390: Overcoming Burnout and Building a Successful Career as a Food Creator with Karishma Pradhan

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Foreign.

Hey there, this is Bjork Ostrom. You're listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We've been doing this podcast for a while, and the reason we continue to do it is because not only is it fun for me to have conversations with unique, creative, smart people, that's one of the massive benefits that I experienced personally from this. But the other benefit for this podcast or the other reason that we do it is because we've learned that listeners benefit from the conversations. And the reason is because we have conversations with people who are really smart, who are really creative, who are doing unique things in the world. And that's the case today. Today we're having a conversation with Karishma Pradhan, and she has really transformed what she does, what work is for her over the last three, four or five years. And we're going to talk about her journey and how she's done that. And some of the conversations we have on the podcast are people who have.

Been blogging since 2009.

And the inspiring thing for me in Those conversations is people who have stuck with it. They've continued to publish content over a long period of time. But we also have conversations with people like Karishma where their journey is more recent, like their transformation is more recent. And this conversation today, she's going to be sharing about how stressful her job was. She's going to be talking about kind of the idea of going into a war room type setting where they needed to do this data analysis and get information back to these business owners. And just the stress around that and how that made her realize that she needed to transform the work that she was doing. And she's going to be talking about the steps along the way that she took in order to, to make that transformation. And now her day to day looks very different. She's a recipe developer, a food photographer. She's gonna be talking about workshops that she does and how that was an important piece of the puzzle for her and realizing that this could be a thing. And she's also gonna be talking about her site, Home Cooking Collective, and what that's been like to kind of, in unison, build all of those things up. She's also a contributor to Simply Recipes, an extremely popular site, and some other sites as well. So what I found most fascinating with this conversation is kind of the intentional steps along the way to not make one big leap, not make one big change, but to kind of twist and change the dials and to make adjustments to move towards an eventual goal of focusing on kind of creative work or owning her own business and, and how she was able to do that over a period of years and to do that in a really kind of systematic way. So we're going to have that conversation.

And I think you'll get a lot out of it. Excited to share it with you.

So let's go ahead and jump in. Karishma, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me. It's like I've, I've said and I've heard on the podcast as well. It's truly an honor to be able to chat with you and to all of the listeners, um, I've learned so much from listening to your podcast. I've actually, like, through your podcast, have hired and have been hired by many people. So it's awesome. Like, full circle.

Yeah. Like, these were people we interviewed. And then you're like, it'd be cool to work with them or connections that have made.

Yeah. Like sponsorships and, you know, people that have really particular skill sets. Like, you know, I work with Ansley. She's My tax accountant. So it's just really cool to be able to come back and share all of that.

Oh, awesome. Yeah. Well, it's always fun when people have some context around who we are and what we do and, you know, how the conversations that we have. So thanks for jumping on and being willing to share a little bit about your story. One of the things that I'd be interested to start with is your background. You have a background in data, which feels like a really good thing to have coming into this world. But one of the key pieces that I'm interested to hear you talk about a little bit is kind of in your career path, dealing with stress and burnout. And, you know, I think it's something that a lot of people can relate to, even for myself. Like, what, you know, being aware of what burnout is and trying to get to, like, know that better, number one, to avoid it. But also, like, if you're in a season where you're experiencing that, how do you get out of it? So bring us back to that. That moment where you started to realize, hey, this is something that you've realized, like, I'm dealing with this. And then what. What did it look like for you to. To kind of build a plan to address that or kind of work through that?

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I started my career in data analytics, specifically marketing and web analytics, which is, you know, very relevant, I think, in a lot of ways to what we all do today. And I kind of cycled through a number of different jobs. I worked at larger corporations, I worked at startups, and I did that for about five years. And sort of towards the end of that kind of period, what was happening to me was, you know, I really. I love data analytics, and I feel like I learned so much from, you know, people around me, and I really learned about, like, how to run a business. It's a really awesome place to be because you're often in front of higher ups, CEOs, things like that, because data is so important to them. But what I had realized in my last couple of jobs is there's also sort of the counter to that, is that there's a lot of stress and pressure that comes in being in data. And so what had kind of happened was one of the jobs that I was at, towards the end of it, the last few months, we would essentially be in fire drills every single day. So I don't know if people know what fire drills are, but essentially it sort of means someone comes to you and they say, hey, we need this data. Or we need to answer this question in X amount of time. And it might be two hours, it could be two days. But usually a fire drill essentially means drop everything that you're doing and go and do that thing and focus on it. And a lot of times there's a disconnect between people and data and the people that are asking those questions. And it's like, yes, I can do it, but maybe it's going to take me two weeks to do this in the way that you want me to. To do it. Well, to make sure it's accurate. But a lot of times the answer back is, well, we need it now. Um, and so yesterday or yesterday. Yeah, yeah, yesterday is a. Is a very common answer. So towards the end of that job, the last few months, we would come into work and instead of sitting at our desks, we would go directly into what was called a war room, which is essentially just a conference room. And we just kind of like, you know, slogging on our computer, trying to get the answers out. And there was just so much of a focus on getting the data now and also getting it perfectly accurately, no mistakes at all, which is very difficult to do when you're under pressure. And I ended up leaving that job because, you know, for me, that was a lot of stress. And I found another job that, you know, I felt like was a lot more balanced. But what had happened, I think was maybe my body a little bit started, had started to break down and I became more and more sensitive to the stress. So, like, a couple of months after I had started the next job, I started getting headaches a lot more frequently grew up. Like, I've always had migraines, but usually they would happen maybe, sure, you know, like once a week. But I started getting tension headaches. And basically over the next couple of years at that job, it started ramping up from, you know, getting tension headaches a couple of weeks, a couple days a week, to almost every single day I would leave work with attention headache. And, you know, I. It was just something that, like, to me felt okay now. You know, this stress is something that, like, I thought I could really keep under control. I could just sort of deal with it, but it could become this, like, really physical thing for me where, you know, it was like kind of ruining every single night for me and totally feeling like, fine, but it was just it for me that was. That was really difficult. So that was the start of the point where I started thinking, is this the right career path for me? And, yeah, so I think for Me, it was kind of like there was stress that I thought was maybe this is normal, but I think it turned into this kind of physical thing that I.

Persistent as well.

Persistent and kind of like getting worse and worse.

And Lindsay just the other day was talking about this book that she read called the Body Keeps the Score.

Oh yeah.

Brain, Mind and Body and the Healing of Trauma. And you know, I think that concept is just like, yeah, totally. Like if attention headache as a result of stress just makes so much sense that those two things are connected. So what is an example of a situation where somebody would be like, we need this information in two hours or two days. Is it like E Commerce is and, and like their sales numbers are going down and they don't know why or.

Yeah, yeah, that. That's like a perfect example. So I mean, I had in a couple of different industries, but the last company I worked for was E Commerce. And it was exactly that. It would be, you know, maybe there is a particular holiday that's either like, maybe it's. It just happened the day before, or there's a holiday that's coming up and we're noticing kind of like what they call softness in sales. And so the question would be they would be coming from the higher ups and it would say, yeah, you know, what's going on here? We need you to, you know, figure out what's going on and help us make a decision. So that, and a lot of it is because they need to decide if they want to. Like with E Commerce, they need to decide do they want to change something with their marketing? You know, is there something that can actually, like, we can take an action and so that we can actually improve those sales really quickly. But I think that there was an, there was another point where what I was realizing as a data person is there, there isn't always like a really clear answer. And a lot of times what we're doing is we're just giving people yes. And so there's a lot of pressure to kind of come up with an answer or to sort of focus a lot on the short term as opposed to really being able to take a step back and say, you know, is this a trend that's continuing long term and what can we learn from that? So I think that was another thing that was, that was difficult to deal.

With because the data is always going to be clear, but what's not clear is the answer as to what's influencing the data. And my guess is sometimes it might be like, if it's E Commerce, you Might be able to say, like, hey, the numbers on this have slipped because it's now not ranking as well on Amazon as it did before. And so you need to get in a better position than you are right now on Amazon search results for, you know, whatever it is. Like duct tape or something. Yeah, yeah. But in other times, it might be like, oh, actually, there's this potential trend of people doing less home projects because they're not at home because of COVID And so people aren't buying duct tape as much. But it's like. It's kind of like a best guess. Like, the data is really clear that the numbers are slipping, but it's not always clear as to, like, why. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, exactly. It's not always clear as to why. And even if it's clear as to why, it's not always clear, what if there's an actual immediate action that can be taken? Right, right, right. So, like, what you're saying is, if people are just doing less home projects, okay, so then what's the next move there? Yeah. So.

And people want to know, like, what's the answer?

Yeah.

And there's pressure for you to produce that. So coming out of that, you start to have this realization, like, this is stressful. This is difficult for me personally. It's probably not the best fit for me personally. How do you make a next step out of that? Did you know what was going to be next and what you were looking for?

Yeah, so in some ways, I did know. I had. I'd sort of planned it for, like, six months or so. I really started thinking about, what is it that I want to do next? So, on the one hand, I have always really loved to cook. Like, I started cooking when I was 12. I was obsessed with the Food Network, and it's something that I just never really considered as a feasible career path. You know, there's just always, I feel, like, pressure to, you know, stay in STEM and, like, do something that, you know is going to make enough money for you and support you and have that security. And so I think I just sort of turned it away as a possible option for me. But. But the more and more that I was working and I was feeling unhappy, I wondered, you know, well, what if I just tried this? And can I try it in a smart way? So my. My basic plan was to try to do something in the food industry. I wasn't sure what that was, and to have some security by essentially, once I quit my job, finding data analytics, consulting projects to Support my income on the side. I felt like that was a great way, you know, I had been saving up money to be able to quit my job. But I also felt like it would make me feel a lot better if I had something part time to work in data, where I felt like I had a much better chance of being able to actually find something and, and secure some sort of, you know, type of there.

It's in the startup world, you know, they talk about Runway a lot and they say if you are in the early stages, you raise around what's your Runway? Your Runway has to do with how much money you have in the bank, you know, and then how much money your startup is spending. And I think when we are thinking about as entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, whatever it is, we can use that same idea to say, what is our Runway? And the variables that you need for that, you know, would be, what are your monthly expenses, how much money do you have in the bank? And then you can supplement that with what you're, what you're saying with consulting work. And maybe it's not on the thing that you want to be doing, but it can really extend your Runway. So for somebody who's like, hey, I want to try this, I know that my expenses. I'll just make up some numbers. My expenses are 4,000amonth, and I've saved up, you know, 12,000. And I can do. This is going to be math on the fly. You're going to check my math. So 4,000amonth, I've saved up 12,000 and I can do 2,000amonth in consulting.

Yeah.

Then suddenly you have.

Six months of.

Runway, Is that right? And so you can start to play with those variables. And if you can, like in the instance that, that you can do as much consulting work as needed to meet your income, then maybe what you could do is like, great. Not only do I have a buffer in the bank for kind of slush.

Money, but for the most part, I.

Can pay my expenses. But I'm not going to do any more consulting above that, because then what I'm going to do is just work full time on my business, what it is that I'm working on. So you don't have to use actual numbers. But I'm curious to know, did you have kind of like a comfort level in terms of from a monthly perspective? I want to get to 50% of what my expenses would be or like 100% of what my expenses would be to cover that and anything above and beyond that, I'll work on My business. What did, what did that look like for you?

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a really great question. I think for me it was like a little bit of. It was. I think I wanted to make sure that I covered sort of my monthly expenses through the consulting work. And then if there were additional expenses, you know, from like the food blogging business itself, that was something that I was willing to cut into my savings. But generally I kind of wanted to cover like basic things like, you know, my rent, utilities, food, and things like that through my consulting income. Because I had really just gone from such a different world of full time, full time job to doing something part time. And as I actually kind of started feeling more and more confident working on things on the food side, I was able to sort of like recheck and consider that every few months. But for starting, it really felt great to have this part time gig actually cover, you know, those critical expenses.

And the nice thing too about that type of work is it can flex in a way that a full time job can't. So you can scale it up or down depending on what the, you know, month to month looks like. And. And there's just maybe a little bit more flexibility within that.

It was similar.

Lindsay and I had similar paths where we still had were W2 employees, but our jobs. We were lucky enough to have jobs that allowed flexibility in the way that, you know, we went to 75%, then 50%. Then like towards the end, I was working like a day or two at the nonprofit that I was a part of. And it just allowed for like a nice transition to help smooth that over. Not everybody can get that, but it was nice to be able to do that. I'm curious to know, where did you find those jobs? Like, you knew that you wanted to do freelance consulting. Was it previous companies that you had worked for that continued to work with you in a contracted basis or was it like a marketplace? How did you connect with those companies?

Yeah, I was really lucky. I think for a lot of people who are going from full time into consulting, it's really important to like build out your network. And I had that network, but I was really lucky in that I kind of went to like a startup marketplace. It might have been like angel angelist, but. And so they were specifically looking for someone who is a part time data analyst. And so that was just a really great opportunity. You know, we just connected very immediately and I was able to kind of get started on that pretty soon. And the other thing you mentioning kind of the flexibility, I was really lucky to have the flexibility. And that's exactly what happened. I kind of was doing 25 hours a week at some point with them and I slowly and slowly scaled back down until we were able, they were able to work with me to hire an actual full time analytics manager for their company. So I think that was really great as well, was they were really open to kind of my needs, especially with knowing like my headaches and burnout and things like that. I was really lucky.

That's awesome. So knowing that you are wanting to make this transition and part of that transition is for your own like physical and mental health, what did you build in as con considerations or kind of like lessons learned now that you had more control over the work that you were doing and the schedule that you.

Kept.

I'd be curious to know like how that experience informed your own kind of custom schedule and in the ways that you focus and work.

Yeah, so there's definitely a few aspects and I think a lot of us in the industry struggle with this. But when I left my job, it's not like I immediately knew how to balance my own workload because a lot of the stress, it was like self imposed. I was putting that pressure on myself to search for perfection and search for accuracy and all of these things. So I think it required a lot of kind of like reflection and a lot of trial and error. Some of the things that kind of helped me was the ability to say, why am I doing this? Why am I choosing to have a more flexible lifestyle? I'm choosing to do this for sustainability. Right. I'm trying not to burn out. I'm trying not to make these mistakes again. And so when I find myself in these places, which kind of happens where I'm on a roll and like in this really intense bout of creativity and I find myself, you know, I'm working, you know, I'm working until late at night or I find that I'm starting to feel more headaches, I kind of have to take a step back and say, okay, you worked maybe through this weekend or you just worked 12 hours a day for the last four days. So I actually make myself take time off. So if I work on the weekend, I make sure that I take time off during the week. And the other thing is with my headaches, if I have a migraine or something like that, I make myself obviously take the day off and I make sure sure that the next few days I really like dial it back a little bit. And because that's kind of the thing is like, why Else am I choosing a job with this flexibility if I can't work around it and actually use that to my advantage?

Yeah. It feels like there's so much to be said about knowing yourself. And one of the hard realities in just, I think in like the human existence, but especially online, is that we can look at other people's realities and we pair that against our reality and we're better or worse. I think a lot of times worse. I think at its best it's inspiration. At its worst it's like demotivational and that we look at somebody else and we're like, wait a minute, like this person is hustling, whatever that means 12 hours a day, seven days a week, they're making all this progress. And so you kind of, at least for myself, I can look at that and place that as like this expectation. And so much of it does come back to like, in service of what? Like, what are you after? What are you trying to get? Like, what is the purpose behind it? And that's such a personal question. I think of like, analogy on the fly. I think of so like you go to the hardware store and then you can look at like a drill. I don't know anything about drills, but my guess is that there's like a heavy duty drill that like a construction worker could use and use it all the time, all day long. And then there's probably one that's like an amateur like myself would use, that uses it like once a month. And the amount of exertion that you could have within those respective pieces of equipment, that's going to be, there's going to be a spectrum to that. I think the same is probably true for people. I think there are some people who are just built in a way where they can work at a certain capacity and then there's others who aren't. And, and you need to know like, what your limit is. So if it was a, if it was a machine, it's like you don't want to take the thing that is most valuable to you. And in this case, it's our, it's us. It's like us as creative vehicles. You don't want to push that to the point where it breaks down because then it's not going to be able to do anything. And so you need to know like, what that upper limit is. And I think it's important and really appreciate you bringing that up to talk about it. Because if you push past that and you experience burnout, like it's, it's, it's not sustainable. And, and what you said is like, how do you sustain yourself in this world? And I think about that for myself a lot too. Like, what does that look like? And kind of in a season of exploring that and trying to figure that out, like, how do I operate in a way where every day feels like sustainable and healthy and inappropriate? So appreciate you bringing that up so you have this new perspective moving into the work that you're doing. The other thing that I'm curious to know is what were the things that you learned from your data analyst role that you were able to like, immediately take into your role in the content creation world? Were there things that you, you had as tools that you could immediately deploy that gave you kind of an inside maybe advantage or mindset when it comes to business building?

Yeah, it's a really interesting question because the first thing I was thinking about this question and the first thing I wanted to point out was because I was so burnt out from the data industry, the first part of building my business, I really was shying away from.

The data that makes sense.

And I wanted to say I really wanted to build this creative skill set for myself.

But the funny, almost as a reaction to your last five years of data work, it's like, I don't want to do data work and I want to do something that's, yeah, that makes sense, but.

And you know, unfortunately, like, it's really important and it's really useful to have data to build that into your business and to be able to drive yourself towards success. And so I think over time I've been able to really like incorporate some of those tidbits. I think the thing for me as well though is that I probably was doing pieces all along but not realizing it because, for example, something like Google Analytics I used in many of my jobs every single day. And so for me it's possible that I was probably using Google Analytics and looking at trends and things like that, but to me it was just such a normal thing that it didn't feel like such a heavy lift. But I think definitely having that experience with Google Analytics and other types of web analytics tools was super helpful for me. Able to just quickly be able to track traffic over time. There's also some really interesting pieces as well that I learned of being able to track particular events on your site. So when someone is clicking on, you know, a particular button or they're scrolling in a type specific type of way, like I kind of learned working with some of the engineers at my companies, how to actually build that into my site, which I think is a really interesting piece of data that not, not everyone is necessarily. It's not that easy to sort of build out on your own. So that's kind of cool too. And one of the things as well is I focused a lot on user behavior and really trying to understand how are people navigating through a particular site. So at my work it was E commerce, but in my own business, it's really trying to understand, like, what are the barriers that readers are facing as they're going through my website, how can I make things easier for them and really like taking that perspective. So I think that was something that was super helpful as well. I actually had my site redesigned in March and I was. I really kind of had fun trying to think through and troubleshoot, you know, building this site. What are the easiest ways to sort of get someone from one page to another? What are the ways to ensure that they kind of, you know, they're interested in my site? I'm showing them kind of everything that I have, and they're not just necessarily leaving after a few seconds.

Yeah, how do you, how do you do that? Like, how do you understand user behavior better? And is it like within Google Analytics, you're looking at data and seeing the flow that people go, where they stop, where they continue on? Or is it more of kind of the soft skill of kind of, you know, user case studies or like observing actual people using your website for. For somebody who wants to get better at it? How do you do that?

Yeah, it's totally a combination of both. Both are really, really important. So definite through Google Analytics, looking through kind of like page flow, behavior flow, and trying to understand kind of where the, where the places people are landing on your site and where they're most likely to go next, where are they most likely to drop off? But also I think, yeah, the soft skills. So in my job, we would do lots of user testing and I would sit in on these and we do something like this, like a zoom call where someone's going through the website and sort of they're noticing places where they're confused by something. And that's really helpful. So I think just kind of combination, like you can even ask your friends and family to go through your website. I know I've had family who just. They'll tell me, they're very blunt and they'll tell me, you know, this particular thing on your site doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand it. But I think being able to step back every once in a while. And asking friends and family to go through your website and, and to, you know, sort of ask some of these questions of. Of what's confusing to them can be really helpful.

Yeah, that's great. How about on the Google Analytics side, you were talking about events. Do you have an example of what that you kind of shared one. But like, for somebody who's looking for a tangible takeaway that they could maybe fold into their process for Google Analytics, is there anything that you'd point them towards that would be kind of a helpful or interesting thing that they could start to look at from an analytics perspective?

Yeah, I mean, there are. There are kind of like some interesting, like, more easier things to set up, I think, would be to kind of try to understand, you know, something like are people clicking on a particular button? Or if you have maybe a video on your homepage, One thing that can be cool is to try to set up, you know, are people even playing this video? Like, sure, you know, sort of like understanding that. I think that can be really interesting. Another thing is trying to understand where people are scrolling is really interesting as well, because I know sometimes it can be really confusing looking at your site and seeing, oh, I have, you know, this particular bounce rate. So I'm noticing that a lot of people are just only looking at this one page. But what are they actually doing, like on this page, for example? Like, are they actually interacting? Are they scrolling? Or are they just kind of going to the site and then immediately closing out? So I think those are kind of examples of really interesting things that you could add in.

Yeah. In the example of the video, you can have that be an event and the event could be the click.

Yeah.

And I think of that in, especially in instances where you have a specific thing that you want to make sure is happening.

Yeah.

And even like subscribing to an email list. So if that's your primary motivation, you can start to track that as an event and then you can see, percentage wise, how many people actually, when they come to this page, subscribe to that. And that's where you can start to use that data to inform decisions, to say, great, so how do we get, you know, 1% of people to 1.5% of people to, to sign up for this or whatever it might be. One of the things that you mentioned when we were just getting started is, you know, we're talking about your business and the different components of it and talking about workshops, and that was something that you started to do and you said that it was really kind of like a catalyst or a launching point for what you were doing. Can you talk about what you meant by that? Maybe explain a little bit about how you use workshops within your business?

Yeah. So one of the funny things about when I quit my job was that the last day of my full time job was actually the first day of the pandemic, 12th, 2020, and I was living in New York, so everything shut down. Yeah. So, you know, at that point I essentially realized, okay, well, I can't, you know, I can't work at a restaurant right now. I can't do anything in person if I wanted to sort of delve into the food industry. And so one of the things I had realized as kind of the pandemic started beginning was, you know, people were really looking for opportunities to connect with one another, you know, through Zoom. That was such a big thing that started. And I had seen some other food bloggers and kind of Instagram influencer influencers starting to do different types of Zoom workshops. So I kind of got. Got started by actually just offering free cooking Zoom workshops to kind of started with like friends and family and people that were following me on Instagram. I was really just starting out and I wanted to use it as a way to be able to, you know, cook with people, be able to teach them some skills. And it was a really fun experience for me, I think, just like getting started in the industry. And it also taught me so much about how to actually teach people how to cook and how to break down steps, which I think has helped me so much in writing my own blog posts and trying to sort of understand, well, what are the barriers when you're teaching someone virtually through Zoom? You know, if you're teaching them to do something particularly that requires like, like I was teaching kind of how to make handmade pasta where you have to form it into a very particular shape. And so trying to translate that kind of through Zoom, not in person, was very challenging, but very interesting. And it taught me a lot about how to really, like, break down those steps if I'm teaching it in, in all different kinds of mediums.

Yeah, it's almost like anything that we can do to refine our skills around being a better communicator is a win.

Yeah, exactly.

Essentially, what publishing content online is, is. Is the continual pursuit of communicating some message, whether it be education, humor, information, like how to do that in the most effective way possible. And when you get to bump up against people in real time, the feedback loop is like real time where you get to see, I said this and then what you created was this. And it's not what I thought that I said, but that's what you heard.

Yeah.

That allows you to get so much better and kind of refine your skills quicker than you would in other ways. Is that something that you're still doing or I'd be curious to know what maybe the question is this, like, as your business stands right now, I know for you it wasn't necessarily, hey, I just want to start a blog. And that's what I want to do is kind of more general fascination with food and that as an industry. And that is a pursuit of, you know, a business or a career. What does that look like for you now in. I know there's kind of multi. Multiple different pursuits that you have that make up kind of your day to day.

Yeah, yeah, so exactly. I didn't know exactly that I wanted to start a food blog, but I'm, I'm really happy. Like I'm at the point now where I'm focusing a lot more on my own blog and I'm having a lot of fun doing it. It is kind of like being able to combine this passion that I have for cooking and also being able to really teach other people. But in terms of the other pieces that I do, I kind of, I do also do freelance recipe development and food writing. So I work with different publications. You know, like, I've worked with Simply Recipes as like a regular contributor, which has been a really great opportunity and a really great source of regular income because they're always looking for, you know, a number of recipes each month. So that's been really great. And I've also kind of worked, you know, doing one off pitches to publications, doing food writing work or specific types of recipe development. And then I, you know, started off really focusing a lot on the workshops and now I would say I'm. It's definitely like a smaller part of my business, but it's something that I do really love doing. So I still do kind of private workshops now, which I think is. Is really fun for me. I've done kind of like corporate workshops as well, which is great. And yeah, so so basically it's like a mix of kind of freelance recipe development and food writing for publications. I also do freelance photo food photography for different clients, sponsored content, and then these workshops.

Cool. How do you find those connections? Like let's say for the corporate workshops that you do, are those people who follow you, do they reach out to you? Are you reaching out to them and pitching? What does that look like?

Yeah, I think I would say it's like a combination of both. I've definitely had followers who maybe they've taken one of my own workshops before and they really liked it. So they might reach out and say, hey, you know, I work at this company. We're looking for a corporate workshop. Would you be able to host something like that? I haven't done much sort of pitching on my own, but I have sort of made connections with certain people that I know might be a part of something and then eventually it might turn into something. But usually it comes from, you know, just somebody who's an existing follower that has already taken one of my workshops.

I have a friend who is in a very different industry, but one of his kind of sales, the sales process that he uses is he has kind of top of funnel content. So YouTube, podcast, blog, and then what he does is he does these one free work. It's like a he, the thing that he sells is like a two day consultation. It's like he consults consultants. So like Boston Consultant Group or McKinsey. Like he'll work with companies like that to consult them on business development and. But he'll do a free one and invite two people from companies and they get to come together and attend and see what it's like. Just like you said, a lot of times what happens is those people then go back to their company and say, I think we should do this. And then, you know, he's able to charge per seat for those workshops. And, and so I think for somebody in this space, there might be something kind of cool there to say, like, hey, I'm going to do free workshops in whatever category. Focus on corporate, like doing corporate invitations for people to attend for free with the hope that then they go back to their team and say, hey, we should do a, you know, 50 person workshop on whatever, whatever it might be. So what does it look like for you as you consider the kind of different components that now make up your day to day? And some of it's freelance, some of it's within the business. But within all of this, whether it's our job or the business that we have, we're kind of the CEO of ourselves. Right. And so you're combining all of this up into one kind of pursuit. How do you go about balancing the things that are guaranteed, like let's say freelance recipe development? You could do that and you. That could be your only thing potentially.

Yeah.

But the downside with that, the upside is like there's a guarantee with it. The Downside is that you're maybe not building kind of the snowball of your business that over time could kind of pick up speed. But in the early stages, maybe there's a little bit more risk with it because you're doing work that's not guaranteed. So do you have kind of a decision making framework to say, hey, I'm going to fill up this much of my time with guaranteed things versus work on and pursue these other things that maybe might not be guaranteed in the same way. But I know it's for the greater pursuit of building this business, which takes time.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's such an important thing. And it's very difficult to sort of balance all of those, you know, these guaranteed incomes from. Yeah. With these long term sort of ventures. But what I, what I end up doing is I actually, I took Joni Simon's like food photography pricing course and I actually use that as a way to kind of estimate basically sort of how much time do I have in, in a given month to do any type of work. Right. Whether it's freelance work or my own blog work. I sort of like say like this, I have this many hours in the month.

Yeah. And then example being 40, easy example, 40 hours, four weeks. So like, okay, I know that consistently I'll have like 160 hours or so.

Exactly.

Dedicate towards work.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Just knowing also that like there's probably a lot of admin work. So probably it's like also important to make sure that you're kind of like on the lower side and giving yourself that freedom. But if we started with like 160 hours a month, then what I do is I say, you know, how much current like guaranteed income do I have and how much time does that take? So I kind of like look at like, you know, If I have 10 hours in this month that I'm like, I know that I'm charging, you know, whatever my hourly rate is. Let's say it's like $100 an hour, then that's going to guarantee me X amount of dollars in the month. And then so what is left? Like that is the time that left for me to focus my pursuit on something that isn't necessarily, you know, paying me right now, but will in the future. And you know, each month or each year those numbers are going to be different. Right. It's like based on what risk level is. So, you know, one year you might say, yeah, it's really important for me to feel like I have that security the next month in My next year might say I feel like I'm really like building my blog and I'm really getting to this point where I'm going to be making income soon. So now I feel like I might be able to lower that income figure threshold per month and focus more on something that I feel like is a long term effort.

It's really cool to look at the kind of arc of your story because it feels like really intentional pursuit of tweaks and changes to get you to your goal. And if starting on the left side, like whatever it was, let's say seven years ago, you're in this data analytics job, it's stressful, you know that it's not a good fit. And the next this is going to sound probably much more simple than it actually was. Like the next evolution being okay, I'm going to contract have a little bit more freedom there. It's still within this industry that I know. And, and then I'm going to also backfill with the pursuit of the thing that I'm most excited about or like where I have a pull. And the evolution out of that was now that I'm going to wind down the data analytics stuff and the way that I'm going to fill that, you know, with guaranteed income is within the area that you have the poll and the backfill continues to be the pursuit of the things that are that are owned within, within your world. And then from that you can like you said, tweak and change. Maybe you, you reduce the amount of hours that you have but increase the, the, the dollars attached with those until you're charging more. And but it almost seems like kind of this soft data approach to decisions that you're making from a finance perspective within your own business. In the ultimate pursuit of this is will not be a question what like where, when you look at where you're going, what, where is it that you want to end up and I'd be curious to know if you feel like you're there potentially or if not like what are the other elements that have to change in order to get you there.

Yeah, I think the alt. Yeah, it's a really good way to I think summarize how this journey has been. For me, I think my ultimate goal is to really, it's really to like reclaim like ownership of and control and being able to pursue this passion but like having a lot of control over how I do it and what I'm putting out. So I think for me the ultimate goal is, you know, to have most of my income be generated by my blog. Right now that's not the case, but obviously I hope that's to be the case in the future. And I think a lot of it comes down to like, I find so much joy in developing recipes and really being able to like, teach people how to cook, teach them to cook from scratch, see cooking as a form of relaxation. And you know, I feel like I can see it as sort of, I have my blog and then maybe I, you know, have more regular workshops again. And it's really like, it's all centered around being able to like instill this passion and education and others. So like, that I think is my ultimate goal.

Yeah, it's when I look back at how things changed for us over time, it was kind of the similar progression. I think the, the work that I was doing enjoyed, but I knew that it wasn't something that I wanted to do forever. And so started to think about what are the ways that I can start to do work that I know is in the realm of what I'm interested in. And at the time it was video. Like, I was kind of interested in video and I was also interested in all things online, like websites and social media and things like that. And so I was lucky enough that the nonprofit that I was at, they had that need. And so I was able to kind of experiment and dabble with video, doing video creation, editing, you know, shooting. And then was also able, they needed a website redesign. So I was like, okay, let's see what this looks like and how that works and managing computers and stuff like that. So it allowed me to do. It's kind of like on the job training and as you're doing recipe development, like you're getting better at developing recipes and that's gonna set you up well to, to go down this path. It's, it's like it's pointing you towards where you are going and where you want to go, which I think is such a wise thing to do. And, and also it's hard to do because it's not immediate. Like, it's these slow steps that get you there. But in the long run, what we've seen is like, people have success if they're willing to stick with it. And so it's cool to see that. So if you were to look back, one of the questions we like to kind of wrap up with or end on is, is kind of this look back question. So for you to look back, knowing what you know now, I know that you're not, you know, a decade into, into It. But what are the things that you'd tell yourself in order to kind of compress your journey or maybe skip some things that you wish you wouldn't have done or do things that you wish you would have done sooner? What would the advice be that you'd give to yourself when you're kind of just at the beginning stages of this?

Yeah, I think one of the things that I would tell myself is, you know, to like, faster is not necessarily better and to like allow myself to really slow down and reflect and think about the decisions that I'm making. I think that there's like, I felt like there's so much of a pressure because, you know, I feel like it's like there's a pressure from leaving my job to try to make these things work. It felt like a risk and it felt like, you know, when I was in that, in that phase, I really was like trying to push to just try all these different things. And you know, I think being able to just really step back and say like almost framing it the way that you did of kind of the way that I went through this journey, like all of the high level steps, they made a lot of sense, but there was a lot of going back and forth to getting there and I think a lot of like trying to, you know, in the pursuit of just kind of trying to grab up jobs and things like that. Whereas like being able to just really focus on like what is the pursuit that I'm trying to go for. What is this thing that is driving my passion and like really slowing down and being able to kind of like reflect more often, I think would have been, would have been helpful. But I'm, you know, still very proud of like the place that I've gone to.

Totally. Yeah, it, it seems like one of the things that we don't consider to be work, which actually is work, is the intentional stepping back and, and like you said, reflecting or analyzing or just even thinking why. Like, I think sometimes we can put our heads down and we can show up and we can work and we don't look up and say why? Like what is the reason I'm doing this? And I think if there's some way that maybe it's scheduling it in, maybe it's, you know, building in a daily routine around. I don't know what it is, but I think the more that we can do that, the better off we're gonna be. It almost allows us to like course correct if needed. So I think, I think that's great. We covered a lot And I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in continuing to follow along with what you're up to. So can you do a quick little shout out to the different places people can find you online and like you said at the beginning of the podcast, potentially work with you or, you know, connect or whatever it might be? I'm sure people would want to know.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I really love connecting with others in the community, so I'd be happy to chat more about my experiences or just get to know someone. But you can find me. My blog is homecooking collective.com my Instagram is at home cooking collective. Those are my two, you know, main social media platforms.

Cool. Awesome. We'll put those in the show notes as well. Krishna, thanks so much for chatting. It was really good to connect.

Really good to connect. Thank you so much for having me.

Hello.

Hello, Leslie here from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for tuning into this this week's episode of the podcast. As you might know, aside from the podcast, we also have the Food Blogger Pro membership where we have exclusive courses, the forum, live Q&As and more, all for our members. And so if you're not a member and you want to learn more and maybe join, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com join to do so. But we are always adding new content and updating our content to improve the value of our membership for everyone who is part of Food Blogger Pro. And so we wanted to quickly update you about all the exciting new content we have coming to Food Blogger Pro in the month of January. So first things first, on Thursday, January 5th, we are launching a very exciting thing that we've been working on for a while now. And these are our coaching calls. So in these one on one coaching calls, Food Blogger Pro members have the chance to ask Bjork their questions. So we're holding one coaching call a month and our members get the opportunity to just kind of chat with Bjork about some of your best blogging questions to get his advice and see how he can help you work towards your blogging goals. And then we record each conversation and then add it to Food Blogger Pro so that the greater community can learn from one another. And so on January 5th, we're actually going to be sharing our first coaching call and it's actually with me. So I did a coaching call with Bjork last month and we're sharing the conversation in case you want to get a feel for what they look like. And if you are already a Food Blogger Pro member and you want to submit an application to do your own coaching call in the coming months. You can head to foodbloggerpro.com coaching call application to do so. We're so excited to finally launch these coaching calls and we really hope that our members enjoy them as much as we will. Then on January 12th, we'll be hosting our monthly live Q and A for foodblogger Pro members. And it's an exciting one because it's actually going to be with Kate all, our Pinterest expert. She's from simplepin Media and she is by far the expert when it comes to all things Pinterest and she'll be joining us to answer all of your questions about Pinterest strategy in 2023 as a food creator. So it's going to be a really great conversation. And if you've been looking to kind of level up your Pinterest strategy in the new year and learn more about what you should be doing on Pinterest to have success nowadays, since so much has changed in that world, you won't want to miss this Q and A. So if you want to add it to your calendar so you don't forget, you can head to the Live tab on Food Blogger Pro to learn more and go ahead and do that and we hope to see you there on the 12th. Last but not least, on Thursday, January 19th, we're going to be sharing a brand new course with you, all about iPhone, photography and editing. So we hear from you all the time that especially when you're first starting out, it can be really expensive to buy a DSLR and dive headfirst into the world of photography. And so a great place to start is just using the tools you already have, which might just be your iPhone. And so in this course we're going to walk you through, you know, optimizing all the settings within your phone, creating and taking beautiful photographs, and then also editing your photographs using just your phone. So stay tuned for that course. It's going to be jam packed with information to help you take and share beautiful photographs with the world. So that's an overview of everything coming to Food Blogger Pro in January. And if you're not a member and you'd like to join so you can get access to all of this, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com join to learn more about our pricing options and get signed up. We would so love to have you join our community. That's it for today though. Thanks again for tuning in to this episode. And until next time, make it a great week.

Sam.