376: Organizing and Running Large-Scale Virtual Events for Creators with Stefani Pollack

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Foreign.

This is the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Bjork. Today we are having a conversation with Stephanie Pollock, and she's going to be talking about how back in the day, way back in the day, especially in.

The Internet age, she built a site called Cupcake Project.

There's a great story behind why she started that and how she really got into the nitty gritty details of building a site, found success with that, and eventually pivoted into agency or evolved the number of businesses she had to also include an agency. So she was running two companies, Cupcake Project and Agency around Instagram and Instagram Growth. And between the Cupcake Project and her business partner Scott, who has a an Instagram account called Grillin Fools, they have over 1.5 million followers. Cupcake Project itself has 912,000 followers, which is at the time of this recording. Really incredible. So there's a section where we talk about the start of Cupcake Project. We also talk about her digital marketing agency focused on Instagram growth and what she's seeing as successful ways to grow a following on Instagram right now, and some tips and tricks on what she's seeing really working well. And then we're going to talk about an online virtual event that she has called the Bakefest. And she's going to be talking about how she pulls that off, what it looks like, the tools they use to run the event. And we're going to talk about ways that people could do something like this, even if you don't have a big following, and how to be strategic about business and business decisions and how to decouple the idea of a following from building a business. And that's not always something that you need. So there's a lot of different angles that we hit here in this podcast interview, all really interesting things. And I think there'll definitely be some.

Nuggets that you'll get out of it.

And apply within your own business. So let's go ahead and jump into the interview. Stephanie, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, we're going to be talking about.

Your work with the Bakefest, but before that, I want to hear a little.

Bit about when you first started online.

And it was before blogging and like, community building and online events were what they are now. They look very different. So take Us back to that moment. Like that first blog post that you published.

Sure. So I started blogging like you said, a really long time ago in 2007. And what it was was that I had some good friends who were talking to me about a wedding, their wedding that was coming up. And they were talking about cupcakes and how expensive it was going to be for them to have these cupcakes at the wedding.

And.

And so I was like, well, I'll bake the cupcakes for you. But I had never baked cupcakes like a day in my life.

But you're like, can't be that hard, right?

People are going to say no. So then they said yes. And I'm someone who takes things pretty seriously. And so I was like, I better get really good at baking cupcakes if I'm going to do this for someone's wedding. So I started baking cupcakes every week for like nine months leading up to their wedding and, and let them sample all the different flavors. And then I started this blog cupcake project purely as a way for them to leave notes about which cupcakes liked and didn't like.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. That was the whole, the whole beginning of everything. And you know, they were the only ones who were reading it. And my early comments were just, this cupcake is an A on taste and an F on presentation. You know, things like that.

And that was in 2007. Seven.

Yeah.

And so did you have an idea of like, okay, the wedding's gonna happen and at that point I'm gonna stop publishing these online? Like, was that the culmination of the cupcake project in your mind or did you know that it was gonna continue on and be kind of its own thing into it?

I realized that it was going to be more than just their wedding. Like, once I saw people were starting to read it and I got really excited and I got really into it and I started trying to research how can I make this grow. Yeah. I mean, not necessarily to become my full time business, you know, as it ended up becoming, but just to see, you know, how many people can I get to look at this and what, what can happen?

Yeah. And so you have a few different things in the works now. So you, you started that. And very quickly. My. What I'm sensing is that you're somebody who, once you dig into something, like, you're really going to dig into it. So cupcakes. Right. You just 100%. But then within that kind of the, the sub project, underneath that was like, oh, I'm publishing stuff online. I'm starting to get engagement. Let's get really into that. How can I figure out how to do that well, and grow that? And from that, you've had success in multiple areas. Right. You have almost a million followers for Cupcake project on Instagram. You have the blog itself, but you also have two other areas, kind of digital marketing agency as well as a virtual event. So can you talk about kind of in your online event community ecosystem, kind of what the different components of it are?

Yeah, sure. So it all started with the blog, and then it grew into the social media like you mentioned. And then when my social media blew up my Instagram, when I had hundreds of thousands of followers, I started to get a lot of questions on how do you grow on social media? And so I teamed up with a fellow blogger in the grilling space. He's at Grill and Fools, Scott Thomas. And he also, he kind of helped me to get to where I was. And so the two of us together started build digital marketing. And what we did is we were offering classes on teaching people how to grow on social. And then that quickly changed because what happened was we were teaching people how to do it, and then they weren't doing it what we told them, and then they were complaining and. And they're like, we don't have the time to do this. You know, it's frustrating. And so what we started doing was just managing social media for people. We're like, let's just. We'll take this off your hands. We'll do it. We know you don't have time to do it because you're doing 500 other things. And so we started doing social media management, specifically on Instagram.

Yeah. What are you finding now that works well for growing an Instagram following?

So now it's all reels. I mean, all reels all the time. It's video. You just have to do video. And. And what's different now, which is so different from when we started? When we started, it was a lot of repurposing viral content, and that was what was working super well. And now it's original content that does so much better than viral content and video and stuff that isn't overly produced. It's just natural.

Yeah. It's interesting to contrast that against what I think a lot of people have as a vision of Instagram, which is a really polished, almost perfect photo that you're publishing. This is, you know, I don't know, six, seven years ago. You would know better than I would, but it also feels like there's kind of a little bit of a hangover of that. It's. It's almost like, I would imagine if it's a. Like a high school friend that you haven't seen for eight years and you come back to it and you're like, wait, you've totally changed. Like, you're not the same person that I knew in high school. For better or for worse. I think it depends on who you ask. Feels like Instagram is very similar where if you haven't been in it, like, if you. If you. Your idea of it was what it was five years ago, you'd come back and you'd be like, oh, my gosh, this is a completely different platform. So within reels, you said original content, meaning you're. You as the creator or whatever your creative looks like are going in and you're creating a reel and you're not trying to find, like, another viral piece of content or like some meme that you're repurposing. You're just going inauthentically, genuinely recording you, and then maybe doing a little bit of editing, keeping it tight, and then publishing it as a reel. Is that essentially what you're saying?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. When I said original content, though, I meant as opposed to being a curator. I think curator was really working for people. And now it's. Let's come up with something and it doesn't have to be. Yeah, it just can be really, really simple and raw. And that's. That's it. That's what does well, so if it's.

Simple and raw, what is the thing that's attracting people to it, in your opinion?

I think it real. I think things real, real. It's like things that are.

Right.

So anything that somebody can look at and say, oh, yeah, I can do that, or, oh, yeah, I've experienced this. That's. That's going to win people over.

Yeah. Do you find that with the clients that you work with, it's a hard transition if they've had success in a previous version of Instagram or do you feel like people are pretty nimble and willing to make the change?

I think it's a very hard transition because a lot of brands don't have the wherewithal, the ability, the budget to be creating content. Right. So all of that. So getting brands on board to the content creation piece of it is tough.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So in terms of your.

Well, one more question on the agency side of things. So build digital marketing. Com, what does that look like for you in terms of an ideal client? Because I'm sure a lot of people listening to this would be like, that sounds really, really great to have somebody helping me think strategically about growing my Instagram account. Would you have somebody you'd say like, hey, ideally, here's what we're looking for for somebody who might work with us.

Yeah, I mean, I think it has to be somebody who is already established themselves in some degree. We work with a lot of small businesses.

Sure.

Is our main clients that we, that we work with. But it's got to be somebody who's willing to be flexible, willing to either give us content that they've created and let us finesse that content and work with it, or willing to kind of turn things over and say, okay, you run with this and you, you create the content for us.

Yeah, cool. So on a day to day basis. Well, that was build digital marketing. So Instagram focus and you have the cupcake project and the, and then you also have the Bake Fest. Can you talk a little bit about that? We're going to dive into, little bit deeper onto, onto that in a little bit.

Yeah. So the Bake Fest grew out of the pandemic. So what was happening in the pandemic specifically, I mean, all throughout the everyone but baking community that I was dealing with is that nobody, you know, nobody's getting together. Right. And there were normally a lot of different baking shows, baking events that were happening throughout the year where bakers could meet up with brands, could meet with each other, could get inspiration, learn new techniques, tips and tricks, all of this stuff. And that just wasn't happening. So I got together in like an Instagram chat with a bunch of my Instagram baking friends and we're like, you know, what can we do? Like, how can we do something to bring everyone together? And my friend Darren Fox actually had this idea, he was like, let's have a virtual event. And so him and I teamed up and created the Bakefest. And the Bake Fest is a virtual event for bakers at all skill levels and along all topics. So a lot of baking events are just for cakers or just for cookiers or they're very specific if you're in that world. But this is beginners to advanced level and it's hands on baking classes and then it's also baking business classes. So people who want to grow a baking business can take classes there and then there's opportunities to network and opportunities to meet brands and all of that good stuff.

Yeah, it's almost like, you know, and my father in law is a doctor and he has these continuing education courses or classes that he has to take and sometimes they're in these, you know, great locations and you're able to travel and go there and. But I think they also do digital versions of it and I think a lot about that for our space. We don't have any requirements necessarily like if you're publishing content online. But I think the still, the idea should still apply around continuing education. Like how are you continuing to evolve your craft, get better at it, make sure that you understand it. And it sounds like that's what this is where it's not only baking related content but also like here's classes and content for you. If you're in the business of baking. It's both of those things.

Exactly, exactly. It's business and the baking classes together. So we didn't know actually like who our audience would be when we first started. We just kind of threw the idea out there and it ended up that like 60 something percent of people that are attend our events are small business owners in one respect or another.

Yeah. What. So for you personally, when you, you have these three different areas of focus that you've described, three different businesses, how do you split your time between those? Like what does that look like for you to kind of load balance in a day between? Because with any single one of them I would assume you could spend a lot of time on it.

Yeah, it's really tricky and I'm not going to say that I'm the best at it. Like I'm someone that goes like whole hog, you know, one thing at a time. So I would say that I spend probably 75, 80% of my time on Bake Fest right now because it's the baby, you know, it needs the most attention. It's the one that I'm growing the build. Digital marketing kind of runs itself. I have a great team, so I work with my team and make sure everyone's on task, onboard new clients, things like that. But it doesn't require that much effort. And cupcake project is there, it's earning sort of passive income from the ads that are on there. But it's not a top priority. It's a moneymaker, but it's not something they have to spend a lot of time on.

Yeah. What is that like for you as a, as a creator but also as a business owner? Because I think anybody listening to this would look at kind of what you have going with the cupcake project where you have Years of experience. You have almost a million followers and I think that would be so desirable for people. And they would say like, I would just spend all of my time trying to like build and grow that thing and you probably could spend all your time building and growing it.

So what was.

And I can relate with this too as I personally or like with collectively with another person have ideas that want to pursue and kind of part of it is strategic decisions around business but a huge part of it is like where are you being pulled as a creative and where is your energy going? So what does that decision making process look like for you when you have a really good thing and then you also have a good idea and you know that that good idea could be great and you also have a good thing. And how do you balance between the decision making of like which one do you focus on?

Oh, it's a great question and I think you sort of nailed it. I think for me it's where I'm going to derive the most pleasure like and learn the most new things from. You know, I'm somebody who like, for me, just like learning is what motivates me. Right. Learning and trying new things and making them work. Right. So I think that, you know, this is, I'm by running this virtual event, it's just so exciting to me. It's something completely new. I love community building and this really is an opportunity to do that. So it's really what drives me more.

Than anything else right now is learning is kind of acquiring a new skill. They talk about the idea of being in, I think they call it flow, like a state of flow. Does that sound right? There's this, the guy that, he has a really long last name and I can never pronounce it right. Mihali. Oh, I'm not even gonna attempt. But he, he does a lot of research around flow and it's this idea of like when you're doing work where time passes quicker than it usually does. And I think of myself like in high school I took a photography class and we had a dark room which feels like I grew up in 1920. Like it just seems like it was so long ago. And in some ways, in a lot of ways it was. But I just remember going in and developing photos and kind of feeling like this state of flow where you kind of lose track of time could come out. And it feels like I was in there for 20 minutes and I was maybe in there for two hours. But just how great it is when you're doing work that feels like that where you just kind of it engulfs you and you get lost in it. And I think it's inspiring for me to hear you talk about that because as creators and business owners, part of the decision making is like business decision optimization, but a huge part of it is optimization around the work that you're doing and finding work that is the best fit for you on a day to day basis. And it sounds like in a lot of ways you've done that with the Bake Fest. So when was the first event? Sounds like COVID Pandemic was kind of the launching point for it.

Yeah. So our first event was May of 2021 and we did one of May of 2022 and now we have our third event coming up on October 8th.

Got it.

So talk about that.

Let's talk about it first from an attendee perspective. So I'm somebody who's going to attend this. What can I expect?

And then let's talk about it from.

Kind of behind the scenes perspective. How do you actually pull it off? So for somebody who's interested in attending, what can they expect and what does the kind of logistics of a virtual event?

Sure. I think a lot of people expect one of two things when they go to a virtual event. They think it's either going to be just like a zoom meeting because that's what they're used to, or a lot of people do virtual events in Facebook groups. So people are expecting a Facebook situation, but ours is nothing like that. It's very immersive. What happens with our event is when you log in, it's a single login and you see a splash screen that shows you everything that's happening throughout the event. And we have four classes that go on at the same time, so you can pick which one you want to attend. And you don't need to decide in advance. So you just show up and if you don't like it, you can pop into another. Another class. We know, whatever you like. And then it's kind of like a.

Conference where they'll have sessions. You have four different rooms.

Exactly.

You might sit in on one for a little bit and then decide, hey, I'm going to go to a different one.

Yeah. And you can even hang out in the hallway just like you would at a conference. Because we have little networking tables that pop up with video chat. So you can like hang out there and be at the video chat and talk to people there if you'd like. So, you know, whatever you want. And then we have a virtual marketplace which Is basically like the vendor booth that you would see if you went to a live event. Right. So they're little, they're. They're literally pictures of tables with little chairs around them. And then you can like see from the chairs like how many people are at each table. And, and then when you click on it, it opens up and you can talk to the vendor, ask questions, get to know them. And then we have discounts, shopping discounts from everyone that's participating. So it's a great place to kind of do some holiday shopping.

Cool, that's awesome. So an example of a vendor, can you talk a little bit about what that would look like? So that's somebody from a company and you can maybe if there's certain vendors that you work with sitting at their computer. But when you log in, it looks like they're at a table and you can go and like click and then you just be in a. Is it zoom? A zoom conversation?

It's like zoom. It's like a video chat and there could be up to 10 people in there with you. So all asking questions, interacting. So like for example, Bob's Red Mill is a sponsor. So they'll be there and you know, it'll pop up and you can talk to someone from Bob's Red Mill. If you have a question about, you know, your gluten free baking or whatever, you can ask them some questions.

Cool. Oh, that's great. In the class, as you said, focus on baking or kind of the, the art and skill side of, of baking, but also the business of running like brick and mortar online. All of the above. Like how wide is kind of the business side of things.

Yeah. So our holiday event on October 8th, we have seven classes. So in our big events in May, we had like 40 classes. So we covered, we were able to cover a lot more topics. This one we do have quite a bit on holiday baking. So we've got amazing cookie decorators showing cookie decorating and cake decorating. And then we have some like easy holiday recipes if you want some simple, great, perfect like you know, basics. And then we have business classes like how do you raise your prices? You know, supplies are more expensive now. Can you raise your prices? And how do you market on social media and grow your business? So all that kind of stuff as well.

How do you do the virtual side of the baking classes? Is it somebody who's like in their kitchen and has multiple cameras or.

Yeah, so they have two cameras so you can have a close up on the food and you have their face and Then we send all the materials in advance so that participants can print out and buy the stuff that they want if they're going to participate live. And a chunk of our students do participate live. And what's cool is that with the technology we're using, we can bring them up onto the screen. So if they want to show what they're doing to ask a question, they can show the instructor what they're working on. But if they don't want to watch live, then they can do the do it with the recording after the fact.

Cool. Is there a producer, like a producer person on site doing the camera switching? It's a really detailed question, but I'm curious how that works.

No, we don't have a producer person. We just have two cameras going the whole time.

Oh, I see. That makes sense now. Going the whole time so you can see. So it's not like somebody switching back and forth.

Yeah. Now what we do have, I mean, if you're getting technical about things, we do have hosts that for each class and they're actually actors and they're amazing and so they keep the class moving, keep it fun. And they are the ones that are managing the comments and stuff for our speakers. They don't have to read the comments and everything like that.

It's almost like at a typical conference you'd have an emcee, but it's like that person just the whole time. So it's. They're doing kind of commentary, as I would guess it's for the baking specific ones, not necessarily the business ones or even for the business classes for all of them.

They're there because we don't want, you know, like when you do an Instagram Live or something and the person is like staring at the screen trying to read the comments the whole time. We don't want them to have to do that. So that's what our hosts do is they handle the comments and bring people on the stage to ask questions.

Cool, that's great.

So let's talk about the behind the scenes stuff.

How do you do all this? Is there like a platform that you can use for virtual events?

So there are a lot of different platforms. Actually there were so many that came out right during the pandemic. We ended up going with airmeet, which we're really happy with. It's a great platform. We were lucky. I don't know if listeners have heard of AppSumo, but AppSumo has these amazing deals for entrepreneurs and so we got a great deal from Appsumo on Airmeat so we. That's a platform that we use.

That's awesome. Yeah, Appsumo is great for these, like mega discounts on a platform. A lot of times it's lifetime deal. And if you can find one for platform you're interested in, it's usually great to cash in on those. So airmeet, does it do everything? Like it processes the payments, it lines up the attendees, it allows you to email. Is it kind of everything in one?

So when we first got airmeet, it didn't have the ability for someone to purchase a ticket through airmeet. They've since added that, but it's not. Doesn't do everything we want it to do. So there's so many different tech pieces that have to be done to make the conference work that we just keep coming up with. Luckily, my husband's a programmer, so he can help with all this stuff. But we use Eventbrite for ticket sales, we use mailchimp for our email, and then we have a bunch of zaps and zaps just connect everything together so that it all can work.

Can you talk about what Zapier is at a high level? Not that you're necessarily the one hooking those up, but maybe you are, but how does that work and why is it helpful in a situation like this?

Zapier is this. I don't quite know how to describe it. Basically what it does is it connects a bunch of pieces of software together, so we use it in a bunch of different ways. So like, let's say you buy your ticket on eventbrite, then zapier will do. It puts your information into a spreadsheet for us. Then it puts your information into mailchimp so that you're on our mailing list and it tags you with somebody who's purchased a ticket. Then it connects you to airmeet. So airmeet knows you have a ticket so you can have an airmeet login so that you can get to the event. So it just connects everything together to make it run smoothly?

Yeah, it's really incredible when you start to get into it, all the different things that can happen where even like email, you could, if you have an email, you could forward it to zapier or zapier could look to see if it comes in and that can pull information and bring it into Slack or whatever it might be. So it's a really powerful tool.

And then how about on the marketing side?

Like, where are you finding people to sign up for this? Is it through Cupcake Project? Are you working with other influencers to promote it. And then the other piece that I'm curious about is like, how do you know how to price an event like this?

Okay, so those are two really good questions. The first question about how we get people to come. So interestingly, my audience at Cupcake Project, even though it's really large, I've had a very difficult time converting these people into coming to Bakefest. And I think because like I said, a lot of my people that come to Bakefest are small business owners. And the Cupcake Project people, I think are largely home bakers and they could learn a lot at Bakefest, but I think they're just not seeing it as something they want to invest in. So they're not my biggest audience. Interestingly, what we do is that the people who are speaking, we kind of treat as influencers. We pick people that are really high profile, that have huge audiences, and we give them commission on sales or pay them extra to sell. And so that ends up working really well. So we get. Most of our attendees do come through our speakers and through our brands that are partnering with us telling us about it. And also just media exposure, like, you know, like you're doing here.

Podcasts.

Podcasts, yeah.

One of the things that I love about that is I think it's a good reminder you're unique in that you have both are really large audience through Cupcake Project. You also have experience with an agency and building that and then you've also built this event. But one of the things that I think is worth pointing out is for people who, I think sometimes people get locked in this mindset of like, I need to have a big following in order to create a thing online. And it's a good reminder that there's a lot of creative ways that you can build a successful business without first needing to build an audience. I think it's much easier if you build an audience first and then use, you know, that the, the following of that audience to promote something. But the point about specifically working with people with a pre existing audience and finding a way to align incentives with them to say, hey, if you, you know, whether it's a more traditional affiliate relationship, if you refer somebody, you get a certain percentage of the sign up for this or you know, not that you're doing this, but you could do sponsored content. Like you could pay somebody and say like, hey, if you talk about the event, we'll pay you and see if there's a return on that. So when you're doing that Are you doing it in a traditional affiliate way where you say, hey, you can get a percentage of this? Maybe depends on person to person or company to company. And if so, how do you manage that? Like, is that through Eventbrite? Do they have the ability to do affiliate referrals or do you have to set up another zapier?

So that was kind of a nightmare to set up, but we did do that for our last event. Yeah, we gave a commission to the speakers and it is not built into Eventbrite, so it was all had to be just like custom coded, basically. Yeah, there's zaps involved. I mean, we can give people special links and then zap it and make it. Make it all work. But it's not straightforward is what we found.

And I think that's. It's true for so many things where you look at it and you're like, hey, this is even like, my guess is this event in itself where you have this idea and the idea is at a really high level. Like, if you're up 50,000ft, you're like.

I think this is a relatively simple idea.

We want to get people together in a virtual way and do classes.

And then as you start to zoom.

In, and I think this is true for really almost any business, you get to 25,000ft and then you're like, okay.

So we're going to need to email.

Attendees and we're going to need to process payments and they'll probably have to have a login. And then like, you zoom in again and then you're like.

And like, we want to have influencers.

And people speaking promote it.

And you keep zooming in and by.

The time that you get all the.

Way down, you realize there's all of.

These different elements and components. And it reminds me a lot of. There's a book called It's. I think I have it in here. Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon. And he has this little. We can link to it in the podcast, but it's called the Life of a Project. And Lindsay and I often talk about it and it's essentially like a little. I'll try and describe it. It's essentially a little graph and it starts up at the top and it's like, this is the best idea ever. And then it's just as it goes on in time, it sequentially just goes down and it's like, actually, this is harder than I thought. Like, this isn't very fun. And then there's like the bottom dot is like the dark night of the soul. And, and then it starts to come out a little bit where. And then it's like, that's not as bad as I thought it would be. And like that actually went okay. And, and, and, but it's like this idea of you start out at this really high point and then it, when you get into it, when you get down to the details of it, it's actually really hard. Do you feel like that applied in this scenario or did your business experience previously kind of set you up to know that like, stuff is complicated?

Oh no, it was a hundred percent like that. I mean, with our first event, like the week before, we were doing dry runs, which is very important by the way, if you're going to do any kind of virtual event. And we got there and our two camera solution just didn't work. Yeah, I mean it was just like a nightmare. Like didn't work at all. For the speakers were complaining. Nothing was working right. And like literally like a week before the event, we're like, what are we going to do for our speakers? We had to redo everything. I mean there's just so many things that can, can go wrong. Even things with contracts. I mean we, that's so important with an event like this.

Yeah, that's a great detail level thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And we, you know, we hadn't even. There were little things with contracts we hadn't considered that we had to put in there that were difficult. And there's just a lot.

Yeah. So this is. I found it here, I'll send it to you and read it. For people listening, the life of a project, these are the different stages. So like it starts at the top. This is the best idea ever. And then it goes, okay, this is harder than I thought. Then it goes, this is going to take some work. And then it's, this is, this sucks and it's boring. Then it's dark night at the soul at the very bottom. And then it comes out a little bit and says it would be good to finish because I'll learn something for next time. And then the next dot as it kind of comes back up is it's done and it sucks and not as bad as I thought, which, you know, I think hopefully what happens is you continue up on that and you get to a point where you're like actually really proud of the thing that you've built. But I think it's good to just acknowledge for anybody starting a thing that like, it's hard and it gets really hard as you get into it for you, what Is it that keeps you pushing through that? Because it has to be something deeper. There has to be kind of some meaning behind it. And even on your Bakefest shirt I see dreamer, baker, difference maker, like, that's. There's something there. So can you talk a little bit about what that is for you?

Yeah, I think what happens for me is that when the event starts, everybody's in one room together and the chat starts flowing and people start talking about how excited they are to be there and how much it means to them, and that gets me going. And then after the event, I mean, you wouldn't believe, I get emails from people who talk about how they were in a depression and then they came to the bakefest and this literally changed for them. They got so inspired, inspired and they're ready to try something new. In those two days that we were together, just, they didn't want it to end. And so just emails like that and like knowing that you brought people together in a way that wasn't previously possible and just gave them this experience of community and connectedness and learning that. I mean, that's everything.

Yeah, it's. There's. In the work that we do, there's all sorts of types of income. And I think sometimes we focus a lot on just because it's so tangible, financial income, but there's also emotional income, relational income, like difference making income. And I think it's important that we stay in tune with those things because a lot of times that fuel can be what really gets us through something. Like if it's just financial, I think when you come against those roadblocks, unless you're somebody who has a strong drive because of something in your life potentially that's financially related, I think eventually you'll get to a point where it's like that won't be a motivator in the same way. And then you'll have to fall back on the things that are those other types of income or just mix those in as a consideration within it. So the bakefest, it now takes up like 80% of your time. Uh, and that's kind of a primary focus for you. What do you envision it being going forward? Do you envision it being something that you continue to spend more time on, doing more events every year, or will it kind of be like the agency where you're able to get it to a point where it's established and it's running, it can build a team around it and then look for the next thing that's inspiring and interesting? For you?

Yeah, I hope so. I hope that I can, I can grow it to a point where I can sort of more fully pass it off. I'm building a great team now. I have some really great people working for me, but it's definitely nowhere near the point where I could hand it off. But that would be cool if I could. I think I'll have. It's like a learning experience. Like each event I'm like, okay, what worked, what didn't work, what are we going to tweak and how can we make the next one, the next one better?

So, yeah, what, what are, what are some things that, that worked? Like when you did that debrief over the last couple times, what are some of the things that worked really well? And then what are some of the things that you looked at and you're like, oh, that didn't work really well other than the cameras that first time.

Um, I think what worked really well were the longer form hands on classes. At our first event, um, we had done a mix of shorter kind of demo style classes and then longer hands on classes and on our surveys afterwards, which surveys are so important. So on our survey afterwards, people all felt the demos were too short and just didn't get enough out of it. So we went to all classes, like at least an hour long, where you're really digging in. So that was something that we learned and we've integrated and it's been great. Something that did not work well was with the way we were using our sponsors. So with our sponsors and a lot of these online platforms and airmeet has this is. There's an area specifically for sponsor booths. And we had set up these sponsored booths for our sponsors. And what we found was that they didn't even really want to be there. They weren't interested in like being. They just wanted to have like kind of an ad. And it really didn't work well for the sponsors or the attendees. The attendees were like, why am I going to this booth? And we're like, why? You know, and the sponsors are like, I didn't get that much out of it. So we've totally revamped how we work with our sponsors and that's been a great thing.

Yeah, so that was like the virtual booth that you were talking about before. Or is that different than the table?

So that's different. So what we had is like, it was literally sort of like almost a banner ad with a bunch of links on it that was within the event. Now we have these tables where they're all on the same page. So it's not like you're, I don't know, you're just going to different little banner ads, sort of. But now it's like there's a bunch of tables and the brand, Every brand that participates in our event is required to be at the event. It's not like, if you want to come, come, we'll put you up anyway. No, like you have to be there. You have to interact with our attendees.

And that's how long is there like a window? They have to be there for like an hour at this time or are they literally there for two hours?

Yeah, they have to be there for two hours.

So it's kind of like a drop in meeting that they're around. People can ask questions, there can be networking, connect with people. Okay, cool. Do you know that history with airmeet, did that also come out of the pandemic or did that exist previously?

It was really new when we started using it, so I'm assuming it had. It came from the pandemic.

Yeah. How about this? Any for people who are like, hey, virtual event. That kind of sounds cool. Anything that you'd say like, it is cool, but here are some of the things that you didn't know about running a virtual event that are actually really difficult.

Yeah, I mean, I think that it is cool.

It's great.

I think it's. Everything about it is difficult. I think that you just need to realize that it's a lot more time consuming than you initially think. Going into it. Like, I did not expect to be spending 80% of my time on this, but there's literally something to do with it. You know, constantly. There's always, there's, you know, between, if you're going to have sponsored. Between speakers and managing speakers and managing sponsors and marketing it, there's, I think just kind of keep in mind that it's. It's not like a little side thing to take on. It's a major project.

It's a ton of work. Would you ever do in person events?

So yes, and I actually have. I ran a conference called Food Media forum here in St. Louis, where I live, years ago, and it was a blast. I love that too. So I would definitely consider doing an in person event. But what was interesting is that from our surveying, our attendee base all voted that they would prefer to keep them online. I think that they really like being able to do it at home, being able to watch the recordings. The fact that we can keep the price low, it makes a. It makes a Big difference. So we might do some like satellite events in different areas at some point, but right now we're sticking with online.

What, what was the reason for winding down the in person conference?

It was attendance was the reason. It was hard and I don't know if it was because it was in St. Louis or, or what, but yeah, we had trouble selling enough tickets.

Yeah. And what's interesting is it seems like not an issue now online, which makes sense. When you switch to something that's online, suddenly it's not just people who are willing to are able to fly to St. Louis or drive, but it could be people in all around the world. Like essentially anybody who could access the Internet could be somebody who could be a part of the conference. Do you find that attendees are global or is it mostly certain areas?

So my former business partner Darren, he lives in the UK and so we had sort of tried to cater to that UK market a little bit. The problem with the internationalness of it is time zones.

Time zones, sure.

Yeah. I mean it works. And people do come from all over the world, but the majority are in the US simply because of the time zone. Because like, you know, we have people coming from Australia and they have to be up at 3am if they want to participate in it.

Yeah, that makes sense. So I think, you know, to go back to this, the idea and a couple of the things here that I want to point out, like with your story, your entrepreneurial journey that is inspiring to see is number one, I think continuing to pursue the thing that is drawing you. And I think in Big Magic, I think was the book, she talks about this idea of the muse. And the muse is this thing that like visits us, but if you don't move on it, like eventually it goes to the next person and. And the idea kind of leaves and it feels like this is an example of that where the Bake Fest as an example, there's. There's kind of a window that you'd be able to do that. You took action on it, you moved forward, you were able to build this thing that didn't exist and now potentially thousands of people are impacted by it. So this idea of being able to like continually evolve, really appreciate. The other thing that I think is important to point out is just this idea of like, it's hard. And we have some friends that we're talking to, they're thinking about starting a business in the wedding industry. And I feel like a little bit of a downer whenever I interact with them, but I'm like, this is Awesome. I love the idea also. It's going to be hard. Like, I feel like that's a through line that that comes up and try not to be too much of a downer, but just this reminder of kind of the life of the project idea. But if you were to go back and talk to yourself without knowing what you know now about being an entrepreneur, building businesses, you know, building a following online, what would you. What would you tell yourself as kind of inspiration or like, insider information to, like, put in your back pocket moving forward?

So going way back, I made some major mistakes with my blog that I would.

You and everybody else I know.

So then that's like the main, main thing. Like, I was like, if I had no one thing that, you know, when you talk about, like, following your passion and just going with what you want to do. After a bunch of years on the blog, I got tired of cupcakes. I was like, I cannot make another cupcake. And I switched my blog and I started putting all this stuff that wasn't cupcakes on my blog. And that was like the beginning of the downfall of cupcake project. Like, it was like Google loved me as this cupcake expert.

And.

And, you know, so if I had done things, you know, looking back, I would have, like, kept cupcake project kind of where it was and then, you know, started something new at that time when I was looking for something new.

Yeah, it's interesting. It echoes back to that, like, business versus creative poll decision. And I think everybody listening to this, especially everybody within a certain niche, can relate and be like, oh, my gosh, yes. After however long you are focusing on this thing, you're like, I need to do something else. And what you said that I think is interesting within that is not to say no to that, but potentially to look at ways to approach that without it being within this certain brand. Like, you could do that, but maybe do it somewhere else. Because the value of a niche and an extreme focus is significant. Like, it's just cupcakes. That's what it is. It's the name. But it also is hard then because you're like, wait, I have all this momentum. I don't want to start from zero with a new thing. But I think it's wise and insightful. Anything else that you would include if you have that conversation with yourself.

So what else? I think hiring out earlier on, I think probably a lot of people talk about that, like finding the things that you're not good at and getting other people to do them, or even if you are good at having other people do them to free up your time to spend on the next thing. It's huge. And I think that's a lesson I'm still trying to learn. I still tend to do things myself, I think, even though it costs money, I think just spending the money so that I have time to do other things is a big, is a big lesson.

Yeah, it's almost like resources. Resources could be time, it could be money, it could be your kind of brain space. And you're always spending that. And it's just a decision of like, do you want to not spend time and, and actually spend money or not spend money and spend time? And that's a hard, it's hard to make those decisions and to know like when that's right. And especially to your point, like when you're good at it, it's. It's oftentimes easier to do that. So some great pieces of advice there.

Wrapping up here at the end, the Bake Fest.

I'm sure there are people who are listening who'd be like, hey, this is awesome. I want to not only check out this process, see what it's like, but also learn whether it be baking related things or kind of the business side of things. What's the best way for folks to learn a little bit more? We'll link in the show notes as well and then sign up if they're interested.

Yeah, so thebakefest.com is our website. We have all the information on there. And I didn't mention that you had asked me about pricing. And our other events were priced at $150, but this holiday event is $15. So it's like, I mean, it's like a no brainer. Like to me, it's like such a cheap price that we're hoping that people, you know, will want to come and check it out and be a part of it. So yeah, so we're keeping the prices $15 as long as we can. It's a limited, limited time price, but it should still be when you guys watch it.

Yeah, that's great. And like I said, we'll link in the show notes. Otherwise people can just go to thebakefest.com.

Stephanie, so great to talk to you.

Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Thanks for having.

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 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 move 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 foodblogger 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 log, 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.

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