421: Scaling Three Food Blogs and Tips for Hiring a Virtual Assistant with Cheryl Malik

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Hey there, this is Emily and you're listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Sheryl Mollick from the blog 40 Aprons. Sheryl first started food blogging back in 2009 and she now runs three different food blogs in addition to an agency called 40A that matches food bloggers with virtual assistants. In this podcast interview, Bjork and Sheryl chat about growing and diversifying her businesses over the years and how she manages her time to run all of these different businesses. And Cheryl also shares lots of tips and recommendations for growing your team and how to find virtual assistants or other team members to add to your team. She also shares her recommendations for onboarding new team members and just other advice for managing a growing team. It's a super interesting episode hearing all about how her food blogging journey has changed over the years from just managing 40 aprons to also starting her blog, Easy Healthy Recipes, and her blog, Cheap, Cheap Eats. She has a really interesting and fresh perspective on food blogging, and we know you'll get a lot out of it, so we'll just let Bjork take it away.

Cheryl, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, we can talk about your story from multiple angles because you have not just one food site, you have multiple food sites, but you also have another business that you're running, connecting food creators, food bloggers, with virtual assistants. So you have a lot of experience in the world of business building, site building, company building. Did you know when you first started like this was going to be, you wanted to build a business? You wanted to create a business back in 2009 when you first launched?

No, not at all. And I don't think it really was. It didn't feel like an option back then. Um, for me, I started my site as a creative outlet when I was going to law school and I was a hundred percent planning on being an attorney. That didn't last for long, but even after I left law school, I. It just. Food blogging wasn't a career option for a little while after that. So. No, it was really. It really just stemmed from a love of food and writing for me. And then the photography piece came later and it all really grew and developed from there. But for me, it was just, I want to write about the food that I'm making. And for me to be here now is totally mind blowing. There was no foresight back in 2009 that this would ever happen. For sure.

Yeah. And the site that you started with, was it called 40 aprons when you started it? And what was the idea behind that?

No, it was called legally eating.

So law student.

After we left the legally part behind, we, you know, I had to change the name and then it became the stylist quo because I wanted to do more lifestyle content. And then I started a second site called the Laid Back. It was just a whole lot. So eventually I decided I need to rebrand into something that is versatile enough to last me, you know, for however long, wherever I'm going. And that's where 40 aprons came from. Sort of the idea of wearing multiple hats, which is, you know, something I was doing back then as well as I'm doing now. And kind of a riff on the idea that when you love to cook and people know you love to cook, I at least used to get aprons as gifts all the time. Now everyone is like, she has 40 so we don't need to give her any back. In the day that was like the gift that I was getting. Now I guess it's spatulas.

So sure. So the idea being you had multiple kind of iterations, finally landed on 40 aprons. But from that you've also branched out into other areas. So two questions that I have. First one is at what point did you know, hey, this can be a thing? Like I'm going to be able to build this into a business. Like started in 2009. When did you know it was going to be a thing? And then at what point along the journey did you create the other sites as well as the agency where you're connecting food bloggers or food creators with assistance.

So not to fangirl too much, but I was following you and Lindsay with, I think you started some series like can a Food Blog make money? And I was like, wouldn't it be crazy if it could?

Interesting.

Yeah, right. And so I started, you know, getting the income reports and seeing how y' all were monetizing and I would forward them to my husband and be like, what if? This would be nuts if this.

What if? Yeah, wow.

Like I would like dare to dream, you know, and then didn't really have too much of a strategy with how I was running the site still at that point. But I was like, this is amazing. It really started shifting at that point, I think, and my site grew when I unintentionally sort of niche down and I did a Whole30 and started sharing my Whole30 recipes that I was making. And it really blew up then. And that was around 2016. So at that point it felt like this can be my full time job. Up until then I'd had solid traffic, but it wasn't enough, it certainly wasn't enough to replace my full time job. But around then, when the traffic started growing, I realized I can really focus on this the way that I'm focusing on my clients. Because at that point I was working at a marketing agency, spending all of my time building other people's businesses, helping them strategize and develop and market themselves. So I said to myself, what would happen if I did that to myself? And really from there, that's when it became a full time job. And along the way, right about when that happened and things became full time level, basically I hired my first assistant, but I was a little terrified. This person isn't relying on me entirely and it was my first payroll expense. So she was Part time for me and she was local to me as well. And so I said, what if I tried to get other, some of my food blogger friends to hire you as well? And I'll teach you everything and we'll work on things together, we'll look at their sites and we'll say, okay, here's what I think needs to happen today. Let's try this next week, whatever, and, and let's see if we can bolster your income that way because I can't afford to hire you full time right now. That changed eventually and she became my full time business partner. But she started taking on so many clients. It became clear to me that this was needed because I'd had virtual assistants and it was for me so much work to train them and to keep training them and to review the work that was being done and then if it wasn't right, it wasn't good enough, then you have to go through that process again and find someone else. And it was such a whole process. And food blogging in and of itself is a whole process. There's so many things we have to do.

What do you mean by that when you say it's a whole process?

Right. So we are photographers and we're writers and we're SEOs and we're social media managers. There's just so much that goes into it. Then you add that management, the training, your hr. There's just, there's just a lot. So what I wanted to do was allow the food bloggers to focus on the content creation and management and marketing and leave all of the sort of administration of hiring and managing behind. I would say, I think maybe a couple years after that. That's when I decided I had a team of my own then and I decided to start a second site. I wanted something that I could kind of pass on to them. They wouldn't just be me writing and shooting and developing all of the time. And at that point, 40 aprons still had a very specific niche. It was like this is a 40 aprons recipe and this is not. And I wanted to be able to fill in that content that we were missing. So we started easy healthy recipes.com I think that was around 2019. And then recently just started our third site within the last 12 months, I believe.

So yeah. Can you talk a little bit? You shared a little bit as we're doing the show notes, but I think it's helpful context. Cumulatively, those sites are doing really well, like producing really good revenue. Can you talk about what that looks like and Then even like the shape of that pie, like is it ad based sponsored content? What does that look like?

Yeah. So in terms of the pie, I wish I could say it's highly diversified and if ad revenue drop, then we'd still be fine. But it's largely ad revenue and that's partially because ad revenue is so good. So Easy Healthy recipes has really grown in the last year. We're seeing currently the average monthly is maybe half a million. It's growing rapidly right now, but we are managing.

When did you launch, launch that, did you say?

I believe that was 2019. And we went through a lot of. This was my first site that I was really outsourcing a lot of the content creation management and we went through some, we had some hiccups, you know, figuring out what worked. And since we smooth those out, the third site that we launched has been much, much smoother, has grown much faster. But we, we learned a lot. I'll say we learned a lot along the way with the easy healthy recipes. But it took a little while for it to get going, but now it's, it's growing pretty well and we're, we're seeing about a hundred thousand a year in ad revenue with Easy healthy recipes.

Yeah. That's incredible. And the thing that's interesting for, and it's cool to see you kind of touching on each of these things, but it's like you go through the process, you learn how to do it, you've, you built your own site, you're the content creator, you're the photographer, you're the writer. And then you kind of start to experiment and say, hey, you know what, there's some other things that people can help out with. For everybody. It looks a little bit different. Photography. It might be somebody doesn't like writing, so they bring somebody in to do the writing and you put the pieces together and then you're still a piece of it, you're still a part of the brand, but then you can launch another brand that you're not a part of. And correct me if this isn't correct, but like it feels like the approach to that is like I'm going to create an almost like a product that is the brand. So if it's not me, who's the audience, who am I creating it for? And you're able to create something that is completely apart from you. And that's where it feels like you're not creating a job, you're creating a business. And the business runs without you being a part of it. And that Feels very different. Have you felt that each step along the way with each of the sites that you've launched, from kind of the original, you know, what is now 40 aprons to the most recent iteration where you said it kind of clicked a little bit more.

Absolutely. And partially what I wanted to do. My vision was 40 aprons is me. I mean, I've been doing this since 2009. This is all I've really been doing pretty much my entire life that I've been working or producing anything. And the idea of selling something like that is very personal to me. And whenever I consider it, I'm like, what would I do without my little baby 40 aprons? But easy, healthy Recipes was sort of designed for that purpose. The idea was, let's grow this and eventually we could sell it and it wouldn't. I wouldn't feel like I was losing a part of myself. And at the same time, it would be easier for, you know, if we did sell it, whoever was buying it. It's a seamless transition because they're not changing my face, they're not taking my little, you know, headshot off the profile or anything like that. It's just new people doing the keyword research, essentially.

Yeah.

So it does, it does. It definitely does feel different. And with the third site that we launched, it's completely different from the sort of content that we're producing on 40 aprons, which tends to be in the healthier spectrum of recipes. And it's really budget friendly recipes that, you know, during COVID we started thinking about recession possibly coming up. And when Covid was, you know, at its peak, people weren't making healthy recipes. They were making recipes that they could, they could source the ingredients that they could afford. And it really opened my eyes that these healthy recipes are honestly somewhat of a luxury. And there's this entire market that can be addressed, you know, and supported by producing recipes that are very budget friendly in case, you know, that there was a recession or any, at any time or anything like that. So we, we produce recipes with ingredients we would, that would just never be on 40 aprons. And in that way, it feels like the brand, the, the avatar for that brand is just something totally separate from me.

And in that you're not as personally connected to it like it allows, it's more, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but it feels like it would allow it to be more of a playground, like, okay, we're going to experiment with this brand. It maybe doesn't have to be as precious because it's not as closely tied to who you are. And so you're able to look at it and say, like, apart from you, what's the best way that you can build this brand? And I don't think either way is right or wrong. It's just a different way to build a business. Like, it's not as much of a personal brand. It's more of a brand that stands alone. And I think, you know, one of the things that's nice about a personal brand is connection. It's trust. Like, you can establish a rapport with somebody, they maybe follow you. So there's maybe an advantage there. And how have you navigated that? Have you felt like that you're having to craft, like, a brand voice as you create those other sites? Or is it more of just delivering a really good product and making sure that it's, you know, the recipes are tested? Well, what does that look like?

I think it's really the latter to me. We haven't changed the voice or the tone too much. What we're really doing is just shifting the content focus. And I mean, very honestly, when I started what became 40 aprons many years ago, there was much more personality involved in the actual writing of the blog posts and things like that. And that has been sort of taken out of the copywriting element of running a site and running a blog for a while anyway. So we've developed a brand, and the way that we write is it really sort of addresses people in a way that we feel like works for us, works for our writers. And so we've kind of just copied and pasted that. That approach to producing content into writing, but changed up the parameters within which the recipes are developed. So it is much more impersonal in terms of my face, isn't there? You know, I'm not speaking in the first person as Cheryl.

Yeah.

But I only really know how to run a site and lead a brand as me. Anyway, so we just decided, you know, let's. Let's sort of shift where we're going with this. But the sort of brand standards have been the same.

Mm. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, and the interesting piece I was talking about before is you're kind of triangulate, triangulating around all of this is, you know, it feels like the first iteration for all of us as entrepreneurs is you're the, you know, head chef, you're the dishwasher, you're the photographer, you're the writer. As you start to find some success or as you decide to, like, use some of your own disposable income to invest in the business. You start to outsource some of those things and you get a feel for, like, working with a team. You have somebody who helps you with something. It's like, oh, it feels really good to not do the thing that I don't want to do that somebody else really wants to do, and develop processes around that. And in your case, then duplicating those processes and applying it against a brand, a separate brand. And that feels really different then because it's not. It's not you personally. You can kind of craft this entirely different thing. And that's really awesome. But you've also then created kind of an agency, or maybe you have a better word for it, but you're connecting people who have food sites to virtual assistants. Can you talk about why you saw the need for that and what that looks like from a business perspective?

Yeah, absolutely. So I love a system. It is really the only way that I feel like I can manage all of the things, just all of the things in for one individual site, all of the things for having multiple ventures that are going on and then being able to pass that on when it's time to pass it along. So back to that idea of before I hired my own personal assistant, I had had those vas who you're starting fresh with someone every time when you do have to hire. And I realized that this was a pain point for. For my friends personally. They would complain to me about, I don't know how to approach. I don't know if she's doing this right, but I don't really know how to approach her. I don't want this confrontation. But I'm not sure that, you know, the trainings, there's all of these. This chatter of, you know, I don't really know if I'm doing this right or it's taking up a lot of my time. You know, I'm spending all this time and investing in. In training this person. And then it's. She, you know, it's not. It's not going well. So I have to reinvest that time. And I'm taking this time away from really where I'm of value, which is the content creation. So after we saw the system and the process that I had implemented with my own assistant working for my friends, we started to think, my assistant and I, maybe we can do this again. And maybe we can train people from a food blogger's perspective, which when something changes, I go to my business partner and I say, I think we need to do it this way now. Maybe we trim down our copy, Maybe we invest in this area of Pinterest. You know, web stories are a thing. You know, a few years ago we were like, we got to do web stories. Now it's like we've got to do short forms. So there's this. Basically, I'm. I like to think I'm standing in for the client in keeping an assistant, a virtual assistant, up to speed on the industry and where it's going and take that part, take a part out of the job for. For the blogger. What we also like to do is we hire majority food bloggers. So we have people who. They get it. You know, they are experienced in this way. And so it's really a matter of just learning a new brand, learning a new voice, but keeping it all within the industry instead of sourcing someone at upwork. And you have to explain all of the details of food blogging and then hope that it goes well. So we try to remove that hurdle.

Yeah. It's interesting when any industry you get into, you realize there's all these little nuances, all of these ways that you approach best practices. And so a huge head start on that is somebody who is in that world themselves. And then also to train them on that, to have a system to say like, okay, here's what it looks like. To work with somebody is great. What is your advice for somebody who's never gone through that process of working with somebody, or who has gone through the process and it was kind of clunky, it didn't work. Like, how do you work well? How do you bring somebody on to your team? Whether probably in a contracted relationship. And my guess is when you're working with people, it's a contracted relationship or they're just paying you, and then your company, and then your company pays the contractor. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. But how do you work well with somebody? How do you bring somebody on and have it be successful?

Yeah. So I think expectations are a huge part of that relationship and communicating them well, that setting expectations and so that both sides know what is going on and where you want to go. That is just such a critical part of how any employee relationship, a contractor relationship, anything like that will function well. And then, of course, communication in general is just key. We've been through, with my own team, we've been through so many approaches to project management, software, communication software, and we've found what works for us. But really making sure that there's a system in place for everyone having what they need and knowing what you need to do a good job and being able to communicate that regularly will eliminate so many of the issues that arise.

Can you talk about that? Maybe what that looks like when it's not done right and then what it looks like when it is done right. Just to paint a picture.

Yeah. So it really, I mean, to me, it really depends on the issue at hand. A lot of times we've been. I don't know if this is the same for other brands, but we've been through so many iterations of we're using this software. Please, everybody, you know, actually use it. Make sure you're checking off your things and having to go in and be like, are you, Are you actually using this? Are you not getting things done? Trying to force people to use a.

Software to Asana or ClickUp, like a project management software.

We have done all of those. All of those and many more. Right. So. So we've been, We've been through that. That process of feeling like we were having to micromanage our team to make sure that they were using the software was it. That was a huge struggle for us. And then eventually we just decided, let's do what works. And we sort of shifted and made things a little more just casual for our team so that we know there's no sort of like artificial system in the way of things being like, make sure you go back to Asana, make sure you update your status, blah, blah, blah. So we just keep it very, very just native to our team. But the sort of angst that can arise around either too much communication, which can overload someone and take up all of the time that they should be working on a project, or the total opposite, which is lack of communication, where you're not even sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, or you don't have what you need, that can be an issue that a lot of contractors run into is, yeah, I'm supposed to be writing, but I don't have the information. So finding that happy medium of just enough, not too much, not overwhelming, and not feeling like you're untethered, like I'm. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.

So, yeah, the balance between giving somebody clear directive, knowing they know what success looks like, they know what a deliverable is for them, but also not looking over their shoulder at every word they're writing and like finding that sweet spot, part of it is it feels like they're. People probably have a different level of where they'd feel most comfortable. Does that feel accurate?

Yeah, I think so. And a lot of it is. Like you said, most of us started from this chief everything officer place. I mean, I think almost by design, we all did. And at some point you have to relinquish control a little bit. You have to trust. But it can be very hard because it's personal. It's your baby, your face is on it. And you want to deliver what you've been delivering. High quality product. You want your followers to trust you, to continue to trust you. And it can definitely be hard to give some of that up. But of course it is. You know, as you grow, it can be necessary, but it is hard, but it is necessary. So it's just, it's a completely understandable place to come from.

Yeah, that idea of giving up control feeling a little bit weird. But it's almost like any skill you have to practice. What does that feel like? How does that, how does that work? So the. Do you call it an agency? 40A?

We do.

Okay, so the agency is 40A. You can get there by going to foodblog. Virtualassistant.com what does it look like if somebody were to go through the process of working with you? Do they say like how many hours they need or what the specific job is that they need?

Definitely. So we have an onboarding, sort of questionnaire where we identify the strengths of that individual person as well as how many hours they could reasonably take on per week so that we're not overwhelming anyone and we're not holding them back from what they need to support their family and to really fill out their financial, their needs. So we get to know that individual person very well. And my business partner knows every, every person who works for us so well. She has all of their profiles just in her head all the time. So from that point, we can pair the virtual assistant with the client based on their needs, their niche, just what focus we have for them. And it's really the sort of like beautiful matchmaking process where when it, you know, when we match well, it's just, it works, it works out long term. You know, each, each side getting what they, what they need and what they want.

Hmm. Yeah. So somebody comes in and they're like, I really don't like writing. I want to find somebody that can help me with writing. You know, you have this database of people who are like interviewed, process, go through process. And they're like, I love writing. I want to do more writing. Matching those people up. What does it look like on the onboarding side of things, specifically with 40A. But also like, how do you successfully onboard somebody to work with? Do you need to have those processes ready beforehand? Like, one of the things we talk about is occasionally, even if you aren't hiring anybody, it's really great to. To document your processes. So if a time ever does come when you are working with somebody, you have these documented and you can be like, here's how we do things, or is it more like, hey, let's bring somebody on and we can work on the processes together as a team? Do you have any recommendations just for onboarding a new team member?

Yeah, I definitely think that having those, those documents, those standards in place is. It's so helpful. And that's. When you asked me about, you know, did you develop an entirely new voice for your brands? I was honestly, I'm like, no, we already have those brand standards. It seemed easier to just, you know, copy and paste that. So had that existing. And that was because we had been onboarding people in the past when we would even hire new photographers, freelance photographers. No matter how beautiful their portfolio, we would say to them, look, these images represent our style really well. So this is what we would like you to focus on. It's just so helpful, not only in bringing someone on, but in clarifying your. Your voice and your style for your own self so that you have a vision when you do create your own content. So I love the idea of having that detailed and that makes our job so much easier. When we are partnering a VA and a client, what can sometimes be the issue is if a client. It's almost like an I'll know it when I see it sort of situation. Like, I know that's not my voice because I realized that when I saw your Facebook post today. But having more information allows our discovery process to go by so much more easily, allows us to learn that client and their content just without any issue at all.

What about different ways to work with team? I'm calling them team members. People probably have different ways to frame it up or, you know, words to use for that. Can you talk about the difference between like W2, like hiring an employee and bringing them on, like contractor, freelance, working with somebody and then working with an agency. It feels like those are all kind of three different buckets. And can you help people understand the difference between those?

Yeah, so I actually have all three working for me. I have several employees, and these are people who, I mean, they are my team. These are the people who, you know, they get maternity Leave and Christmas presents. And they're just part, they're part of our little family. And when a new brand comes up, sometimes I may say, hey, I'm going to divert you from easy, healthy recipes. You're going to produce some content for the new site for a little while. It's easy to just, it really feels like sort of an all hands on deck kind of situation where we are all working towards one general goal. They also use contractors to do more specific work or one off work. And these are the, you know, I don't personally have any like long standing contracts with anyone, but like my accountant, you know, or my bookkeeper. They just work on an hourly rate and you know, and we have photographers who sometimes if we're, we're building a new site, I'll invest, you know, for a few months in several rounds of photography with a freelance photographer and then we may be able to take it over from there. And then I also use 48 to handle quite a lot of our social media. So they handle all of our Pinterest. And I let my business partner and our director of Pinterest handle that completely. I don't want anything to do with it. I'm like you, you know what's going on. Yeah, you stay on top of it. You let us know what we need to do and that, that balance is what works for me. It may look different, you know, for anyone else, but I feel like I have a need for, for every approach to someone, you know, working on the site.

Yeah, it's that, that difference that you talk about like you know, maternity leave or Christmas presents as an example. Like it's a, it's a job for somebody. It's not like they're viewing it as one of their clients and they have multiple clients as maybe a contractor or you would with an agency. It's like this is kind of what somebody's focused on usually, unless it's maybe part time and somebody has some other stuff that they're working on. But can you speak to what comes along with that? Because suddenly now there's additional considerations. Like, you know, you talked about kind of the benefit side of it, which is, you know, a really important piece. But there's also like the legal side of it in terms of what it means to hire an employee. And if it's the remote, you're setting up workers comp and like taxes and all of that. So how do you handle that? And at what point would you say you tip over from doing agency contractor work into hiring full time?

Right. So it is just so much more. It's so much more. And the, the benefit to me is that sort of like you alluded to, there is this feeling of ownership with an employee. They feel like we want to see this succeed because it's, it's us, it's our, our thing and we're all working on it together. But there are so many more taxes that are required and time off that we pay for. And we have workers comp. And we have all kinds of insurance and taxes that we're paying on a monthly basis. And that good old contractor that I mentioned that handles our taxes, she helps me with all of that. This is the side of the business that I, when I got into this, I was like, this is one of the things I want to outsource as quickly as possible. And luckily I married an attorney. I didn't actually go through law school.

But in law school. Yeah, that's right.

So he helps out with so much of that. But it can be so overwhelming. Making sure you're doing everything right, making sure that your employee has the equipment and the gear that they need to do their job. There's just so much of it. So my best piece of advice is to find someone who can help you manage hiring and help you make sure that, you know, based on your state. And we have employees all over the country and they all have different taxes and laws that we have to abide by. And it really can be this massive undertaking. And for. And I always ask myself, when do I decide that it's time to take on another employee? Like, there's just this shift in my mindset. I think I'm like, we need someone else on the team who's there all the time. But it's a big deal. But it also has that benefit, that ownership and that feeling of being truly bought in. But it's also a huge responsibility. And I would say the almost lowest sort of sense of responsibility is my relationship with the agency in terms of a blogger and a va. So if we have. So say we had. We had the person who was working on our Pinterest a few months ago. She had a baby. She decided she wanted to be a full time mom. I didn't handle that at all. My business partner reassigned us, had that person trained and onboarded with our site. It was completely hands off for me. But one of my employees is actually on maternity leave currently, so I'm producing the content to fill that in. So completely different approach. And I like having both, but they are just so totally different.

Yeah, right. And as a business owner, as you think about switching from being a solopreneur, doing everything on your own, which has its positives and its negatives, one of the evolutions that you'll step into is thinking more about what does it mean to be a business owner and those trade offs and considerations. And it's. It's something that for anybody who continues to work on a thing and grow it and find success, inevitably will get to that point where some of those are the decisions that you're going to have to make. But the great thing is you don't have to make those right away. You can kind of dip your toe into it. And I feel like working with somebody on a contracted, freelance or an agency type relationship is a great way to do that. So for the solopreneur who's like, I do want to step into this a little bit, I want to figure it out, would you say there's like a minimum with time or responsibilities that you could step into it? Is it like five hours a week would be a good stepping stone for somebody to have some help?

There's really. We like to work with bloggers on sort of project basis. So we do a lot of Pinterest management which. And we have post writing packages that we offer. So it's not so much that you have to commit to five hours a week or anything like that. It really is scalable. Coming from the perspective of being a blogger who could hire an assistant, but only for a little bit because I was terrified that it wouldn't work or that the site would suddenly just backtrack or whatever. I've been there and I wanted to make this doable for people. I wanted to make it affordable and manageable. So we made it pretty flexible. There's not just this. You have now reached the threshold where you have earned help. We have several clients who have full time jobs and they simply can't do all of the things. It's not so much that they're at this point where they're overloaded by their traffic and the creation that's required, but it's just how can we support each individual person without it being this threshold? You have to sort of meet.

Yeah, that's great. So I'd be curious for you, as somebody who operates multiple businesses, how do you split your time? Like, what does your day look like? How do you divide your time? Because inevitably there's a group of people who listen to this podcast. They're entrepreneurial. Most of the people who listen to this are entrepreneurial, ambitious Excited about multiple different things, they see opportunities. What have you learned about having multiple businesses? Maybe it all rolls up into one business. But like you're operating multiple things. What have you learned in as you've gone through that process?

Yeah, so I have developed a sort of routine lately that I absolutely love and has helped increase my efficiency so much. And that is for me batching my days. So like on Monday I catch up with all my emails from the weekend. I do all of my ingredient shopping. I sort of just get the week ready. Then on Tuesday my assistant and I are in the kitchen all day. I mean we just buckled down. I put on my Crocs, I put on my apron, we got our Spotify going and we're like, all right, yep, let's do this. Let's get seven recipes done. And then on Wednesday I edit like five to seven batches of recipes photos and then it just every day has a theme and I'm actually developing a business with my husband that's completely unrelated to food blogging. Totally not a digital business at all. And I have a part of my week that I devote to new business ventures. So I don't feel like I'm trying to stuff it in around. Well, this, you know, this post needs to go up so I'm going to just edit this real quick and then I'm going to get through this, you know, other. And I feel like when I was working that way I was always pushing those non urgent tasks off. But now I get into the flow with any given task and I'm able to just really settle in and just blow through it. It's amazing how much time it took me to edit before. And now that I'm doing five, you know, photo sets in one little portion of my day, I can get through it at half half the time minimum. So that's been huge for me and it really allows me to sort of like put on that hat. Now it's my recipe developer hat. Instead of I'm going to do this one recipe and then I'm going to go check on those emails. I'm going to try and get that webinar in. It really has allowed my focus to sharpen so much. So I highly recommend that.

That's awesome. What's the. Can you talk about the new business venture unrelated to what is it?

Yeah, yeah, totally. So my husband is a real estate attorney and we have recently been investing in properties. So we actually bought an office in February 2020. And then, you know, Covid. Covid. And we decided like we are just going to work remotely. So we ended up renting that out to a business and from there we started, you know, developing other. Other property businesses. And we are developing a. A property management company where we have our beach house. So we're hoping to be able to do the same kind of thing and manage for other people as well and.

Yeah, like short term. Short term rental management.

Exactly right. And I want him to not have to be an attorney anymore. I want him to maybe do the law things, you know, that's good. But I would like him to be able to do, you know, just live a little more flexibly. Like, like I'm, I'm able to.

Yeah. So then you can match your schedules. Like you both have the flexibility and autonomy. That's really cool. And I think one of the things that we found is like, in doing these things, meaning business building, you learn how to apply that in other areas, like processes as an example, like, okay, we need to have processes for these things. Or even some of the relationships you have might transfer over and work really well in other places. And so I think it's important to point out for anybody going through the process of trying to figure all of this out, it feels like it can be kind of exhausting. And there's so much that you're doing and so much that you're trying to figure out, but what you're doing is you're training on skills that are transferable. And I think we forget that sometimes. Like it, it works really well in a certain category and it also might work well in another category. So it's cool to hear you guys developing that. And bonus, bonus, if it's a, like beach house, short term rental, like, what a great upside to be able to have access to that, which is really cool. So what would your advice be for somebody who wants to take that next step? Like, they're listening to this. We have this all the time where people are like, I want to work with somebody, I want to connect with somebody to help me. But they're maybe anxious about it, they're nervous about it, they don't know what to do. What would your advice be for somebody who wants to take that next step and how do they break through kind of some of that fear or hesitation to bring on a team member?

Yeah, I think honestly I say lean into the anxiety and know that that's part of the growth. So I heard this story years ago and it reminds me whenever I feel a little anxious about where the business is going and taking on a new responsibility, like When I brought on my first assistant, I was so nervous about it, but reminded me of the story that they said there's this moment with a lobster before maybe it's a snail. I don't know, some sort of crustacean where they're too big for their current shell and they only know that they need a bigger shell because they're uncomfortable.

Sure.

And I started thinking, okay, I'm just. I just need a bigger shell. Or, you know what I mean? It was. I started leaning into this idea that, that discomfort or. And that sort of anxiety or nervousness, that is part of it. And that's okay. And it's, it's okay to trust as well and, you know, to lay out those processes that will help that. That transition happen sort of seamlessly, which, you know, as we discussed, is always good to have just for clarity of vision anyway, so there's. I like to lean into whatever feeling I'm having, but then buckle down and do the work. You know, let it fuel me a little bit. So it's, you know, it's. It's normal to feel that way totally. But it can also lead to the best things.

That's awesome. Yeah, it. So much of what we do is coming up against something that's uncomfortable and then figuring out how to work our way through that. Just in life in general, like, could be business related. It could be in our personal life. Like, navigating those situations is a skill and the best way to get better at it is to go through it, whether in business or interpersonal life or whatever it might be. You've done such a great job of that. It's really fun to see all the different places that you're building, that you're creating, that you're helping people for those who want to follow along. Cheryl with you. And then also, if you could do a shout out to the agency if they're interested in working with your team, can you do a little quick recap of where you can be found online?

Yeah. So 40 aprons is 40 aprons everywhere 40 aprons. If you want to check out easy healthyrecipes.com, the social for that on Instagram is Easy Healthy Recipes Blog. And then we have cheapcheapeats.com which is cheapcheepeats on social. And then if you want to check out the agency, head to foodblogvirtualassistant.com and we would love to chat with you. And if you are having some anxiety, we'll do our best to swish that.

That's awesome. Cheryl, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate you sharing your insights.

Thanks so much for having me. It was so much fun.

Hey there Alexa here from the Food Blogger Pro team. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I wanted to take a quick second to make sure you are aware of the Food Blogger Pro membership. So the Food Blogger Pro membership, Food Blogger Pro in general was started when Bjork and Lindsay Ostrom. Lindsay is the content creator over at Pinch of Yum. When they started getting a ton of questions about starting and growing and monetizing food blogs. So people would come to them and say, hey, I see what you're doing, I love what you're doing. How can I do the same thing? So they decided Food Blogger Pro to be the place where food bloggers, food content creators can go to learn how to start, grow and monetize their own food blogs. So we have different courses, we have different events, we have different tools and deals for our community. We have a community for forum where members can connect, collaborate and troubleshoot with industry experts and their fellow Food Blogger Pro members. And it's just a really active place. I always like to say that your Food Blogger Pro membership won't look the same the next week after you join because we're constantly adding new content, new value to your membership. I wanted to read this testimonial from Food Blogger Pro member Alistair from the Pesky Vegan, and he says starting a food blog can feel pretty daunting. More often than not, it's probably something you're trying to do on your own without much prior experience. Signing up to FoodBlocker Pro was one of the single best things I could have done as it removed a lot of the worries I had and provided me with a supportive community and a wealth of invaluable information. When I think about the journey I've been on, I simply can't imagine getting to where I am without this membership. Thank you. It's so cool to see so many different experiences with Food Blogger Pro. We have tons of testimonials on our site. If you're interested in learning more, if you're interested in learning more about the membership, what that looks like, what you get when you sign up as a member, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com join you get access to everything we have the moment you sign up. So no content is dripped. You can kind of just create your own journey through our content and access what is most meaningful and beneficial for you. So again, that URL is foodbloggerpro.com join if you're interested in learning more. Otherwise, we'll see you here on the podcast next week. And until then, make it a great week.