317: Optimizing for Growth - Developing Habits for Long-Term Success with Nisha Melvani

This episode is sponsored by our sister site, Clarity. You've heard me talking about Clarity quite a bit on the podcast now. It's the first ever official sponsor we've had. It's kind of fun because it's a sister site to Food Blogger Pro, so it's all kind of in the same family, but we're saying, hey, Clarity, we want to not only test out doing ads on the Food Blogger Pro podcast and get a feel for that, but we also want to give some exposure to Clarity, this tool, because we are really excited about it and we have a lot of folks who have signed up who are using it. It's really fun for me to go in and see some of the conversations are having. We have this Slack group where people are sharing the ways that we're that they're using it. Some insights that they've had, feedback on the tool. We're still really early stages with it. So it's been a really exciting process for us to get this tool up and running. Clarity really exists because what we found with Pinch of Young was that we had this huge spreadsheet and we're using it to keep track of changes that we were making. We were using it to do campaigns. So, like, an example of a campaign that we did a long time ago was like, we want to go through every single post and make sure that nutrition information was added to the recipe. We wanted to go through every single post and make sure that every image had alt text. We wanted to go through every single post and make sure that we were strategic about how we were linking, internally linking and external links, and all of that was managed through a spreadsheet. We said, anytime you're doing something with a spreadsheet, there's actually probably a good chance that you can build a software around that. And that's what Clarity is. C L A R I T I and we're in the early stages, but Clarity as a tool is going to be able to help you right away. When you sign up, first thing that you're going to notice is you're going to sync up your WordPress information and your Google Analytics information. That sync is then going to happen automatically. What's great about this is you have WordPress and you have Google Analytics, but rarely are you able to see those things in the same place. So Google Analytics is going to be put right alongside your WordPress information so you'll be able to filter really easily and say, hey, show me the content on my blog. Within the last 30 days that has gotten the most Traffic. And then from there you could say things like, show me of those pieces of content. The content that has gotten the most traffic but is, has broken links or missing alt text images. That's the type of filtering that you can do within Clarity. Another thing that you could do is you could say, show me the, the from the last 30 days, show me the most popular content. And then you could create a campaign around that and you could say, you know what, I think it's more important for me to add video content to my most popular recipes as opposed to adding video content to new content. Because especially if you are running like a pre roll video ad player, ad Thrive, mediavine, something like that, you're going to be able to immediately see a revenue increase from adding video, especially video that has ads that are running against it on popular content. So maybe you could justify that and say, hey, this piece of content is actually getting a lot of traffic. It doesn't have a video. These five pieces of content, I want to bundle these together and create a little campaign around that. You can do that within Clarity and that can be your video campaign. The things that you want to focus on adding video to, there's lots of different kind of, for lack of a better word, recipes that you can use within Clarity to think about how you can filter and optimize your content. So filtering first, looking at it strategically, and then optimizing by creating a campaign around it. It's one of those tools where you really have to see it to understand. And one of the ways that we can do that is by giving you a demo of that. And it's a great time to do that because we're doing something called 25 Forever. So for the first 500 people who sign up for Clarity, they get access to the tool for $25 a month, forever. So even when we, you know, change the pricing for Clarity down the line, uh, that won't be retroactively applied to your account. If you sign up as one of these first 500 users, which you can do by going to clarity.com food. So C L A R I T I.com food and that's where we're directing people who want to sign up as part of this 25 forever plan and start to understand how this tool is used, you can join the Slack group where people are sharing inside information around what they're doing and the processes. We're just really excited about it and think there's a ton of opportunity here with the tool. And, and we want to thank Clarity for being our first official sponsor for the podcast. It's a great one because it's kind of like, you know, sponsoring your or cheering on your brother or sister. Right? So it's like part of the Tinybit family. And we're excited about it as the Food Blogger Pro. People are excited for the Clarity people because it's a great tool in making some great progress, and it's been great to have them as the first official sponsor, first official ad on the Food Blogger Pro podcast. So be sure to check it out and we will jump into this week's interview. Hello, hello, hello. You're listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This is Burek Ostrom, and today we're talking with Nisha. She is a Food Blogger Pro member. And one of the things that we've wanted to do is to showcase Food Blogger Pro members who are doing the work, getting traction, they're growing their site and doing so with some of the kind of philosophies and frameworks that we talk about. Nisha's gonna be talking about getting a tiny bit better every day. Forever 1% infinity. She's gonna be talking about how she grew her Instagram following to 400,000. And even when we were making notes about the interview, we put in, hey, 399,000 followers. This is amazing. And then a few days or maybe a couple weeks later, I saw that it had grown to 404,000. And I'm sure if you were to look at it now, it'd be even more. She's also going to be talking about some of the things that she's learned in terms of balance. How do you maintain a healthy mind, body, family, relationship, prioritize those things that are important while also doing the hard work of showing up every day, learning how she learns, how she connects with people, and how all of those things have helped her advance her site. She's also going to be talking about kind of an interesting take on how she's viewing, building her business, which is focusing on growth, focusing on traffic as opposed to monetization, and delaying that as much as possible so when that time does come, she can flip that switch and be at a point where she'll have more substantial income. It's a great interview. It's inspiring for me to hear from somebody who's showing up every day and doing the work. And I think that you'll learn a lot from Nisha as well. So let's go ahead and jump into this episode. Nisha, welcome to the podcast.

Hi. I am so excited to be here with you. Today, I have had a webinar with you that was six weeks long. So I feel I've gotten to know you, and you are just a fabulous human being. I think you really actually care about people's success, like, genuinely, thank you. It comes across, and you're gentle, and your motto helps me every day to get a tiny bit better forever. It really helps me, and I think of that a lot.

Well, thank you. Yeah. It's why we named tinybit. Tinybit was the parent company. Over the other companies, we have Pinch of Yum Food Blogger Pro. And what we noticed is, like, you know, we'd go to conferences, we would talk with people, and whenever that came up, that idea of, like, tiny bit better every day, forever, 1% infinity, continual improvement. It always. There's a little bit of, like, this sense of relief, I think, that people felt like, oh, I don't have to do everything every day, 14 hours. Like, I can commit to something for a long time, get a tiny bit better. And there is. Yeah, there's this relief. It kind of felt when people started to think about that or use that as a. As a framework for how they kind of approach their business. I'm curious for you, what does that look like? Like, once you started to think about that idea of operating your business in a way where it's tiny bit better every day, did it change how you worked? Did it. Was it just like a framework that you thought about things differently? I'd be curious to know.

Yeah, I think, like, with these, you know, with what we do, there is definitely a burnout feeling sometimes. And when I feel like that, like, you know, there are days I just want to quit. I'm like, I'm done with this. This is too much.

Totally.

And that sort of puts things in perspective that, you know, I love what I do. If I do it at the right pace.

Yes, yes.

And I don't want to not love it anymore, because then I don't want to do it. And so that phrase in the back of my mind just says, it's okay. I don't have to accomplish all that today. I'm still good at what I do. I'm still fine. It will still be there tomorrow to do. And, you know, it's not a race.

Yes.

I guess I think that's a huge.

Huge part of it. And kind of the subtext to that idea is like, how do you fall in love with a process? Like, as opposed to trying to get to the end and have this massive success and that being the thing. Instead, it's like, how do you really love the process? And then it gets easy to easier. Not easy, but easier to get a tiny bit better every day. Because it's like, here's what I do. I show up, I do the work. Some of the work might not be the stuff I enjoy the most, but a lot of it might be stuff that I really enjoy. And how do you preserve that for a long period of time? And so you have 10 months instead of 10 months, you think 10 years, you know, instead of two weeks, you think two months. Like, expand the horizon out, show up every day. And you've done that. And it's been fun to see. You know, I was looking at our show notes here for the interview, and it was Leslie or Alexa on the team had entered in, like, hey, it's been really cool to see Nisha growing her account. You know, she signed up for Food Blogger Pro a few months ago. We've been kind of. We're aware of people who sign up and, like, said, hey, she has, you know, 399,000 followers on Instagram. And then I check today and it's 404,000. So, like, I don't know when that note was entered, but it wasn't that long ago. And you've been seeing growth there. So obviously you are showing up getting a tiny bit better every day and delivering content into the world. Did you start with Instagram? Was that your focus originally and then kind of introduced your blog, or was it the other way around?

So I am a nutritionist and registered dietitian. And when my kids were a tiny bit older, I decided to start Instagram. I'm not really a big social media person, actually, and I decided to start it more to share, like, healthy food with people.

Sure.

I wanted to teach people how to eat healthier. And I actually would go to, like, restaurants and show them what was healthy. So it was very different. And I had, like two followers, my mom. And this was.

So your Instagram account, you would say, like, hey, I'm going to this restaurant. Here's how I'm going to, like, strategically order a healthy meal at a restaurant, which is sometimes really hard to do, right?

Yeah, I still should probably do that, actually. I love doing that. You know, I think the first thing I posted was like, Bliss Balls at the Elk, which is a cafe I went to. But I then. I don't even know how exactly it evolved. I think I started then doing my recipes. I was like, oh, this is fun. And I had an iPhone in my kitchen using terrible lighting and the photos were terrible. And I think my mom bought me a camera because she sells Nikon. So I was lucky.

Yeah, you know, you have an in there.

Exactly. And then I just, you know, it just sort of evolved naturally. There was no goal, it was just for a love of it. I didn't have a business idea. It was nothing to do with money. It literally was a passion and just a desire to help people and share. And that's how it started for me. I didn't even know what Instagram was. Just all new.

Yep, yep. And I think, you know, there's, it's interesting. I think some people would come to the table and say, like, hey, you have to start with something that's your passion and then turn it into a business. But for some people, business is their passion and so they can start with something and think like, hey, I want to grow a really successful business and that's what drives them. But it's obvious from reading about you, your about page, like your transition into understanding food and nutrition and even talking about like going through the process of getting a degree and then looking back at that and saying like, actually I think the things I learned in school aren't necessarily things that I'd believe to be true today. And really just having a passion for healthy eating, that's the thing that drove it. And then eventually it tipped into, wait, this could. There's something here, right? Like thinking strategically about it, obviously, you know, making some decisions then around how do I actually grow this thing and turn it into a business of sorts. So two questions that I'd be interested in hearing about there. Number one, your story around health and nutrition and kind of where you are now with that and how that has evolved. And I think that's a really interesting story with your upbringing and as it relates to your transition to vegan. And then the follow up question that we can tee up again if needed would be the transition to, from like passion to, hey, this could be a business. So let's start with that first one, talking a little bit about your story transitioning into eating a vegan diet.

So I think I wrote this somewhere. I was raised on a meat based diet, not a plant based diet. My parents still really, they're eat a lot of meat.

Yeah.

And in Jamaica, you know, they have, I was, I think this thing called cow cod soup, which I used to eat, which you should look up and just heavy on the meat, you know, Indian curries with goat and all that. So I never really thought about it. I didn't love to eat. Then maybe I just, I don't know, I was a bit picky, I guess. And then I went to boarding school in England where it was again, very like steak and kidney pie, liver. I hate, you know, haggis. I don't know, like strange meat dishes. I was like, what am I eating? Like, this is not even recognizable to me.

Right, right.

But you were forced to eat it. There was no, like, choice of really being a vegetarian, actually, which is so interesting. Or definitely not a vegan. They would have probably expelled me. But.

Right, right.

Anyway, so then I, you know, came and did my nutrition degree after graduating in New York. And again there was, I don't. I feel a lot of it is taught by like, industries that are in, like, promoting themselves or have a lot of money. And so certain things were promoted to eat as healthy are based on studies done by those industries that want to sell you those foods. And I didn't really understand all that. I was so naive.

Sure.

And you know, I just read a lot of studies and my degree never really said anything about meat versus vegetables. It was. Or dairy. It was kind of just all like about the macronutrients and what you should get and saturated fats and like very focused on metro.

Macros are all going to be the same as long as you're accounting for your macros. And it doesn't matter if it's like meat based versus not. Right.

Yeah, exactly. And I think they still teach that. But for me personally, and I don't, I'm not one who like preaches that everyone should be a vegan or anything, that's not my thing. I just naturally evolved to eat that way as I studied more and what made me feel better and more vibrant, you know, like, I wanted to feel vibrant. There was a period where I felt I was sleeping a lot, I was lagging.

Yeah.

So as I started to eat more plant based, I just became more vibrant. And then I had children and there was, you know, a decision there. And you know, so I let them sort of make. Now they make choices, but they don't eat meat because that's what they were raised.

Yeah, there's that interesting transition with kids where it's like you are making all the decisions for them. Just today I saved this article and it was from this company called Levels, which is like a continual glucose monitor that there's. I think most people do that with. Like, if you have diabetes, you do that. But now a lot of people are just doing that to do it. Um, and like, I want to like track all the things. So like Apple watch continual glucose monitor. Like more that I can make myself like part machine.

The better step counter is a big one.

Yeah, exactly. So the. But what I have, I'm on the waiting list. So I get these updates and most like email newsletters I just remove myself. But these have actually been interesting. One of them was like, hey, the impact of sugar on your kids specifically. And you know, we have a nine month old and an almost three year old and you start to realize like, gosh, there's a lot of sugar, added sugar in everything. And I've cut out, attempted to and have done a pretty good job of this cut out, added sugar. And when you talk about kind of feeling vibrant or like feeling different, you feel that like when you make that change. And there's been a couple documentaries that we've watched lately, Forks Over Knives, which is an old one. And then there's this one on Netflix. It's like the Game Changers, I think it's called about vegan eating and athletes. Pretty compelling information and really interesting in terms of not just macros but where those are actually coming from and the impact of that. So we don't have to dive deep into that. But I can track with what you're saying and interesting. And for you, do you feel like, for you, is it a health consideration? Is there any impact? I know for some people vegan eating is around like also environmental and like impact on animals. Feels like all of those are a win.

It's both. Definitely it's both. And the funny thing which I find interesting is I'm not that tall and my husband is definitely not tall, but my kids are tall and at least two of them and the second is average at least. But I remember like people like when they were younger, if they don't eat meat and dairy, they're not going to be tall, they're going to be tiny. And then a study recently came out that actually they have found that vegan kids actually may be taller. Like it's the opposite of what you might think. And maybe that's why they're a bit tall, because we're not tall. I don't know. Or at least very heavily plant based kids.

Sure. It's interesting to dismantle some of those core beliefs you have from growing up. I think of as a kid I was always like, oh, juice is healthy. Just a huge glass of juice. And specifically juice, like juice that you buy at the, you know, supermarket and you look and it's like, oh my gosh, this Is like a lot of. There's a lot of sugar in this. And as you start to, number one, be aware of what you're consuming, which preaching to the choir, I think, in a lot of ways for people who listen to this podcast, um, but you just start to learn pretty quickly, like, oh, this makes a difference. And what I've learned is the more that I prioritize that type of work, so to speak, like working on thinking about what I'm eating, or like working and thinking about how I'm exercising, that translates into actual work. Like, if you're sharper, if you're more present, like, you're able to do work in a different way. So in some ways I can see that, you know, directly impacting what it looks like when I sit down and, like, put my hands on a keyboard and use my brain to think. Which is essentially what we do, right? Like develop recipes, we document, we type. So at some point, this passion for you, these beliefs that you're starting to shift and change and understanding eating in a different way, you almost become. And you want to tell people about it, you want to kind of evangelize this thing that has had a big impact on you. And you're doing that through Instagram primarily at that point.

So one very important thing for me was not to pressure people, not to make them feel bad about their choices. Yes, I really, like, even with my kids, it's just not how I want it to be. And I realized with Instagram, what naturally happened for me because of raising three young kids that, you know, they're like, all born within three and a half years, so it's pretty busy. So I realized the most efficient. Everything for me has. It has to be efficient. And what I realized is the one meal I make every day is dinner. So I focus just on dinner. Now, I know there are many accounts. They do breakfast, they do snacks, everything. I wouldn't be able to do that. So it's more seeing what is actually feasible without me going crazy. What is a natural way to do this? And so because I'm making dinner anyway, I would post dinner. And so my account and my cookbook is all about dinners, vegan dinners. And I guess the philosophy also there is, even if someone who isn't vegan can eat one meal a day, that is, or, you know, or heavily plant based, I think that's a help for the environment, for the climate, and it helps them ultimately. So that sort of became my thing is vegan dinners. And it just was easy because that's what I was doing anyway. So the posts I would make are what my kids ate for dinner.

Yeah. And you're doing it anyways so you can document that.

Perfect.

Can you talk through what that looked like? So were you planning ahead, like, hey, this week, here's what we're gonna do. And then do you take, like, 15 minutes before putting everything on the table? Like, how did you execute in your head, both preparing dinner for the night and documenting a piece of content that you'll publish?

Well, they just ate cold food. No, I'm kidding.

Sure. Yeah. But seriously.

Sometimes, anyway, I think so I'm not really a big planner. I see my creativity doesn't really work like that for me. It's like, I get up and I'm like, what am I feeling today? And luckily, I live near grocery stores, so it's, you know, health food stores and all that. But I. It's very hard for me to plan. I don't know. I've never been a huge planner. I have, like, a big grand plan, but the specifics kind of evolve naturally. And, you know, your mood's different and the weather is different. So it's just like a feeling, I guess.

Yeah, totally. And if it's raining, that might result in you feeling like, hey, this will be a better meal tonight than if it's, you know, a hundred degrees.

Exactly. Like, when do you make soup? When do you make, you know, like, that sort of thing?

Yeah, I think that will. I think that's probably inspiring for a lot of people because I think sometimes what can happen is it can seem like everybody is just an awesome planner who has a month of content built out, and they're never stressed, and every day they know what they're going to do, exactly what they're going to do, and when. But I think the reality is, for a lot of people that I know and ourselves included, a lot of it is like, hey, you're kind of doing this day by day, week by week. And a big part of it depends on what's the best fit for you. There are some people who, like, yes, I love planning. I love to know everything that's going to happen. And there are some people who are like, I love to wake up and think, what am I going to make tonight? And that's how I can do that sustainably. To kind of get back to something you were saying earlier. You know, the sustainability element is really important to consider. So at what point along the way this is getting to that second question that. That we had talked about. Were you like, wait, this could actually, like, be something. It started as a passion, it started as an interest. But this could actually be something that I can think strategically about as a business. Was there one kind of inflection point or was it slowly over time, starting to realize that?

I think it's slowly over time. And it's funny, I still don't view myself really as a business because I have little things that happen. I think I'm more building towards when my kids are really gone for it to be a full fledged business. But it's important for me to spend time with them still and exercise and all those things. But I think what happened is. Oh, so for example, with the blog market, it's all about ads. And I remember you saying something in one of our webinars with you that really resonated with me because I definitely evolve. The way I evolve my things is very much like intuition, feeling, and not like, I don't really listen to a lot of or look at everyone else and try and do that because then I think I'll lose my way. So it's more like, how do I feel about this? What's my gut feeling? And my gut feeling, you know, I'll answer the other question in a minute. But about the blog was, okay, it's all about advertising. But I want to have a good product first.

Yeah.

I want to, like, have it to be good user experience. Really work on that and the content. And then when I think it's time, then I'll go into the ads. And it's funny because I felt like that before you even said that I wasn't chasing after something because I believe it will all come eventually and I don't need to chase it. I mean, fortunately, I'm in that position. So I know everyone has a different position. But yeah, so I can't really say. There was like one point, I think, with. So I built my Instagram and I think Whole Foods was the first person to validate anything I did because they posted this cauliflower crust pizza I made.

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, gosh, if they're posting. And I think I grew by like 2000 followers that day. And I was like, oh, my gosh, maybe I'm okay. Maybe I should really consider doing this more. And then, you know, you have a community who supports you on Instagram. So for me, when I joined, I was very much strict with myself that I would limit who I follow so I could actually engage with those people and not go in. It scares me to go into Instagram and suddenly I'm bombarded with other people's posts or yeah, I get very nervous. So I know myself well. I'm like, I'm going to follow very limited people. I'll still like a lot of people's posts, go visit their feeds, but I just need my sanity here. And when I go in, I can't get overloaded with things. So that kind of became a thing. I never followed family, I never followed travel because that would make me jealous. And you know, I just kept it very strict like that. And I think that really helped to just know from the beginning this is a work thing. I'm not a social media person as such, but I'm going to make it strictly about this. And then a friend of mine who's a big, you know, food blogger on Instagram said, why are you leaving all your content on Instagram? Like it's unpredictable. And I kept seeing, wow, Instagram is changing. It's so unpredictable. And she's like, you really should have your own space. And you know, I thought about that. Like, that's so much work and that's so overwhelming. And how will I exercise? How will I see my kids? I can't possibly do it. And I put it off. I put off. And then I made the WordPress.org, wordPress.com mistake.

Sure. Yep. Can you explain that for people who are like, what does that mean?

So initially I claimed my domain name on WordPress.com right. And I realized it wasn't like the organic WordPress where you, you know, get a plugin and you do it all yourself.

Kind of a self hosted WordPress versus.

They had a lot of control over me, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's the benefit and the, there's, there's good and bad with it. There's, you know, I have a mentor who posts his kind of thoughts on spirituality and faith. WordPress.com is perfect for him. Like he's not looking to monetize. You know, he might write a book someday. But WordPress.com great. Like he can go in, he can write it, he doesn't have to worry about keeping stuff updated, doesn't have to worry about a host. Like it's just all there. But to your point, like if you want to start to have more control, if you want to have plugins that you want to install specific ones, you have to, WordPress.org, which would be a self hosted instance, would be the way to go, which is what we recommend. So you had to make that Switch at some point.

Well, someone told, you know, a lot of this has been help from other food bloggers. You know, they kind of. I've made friends along the way, and I wasn't part of any groups then. I didn't know about you guys, you know, Food Blogger Pro. I had no knowledge of anything. So a lot of it was just friends who supported me and said, like, one of them said, why are you on WordPress.com for what you do? It's like, oh, there's a difference. Yeah. So that was the first mistake. And then I switched all that. And then there was the whole thing of, like, okay, you know, I don't have the funds from my. I'm not a big enough business yet to have funds to hire someone.

Yep.

So it was, how do I do this on my own? So I looked at other people's. I was like, oh, what do they use? What's their template? And I would see, you know, Foodie Pro at the bottom. I was like, what is Foodie Pro? So a lot of it is just looking at what others did and trying to learn from them. And it still is. It's always going to be that, I think. And so then I looked up, you know, the feast design, and I first, again made another mistake. There's a lot of mistakes, but you learn from them all. Yeah, totally.

Part of it is, like, you're doing it like you're moving forward, you're implementing things, and that's how you learn. Yeah.

And my mistakes, when I'd make them, would make me quit for a while. Then I'd say, no, Nisha, you can do it. Go back. And so I bought, like, one of the. Just the themes at first, and I was like, this is way too hard because if I have to update it myself, I can't do that. I don't know anything about this stuff. And then I realized they made a plugin. So I got the plugin, and that is amazing for me. And it's basically updates everything. For me, you just press update now. And I love that button. Update now. And they have a support system. So for me, it was creating different supports around this process that weren't too expensive. Now, obviously, there are cost to all of this, but to me, they're much more reasonable and they just feel safer. I feel safe having these things around me.

It's almost a safety net of sorts of.

Yeah. There's, like, so many different people I can ask things to through all these little things. I've put together the plugins and.

Yeah. Shout out to Skyler and the Feast team. We can link to Feast Feast design company kind of specializing in the food and recipe space. Yeah, they're great plugin that they have is kind of an all in one plugin for a lot of different things. But what I love about that, what you just said and I think is worth calling out. I was thinking about this recently as it relates to building a team and you know, you said, hey, too early to actually build a team. But I think what you did is you essentially built a team, but just not a team of like this person is going to work for me full time exclusively. It's like here's we use a company operating system called eos. They talk about the accountability chart and the accountability chart, this would be a good exercise for anybody to do is essentially saying like instead of the people you create roles or functions. And so it's like one is photography, one is recipe development, one is updating WordPress whatever it might be. And within a company there's lots of these different roles. And then what you do is you go in and you say okay, who's sitting in this seat? Who's fulfilling this function? You know, when you first started, if you were to do that, it would have been you and every single one. But what I hear you saying is you started to think through it and be like, well maybe there can be somebody who can I can go to like if a WordPress thing comes up. So I have this resource for, you know, some of the specific WordPress needs that I have and you know, maybe you have a friend who is able to weigh in on kind of technology considerations and you slowly, what you can do doesn't have to be full time team members, but you can start to replace yourself in every seat with another go to. And so when something does come up, you can route to that person. We just did that with Google Workspace. So like we have a team of 20. I was the one managing all the Google accounts and stuff like that. I was like, oh, we need to replace the person in that seat. So we hired a consultant to. Now when somebody has an update, I route that over to them so I'm not having to figure out even if it's 10, 15 minutes, were there other areas that you're you did that with or other things that were.

So I, I think I did that in a cost effective manner that felt like good for me. Y. I also went with Big Scoot as a host and they have been so helpful. Like if anything goes really wrong, I, I reach out and they're so nice and always help me. So that was another thing. And then, you know, I found you guys. I can't remember how. I think it was the first thing was when you did the six week optimization course.

Yep.

Right.

Yeah. So we did a. We did a kind of course where we went through and said, here's how you can think about optimizing old content. And this idea that we're passionate about and a lot of people are focusing on a lot of publishers is not just publishing new content, but how do you go back to old content and update it? So we did a kind of a six week course with a handful of members that went through that process.

So that was great. I didn't have old content yet.

Yeah, conceptually still applies. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you always have. Right. Yesterday's content is old, but so you. So Food Blogger Pro has, you know, the community forum, the courses you guys have, the podcast. I still have so much more to get through that is going to be hugely helpful. So that and just asking the community questions was huge. Again, it's such a great resource, I find. And then I realized, oh, there's a tasty recipes thing they have too. Because I saw other people having this different format to their recipes. I'm like, where did you get that? What are you using? And then I realized that was actually related to you guys. And that's a great tool too because you can do step by step videos now. I wasn't doing a lot of videos at this point.

Sure.

But I just actually was inspired by the fact that I could have videos in my recipe. It's like, that's so cool. So again, what inspired me was not everyone else is doing it because. Because I actually am a bit of a rebel that way. I don't want to do it then. But more that, wow, I want to see what that looks like. Because then I went to yours and you had a Brussels sprouts video. I was like, oh, it's in the recipe. And so I remember I just shot videos so I could see that because it was so cool to me.

Yeah.

So it's like. And then I was like showing my family, look, the videos are in the recipe. I've never. And you know, it's kind of still a bit new, I think. And so it was, you know, novel.

For me a lot. Yep.

So that's like so fun. And so I think these kinds of.

Think about how you do that. Like, you sure, you obviously don't have like a video team, but you're still Able to pull that off. So what does that look like for you?

This is actually my whole work area.

Yeah.

Like this behind me. That's it.

Yeah. So for those. For those listening, it's like you're in a room and you have your.

I have a bit of my living room. That's it. Kids shouting at me, like, why do you have so much stuff around? It really is just like a little.

Bit around, isn't it? You should be yelling at your kids that they got to move their stuff.

I know, it's true.

What does that look like for you to shoot video for step by step cards in a way that doesn't drive you insane?

So the thing is, I did try videos for reels. You know, it's funny. Still, images are better for me on Instagram. That's why when they say follow every everyone, I think it just depends on. And you have to, like, monitor how is your feed doing with what you're doing? And so I don't want to follow everyone because reels I would work so hard, and then they wouldn't do that well. And I felt disappointed because I don't have. There's a certain style for reels.

Sure.

And I don't have that style yet. I guess I'm trying to. I'm going to try and learn it. But my way of thinking is much more like, I'm a teacher. I'm much more that kind of person than like, oh, I'm gonna make this fun vibey thing. It's not. I love it. I love watching it. I just can't do it.

Lindsay talks about that just in terms of content creation. Like, you can be a teacher or an educator. It can be informational. Informational. You could be somebody who's like, entertainer. Like, you could be comedic. There's these different buckets of content. All of those perform different and better in different places. But I think smart for you to think, like, who am I and how am I creating content and what feels like the best fit? And then once you realize that, then say, where am I going to focus on knowing what I know about myself and how I create content?

Exactly. I mean, I really appreciate those more, you know, comical, those fun. Those people can make fun videos. I love watching them. I'm a little bit jealous of them, I'll admit. Totally.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm much more like a teacher, like, step by step person. So this recipe thing was great. And what I would do is I'm like, okay, if I'm gonna go through all this work and make a Video. I need to use that video as much as I can, like wherever I can, so. Because, you know, maximize the use of it. And so I put. I would. I edit them in Final Cut Pro. I used to do Adobe, but it was too hard. It just took too long. And it's enough for me. I'm not making big movies. And then I split the video into steps for the recipe, like just take out pieces. But then I have the whole video now as one piece. And now I'm starting to put that. Because you actually told me that the best way to do ads eventually is to have videos. Like, I haven't approached mediavine yet or anything, but like the best thing, actually the most successful, right? So then I was like, well, I have the videos. I'm going to make them into full length videos too. And it's the same work essentially. And I'm going to put them into Vimeo and just put it onto my site because, you know, so I just started to do that. And then you said, I listened to a podcast from you yesterday about Yoast Video SEO. I never knew that existed. So yesterday evening, yeah, I like, yeah, maybe I am got Yoast Video SEO.

Yes. Yeah, that's great. Good for you.

I already asked the community questions.

Yeah, continual execution. It's like hearing it, researching it and then actually doing it, which is awesome.

Well, I have to do it quickly or I'll forget. But then, you know, I use the full videos, the pieces of videos. And then something else came to be evolved. I never worked on my Pinterest account. I had. I don't even know. I kind of just put my Instagram linked to Pinterest. You know when you just say link to Pinterest, whatever. And I never worked on it. And I think I had like 70,000 views, something like that. And then one of my friends said, you know, you need to work on Pinterest if you have a blog because that drives traffic. I was like, oh my God, really? Another thing. Can't do it. I just want to quit. I just want to quit. So then I'm like, okay, how can I use Pinterest? Because she's like, you need to do like five pins a day or six pins a day. I'm like, you're out of your mind. I'm never going to do that. There's no way. So how can I again make this work for my life where I can sustain it? And at that time, Pinterest was really changing. This was like a month ago maybe. And I looked into Tailwind and I was like, you know, for me personally, this isn't what I need because I'm not going to be doing the five a day. I just can't. And then I was like, oh, idea pins. Okay, I'm going to use the videos there too. So I'm really getting a bang for my buck.

Yeah.

So I flip them, I rotate them, I change, you know, I just flip the video, the angle. And so when I film, I keep in mind this is going to be both directions.

Yeah, yeah. And so. And then you're putting the video content on Pinterest. That's.

Yeah. And I grew to like, I think today I looked and it was like 750,000. So I was like, wow. I took it from 70 to that by just looking and seeing what was doing well, like because I didn't know anything about Pinterest. Now I'm still very small on Pinterest, but that's okay. I mean that's just where I am.

And just to make sure I'm understanding that. So you will cut, you'll do the video, you do it horizontal. The point that you made there was something we've talked about which is the ability to earn more from pre roll ads on video content. So like there's display ads, those are the traditional ads. You'd see mobile and desktop. You know, they'd be in the sidebar, they might be in the content. But there's advertisers who are looking to advertise against video content. There's not as much video content. There's. So there's a supply and demand thing. They'd be willing to pay more to get in front so you can earn more. To your point, you're not doing that yet, but you're kind of, my understanding is like you're getting the snowball to a point where like you're, it's going a little bit faster, getting a little bit bigger because you don't have the restrictions of ads slowing down your site, impacting the user experience. So at some point you'll switch that on. When you do, you'll convert those videos over to be ad based video players through whatever it might be. Mediavine, ad thrive. And that's an important piece especially for creators who have a, have built up a following and have video content. Even if you don't have video content. Find your top 5, 10, 15 pieces of content, add that video in and see if the ad network you're working with can, can create that as an ad player. We've done that for Pinch of Yum and you know, if we earned $1,000 a month from YouTube on ads from video content we had embedded, it might be, you know, 10 to 20,000 from that same video content embedded through a video ad player. So it can make a really big impact. So I think that's an important piece to point out. And then the other piece is like continually building on these tools that help you do what you need to do. Are there other. You. You mentioned Yoast and the video site map that goes with that. Why that's beneficial because then Google Search console is indexing your videos. You know, you mentioned a recipe plugin. Tasty recipes. Appreciate that. Shout out. So that's helpful. The. The Feast plugin. Great. You said Tailwind didn't need that. It's a great tool.

Right.

But you're able to just kind of simplify Pinterest and do video content on there, because that was working. Other things that you've layered in as like plugins or, you know, big scoots. You had mentioned that just as you've continued to like, kind of level up.

Right. So I have tasty pins too.

Sure.

And then I feel like I have a lot of your products and you're not, you're not. This is not sponsored by you.

Yeah. Right. And there's. And there's open to other solutions out there in the market. There's definitely not the only options.

Yeah, no, no, no. And I think there's so many great things. This is just what I happen to choose. And so many things that work differently for other people. And you know, it's always in life. It's like that. Yeah, but. But also, as a nutritionist, it was important to me to have some sort of label, nutrition fact label somewhere. So I use the nutrifox. And then also I don't have time to check all the broken links and the broken images and the alt text. And the thing I didn't like for me to sit and do all that, I wouldn't be able to make recipes. And that's really where my joy is, designing recipes. So I needed all that to be done where I can just go and say, so that's through clarity. And so some of these tools are really for bigger blogs, but I would rather implement them now so I don't have to go back and fix things. To me, it's like, start right and just do it right. Even if it's like way too big for you right now. You'll grow into it.

Yeah, that's interesting. Just this idea that you could wait to do some of this stuff. But if you start. And eos, which I've talked about a couple times in the podcast, is kind of like that we started maybe a little bit on the earlier end. It was probably just about right. But with this organizational, entrepreneurial operating system, eos, like a way to run our business, we couldn't have done it when we were one person. Me and Lindsey couldn't have done it when it was like three or four. But it was still pretty early. But my thought was like, hey, let's do this. So it's in place, we've hit the ground running. We don't have to introduce a new system later on. And it sounds like you've kind of taken the same approach where, hey, if this is like best practice or it's going to be helpful, let's implement it now, figure out the routine around it and then use that moving forward so you don't have to, three years down the line, change up the routine that you have and how you kind of are doing things on a day to day basis. Um, which was one of the questions that I wanted to ask was you. You've talked about, you know, essentially balance, making sure that you have time to exercise, be with your kids, but continue to do this as well. You know, we talked about tiny bit better every day, forever, continually showing up. What does that look like for you to strike that balance in a way where you're continuing to grow? Right. You know, 399 into 404, 404,000. And so your, your Instagram's growing, you're launching this blog, you're introducing new tools. But also it sounds like you're prioritizing time with kids and exercise, you know, taking care of yourself. What does that balance look like? And do you have to consistently check yourself to make sure that, that you're keeping that balance?

Yeah, I think when I first started the blog, I realized I was sitting a lot and I'm not really a sitting person, which is why I like the cooking thing, because you're standing, you're moving, you're like standing on step stools to try and get angles on your food. And you know, you're climbing everywhere on your windowsill. And so I realized, wow, I'm sitting a lot. But then I was like, well, you know, be gentle with yourself because this is the beginning phase. And it, you know, it takes an investment of time to get it going. And so just be, you know, I'll get through these few weeks where I am sitting a lot and then I'LL try and then I'll go back to, you know, moving more or. Yeah, so I paid attention. I guess it's paying attention to how you're feeling, to what you're doing and, you know, not being hard on yourself. If every day doesn't go perfectly, if I don't achieve what I thought I was going to achieve in the morning. So then, you know, I took those weeks to sit and build the blog, and I told my kids, my husband, this is what I'm doing right now. I don't want to do it in piecemeal because I'll lose what I learned yesterday and I'll forget. And then once it started to feel like I had a hold on it, I was like, okay, I'm not going to be so invested. I'm going to. I post a lot, but it takes a lot of time to make a blog post. So I try and do like, two a week, if possible, but I'm alone, so. And I think I sort of just see how the day looks when I get up, like, what's this? What are they doing? And. And then try and gauge it off that. But if I see, like, I'm sitting doing this blog post for just too long. What I started to do lately is I'm like, okay, every morning because I get up really early, just naturally I'm gonna go for a long walk outside and take my coffee and just, you know, be present.

Yeah.

And maybe talk to some friends, but they have to live in England because no one was awake in America.

Sure.

I'm from England, so I have of friends there.

Right.

And so that's.

In that sense, you become on the same. Same schedule. Yeah.

They're having lunch.

Yeah. Right around lunch break.

Yeah. So, you know, it's a time to just reach out to others, to just be, you know, present and move. And then I'll come home and say, okay, this is what I'm making. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm making at that point because it comes clear to me while I'm walking. Oh, I feel like this will be good. And then I'll go to the supermarket, whatever the health food store nearby. I'll get the stuff and then I'll come home. And now lighting is an issue because light changes.

Sure.

But I kind of had to give up on that and just do my best. And as long as it's not dark. And then, you know, I sort of. Yeah. If I find. And then every evening I go for a walk with my kids and they all have Step counters now since COVID because, you know, it like, took away all their school activities. So my husband's like, we should count our steps. And I wasn't on board till recently, but I don't use that as, like, I have to reach this again. I can't do that in life. I'm just not good at that pressure thing. So, you know, he always sends me his. And they're so high, and I'm like, can you just not do that? Like, it's really upsetting for me. Like, yeah, yeah. It's like, don't tell me. I don't care. So, you know, the good thing about it all is really what's helped is they all eat my food. Like, you know, you look at some of those dishes and people, My friends are like, your kids eat that? And I'm like, they really do. And my husband eats that. He hates when I don't cook, you know, and you would think, like, he's a guy and they don't want to eat those bird food looking things. I don't know. But, you know, they. They all eat it. They all, you know, sometimes it's not the best and they'll tell me, and that's helpful.

Yeah.

So it's just. I know I'm never wasting time when. When my recipe doesn't go great because they'll eat it anyway.

Yes.

And I not wasting time because I learned something. And I think that's the most important thing when the picture doesn't go well. The sad thing is the post goes well when the picture's good. But it's very hard to always have a good picture. You just don't. And sometimes they tank. But you just learn. You just say, you know what? It's okay next time. I know this is what I did and it didn't work, and I'll just do it different next time. And I think that took a while for me to not be hard on myself about. And I always just think I wasted my time. But it's never a waste of your time. That's what I realized. It just never is.

And I think there has to be a point as well, where it's kind of like, you know, songwriting. There's. I haven't watched this documentary, but I've seen some people quote it where Ed Sheeran talks about how he's able to write the songs. He is now because he essentially got all the bad songs out. Like, he wrote so many songs through the years that he refined his skill as a songwriter, but he uses this idea of like, getting the bad songs out. But I think still to this day, I would imagine you write songs that nobody ever sees or nobody ever hears. And that's just part of the game. Like, that's the game you're playing, is you are creating something, and sometimes you connect and it's exactly what you want, and sometimes you don't, and sometimes you have to have. Like, when I worked at a nonprofit, they would talk about, you know, whether it's like a brochure or an email that they'd send out. They had like, a percentage. They said, Hey, 90%. That's what we're shooting for. We can't get everything to a hundred percent, but our marker is 90%. And if we get there, then we can press publish. If not, maybe it doesn't ever see the light of day. And that's happened with a lot of pinch of yum content where, you know, we might work on something. The team will create a video, we'll do recipe development, and it just doesn't get there and we don't publish it. And that, to your point, can potentially feel like, wait, no, this is a failure. But that's just the name of the game. When you're creating things in the world, some of them will see the light of day, and some of them won't. My dad, who's a potter, crushes 50 to 75% of the pots that he creates because they just aren't what he wants them to be. And he wants to be super selective about it. And for me, I look at it and like, wait, what? No, that's fine. Don't you know, it crushes it. So I think it's important to mention that, as I think I do have.

A high bar, a little bit of a high bar, like. And if it's not the standard I want, I rather just not put it out there. Whereas my kids are like, but that's a good picture. I like that. I'm like, well, what do you know? What do you know? In fact, interestingly enough. Yeah, exactly. They don't have social media. They hate social. None of them. And my eldest is 17, so, you know, and none of them have it. They have phones, but they're just not interested.

Good for them. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. So.

And maybe simplifies a few things for you as a parent.

Yeah, well, maybe they saw the whole Instagram thing, like, oh, my God, we're not doing that.

I don't want to do that. Too stressful.

But actually, another important part of this, I think, is When I started Instagram, I would post every day.

Uh huh.

And that is for me personally, a lot of people can do that and that's great. But for me that was burnout too. And now I'm just, I don't have that pressure on myself. I'm like, okay, I'll do it, I'll post. Definitely. I want to be regular enough so that no one, everyone's like, where's she gone? We're going to leave. But it's sometimes it's like every three days, you know, and it's, it's okay, like, yep.

And I think there's. What I've learned about content over the years is it's better to do less that's higher quality than more that's not as high quality. So if you can do something that's twice as good, but post half the amount, that's going to be more impactful than if you are posting more frequently and it's not as good.

Yeah. And I think it's your brand, you want your brand to be good. I think at the end of the day I do think about that. Like, is my brand gonna be all over the place or do I want a consistency of quality that represents my brand?

Yeah, that's great. So if you think back at the last few years, what are the things that you could pinpoint and say, these were some of the most important things I did in order to achieve growth traction. The things that you look back on and you're like, gosh, this was super helpful and you know, advice that you'd give people who are wanting to also grow or wanting to get kind of traction in some certain areas. Would you have something that you'd, you'd be able to pinpoint, be authentic and what does that look like?

Don't try and copy everyone else and do what works for you and what feels good to you and what makes you want to do it. I think that for me has probably been the most important driver.

Yeah. And it's hard to do though, like, because you can look at other people who are having success. And in some ways there's a combination of like authenticity layered in with like inspiration from people who are doing things really well. Like you know, to your point earlier, hey, this person is using this theme, like, or getting advice from people, it's a little bit more technical but like this combination of inspiration from people who are doing it well. But authenticity in what? Your brand, your voice, your direction, what are those? What would be included in kind of the category of authenticity? What, what Areas.

Yeah, you said it perfectly. It's not that you don't look at other people's work or you don't learn from them. I think you have to. That's how everything is, you know? But then you don't try and, like, become that if you're not. I think, like, I know a lot of people put themselves as the image of their brand.

Yep.

And so many of them are so good at it and should do that. I am not at that point. So that's another thing. Like, I'm not gonna put myself out there at this point because it's not authentic for me. I don't feel good doing it.

Right.

I like to prevent. I like to pretend I'm an introvert, and that would go against that. So.

Yeah. Right.

Because introversion is cool, I think.

Yeah. But the idea. The idea being, hey, I'm not necessarily building a. I'm trying to build a brand, not just like a personal brand. Like, this isn't you. This is the brand that you're building. Is that right?

For me, it's the recipes, and it's just the information for me. And I. And I. And I love when people can do both. Like, you know, Lindsey I think does both. I think it's. It's beautiful together. And I've. I now really like people. It took me a while, but. So, like, I like communicating with people a lot, but.

Right.

I just feel for me, it's the product right now, and it always was. That's how I started. So I am also scared of change in that. Like, that's a big change, and I'm not ready for that. So I think it might never be.

And that's okay.

Yeah, exactly. So I think it's like, a lot of it is also patience, like, not rushing to do something because others. But just seeing actually all of this. Patience is another thing. Like, patience to put out the ads, patience to approach me, you know, different brands to do sponsored posts. All of it for me is just like. But again, I have that luxury to be patient. So, you know, I see both sides of everything.

Yeah, that makes sense. Last thing that I'd be curious to hear a little about is you signed a cookbook deal and you've been working on that. How did that come about? And what have you learned through that process of writing and developing a cookbook?

So I felt like a validation from that, you know, in this being on your own and doing this all your own and being, like, scarred by Instagram sometimes depending on numbers and you don't really get validated such. Because it's not where you go to work and, you know, you get paid every week or you, you know, it's not like, oh, you're doing good work. No one's telling you anything, essentially.

Only when you're on your own for the most part. Like, it's not like there's people who are there to kind of be a part of the team working on something together. It's just you.

Right. And the most validating thing about what I do is when people make the recipes and share me, share the photos and write something. That's the validation of it all, I think. And the cookbook was a huge validation that someone would care enough that, you know, Penguin Rodelle Books would care enough to actually pay me to put my work out there. And, you know, it was at the beginning of COVID actually that I signed the contract or even had the interviews, anything. And so, you know, everything was so thrown off. But I guess everyone was cooking then, so that was it kind of tied into, like, this huge cooking fest.

Yeah.

And I think, like, I was very nervous to do it. I didn't want to do a cookbook. It was never something and I thought would be in my cards. Everyone said, you know, make any money. I was like, then why would I do that? So it. It definitely wasn't like, something I really was going to pursue. And then it sort of happened very naturally. And. Yeah, so I got that. And I think it saved me in Covid, honestly.

I mean, in terms of. Of focus, mentally, or something to do. Right.

Yeah. Otherwise I would have focused on all the negatives. I didn't have time to dwell on, like, everything that was going on.

Right. A gift of a distraction.

Yeah, exactly. And it was just a natural thing to do because it's all about, you know, the whole cookbook is dinners, vegan dinners, easy and affordable. Because that's what my whole site is. They're easy. And sometimes I'm embarrassed by how easy they are because I went to culinary school.

Yeah.

Six months at the Natural Gourmet. So not like Intense attends culinary school, but some sort of culinary school. And we learned very hard things.

Yeah.

But I never used them because when I got home, I was like, I'm not going to sit and make my pasta from scratch.

Well. And nobody else does.

Right.

You know, random work day, weeknight.

Exactly. So it wasn't about showing off my skills, and so I've probably lost a lot of them, honestly. But it wasn't about that. It was like, how am I Going to help people. Like what? And how do I help people? As me surviving with three kids. It has to be easy. The recipe has to be easy or I won't get it done.

Yes.

And so it became easy budget friendly and just dinner times. So that's what the book is. And I think it's more than 100 recipes. It just ended up being. I did way over what they asked because Covid just kept going on and it never ended, so might as well do more recipes.

So if we're interested, what's the best way to follow along with that? Obviously, it'll be a little bit. I know that you're still working on.

It, but yeah, no, it's actually done on my part mostly. So it will come out in spring of next year and I'm going to start saying, you know, stuff about that on my Instagram. So Instagram is still like a big part of what I do. I know a lot of people sort of move from it, but for me, it's still a big part.

I think that's awesome. Super helpful, really insightful. Anything else that you want to share as we're kind of coming to the end here, Nisha, in terms of your journey, building your account, your blog, kind of. Any final thoughts?

Yeah, I think something I actually heard on one of your podcasts that, you know, I thought about a lot is I'm definitely do compare myself to others sometimes. Like, I'm not immune to it. Even though I say, oh, you shouldn't. I definitely do it, you know, and for example, I look at, you know, pinch of Young videos and I'm like, oh, my God, how like mine are. They're so bad. And then I'm like, but are they helping people? Like, okay, they're not going to be. And then I have to remember I don't have that team you have. I don't have that. And I've never done this in my life. So it's important for me to say, okay, I'll just admire them from afar and, you know, if they're helpful to people, they may not be esthetically amazing, then isn't that what I'm trying to do at the end? What am I trying to do? I'm trying to make this reachable for people, make them able to make this recipe. And they may not look pretty, but they're clear, they're concise, and they tell you what to do. And I think someone in one of your podcasts said, comparison is the thief of joy. I think it was yesterday I heard I Don't know. I was trying to prep for this interview, so I listened to, like, 10 podcasts. Exactly. A scrambling. It's like an exam.

Yeah, exactly.

So comparison is a thief of joy, I think is so true. And I'm going to think about that when I feel I'm getting lost in that world. Because, you know, you get lost in it, you pull back from it.

Yeah.

And I guess more now I try and just appreciate the beauty in other people's work. When I remember that.

That's great. I think it'll be always present reality and something worth thinking about. And whether it be actual systems like you had mentioned before, strategically thinking about who you're following and thinking about, like, if I see this account, am I, like, feeling better or worse? And, like, travel as an example, I think a lot of people could relate to that. Like, oh, my gosh, this person's traveling to, like, 32 places and taking these beautiful photos. And, like, I generally show up and sit here and, like, drink the same coffee and eat the same granola every day. Like, oh, no, my life is uninspiring. But the idea of being strategic and saying, like, hey, maybe that's a withdrawal. Maybe I shouldn't follow that person and being strategic about that. But also having, to your point, mental framework to say, here's how I'm going to decide to think about that if I come up against a thought like that, I think is a really valuable takeaway and insight. So appreciate, I think.

You know, I've done a lot of meditation. I don't do it anymore, but I meditated for maybe five years. And I think, as much as I like to say this meditation now, because I'm like. Because I don't do it. So I dis it because I feel guilty.

Yeah, right. Feel better about it if you.

But I think, like, the values I got from that really did help.

Yeah. Like what? What's an example?

Being present. Like, you know, and like, my husband says when I. He thinks when I look happiest is when I'm actually styling a bowl, like, trying to photograph it, because you don't think about anything else. You're so present in that moment.

It's like. Flow.

Yeah, exactly. Flow.

Yeah.

So I think. And also, just when I'm starting to get off track and get upset because someone else is traveling or someone, you know, it's more like, okay, I'm here right now.

What?

What do I have here? Like, you know that practice of being grateful, Writing down what you're grateful. Yeah, yeah. Gratitude is so like, for me, that helps a lot because there's so much I can be grateful for. Coffee is, you know, the main one.

But yes, totally small things are the big things. Yeah.

My coffee tastes so good. I love it. I think I've mastered the art of making good coffee with my Chemex beaker. It's so simple.

Right? Right. That's great.

Simplicity. Simplicity is, I think, very valuable.

Yeah. That's awesome. Nisha, for people who want to follow along, you know, I'll do obviously talk about your story a little bit as I'm queuing up the podcast and doing an intro. But as we head out, where can people follow along with you and what you're up to and track along to for when the. When your book comes out?

So I am a Best of Vegan contributor, so I do have more information about myself and some of my nutrition articles are on there too. I have my blog, which has an email link and Instagram, I check pretty frequently. So DMs and the email link there too.

Yeah. Awesome. Cooking for peanuts. For all of those. The background. We should have started this with this background for that name is what?

Cooking for Peanuts. And for the. For the name. Actually it's funny because none of my family liked that name when I chose it and he didn't get it and I was like, but, you know, you're cooking for peanuts, which is kids. I love peanuts. So I'm cooking with peanuts, but I don't always use nuts. So. And I'm cooking for peanuts. I make no money at that time.

Sure, sure. Yeah. So it's like multi meaning. That's great. I love that. We'll be sure to link to those spots in the show notes as well. But Nisha, so great to connect. Thanks for.

Oh, I'm so honored to be here. You're a wonderful human being, honestly, I can tell you. So.

Yeah, yeah. It means so much. Thanks, Nisha. And we'll be in touch.

Thanks. Bye.

That's a wrap for this episode. Thank you to Nisha for coming on, sharing her story. There's a couple times Nisha had mentioned some of the things that she plugs into with Food Blogger Pro membership. She talked about kind of a little mini course or webinar series that we did. Talked about some of the community elements for the Food Blogger Pro forum. If you're interested in any of those, you can check those out foodbloggerpro.com and learn a little bit more. Just as a really easy step, first step, maybe you're not even interested in the membership site. But if you go to foodbloggerpro.com, there's a spot to put your name and your email and you can sign up there. And it'll be kind of this series email series that talks a little bit about not only how you can think about growing your site, but also talks a little bit about what Food Blogger Pro is and what we're all about. So if you want to take the really small next step to learn a little bit more, that's going to be the best way to do it, is just to go and sign up for that email list. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for following along with this podcast. If you are a frequent listener or a first time listener, we really, really, really appreciate it and couldn't do this without you. So signing off from the Twin Cities here in Minnesota, this is Bjork. Thanks for listening. Make it a. Sam.