432: Creating a Community of Food Bloggers with Morgan Peaceman from Nomaste Hungry

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Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you're listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast we have Morgan Peaceman from the Food Blog Namaste Hungry. Morgan first started her blog back in 2018 and has rebranded and taken a different approach to her blog in recent years. We all know that food blogging or really any career as an online creator or entrepreneur can sometimes feel like a lonely space, but Morgan has been working since she started blogging to change that. Morgan is super outgoing, but has also been really intentional about how she reaches out to fellow food bloggers and creators and like minded brands to help build her community and make this space feel a little less lonely. Morgan has noted that she's had increased success with her blog since growing her community, which she attributes to sharing resources, contacts, experiences, helpful tips and tricks and other things with her contacts in her community. In this episode, Morgan shares more about how she's had the confidence to reach out to all these other food creators and brands, and her recommendations for others to start doing the same. Morgan also shares more about how she tracks and manages all of her outreach, especially to brands, and why she thinks it's so important to start growing a community and building a village in this space. It's a short but sweet episode, and I think all of us will leave feeling inspired to work to grow our community and to reach out other food bloggers in this space. Moving forward, without further ado, I'll let Bjork take it away.

Morgan, welcome to the podcast.

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

Yeah, great.

It's going to be a fun conversation. One of the things that we're going to be focusing on is this idea of creating a community of other creators, bloggers, mentors. It's one of the things that we hear a lot about. People get into it and they're like, how do you connect with people? How do you create that community? And knowing that it's a really important thing. I was just even thinking about it this morning as I was getting ready for the day. It's like, gosh, it would be really nice to connect with people, a group of people who are kind of solving these similar problems. Like, we have kind of unique problems that we're trying to solve. And I was thinking for myself, who are those people? So, like, even for myself, I'm thinking about that, how do you create that community? Because I think as you do that, especially in the world where you're remote, it feels less lonely you have those connections. But before we do that, let's hear a little bit about your story. You started your site in 2018 and then have kind of had a revisioning of what it could be. So take us back to when you started it and kind of how it's progressed along the way.

Yeah. So I literally started my food blog in 2018, in August at a Mets game in Citi Field. Nice.

Like at the game.

Like, legitimately at the game. Study there. I was like, I think I'm gonna start a blog. My husband was like, now? I'm like, yeah, you know, you're, like.

Not invested in the game. And you're like, I think I'm gonna start a business.

Yeah. I was like, I think I'm just going to use my time more efficiently. So I went on. I think it was GoDaddy and just found the name. I had a friend just tell me. Yeah, I think Namaste Hungry is a really cool Kind of play on, you know, my peaceful side to who I am and loving to stay hungry and food. So, yeah, August 2018, it came to fruition, and it actually was really. It started when I came back from a Europe trip with my husband. We had kind of traveled around Europe a little bit, and I was really invested in the culture and the atmosphere that food really cultivates, especially when you're around new people and you're with people that you love. And food has always been something that's been a part of my life since I was a little girl. My grandmother always baked, my family always cooked, so I was always in the kitchen, and I figured, what better way to tell my story about food than having my own website?

Yeah, that's awesome. So you started it, and then somewhere along the lines, kind of had a revisioning of what it could be. Is that right? Your. Your story was such that, like, as I was reading into it, it was like, oh, there's a little bit of a shift or pivot that happened.

Yeah. So I. Initially, 2018 was one of those years where it was a lot of cheese pull accounts on Instagram. There was a lot of those, like, zooming in on the pizza, the cheesy, gooey, like, oily food. So I initially was like, I don't know if that's the avenue that I wanted to go or if I wanted to go in the avenue of calling out restaurants that I really liked. At that time, I lived in Brooklyn, and that's r. Really cool. Awesome spots to hit up. And so one of the things that I started doing was a mixture of both. I had recipes on my. On my site, on my Instagram. I also had calling out and going to restaurants, getting invited to restaurants, but then also taking that really large LED light that many influencers have and going to restaurants and bothering everybody around me, taking those.

Everybody. It's impossible for everybody in the restaurant not to look at you when you set up a giant LED light.

Exactly. And then, you know, I started to really reach out to people that I became friendly with through social media and on my platform. And it became more apparent and clear to me that what I really wanted to do is create my own recipes. And even from there, it was a big rebranding of figuring out exactly the type of recipes I wanted to do. Did I really want to go into all sorts of cuisines? What type of cuisine did I really want to hone in on? Who was my audience? What was my vision? What was my mission for who I am as a blogger? What's going to make me stand out. And so from 2018 till now, it's been a lot of questioning and trial and error and just using the people around me to help kind of identify what works, what doesn't work, what can I, what can I continue to improve on?

Yeah, that's great. So let's talk about that idea of the people around you. And one of like I said, one of the things we hear often is like, man, it would be really helpful if I could connect with people, if there could be people that I could, you know, understand what it is I'm trying to do. Or people talk about meeting with friends and they're like, wait, what is it like? It's. You're trying to like build a following online. What is that all about? It's becoming more common now, I think than it was five or 10 years ago. But still, I think the work can be lonely if you don't have a community. Can you talk about what that was like for you? How you started to build that community, how you connected with people and then what functionally, what does that look like?

Yes. So when I first started and I was more just about going to restaurants and figuring out, you know, exactly what I wanted my account to look like, I had started to join. I guess back in the day there were like these DM groups that you would join and everybody would kind of share a post that everybody would engage on and that's just the hopes to get folks to follow your account, like your account, et cetera. But from those groups there actually stemmed a couple of friends that we would chat on the side through dms. Hey, how's your day? Oh, I really like this. Or oh my God, I've been dying to go to this restaurant. Restaurant, tell me more about it. And that actually turned into let's go together. Let's you know, take our, our social medias and kind of combine to do some stuff together and share on each other's channels. And so that was initially what had happened when I was starting out in around 2018, 2019. And then when Covid hit, it was really, you know, we're just kind of home and not doing much. I actually had my son, St. Patrick's Day of 2020. So being home with him, being home, trying to build my business from the ground up, really just starting to re envision exactly what I wanted my website to look like was more home, stress free recipes for everybody to enjoy. No matter if you're a novice in the kitchen or you are somebody who's who's been cooking for years. So one of the things that I had started to do was just comment on many different food bloggers accounts and send them messages. I'm a very personal person. I'm never, never afraid to just slide into someone's DM and say, hey, I love your stuff. Like, just here to help support. And it's turned out to be really successful. I have really close friends with a lot of bloggers across the country, across in the UK and other areas and other countries. But I think it's become more about me being comfortable reaching outside of my comfort zone to find those people has been a big success.

Yeah, I'm just. It was like last week, I think Lindsay had a get together with some of her friends and the initial connection with these friends was like eight, nine, ten years ago. Not all of them, but some of them through blogging, like it's, it's. Or online things like whether it be Instagram, blogging. And we have a lot of those friends. And I remember the first time that we ever like connected with people who weren't friends that we had in real life, but friends that we knew from the Internet. It was Alex and Sonia. They have a site called A Couple Cooks and we were going to visit our friend in Indianapolis and they're like, we're in Indianapolis, you should swing by. And we're like, whoa, this, this must have been like 12 years ago, even longer maybe. And it was like, weird. We're gonna like meet with people that we met on the Internet. And it was just at the time it was such a weird, novel, like questionable thing. But now it's just, you know, so common. And I think as our lives and the Internet has kind of overlapped, like they're not as separate. But even for Alex and Sonia, it's not like we see them all the time, but still are people that we'd consider to be close friends and people we really appreciate. And eventually what we found is like, initially what you have is this connection of like you are doing things online, but eventually you get connected with people where like that becomes like a secondary. It was almost like the reason that you connected.

Right.

But then you are just friends and your friends who are maybe doing similar things, like in a similar industry. We've also had a lot of friends who we made the initial connection because they are doing online business or building a side a following and then move away from that and then they do something completely different. But because we have connected initially and our friends through that continue to stay connected, point Being like, one of the benefits of doing this can be connection to really cool, inspiring people who are doing things in the world. One of the things you talked about that I think is important to point out is this idea of going outside of your comfort zone. And it's one of the things I've seen is a lot of times what it takes is you making the effort. A lot of people say, like, how do you get into these groups? How do you connect with people? And the expectation, I think a lot of times is like, how do people get asked? And usually it's less of like, how do you get asked? And more of how do you figure out ways to ask people? So. And it sounds like that's kind of a little bit of what you. You were saying. So can you talk through and give some encouragement to people who are maybe a little bit gun shy around reaching out and connecting or like making the ask with relationship with somebody that they're like, hey, this would be really fun to connect with this person.

Yeah, it's like I said, I've always been somebody who really enjoys talking with people. I've worked in restaurants. I'm a special educator by trade. So for me, a lot of what I do comes a little bit organically. But I think for folks who are looking to kind of build their community, build their village, as I say, I think a lot of times it's just sending a message and seeing what happens. I mean, the worst that can happen is they don't read it, or they read it and they like it and they keep moving forward. But in particular, a really good friend of mine who's a food blogger, we have been chatting since 2021. The later, the later year. The later of the year of 2021. And I think I just messaged her saying, wow, your food looks really good. Or I wrote like a bunch of emojis. And we then learned our sons have the same name, coincidentally. Yeah, she's in New Jersey, I'm in New York, and we met up in January of this year and had a phenomenal time together. And we text all the time. I think I text her more than I text family members at this point. Like, she's the first person I text in the morning. It's. It's great. But I think it's really just having that initial, hey, what's the worst that can happen? And you could build a really great friendship. I have other friends, food blogger friends, as I call them, my. My food blogger, like groupies. They live on Long island with me in New York and we get together every and again. And I've had opportunities even with brands that I know are local too. Just reaching out to them and saying, hey, I'm local, like there's anything happening in your area, I'd love to help support. And I'm actually doing that on Saturday with a brand. So I think it's really about just winging it and seeing what happens, taking that initial, like I'm going to message them and see, see what comes of it.

Yeah, there's. This is a little bit of a long shot analogy, but. And it's not even an analogy, it's just like a similar type of thought, a similar thought to a different, completely different industry. But when I was a kid, one of the things that I did was I love sports, still do. And loved cards as well, like baseball cards. Is your son old enough to. Probably not. Because you said that.

Yeah, he has little figurines. My father in law brought over some Mets figurines. So he plays it when we go out.

Okay. So eventually he might get into sports cards. And I was really into cards, collecting them. And then one of the things that I found was at our local library, there's this, this book. And the book had addresses for all of the different stadiums of the sports teams. And so I had you could make copies at the library and so you do 5 cent copy. And I copied all the addresses and then I took those home and I created like I wrote up a letter and then I would just about like who I am and what I'm interested in and, and then I would take the card from a pack that I would open and I would in the letter like replace the player's name. So it's like hey Michael, you know, or hey Josh or whatever, print it out. And then I would take a self addressed stamped envelope and put in another envelope and then send it to the stadium with a card and it would be asking for autographs. And the reason I'm thinking of this is because I have a friend who has boys that are kind of at the same age that I was when I started to do this and I gave him each a pack, a card and a book of stamps and I was like, you guys got to start doing this. And just for the first time, his son, his name is Paxton, got an autograph back and my friend sent me a video. All of this to say, here's where I'm going to draw the connection back to your story is the key to doing that. And for that to be really fun is sending out like a hundred different envelopes to a hundred different players and asking for an autograph. And what happens is you get 10, 20, 30 back. But it, it's not like you send one and then you just wait around and hope that something happens. Like it has to be an active part. And for me, it was like every day I'd come home and I'd send five out and then two would come back. And it becomes really fun when you start to get to that point where you have some of the flywheel going.

Yes.

But where it's hard is like in the beginning stages where it's like you're doing the initial outreach and nothing comes back yet. And so for you to say, like, hey, you gotta put it out there, you have to reach out, you have to connect with people and you have to do that repeatedly. And you will, you will get some of those back. Worst case scenarios, you don't. Same with the cards, like sometimes people just don't respond and you don't get the card back. So that's a little bit of a bummer. But it's not as much of a bummer as, like, how cool it is when you do make that connection.

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One of the things that you said was the brand piece. I think that's a really interesting element and I often think it's important for anybody who wants to do branded work to make a relationship before you are doing this initial pitch, especially in the early stages, as you're starting to grow and build a following, can you talk about what that's like, specifically how you go about facilitating some of those conversations with a brand and what that looks like to just say like, hey, do you have anything going on? What does that mean? What does that look like?

Yeah. So I've been doing brand work probably since October, November of 2021, so I'm still fairly new to the game. This year has been way more successful, I think, because I have become more confident and comfortable with taking risks and to the point of showing up consistently. And I think finding brands that align not just to what I value as, as somebody who's a consumer of the brand, but also the niche and, and what I represent as a food blogger in this space and brand. Perfect example. I'm working with a local or an east coast grocery store chain that has a very family oriented view. And so I reached out, I actually had a friend in a book club that I'm in, send me the message. And he goes, hey, they're looking for people to support. And I was like, I shop there all the time. My son loves the store, so yeah, I'm going to reach out. And I said, hey, you know, I'm, I'm local in the area, I shop at your store all the time. Do you have the best person to contact so I can send over an idea of potentially working together? I, I'm very interested in collaborating. I know that this would be a great fit, you know, and I kind of just say I know I'm a great fit because I believe in myself and I feel I'm very confident in the power of manifesting those, those, those achievements and those and things that come to fruition. So I sent a message and she responded and she goes, oh my God, that's great. I love your feed, let's chat. And I always try and get to a discovery call or a video call so it doesn't just sound like carbon copy a lot of times. Sure. You know, at the, I was very, I would send like novels and dissertations to brands and they would never get read because it's very. Just here's why I love you and you're awesome and I love this brand of cheese and I can use it here and I can use it there. But ultimately it's about what are you bringing to the table and how can I align with the brand's vision. And so I think a lot of it is following up consistently and showing up for yourself consistently too.

Can you talk about some of the brand deals that you've done. Like what, what successes have you found in that as you've started to get into it? You talk about like the idea of, hey, keeping emails short and succinct, trying to get to a video call or discovery call as soon as possible. I think those are great takeaways, like shortening the sales process, prioritizing like a call over a bunch of email exchanges. What other things have worked well for you and how much of it is you reaching out? Like kind of that baseball card analogy, like sending out a bunch of these inquiries. And what, what does that process look like?

Yeah, so I, I, if I don't have the contact, I'll try and use a website to get the contact information. I'll do some research on my own. Looking at their website, looking at the brand's Instagram, social media, Facebook, et cetera to see kind of what recipes or what style and aesthetic they're looking for. So if it's freelance, I, I love freelance photography work as well. If it's sponsored content, I look at the, or what they're looking for or how I can fill the void in which they're missing. And so it, it really just boils down to sending a message saying, hey, I'm, you know, a big fan of your, your product. Do you have this contact? Do you have the best point of contact? I'd love to send over some pitch ideas for a potential partnership this year or maybe next year. And the successes that have come from that have been very direct, very succinct in my emails. So not kind of being wordy and painting a picture of this grand spread that I would do for them, but being very direct and saying, this is, this is the, this is a service I can offer. I have expertise in this area. I have worked with XYZ brands before and here's my media kit and I'm happy to hop on a call. I have availability on Friday at 2 o' clock and I've actually had two brands. I had one call today with a brand saying, yeah, let's hop on a call. I have availability on Thursday, so let's, and let's chat. And every time I've had the opportunity to chat virtually person to person, it's become more of a connection, building that relationship, as you had said, building that village, whether it's people you lean on in terms of the blogging community or having brands that have turned into friendships. I have a long term partnership with one brand who I text her all the time. We Chat about life, we chat about other things and we can quickly switch code to hey, did you receive that video? Or oh, let me send it over again because it's. We have that trusting relationship with each other.

That's cool. So with the brand work that you're doing, how much of that is like what are the in, in those calls that you're having with them? What do you feel like the brands are after? Or does it really depend per brand? Like is it you saying, hey, I have this expertise in food photography and food video, I can create these, post em to my account, get some exposure and then you can use them as well for your content. Or is it like recipe development ideas? Like can you help shape a little bit the idea of what the campaign or the project is as you're working with these brands?

So it's really a mixed bag. It depends on if the brand is looking for freelance photography. The client that I just referred to, I do both. I do some white label freelance work but I also do sponsored content. A lot of it has been sponsored. I know that brands and clients are still looking for getting their name out there on social media and there's been evidence to support that. Influencers are really the leading cause for a lot of driven sales, which is fantastic. Lately it's been trying to get more blog posts because going back to the initial discussion around building up and refocusing, my brand has been getting brands that I know, you know, know to be true to their vision, things that I. Brands that I would use a regular basis and having a recipe developed in partnership with them on my website, that's been a real focus for me. And then if brands want just a real or a TikTok video or a static carousel, it's really just about what they're looking for at that time. And I know it's Q4 is, you know, the super bowl for a lot of us. So there's definitely a mixed bag so far of what, of what brands and clients are looking for.

Yeah, well, I'll frame up the question a little bit by talking about a conversation that I had probably two weeks ago over lunch with somebody. He's, he's the vice president of sales for this like company that's rolled up a bunch of gear related sites and like outdoor sites and he does all of the kind of brand related stuff and he talked about the importance of maintaining their like connection with the kind of their contacts at the different agencies and the brands that they work with. And it's like such an obvious thing but it was also a good reminder to me that part of what we're doing is like, we're generating content, we're building an audience, we're getting traffic, we're building followers. But another part of what we can be doing is behind the scenes, and it's less one to many, and it's more one to one, and it's developing these relationships. You talk about that connection you have with a person who's at, you know, the. The company, the brand that you worked with, that you are very top of mind for them. So, like, when something comes up, you're going to be a really easy connection to say, hey, we need some photography, we need some video. We want to work with somebody. Here's who we can go to. And part of what we can be doing if we want to pursue the path of working with brands or getting sponsored content, is even if we're not signing deals, like, we're not at the point where we're still too early for that, or if we are doing a lot of that and we want to do it, even better to think about nurturing this. You called it a village, this group, this kind of database, if you want to be more scientific with it, like, of contacts. And we're just in the early stages of starting to do this. We're using an app called Folk App, which is like a CRM. But when I met with, his name was Kyle, he talked about they use this, they use Salesforce, they're a little bit bigger and kind of more official. But. But he's like, yeah, I probably have like 60 people on my list. And then I have four or five people that I work with, and they have 50 to 100 people. And so I think for us as creators, we can start to think about that, like, who are the people that we consider to be important for our business and how are we managing those relationships in a way where we're prioritizing, checking in with them? And he says, like, every once in a while we'll just like send an email and say, hey, we're coming up on Q4. Like, we have some openings for sponsored content on Instagram if you'd want to chat. Like. Like that's part of their process and their routine. And so it's encouraging to hear you talk about that and kind of the process that you use for it. Do you use anything, like, any software at this point to manage those relationships or keep track of conversations or for the most part, are you kind of like, hey, I know who I'm talking to. And when I'm talking to them and keep the contacts in my Gmail account.

Yeah, I started an Excel document on Google Drive. Google Drive is where I put everything. I was originally very old school. I had a, like a composition and Mead notebook and I would write down like week one, I would do this, this and this recipe, reach out to this person, all color coded because that's my, my teacher and me. But I realized quickly, no, that can't happen. I gotta move to something a little bit more digital, a little bit more updated. So I have just an Excel document with updated brand contacts. The brand itself, if it's an agency, last follow up date and regularly I'll check it and just send follow up emails. If I haven't worked with that, that brand or client in a couple months, I'll email and say, hey, I hope you're doing well. Want to just quickly check in and see if there's any need for any photography at this time. I know we're coming up to the spring and I know we're looking for St Patrick's Day content for example, or it's now it's, you know, getting towards Halloween. I have these recipes in mind. I'd love to feature your product in this recipe. Let me know. Thanks. And just keep it really easy that way. But I'm very big on follow up and being consistent with it and I, and I think that's important is to be top of mind, you have to be, you have to have some skin in the game to get there. And I think in terms of thinking about the village and the community that I build, I am not a gatekeeper of contact information. I know that that's like, oh, we're sharing information. But it's, I mean if I can win, we all can. And there's so much room in this space for everybody to be successful. So you know, if I hear of anything or if I know that there's a contact looking brands, I've had a brand asked, do you have any other influencers who would be interested in this? And I'm just like, absolutely. There's so many who are interested. So having having those contacts and being top of mind and also being willing and ready to share with those that you know, can benefit from that.

Yeah, it's, it's almost like, you know, we do so many things as solopreneurs or solopreneur. Plus like maybe you have a couple team members is you're creating content, you're doing photography, you're doing video, you maybe understand, need to understand tech. A little bit. This is another one where it's like if you decide to do this, you're kind of doing sales, like you're just going through the process of you have your contacts, you have your leads, you try and like nurture those leads. That makes it sound like less relational, but I think at its core what it is is like it's relationships with people with the, there's a, the spectrum. Part of it might be like purely business, part of it might be purely personal. A lot of times it ends up being something in the middle where you're like, hey, give me an update, how are you doing? But like you're both out to accomplish business related things which is like advancing the goal of the brand. And for you as a creator, it's creating revenue for a content business.

Right.

But if you can find that point where it like overlaps and you can help each other out, that's the sweet spot. And so often it comes from developing these relationships and maintaining these relationships and using a system around that. It could be Excel, it could be Salesforce, it could be Foak. Like whatever it is, it's important to get it out of your brain and onto something else and then create a system around managing, checking in. Following up, can you talk about what the follow up looks like? Like if you're sending a follow up email, is it another quick little one or two email? One or two line email. It's like, hey, how are you doing? Anything coming up that I could be aware of or help with?

Great question. Because it's something that I'm still working through. I have been, I've follow up before saying, you know, like three weeks, in three weeks it's going to be colder, it's going to be cozier a month or whatever I said. And it wasn't working. So I just was like, okay, let's get blunt and let's get direct. And I was talking to my friend who, who's a food blogger who I text in the morning at this point and I was like, I think I'm just going to be very blunt with this brand. And she goes, yeah, like just say like you need, you ultimately need to make sure you have space in your calendar to create the content for this client. So tell them that. And so I did and it worked. And we got on a call, we're like, yeah, let's actually get this done sooner than later. Or you know, I'm actually waiting to hear back from my, my budget person and I'll get back to you tomorrow. And so the follow up has now then sounded like hey so and so I hope you're doing, I hope you're having a good day, hope all's well with the biggest quarter of the year coming up. I'm my calendar starting to get a little full and I'd love to prioritize my work with you. Do you have any updates on the budget? If I know I'm wa on a budget to be confirmed or finalized or have you heard anything about content you might need? I've looked at this product in particular and I'm hoping we can work on this for an X recipe. Looking forward to hearing back from you. And it's, and it's usually about, I usually wait seven to eight days to send a follow up. It's usually weekly and then it'll go to about two weeks and then if I don't hear back after like the seventh or eighth, I'm usually like, oh, I got ghosted. But that's okay. Sure.

Yeah, it happens a lot.

Yes, it does.

One of the things so I use this email program called Superhuman. One of the things you can do is you can say remind me in seven days if no reply. So like I send an email and I say remind me, which essentially puts the email back into my inbox if somebody doesn't reply. And then it's easy for me to be like, hey, quick follow up on this, any updates? And it's a nice system. So then I don't have to remember, do you have a system that you use for that like you're using in the Excel spreadsheet to say like here's the last time I reached out, here's when I should follow up again, I.

Haven'T been as high tech in that regard yet, but it's definitely something to keep in mind. So thank you for that. I actually use my phone and I have notes and I just update it with the weekly reminders for now. And what Google's email does, it kind of has that like nudge that you can dismiss. So I've been leaning on that because that'll nudge me every couple of days. And then what I'll do is I'll schedule Monday through Thursday. I do my blog work or like brand work at night. So I'll schedule myself on a Monday night to schedule that email, that follow up email to go out on like Tuesday at 9 in the morning.

That's great. Another one that I've used in the past when I was using Superhuman is like a different app that you use, Gmail, but It brings Gmail into the app.

Oh, okay.

An extension. That's another good one. For anybody listening that does a similar thing is called Boomerang. I think some of those features are built into Gmail, but superhuman Boomerang. All things to check out. And I think a lot of it is like, what is the system you normally use? Like, we're doing a trip to Disney World with our five and three year old. And I was like, what is the. How am I gonna build this out? Build a plan for this? I was like, I think the Notes app is probably the best. Like, I can share it with Lindsay. It'll be easy for us to communicate. Like, yeah, sometimes the, the thing that you actually use is gonna be the best thing to. To use the best solution. So yes. That's awesome. I love this idea of building a village, building a community. Kind of the two different components with it. It's almost like your support community. The people who are in it with you, who get it, can give you advice, can give you encouragement. Not being afraid to reach out and connect with those people and then also thinking about building, building kind of the. Your network. It's like some people would maybe even just call it networking. Like you're getting to know people, you're building that network. And even if you're not, the stage where you're doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsor content, if you do a really good job of building that network while also building a following and those two things are growing at the same time, it's going to be a lot easier when you do reach that inflection point to start having those conversations to say, like, hey, I'm kind of at this point where I have critical mass. Or even if you don't have that, brands still need really high quality content. They need video, they need photography. There's a conversation we're having right now with a brand for Pinch of Yam. And we can tell the primary interest is the assets, the benefit above and beyond that, the kind of the frosting on the cake is like that being shared on Pinch of Yum. But like what they're after is like, we just need some high quality content that we can share internally. So even if you aren't at the stage where you have a following that would justify doing sponsored content, you do have skills and expertise in creating content. So just a reminder for anybody listening, that's a valuable thing to offer as well. Really fun conversation. Fun to hear your background and story. Morgan, for people who want to follow along with what you're up to. Maybe people who want to connect with you want to become part of your village. Not that you have any differences, but is there a good way to reach out and connect with you and have a conversation?

Yeah, the more people to come and hang with me, the better, the more fun it'll be. So yeah, I'm on most handles at Namaste. So so it's Nomnom A S t e Hungary on Instagram and on TikTok it's Namaste Hungry, Facebook Namaste hungry, and my website's namaste hungry.com awesome.

Morgan, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks so much for having me.

Hey there Alexa here. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. And if you are sitting there thinking, man, someday I'm going to start my own food blog. Or maybe you're sitting there thinking, I just started my food blog and I have no idea what to do next. Don't worry, we've all been there and we actually have a free ebook just for you and it's called the Food Blogger Starter Kit and it's full of different resources just to help you along the journey as you're getting up and running with your very own food blog. So you'll get access to our free course all about setting up your food blog, some of our favorite podcast episode recommendations, some tips about plugins and photography, and then just some other ways to continuously learn and get a tiny bit better every day. If you're interested in downloading that ebook for free, just go to foodbloggerpro.com podcast start and you can download it right there for free. We'll have a link to it in the show notes as well, so you can easily click on that there. Otherwise you can just go to that that URL foodbloggerpro.com podcast start to download that food blogger starter kit PDF for free. So we'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in again and until then, make it a great week.

Sam.