356: Achieving Financial Independence, Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, and Sharing Content Confidently with Jillian Johnsrud

This episode is actually sponsored by our sister site, Clarity. I've talked about Clarity before on the podcast as a tool that we use, so it's just come up naturally, but also as an official sponsor, as an official advertiser on the podcast. And the reason that we're advertising on the podcast is because it is a perfect fit for the people who listen to this podcast, people who are thinking about how they can optimize and improve their existing content. And that's why we built Clarity. It really came out of this need for us, as we were working on Pinch of Yum, to have a tool that would kind of facilitate our projects and the work that we needed to do on posts in a way that we were doing, but with a giant spreadsheet. So we created this tool called Clarity. It's C L A R I T I. So it's Clarity with an I. And the. The simple premise of Clarity is to build something that will allow you or to. To have an. It's a software app that will allow you to look at your content, content kind of at a high level. And you can filter and organize and understand your content, and then you can build projects around the things that you need to do. So what does that look like and how does that practically work? I can give you some specific examples of what Pinch of Yum is doing right now. One of the projects that we have is adding internal links to posts. And the reason why that's important is because you want to make sure that the content that you have on your website, on your blog, links to other places on your site. Now, of course, you want it to be relevant content, content that makes sense to link to. But if you don't have any internal links on a post, that potentially could be an area for you to optimize. It could be something for you to look at and to add internal links. So for Pinch of Yum, what we did using Clarity is we filtered and we said, show us all of the content that doesn't have any internal links. Or in your case, you could say maybe just one internal link. And you might want to add 2, 3 internal links to that post. So you could filter using Clarity, and then you could take all of that and add it to a project called Add Internal Links. Another project that we're doing is simply adding alt text to images that don't have alt text. We have 772 different posts on Pinch of Yum that have an image that. That that is missing alt text in some way. So we filtered using Clarity and We said show me all of the posts that have at least one image with alt text missing. And then we took all of those posts and using Clarity, we, It's, it takes 30 seconds. We said create a project where we are going to look at these pieces of content and find those images and add alt text to those. There's lots of different things that Clarity can do. We're still early stages with it and because of that we're offering what we're calling 25 Forever Campaign. We're allowing the first 500 users who sign up for Clarity to get their plan to get to get a subscription to clarity for $25 a month forever. We're not going to raise that even down the line when Clarity becomes more full featured and it's already pretty powerful with the things that you can do. But even when it becomes more full featured and we increase the pricing, maybe we change it based on how many page views you have or how many posts your site has, whatever it might be. Anybody who signs up in this early stage will continue to get that $25 a month forever plan. So if you're interested in doing that and getting that deal, you can go to clarity.com food it's C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com food and that will bring you to a page where you can sign up and we'll follow up with you once you've signed up expressing your interest and we'll talk through how you can do it, how you can sign up and really what comes with a Clarity subscription. So thanks to Clarity and the Clarity Team for sponsoring the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We have kind of a tight knit family here with the Tinybit companies, but it is an official sponsorship and we want to thank the Clarity team for sponsoring the Food Blogger Pro podcast and for building an incredible tool that we've been able to use across the Tinybit brands. So if you want to join, there's still time for you to sign up. It's not like we're going to run out of those 500 user accounts right away, but they also won't be there forever. So you can check that out by going to clarity.com food and thanks to Clarity for sponsoring the podcast. Hello. Hello. This is the first Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today we are having a conversation with Gillian Johnsrud. She is a speaker, an author, a blogger, and she talks a lot about financial independence. And we're going to talk about what that is, what that means, how she was able to achieve that in her life and it really, for me, I love these conversations because a lot of times it opens the door to an area that you've never thought about, a room that you can go into that you didn't know was there. And so we're going to talk about financial independence, what that is, how people can get there, how she was able to get there in her early 30s. Then we're also going to talk a little bit about her book called Fire the Haters and this idea of finding courage to create online in a critical world. It's a great conversation and I know there's going to be a lot of takeaways for you as you listen through it. Hey, one quick promo that I wanted to shout out here is the Food Blogger Pro Facebook group. If you go to foodbloggerpro.com facebook that will redirect you to a page where you can weigh in on the Food Blogger Pro podcast. It's actually the Food Blogger Pro podcast group, not just Food Blogger Pro. It's the kind of subgroup, so it's not a page. It's a little community of podcast listeners. And you can weigh in on questions. You can follow up. Sometimes we'll have guests come on after. Essentially, it's a little community for anybody who listens to the podcast. So again, if you go to foodbloggerpro.com facebook that will redirect you to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook group and would love for you to join in on the conversation. There be a part of everything that we're talking about. We have almost 500 members, so it's fun to see that continuing to grow. All right, enough about that. Let's jump into this interview. Gillian, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, this will be a fun conversation because it's something that I'm personally really interested in. A lot of times that happens for the podcast, but an area that I've read, read about. We've done a couple conversations on the Food Blogger Pro podcast around finances as well. But we're going to kind of, it's kind of going to be a hybrid conversation. We're going to be talking about finances, financial independence, and we're going to be talking about what it looks like to be a creator in the world and how to create confidently when you maybe come up against things like people who are critical or imposter syndrome, things like that. So let's lead with finance because I think that's a great thing to talk about, something I've been reading a lot about lately as well, and specifically this idea of financial independence. So one of the things you talk about is at 32, you became financially independent. What does that mean? And was there a marker that you had set in your mind of what that was and what that represented?

Yeah. So the term financial independence basically means that you've built up enough assets to where you don't have to earn income to pay your bills for the rest of your life.

Sure.

And so people do that a lot of different ways. It can just be your 401k, it can be real estate. You know, there's a number of different methods, but that's what happened at 32. And oddly enough, I didn't think it would happen in my 30s. Like, when we started this journey, I was like, maybe it's 60, like, if I'm really ambitious. And it kind of snuck up on us, um, as it tends to do because compound interest is so powerful.

It.

It kind of boggles the mind. One day you feel like you're halfway there, and then two or three years later, you're like, oh, gee, it's right around the corner. I don't feel ready.

Yeah, what, what, what was it that you did to get you there? Because I think people hear that and they're like, oh, my gosh, I want to do that. Like, I want to be at a place where I don't have to worry about working or live month to month. And my guess is there's two components. One is how much you've saved. The other is how much you spend. And if you can maximize both of those things, spend less, earn more, then you'll be able to get there quickly. I think of Mr. Money Mustache as kind of the ultimate example of people who have done that. I just read a book by an author named J.L. collins. Do you know J.L. collins? My guess is similar to the food world, kind of the finance world is similarly, like, tight once you get into it, where you know these names and these people. But he wrote a book called the Simple Path to Wealth, and it's about just, like, strategies around investing, but also, you know, spending wisely. So what was that for you? How did. And then how did you know, like, hey, we are there. We've made it. What did that look like?

Yeah. So we started our journey not in a fantastic spot. You know, we had $55,000 worth of deb. And coming out of college, we opted for, like, low earning career fields, which isn't a fantastic combination.

Same with my wife and I. We were at an. I worked at a nonprofit, and she was a teacher, so.

Yep. So I knew that it would take a lot of frugality. Like, that was going to have to be a component for us because we just weren't going to earn enough money to look rich and be rich. Sure, it was one or the other. We had to pick, but we didn't have high enough income to pull off both of those. So we started by just saving half of our income. And it was really, at times, it was really difficult. And at times we had to make some kind of unconventional choices. When our peers were all doing this one thing, we were doing the other.

Do you have an example?

Like, we lived in D.C. which is a pretty high cost of living area, and we were in our mid-20s, and we had one and then two kids, and we had a roommate. And I told all my friends, like, hey, guys, this is like a fantastic idea. You can save so much money. And they're like, nah, we're good, we'll pass. My husband had a lot of student loans. All of our friends had a lot of student loans, and he decided to join the military because they would eventually pay off those student loans. And there again, told my friends, like, oh, my gosh, you guys should consider this. This is a great option. And they're like, nah, we're good.

Yeah. It's interesting, I think of Dave Ramsey has this phrase of finance person who I think a lot of people would be aware of, but where he says, live like no one else. So you can live like no one else. And I think that's a great example. Like, you were doing things that nobody else was doing and that were really unconventional. And now my guess is you can do things that not a lot of other people can do and are kind of inconvenient. Unconventional.

Yeah. And those choices, especially in our early 20s, they really compounded.

Sure.

For example, living with that roommate over the three or four years, it helped us save $25,000, which we invested for four years. And then that money became the down payment on our very first rental property. That rental property. That income helped us buy our second rental property. And just having those two rentals now is like 30% of our passive income. So kind of one choice snowballed into something that now creates about $1,500 a month in income. And because housing prices are insane right now, significantly grown our net worth.

Yeah. The appreciation of it. That's one of the reasons why real estate potentially can be a good investment, is because if the market's trending in the right direction, then you can buy something and five years later, it's worth 30% more in addition to the income that it creates, just because it's worth more and the market has gone up. Now, obviously that can go the other way. You and I have both experienced a market crash, 2008, 2009, where when Lindsay and I bought our first condo, I think we bought it for 78,000 and the person before us bought it for 140,000. And so you can see both ways. It can work both ways. But to your point, what a great thing that you were able to compound not only your decisions, but also compounding interest on investments that you made. So just to nerd out on the investment side a little bit, you've talked about real estate and investing in real estate, there's cash flow from that, there's appreciation from that. So that impacts your net worth. You can't really live off of that unless you refinance or take that money out. But it's a great investment. What else did you do from a financial perspective with your investments? Was it index funds? Was it other real estate? You know, obviously investing in a business where you're speaking and publishing books, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But what did your kind of at a high level, what did the portfolio look like that allowed you to say, hey, we're financially independent and now we can kind of, you know, work has become more optionable, optional as opposed to required.

Yeah. So we kind of have a three leg stool. We have our rental income, we have investments, and we just saved in kind of our traditional retirement accounts and a brokerage account, which is just like a checking account for different kinds of assets, like stocks and index funds and stuff. We kept it that really simple. And then my husband retired from the military, so we have his pension, which gives us healthcare. Just a really wonderful bonus in making kind of this whole thing work. Each of them actually create almost the exact same amount of income. They're about 1500 each.

Okay, great. And to the piece of you have these investments that would be like wealth accumulation. And then you also have spending and being strategic about how you're spending and keeping your spending below a certain level. So those two things, if done right, you can get to a point where you can say, hey, I know going forward, we can take this money out, whether it be cash flow from the real estate, maybe money from the brokerage account, and we can support ourselves at this amount, whether it's 4,000, 5,000amonth, whatever it is, that's what we need to live on a Day by day basis. How did you know what that was? Like, when did you get to that point? Had you done a really good job of budgeting and saying, like, great, we're gonna, here's where we're gonna get. And then the other question is, you know, I think a lot of people say, like, how do you know you're not gonna run out? Like, if you, if you kind of shift away from work and you say, maybe you don't have your resume as polished as it could be, there's maybe some fear involved with saying, you know what, we're going to make this shift. We're going to kind of change things. Or was that not how you viewed it? You just said, hey, we're financially independent, meaning we don't need to work. We can and we will, but we can kind of leave a traditional job in service of some more creative endeavors.

Yeah, we kind of ran our numbers. That actually happened. So we had had one biological kiddo, and then we were placed with three kiddos, half siblings, for adoption. And. And then I found out I was pregnant.

All right.

So in the span of two years, we went from one to five. Wow. It was a big life change.

Totally.

And I, my husband, I had. After the three kiddos came, I had left my job, he was still working full time, and we found out we were pregnant. I was like, yeah, I can't do this. It was a life changer, like keeping my head above water. Like, you could not add an infant to this situation.

And what were you doing for work at the time?

So the job I had done before that was commission sales.

Sure.

So I'd done a lot of different jobs. I mean, my husband was in the military, so we kind of moved around a little bit. So I had had a variety of professions. But yeah, I kind of looked at our numbers. I looked at what our passive income would be. We had just added that second rental property, so our passive income increased. And I looked at our expenses. Our first house that we bought as our primary residence, we had paid cash for because we had been renting for 10 years. We've been saving for 10 years. And we had completely gutted it and renovated it. So our expenses were pretty low.

Sure.

And I just said, let's just take a year off. Let's just try. We had done a number of mini retirements throughout our marriage up until that point, partly because I didn't think we would be able to retire early.

Like, yeah, like, let's do this now because we're not going to be able to do it later for sure.

But I just did it as an experiment. And you know, I work, I do one on one coaching. And a lot of people are in this spot where they're thinking about taking a mini retirement. They're thinking about early retirement. You know, they're ready for this career transition. They want to do something more entrepreneurial for the second chapter. And everyone's scared. Like scared is the normal baseline emotion. But what generally happens nine times out of 10, especially if you just do a couple things right, is once you open up this space in your life, so many opportunities present themselves that you never would have seen in your 9 to 5 job.

Yeah.

I even have to warn coaching clients like you will get a lot of job offers as soon as you leave. As soon as people know that you're available and you're free. There's something in the American psyche that finds that very unnerving that someone's just not working. So they constantly think, oh, I know who's available. Oh, I know who might be a great fit. My husband, when he finally left, he got four or five job offers, better jobs than he had ever had before. Just in the first year. Yeah, because there's something that like, there's that loop that people want to close of.

Like this isn't just be working. Right, right, right. It's interesting you mentioned Mini Retirements. One of the first kind of influential business books I read as well as I'm sure a lot of other people, is Tim Ferriss for our Workweek. And he talks a lot about this idea of mini retirements. What was that like for you? Did both you and your husband step back for a year and how did you think through that decision?

Yeah, it was something we actually, We've been married 20 years this summer.

Congratulations.

We talked about our first year of marriage. Like I, you know, I was, I was reading through the Old Testament, you know, as you do as a 19 year old. Just light reading.

Sure.

And I got to the point where about sabbaticals and how you would take a year off every seven years. And I thought, well, that's a fantastic idea. I love the sound of that. I told my husband and he was like, oh, sweetie, I don't think people do that anymore.

Yeah, news flash.

I'm not sure if they even did it then. It was one of those cool ideas that was never implemented. And I was like, but we should do it. He was thoroughly unconvinced at my crazy scheme at the time. But we just kind of kept that in the back of our Mind. And after we started to make some progress with our finances, we just took those opportunities. Sometimes it was requesting a month off from work to go do something. Sometimes it was just taking the natural career breaks between jobs, between, you know, when you move, just giving yourself an extra two or three or six months to explore something outside of the nine to five. And we just kind of sprinkled them in all the way throughout.

What happened when you did that? Like, did you come out of, let's say a six month period or a one year period, being in a different headspace? And did it inform how you made future decisions about work?

Yeah, it's so helpful. It's so helpful to take a break from your work identity because for a lot of us it can be so intermeshed in who we are. And then what happens when people go to retire is it's really scary because work, to use like a little garden analogy, because I'm in Montana, I love gardening. Like, if you think about a garden box, there's only so much space in there. And sometimes your work plant becomes the biggest plant and it crowds out all the other plants and if you pluck that out, it kind of spot dirt.

Yeah.

And that's so dysregulating for people that they get this one more year syndrome where they just keep pushing it back.

Yeah.

So having that time to disconnect and build up our identities and our purpose and our meaning outside of our job was super helpful.

Yeah.

I actually just came back. I was gone. We did a three month road trip with our, all of our kiddos.

What are the ages?

So I've got, let's see, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14.

All right, road trip.

So we escaped Montana, winter. We went to Arizona, Southern California, did this big loop. Um, but I did like almost no work on the trip. Um, and it was really helpful for me to just kind of reset and to come back refreshed, but also to reimagine what the role of work is going to look like in my life.

Yeah.

Because sometimes you just get in that cycle of like more and more and more and busy and busy and you don't stop and say, how could this look different?

Right, right. Oh, that's interesting. Um, so what along the way, you know, as you started to reflect on work, your career, you kind of settled into where you are now, which is. I heard you reference one on one coaching with people. Obviously your book, which would love for you to talk about, but how did you get to where you are now? Knowing that it was probably a pretty Methodical, well thought out process. It's not like something you just kind of stumbled into. Like you've reflected on work, you've reflected on career, or maybe not. Maybe. Maybe it is something you stumbled into.

Totally stumbled into. So during that one year off, we had this huge laundry list of things we wanted to do. Some of it was like, honestly, just catching up on life. We had a lot of life deferred because we had had a really busy couple years.

Sure.

So it was like bathroom remodels, so decluttering and visiting family. But one of the things on the list was something to do with writing. That was the big idea.

And when was this? That when you took the step back.

Let's see. That was seven years ago.

Okay, so seven years ago you have this list. And then it's like, I want to do something with writing.

Something with writing. I always loved writing, but I grown up really poor and like in a very practical kind of blue collar mentality. And honestly, I kind of viewed creative work or entrepreneurial work as indulgent.

Sure.

And like, for other people.

For other people meaning not for you.

Yeah, for other people who maybe, like, have more affluent families or for other people who, you know, can afford to, like, not get paid on Friday. And it was helpful during this time to kind of reevaluate a lot of those underpinning beliefs that I had never really questioned and to reimagine what do I want life to look like going forward in this next chapter.

How did you do that? Because that's a hard thing to reevaluate underlying beliefs and even to recognize that you have them.

Yeah. The process for me that's most helpful is to see an idea or heard an example out there of someone doing something that kind of resonates. It kind of seems exciting to me for some reason. And it's actually a chapter in the book, the why not? Why not you. And that was kind of the process I went through. I would think about these things and then go, oh, but I. And then I would just pay attention. What is that narrative? What am I telling myself for all the reasons that I can't do that or I won't be successful at that? And are those ideas my truth or are those things I've just absorbed from society and culture and family? Do I actually believe those. What have those underlying beliefs that I had never realized? Never. Maybe. I don't know. I guess I kind of realized it, but I never thought to question it was. I always assumed I would be a low earner.

Sure.

I'd grown up kind of, you know, my family were kind of low earners. You know, I didn't finish a college degree. I just, I went into like helping kind of professions.

Sure.

And I thought, well, if you are going to be a helper, if you're going to help people, if you're a good person.

Yeah, yeah.

You'll never make a lot of money.

Uh huh. Like there being a correlation between from an income perspective, the more that you earn, the less that you're helping other people and the more that you're helping people, the less you'll probably earn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and it took this period of time when I went, okay, now wait a minute, like why do I think that and why is that true? Like, am I not hardworking? Am I not smart? Am I not capable of things? Can I not provide value to other people? All those things I actually believe are true. And if you have those things, I think maybe you can earn a decent income. And it took kind of taking that old idea of people who help other people are always going to be broke because I had heard that, you know, we, me and my husband both had like ministry degrees.

Sure.

And that's like, that's the narrative.

Yeah.

Welcome to always being broke. Like if you want to work in nonprofits, like have fun fundraising for the rest of your life.

Yeah, right.

So, yeah, just kind of looking at those ideas and those people that are doing something interesting and really digging down and uncovering where I internalized these ideas and do I want to accept them as, as fact?

Yeah, that's, I feel like it's, that's good hard work. And I think the takeaway that, that I have personally when I think about that is to look at two pieces, like when I come up against a story or somebody else's experience, to look at that and say like, what resonates about that with me? And then to say why? And then is there anything that is kind of keeping me from folding some of that into my story? Like, and if so, why, like was questioning some of that stuff, which I think is, is, yeah. Like good hard work. And, and you have to be really intentional to do that and to realize that. So great reflections for people to have that were listening. In the podcast you had mentioned your book a couple times. Can you talk about what that is and kind of when you realized it was a book that you needed to write? Because I know in this time where you stepped away seven years ago, you're like, hey, I kind of want to do something with writing. And my guess is the book is an example of that, but also maybe kind of building a following online through writing. Was that a piece of it as well? And how did you get to where you are now in terms of what you are doing for work?

Yeah, I started with blogging and blogging and emailing and social media and eventually a podcast. And then the book kind of. It's funny because the book, I think it was surprising for people that this was the book I wrote because I spend so much time talking about personal finance and financial independence and lifestyle design. So for me to write more of like a business creative book felt a little outside of what I do most of the time.

Yeah.

But I picked this book because I was so passionate about the topic. Outside of personal finance. One of my greatest joys and kind of awakenings is being a creative entrepreneur. Like I said, it was something I never thought I could be for a lot of, a lot of internalized reasons. But to find something like some kind of work that you can put your skill and your talent and your personality and all of your strengths in is so satisfying. And I work, like I mentioned, I do a lot of one on one coaching with people who are thinking about transitions. And even with early retirement, you can't transition into nothing.

Yeah, right. There has to be somewhere in there.

Planned out and then just say, I won't fill it with anything. I'm just going to stare at dirt the rest of my life.

This is going to be a dirt garden. Inevitably it'll be filled with weeds.

Yeah, exactly. Dirt gardens get filled with weeds real quick. And so because I was so excited, I love other entrepreneurs. I love creatives. I love seeing them at conferences. Like I love talking about it. It's just, that's so joyful for me. I love helping other entrepreneurs build their online business. So this is kind of. It felt like I want to write a number of books, but this felt like the best first book to write.

Sure. And it's almost meta in that. My guess is like what people see you as is somebody who's talking about, like you said, personal finance, financial independence, lifestyle design on the other side of that. And it's interesting, even as I've looked at some of the financial independence books in the past, a really common theme is people hating on personal finance people or financial independence people. And I think a huge reason is it's a construct that people have which is like, I can't do this and it's frustrating for me that somebody else has done it, which varying degrees of that Being true. But also it's like, oh, that's just something. It's kind of, I would imagine, equivalent to the people who are like, in the food and recipe space. I don't want to hear your life story. Just give me the recipe. It's like, okay, we hear that all the time. My guess is in the financial independence space, a lot of times you hear like, oh, must be nice for you, because you had these things. And it's like, true. But also to your point, it's like you made some really extreme sacrifices, as everybody has, that most people aren't willing to make. Like, you know, 99% of people aren't going to have roommates when they're married and have kids, but you do that, and then you're able to have kind of these freedoms that come with it. So is there some truth in that, like, part of your journey as a creator was having to navigate through the pushback that you got from people around how you're creating, and that was the reason you created this book? Or does that come from a different place?

I mean, I think everybody, if you share online, if you share your ideas and your thoughts and the things you're passionate about and your perspectives, like, there's going to be people who disagree and don't like it for a lot of different reasons, some valid, some not valid. And it's just. It's not any different in the personal finance space, for sure. But you're right. There's something specifically about financial independence that is irritating because.

And it's not for financial independence people. But if, like, somebody else comes across it, then it maybe is.

It's a frustrating concept.

Sure.

That, you know, I think, because we think. Well, there's like, the insanely rich people who like gold, but, like normal people having kind of these amazing lifestyles, you know, it feels too close to home. Like, we're similar, me and you. Like.

Like, it's easier to Jeff Bezos, but if it's like your neighbor three houses down. Yeah, yeah.

And I always. To that point, I always want to encourage people. Like, I think the other reason it's frustrating is that, in all honesty, it's a long process.

Sure.

This isn't like. This isn't like a diet where, like, change your eating and in the next 12 to 18 months, like, you're gonna see massive results.

It's like six to 10 years.

Yeah, I would say like eight to 15.

Sure.

You know, it's a long journey for us. It took 13. Very few people can do it in less than 10, like you have to have like that perfect combination of like, I earn 200,000 and I spend 40. And like the math has to really fantastic. But for most of us it's, it's 10, 15, 20 years, which means you're going to be. If you start at 20, you're 40. Start at 30, you're 50. You're still way ahead of like the average American. But it's not an overnight kind of get rich quick speed.

Yeah, right, right. Which that in and of itself is hard. Like that long term commitment for people. So tell me about the book. What are the elements that are a part of it? If somebody picks it up and they read through it, how could they expect to be changed potentially in new ideas that they might have? What's kind of the core of the book, obviously called Fire the Haters. So you know the basic premise of it and we can link to it in the show notes so people can check it out. But the subheading is finding courage to create online in a critical world, which I think a lot of people can resonate with. Like, man, it's hard that first time, especially you press publish. You know, I remember pressing record for the first time on a podcast, being super nervous, and still you put something out into the world and you wonder like, is this good enough to be in the world regardless of how long you've been doing it? So my guess is a lot of people will hear that conceptually and say, yeah, this is something I want to get better at. But what are some of the elements in the book and what can people expect if they read through it?

I broke the book into three sections in order of people's initial concerns. The first one is dealing with online criticism. I outline some caricatures of the bad actors that we meet online.

Yeah.

My favorite being the CEO of the Internet who's really convinced that they're your boss and you should do everything exactly to their taste and their standards or else they try to fire you. Like on Twitter, which I always find I'm using. But it's also about how to, you know, I have a chapter. You make the thing, you make the rules. How to create boundaries and rules for yourself as a creative. How much time each day are you going to spend in your email? What kinds of comments do you respond to online? How do you respond? What do you do when people ask you for your time for free? I had a really funny email the other day. Someone emailed me and was like, I would really love advice on this. I know that you charge for coaching. So it's okay if you say no. It's not like. So I know that this is something you get paid for, but would you just like in this case not.

Yeah.

Which I was like, that's. He was nice about it. It was very sweet. But it also was ironic that like he recognized it and then did it anyway.

Totally. That's great.

So how do you have those boundaries, you know, and those rules? Whenever I see a creative or an entrepreneur really frustrated and burned out and kind of bitter about a situation, what's happening, nine times out of 10, they haven't been clear about what their boundaries need to be. Sure, they haven't created boundaries to take care of their own physical, mental, spiritual health or they haven't clearly communicated those to other people.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So one of the chapters is clear, is kind. So to clearly communicate your boundaries and your rules is a kindness to other people to help set those expectations. But oftentimes that's like, like one of those two things haven't happened. They haven't either made the rule or they haven't been clear about that.

Clearly communicated it. Yep.

Yeah. Another idea from that first section that I think is so important that we especially like as creatives really struggle with when we first come online is separating ourselves from our work and having boundaries with our work. Because oftentimes our work is so much of our perspective. It's our taste, it's our opinions, it's our thoughts, it's our personality that it kind of starts to feel like us.

Yep.

It's just a little extension of us that's living out there online.

Especially when you think of it as a personal brand, in which case it's really mixed in. Yeah.

And so I always encourage people like, you know, we have this saying that like our work is like our baby, which is really unhelpful because if your baby's being attacked, like you should defend it, like you should protect it because it's a baby. But instead I like to think about, if you thought about your work as your baby, it can be your baby while you're working on it behind the scenes, but once you send it into the world alone, it is a full grown human. It is an adult child that you have launched into the world. And, and then if someone, you know, if your adult 25 year old kid is at work and like people are gossiping about them or someone's being hard on them, like you don't show up and be like, hey, who's being mean to my son? Yeah, who's saying this stuff like I need to defend. That's being an awkward helicopter parent. You just have to trust that your kid can do their work in the world. And the same with our work. You have to allow your work to work. Let it go, let it do its job. It can handle the criticism, it can handle the praise. Whether it's successful or a failure. It could stand on its own two feet and you just get to like, I'm in my channel. I just get to like hang out in my garden or go for a hike or go to the lake and just live my little life right here while my work is out doing its job.

Yeah, that's a, it's a, I would imagine a hard thing to do for a lot of people, which is to separate yourself from the thing that you are creating. And almost viewing that as like a separate line. I think it probably gets. There's probably a spectrum and I'd be interested for you if it's an example being a rental property, it's probably pretty easy if somebody complains about a broken pipe to not take that personally because it's such a clean line. It's like a house. It's a different thing. It's located somewhere else. People aren't critiquing you, they're critiquing the house. But I think if it's like a recipe you've created or writing you've done and people critique that, that feels closer to your soul and therefore is like more hurtful. Do you. How did, how did you work through separating those and are there any kind of like mental frameworks or tools that you've used to make that line cleaner? So I think that personally, I feel like it'd be really hard to do.

Yeah. I really envision my work as a full grown adult that's out there. You know, I would, I would be bummed if my kid lost their job. But like, I don't confuse that. That I lost my job.

Yeah.

Like, I would be really happy if, you know, my kid won an Oscar. But like, I'm not going to run up on stage and try to snatch that from them, like thinking it's mine. I realized that that's separate from me and that's helpful. But so because I started with the characters, that's part of it. Like those bad actors. Like, you have to understand, like this is just how some people are. So they move through the world.

Yeah.

But I also talk about one of the ideas is give yourself the gift of being misunderstood.

Sure.

And this idea that other People's thoughts and assumptions and ideas aren't any of your business. That's not my job to micromanage how someone else feels. That's in their little fenced off garden. That's their responsibility. I shouldn't meddle.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

And to not like suffer under the weight of being misunderstood to where if someone misunderstands me, like, that's okay. Because the reality is no one can fully understand. Even if you watched a second by second replay of my entire life up until this point, like, that's not the whole picture. Yeah, there's still a lot that isn't there. So of course people will misunderstand. Of course they're going to get the wrong idea. Of course, you know, people have different tastes and opinions and preferences and like, none of that is any of my business.

Yeah, it's, I think a lot of, in the world of creating and publishing content online, the idea of a numbers game and there's some percentage, I don't know if it's 1%, 2%, where you're going to come up against people who push back or disagree or think it's not right or whatever it is, whatever category of hater you would put different types of responses in. I think as you scale up and there's more people just as a percentage, that percentage still applies. So if you, if a million people see it and that percentage is 1%, you might have 10,000 comments of people saying like, hey, I disagree with this and here's why. You know, if it's 100 people see it, you might have one person say something. But for me, it's helpful to think about this idea of like percentages. And regardless of what you're creating in the world, there's going to be a percentage of people who come across it and either misunderstand it or disagree with it, have a different take on it. And there's something that's helpful for me about just realizing like that happens regardless, like whatever you're talking about creating, putting into the world, you know, Jeff Bezos, to use him as example again, you know, donates millions of dollars to, you know, environmental causes. And there's people who have takes on, like, why that wasn't right. It's like, oh my gosh, but it's such a good thing. So yeah, it's helpful to have those kind of frameworks and love the idea of this idea, you know, being an adult child, but like, hey, can kind of. It's on its own. It's not that it's Completely apart from you. You know, you. You still have some type of connection to it, but it isn't you personally. And I think that's. That's a great takeaway when people aren't.

Being haters, but just. It's just not their taste. It's not their preference. It's not what they like. It's not what they agree with. Like.

Right.

I'm always incredibly thankful when they come to that realization and choose to leave. Because when those people stay, they take so much time and emotional and creative energy to deal with. Like, you have to start to enforce all the rules because they didn't realize, hey, this isn't a great fit for you.

Sure.

You know, whenever people. I have a very active email list, but, you know, people unsubscribe every single day, and I'm just so thankful that, like, they realize that.

Yeah.

Because the time and the cost for me to go in and, like, block people from my email list or to, like, respond to crazy emails is such a waste. So when people leave, I'm just thankful that one. I'm just really thankful they gave it a try. Like, thanks so much for just giving it a try. And thanks for realizing this isn't for you, because that's okay. Because I couldn't make something that was for everyone. That's impossible. So having, I think that more helpful perspective, because it can be hard, especially at first when you see, like, email unsubscribes or negative comments.

Yes. Yeah, for sure. A couple questions that we have from. We have a foodblogger Pro podcast Facebook group, and we let people know when a guest is coming on, and they can ask questions they're interested in having that guest answer. So we have some coming in from the Facebook group, if anybody would like to join. You can just search foodbloggerpro podcast on Facebook and you'll be able to find it there. How about this? Do you have an evaluation process for if and when you respond to criticism from readers? This is from Christina.

I think everyone. Like I said, you make the thing, you make the rules. So you have to decide what framework works for you. I know some people will give a snarky response to every single. Every single snarky. Because, like, for them, they get a positive energy from that. They enjoy it. They find that snarkiness, like, creative. It's stimulating for me. I find it very draining.

Sure.

So generally, if. If people my. My role in personal life online life across the board. My rule is, if you ask an honest question, I'll give You an honest answer. Yeah, but oftentimes people will say things like, I don't like that, or I don't agree or that doesn't make any sense. That's not really an honest question. That's a statement. So I'm not going to add more information to someone who's not asking an honest question.

Yeah, that's great.

So for me, it's kind of a time, energy, creativity suck. I actually just had a funny situation on Twitter for the first time. I had a tweet go viral that over half of the retweets were negative.

Sure. Like, disagreement on.

Some people hate retweeting, which is. I've never had, like, so many hate retweets on something compared to, like, positive retweets.

Yeah.

And, like, it's okay. You don't.

Sure.

You don't have to understand. It doesn't have to be for you. You don't have to agree with it. Like, it was a tweet about, like, a very personal, like, financial choice we made. And it's a tweet. Very limited number of characters. I could have write, written, like, an entire book of why this decision made sense for us personally. But, like, I just let it. Let it be. Like, yes, if someone has an honest question, like, I'm happy to answer, but if they're just like, that's stupid. Okay. You're welcome to think and feel that. Whatever. You know, that's. That's your little. That's your garden place.

What? I know people will be curious. What was the decision?

Oh, man. So we did a cash. So we. Our first house, we bought cash. The home we currently live in, we paid cash for. And we did a cash out refi and invested the money.

Sure.

And people have really big thoughts and feelings around debt and around mortgages and like, it's a very personal choice that honestly, for a lot of people does not make sense. I would not recommend it across the board, but, like, in our very unique situation, it was a good choice. But, man, people had opinions, big feelings.

And it's like, it's another example of, like, you have this world where people have strong opinions on finances. You share one of your opinions, and if it. If it. People don't agree with it, they're gonna. They're gonna talk about it.

Yeah.

Yeah. One. One more question here from Christina. She says, when thinking about imposter syndrome, how do you think or talk about your past experience credentials in a way that lends authority to your new projects?

I think those are two separate issues to Be dealt with imposter syndrome. You have to kind of reckon, like, it's an internal job. You have to reconcile that kind of on your own. And, like, one of the tools, like I mentioned, is that the why not me? Like, really start to uncover why it is that you feel like an imposter. Like, why you feel like an outsider. I shared in the book one of mine, and this sounds strange, but it's actually kind of common. Was I grew up in a really small town in Montana, and for a long time, I struggled with that. Well, who am I? Like, I'm just. Like, I'm from a small town. Like, I'm from someplace where nobody knows. Like, it has nothing to do with anything. Like, no different.

Yeah.

In. In my education or in my experience. But it was a little nagging thought that every time I pushed myself outside my comfort zone, I talk about three ways that really trigger our imposter syndrome. You're doing something outside your comfort zone. You're stretching yourself creatively. You're doing work that really matters to you and you care about, or you're shipping the work into the world.

Sure.

And all three of those are really good things. They're super essential things for you to be doing. But it triggers that imposter syndrome. And I kind of process it. When you're at the gym and you start to sweat and you don't think, oh, God, this is awful. What's happening? Something is wrong with my body. I should stop and leave and never come back here. I've obviously done something horribly wrong. You just go, okay. This is part of the process. Like, okay, yeah, a little perspiration, but I'm okay. I'm just feeling a slight discomfort. And I view imposter syndrome the same. If I walk into a room with lots of very important people, slight discomfort. Okay. But, like, slightly outside of my comfort zone, like, this matters. You know, if I get up on a big stage, slightly outside of my comfort zone, it matters of shipping this work, but just kind of processing that emotion and not letting my mind spiral into all these old narratives. Why I don't belong.

Yeah.

So the other side. You know, I think that it is helpful to share your experience in a way that creates empathy, that you understand what the other person is going through. You understand where they're at and their struggle. I once heard it said, people will naturally believe that you have the solution if you can explain the problem better than them. And then a third is that other side. So I encourage people, like, just be honest, be open, be yourself. You know, and I've also found like the amount of authority you need to help someone, really I think it's most ideal if you're just a little bit ahead of them. Yeah, you don't have to be. You know, I have one chapter called the Myth of the Expert. Expert. Like you don't have to be the most expert expert to help someone. And in reality, oftentimes I found the people that are most helpful in my life are people who are just a couple years ahead of me, not, not mentors or coaches or people who were like 20 years ahead of me.

We use a term called expert enough. Like you're expert enough to help the person. You know, I think of it in regards to like or in connection with like if I was going to learn, you know, guitar and it's like I could take lessons from John Mayer or I could take lessons from somebody who's like been learning for five years and my guess is they would be able to explain it a little bit better because they're, they, they understand me better. It's not as esoteric, you know, it's not like almost philosophical. It's just here's concretely what you need to do and how you can learn and yeah, I think that's great.

Yeah.

My guess is after hearing this a lot of people will be curious in learning more. The book obviously, but also the work that you're doing. You'd mentioned one on one coaching a little bit. News we close out. Julian would love for you to share just where people can follow along with you the work that you are doing in the world. Obviously you're able to craft what that work is, but still doing work in the world, what that work is and where people can follow along and also where they can find the book.

Yeah. So the book is Fire the Haters. Finding the courage to create online in a critical world. And I'm everywhere. @gillian johnsrud.com I do have a free PDF for mini retirement. So if you're like, ooh, that sounds something I want to do, that might be super helpful. That's just backslash Mini, but I have some, I have lots of free resources for creatives and for entrepreneurs and financial stuff. So you can find all of that, all of that on my website and yeah, if you want to join my email list and if you hate it, you can leave. And there's no hard feelings.

Yeah. For previous conversations that we've had. That's great. Gillian, thanks so much for coming on. Really fun to connect with you and a lot for me to learn and a lot for me to take away. And I know it'll be true for our listeners as well. So thanks for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me.

Hey hey Leslie here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We really hope that you enjoyed this episode of the podcast. Before we sign off, I wanted to quickly mention something really cool that all Food Blogger Pro members have access to, and that's our Tools and Resources page. So if you're logged into Food Blogger Pro, you can access this by going to the menu bar at the Top Top and clicking on Tools and you'll be taken to a page that has all of our different tools and downloadable resources that can help you stay organized and moving forward on your blogging goals. So just to give you a quick sneak peek at some of the downloadable resources we have, we have an SEO checklist for you, a social media checklist, a brand email template. So if you want to pitch yourself to brands for sponsored content, we have an email template that you can just use and customize for you and your blog. It's so awesome. We also have a blog post checklist that you can use when writing your posts, an email marketing workbook, an image size checklist, and more. There are just so many fantastic resources that you can download to your computer and just reference whenever you need them, and you always have access to these as a Food Blogger Pro member. So if you're not a member yet and you want to join to get access to all of these right now, you can do so by going to foodbloggerpro.com join and you'll be able to learn more about our membership and join the community. That's all we've got for you today though. Thanks again for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed this episode and until next time, make it a great week.

Sam.