435: Prioritizing Recipe Testing and Purpose in Food Blogging with Michelle Cehn from World of Vegan

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Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This week on the podcast, Bjork is interviewing Michelle Kane from the food blog world of Vegan. Michelle has been blogging for a long time. She even has the Egan handle on Instagram which should tell you a lot. And she's always been really passionate about animal rights and spreading the message of eating vegan and plant based. But her approach to sharing that message has changed pretty significantly over the years and it's really interesting to hear Michelle reflect on that change and and how she approaches activism and sharing her vegan recipes.

These days.

Michelle and Bjork chat a lot about how to include purpose and passion in your work and how important that is to balance with the business or financial side of running a business like this. Michelle also shares more about her recipe testing process both for her cookbook and for the recipes on her blog. She has a really detailed recipe testing process and uses a whole team of volunteer recipe testers to test every recipe that she puts on her site. She explains more how she recruits volunteers and the exact questions that she asks these volunteers to fill out when they're testing her recipes. It's a really wonderful interview. We just know you're gonna love it, so I'm gonna let Bjork take it away.

Michelle, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much. Such an honor to be here after all these years of Listening.

Well, the funny thing is you have a podcast as well. It's always great when you pull up the interview, the video loads up and it's like, oh, you've got like podcast headphones. You've got like a podcast microphone. We're just like ready to go here. So you can maybe as part of this, when you're telling your story, you can talk about your podcast a little bit. I know your host is somebody, your co host is somebody that we've interviewed as well on the podcast. But everything, every time we do an interview, we love to set it up by hearing a little bit about somebody's story, what got them started, and kind of what day to day looks like for you. And then we're going to get into the subject specifically around recipe testing. But before we do that, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you're about, and what your days look like as a creator.

I love it. Yeah, I got into this field in a pretty non traditional way. I was, I'm a huge animal lover, so I always wanted to have a career helping animals. And so I used to want to be a veterinarian. And then I thought, well, maybe if I go in the nonprofit space, I can help more animals that way. And ultimately I landed as a food blogger, realizing that I can make the biggest impact for animals by helping people who love animals not eat animals.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

And yeah, I started a food blog. It was kind of more of a advocacy blog at first, but over the years evolved and I realized that a big way to help not only animals, but the planet and people is really not focused on the animals. It's not about them. It's just help people eat more plants in general. And everyone's on board with that. Almost no one's on board with eating vegetarian and especially not eating vegan, but people are happy to eat like a delicious plant based meal. So.

Interesting.

Yeah.

It's almost like your. The heart behind what you do, I'm sure is still the same, but I'm sure through time you learn that the positioning of that has to be different. If your goal is for people to eat less animals. Like to come out and say, don't eat animals. And here's why is different than saying, here's why it's so great to eat plant based. Like it's almost. It's the same thing, but the position that you're coming from or the angle that you're coming from is different. Is that a little bit of what you're saying is like it's repositioning the messaging around eating vegan.

Yes. And I no longer feel any, like I need to pressure people or encourage people or say, hey, have you considered eating vegan? That's no longer a part of my life and I'm so grateful for it. And instead I just, you know, try and lead by positive example. And the beautiful thing about food blogs is like we can create a recipe for cookies and someone can find it who's not plant based, not vegan, not even thinking about that. But they're, it's an amazing recipe and so they make it, they try it, maybe they realize it's vegan, maybe they don't. But it just opens this door to a different way of eating that it was never possible for before the Internet and sort of the food blog space sprouted up and that. I mean, I used to like be a more typical animal advocate almost actors, I'd like go to protests and whatever. And none of that did anything like it just made people hate vegans. So. And I feel like now I've seen so much transformation in like the communities around me and my family around me and people around me. Like, you know, if you take away any of the judgment or pressure or like, yeah, having to even think about what's involved in our food, because that's like a hard thing for us to see. Even eating plants, like, it's can be complicated what goes into our food system. And so just making it easy for people to eat healthy. Amazing. Food has been such a gift.

What, what I'm curious to hear what helped facilitate that kind of transformation for you. Because it sounds like you can kind of look at it and say it's almost like a before and after. Like at one stage you were very outspoken and kind of an advocate. And that's good, that's still a good thing. But maybe didn't have the impact or maybe you'd say it wasn't a good thing.

I don't know.

But it seems like outwardly it's a good thing to advocate for the things that you want and believe should exist within the world, but maybe didn't have the impact that you wanted it to. And so there was some point, it sounds like where you're like, wait, I need to do this a little bit differently. Is that true or was it just slowly over time?

Yeah, it was slowly over time, but also very strong points where I'm like, this isn't working. And actually, I mean, I'm in a. I know a lot of people who are also into Animal advocacy and trying to help protect our world in various ways. And the same thing tends to happen when you learn about. I don't think anyone on our planet is on board with the way that factory farms are run and the way that animals are raised in this world. Like, it's just, it's really hard to see. Most people don't. But when you see that, it's so upsetting that you have like this fire in you. If people only knew this was going on, no one would participate in it. No one would be putting their dollars there. It's, it's way beyond anyone's comfort level. And so like, that sudden, like, and very intense sadness and also like kind of a feeling that you can make a change comes out often loudly and eagerly. And then you kind of realize, well, we're in a world where most people are not in a place where they're ready to make any changes. And it's just that doesn't really work to tell someone information when they're not ready to hear it. So, yeah, over time, I think many people who first become passionate about something kind of soften and change their approach to, to something that's both more sustainable for them and also a warmer, more welcoming place to be for people who want to, like, step in that direction.

Because it's a hard place to live, I would imagine, as well to be like, as activated, potentially frustrated. Also, like, wait, why aren't people seeing this? Why don't people care? Like, to come alongside me in this, it was like, that would be difficult.

And so, and like lives are on the line, like the suffering is happening. And so when you're not being effective, like, you feel the impact of that. But I think getting some distance from that, just for mental health, my own mental health, anyone's mental health is important. And then it's been interesting, seeing as I've tried, I've tried every different kind of avenue of trying to help help reach people. And the most effective is when you kind of stop trying to reach people and you don't have any expectations and you don't try to have direct conversations with anyone. Like, it's just you put the information out there and people want to be doing, you know, we want to be, we all want to be eating healthier. You know, we all want to be, you know, kinder to the planet and kinder to animal. Like, we all want these things. And if you can just make it easy for people to choose it themselves, that feels so much better, I think, on both sides.

And yeah, the thought I was going to share is like, it's almost like marketing. Like, part of what you're doing is thinking as a marketer. And it's a little bit. It's not an A B test, but like, it's a little bit of a before and after test of like, what's the most impactful way for me to market this message? And it sounds like what you're saying is you found a more effective way to market it to get the same outcome, or maybe not even the same outcome, but to get a beneficial outcome.

Yeah, yeah. When you feel like upset about something that's wrong and you want to make a change, our minds feel good if we're doing something, anything, and that's great for our minds. But if you really want to make a change in the world, you only have one life and one kind of opportunity to do that, to use our lives to do that. And so it's really important if you want to make the biggest impact possible for whatever it is that you care about and are passionate about. It's important to see, okay, well, what is this time and energy and input that I'm putting out there? What impact is that making? And how can I refine things to make sure that the impact is as, as great as possible?

That's great. And one of the things that I love about your reflections on that is this idea that part of like, we need to be looking holistically at what we do. And it's easy to talk about followers or traffic or, you know, numbers or revenue. And. And part of that is like, it sustains us, whether it's a nonprofit or for profit. Like, we need to figure out ways to functionally make that work. But at some point, like, if your only motivation is metrics and numbers, this isn't true for everybody. But for a lot of people, you might burn out or you might kind of question, like, what is the purpose behind it? And one of the things that's so great about your story is like, those two things could operate side by side. You get to think about your business and growing it, and it's impact for you as a business, but also kind of the purpose behind it is also really meaningful. And I think want to shine a light on that because as we think about what we're doing as creators, business owners, people in the world, I think that's a really important component is like, what is the impact that you're making on the lives that are interacting with the thing that you're creating? Because it's a lot of work It's a lot of time and you want to make sure that you are folding that into the process. As you contemplate what that looks like. Does that feel when you think of your own work showing up every day to do what you're doing? Do you kind of feel the balance of those two things? Hey, this is a business. I want to grow it as a business, be strategic with it. But I also know that one of the reasons I want to be strategic with it is because I want this message to get out.

Yeah, I feel really fortunate to be in kind of the head space I'm in because, like, the number one for me is always going to be kind of purpose driven and mission driven and trying to be helpful. And so it makes it so lots of shortcuts that people will take with profit in mind just don't make sense. If it's not going to be helpful and if it can even be harmful, that is out of the question. But the other interesting thing is that when you're creating things with an intention of being helpful, those were some of the things that I thought would have zero business impact. And yet I just wanted them to exist, to be helpful and have completely changed my life on the business front. So, like, when I became an entrepreneur after I got laid off from a job, as many people do, and I thought, oh my gosh, I will probably be back in an office in a matter of months, but I'll just try this. And every month since then, I've made more than the month that I got laid off.

Wow.

So that was.

When was this? That the month that you got laid off?

2015, maybe. Oh, my goodness.

That's incredible.

Yeah. And then some things that I would create. I remember I was creating these meal plans with my friend Tony Okamoto, who you had on the podcast as well, from Plant Based on a Budget. And she and I were driving down to go to my parents house to just put our heads there, recipe test, photograph everything, put together these ebooks. And my mom was like, well, what's your goal? Like how this is a big effort. You're here for a whole week. How many people would need to either buy or see this for this to be worth it? And I remember thinking like, God, I mean, if this helped five people, I would be so thrilled. That was my thought. And then those meal plans carried myself and Tony, who also got laid off and then also started her focusing full time on her blog. That carried us for like two years as the bulk of our income from $5 meal plans, like and we wouldn't have created those if we were thinking about business. Because what is a $5 meal plan going to do? Yeah, but you need to like, pay your bills, right? So. And that's happened time and again. Like, we create things that we don't. Our podcast, we never meant for that to be an income source. We never even thought about it. And then after I think two seasons, we're on season six of the Plant Powered People podcast now. And now every episode is sponsored by two sponsors. And it like, is a significant income source that more than pays for itself. And we never thought about it from that angle. And now we feel like it's one of the most meaningful things that we do and also for our business and for the world.

Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. And it's, I think, a really important reminder. Like, where are you starting from? And if you're starting from, hey, I want to figure out a way to maximize profit. I think it'll, that, that'll work. Like in a lot of instances that works. But the question is, like, how long can you sustain that? And also if it's just purely profit or purely revenue maximization, like a lot of times that means that you're probably like, I think ad layouts is a good example. Like if you switch on the. Like maximize earnings from ads, you will maximize your earnings, but in the long run, I don't know, this isn't statistical, but the user experience is going to be much worse than if you didn't have any ads at all. On the other example, like other extreme. And so what does it look like to find that balance of prioritizing long term experience, long term value, long term kind of giving or help or like thinking of the other person on the other side and how you can create something that's going to be as helpful as possible for them along with. It's not like you did the meal plans for free. Some people do that and that's a part of their strategy. But like also layering in some business considerations and it feels like almost like, you know, it's, I think of Tony Stark in Marvel. We just finished Loki. Do you know Loki, the series Loki? Have you watched any of it? Okay, we'll usually have like one TV show that we're watching.

Yeah.

And then we'll go through these like, show holes where we won't have any. But we just finished Loki and it's like, so good. Yeah, but the Marvel series and some of these characters like Tony Stark, you know, they'll put the like Iron man suit on. And that empowers them to, like, do things beyond just what the normal kind of version of themselves would do, but just the suit itself doesn't do anything. And I feel like that's kind of like business best practices or tactics or strategy, like, that's really great, but in and of itself, it's not very valuable. What you have to have is like the heart and the human behind that. And then if you can wrap that stuff around it, that's where it becomes really powerful. And it sounds like that's part of your story is thinking about, okay, how do I wrap some of the business considerations around the heart and the soul and the impact that you want to have, which it's cool to hear even that story of, like, continual, gradual growth. How about for somebody else who's coming into it and they're like, they hear that. And that's really inspiring to hear. Oh, you got laid off. You start your site focusing on it, and ever since then it's been continual growth. What's the mindset that you've had that's allowed you to do that?

Yeah, well, your podcast has been a huge help. And just doing little bits every day is so huge. But I mean, one of the things that. That I've found is there's like these kind of periods of focus shift, and there's some periods of time where you have to focus on business and like that for me, this last year, we were so focused on SEO, so we'd be creating these articles that's like, I don't think that this article is going to really make an impact on the world, but if our team is going to continue thriving and be able to do this stuff, that really is going to make a difference and I could continue to pay them. Like, we need to write how to eat vegan at McDonald's and all these different articles. So, yep, it's kind of like focusing where your capacity is, but at. At several different checkpoints. I would recommend to people taking like a mental moment, mental, you know, 15 minutes to try and separate your mind, your business goals from. What would you like to create if business wasn't a part of it? Because a lot of successful bloggers now, you. You see that they started before there was money in the game. And I think there's something huge to that. Like, if you can bring the heart of what you can offer, and even if you only started for business, we all have things that we can bring to the table that's special and helpful for people. So to at least Check in on what those things are and kind of maybe add them to your goals list. So you have your business goals and then you're like, maybe things you want to do that doesn't make business sense. That's one thing. And then the other thing to just keep in mind is that when you're doing something with a purely business mindset. So for example, for SEO for World of Vegan, when we were like focused on that for a year, we're spending all this money of all this team. We're at this time, we're re photographing like all these things are happening. And if that doesn't create a change in our website traffic.

Yeah.

What do we get at the other side of that? It just sunk all of this money that feels awful. And it impacts your mental health and it impacts like your eagerness to be doing your work. But what if you're creating something that the goal is not purely financial? There's no way to fail at that. If you're creating something that you think would be awesome to exist and it's like an evergreen resource kind of, so it will continue to be there like that. There's no way for it to to kind of fail or suck the resources out of you. So I think having a balance of both, kind of like we want to diversify income, we also want to kind of like diversify, or at least I do. I want to diversify like intention behind different initiatives at World Vegan.

That's awesome. And I think that, you know, the, the best outcome for somebody who's either starting or in the middle of what you're doing and creating, trying to build a thing, like figuring something out is even in an outcome where, let's say in the example you're starting a blog or starting to build a following and you try for a year and whatever success looks like, it's different for everybody. Let's say you don't hit that like, level of what you'd consider to be successful in the outcome metrics.

Outcome.

The best scenario is if in doing it you still are like, wow, that was awesome. Because now I'm a better photographer or I'm a better writer or now I've realized I'm interested in web development. Like, yeah. And, and for anybody listening, I think to really reflect on like the multiple different types of income that you can create from doing work. And one of them is revenue income. It's financial income. But there's also, like you've talked about impact income. That's a very real thing that serves a Lot of us, not all of us, but a lot of us in a really significant way. There's educational income, like you're learning a new thing. There's relational income. You connect with people and to think about how rich your pursuits can be beyond just the dollar considerations. And great if that also follows, but it doesn't have to. The other thing I was going to share that I think is always interesting in conversations like this is the Charles Ives who was a composer, Charles Edward Ives, but he was this really experimental composer and he would do stuff like a pianist would come out to do a song and instead of playing it he would like smash the guitar or smash the piano with a sledgehammer like, or like sit and wouldn't play for 42 seconds or whatever. It's just super experimental stuff that wouldn't have really worked if he was an actual composer. Like it was so experiment experimental in fringe. But he was a full time insurance salesman. Like he, he. And it's the extreme example of.

Right.

Kind of a nuanced version of what you were saying, which is like, hey, sometimes you'll do like posts that you think are SEO and you'll get some traffic from that and are never new from it. Or sponsor content with a brand that's maybe difficult to work with, but it allows you then to have some of these other pursuits or focuses that are more oriented towards other types of income. Emotional, relational impact, any of those. And so I think it's really wise to not think of it as like it's either black or white. It's just like, hey, there's, there can be different kind of mindsets that you have with work that's all under the same umbrella. You're still posting to your site, but it might be kind of in a different category. So I think that's, that's super insightful.

I love that. I love the different kinds of income that you're mentioning. It reminds me of one time I was reading someone's thoughts about this and they mentioned the idea of being an animal millionaire and it like in my line of work. So the, the idea is that you save the lives of a million animals. Which sounds insane, right? But you realize like, oh my gosh, through the course of my life, like, not only is that practical, but I might have already done that. And, and you can apply that to anything. Like if you care about humans and you're posting, you know, healthy food content that's preventing heart attacks, like you can become. There's all these different benchmarks that feel so much. Well I guess for everyone's different, but they feel so much more meaningful to step into your day. And I mean, I can say now since 2015 and first starting this, like, I literally jump out of bed every day and I'm so excited to come to, quote, work. And this work that I do, 90% of it is stuff that I would be doing on my free time even if I wasn't getting paid. So one of the beautiful gifts of being an entrepreneur is you can find a way to be doing work that is both exciting on the business front, but also, like, fuels your soul and makes you feel really impactful, meaning, like, you're doing meaningful work. And so to integrate that in is is, I think, huge for, like, the longevity of your career.

Yeah, that's awesome.

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So I feel like we could wrap the podcast up there, but because I think that's really meaningful and there's a lot of takeaways for people. But we also wanted to talk about. And this is one of the great things about doing these interviews. We get to hear people's stories, kind of the arc, the passion behind it, and we also get to talk, like, tactics, like, what do. What are some of the things that are working for you? What are some of the things that you'd like to teach other people? And coming into this, one of the conversations we wanted to have is around the process that you use for recipe testing. And, you know, I think it's, as we talk about tactics and metrics and. And, you know, impact, we can see that, like, on the backside. But I think an early indicator of that in this world is, like, the success that people are having with the content that you're producing. One of the questions that always comes up is, like, people always talk about, like, what does good content look like? People. Content is keying. Okay, great, great, great. But what does that mean? One of the nice things about the world that we live in is, like, we kind of know what it means. And what it means is people having success with the process of creating a recipe. And one of the best ways to do that is to make sure that everything that you're doing is easy to understand, that people can follow the instructions well. And one of the best ways to do that is to get outside people looking in on it and saying, hey, this didn't make sense. This should be changed. This should be tweaked. So you've done that and you have a process around it. Can you tell us when you first started to do that and started to build a process around it and why you saw the need for it?

Yes, I think it's. We're in, like, this interesting space where we put content out, and oftentimes we don't. We'll never know the impact that had in people's kitchens when they're making it. Every once in a million, someone will come and actually leave a comment. Either really happy or really angry. But usually if a recipe flops or a recipe is amazing, we're not hearing that. And I think that detached element, plus maybe thinking more on the business mindset and less on the like, how can we be as helpful, make sure we're being as helpful as possible, is kind of a missing link for a lot of people. I know that it was for me, I just did not realize that there was a disconnect between when I would create a recipe, it would turn out great for me. I'd write it up, I'd put it on the blog. I just assume it's going to be great. And the moment when I realized that was maybe not the case was when I wrote my cookbook, the Friendly Vegan Cookbook, also with Tony Okamoto, my co author. And it was her second book and her first book, she had a bunch of recipe testers, I think 100 volunteer recipe testers to test all her recipes. And so she and I were just like, okay, we're going to do that for ours as well. Like, we want this to be the ultimate vegan cookbook for someone getting started with plant based cooking. Like, we need these to turn out well. And as much as I thought, okay, this is going to be like quality control to make sure we're not missing anything or we're wording things correctly or whatever. By the time our recipes got to recipe testers, they had already been through both Tony's kitchen and my kitchen. And we both loved the recipes and thought they worked.

And like, it passed two tests too.

And for sometimes, like it would pass like three times. Me making that, trying to. Seven times. Yes, yes. And we had 75 recipe testers. Over 75. And each of our recipes were tested at least three times. And it was such a shock to see it come back and realize, whoa, yeah, everyone has different cooking supplies, different cooking levels. We intentionally found recipe testers that were a wide range of cooking experiences, you know, hardcore meat lovers and plant based eaters, just like spanning the gamut. And. And we.

How did you find those people? I think that'll be a big reach.

Out to our audiences.

So, yeah, just being like, email us back if you're interested.

Mm. Yeah. Or just post to Instagram, post it as a story, have people drop their email. And, um, it's pretty amazing how, how eager people are to be involved in that process that they're not usually involved in.

Yeah.

And then everyone was credited in the book. And we now do recipe testing on World of Vegan and our recipe Testers are credited in blog posts. And so it feels, like, exciting for people. And if you have a blog, you get a link back. You know, like, it's. It's. It's nice, but it. So, okay, there was that. And then also on Worlds of Vegan, not only do we post our own recipes, but we also post sample recipes from cookbooks. So whenever there's a new vegan cookbook that comes out, the publisher send me a copy of the book, we check it out, I pick a recipe, I make it. And I kid you not, probably 40 to 50% of those recipes flop. They're either don't work from a cookbook.

Yeah.

From a published cookbook and sometimes published by, like, legit publishers. And when you think about it, like, we're in a time now where there's just such a push to create content and fast. Like, people get a cookbook deal and be like, this needs to be out in a year or a year and a half, and it's got 100 recipes. And you think of what's possible there. It's you. There's not the capacity to do rigorous testing. And then, like, Tony and I probably scrapped maybe eight recipes I'm not sure that we loved. But. But we're just like, it's hard to get this working where it works right. For everybody all the time. People measure flour differently. People's ovens are a little bit different, you know, and we want to. To make sure that our recipes were working. And if you think about it as a food blogger, if you put yourself in the headspace of someone finding your recipe, printing it out, going in their kitchen, buying the ingredients, spending the money, following it line by line, and then they come out with the dish and they serve it to their friends and family. And everyone's like, not great.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, it is so deflating, especially if people are new to cooking. Like, they might just forever be turned off on it. So I think it's, like, a huge privilege that we all have to be able to reach people that we don't know and provide them with resources that are hopefully helpful. And not only does it just like, when you're practically thinking from a business standpoint, like, this reflects on your name, are people going to come back to your website and try your recipe again? I guarantee you not. If they had a horrible experience and you're never going to know the people that are kind of lost from that. But also just. It's heartbreaking to think about creating suffering in the world. And I would say failed recipes Are.

Like, yeah, one of the worst forms of tormental, gentle suffering.

Yeah, yeah.

But so what does that look like from a logistics standpoint? Because my guess is there's a lot of communication around really specific things that need to be precise. And I think in the initial outreach makes sense. You have Instagram followers, you have an email list, you have a blog. And so you put that out there to the world and see who responds maybe.

And if you don't, friends, family, like my mom, my dad's girlfriend, like tons of people will be happy to recipe test. Yeah.

Yep. And so you kind of gather this list. This is a really specific question. Do you have like an Excel spreadsheet and you have all those people listed? Okay, of course, all things, all things documented in spreadsheets. So you have their name, you have their email list, and then you have a recipe and you need it to be tested. What, like, what does that look like logistically at that point? Are you emailing it to a few people? Are you asking, who wants to do this? How do you do that?

Okay, so at the base when you are asking people if they're interested in recipe testing, then I found out a crucial next step is saying, awesome. And you have this dry like pre written letter that you can have that you send back that says, do you have an instant pot? Do you have a, you know, an ice cream maker? Do you like, what supplies are you working with here? You want to find out information about them. Are they beginner or intermediate or advanced cooking skills? Because you're going to have different recipes that are going to be a fit for different people and it's a huge waste of your own time if you are trying to find recipe testers and a bunch of them aren't even relevant to the recipes that, that you have available. And also like, are you gluten free? Are you like, do you have, do you have restrictions like that? Do you prefer savory or sweet recipes? So you kind like take the time to build a list of volunteer recipe testers or paid, you can pay them, you could give them like gift certificates or whatever and then information about that track that all in a spreadsheet. And then when it comes to the recipe ends of things, I imagine a lot of people are writing on a notebook in their kitchen and then it goes straight into WordPress, straight into your recipe card, which is efficient. But I would recommend having a folder, having a recipe document in that folder and then being able to work from there. So you can then just duplicate your recipe document into, however, let's say you're going to have three recipe testers per recipe. That is ambitious. You duplicate it and then you have like just a set of questions. So I have just a set of questions that we ask for a recipe. I'm happy to share them. And I put that right below the recipe. And then you just send that out. You say you could either, if you know your recipe testers well and you know it'll be a fit, you can just send that to them. Or if you want to, like, if you have 10 recipes that need to be tested and you want to email your whole group of recipe testers and say, hey, we have these. Which ones do you want? And have people volunteer. There's all different ways to. To manage that. Then they sign up. It's important to have pretty clear deadlines, clear but generous deadlines. Especially if these are volunteers. You want to give them plenty of time. But if you give them too much time, then no one, the human brain will do it. So giving it, giving a deadline. If you have someone managing this for you, if you have a team already or someone on your team that this is a perfect project to delegate, you can easily create like a simple sop and have them, you know, manage the whole thing. That's what we did for our cookbook.

And.

Yeah. Then wait to hear the feedback back. And I mean, in that recipe tester form, you're going to want to ask. Okay.

Yeah, that was what I was going to ask is like, what are those specific questions if you could talk through them.

Okay. So ours is actually pretty informal, but number one, photo. I want to see what this recipe looks like in their kitchen. This is the most helpful and also sometimes most shocking thing that will help you figure out, like, oh, I need to explain how to slice an onion or something like that. People just won't realize. So please snap a casual cell phone picture of the dish and include it in this document. And I make sure to say casual cell phone photo because I don't want people feeling like they need to get out their family, their fancy. Like this should. This should not take any effort. It's just snap a picture, drop it in. Also letting people know to please track how long like the active prep and cook time was. And so you've probably tracked that already. If you have an add brain like me, you probably forgot to do that when you were developing the recipe and then have to make something up on the recipe card.

Yeah.

Which I wish I could say I've never done.

Yeah.

But so you're. You'd have multiple people, like, sharing how long it took them, which is, like, enormously helpful. Um, and then how would you rate this recipe? And we do just a 1 through 10. 1 being total garbage and 10 being the best ever and in detail. What do you think about this recipe? And it's very interesting. Like, sometimes for our cookbook, you really. You have to, like, be cognizant that everyone shares feedback differently. Some people are very generous, and some people are very. Have a lot of critique. We had a recipe that, like, two people. It was like, more than 10 out of 10. And then one person was, like, it was so inedible, I couldn't even get my dog to eat it. Yeah, yeah, same recipe. And so it's like. And sometimes there's just things that some people love and hate, like, we're talking cilantro or whatever. So you then just have to, you know, just be. Have a critical eye when you're reading feedback, for sure.

It's like another point of view beyond just your own that allows you to consider if you maybe have some blind spots. But there also is the reality of maybe you could have too much feedback. You have a hundred people giving you feedback on a thing, on a recipe, then it gets to be too much. And so it's almost like, what is the sweet spot with getting enough. Where you can kind of make sure, especially for a cookbook that's printed, that you've gone through the process of being diligent and getting feedback and having other people test it, make sure especially that there's no glaring issues. Hey, there's salt in the ingredients, and you never talked about salt in instructions, like, stuff like that. But also, maybe the way that it turns out, it looks really different. You're like, oh, that's interesting. The picture that you took is very different than the picture we're using in the cookbook. Why is that? Are you doing this for actual recipes on your site as well, or did you just follow this process for the blog?

Yes. So after writing my book, I decided that it was really important to do this for a blog. And so now that we have a personal team, Erin, she's amazing, and she coordinates recipe testing occasionally. I will skip it if I'm. Because it's. It's like I'll be cooking it if it's a cookbook recipe and I make it and it works. And then I know my photographer's making it, and our videographers, like, there's a lot of. It's going to go through a lot of hands before it lands on the blog. But if it's just you, and especially if you're starting out and you know, your recipe reputation is important to you, I would highly, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend getting your recipes tested by at least one tester. I mean, hopefully two. Because people, some. Yeah. And then it's very confusing because you'll get a rate. You'll be like, I love this recipe. And then you'll get a rating of 7, but with nothing that, like, actually needs to be changed.

And you're like, yeah, it's just like.

What do I do with it? Like, it's not. This makes me just feel blah. I don't know if I want to, you know, invest in putting it on the blog or not. So, like, it. There's. It makes it harder. Like, there's a lot of hard things, and then you're going to hear feedback that you don't want to hear, whatever. But it is also enormously helpful. And then on our blog, so some recipe testers will also have an opportunity to, like, share anything that, like, they might do differently or any suggestions they have. So for some of our recipes, if. If testers provided really helpful tips or suggestions, we'll have like a little section, our blog that says testers tips. And we'll be like, yeah, they really liked serving this with whatever or adding this ingredient into it. And, you know, they tried and it worked. So I think that's a valuable thing to be able to provide to readers as well. Do you mind if I just share the rest of these really quickly?

That would be great.

Okay. So were the directions easy to follow? If not, how can they be improved? Did you struggle at all or have any questions while you were making this? Please describe. And that. That's pretty much it. I mean, how long was active prep and cook prep time and cook time? And do you have any additional comments, suggestions and. Or tips? So this is nothing fancy. Like, we really want to create a situation that doesn't feel like a huge project for people.

Right.

Um, it's really simple to provide, but in just those seven questions or eight questions, you get a solid sense of, of the recipe. And I think the reason why multiple recipe testers is important, it will save you time. Like, it's easier to find more recipe testers to sign up and to send out more emails and assign it to more people than to have to follow up and handle when you don't get it back. Because, like, 25% of your recipe testers are not going to follow through with recipe testing or even if they commit it, like life gets crazy. Understandably, this is, you know. Yeah.

So in one of the things that I think people will think about is like, well, nobody will want to test my recipes or I probably need to pay people. What do you find as the motivation for the people who are doing this? I know you mentioned some of them might be creators and they're getting a link which is valuable to have quality links to your site. And so that's part of the consideration, I'm sure, for some people. But what do you find the motivation to be? And you can speak to that within the context of people who are listening as creators and thinking like, I don't know if anybody would ever want to. I don't know if I could convince somebody to like help me without paying them.

Right. Well, there's so many different options and you can of course get creative if you have the budget. You could hire a recipe tester or you could get volunteer recipe testers and pay them so they don't have to be volunteer. You can also do. I think the most important thing is making sure that both it's very clear, clear what's involved and expected and what the tester will be getting in return and whether that's simply like your gratitude and they're your friend or your parent or your whatever and you just like make sure that you're so grateful and that you show that that's enough for some people and they feel really, it's like community building in a sense.

It's a connection and it's like for some people to get closer to people that they like and follow and appreciate and want to learn from. Like, yeah, that could be enough for some people to say, hey, I have the time. I, you know, I'm going to be buying groceries anyways and I would like the process of doing this and the benefit that then I get to connect with somebody on a more one to one level that maybe I know or have been following.

Yeah. And I mean a lot of people who read blogs and read your blog, they love making new recipes, they love trying new things. And I can tell you the majority of the things out there are not tested. So what they're doing is they're basically making recipes that they get to provide feedback for and be connected and be part of the process versus doing that also, but just not having any connection connected, like involved in it. So I think I was, I felt similarly like, why would someone do this? This seems like a lot to ask, but you have to remember that you're not Directly asking anyone. There's no pressure and it's just like an invitation if anyone's interested. And it's always like a free, free to come, free to go, like they absolutely don't need to. And then one other thing that we started doing was at the end of the year, around the holidays, we do a couple, I can't remember, I think we have three different gift cards or just like Amazon cards or cash. I can't remember where I landed. We started this last year. Yeah, yeah.

Something that says thank you.

Yeah. And there was like a mix of both, like at random, picking a recipe tester and then it was maybe the ones that like tested the most recipes. So finding a way for them to feel like connected on that way and to be able to give an actual financial thank you. And then, I mean, crediting thinking publicly I think is important. And then even things like you're sending out holiday cards, get your testers addresses and send them a holiday card. Like let them know how much this has personally touched you, that they're volunteering their time and effort and feedback to be a part of your food journey and blog.

And the other piece that maybe ties the conversation full circle is I think there are a lot of people who are probably mission aligned and to know that they are contributing to something that is missionally aligned is meaningful for them. Like maybe these are people who wouldn't be creating a site or building a following online but would be passionate about helping people experience, in this case, literally and figuratively, the world of vegan eating. Like in a, in a, in a way that is like really successful, I think motivates people. So I think there's that component as well. And it's one of the additional great benefits of having something that is kind of missional in terms of the why behind it. So Michelle, it's been a great conversation. So fun to talk to you and also to have the context within the conversation with Tony, your partner in crime in a lot of this stuff. People can check out that episode. We'll link to it in the show notes as well. If people want to connect with you, maybe they want to be a recipe tester, maybe they want to follow along with what you're up to. What's the best way to do that?

Yeah, you can find the links to everything on my site, worldofvegan. Com and we're on all the socials at worldofvegan except on Instagram we're just the word vegan, vegan, so you can find us there.

Literally instagram.com vegan.

Yeah, yeah.

What?

I've been creating content for a long time.

That is incredible. Can you tell the quick story of how that happened?

Yeah, yeah, it was, I mean, well, I've been a content creator since like early YouTube, trying to just like help people with my life, to help people eat vegan and be a resource for people. And then Instagram came up and there was this dad that had the at vegan account and he had like just a few family photos. And I was like, hey, are you using this? Like, can I be helpful? Like what's. And he was like, you know what? Make a donation to an animal sanctuary farm sanctuary. And I'm not using this account, but please.

Awesome.

And so he just changed his username and then vegan became available and I changed mine to. To Vegan. And it was like, wow, that is so cool.

I usually what I'll do is I'll go through and I'll just check out the social accounts, but I just missed it in my show research. That's really fun.

Yeah.

Cool. So easy for people to follow along with you on Instagram and then World of Vegan everywhere else.

Yeah. And if anyone has questions about, about recipe testing or if you want me to send the, you know, example of what we've done, feel free to reach out. I think my email's on, on the World of Vegan website. So cool. Happy to help.

Thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Thanks Bjork. Love, love the show and thank you so much.

Oh, thanks. Appreciate it. Great to chat.

Hey there, Alexa here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed this episode and we so appreciate you you being here and tuning in today. I wanted to let you know that we are actually running a Cyber Monday sale. It's our best sale of the year and it'll start on Monday, November 27th. And it will get you get this. A hundred dollars off of an annual membership to Food Blogger Pro. So Food Blogger Pro includes Monthly Q&As, exclusive access to coaching calls with Bjork, access to industry experts in our community forum, courses about strategy tools, and so much more. And anyone that signs up during this this membership sale will get a bonus group call with Bjork about goal setting so that you can start your Foodblogger Pro membership off on the right foot. So if you're interested in just getting information about this sale, be sure to go to foodbloggerpro.com cyber there you can just sign up for the waiting list. There's no commitment. If you get on this list. It's just a, hey, I want to be notified and I can make my decision later sort of list, so be sure to do that. And we hope to see you on FoodBuggerPro soon again. That URL is FoodBlockerPro.com cyber all right, that does it for us this week. We'll see you next time. And until then, make it a great week.