to free. Free, free that up? So that would be a big one. Yeah. Bookkeeping is huge. So love the idea of having super clean books. So we have a really good understanding of the. Where each business is at from a revenue and expense perspective. We use a company called pilot pilot.com to do all of our bookkeeping and they really understand startups and online businesses. We just hired on a fractional cfo. So somebody who really understands the high level number side of things. That's been really impactful having somebody who's really good at technology. So we have somebody who kind of is in that fractional. This is a contractor position kind of CTO role, if you'd give it a title that we can go to. And we have questions around WordPress or development related stuff. And that's Daniel. Daniel's an incredible developer that we work with, I think somebody to manage the interactions that we have. So emails that are coming in, reaching out for contact forms, comments on the blog was a really important position. And then some of the other stuff that people think of right away. So any of the places that you need to be consistently showing up but don't require you to be the one showing up, like essentially it's pushing that content into other places, whether that be social media or email has been really important. We have somebody on our team who does writing. So her background is in theater and writing and stand up comedy and improv comedy. And so she really, Rita really understands words and how to put words together in a way that's entertaining. And so she'll do the captioning for Instagram stories for Pinch of Yum. So she's able to layer those on. So again, all of that stuff over the past 10 years, really the past maybe like three years that we've started to fill in those positions. But those are the things in the early stages we have to decide am I going to do this or am I not? Because you probably don't have the budget to hire somebody to do it. And not that you never will, but at some point you might and at that point you can bring somebody in and do it. But sometimes you just have to decide like I'm not going to do this. And some of those things existed for us in varying levels in the early stages until we could hire somebody and bring them in.

Right, right.

I think that's so true. I think the big question is like what do you want to happen? And then be honest with yourself like what your skill sets are. So I'm definitely a tiny bit kind of guy. Like I owner, I'm not really necessarily the founder. I'm definitely not really a good day to day CEO. And so my brain, that's how I break down people's talents and like, okay, are you the star? Like do you like being in the.

Whole thing being there, you have the magic fairy dust. Lindsay and I talk about that like, it's. You can't distinguish what it is, but it's, like, star quality for some reason.

And it's always on. It's never off, so. I've learned that from watching the Michael Jordan documentary.

Yeah.

From day one.

Totally. It's so inspiring. Lindsay and I would watch those episodes, and after each one, we're like, gosh, we just want to be great at something.

Like, you just watch he was 19, 20, 21, 22. And he'll say something and be profound, Right?

Yeah.

Okay. So he's a star. That's who he is.

Yeah. Yeah.

Then there's, like, the Phil Jackson, like, the coach.

Yeah.

Like, he understands. Okay. I'm working with all these stars. They're all great. They're all different.

I'm gonna let Dennis go and hang out in Vegas for a couple days, but I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna let Steve Kerr do that.

Exactly.

Right. Yeah.

They know how to use those pieces. Like, maybe Liz is that right now, like, with her team. And, like, okay, I know how to use this person to the max.

Yeah.

To help win US Championships. For you, it might be a million dollars to Whatever. Whatever. The dollar amount is cool. But win champion, and then there's, like, the owner.

Right.

And I feel like that's me. Like, where you. Not necessarily don't really know what's going on. Like, you know what's going on, but, like, you are, like, trying to build the bulls and, oh, I want a new arena. Oh, you know what I'm gonna do? Start selling. I'm gonna start selling water bottles and, like.

Yeah. Visionary.

You know, and then you start having people, like, build those verticals out for you. And that is also a skill because you also know how everything runs from a system side of it, so it's actually a skill. Like, how do you think? And so sometimes it's great when you start in the beginning to work your way up and you start learning about yourself. Like, okay, I'm a systems thinker. So for you, like, you can have those silos. That shows me that's how you think about it.

Yeah, yeah, totally. You.

To be like, okay, what I need for pitching, I was a general manager. Okay, cool. What I need for this, I need a CFO here. Okay, cool.

And so then.

Okay, my time's free. I'm not looking at contracts. We're now doing a tiny bit real estate.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, right, right. And I think the key to that too is there's two kind of mantras that I've had that kind of complement each other and I've tried to challenge myself with. One is intentional ignorance. And intentional ignorance, meaning are there things that I can give to people and trust them with that in a way where it'll happen and I don't need to know every little thing that's going on with it. And complementing that is radical delegation and saying, here's the thing that we're looking to do and trust you to go and do that. And I think back to the Phil Knight example is or not Phil Knight, Phil Jackson example. There's varying levels of comfort with people with all of those different things. But I think, to go back to an earlier conversation, it's finding people who, when you do have that radical delegation, it's in an area that they're really excited about, that they're interested to learn that they're excited to be working on it. And I think that's part of the key of working with people is, hey, it's not like Michael Jordan was doing that in service to Phil Jackson. Like, they were equally together doing the thing that they enjoyed in order to become the best version of themselves that they could be. I think as we think about working with people, it's one of the things that I try and challenge myself to think about is how are we doing this in a way that is beneficial to the people that we're working with, whether it be a company, kind of a faceless company, a contractor, a team member. With a company, it might look like if it goes really well, saying, hey, can we do a testimonial? It's been great. With a contractor, it might be willing to make other introductions to people who they can work with. With a team member, it's thinking about how do. How do we fit in career development for them? So they're working on the things that they're interested in becoming better at. Those are the things that by no means we're perfect at, but are good considerations. And see a lot of kind of those parallels with the documentary, the Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan documentary, What is it called? Last Dance. That's what it is.

Last Dance.

Yeah. So good.

Okay, so we can't wrap this up until you tell us a bit more about Food Blogger Pro, because we might have some listeners that this might be beneficial for them. So why don't you tell us a bit about it? And even just. I know you touched upon it in the beginning, but what your inspiration was for, you know, Again, you started with a food blog and then you decided to take it another step further and help others almost not. Not mimic, but have their own form of success in the food blogging world, which I just think as a food blogger is the coolest thing ever. So, yeah, just about it for people that might not be familiar.

Sure. So it's. People describe it as a membership site which essentially is, you know, it's like Netflix. You sign up for a month, three months, six months, whatever it is, and you get content delivered from you. The difference is instead of Netflix delivering the Last Dance, it's Food Blogger Pro delivering tutorials on how to use Google Analytics. So it was a lot of the questions that we saw people having questions about, whether through email or in conversations, hey, how do you take better photos? How do you shoot video? How do you use Google Analytics or Google Search Console? What are some of the things that you guys are working on right now? All of that content lives under Food Blogger Pro and is for people who are building a brand in the food and recipe niche online. One of the conversations that we're having is like, hey, it's not just about blogging. It's still called Food Blogger Pro. There's probably a rebrand that should be in our future to kind of encompass food entrepreneurs who are building things online.

Now that you say that so much of that is super relevant to any.

It'd be relevant to like a food truck to somebody who's building their YouTube first account. So I think that that's something that we've been talking about and need to consider because it's a really big pool of people who want to build something online. And I think one of the things that's kind of fun to think about with opening that up. This is a little bit of a tangent, but like, how helpful for somebody who's like food Blog Forward to be able to talk to somebody who has like a food truck and say, here's some of the things that you can do with that website or somebody who is like YouTube forward to help somebody who has a blog and wants to do more video and vice versa. So there's some cool overlap that can happen that already does. But it's important for people to know it's not just people who are blog forward that can benefit from Food Blogger Pro. So you can check it out, some good ways to start for free. If you don't want to sign up and be a member. We have a podcast, we have a blog that you can go and read some of the articles that we have on it Alexa on our team, who's the general manager for Food Blogger Pro, sends out a monthly update with kind of like a recap of things that are happening in the industry. So there's lots of free ways, content that we're producing kind of in the same way that you guys produce content that we're putting out into the world that people can follow along with without signing up for a membership right off the bat. And that's usually the easiest way to start.

Yeah, I think that it's. I highly recommend the podcast to so many people. Like, like you said, I don't know, it's. I'm sure it's the name, but you're right. I mean, it would apply to so many different people.

Yeah.

Many business owners, especially online business owners. I mean, anyone should be on Pinterest that's trying to, you know, if you've got. I just, like. Yeah. So the other thing that I just think is such a great takeaway that I want our listeners to really get from this is that if you have a pain point that you can solve for people, you know, you think about what are the dms you're getting all the time? What are the. What are your customers asking you in the restaurant over and over again? What are the same comments you're getting over and over again? You know, what do people ask you about your customer, whatever it might be, you found a way to really help as many people as possible on a much bigger, bigger scale. And I just think that's so inspiring and smart. And I think so many of us can do that in all the capacities. And if there's something that people are asking on a regular basis. Yeah, you're an expert of it in some way.

Yeah. And it's the analogy that I give, or maybe the visual I like to paint is like ear to the ground. And it's like when you put your ear to the ground, what are the things that you hear is kind of the. The repeating asks or problems essentially, exactly like you're saying. And to remind people, you don't need to be the ultimate expert, you just need to be expert enough. And sometimes, like, when it comes to taxes, it's going to be a lot more helpful if, like, my neighbor who's really smart with taxes but doesn't work for the irs, explains the code, tax code to me, then if, like, the guy who wrote the tax code explains it to me, and if you are expert enough, you could be at an advantage to speak in a way that people can understand and Helps them get to where they need to get in a way that somebody who is the ultimate expert wouldn't be able to do, because they are almost too expert. So don't discredit yourself if you feel like you're. If you're not the ultimate expert.

I love that.

I always say good enough is good enough.

Yeah, totally. Totally. I love that.

All right, Bjork, thank you so much for your time. Where can people connect with you? And we will, of course, have links in the show notes, but where I know you're not on every social tab.

I don't think I'm on any now after watching this social dilemma.

FoodbloggerPro.

Yeah, food blogger Pro. Or you can just drop me an email. Bjorkoodbloggerpro.com and certainly you guys subscribe to the podcast immediately.

It's one of the most valuable. Bjork is an incredible interviewer. I feel so selfish right now that we should have had you lead the whole thing.

No, it was awesome. It's super fun to be on the other side of the mic.

Yeah. I love your podcast. So everyone subscribe. We'll have the link. Bjork, thank you so much for your time today.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

And that's a wrap on this special featured episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thanks again for tuning in today. Like Bjork mentioned at the end of this episode, if you want to learn more about who we are, why we do what we do, and how we help bloggers get a little bit better every day, forever, you can check out our website@foodbloggerpro.com there you can join our email list and download Our guide to 16 ways you can monetize your site for free. You can also learn more about what you can get access to as a Food Blogger Pro member by going to foodbloggerpro.com/membership. Foodblogger Pro is made up of nearly 2,000 bloggers, all working towards goals of monetization, traffic, and more. Food Blogger Pro members are just so hardworking, inspiring, and open to share their strategies and thoughts to help you reach your goals. I'm constantly inspired to be a part of this community, and we're just so thankful to work alongside all of you every single day. Again, if you want to learn more about the Food Blogger Pro membership, you can go to Food Blogger Pro. And that does it for us this week, friend. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you next time. And until then, make it a great week.