341: Eat the Culture – Building Community and Empowering Black Culinary Creators with Meiko Temple

A big thank you to Clarity for sponsoring the Food Blogger Pro podcast. You've heard me talk about Clarity before. It's a tool that we're building and using for Pinch of Yum, but also a really powerful tool for anybody who's focusing on content. It's kind of one of the main vehicles for growth or revenue for their site. And we've been working on Clarity for a couple years, but it hasn't been until recently that we've started to bring other people in to sign up and become a part of it. We're doing an offer right now that we're calling 25 forever. So the first 500 people who sign up for Clarity will get their account at $25 a month. Forever. We're still in the early stages of offering this, but we'll cap it at 500 people. So once we have 500 people who have signed up, then we're going to cap that. We're going to move to a different pricing for Clarity. It's still in the early stages. You know, it's not going to be the kind of thing where we're at this point where we'd cap it and say, hey, you can't sign up. Uh, you've missed your. Missed your chance. But slowly and surely we're moving to that 500 mark. So if you're interested in, in joining and checking it out, now would be a good time to do that. Um, there's no commitment, there's no plan that you have to join and can't cancel. So you can check it out. You can, you can see if it's a good fit. And how do you know if you would even be interested in it? Well, Clarity is for anybody who's focusing on content and also starting to focus on optimization of their existing content. So we have this belief that any and every site is going to be suboptimal right now. There's going to be broken images, broken links. There's going to be posts that don't have internal links that could or don't have external links to helpful resources. There's going to be images with missing alt text. There's going to be content that's starting to perform worse that if you looked at and kind of improved and enhanced, it would increase rank. We're really just thinking about that for Pinch of Yum a lot. What are the ways that we could improve the content that's currently on our site as opposed to just creating new content? And we're using Clarity as the tool where we track that and make Those enhancements and improvements, one of the things that comes along with that is you can join the Slack community that we have of other content creators. And this just came up the other day. Somebody pulled posted and they said, I had no idea that it had broken images on my site, but somehow those images broke. So I need to, number one, find out how they broke and then number two, fix them. But they were just saying that they noticed that because of Clarity and some of the filtering that they were able to do. So they created a project, they filtered first and said, show me all the broken images on my site. And then it was like, oh, there's some broken images. Then they filtered. After filtering those, they created a project that was fix broken, broken images. Now, you could then have somebody on your team go in, make those improvements, make those enhance enhancements, or if you don't have somebody on your team, that can be the type of stuff where maybe once a week, once a month, you kind of have this maintenance or kind of like spring cleaning mindset where you go in, you block the day out to make improvements, make enhancements. You're not creating new content, you're just going in and optimizing and improving and paying attention to older content and making sure that it's at 100% as opposed to, you know, 70%, which, if I were to guess, I would say all of our sites, pinch of Yum included, would probably be operating at like 70% of their true potential value. And we want to find ways that we can improve that. And we're using Clarity as the tool to not only discover those things, but also to organize the tasks and projects that go along with improving them. So we're still in the early stages of it. We're excited about what it's going to be and what it's going to grow into. And we're also excited to learn from you in the process of what you would want it to be.

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Community that we will welcome you to if you are interested in signing up. So you can go to clarity.com food C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com food if you're interested in signing up. Getting a little demo of how it works, seeing if it's a good fit for your account or for your site, and would love for you to check it out. Let us know if you have any questions. And again, it's clarity.com if you want to learn a little bit more. That's Clarity with an I. All right. That's A wrap for this little ad read. Let's go ahead and jump into today's episode. Hello. Hello. You're listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. My name is Bjork Ostrom, and my guess is that you knew that you were listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast, but I just say that every week because it feels like a tradition at this point. Speaking of traditions, we've been doing this podcast for years and years and years, and one of the great honors that I have is to talk to creators who are doing wonderful and impactful things. And that is going to be the case today as we talk to Mikko from Miko and the Dish as well as Eat the Culture. She's going to be talking about what Eat the Culture is, how she created a community, how she connected with different publishers, and how she's looking to really place a focus on Black culinary creators and entrepreneurs and shining a light on the work that they're doing and being really strategic about that. And she's going to talk about what that looked like, the reason why she's doing that, and also the how behind it. And both of those things are very fascinating to me. And Mikko herself is a creator and she's going to be talking about that as well. Especially important as we are coming up on Black History Month here in February. So perfect timing for this conversation. One of the things that is true about this podcast is it's often conversations. It's either me talking or it's me having a conversation, like I said a little bit ago, with another creator or influencer or publisher, whatever we want to call them. One of the things that we don't get to do as much is have conversations as a community like us, the podcast listeners. And we want to start to do that more. And in order to do that, we decided to create a Facebook group. So if you're interested in joining that group, be sure to go to foodbloggerpro.com that will bring you to the page where you can apply to join to be a part of that group of podcast listeners. We have 200 folks there, I think, last I checked, who are joining in on the conversation around questions that we could potentially ask upcoming guests, as well as follow up questions that you have for people who were a part of the show. So it's something we're trying out. We're kind of demoing that to see what that might be like to build up that community. So there is more of a community element for this podcast. It's one of the great joys that we have is being able to gather people around and have a conversation around something that we're all interested in, whether that be one on one, like I do in the podcast, or one to many like we are doing within the Facebook group, and even more so within the Food Blogger Pro, kind of the membership side of it. So if you go to foodbloggerpro.com you can sign up to be a member. And we're starting to do things like Food Blogger Pro Study hall or Food Blogger Pro live Q&As. We're figuring out ways to really add a layer of connection and learning, deeper learning, along with the things that we're doing, like blog content and podcasts, where everybody's able to access those. So let's go ahead and jump into this conversation with Mikko. I think you're going to enjoy it. Really appreciate not only the heart behind what she's doing, but also the strategy, the brain, the head behind what she's doing, because she's mixing those two things really well, thinking strategically about how to build a community and build a movement that is really impactful. It's going to be a great conversation. So, Mikko, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me. Bjork.

Yeah, it's going to be a fun conversation.

You have a lot of things going.

On and you're doing those things really well. And I'm excited to talk about each of those. But before we jump into it, one of the things I always like to hear is a little of the backstory for people, where they're coming from and what led them to where they are now? And I'm interested in your story because a lot of the work that you were doing originally was in design.

It was in marketing.

And my feeling is you probably carried over some of those skills and abilities into what you're doing now. But where were you before you were doing any of this exciting stuff that we're going to talk about that you're doing now? I don't want to give it away, but what were you doing before that?

Well, before food blogging, I was in marketing. I was in investor relations. I dabbled in a little bit of everything. I also worked in retail management. And like you said, yeah, a lot of the skills that I learned across all those different careers definitely helped feed into the blog. As a matter of fact, the blog even helped me get careers. So happy to talk about that as well. But yeah, I was doing marketing and investor relations for a small oil and gas company out in San Diego. Then I decided to go to business school in Michigan and then from there, move to Minnesota. Right before I had went to Michigan, though, I started a site that I won't call a blog because it was recipes and no story. And it was all created. It was under the name Cookin with Nico.

Okay.

And that was back in 2013. And I was. It was just a way for me to share my recipes and I wasn't even as excited about it as my friends who wanted my recipes. So a couple of my digital media classmates helped me create the site. I self published a book and then I got accepted into business school, and.

So then that was the focus. Like that took up most of your time after that?

Absolutely. But right before I did, I had gotten my book into, you know, a couple Barnes and Nobles out in San Diego. So it was like it was gaining some steam. But yeah, MBA completely took my attention and I veered a completely different direction, thinking I wanted to be a beauty executive. And so went to Minnesota, where. I don't know if you remember this. I'm gonna put you on the spot. Do you remember meeting before?

Well, remind me where it was. I feel like you have to set up where it was.

I know.

Okay.

Okay.

It was a couple of times. I'm sorry to put you on the spot. So one. One, I interviewed for Lindsay for Yum.

Yeah.

And then two, I also took her the. The photography workshop at the warehouse.

Totally. Yep.

Yeah.

Interview. The interview is there as well, right?

Yes, the interview is there as well.

Yeah, yeah, yep. I can imagine.

I was wondering.

And there was a few. There's a handful of people. I think it was maybe like three or four people that we interviewed at that point. Um, totally. Thank you for giving my brain like 30 to 60 seconds to get there and. And additional clues because I. I gotta.

Give you context clues.

Right.

I would not be the kind of person who'd be like, yes, I remember where it was when it was talked about. Yeah. Um, yes. So interesting in that you've. It sounds like even just from going through the interview process, being a part of that on the pinch of Yum side, but also doing MBA school, thinking about doing, you know, becoming a beauty executive. Like, it sounds like you kind of had this split path or I kind of not. Not split, but just maybe back and forth a little bit, which I think people can relate to. Like, hey, I know I'm interested in this. I maybe want to do this, but.

Also there's this potential thing over here.

What did that look like for you as you were sorting through that?

Honestly, it was the bane of my existence. So it's literally what I've been dealing with my whole entire life. This really strong lean towards creative energy and creating, but then also this lean towards business and food. Blogging was the first thing that was able to combine both of those things for me. When you go to work for a corporation, they want you to be a subject matter expert and you're kind of in a narrow space for sure.

You know, like one thing really well.

Exactly. And that just never fit who I was because I always wanted to exercise both sides. And so as I was at, you know, Target, that was, that was actually exactly what was going on. And I. And it just wasn't. It wasn't the right fit because I wanted.

Because it's too focused.

Exactly. It was too focused. And so I actually decided to take a risk. And. Well, one. Minnesota is too cold.

Sure. Not to today. Today's like 33 degrees. Yesterday was like negative 20. It was like, I have a story.

About it being negative 40 and like my, my, the little film over my eye, like, freezing. And that's when I knew, like, it was time to go, but it was cold, so I wanted to go to a warmer climate. So it was, it was the career. Not necessarily, not necessarily fulfilling what I needed. The, the, the, the climate. Not necessarily fulfilling what I needed at the time. And so it just kind of, you know, boiled up into this big thing is like, you know, maybe it's time to make a change. And so I moved down to Dallas. I launched the blog before I moved, moved down to Dallas and started pursuing the blog.

And can you talk about what that looked like? Like, what does. Because I think for people, they love the idea of doing that, but once you actually have that in front of you, it's super intimidating to sit down and be like, there's, it's kind of the, the opposite of, you know, this really siloed job at Target Corporate where suddenly you have this really broad job and you're responsible for everything and everything to some degree is important. And then you sit down at the computer to start the day and you're like, what do I do? Did you find yourself kind of struggling through, like, prioritization of tasks and figuring out a system for that, or did you know, like, hey, here's the thing I'm really passionate about. I'm just going to do that. How did you, in those early stages, know what to focus on? And anything that you learned in that process, I'll say.

And I don't know how many people Come on here and say this, but I did everything wrong. I started off and I did every single thing wrong, but it taught me a lot. It definitely, I think, has, like, kind of slowed down my. My growth in a way. But I've learned so much, and that's why I'm able to do work now that helps other bloggers because I made so many mistakes. But in that very. In the very beginning, I think I was having a quarter life crisis. And, you know, I would not recommend this to anybody. I mean, I was able to. To save up. And I think savings and resources and funds are very important. Even though I would say blogging is not a super intensive, like, investment in the front end, it doesn have to be. But when you really want to be good, when you really want to have quality work, you know, the dollars start adding up. And so for me, I. Before I left, I started purchasing equipment. Like my, my. I think I. My first one was like a Canon 7D that I bought used or something. But I knew I needed a DSLR camera, so I started buying the equipment that I needed before I actually left the job. And then once I had kind of my boiling point, or when I had found a place to stay, I guess in Dallas, I decided to make a move. But I had savings and I had my initial gear that I needed to kind of get started, and I had my ideas. Like I said, when I first started it, it was, you know, just about my, you know, family recipes. It was a way for me to share the recipes that my friends love because I always felt like they were like, this is the best I ever. And I was like, oh, okay, let's have more. Best I ever had experiences. Right? And then it was. And then it turned into really, you know, trying to find ways to tap into, like, what I'm innately good at, like, cooking. I feel just naturally good. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to take classes. I mean, I do take classes to be better, but, you know, I can do well without it. And there's nothing else that I did in my life that felt so natural for me.

Yeah, it's. I've talked about this a couple times on the podcast, but one of the things I've been thinking about lately is coming from this book, this person that I'm following, his name is Michael Hyatt. And we. I'm just starting to work with an assistant. Anyways, he wrote a book around how all of us should be thinking about as much as possible, working in our desire Zone. And what he calls that is like, the things that you're passionate and proficient at. And that's. That's the stuff that you should be doing. And it sounds like what I hear you saying in response to the question of, like, what did you work on? How did you know what to do? It was like, what are the things that I'm passionate about and what am I proficient with and doing? As much as possible. Spending as much time as possible on those things. And anything, especially if you're not passionate and not proficient with it, you definitely don't want to be doing it. But even if, like, you're not passionate and you're proficient, or you're proficient, proficient but not passionate, like, you don't want to do those things as well. So you're focusing on the things that you're really good at. Cooking recipe development as an example of that. If you were to look back and you were to say, hey, you know what, some of those things were mistakes that I made, what would those be? And then on the opposite side, what were the things that you did that were really smart? And you look back on and you're like, gosh, I'm glad I did that.

So, yes, I think I found the crossroads between the passion and proficiency. But any food blogger who has been in the space for any amount of time knows cooking is not the only thing you have to know. And I really did go in there green. Like, all I need to do is cook good food and people will find me. And that could be further from the truth. So first thing I did, I kind of mentioned before I started a blog without a blog. So that was like two years of just wasted time.

You were publishing recipes, but not really publishing content that would encourage people to follow you or engage?

Yeah, absolutely. Then I eventually switched to an actual blog format, but it wasn't with any known cms. As a matter of fact, it was a friend who was creating his own cms.

Sure.

So you know what kind of challenges that presents with optimization. It was just the worst situation. So I spent a couple years there trying to make that work. So I bucked that system. And then finally I was like, you know what? I need to figure out photography. So I did at least do that, but I bought the camera without really learning. But thank you, Lindsay, for teaching that class. Yeah, totally did help me get a kickstart on that. But then I would say another really big thing was the lack of commitment. So I started the blog and I was, like, committed to doing it, you know, full time. And Then, you know, life happens. And so I got engaged and I wanted to stay in Dallas, but my fiance was in New Orleans and he had his own business in New Orleans. You know, a private chef business that, you know, is really based on relationships.

Totally.

So.

Yeah.

So uprooting and coming to your based on my request means I'm. I'm partially responsible for figuring out how to make this finance thing work. And I had an mba.

Yeah.

And so for him to continue building his chef business in a completely new state, that means I needed to go back to work to one, pay for a wedding, but two, make sure that we had insurance and all the things that we, you know, we needed to have to, to build a family. So because of that, there was a lot of like, opposing commitments to the blog that took my attention away from the blog for a considerable amount of time. And I just kind of like part timed it for pretty long while because I couldn't handle all of the responsibility because I was trying to do everything on my own.

Yep. And one of the things that I think is important to point out is I think there are, there are seasons. And I also think that in a season, because something didn't work doesn't mean that it won't work in a different season. And for what, what I hear you saying is you went through this season of corporate work and then you said, you know what, I'm going to be strategic about making some decisions here. What I liked about that part of the story was this idea of like, hey, I'm going to purchase the equipment that I know that I'm going to need when I know that I have cash flow. And then I'm going to go into a season where I have some savings. But you know, and talk about burn rate. Like, what is your, what is your burn rate for when you get to like, if you're investing in a startup, you, let's say you invest $120,000 and the burn rate is $10,000 a month. Like their Runway is going to be a year. But what you were saying, I had.

About a year Runway, I had about a year Runway. And so I knew that I couldn't go through the year without. So I started exploring freelance. And what's very interesting is the blog helped me explore freelance. So yeah, out of the blog I started a couple of businesses. So I did, I was doing photography for, for food companies. Out of it, I started doing like in person events where I was the chef, the event organizer, the ticket taker.

Yeah. So those are people who are coming to you through your site. So in that way, it almost becomes like a portfolio or it becomes a showcase of the work that you've done.

How did you find that portfolio? And then from there, I was hired as a contractor for a corporation for another beauty corporation out here where I was doing art direction based on my blog. So my blog's pictures, my writing. I was doing social media art direction and creative direction for this company because they saw what I did with my blog.

Yeah. One of the things I love thinking about for all of us as people who are in the world, working in the world, doing creative things, is really like, we are the CEO of our own life. Right. So we are the CEO of the work that we do, the income that we create. And one of the things I think that's important to point out is sometimes we can get narrowly focused on, like, yeah, hey, I want to build my blog so it gets more traffic and I create ad income. Like, that is great. It's one version of a business that you're the CEO of. One thing that's great to hear you reflect on is like you becoming the CEO of your business, your business being all of those different things. And the creative work that you did with your blog being something that is a multiplier on those things, it's multiplier on connection, probably a multiplier on income. And that like, you have a proven history of being able to do that well and putting together the pieces to build a career, to build an income. And your site being an important piece of that. It's interesting, in the. In the pre recording, we also talked about the different things that have come related to your site.

Yes.

And one of those things being eat the culture. And I'm curious to hear you reflect on when that came about and your realization for that needing to exist within the world.

Yeah. So as I kind of mentioned before, the dividing of attention between the corporate world and the blog, I think one of the things that I always tried to do is still put out content when I could. I never completely walked away. One of the things that was a commitment for me and a driver for me was doing roundups with other black content creators. So what I would do is every Black History Month and then later every Juneteenth, I would pull together black content creators that I knew and didn't know. And most of them were growing, were looking for opportunities to get their name out. And we would basically collaborate by combining our social equity and reaching out to media outlets to tell stories about our Black History Month. And what it looked like around food or what our Juneteenth looked like around food. And it created story concept that media outlets like Food52 or the Kitchen were very, very interested in, got us exposure, got bumps in traffic to all of our sites. And we started doing that in 2017. I remember 2000, I think 19. I was like that. Rallying 30 to 70 content creators at one time is a ton of work because we're not just asking them to use an existing recipe, we're asking them to develop a recipe around the theme.

Yeah, yeah, yep.

So one, it's like working within all these individual content calendars or development calendars. Right. Having them do something new based outside of what they would typically be doing, thinking about that, while also thinking about the needs of the media outlets and what they need. So it was a whole, you know, case study in project management and working and managing people. But ultimately it's proved to be very valuable for the black content creator community, particularly in the food space. And, you know, when 2019, I was like, I don't know, if no one says nothing, I'm not going to do it. And they were like, mika, is this happening? And so, you know, every year it's like, okay, is this coming out yet? Like, when are you going to ask for us for our recipe? And so at that point, it had been proven, like, there's demand for this. They're finding value. The media outlets are finding value. And so just this past year, we made it official, official under the title Eat the Culture, where we now officially do these roundups for Black History Month, Juneteenth and for the holidays.

That's awesome. So this will. The episode will be coming out end of January, coming up on Black History Month. What for those who are creators, who are publishers in the world, you know, what is. What does that look like? To come alongside a movement like Eat the Culture and support that? Or for white guys in suburban Minnesota like myself, what does that look like? To come alongside a movement like Eat the Culture and support that, knowing that we do have a voice. Part of it maybe comes from conversations like this, but also, I'm sure there's lots of other ways that that can happen. And I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that and what that looks like.

Well, I think one way is very easy for sharing. Anybody is sharing the recipes. I mean, these. In this case, I think we're approaching about 13. I'm sorry, not 13, 30. Semi content creators who are developing recipes around Afrofuturism. So kind of the intersection of technology and art and food. We're constantly trying to push ourself with new themes every year. And so this is the theme that we're approaching. So, I mean, I think that also presents, like, an interesting conversation because we're also looking through the lens of, like, you know, geopolitical issues and how to interpret that through food. Just going out there and playing with their food.

Do you have an example of what that looks like?

Yeah, sure. My submission this year is going to be a bruleed sombi. Sombi is a Senegalese rice pudding. And as we all know, rice pudding is like a humble dish. It's just rice, coconut milk, salt, and water. But the brulee over the top represents what I like to say is gentrification. So just thinking about, you know, humble communities being taken over and beautified for wealthier people to come in. And so I'm doing a humble dessert, then I'm bruleeing it and adding gold flakes over the top to kind of symbolize the gentrification that has been happening. And I'm telling that story along with the food.

Yeah.

And then so do you publish that recipe on your site along with kind of an explanation of, like, here is this piece really?

Like, exactly.

Here's this art that. One of the things I appreciated growing up, my dad was an art teacher, and like, him helping me sit with something and, like, try and understand it and letting that then impact me. And art at its best, I think impacts people. And I think food is art and no better example than this. So how does that then. So you are developing that for within the kind of movement of Eat the Culture?

Yes.

What, what then how does that fit in? So you publish that on your site. Are you. Is Eat the Culture then doing kind of like a roundup of that content and presenting it to food outlets or like, what. What does the in between look like?

So, so how it's executed is basically each person submits their recipe to the roundup. We then do a blog post on our individual site, sharing our recipe along with links to every participant in the roundup. So we're doing some external linking going on there, right. Then from that, everyone has to be published at the same time so that the. We can then share all of our blog posts with the media outlets. And the media outlets, then they actually share each. Typically, most media outlets share every person in the roundup.

Cool.

Share their recipes, they include pictures. And then we tell a story of what the theme of the roundup is all about. And we Normally call out summaries from each person's contribution. So we get to see all the stories that people, in the end, the concepts that they've come up with, while also kind of telling, like, how this all came together.

That's really cool. So essentially, it's like a.

It's like a virtual potluck. That's what we call it.

Sure, sure. Yeah. Like, everybody's bringing this. What I was going to say is, like, on the art side of it, it's almost like a mobile, like, art gallery that could be duplicated. Like, so you can go to. You can go to all these different places and you can say, like, great, here we're going to put these on display. People can click and they can go and visit and kind of read a little bit about it and understand it. And there's a theme to it. Like, hey, here's the theme for this year's roundup of content. And then each people kind of does their own take on it. Is that getting close to kind of what Eat the Culture is, that is.

Very close to exactly what we do. And we typically do some variation of that with each of our virtual events. Sometimes they'll be accompanied by, like, a workshop or conversation, a virtual conversation where we talk about something. Like, one time we did a virtual conversation about, like, what is black food? This concept of black food. And, you know, we did that and invited, you know, anybody who wanted to come in and talk about it. So that's one way to support is, you know, join the conversation and to share, you know, some of these recipes, to try the recipes and to follow someone new.

Cool. So does that happen primarily in, like, in February, where you're doing this roundup content, or is it throughout the year that you're. The events seem like they could maybe be something with throughout the year, but maybe a big push in Black History Month or. What does the schedule look like?

We. We are. We do typically align with holidays like Black History Month, Juneteenth, and we do have a holiday roundup. This last holiday, we did a virtual cookbook where we also. Cause it's Eat the culture is about the roundups and the activations, but it's also about teaching. And so we did a course on how to use your cell phone to record cooking videos, because obviously, like, video is so important now. And so we taught how to use the specific application, how to create a video, and in order to be a part of the book, you'd have to submit a recipe and do a video with that recipe. And every video in the book. In the virtual book is linked to. I'm sorry, every recipe is link the video. So it was like an interactive book that we gave away for free. But we just want to push people or our black content creators to continue to grow their business and push past their. Maybe their comfort zones.

Cool. What. When you say activation, what do you mean by that?

Well, that's just the roundups themselves. Got it. Yeah.

Yep, that makes sense. So ethic culture, when you describe it to people, are you describing it as a community? Are you describing it as a movement? As a. Like, how do you describe to be. Or even, like, how do you think of it? Maybe that's a better question.

Does it have to be one thing? I mean, I feel like it's a community and it is a movement. I mean, at its core, we are building community with black content creators in order to help build value for them so that they can grow their businesses. That is at the core of what. What we're doing. We're creating a space for them to ask questions, to learn, and to activate what they learn immediately through our roundups.

Yeah, yeah, that's really, really cool.

And from the movement part, you know, you know, one of the things that I think, not just with black content creators, but in general, the power of new media is just immense. And, you know, food bloggers are our storytellers now. We hold the key to our family histories and stories, and it's all encapsulated, you know, on our blogs, which is so beautiful. And so, you know, when I think about my history, my grandmother was adopted, so I feel like we kind of have a place where things stop. And I long so much to know where I'm from and where do I get this desire to cook, because it's definitely not my grandma, but it just feels like it's in my blood. But I don't have all that history. And so for me, it's very personal because I really want to make sure that these things are documented for generations to come. And so that. That is the movement, making sure we document and tell our stories from our perspectives and, you know, share them with. Share with the world.

Yeah, it's. I've been importing all these old VHS tapes for my parents, and I came across this one that was like a VHS tape of another movie that had been imported. Like, I don't know what. Whatever it was like before vhs. But what was so interesting is it was like multiple generations removed. So it would have been like, I think, my grandma's grandpa. And for me, it was this moment of like, oh, like that's like my family and part of me is in them or part of them is in me. And it's interesting to hear you reflect on that also as it relates to story. This is more just a question towards you. I'm curious to know what does that look like for you to try and find that? Like, have you, have you tried to navigate to say, like, who is my family and what were they like?

Because yeah, absolutely.

After having gone through that, I have.

A complicated family history. So there's a lot of disenfranchisement that for those who are still living. But I, I definitely long for that and I definitely have tried to kind of do my own search. I've done the genetic, you know, testing just to figure out where I'm from and it's completely in conflict with what my family told me. So there's a lot of just like eye opening happening in the process. But I'm actually in the process of that right now because it's definitely something that I long for. I feel like, I feel like outside of not having, you know, true lineage, understanding the culture community has helped me kind of find roots and understanding. But you know, family wise, like, I'm on the journey as we speak.

It's interesting just everything that's made available through that. Yeah. And especially the story like yours. So I'm curious to know when you, for the movement side of it, what have you learned in terms of being the kind of central person in a movement, organizer, facilitator, around with the culture, but also just like, what have you learned in the process of rallying a group of people around something and being the central person for that? Because that's a significant thing in. And especially when it's not like, you know, like Plant Power January, which is like an important thing that Pinch of Yum does, but it's kind of this like, hey, people want to eat better in January, but what you're doing is like significant in a very real way. And do you feel like a weight around that or do you feel obviously a passion around it? What is that like for you?

It is a weight, but it's a weight of love. I love what I do. And like I said, when I wasn't doing anything else, I was committed to doing the roundups. When I wasn't doing my blog, I was committed to the roundups because it wasn't only affecting me, I was helping other people. So there was a lot of weight around it. But some of the things that I'VE learned is to over explain. I think some of the things that you think like, you know, people will automatically get, they don't necessarily get. And you're dealing with people who are very busy if they're running a food blog. And so sometimes you have to repeat 101 times just until it clicks. It's almost like the marketing thing. Like people have to see it seven times before it actually sinks in. Like you have to do that as well when you're, you know, rallying, you know, a group of people. That's from the blogging or the influencer or content creator side, and that's even from the meeting media outlet side. I've reached out to media outlets on, on behalf of the initiative and first time, I don't hear anything. But you just, you just can't stop. You just got to keep pushing forward. And for me, like, if it were just for me, when I am turned down, I just, I just kind of, you know, walk away. But this definitely just felt deeper and stronger and more important than myself. And so I would push past rejection, I guess, in order to make sure that we were properly placed and bringing enough awareness to the initiative. So I would say, like, over communicating, being okay with rejection, and keep pushing forward. And then you have to kind of think about where you want to, like where the goal is and kind of work backwards from a timing perspective. Because ultimately the goal is to get our story in as many media outlets as possible. That means copy has to be written and it has to be different for every media outlet because there's that SEO component that you're dealing with. It can't be the same, so you're telling a similar story, but it has to be different enough for every outlet. You kind of have to take a slightly different angle. So I had to learn not only how to prepare for that, but even enlist the people who are participating and say, if you're participating, are you okay with copywriting? Are you okay with, you know, helping to tell this story? I'll start it off. You build from there, you know, and kind of, you know, thinking about it that way. But after you get everything together for the media outlets, then you have to get the full list of participants and have all of their links. I wanted everything laid out for those outlets, so all they had to do was copy and paste, and that's made it the easiest way for them so that they continue to bring us back. And so that's what I thought about is like, what do they need? And then after I thought about the needs of the media outlets. I'm like, okay, so what do these content creators need to make it easy for them? And so I would, I created a schedule, I added, I added deadlines to their calendars. I shared. You know, I have this system now of Google Files where they always enter in their information. We create folders for uploading everyone's images to make it easily accessible to share across all of our different platforms. You just think about what you need to do to make it easier for everybody involved. And it's a lot of manual work, but eventually once people find value in it, they'll start wanting to help you make it easy as well.

Yeah, so one of the things that's so interesting to me about this is that it's you, you have it. The, this, the social impact is obvious. Right. So like the things that you're doing have a very real impact not only around shining a light on black creators, but also on the stories that they are interested in sharing the most. One of the questions I have for you is so there's all different types of income. And I feel like social income, social impact income is one outcome, the other is income income. And that can usually sustain you, whether it be through a nonprofit or like a B corp, which is kind of a hybrid or somebody who's just saying, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this because I think it matters and I'm, and I want to make the time for it. So I'm curious for you. Obviously it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of energy, a lot of brain space. How do you fit that into what you do on a day to day basis? And do you think of it as, hey, you know what, this is kind of of something where like a, there's a double bottom line here in that I'm able to create an income from this. And that also is going to have social impact. That would be kind of the B corp model or like, hey, this is a nonprofit. Or like, you know what, this is something that I just believe should be done in the world and I'm going to do it no matter what. Like that's being another category. So I'm curious to know how you think of that work that you're doing there and how that fits into your day to day knowing that you're busy and capable of doing 100 things.

Well, when I started it, it was just like I felt like this needed to be done. It was important for me. But even when I wasn't committed to my blog, it made Me still feel a part of the community. It made me feel like I wasn't completely disconnected. And so it was serving a purpose for me as well. Even though there was no official pay. So I, and I say official because when you write for some of these outlets they give you a small like stipend for, for writing for them. But it's not like anything major. So there was no major income incentive in order to do it. But at the bottom, at the. I'm sorry, at the bottom of last year, formalizing the organization to eat the culture. The plan is to have a double bottom line to, to hit with value and the movement piece of it, but also to make some sort of income and not income, but funding for the work that we do.

The work better if you have the funding to support it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So when we first started it, this was communications coming from Miko and so they knew to look out for meco. But since I changed the name, I feel like there's also still a credibility and a piece to it to reintroduce like things. Not everything is changing. We're still providing value. And so we haven't approached the first year because I have a board now and we haven't approached the first year in any way trying to make income from any way shape or we're just providing value and getting people used to the ethiculture name. But eventually the plan is in. This year we'll be formalizing into a nonprofit, but we're juggling our own individual businesses as well. But that is the plan. Absolutely. We do plan to go go that route because we, I think that we have enough behind us as far as our portfolio to show that, you know, we are adding value to the community and we could do so much more with more funding.

That's awesome. Um, I did an interview recently that will be coming out with the food blogger Pro member who runs a nonprofit as his full time gig and uses his food blog as a, as a kind of support to that.

Okay.

But one of the things that I've observed is I think a lot of times people will have like my friends who are in corporate will like have their nonprofit and my friends who are in nonprofit will like have their side hustle to support it. Um, and I feel like I've flip flopped on that. Like personally I've worked at a nonprofit and then was kind of doing our side hustle. We're building it now. We have this as our main thing and spend some time with the organization called the Children's Shelter Cebu which is a nonprofit Lindsay and I were involved with. But what I love about that is I feel like the skills and abilities that you have, that we have as creators, as builders, as creatives, those are so needed within and starters really like you being somebody who can start something and rally people around it are needed in a social impact environment. And you being somebody who's been willing to say, you know what, I'm going to focus on this because it needs to exist within the world when you could, you know, just focus on your own thing and focus exclusively on that. I think it's worth shining a light on that and acknowledging that as something that's sacrificial and world impacting, which is really cool. What is your advice to people who see that and say, you know what? Like, I'm inspired to start something like that. Like, whether it be a movement or a community or something that has some level of social impact, and they're inspired by your story around starting that.

Yeah.

What's your advice to them in doing that?

You know, the space that we're in is pretty interesting because everything leads you to be competitive. I mean, even when you think about SEO, it's like rankings. Like, you know, everything feels very competitive. And I would say just don't underestimate the power of collaboration and working together. You know what I mean? Like, find a common, you know, thread line and find people. I mean, there's so many groups right now, particularly in food blogging, where you can share your interests and get other people to jump in at least to try something and to, you know, get your feet wet. So I would say leverage those groups. And those groups are very valuable for sharing information. And if you have an idea, throw it out there. I remember when I first opened my shop, I feel like, I don't know how many food bloggers were doing this, but years ago, when, like the drop shipping first became a big thing, I started doing shirts on the blog. And so I dropped in like a, you know, hey, I'm thinking about doing, you know, foodie related shirts. What do you think? And people were sharing ideas about, you know, what, you know, I was like, oh my gosh. Because I used to keep everything here because I'm like, I'm afraid to share my ideas, but I'm like, if I want these people to buy them, I need to know what they want. And that's the same thing. If you have an initiative that you want people to rally around, you need to know what they think about it. So use those groups in order to ask and see who would jump on board. I think that's the easiest way to do it and to get started.

Yeah, I think so. Rarely do we talk about the things in an open way that we're thinking about or pursuing or hoping to do in the world. And I think the more you can enlist other people to like, even if it. Even if just for 15 minutes, they give you part of their brain or maybe it's longer than that, maybe they say, hey, this is something that I'm passionate about as well. I would love to come alongside you and be a part of this just through sharing and being open about what it is that you're doing. So I love that. This is awesome. It's inspiring for me to hear Nico your story and what you've been up to. And I think a good reminder of like, what matters in the world. And in that we should be prioritizing impactful work like that. For people who want to follow along, this will be kind of a double. Yeah, share. But like with your blog and what you're doing online, but also Eat the Culture, especially as we're coming up on Black History Month here, what are the best ways to do that and to follow along with both of those areas?

Sure. I try to make it as simple as possible. So EatTheCulture.com is the site where we live and where you can find out about our initiatives. And we are everywhere on social at Eat the Culture as well. And if you want to follow me on the Dish, it's simple there too. The only difficulty even Bjork had to clarify is the spelling of my name, which is. Which is M, E, I, K, O and the dish. And that's mekongthedish.com and mikoandthedish on all social media.

That's great. Thanks. Yeah, we both have those names where, like, I would say maybe yours is different. I would say like if I were to just type it in and like somebody at Starbucks were to read it back, it's like 80% of the time it's right, but it's 20% of the time it's like, eh. It's like kind of right, but not exactly. Especially with the silent J in my name.

That's what gets you, Is that silent J?

Yeah, exactly. So that's great. Mikko, thanks so much for coming on.

It was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Another big thank you to Mikko for coming on and sharing her story and everything that she's doing. My encouragement to you as creators is to think about what are the ways that you might want to create something impactful. We have the ability as people who have a following, who have impact, to use that to make an impact. It might be within a really small group of people. It doesn't have to be this huge movement, but it might be. And there are a lot of opportunities that you have before you. And in some ways, I think there.

Is a lot of truth.

In a lot of ways, there's truth to the phrase to whom much is given, much is expected. I think that was a Spider man quote. When Peter Parker, it was like his uncle or grandpa or whatever it was. I think maybe true Marvel people are going to be like, oh, Bjork, what a disgrace. But that phrase is really true. And as we think about scaling traffic and followers, I think we can also think about how do we scale impact. So let that thought bounce around a little bit this week and see what comes from that. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Thanks for following along. We'll be back here same time, same place, next week. Until then, our hope is that you can get a tiny bit better every day, forever. That's what we're all about. Bye bye.

Sam.