342: Blogging with a Full-Time Job (Part One) – Optimizing Your Time with David Crowley

This episode is sponsored by our sister site, our brother site, our friend site, WP Tasty. It's the go to place to find rock solid WordPress plugins for people like you. My guess is you'd consider yourself a blogger or a publisher or creator under the broad category of business owner. And similar to us, Pinch of Yum, that's what we are. And Food Blogger Pro is that. And we use WordPress, which is the WP part of WP Tasty, to power all of our sites. We actually, maybe you've heard me talk about in the acquisition of a site we had recently called Curbly. We brought that over to WordPress. We're just big believers in WordPress and we create plugins to support the content component of sites that we are running on WordPress. So any purchase of their plugins, Tasty recipes, Tasty pins, Tasty Links comes with two things that are really important in the WordPress world. Really great support. Our support team is awesome. Not only are they smart, but they're kind, they're quick to respond and they'll help you figure out how you can maximize that plugin and the plugin usage. But it also comes with continual updates and you can make sure that the plugins that you have will be continually supported through updates, which is also really important. And really in the WordPress world, you can get things for free and use them, but when you're paying, what you're paying for is those not only continual updates, but a great level of support as well. So that's, that's really what we view as the subscription component of tasty products. The different products, maybe you've heard of them, maybe you're familiar, maybe you're not. There's Tasty Recipes, which is a recipe plugin that displays your recipes really beautifully and accessibly. Those are two really important things for your readers and for search engines like Google. It powers some of the sites that you might be familiar with. Pinch of Yum uses it. Obviously we were one of the first users because we created it for ourselves. Cookie and Kate, who we've had on the podcast Sally's Baking Addiction. We've had Sally on the podcast Give me some Oven. We've had Ali on the podcast. So some great creators who we really look up to and appreciate are also users of tasty recipes. And Tasty Pins is all about helping you optimize your recipes and images for Pinterest, so obviously a really important component of social media for creators. This is a Pinterest optimization plugin. It's one of the main traffic drivers for Pinterevum and might be for you as well. So having a plugin that focuses on Pinterest is an important thing and a big win. Some of the things that it does, like an example is you can elect to have certain images excluded from pinning. So maybe you have like in a post you have an image of yourself, right? Or maybe it's your kitchen or something like that. You don't want that to be pinned. So you can elect to have that excluded. When people pin pin buttons, that's a really important piece to give people the prompt to pin something. Descriptions around an image are really important. So if you're interested in that, actually a great place to go would be wptasty.com blog and you'll be able to see some of the Pinterest content that's been created on that blog to give you kind of best practices around Pinterest. And Tasty Links is what we call it an auto linking plugin. It allows you to automatically add affiliate links and links to other pieces of content. We call it Tasty Links. So if you have like a specific brand of flour in a few of your recipes, you can use Tasty Links to automatically add an affiliate link to that whenever you type the brand name. It's super slick. So those are the three plugins that are part of the wptasty family. Tasty recipes, Tasty Pins, Tasty links. You can check all of those out, read a little bit more about them. Read about other folks who have used them in testimonial section by going to wptasty.com so check that out again, it's W as in the letter W, the letter p. And then tasty.com thanks to the WP tasty team for sponsoring the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Hello, hello, hello, this is Bjork. You are listening to the Food BloggerPro podcast. As you know, what is the purpose of this podcast? Well, we've shown up every week for many weeks, years and years and years having conversations with people that we call creators. The name of the podcast is Food Blogger Pro. But really these are creators. These are people who are recipe doing recipe development, doing photography, doing video learning, social media, learning SEO all around food and wine in this case as well. The conversation that we're having today with David Crowley around his following and his.

Site and his success with cooking chat.

And it's all about this kind of wine world meets Food World. And this is a part of a series, we're doing a three part series with people who are finding success with their blog and are doing that when they also have a full time job. And what we're trying to do with the podcast is getting kind of the full spectrum of creators. Some creators have been doing this for 15 years and they're having massive success with, you know, traffic and followers. And maybe they timed it right and they. And they hit a market and everybody knows who they are. Other creators are in the really early stages where they're just getting started and have had some early success. They've figured some things out, they're adjusting their schedule, they're learning what it looks like to create successful content. And we can learn from everybody along that spectrum. And David is somebody who is a seasoned pro. He's been at this for a long time. And one of the things that I love about this conversation that I have with David is he's not in pursuit of doing this blogging thing as his full time gig. He has a nonprofit that he started. He is doing meaningful work within that nonprofit and wants to continue doing that. So he's not looking to say, like, replace this terrible desk job that he's anxious to get out of. Where we do have those conversations with some people who are like, you know what, I just really have this driving force to do this on my own, to have this be the main focus. But that's not always the case. So we're gonna talk to David about what his schedule looks like, what he's learned through the years as he's continued to evolve content, his business, where he focuses on things where he's found a success and some of the things that he's learned. He's a longtime Food Blogger Pro member and somebody that I know from interactions and conversations online. But it's been my first chance to really virtually sit down and have a long conversation with him. Speaking of Food Blogger Pro, there is an upcoming Food Blogger Pro study hall this Thursday. So for any Food Blogger Pro members who listen in real time, make sure that you check that out by going to foodbloggerpro.com live. That's where all of our live events happen and where all the information for those are stored. So if you're interested in doing that, if you listen to the podcast in real time, make sure to check that out. This is something that the Food Blogger Pro team is demoing or not demoing. We're kind of in the early stages of testing out to see what it's like. And a study hall is essentially an opportunity for Food Blogger Pro members to kind of gather around the virtual table and to Have a conversation on a specific topic and to learn from each other. And in this study hall, we're going to be learning about Instagram, specifically engagement and growth. And all that you need to go do is go to foodbloggerpro.com live and there'll be a link there. To register for this upcoming study hall, you can use your Food Blogger Pro email address, the one that you used when you signed up for Food Blogger Pro. And we're gonna have a conversation around Instagram and we're gonna learn from each other. We'll use the Breakout rooms feature in Zoom. So this will be an interactive conversational opportunity. It's kind of like a mastermind. And one of the things that I've learned to be most helpful in the last 10 years of us doing this work is the opportunity to sit in a room virtually or actually with other people and to hear from them what's worked, what are they learning, to share what I'm learning. And this is an opportunity for FPP members to do that. So you can check that out@foodblockerpro.com live. All right, let's jump into this conversation. David, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, it's great to be here. I'm a longtime listener, so glad to be on this end of it.

Yeah, yeah, it's fun for me to see people who I know the online them really well and I know the online them with like, profile picture really well. But it's like, wait a minute, like, this is like a moving, talking David, which is really fun to see. So we've been connected kind of in the online world for a long time and have kind of overlapped in the different kind of online spaces where we operate. But here we are in Zoom. Super fun to have you. So we're going to be doing a series of sorts, talking to people who are successful in blogging and also successful in their career. We chatted about this a little bit before we press record, but you're in this great position where, like, hey, what you're doing in your day to day job, you're not trying to escape.

There are some people who are trying.

To escape the daily grind, but you're not. But also you love your blog and are continuing to work on it and build it and have been successful with that. And so we're going to have a conversation with these folks who are in that space. Some are trying to like, hey, leave the nine to five. Some are like, I love what I'm doing. I want to continue to do that and have a side Hustle. And we're going to see if we can extract kind of some valuable nuggets to learn from you in how you're doing it and then also towards the end, have a conversation around, hey, what's. It's kind of like what's working, what's not working? Which will be a fun conversation. So before we get into that, what do you actually do? What is your full time job? And then take us back to the day that you started your blog.

Yeah, sure, that sounds great. So my full time job is running a nonprofit organization called Social Capital Length. I actually founded almost 20 years ago. We run programs that get people more connected to their neighbors and more active in their local community. So that is my day job.

And this was a nonprofit you started?

Yeah, yeah, in 2002.

Cool. And the name of it again is.

It's Social Capital Inc. So it's basically taking this term that probably a good amount of people have heard. Social Capital, the value of our connections, really putting that in a local context. There's a lot of evidence that says the more people know their neighbors, the more interactive and civic, like, the better off you're going to be across all kinds of outcomes and you're living in one of the highest social capital states. So Minnesota.

Yeah. Scores.

Scores.

Well, that's, that's awesome. And I, and I love hearing that one example of that very small example. It's like negative 10 today when we're recording this super cold. And yesterday I stepped outside and in our. It had snow and our driveway was like completely cleared off. And I was like, wait a minute, somebody had come and had cleared it. It's like, wait, this is the bet. Like the best feeling ever in Minnesota is when you don't have to do the shoveling or snow blowing. And I text Rob, our neighbor. I was like, did you come? Like, I followed the snowblower tracks back to your place. But yeah, what's interesting though, we're in the suburbs. One of the things that I've heard is there's a correlation to opioid addiction and suburbs due to the isolation that results in people living in these huge homes, they don't have to go out, they don't have to interact as much. Um, and the solution, the proposal in this situation from this individual is like connection is social connection because people aren't feeling lonely and needing to like accommodate for that in a way. So like, what a significant and impactful thing. Um, and you really feel that when you start to have that connection with neighbors and you can text Them and say like, hey, you know, we're going to be gone tomorrow. Can you watch our house? And you trust them and have conversations out on the yard or whatever it might be. What was what when you started it? What was the reason behind doing it? Was it your personal story or did you just see it as a need?

Yeah, it was actually. I moved back to the town I grew up in. We're in a suburb of Boston and I grew up here, went to school in the area, but I lived in Kentucky for five years and so and then also like did apartment living and when we first moved back to the Boston area, so then my wife and I bought a home in the town I grew up in and thought I'd never be back to except to say hello to the folks. Lo and behold, it actually looked better and better when you're in that stage of thinking about buying a home, having children and that sort of thing. But in so doing, it really got me thinking deeply about how the community had changed and evolved much more diverse than when I grew up here. And a good thing. But it does create challenges as to how do you bring folks together in an increasingly diverse and changing community. So I was having that personal experience. I also read a book called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, which kind of talks broadly about this phenomenon of people being less connected to their neighbors and less engaged life over the last third of the 20th century. So I sort of had this idea of sort of trying to address this bigger problem locally with the idea of, you know, trying to develop something that might scale in some fashion. And we have grown from the town. We still do a lot where I actually have volunteers out shoveling for senior citizens today. A first no day and in the area. But we serve communities throughout the greater Boston area currently.

Gosh, that's awesome. I'm going to add this book to my reading list. So this isn't obviously Food Blogger Pro podcast. I feel like we could do an entire podcast episode on this subject and it would be equally as valuable on like talking about, you know, blogging business or whatever it would be reason being. I feel like what I'm learning more and more is like are our well being is also ties into everything we're doing right. And so much of our well being has to do with how connected we are. There's. There's tons of studies like that you probably know more than I do around like the variable that matters most isn't how much money you earn isn't like the, the work that you're doing, what it really is. Is the strength of connections that you have with individuals, like the people who, you know, like and trust and are well connected with. I'm curious to know, how do you do that better? Like, if somebody's listening to this and they're like, I want to be more connected with my neighbors in my community, how do you do that?

Yeah, that's a great question. Part of what our organization tries to do is kind of serve up a menu of all kinds of ways people get involved locally. So I think finding. I think part of it involves, like, taking a little bit of risk, you know, checking out what's out there. And, you know, some people are very comfortable just, hey, I'm going to go to a discussion on, you know, for Black History Month at the local library. And some people are really comfortable, but a lot of people are a little reticent to get out of their comfort zone. I think, like, pushing yourself a little, because in the short run, the easiest thing to do is, you know, the default is to stay home or stay, you know, Netflix or whatever, but. Or even in these, as Covid numbers are going up again, or even jumping into a virtual program where you can get into discussions. I mean, that's one silver lining. In this time, I think our organization has figured out a way to put a lot of our programming online, look for those opportunities. This is a great time to just dive in and try something. A lot of organizations are offering very interesting ways to connect and engage with people virtually as well as in person. So, yeah, taking a little risk and trying something until you find something that resonates.

I love that. One of the things that often comes up in the podcast is this question of, like, how do you connect with other people? How do you connect with other bloggers? How do you connect with other creators? And I think one of the things. One of the easiest ways to do it, but not the simplest. I'll say not the easiest, because there is a comfort zone factor within it is being the person to invite other people in, like being the facilitator, the organizer. And you don't have to be somebody who's, like, super charismatic, Right? But to send a message, to reach out to people and say, like, hey, would you be interested in, you know, getting together once a month to, like, talk about blogging? That's how I connected with three different people who have been on the podcast. Bruno, who's in. He does influence Kit, Um, and he's been on the podcast before. Mark, who has a company called Quiet Light. Um, and he buys and Sells website. He's the founder of that. And Raphael, who has a site called Gentleman's Gazette, somehow realized they're all in Minnesota. And I just sent a message, was like, hey, do you guys want to meet up? And it turned into this, like, once every couple of months, we'd get lunch and just, like, chat about stuff. And it was like, oh, those are great connections that. That came out of it. And it reminds me of my neighbor John, who, when we moved in, he's like, do you want to go for a walk? Like, do you want to walk our dogs together? I was like, great. Like, that sounds awesome, but it's not something I would have done. And I really appreciated him doing that. So it makes sense when I hear you talk about that as you're being the founder of a nonprofit. That's 20 years. Is that right? You said it started in 2002.

20 years.

This year, coming up on 20 years. Um, and, like, deep impact and. And important work that you're doing. And so it's not like you're going into an office and, you know, doing this miserable work that you want to get away from. It's like, hey, I want to keep this because it's really important. It's what I want to be doing. And you have your blog, and you have success with your blog, and you've been doing that for a long time. So how does that fit into the puzzle? And when did you start that? And then when did you kind of double down on, like, hey, this can actually be something that I could do?

Yeah, sure. I think the backstory to it, I think, starts with just. I quickly developed a love for interest and enjoyment of cooking, you know, shortly after graduating from college. And all of a sudden, you know, figuring out I had to fend from.

Yeah, you don't have, like, a food court that you can go to and.

Exactly. So. And I always. Food's always been important to me. I was, in fact, talk about meeting people. I remember in college, the joke would be I'd sit through, like, three cycles of people coming in and out of the dining hall.

Yeah.

Just hang out with people that way. Well, and I was eating.

Yeah.

So anyway, but in terms of getting into blogging, I think the early days for me, you know, honestly, I forget the exact year because it started out very informally. Definitely as a way to kind of, like, almost like, journal my cooking. And also as we'll get into my. You know, I have a focus on wine pairing with the recipes. I do. So kind of learning about that as well. So it was kind of a way to kind of open one of the things I came across. I forget what even I was doing. The idea of sort of sharing your journey through blogging, kind of almost like open source, you're learning put out there, hey, this is what I'm learning. This is a recipe I tried or wine I tried. And getting feedback from people that share the interest. So a way of some of the earlier days of the Internet being a thing like where that excitement of, hey, I don't have to be limited by, you know, the people in my family just want to eat meat and potatoes, but I can connect with people love curry or whatever else it might be.

And it was at that time it was like pre2010, 2010 even because you started a little bit before then. But like 2010, 11, 12, there still was this kind of journal mentality of blogging, which is like informal. There's maybe a couple casual pictures of what you ate. Weren't really thinking about like SEO optimization or content structure. It was like you'd follow people who were journaling. It was almost like Twitter. Like you'd have a follow up on a blog and you'd see like, hey, here's what they did today. And they posted at night and just kind of a little journal entry. Is that close to what exactly?

Yeah, it was on Blogspot initially. And so I did that for several years. There was, there was actually. I know sometimes you seem to know all the obscure websites. I was also. I had my, my blog on that and it's also on a site called gather.com. i don't know if you ever heard of that.

I don't know Gather. But I love anytime I can use the Wayback Machine and like pull up 2008, like really popular platform. The one that a lot of friends were on around that time was Zanga. Like I think I heard a N G A but it's. I love that stuff so I'll look it up for sure. So you had. You were posting on Gather.

Yeah, I did. And actually early, early taste that you could actually make a little bit of money on this at least if not, if not more. It was. I actually got, I was posting on there and got asked to do like a bi monthly column on like on. It was called Wine Chat. That's kind of, I think and it was so I think about $100 a month for you know, two articles. Two articles on there.

And I was making money on the Internet which like at that time was like, wow. Yeah, so cool. So when did you officially like when you think of hey I started this in what year? Like what was it? When was it?

You know, honestly I think I. I tend to think more of when I really started Seriously. And that was 2014. It was when I. Cause that I switched to WordPress. I. I started following you. You and Lindsay. But you know, I did that. I forget where you with that online. It wasn't a course, it was like an ebook on like food photography. Yeah, yeah, yeah, got that. You know, started really drinking the. Cool. The Food blogger. I don't know if it was Food Blogger Pro quite yet but you know, started get learning some of that. Learning some of that stuff and starting to see it as a business and a chance to you know, with. With the idea of trying to monetize so that that date kind of sticks. I also know I bought a computer that's finally in need of a Mac. Macs are so good but it's finally in need of replacement. I think I finally, you know, here in 2022. But so, so I look so. So I have harder markers for that date. But I of I've gone back and either deleted most of those those early like here, here's some good cheese I found at the store.

Exactly.

That looks. You know, I've either deleted those or updated the dates or I think I have a few. I think I intentionally left you know, some. A couple, you know, posts early on with the original dates that resonated. But I suspect. And I think I forget how it works. I think even when you do that move over all of a sudden, I think maybe that kicked all the dates to the date I went to WordPress if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah. And I think maybe depends exactly how you did it. And we just went through that actually with a site called Curbly. It's a home DIY site that we acquired actually from Bruno, our friend Bruno that we're going to start working on and made the switch. He had built it on a custom platform and then did the big WordPress switch. So can relate in regards to that being a pretty significant thing and you know, changes to dates and stuff like that are made along the way. So 2014 really has the point where it's almost like dabbling a little bit. It sounds like like doing a little bit of this, doing a little bit of that. But all in the category of food and wine and then being like wait a minute like there's something here. I could actually do this and starting to think a little bit more strategically learning a little bit Right. Food photography. How do you do how to get better at food photography? What did that look like once you had made that switch to focusing a little bit more on the site and knowing that, like, hey, you like what you're doing, you know, that you're not going to leave the nonprofit you founded? What was your mindset with it in terms of optimizations and time and effort along with it? Was it purely side hustle at that point?

Yeah, I think in the early days of doing it, of making that commitment to doing it more seriously, I think part of the idea was there were a couple factors. I think for us, it was kind of like thinking that one of our goals was definitely like in wanting to stay for a nonprofit that's successful but still relatively small and not super lucrative in terms of what seem like there wasn't a huge growth salary if I was, for me, sticking there. But on the other hand, things like projecting college and retirement type things that hard to invest in as much when you're choosing to work in the nonprofit sector. So it was like my wife and I having a conversation a little bit. Hey, this could be a way to keep doing, keep the day job you love with more or less the same salary kind of range, but still help bring in the increased revenue we really need to meet our family needs. It seemed like maybe blogging had that potential. So especially like hearing, you know, the pint of young story and other folks that were successful, like, wow, okay. Like, you know, it was almost like, you know, dabbling forever probably doesn't make a lot of sense because I was spending enough time on it just as a hobby, you know, so it's like, hey, can we get serious and have this be a part of our family's financial equation in a meaningful way? And let's give it a shot. So I think what I would say, though, about the early days of that was not being. It was like kind of like drinking from the fire hose of all these ideas of photography, how to get more traffic, da, da, da. It was almost like trying everything. And this feeling like, man, I could be doing this all the time. And sometimes it was like 20 hours a day. Yeah. So that I think was hard, you know, but I've always, you know, sometimes my first instinct to solve a problem is, you know, work more, work harder kind of thing. You know, it kind of my, you know, my dad at various points had three jobs, you know, sort of make ends meet kind of thing. So it's kind of, you know, just kind of the way you do things. But that's not always the best way to roll. But that was definitely. I would say there are a couple of years where that was kind of. My blogging was frenetic energy. Maybe not, you know, just trying to figure out which of the things I was putting time and effort into were going to have traction and really to test the hypothesis that this could actually be some kind of meaningful revenue stream for our family.

Yeah. What did it look like to transition out of that? Do you feel like now when you look at what you're doing, you have a little bit more clarity on like, hey, here's what I focus on, here's what I do, here's what I don't do. Or do you see it gets still kind of in that. Is it like fire hose stage or is it like garden hose stage or like on this. On firehose, it's at least garden hose.

It's definitely not firehose. I would say. Yeah, it definitely. I think I've been able to figure out over the last few years how. Yeah, how, where? I think it's always an evolving question, I think. And I always think whether it's blogging or my day job, the most important resource we have is our time. So I always tend to be very. For the most part, I get in frenetic stages where I forget about it, but I try to be pretty mindful of where I'm allocating my time. And I feel like I have a better grasp at this stage of blogging as to, okay, these are things that make sense. This is where I need to be spending. You know, if I do the biggest percentage of my time versus the stuff that's okay. If I have a little extra time, I'll do more of that. If I don't, I let it go. And I'm not really the world going to keep revolving. The blog is actually going to keep thriving.

Yeah.

As a matter of fact, you know.

Yeah.

What are those things that, like, in the limited amount of time that you have, so you have, you know, when you slice it, looking not at your schedule, but in general, it's like people who are doing full time, if it's a normal nine to five, you have mornings, you maybe have like a lunch sprint, you have evenings and you have weekends. So in that time that you have, what does that look like for you in regards to what you're focusing on and what you found to be for yourself? Right. It's individual dependent, the highest ROI for your time.

Yeah, I definitely feel like. And it shifts over time, but I think in general, that category of producing, well content that has some SEO potential, that's based on some SEO concepts and a lot of times that means fixing. Lately that's meant a lot of I probably spent more time updating old posts and creating new content because that seems like when I look back at, you know, I was looking back at my 2021 stats, I think I had to go down to about post like rank, rank order number 30 out of, you know, traffic that was actually a new recipe this year. The other 29 were older posts and you know, within the top 10 there I can say oh yeah, great. That was a good investment of time. I updated that sauteed arugula.

Beautiful.

It's glad see it's getting some attention. So I think I was just going to say I do feel like maybe in the coming year I think to some extent I picked a lot of the low hanging fruit when I sort of figured out that that was an important space of time. So I'm sort of feeling like the year ahead, maybe it'll be a little more balanced. But I do feel like I have a little bit more of an idea of how to I might not be able to get a post that's going to bump my top couple posts out of those slots right away, but at least that are going to perform pretty well within the year as opposed to never or over multiple years.

Yeah. What does that look like in terms of your process for finding though? So you say, hey, I'm going to update a piece of content and I know that there's a good chance that if I do the right things, which would be interested in kind of your thought process with that, that I'll maybe spend less time and get more return on it than if I was creating something new. So first, how do you identify with those posts that you want to focus on and then what are some of the things that you like to do once you get into it?

Yeah, I've gotten in the habit the last few years of doing around this, around the turn of the calendar year, try to pull both the Google Analytics and search console data and really look for those where I'm ranking. Originally I was looking where I'm not quite on page one of Google, you know, maybe 11 to 15 or something like that, trying to try to bump where I can bump up. But I also now I think you know, from listening to your podcast and others, some guests and other things I've read also getting a little more like, okay, realizing how much it means to go from, you know, five to three or three to two. So whereas I think before. Oh, I think my earlier on in this process, I think I was thinking, oh, page one. I don't want to mess with that. But you realize low down on page one's not really doing all that much for you unless it's a. I mean my top performing post that brings in the most revenue, you know, is that pork ribs recipe. And one of the reasons why it does well is it just ranks for so many things. So that's another factor too. I mean, I think some of the newer things I'm targeting, it's like a little more niche from the get go, but you don't have that benefit of. So. So it is. And that's where I guess, I suppose it is a science, but it also seems like an art of figuring out, well, well, this is, this is something I could be in the one slide on, but it's not going to, you know, so many people looking for steak picado recipe for instance, versus something where, you know, geez, if I can, you know, various iterations on mushroom risotto, if I, if I can even be on, you know, 10 on something like that, it's got 100,000 searches per month. That's. Yeah, you know, that's something to consider.

So yeah, there's no exact formula for it. That's what's hard is I think some people are like, what's the formula? What do you do? Um, and there's. To your point, it's the art and the science. And I think one of the things that people forget a lot is the art in content is the actual content itself. Right. So there's like structural best practices. Like here's how you would, you know, in. You should only have one H1. You can have multiple H2s. You can have some H3s. It's probably good to have an FAQ section like those type of structural type things. But like if that's super extreme example, if all of that is filled with a random assortment of characters that you mash on your keyboard, like it's not going to matter how you structure it because it's not going to. It's 0% helpful. There's a spectrum of like the most incredible piece of content that would be a hundred percent helpful. And part of what we need to do is like, okay, we have best practices, but what does it look like for then us for you, the artist, the creator, to backfill those best practices with things that are truly helpful, impactful, unique. And that's where it Feels like the art and science comes in because sometimes you can do all the things that you read in articles or hear in podcasts, but it's like if you're not doing it from a source of authority or expertise or value, then it's not going to be super helpful when you do go into it. I'm curious to hear, let's say you do identify something from 2015. You're like, hey, there might be something here. Are you going in and essentially adding content? Do you reshoot photos? Do you update the recipe? Or does it depend for every piece of content you look at?

It depends a little bit, but I would say the majority of ones I've really prioritized for an update, I'm probably doing shooting new photos at least because I feel like I've gotten better at that. Unless it's. There are a few have updated where it's only been a year, but I feel like there's adding. Maybe I'll just add process photos, but I'm happy with the finished dish kind of thing. But I think the majority where I've seen good results, I've done a, you know, been old enough, they've been sitting around long enough, maybe getting some traction, but not, you know, maybe not page one or low page one and then doing a pretty comprehensive, you know, redoing the photos. And you know, I think I'd say within the past couple years I've got, you know, probably what, you know, there's sort of a playbook I know, like Casey and others have talked about on your podcast. You know, those faq, you know, the flow of a good post. And so it's only, you know, I've been blogging for a long time as we discussed. So you, you know, I have 550 or so posts on there, so there are a lot that don't have that kind of format.

So.

So that's so. So most have been, you know, ones that I've been looking for a pretty thorough redo. Although I am kind of interested in this idea of like. But that takes time. It takes almost as much time to do that as from scratch, sometimes even a little more. If I had some really long winded intro stuff that just is not pertinent anymore because then trying to rework that instead of just having.

Yeah, it's almost like cleaning out an old closet and then reorganizing it versus just having an empty closet that you fill in. Depending on how unorganized the closet is, it could potentially create more time. Um, yeah.

Or.

Or yeah, require so one thing I'm in, one of the things I'm interested in maybe as I think to the coming year, is it's a way to work into the workflow. Some of, you know, some middle ground kind of. And I've, I recently signed up for Clarity. And yeah, I think Ben that I did a call with, you know, he was talking about, you know, we were looking at some examples of how to organize like doing, you know, holiday post updates and just talking through some. We were brainstorming stuff for a checklist and I'm like, you know, I could probably get some lift to some old posts without needing to make the dish again, you know, shoot it again and the whole nine yards because.

Anyway, so yeah, no, that's great. So. And appreciate the clarity. Shout out. Ben is the product manager GM of Clarity. Clarity with an I we've talked about on the podcast before. But that's really the, that's really the idea with it. Like, that's what we're trying to get at is like, how do we help people discover areas of opportunity. That would be kind of the quick fix, quick enhancement type stuff, but also to guide people along the way in more project based things where it's like, hey, I want to do this kind of holiday post, I want to go through and update these or whatever it might be. So it's been fun to craft that tool and continually evolve it. I'd be curious to know, as it stands right now, do you feel like your blog, your business is like serving you in the way that you hoped that it would be, in that, you know, you didn't have the intent of this replacing your job and don't want to do that moving forward? That's not the goal, but it's more of like, hey, number one, is this engaging, fun, interesting. Number two, does it allow for this additional kind of backstop? You know, we come, I come from the non profit world. Lindsey was a teacher. One of the things that I found was all of my friends who are in nonprofits would work like side hustles and all of my friends who were corporate would volunteer for nonprofits. Like, it feels like this balancing act that always exists in that world. Do you feel like that is for you kind of serving the purpose right now and in a way that you would hope that it would be?

Yeah, I think it really started to get there and over the last couple years and I think that's been encouraging. It's sort of like, I guess it's a little bit of a testament to keeping the faith Long enough. And I think part of I mentioned 2014 was a key benchmark for me. Another one was around 2019. I was definitely at a little bit of a place where my traffic had actually taken some dip, dropped a bit. And that's discouraging for a variety of reasons. Part of it was how much I think as I had some others in addition to the day job, I was also doing a lot of coaching of my son's baseball, which is consuming a lot of time for about eight months a year. So there's definitely just less time I was able to put into it. But there also I think part of it was the new not enough content, but it was also taking care of the under the hood stuff. And I was at a moment it's like, okay, I think I need to do some investments and if I'm in, let's go, let's take care of some things. And. And I did that. So that included actually heard Andrew from NerdPress on Like I think I need that because I do not love the under the hood technical stuff like many.

People who are creators, food people. Like it's not uncommon for somebody who loves photography or writing or recipe development to not love like WordPress management as an example.

Yeah, yeah. And it was, you know, I. So I signed up for NerdPress and I also I posted some problem I was having actually on the Food Blogger Pro forum and I think Skyler, it was Skyler who popped in is like, dude, you really need to update your theme.

Yeah.

Because I was like, yeah, I hadn't done it in a while kind of put. And that's sometimes I think especially, you know, maybe as a difference as you know, when you have another full time thing, you know, sometimes something that seems like a daunting big project in addition to just creating the content, it's easy to kind of put off. You know, if it were my core source of income, I guess I would feel like a little more like I have to. But on the at the end of the day, if you want to be serious about it either even as a side hustle, you got to invest. So I did, you know, I went to the latest Foodie Pro theme and spent a lot of time doing new category, totally revamping my categories to sort of fit that scheme and stuff. And so that positioned me nicely though I did start, you know, I was able to qualify for Mediavine right around it's 2020 hits a right before the pandemic. Basically my yeah, you know, I had taken care of a lot of that stuff and. And was well positioned for everybody being at home.

At home making food and drinking wine.

Yeah, yeah. So it kind of worked. So. So I feel like that. So, particularly the last two years, I've seen, you know, nice ad revenue pretty steadily growing and, you know, to a point where it feels like, yes, boom.

Yeah, totally.

This is kind of. Kind of where, you know, and hopefully you want to keep it growing. But definitely, you know, of course, we're like, all bloggers commiserate about the, you know, oh, now it's January, and Yeah, yeah, the traffic is actually still there for me. You know, I fortunately, like, I'm not a super. You know, I have some recipes that perform well on the holidays, but, you know, I'm. It's not like, yep, you know, all about Christmas cookies and stuff like that. So, you know, I have, like, a roast recipe that does great on Christmas and New Year's, but any. Any Sunday through till April, it's going to perform well.

That's great. And I think, to your point, what a testament to sticking with it. I think. So often in the content world, specifically, it takes so long. You're shoveling coal into the engine of the train for so long, and it's moving, but not to the point where you would. It feels like you're getting in, shoveling coal all day, and then getting out, and you're like, it feels like I got out at the same spot that I got in. But if you do that every day and continually improve your craft, right, like, eventually the train will pick up speed and we'll get enough momentum where you'll, like, hop on and then you'll be like, whoa, like, I traveled three miles today. But in those early stages, it just feels like, whoa, this, like, the train hasn't moved. Um, but good for you for sticking with it and getting to that point where, oh, man, what a validation to start to see that start to pick up and. And you start to realize that where it's like, okay, now it's like, you know, it's. It's not just like coffee money anymore. It's not like a meal out anymore. It's like, oh, this could actually be money. Like college fund money. And that's a really good. Really good feeling. So I'm curious to know, as we transition in the second half here, where you are right now, right, you've solved a lot of problems. You've. You've done a lot of. Had a lot of, like, plateaus that you've unlocked and gotten to the next level. You talked about working with Andrew and Nerd Press and Skyler from Feast Design Company and, and making these improvements, investing in the business, which is really cool. I'm curious to know like what are the things you're looking at right now and the problems that you're trying to solve. And I'd be curious just to have a conversation about those in real time to see if we can find any kind of like not magical solutions but just any potential opportunities or just interesting conversations. So be curious to hear your reflections on that.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, this is helpful. Have some free consulting on Airport.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. So I think one area, I think I can think of two big areas. One is definitely thinking about. Okay, I'm seeing revenue stream coming in a nice thing the way like the ad revenue, it's like I know what I made in December, my cash isn't coming till March. So it can say oh, how might I reinvest some of that in the business? Kind of a question. And I play with the idea of at some, are there things I can think about outsourcing. I also think about do I love my day job, you know, do I want to sort of essentially buy some time to, you know.

Yeah.

Do a couple days a month where I'm able to knock out a few recipes as a, pretty much as a full time, you know, somebody blogging with another full time job. You know, I sometimes get a little jealous when I hear of full time bloggers who do their photo shoots on a day and not, you know, do five recipes. It's like we're photo shooting what I'm making for dinner maybe.

Yeah, totally.

Sometimes maybe.

Almost done. Yeah. I promise it's not going to be too cold when it comes out and.

I hate cold fools food. So. So, so yeah, you know, you know, do I, you know, invest some of it in sort of, you know, sort of funding some of my own time sort of, you know, you know, it was one idea versus getting help, you know, on different things. I don't feel like I'm ready to, you know, you know, I hear, I know you've had some sessions on building a team but I, I always think in part because of my day job orientation team as those are my full time staff, like certainly a long way from that unless I want to go seriously in the hole. But you know, okay, you know, you know, are there things I can, I did outsource, you know, I do have somebody doing Pinterest for me. You know, it's like just something, you know and sometimes I start, you know, Crunching the numbers. Am I getting enough now? Especially with all the changes on Pinterest where it's paying for itself. But then there's also that I don't have to worry about Pinterest.

Yeah, totally.

It's brain space, so that kind of makes it worth it. But thinking about is a va, Is that something I want to do? Or is there or is it maybe I want help on a specific piece of the work. And one of the things I've found hard is I feel like I've tried to ask a few times in different forums, but it's hard to sometimes, even though I guess, like, I feel like I want to be put investing a portion of the money that I know is coming in. I guess that's a fairly conservative way to do it, as opposed to saying, heck, I'm gonna go higher.

Like, I'm gonna take money out of my 401k or 403b and like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I know that kind of, you know, that kind of, you know, to some extent I did that sort of thing to start my nonprofit. You know, it took a little while before I was, you know, raising enough money to pay a salary. So, you know, and a little further along in the journey where I, you know, I feel like I need to be thinking about how you invest money that's, that's either coming in or pretty sure is going to come in. So one of the things I find hard is like, I found it hard to find, like. Right. One thing I like about you, I think, and some of your guests, like, are a little more transparent, but I think sometimes just hard to find. Like, I tried Googling, like I did try getting like a temporary VA for the holiday season, but just even like, how much should I be paying somebody? Like, I have no idea. And how to find them, how to hire them. Is that a good fit or would it be better to like a general VA or somebody, you know, outsourcing, you know, or would be better to invest in, you know, getting somebody to do a few videos for me, for some of my posts that are. Don't have one, that are good performers.

Yeah, love that. And I. And to the point of, like, it feels like time, obviously we're all thinking about time. How do we optimize our own time? And I'm thinking about that a lot. Like as we move into a season of having, you know, a three year old and a one year old. Right. So it's like, it just looks different. Lindsay and I talk about that. Like, we just don't work until seven every night. Like either Lindsay or I every day goes home at 4 because that's when our nanny's done. And like that's. And we might have some time at the end of the day, but like usually we're pretty gassed by the time that we get to 9 o' clock at night. Like we're not going to do a three hour stretch because then we're having to get up with them when they get up in the morning. So time team, like to your point, it might not be team in the sense of like, hey, you have your team at your job, your nonprofit, but it's like, who, how are you being supported and in what the work that you're doing. One of the things that I think a lot about is like, I think usually we compartmentalize and we go like, hey, blogging, work, you know, home. And think of those as separate. But one of the things that I try and do is I try and think a lot about like the reality that all of that stuff is just mixed together. So for you and for other people listening, one of the things I would encourage people to think about is like, what are the recurring tasks? And I've actually kept just by chances open on my second monitor here a like recurring list of the things that I do on a weekly or monthly basis just to have as a starting point, as a reference. So like these are really basic examples but like change the furnace filter, drop sage off at the groomers, our dog, sage brush, sage, which we don't do as much as we should. Like I have this recurring task that I always just like put, put off, you know, bring the cars in for maintenance. I had to do that recently, so I added that in. Pick up around the house, organize the room, unsubscribe from like physical junk mail that comes in. Anyways, point being, I think you, there's like, you could start to list all of that stuff personal, potentially within your daily work and then also within blogging and you can start to sort order that stuff to say like, hey, your time, it's just linear. Time is time. But the value of those things isn't linear. Like some of those things are really low value even though they take up the same amount of time. And one of the things I've thought about is like, great, so how do we then take the things that are lowest value but take up a consistent amount of time and find somebody to come in and help with those? An example being for some of these things we could hire a high school student to come and help out with it. Or an example, being in the office, we had somebody who was just out of college and she was in this transition period and she came and did office management stuff. She would deliver packages and send stuff out. And even personally around the house, I think that would be one area of opportunity. I think around the price, I think there's a huge. It depends with that. And I think that it depends is around what they're doing and how much direction is involved with that. So that's going to. The price of hiring somebody is going to go down, the less direction they're.

Going to have to get.

And the more that you're like, hey, here's how you clean the air filter on the air purifier. Once a month takes 15 minutes. This is the process for it. Great. Somebody comes in, I think you can start to section some of that stuff off that's on the home front. Recurring tasks that could be separated out. One of the things I'm doing right now is I'm reading a book called you'd World Class Assistant by Michael Hyatt. And actually we just hired Mary, who's an executive assistant. And this book talks about some of that stuff that you're talking about. And it's all about time and how do you gain back some of the time that is most important. And I think everybody listening to this podcast, let's say if you're at the point where you have, let's call it like $250 of disposable income to invest into your business, I think there's an opportunity for people to strategically do higher value work and find somebody to come in and to take some of the lower value work off of your plate. Um, and that book sets up a lot of the kind of systems and processes that you can think about for doing that stuff. Um, for me, like a big thing was email. Like now Mary's coming in twice a day and like looking through my email, organizing forwarding as needed and we create a system. She has a little spreadsheet. It's like, here's what you do with email that lands in this category. And what you'll realize if you find somebody who's good is that they'll be able to help. Like, I'm not super special in my ability to do many things, even as much as I would like to think that I'm special and they're able to come in and help and support you in those. So I've talked a lot. I want to pause. What do you feel like are either the thoughts you have around that or additional questions or just straight out unanswered questions that I didn't actually get at within that.

I think that definitely resonates about that. Really need to map out or define those tasks. Like I found. I found when I did for the holidays, as I mentioned, have a va helping with just. It was a kind of a narrow scope, but all of a sudden I had to. It does force you to write down like the stuff that, you know, you've been doing it for so long just in your head, it does force you to write it down. And I definitely see parallels in my day job, you know, sort of, you know, thinking institutionally, like where, you know, you know, it's something I think I'm definitely like. I tend to move quickly from one thing to another and it's easy. My instinct is to sort of keep a lot of, you know, just going in my head of how to do stuff. So it's a. It does seem like a preliminary step that's necessary to make effective use of any kind of any kind of hired help to define. So that book sounds interesting too, as far as scoping.

And one of the things that I've learned is like, I also don't love the idea of documenting the thing that I'm doing. And so in my most successful relationships where somebody comes in to help support something, I have probably 50% of what the role will be documented in terms of the specific tasks. Right. You can define high level what something is like helping out with email, helping with calendar. In your case, it might be like discovering content optimization opportunities. It might be Pinterest, it might be social. Right. We can list off all of these things, but we might not know the process. We might not have the process documented. But what I've used that's been helpful is a tool called Loom. L O O M and Loom and Zoom. Right. So these are the two video tools. Zoom. We're talking right now on Zoom. Loom is a. Is an extension that allows you to do a screen cast. And so what I've done is when I come up against something where I'm like, wait a minute, like this isn't something that I should probably be doing. I'll use Loom. I'll press record and I'll essentially take what is in my head to your point and then record that as a loom video. Here's how I handle this. Here's the reason for that. Two things will happen with that. Number one, it documents it and Then it allows somebody else to then create a process around it. But number two, it also forces me to formalize some of the loose opinions that I have around a process because sometimes I've realized like, oh, I actually don't know how to handle this and I haven't made a decision around it. Like every time this happens, here's what I do. And so it forces me to also say like, wait, what is my opinion on this specific task and how do we handle it in a, in a kind of a process related way? So that's been super helpful to use loom and then to work with somebody to say like, hey, can you create a process around this process? Meaning we use Google Drive and essentially you're documenting the 20% of what you need to get the 80% of, of the value. So you're not wanting to do like super, super specific detail type stuff. But it's like, hey, somebody who's going to be looking at this is going to have a general knowledge of the system and they're going to be smart and you, you know, like, oh, it's okay. It's like 1, 2, 3. It's like a simple list. Here's what the process is. So that's been helpful from a, from a process and documentation standpoint. The, in terms of like finding those people, we have this really unique privilege, I say we, in regards to anybody listening to this podcast in that we have an audience and like you have, you know, your true fans, David, who are like really into what you're doing. And some of those people are also people who probably have the desire and interest in having flexibility in the work they're doing. And there's probably somebody in your audience who wants to work five to 10 hours a week doing the thing that you don't want to do. And that's been one of my biggest realizations in what we do is there are people who love spreadsheets and they, if they spend 8. It was my sister in law's boyfriend was just talking to him. He's like, I love doing spreadsheet analysis. And I'm like, wow, we're so different. Like, and that's awesome. And, and I, I'm learning that more and more. There's a. In the book he talks about the Freedom Compass and he talks about four different areas. Desire zone, disinterest zone, drudgery zone and distraction zone. And I won't get super into details on it, but as much as possible he talks about wanting to work in your desire zone, which means you're proficient and you're passionate. Like, if you're not passionate about something like Pinterest might have been this for you that goes into your disinterest zone where like you probably were good at Pinterest but like not passionate about it. And the other side is distraction zone, which is you're passionate about it, but you're not proficient. Like that would be me for like quickbooks. Like, I'm kind of interested in books and bookkeeping, but I'm not, you know, very good at it. And then the drudgery zone is like, you're not passionate and you're not proficient. And as much as possible to be thinking about, like, how do we work in our desire zone? And then finding people who my drudgery is their desire, I feel like is the other kind of win within that. So I'll pause again, curious to hear your reflections on that and any kind of ponderings you have coming out of it.

Yeah, I think that definitely resonates. I think something you were saying earlier, also that idea of the documenting the process. I like to check out this loom tool, but one thing I found is I'm thinking a little bit more about my day job. I probably apply if I get into it more with the blog, which is that documentation process. Sometimes when you're trying to define that ideal way you do a project, it's the best practice. But sometimes I realize I've realized this a few times on projects when I'm trying to train somebody at work. The best practice is not what I'm always doing. It's totally reminder to yourself, oh, I really need to be sure that I send that thank you note within 24 hours of meeting, an important meeting. And I realize I've been slacking on that, but writing it up to teach somebody else to do it, I need to, you know, I need to a. I put it in there, it reminds me it's important and then, you know, kind of, you know, reinforces the importance of it.

And part of it is, you know, for you, the thank you note might be like distraction zone or disinterest zone, where you could do it but you're not passionate about it. And passionate not about thank you notes, but about like, hey, a system around. It's almost like a content system. Like, hey, think, you know, it's have to go out a week before or like two days after you meet with somebody. Um, and this just happened for us when I was chatting with Mary and I was like, I'm not great about like birthdays and Significant events that are coming up in that like a day before I'm like, shoot, like what am I going to do for this? And so in talking with her I realized like, oh, this is like generally a broken system that I have because it always ends up with a little bit of a scramble. So what does it look like to work with somebody who is more system oriented? Like the idea of gifts and gifting and like getting those ahead of time and having them ready is desire zone. Like there are those people, it's not me. And the other piece is, I think for a lot of us who are listening to this, we're creators, were maybe like visionary kind of artist potentially. There's a broad category of people, but that might be some people listening to this. And no matter how much you bend yourself, you're never going to be in that position of like, hey, this is awesome. I get to follow this really rigid system. But there are people who out there who like to create those and follow those. And then the key is like, how do you find those people? Like that's a, that's. Yeah, go ahead.

I like the idea of tapping my audience and I was just thinking of an example where, you know, especially on the, on the wine side of my content, I've actually started a monthly wine blogging group and there have been a few spin offs from it that we, we have fun. Very collegial stuff. But I was just thinking I've had some ideas for building out some of the wine content on my site, but again it's like I don't have time to do it. But that could be a great example where someone, you know, I might be able to source that out. You know, if I scope out the.

Work and somebody in that group, the idea that they would get paid to like think about, write about, organize wine, like, oh, it would be so awesome. And I think where the hard thing and this doesn't have to be for everybody, but I feel like there's a transition that exists and we come up against it and the question is, do we want to continue to be the, the maker? Yes, totally. Some people do. Like they want to hold onto that. That's what they want to continue to be. And as much as possible then I feel like the effort is around how do you, how do you bring people around you so you can continue to be the maker as much as possible? Like that's different problem solving than if you want to think about how do I become the manager? Which some people want to do. And in the case of, you know, Some of the content on your site around wine. Like the question would be, would it feel good to have somebody come in, organize, create content and for you to manage that process and for you to see like something go out into the world that you didn't create, what would that feel like? And for some people, that would be like, oh my gosh, that's awesome. Like I can start to play the role of, you know, organizing the calendar, queuing things up. Somebody else comes in and creates it for other people that are like, wait, like I don't want to give that up. And that looks different to support different types of roles in regards to like what you want to do. But I think it really comes back to that, what is the desire zone for somebody? What are you passionate about and proficient with? And how do you do as much as that as possible? So I'd be curious, kind of as we come to the end, do you feel like you have an idea of what that would be for you? Like, what are the things that you want to be doing more of? And potentially along with that, what are the things you want to be doing less of?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. That example is helpful to think about. In fact, you know, you can always, you know, you can do analysis paralysis on things, but you know, your gut. Just as you're talking, like I hadn't, I answered very strongly. Like I'd be excited to have somebody come in and crank out this wine content I have because my passion, I love, I love the process of creating recipes that go with a certain wine. I love that. And some of these wine related groups I'm involved in, I mean, it's very good. People will write like, can write for a long time about the soil type where the wine was sourced. I glaze over a little bit. I have to totally. So But I could see part of what I, what I'm thinking about is like at the end of the day, most people get to my site, they're looking for a recipe and I think there's a second, although people are probably most loyal, like that matching process of both the food and wine. But the wine content I'm thinking of is so I can be writing an article and reference a term and then link to somewhere else where, okay, you can learn more about what does, what is kava. I don't really want to write an article on what is kava or you know, how do you make, how is champagne made? Or something like that. But if I could build out some of that on my site and I've. Because I've done some keyword research where I sort of have an idea of some terms where I could probably rank pretty easily and it would be useful to my audience, but it would be in the drudgery zone, so.

Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of us have come to accept the drudgery zone when we don't need to. And especially when you're at the point where you can start to think about, like, hey, what if I used some of this money that I'm making to have somebody pick this up? And it's hard because you have to speak in generalities, because it's going to be different for everybody. Some people want to hold onto the books as long as possible and do the accounting and taxes. Some people want to get rid of that as soon as possible. You know, we've done podcast interviews where people are like, it was so nice when I finally hired a writer because then I didn't have to write. But there are some people who love writing and they want to hold on to that. But I think what people will find in general is that there's going to be people who, when you come up against the thing and you're like, oh, I don't want to do this. There is somebody who wants to do that. And there's a good chance, depending on how long you've been doing this, there's a good chance that person exists either within your audience or within your circle of, like, friends of friends or like, friends of family. You probably don't want to hire friends. You probably don't want to hire family, although that's debatable. But, like, within those circles, those people might exist as well. For Megan, who we're working with as an office manager, it was our nanny's roommate, and she was awesome. She was great and worked with us until she did, went to PA school, and it was. It was a really good fit. And so, yeah, I guess for people listening like that, that would be a great exercise, is to start to catalog those things that you're doing on a recurring basis. And you could even say, like, desire, disinterest, you know, distraction or drudgery. It's similar to eos. We've talked about the delegate and elevate exercise. Those are basically the same thing. So you could just pick one that you feel like is a better fit for you in terms of how you operate, but love that. So I'm. Here's my way to kind of round out this conversation. What do you feel like your action item is out of this as, like, a first Step into potentially filling a role or finding help to kind of backfill some of the drudgery activities you have.

Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like taking, I think maybe a step is. I sort of think I have in my head, but kind of writing down some of the. What sort of like my weekly. You know, I think I probably plan my blogging stuff mostly weekly and monthly. Sort of. Yep. And some manual as well. But what's. As far as workflow. It's my weekly and monthly workflow and kind of maybe doing some of those labels to it, I think could be a. An interesting activity to help think about.

Yeah.

Because I think that's been a little bit of a. Yeah. The piece for me is like figuring out, you know, how. Identifying those things I could potentially outsource, how to be grouped together in a logical job description, but also making sure that I feel like. I feel confident I'm going to at least over time see the return that I'm, you know, that's enabling me to do more of what's eventually really driving more traffic to the site. But I think it should because I feel like a limiting factor is I'm never lacking of, like, I feel like I'm limited in terms of how many new recipes I can get on the blog, but because I takes me the time it takes me to do the. The. All the steps, you know, so if I.

All the other things that. This is something else that I've thought a lot about is like, what are the things that are. Then we can wrap up here. I could talk to you for a long time, David, but what are the things that don't matter if I'm doing them or not? And there's a lot of those things that I'm doing every day. An example of one thing that does matter if I'm doing it is like a podcast interview. Like, if somebody randomly showed up and it wasn't me on the podcast, there's a lot of people who could do it really well. But it would. The. The what the podcast is like, it's me interviewing people or having conversations around blogging. One thing that doesn't matter if I do it extreme example is like clean the air filter at the office. Which is like, I'm. I'm still do that. Like, it's still the task that I have. Or like, ensure the accuracy of the books. Or like, you know, I could go on and on and on about all these things that don't really matter if I'm doing them. And my guess Is a lot of people listening. There's also a lot of stuff that they're doing that doesn't matter if they're doing it, as opposed to, you know, writing, photography, being on social, things like that. Any kind of final thoughts on that before we move into the last section here and wrap up?

Yeah, no, I definitely think I'm excited to do some of that planning and thinking about. I think it would be interesting. And I don't know if it's a thread on the Food Blogger Pro forum or something just to pick up on. I was even thinking about maybe having it on FVP as opposed to trying to create something else I need to manage. Like, I had some thought of, like getting people have like a. Like a common interest. Maybe people are maybe at that. This phase of trying to, you know, early phase, kind of like not a support group, but, well, sort of, you know, bouncing ideas. Hey, how's it going? Yeah, that could be kind of interesting. If there's a space for doing that.

It'd be a great live Q and A. We're switching over to Zoom for the Food Blogger Pro live Q&As. And one of the things I'm excited with that is being able to have it be more conversational versus we use crowdcast before. But it would be a great Q and A for us to do around. Like, hey, hiring, what does it look like? What is. What's worked for you, what hasn't worked for you, or even in the forums too, I feel like would be a good place for that. So love that idea. We'll make a note and follow up on it. David, where can people follow you? We'll talk about your site, obviously, before when we tee it up, but can you talk about where folks can find you and follow along with what you're up to and your favorite wine? That'll be the ending question here.

All right, sure. So the cookingchatfood.com is the URL for the website and in part because I wasn't on time. It's not perfect across all the channels. On Instagram, it's actually cooking, chat, wine.

So food things you love.

Yeah, and I'm big. I know Twitter. Not all the bloggers are into it these days. I love Twitter. I love the. I've been able to connect and engage with people in a way. I'm not as a visual a person as a lot of folks listening. So I love Twitter. So at Twitter, I'm just ookingchat. So any of those places are great places to find me. And I should actually. I know you do show notes. I did write an article at one point about that process I go through for analyzing.

Oh, cool.

Analyzing. Analyzing which posts to update and stuff. So great. I can share that with you for the notes.

Awesome. Yeah, we'll link to that. And then I'd be curious actually to hear just a little bit more about Twitter, like as a, as a last final piece. You know, a lot of us, I think neglect Twitter cause it's like, hey, it's not a traffic driver. I think one of the reasons it's awesome I don't use it, but I think one of the reasons I see people have success with it is like connection and conversation. Do you feel like that's true for you in terms of the value that you see from it?

Yeah, definitely. I find, you know, it's a quick way like because I feel like I don't need to have a pretty picture. I can just boom, you know, hey, here's a great recipe. Or you know, try and see somebody shared something kind of quickly engage. I find it very user friendly. And I mentioned I do have, we have wine groups that meet. We do. The one I sort of started is second Saturday every month at Wine PW for wine pairing weekend. People can, you know, every month we have a topic. People can, you know, it's just open source. You know, you can join the conversation. You don't have to register. That's, I guess part of what I like about is it's like an open source way to connect with people that share an interest. I guess that's. That's sort of my thing, why I like it.

Yeah, that's awesome. Cool.

Great to connect, have a conversation.

After all of these like little micro interactions that we've had over the years. Seeing you on the, on the forums and you know, in various places around the web, it's fun to finally connect and chat here and really enjoyed it. So thanks for coming on, David.

Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. Good to, good to do it.

That's a wrap for this episode. Thank you to David for coming on, sharing his story. It's always fun for me to connect with people who I know from kind of in the online world. Like I know the profile picture of the person but haven't really had a chance to actually connect with them. And David would be one of those people where like, oh yeah, I know David, but also I've never really had extended conversation with him where we get to talk about his story and his background. And that was this Today.

So, David, thanks for coming on and.

Sharing your story, what you're up to. And I know that folks who listen to this will get a lot out of it. One more quick reminder for any members, if you want to join that study hall, it's foodbloggerpro.com live. And again, that's going to be on Zoom and it's going to be a chance to not just sit back and listen, but really to engage in conversation, to be a part of the group that is learning from each other. That's one of the great things that we have with this community is the ability to learn from each other. And in these study halls, that's what.

We'Re going to do and we're going.

To focus on a topic. The topic for this Thursday, and that's February 3rd, is all around Instagram engagement and Instagram growth. So if you want to check that out and you're a Food Blogger Pro member, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com live to be a part of that conversation. And my guess is in that conversation, if you put the time, block the time off that you'll come away with at least a couple, couple actionable or insightful pieces of information as we learn from other Food Blogger Pro members. Another chance that you can connect with Food Blogger Pro Podcast listeners is by checking out the Facebook group. You can just Simply go to facebook.com and search for Food Blogger Pro podcast and in those podcasts or in those in that podcast group, the opportunity there is to join the conversation for upcoming episodes and you can let us know any questions that you have for anybody who's coming on and any follow up questions you have after listening to it. So that's a new group that we are building little by little over time and it's been fun to see the conversations that we've had coming up in, in that, in that area, in that group. So looking forward to it. Would love for you to be a.

Part of it as well.

We're over 200 members or 200 people followers. What would it be? If you're members, I guess it's technically members of the Facebook group, which obviously is different than members of Food Blogger Pro itself. But the Facebook group for the podcast is free, so go ahead and check it out and join the conversation. That is it for this week. Thanks for tuning in as always. Our hope for this podcast is that it can help you get a tiny bit better every day forever. And it's a great joy that we get to do each and every week all right. Make it a great week. Thank you.