449: Monetizing Through Bread, Courses, and a Food Blog with Matthew Duffy

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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 Matthew Duffy. We were first introduced to Matthew because he's a Food Blogger Pro member and he was part of a coaching call with Bjork last fall and it was a marathon, two hour long coaching call with lots of amazing takeaways. And since that coaching call, Matthew has been closely in touch with the Food Blogger Pro team and has shared all of his recent successes with his own food blog. His site traffic has grown from 6,000 to 45,000 page views in just five months and he has been putting a lot of effort into revamping his content, publishing new content, improving his food photography and he's going to share more about all of that with you today. But let me back up a little bit and just give you a little bit of info about Matthew's background. He started out as a professional chef in a Michelin starred restaurant and and then became a private chef and chef to tons of different celebrities. He shares more about what that's like and why he decided to step back from that and transition into being more of an entrepreneur. He currently runs his food blog with his wife and then also sells bread and panettone on the side. It's a really fascinating interview. I'm sure you'll really Enjoy it. So I'll just let Bjork take it away.

Matthew, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, what's up? I'm super thrilled to be here and chat with you today.

Yeah, we're gonna. We. So this feels like now almost like we just have a little bit of a recurring call because we did for Food Blogger Pro. We do this thing called Coaching Call, and it's one of my favorite things that we do within a membership. Have a conversation once a month with somebody who's creating, talking about their business. We record that. Members can watch it. We did a call together and it was like, it was a really long, great call. And then you're like, I actually have to go. And so we're like, let's do a part two. So then we did a part two. I don't remember how long it ended up being, but it was a really great conversation. After that, you followed up, you shared some information which we're going to talk about today. Some of the action you're taking, some of the progress you're making. It's all really exciting stuff. But before we get into that, I want to go back to a moment that you and I have talked about before is like the helicopter moment, the billionaire helicopter moment. So for our listeners, take us back to that moment and talk about why that was kind of a pivotal moment in your life journey.

Sure. So I have a background of cooking as a chef. For a long time, I worked my way through a number of really high end restaurants. So I kind of started and I basically worked my way up to the best of the best. And I was cooking for celebrities. And then that turned into me cooking for a billionaire, extremely wealthy Canadian gentleman. And I had a really good working relationship with him. And now I was an employee. So I was still kept that as employee level. But he was very open with me. And so I had been through really the ringer when I worked in restaurants. I mean, I had opened a restaurant for chef Daniel Boulud and my wife at the same time, or right around that time was diagnosed with cancer. Cancer. I had this extreme hand accident where I had multiple surgeries. So I was already thinking of how to get out of restaurants, which led me into private chefing. And I think that was sort of a temporary solution. But I realized very quickly, you know, maybe there's something else out there. And I think the tipping point was on the day that my wife was officially cancer free, she had phoned me and said, we're good, I'm cancer free. And there had been some Mistake in. In her. I don't know if it was a mistake, but it was. Maybe there was a few things that came up after when we shot thought she was clear. So I was in a helicopter hangar cooking lunch for four people in a beautiful commercial kitchen. Like better than most restaurant Michelin kitchens with combither with a, with a rationale oven. And I have the same barbecue that they had at Stone Barns, the big huge grill works grill which is I think about 100k US.

And this is just like this, this billionaires helicopter kitchen. In the helicopter. But like in the hangar.

Well, you could see the helicopter. You're working beside a helicopter. So. So yes, literally in a hangar with an entertainment space and car spaces. And there was room like it was. It's pretty wild from NDA purposes. I won't really go into detail, but there was, there was multiple private concerts with like extreme. If I told you the band, you would be like, what? No way. And that's the kind of money was to hire those people. So I cook lunch and in the morning my wife phones me, she tells me she's cancer free and I'm super happy. I'm cooking lunch and my, my boss was actually out and it was family and friends that I was cooking for. So I do their lunch, I set everything aside and then he comes in to have lunch by himself and he was very friendly with me. So he would come in and tell me about his day, ask me about my day. And so I'm telling him, yeah, you know, Jody called, she's cancer free, all that. Oh, congratulations. So he sits down for lunch and I cook and kind of bring the courses out and I would sit down and explain the course. Typically I would make a three course meal and in between courses, I can't remember which courses, my phone rang and now normally I would never answer the phone when I'm working, but because of what had happened, I. Yeah, I. Excuse me, sir, would you mind if I take this phone call? Yeah, no problem. I pick up the phone and I immediately think something's wrong, there's a misdiagnosis, they called her back. Oh my God. And she goes, I'm pregnant. And I just. Yeah, like even, even now saying that makes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this was the same day, Same day, the same. Only a few hours later. So I'm already emotionally exhausted because of the other news. And that was just the whole thing on its own to go through in life. And then this and I stepped out and I'm kind of like crying to be honest. I think I might have thrown up.

Yeah.

If Jody listens to this, sorry, I think I got sick.

Would that be news to her? Is this a new piece of information?

Yeah, it might be. It might be.

So I won't.

I won't tell her when this goes live and hope she, you know, I'm just kidding. I will. And. And I went out and told him, and he stands up and he gives me a hug, and he said, we're having a baby. And I was kind of like, okay, I've got to get out of here. And that was a pivotal moment because.

Of him being like. Collectively, it was.

It's just too close. And. And my life was lived more in someone else's life. Like, I was. I don't want to say Property of, but I was. You say jump, and I'll say, how high? If you need me there, at whatever time, I'm there. I spent. I gave my life to that job, you know, and I. It sounds silly. You're only cooking for four people. But some days I was in the kitchen for 16, 17 hours, and I start super early. I would cook. I would cook dinner for eight people, and the net worth of the table would be $12 billion. And then the next day, I would be packing food to go on a private jet to fly to wherever my boss was going in the world. And. And. And, I mean, it was a really extreme, high pressure, high stress, go, go, go, go, go scenario. And it. It was starting to fry me. And then that moment was kind of like, okay, it's time for me to maybe figure out another path in life. And I had opened multiple restaurants at Daniel Bl years when I worked for him. I would go into work at 7, maybe 8 in the morning, come home at 1. There was days where I would go to work, my wife would still be in bed. I would work all day. I would do the breakfast and the lunch. Then I would go in the change room because it's at the Four Seasons Hotel. I would have a shower in the change room, change, go back upstairs, maybe lay down for half an hour, eat something, usually coffee, probably not even eating, go back upstairs and do it again for the dinner service, then sit down after service with Danielle and a menu and a glass of wine, and we would talk through these menus and make changes and ideas. And I loved it at the time. Yeah, there's nothing I wanted to do more, but Jody would get off work, go to the gym, go out for dinner with her friends, come home, read a book, watch a movie, get ready for bed and I'd still be at work, still come home and she'd be in bed. And I just knew that that doesn't. It may, I don't want to say it doesn't work because it definitely works for some people, but for me, I just knew that this isn't going to work for me. And I just can't do this for the rest of my life. I'd had multiple offers through open restaurants, multiple head chef jobs, been getting handhunted. The Four Seasons had me looking at an executive sous chef job at either the Four Seasons, Miami or San Francisco. And I just couldn't do it. And it just became a time to move on from all that. And I, I love it. I still love that.

That world.

It took me all over the place. I was lucky enough. You know, we, we were talking about this earlier, but I worked in Japan, Italy, Spain, Denmark, New York City, in all Michelin restaurants, Vancouver island, and have been traveling in that capacity so much that I love that fast pace. And I never, I never was a person who didn't want to work on the weekend. And friends would say, oh, don't you hate working weekends? I did not care. I just wanted to be in the restaurant. I just wanted to learn as much as I could. I just wanted to be at the top of my game and I wanted to push myself to the extreme and I would work myself to burnout and then just do it all over again. And that was all I. That's all I knew, that's all I wanted to do. And that was my life. And so I think that that moment I had already kind of, I was already kind of thinking about the transition and that kind of like, okay, now I gotta get out.

It was like the straw broke the camel's back. So it seems like, you know, does this feel accurate? There's almost like three kind of evolutions to your career. The first being kind of working in these fast paced, well known, recognized restaurants. The second being kind of this world of private chefs, celebrities, you know, billionaires. And then the third being this kind of evolution into entrepreneurship. Does that feel generally accurate? And when you look at the kind of arc of your career, that those would be kind of the three buckets, or would you define it differently?

I think it's accurate, but I would potentially add one more. I think that the private chefing, celebrity chefing overlaps with restaurants. So at Four Seasons, only managers are allowed to contact and deal with celebrities. So as a sous chef, I would be able to take plate of food out To Steph Curry. When Ricky Gervais is in the dining room, I personally would take the food to him, ask him how it went, how was your stay? You know, Rihanna, Drake, Steph Curry, the Rolling Stones, you two. I was. And then that transitioned into me cooking in people's houses. So I cooked for Martin Short privately for a while, who's a Canadian comedian. He hang out with all kinds of people. So next thing you know, I was cooking for Larry David, and then Tom Hanks would come over for dinner, and there's goalie Han and.

And.

And it was just this crazy thing to experience, I guess. And then I went into education, and I think that is a really important stage of my life and an important bucket. So I would definitely add that in there.

Yeah. Education, meaning teaching? Essentially, yeah.

So that's when I was at Four Seasons. Another chef was telling me, have you ever thought about teaching? You'd be good at it. And at the time, I had zero desire. I kind of thought, you know, when you can't cook, you teach. If you don't know how to bake, you teach. You can't get a. You can't open a restaurant. And then through the stages of my life, I kind of thought, well, maybe I will give it a. Give it a shot, because maybe that is a good opportunity. And actually, I was teaching in two schools. I was teaching culinary at what I would say is. Or at the time, I guess, was kind of the leading culinary school in Ontario. You know, that's where people wanted to go. And I was teaching there, and that was great. And then I was teaching at this other lesser known college. And I think that is really important for my life because this was. I had a chair who's still my chair, and she just. I. I kind of feel like she took this chance on me. And so I had been working in restaurants and I had been baking for a long time. I had ran a bakery at a relay chateau, which is a designation for hotel. We were in the best restaurants in the world. I had baked in Japan. I baked in Italy in the same thing, in a relay and chateau. I baked when I was working in Italy. Another celebr, just to name drop is I cooked for Daniel Craig, which was pretty cool. And they filmed James Bond in Sienna, the movie. And I was there while they were filming, cooking for the director and the cast and the crew. So anyways, and then when I started teaching, I had this moment where I was at home on a Friday night and I had my kid. And that was kind of like this Is different. Like, I'm in a different life now. I have this kid. I can't be in the restaurant. And so I taught bread. And the chair kind of said to me. She said something like, you bake bread, right? And I said, yeah. And she was like, can you. Can you teach bread? And I had never. I had done some private things in my life, and I'd gone to restaurants for consulting for bread, but I've never really taught it. And I just totally was like, yep, yeah, I can do that. 100.

Yep.

Let me. And she took this chance, let me teach bread. And then I came to her with really positive ideas, and I just said, look, this is a good program. Here's areas of opportunity to make this learning experience better for the students. And she just let me run with it. And I mean, the things that we've done in the five years of me teaching, I think that's just so important because I think I really, truly started to learn when I started teaching. And both of the things that I was passionate about were supporting and growing each other. So if I was trying. So, for example, I'd always wanted to take a course with Jeffrey Hamelman about artisan bread. I have his book. And when I took his course, he took a picture and he said, I've never seen my book as used as this. Falling apart pages, everything. And I was able to get funding from the school to go there. I can have PD days, professional development days, where I can take 10 days off. And I think that that really fueled my learning. And the other part is you forget the beginner journey sometimes, and you forget the pain points of the beginner. So I was ahead in my bread baking space, and I had staged and worked in great bakeries. I'd spent time. I had gone. I went to Germany and worked with the master baker. And that was all things that I was able to do because I was teaching, because I said, hey, I'm off for the summer. I said to Jody, my wife, you want to go to? Just kind of a weird side note was we get these courtside basketball tickets from her dad. And there was a really big player trade, really probably the biggest in the past 20 years, for the Toronto Raptors. And I had the game where those two teams were playing. So why Leonard's coming back?

I was gonna say Kawhi Leonard. Yeah, Kawhi demar.

So demar's coming back to Toronto. Kawaii's playing, and it's the game of the year. I go. I was going at that point in my Life to maybe 30 games a year, maybe 20 to 30 games. That's a lot, right? They only play 40 some home games. So I said, Jody said, let's sell some tickets. And I was like, there's no way. And what I ended up doing was kind of what I thought was sneaky is I posted them for a ridiculous price thinking no one is gonna purchase these tickets. And I pulled into work one day, eight in the morning, phone rang, the tickets sold. And I was like, what?

Yeah.

And then I just said, do you want to go to Germany? And she said, okay.

So we ended up planning that money.

Yeah. With it, we did a whole three week trip through Europe. And so being able to be in education allowed me enough time off to go and work with this baker. And I went and worked with this guy Michael, who is probably the best baker I've ever worked with. And he's just so brilliant and savant about bread. And I was able to do these things. I went to the UK to take a class at the School of Artisan Food. I took a group of 10 students. I was a per. I was visiting Europan the Coupe du Monde boulangerie. I presented at the Artisan Bread Expo. I was a presenter at the IBIE International Baking Industry Exposition. I took students there. But the ability to do those things, whereas in the restaurant you can't do all that stuff. You can't just go wherever you want, take courses, do this. And I think that that trust that that person Suzanne put in me was just really something I didn't have before, maybe in my career. And someone who was like, hey, I trust you. You're you want to do it, go for it. We, I, I, hey, I think we should mail our own flour. We should get this huge mill and we can teach the students.

Yeah.

He's like, okay, cool, let's do it. You make a proposal. So then we got a flower mill and I started learning about milling. And anyways, I'm long winding this, but I think that that is really important. And I guess another part, and I don't know if I told you this, but I. So I was hired on full time after two semesters, which is very unheard of in education. Normally you work contract to contract. Some people do 10, get full time. It's kind of like the coveted job because you've got your pension, you got your summers off, whatever, holidays off. And I taught one semester and in my second semester teaching I got full time. So for five years I was the coordinator of the baking past management program. For the first two years, I also coordinated the WILL program, which is work integrated learning, which is where students go in the field and work. And just as of September, I stepped down from coordinating baking and I'm now coordinating food media. And so if you look at this long term journey of I was, I don't want to say I still think I'm learning. I don't think I'm like the best baker or anything. And I'm not trying to say, oh, look at me, but I started with knowledge of baking and I took that to the point where I've now written a book. It comes out next year. We've done all the stuff online, we run the website, I do consulting, coaching non stop. It's constantly coming in. And now I'm doing, I'm going to do the same thing in the food media space. So for one, I'm going to make it a great program, give students opportunities, share my passion, knowledge. But now it's forcing me to learn about food media. So if I want to learn about podcasting, I can do that and it makes sense both personally and professionally.

Yep.

So it's kind of this weird thing that I have going on that's really helped me progress my skills and my knowledge and most importantly, given me time to be home with my family and with my kids and with my wife and my two. I have two kids now, so I don't want to be in the restaurant every day, all weekend and whatever.

That's awesome. You know, I think what I love about that is one of the things we've talked a lot about is this idea of dream building on the podcast. Like, what does it look like to have a good understanding of what you're actually after? And a lot of times that changes. And my guess is you had a season where it's like, I want to climb the ranks of these, the most incredible restaurants. And you do that and it's good. And you continue to do it until it's not good. And then you're like, okay, why is this not good? Why does this feel misaligned? And then you kind of refresh and press reset and you go about building a new dream. And it's like, okay, what does it look like then to do the kind of private chef world? Maybe that could be something that would look a little bit different and doing that multiple times. And it's exciting to see you where you are now in a season of doing that again with all of the skills and expertise that you have. And this is another thing we talk about Is like looking back at. For any of us to look back at, like, what are we good at? What's the through line for us? What do people keep asking us about? Like, what are the things that we're excited about? And then from that saying, can we pair this with the Internet? Like, can we pair this with social media platforms? Can we pair this with a website? And it seems like you have done that and are continuing to do that now, while also having some of these other pursuits, but saying, hey, what does it look like for me to strategically build a following with all of this valuable information that I have and these experiences that I have online? Can you talk about what that journey has been like and where you found success with that and the things that you're kind of discovering about yourself?

Yeah, that's interesting for sure. And it's good to reflect on these things. I. I think what. So I've. I, first of all, I've always gravitated towards computers. We were one of the. I grew up in a really small town in Ontario, 7,000 people, but we were. My mom was a teacher and we were one of the first people that I knew that had Internet. And so at a young age, I was on forums and I was on ICQ and Messenger and all those other things. I think I've always been in the digital space. I maybe just didn't know it. And I was never. I always took pictures and videos. And when I was a chef, I had a good dslr, I traveled, I would take pictures of the food. I never really did anything with it. I didn't know how to edit the pictures. The pictures probably suck if I look back at them, but I thought I was going to learn photography and I thought I was passionate about it. And. And much like anything, it's kind of. You have to work at it to get good at it. So I think what started it for me was, first of all, I was always geared to technology. And then I was. I. I can look up the number because I think there's somewhere you can check. I was like one of the first 500,000 people to download the app Instagram. And I had it really super early. And it started out by me hosting a little bit of everything. Here's some flowers. I'm walking my dog. This is some cool graffiti. Here's a plate of food at work. And I had grown to two or three thousand followers. And I have a friend who's a celebrity chef, Matty Matheson. He's got. He was. He was actually on the show, the Bear as an actor. But he. At one point we were cooking in an event and he took a picture of me and posted something like, best up and coming chef in Canada. Follow this guy. And all of a sudden I had this spike in followers from like 2 to 5,000. They're like, oh, there's something here. And so I just kept working at it and it slowly turned more into me taking pictures of food. And then I have another friend who actually doesn't cook or do any social media stuff anymore. But he had a good, decent size following of maybe like 15 or 20,000 followers. And I said, what do I need to do differently to grow my page like you're growing and people are liking your pictures? And he kind of said, look, you have this unique thing because you are a chef and you bake bread. And this is before Sourdough was cool. You know, people weren't really baking sourdough. They were, but not the way they are now. And he said, why don't you just focus on sharing more bread stuff and share your pictures? And I started taking this picture where there's a white wall, I had floor to ceiling windows in our apartment. I'd take the picture of the bread and I would post it. And at first it would just be the title 100 Whole Wheat or whatever. And those started doing well. And I started getting that primal branding effect where people would recognize that picture as mine and they just knew that that's the Duffy shot. And then that transitioned into me sharing a little bit about what I was doing because I started getting questions, well, how did you bake this and what temperature? And so then I started sharing that. And then one day I posted a video, and this is maybe five or six years ago, and it performed really super well. And then I started transitioning into learning a little bit of video. And then I kind of like put everything into Instagram at one point and thought, you know, I'm gonna grow this profile. But I didn't ever look at it as a business, which I think in some ways maybe looking back was a mistake. But I guess you never know when you're doing these things. I just looked at the Vanity metric, how many followers do I have? And I just knew if I can keep sharing what I'm doing and keep growing, this will somehow be important later on. And so I think I started by growing that Instagram platform and that's what kind of gave me that introduction into there is some opportunities in this digital space and there is something here and I should work at this to Figure it out. And I think that platform Instagram is what really started it for me for sure.

Yeah. So you started to see like, okay, there's people reaching out, there's some interaction, there's an audience here, people are interested in this. That being an early indicator that if people are interested in it, there's probably going to be an opportunity here.

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What did it look like for you? And I know this has even been within the last like year or two to kind of discover what that opportunity is like. I know you've done some courses and have had success with that. Like talk about what it's been like to step into the world of kind of brand building online, but also business building online. And if, maybe if you could also talk about some of the like physical, I don't know if you'd consider it retail but like some of the sales of baked goods that you're doing as well. Because what I love about it is to, to take a step back. You know, when we talk about this, what we are all after is like building our ideal. And that looks so drastically different for everybody. And what's great about your story is you've had different iterations of that and now you're. And I think we all are always kind of building what that ideal is. But you have all these different pieces and you're putting them together. You know, you have the teaching part which is really great. You're able to sell actual baked goods which there's something that's so awesome about that. You have core sales and you're building that a following online, you're building your website. And all of this is kind of would be under the category of business. Right? It's like the, it's the, the, the teaching is a job but it's also, it's like you could look at it as like that's a client of yours which is the school and you're working for them. So what has that been like for you to craft this new stage of things and how has the online business part developed within that?

So it's really difficult. It's heavy lifting, it's not easy. I think consistency has shown us some success and the way a little bit of trial and error. Before the pandemic, I used to teach some in person classes outside the college. Like very home baker couple things and I was doing it in a studio and they would pay me hourly. And what started happening is people were coming for me, not for the place that was advertising. And they're great and, and I had a really good. And I still know them very well but they were no longer coming because it was the baking studio. They were coming because I was advertising this class. So that was kind of the original side hustle was these in person classes and I would like load up the car. Go teach this class. And through an obsession for learning and a desire to become a better baker and understand more about it, I was baking a lot at home, like 20 kilo bag a lot at home. And so I would work in the restaurant all week. And then what sort of happened was I was just losing money because I was baking so much bread and I was spending 50 bucks on a bag of flour or whatever. I was going into Whole Foods in Yorkville and buying a 20 kilo bag, and they're like, we don't sell this. And I have to get a manager.

To price it for it.

Because at the time, I didn't even know. Even though I worked in a restaurant, I probably could have just ordered anyways. So that was the initial selling some bread. And then I have a friend who was a farmer, organic farmer, who ran a CSA community, supported agriculture at our local farmers market. And he said, why don't you bring some bread here and sell it off the table? And so I started doing that prior to that, maybe 15 years ago, well, 18 years ago now, in the first restaurant I had worked at, the chef was in an obsessive bread phase. And we were selling bread at the market. So I already knew what the side hustle of bread looked like because he was kind of backdooring bread out of the restaurant. And I already knew that there was something to be said there. And there was a way to make money. And so we had those two things going, but very small scale. Loaf of bread here, loaf of bread there. And then we moved out of this little apartment and we started a local WhatsApp group. So we had, I can't remember now, maybe 50 people that were buying bread off me. And it was more of a way to sell what I was baking so that I could bake. The more I bake, the better I'm gonna get. I bought. I got a spiral mixer. It's 15 kilos. I wanna max it out and make 10 to 15 kilos of dough. If I shape one bread, if I shape two breads, I'm learning twice as fast. So I would always make 10, 15. Next thing you know, I had a cooling rack on the back stairs. And when we decided to move to this house, I now live in the suburbs, all of this was built around that online business side of stuff. So early Pandemic, I lost the ability to teach bread. I didn't feel comfortable selling bread because I didn't want people coming to my house. I didn't know.

Yep.

We also didn't want to like, give someone a bread and something happens. We were like wiping our groceries down.

With Santa, all of us, right?

Crazy. And I was just really stressed. I had a newborn baby. I had a job, and I have a really secure job. But my brain was thinking like, well, what if the. Like, what if this is the apocalypse and the college closes? Like, I don't know what's going on. And I went outside and I just. On my phone. How to make money online. No, I just googled how to make money online. Three things came up. Some woman came up, she's like, here's what you do. I wrote it down on a piece of paper. I went and I said to my wife, I was like, here's five ways money online.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna, I'm gonna do all five of them. And she kind of rolled her eyes and was like, whatever. Like, she's known me for long enough that she just. I'm just a crazy person. And she's like, whatever. Okay. I was just probably watching a show at the time and I was like, no, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. And then I looked and I said, think of how much different our lives would look if we could make an extra $200 a month. $200 online. And so now when I break down streams of income. We have now since moved. I've set up a baking studio in my house. Inside of that studio, I have two large deck ovens. Well, one in the garage, one in the basement. And I use a simply bread oven, which is like a kind of like home artisan bread oven. And I, ironically enough, I started tracking the sales and August I was away for three weeks. So with like half a week, maybe one bake in August, September, October, November, December. So four months, we did over $10,000 in sales.

That's awesome.

And that doesn't include panettone, which we make somewhere. Usually we. We made around maybe 420 this year. 410. And that's a pretty high priced item. So there's probably another 15 to 18,000 in sales there. So in a matter of four months, we're doing like 20 to 35,000 in sales, which is like crazy considering I was just trying to sell a loaf of bread. Yeah, so that's the. We call that the side side hustle. So we essentially run a WhatsApp group. We have about 325 people. My wife previews what's coming. I actually saw before our interview, I fed my Levin so that when we're done, I can Go downstairs and mix the dough and I'll have a bake tomorrow morning before I start work. So I set the oven on a timer. It turns on, wake up with the kids at 7:30, throw the bread in the oven, do breakfast, pull the bread out, take them to school and then go upstairs, do my job. And then my wife will manage. Yeah, Jody manages all the front house. I cannot deal with people I hate, I hate dealing with orders. I don't want any of it. And she, she rocks it. And she runs the group like insanely good. We leave the comments off. She says, hey everyone, drop coming today 4pm or tomorrow at noon or whatever it is, here's what's coming. She turns the comments on. I have the reputation and, and doesn't mean that everything I bake is good. You know, I'm not saying my breads are the best, but I have this reputation of being excellent product and everything sells out. And it's very rare that we don't sell out anything. And so I could be baking like 10 loaves of bread and 15 baguettes. I could bake six loaves of bread. I can make a hundred donuts. I could make anything, anything we want. And that pairing that with the online business has been super helpful. So that's like kind of side side hustle. Then we have online. I work with an agency. I actually stopped working with them and then started working with them again because I thought in my head that I could do a better job and I'll do my own brand outreach and I want to negotiate these deals but I don't have time for that. And sometimes I would, I for I did like a, it was a nice company but it was like 800 bucks. Like it was nothing and a very low brand deal. And I counted it after and there was like 82 back and forth emails and I'm like I just said 82 for freaking 800 bucks. Like what am I? So now I'm working back with them. And so what the way that works is I pay a fee and they do all my posting comments and they outreach to brands on my behalf and then they bring me partnerships and so they will take a percentage and I also pay a fee for the social media. But our deal is that I don't pay if they don't get me a partnership. So if they don't cover my cost of them, what I have to pay them in the month on the partnership, then I don't pay. And they're really good. And Shanley's her name, she Does a good job and she's super good at like getting the opportunities. Even when I was on the social that I was telling you about a TV show, she came, sits there, she follows up with them. Thanks so much. If a brand reaches out to me, I forwarded to her. So there's, that is the whole monetization of the Internet world. I've monetized my YouTube channel. So we have AdSense coming in on the YouTube channel. And YouTube is a really big lead magnet for me, which is going to lead into my next, next sort of thing. I create Excel spreadsheets for all my recipes when I post them on YouTube and then in the video. I typically say the best way to scale this recipe is to download the Excel. And I make videos sometimes making two loaves and sometimes making 16. And I found at first that 16 loaves of bread in the mixer, I thought no one's gonna really wanna watch this because people don't make that at home, they make two breads. But surprisingly a lot of home bakers just maybe find it interesting or they learn a lot because I just talk about the process and I'm essentially just. My videos aren't short. You know, I, I have one that I was reviewing that'll get posted tomorrow. It's 32 minutes. Jalapeno and cheddar sourdough. I could condense that into a four minute video, but I really go through deep dive of the process. And so that is a stream of income. Then we have affiliate marketing through there and the blog, which is a stream of income, but very low. I just started teaching in person classes again and so I run workshops of four to six people. It's $250 a person, so it's not a ton of money. But it's a really great way for me to plan and think about online courses. So people come in person, they ask questions. So I'm gonna, I'm. As an example, I'm gonna launch a mini course online for rye bread with 4ish recipes and some information about rye. How to mill yourself, how to crack the grain, soak the grains, why it's good for fermentation, Emily's activity of rye, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I teach this class in person. 1, 2, 3, 4 times. People come, they ask questions, I take some pictures, they leave a testimonial. Now I have an instant, I don't know what the word is, but I have an instant evidence of practice, evidence of success. These students came, they took the course, they were happy. So I will then Transition that to an online course. My newsletter, we're coming up on 10,000 subscribers. We have about a 70% open rate. So we have somewhere between probably 6,000 and 7,000 bakers that read my weekly email. And so now what I can do is take the pictures from the student in the in person show the testimonial in the newsletter and say if you're interested in my upcoming ride course or if hey, I taught this course on the weekend, it was local. But if you're not local and you don't want to fly to Toronto, I'm actually creating an online course. Click this link and I'll be the first to let you know. And what I'll do is I'll run a campaign, I'll do a reduced price for the people that click the link and then I'll increase the price for the main newsletter. But then I always have something that I can market. So on our online courses I currently have three. They're all designed for home Baker One is sourdough bread, one is sourdough pizza which has like pan pizza and five or six different pizzas and then one is Penatoni. Pentatonia is an advanced course for more serious Baker I am in the. I'm actually making pentatonia this weekend for Valentine's Day. We have about 100 on order. So that. That's in the proofer. The. The madre is in the proof. For now, timed it with the podcast. So I will take those courses and market them through newsletter and I will also market them through social media or in this example I'm doing a podcast with you and I'll say something like hey everyone, if you listen to this podcast I'm gonna give you 50 off my sourdough course. Use the the code Food Blogger Pro or if I have a guest appearance, a speaking engagement and whether it's free or paid, that is just an upsell. In another business we were featured by Teachable how to do a pre sale. I had been a number of their blog publications. They've used my model several times. I've spoken at their virtual conferences and we have done six figures in course sales online course sales. And that's over the time since we started. So it's not in one year. Yeah but I also have a job and it's kind of side hustle. So I do wonder if I really went all in, could I increase that? But, but so there's in person classes, selling bread, online classes, adsense, affiliate marketing and then the last kind of. There's probably Something I'm forgetting, but the la. The. Another side is I often get little consults for restaurants and bakeries. And so I'll do them virtually in person. I charge an hourly rate and then I have a follow up and I work with you to reach your goals. Because a lot of people are trying to make these products in their restaurants or bakeries or the. The really big one is December gets really crazy because Panettone and our course sales just like the. The whole year is like this. I actually sold one yesterday at full price. But like, that's the only.

Yeah.

Panatoni car sold in January. Oh yeah. It's like hundreds of people are. Everyone's trying to learn it. And so we kind of juggle between all of these things. And then the last one, I guess that's not there yet, but is part of what. What I'm doing with you or what I've learned from not just you, but your team at Food Blogger Pro is we are working towards growing the blog. And there's a few reasons why. At the very beginning of the pandemic, somebody told me, I don't even remember who, like, you should have a blog. And I was like, cool. And so I started this blog and I didn't know what I was doing and 0 SEO and I took really crappy pictures and lighting was really crappy, but people were still baking the recipes because I have a reputation of teaching bread. They know who I am. And, and it was still successful. You know, we're still having a couple thousand sessions and people were visiting the site and sending me pictures and, and sharing the recipes. And I, I now coordinate food media and I talk to a lot of people in the food media space. And a recurring theme through interviewing professionals, one that really stood out to me was Majun Pax. She's the judge for Top Chef Canada. And she said to me, it all started with writing. And she said, I started a blog. And I wrote, this is crazy. Actually, you should interview her for Food Blogger Pro. He wrote every single day for three years.

Wow.

And she didn't write recipes. I don't think. I think she did. Restaurant reviews. Food reviews, Restaurant reviews. But anyways, so she had told me that and. And then it was kind of like, okay. And I spoke to a few other bloggers and a few other online creators and I said, how do I do this full time? And I like my job and I'm happy where I am. I'm not looking to quit my job. But I can't help but think, is there another path or can I build them both to the point where I have this ultimate decision? If I didn't have kids, I probably would have already left my job. But I've got two little kids and I have a pretty good situation at work. And so. And I really like it. It's. It's rewarding, it's fun, it's good, there's lots of opportunity and, and overall, it's been a pretty great period of my life. But so a few people told me, you know, passive income on the. I'm a huge believer of passive income, so I invest in dividend paying ETF stocks. I really look forward to that. I've tried to set up like all the affiliate marketing, all the things that bring that. And which is why I'm really big on online courses, because I can earn money. I was in, I was in Montreal staying in the Barbie suite, which is this room at the Fairmont they turned into a Barbie suite I wanted in an auction. And I surprised my girls on Christmas, the getaway to Montreal. And I wrote an email and did a course sale while on vacation. So in like 20 minutes of work. And we made a couple grand off one email. And that to me is why.

Yeah, yeah.

It's so important to have passive income and whether it's in baking or not. And I teach my students this all the time. You have something, there's something you can do that can earn you money while you sleep. And it's it. And even if you start small, you know, my first, my first YouTube check was like $4. I showed my wife and she was like, you're crazy. Like four bucks. But she's super supportive. So. So she was like, she was like, okay. She's like, we'll give it a chance.

Go for it.

She's never, she's never said, this is a dumb idea. Well, maybe when I was going to buy a pizza truck during the pandemic, that was the one time she's like, I was like the babe. We could do weddings and like, I could roll up to your house.

And she was like, yeah, it's Covid.

There's no weddings. This is. And so I think that's the only time she's really shut me down on something. But that is one where I feel like that's what I'm really focused on now is sort of blog, YouTube newsletter, and all the rest of it is kind of on the back burner for a bit. You say this in the podcast and this is something that I don't do super well, but if you want to grow your newsletter, grow your newsletter. If you want to grow YouTube, just do YouTube. Sometimes I go to these YouTubers and they have these million followers, and then I click their Instagram because I'm curious. And they have like 30,000 Instagram. I'm like, well, how's this person? But the reason is because they never focused on it. They don't put any energy there because they're solely focused on winning on the other platform. And that's kind of where we're at now. So we started when I. Jo, this is a plug for Food Blogger Pro. Not. This is not a paid endorsement, but when I. When I started with Food Blogger Pro, I think we had about 2000 monthly sessions, maybe 2500. And now we're sitting at about 22,000. We had about 6000 monthly page views. Now we're sitting at about 45,000. And it's. Yeah, it's also my favorite place on the Internet is my newsletter and the blog because you put a recipe on Instagram and it's fun and all that. But how many people are, like, really, truly making that TikTok feta pasta? You know, like, how many are really making those. The viral shaping video. Like, how many people are actually shaping a bread and watching my video. But on YouTube, people are really there to learn. The amount of responses I get to my emails is actually so overwhelming right now that I'm considering potentially trying to have a. I have a VA that we work with, and she's great. And I'm like, could she answer emails as well? Could she run. I like to keep it personal. But that's kind of the next monetization strategy is to get the blog bringing in a recurring revenue so that even if I just want to outsource whatever other job and have that. But that's kind of. Yeah, I guess that's a long answer. But those are kind of like the five or six income streams that we've come to.

And what I love about that, there's a couple different things we talk about. People who have listened to the podcast a long time know that we talk about this idea of the egg carton method, where it's like, okay, what does it look like if you think of an egg carton to fill in? If the full egg carton is your entire salary, Maybe it's a half egg carton, like one of those little ones, you know, six. In your case, this would work out perfectly. What does it look like to build up the different pieces of that as income sources? And in Your case, you know, those will ebb and flow through the year. The other thing that I really love about what you just shared was this. The moment where you said you were really stressed because you thought like, what if this job goes away? And what you have now with a simple WhatsApp group and the skills that you've created around building a great product, which is baked goods, that is something that you could fall back on in a lot of ways. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, as a sole source of income if needed, like 100. And there's, for a lot of us, it's not just even doing this full time, it's having something that's part time. That's a really great safety net against another thing that you maybe love doing, which is what you dedicate most of your time with, that could potentially go away. And if that thing goes away, you have a safety net that can scale up. And is it in some ways a little bit of an insurance policy for the inevitable? Like, you know, jobs change, company, you know, strategies, different education changes, whatever it might be that you have as kind of your full time gig, that stuff shifts and changes and you have all of these things that are kind of surrounding you that you could scale up at any point if you want. The other thing that's really exciting to hear you talk about is scaling up the traffic to your site. And now it is at that point where very soon you'll be able to apply to some of these ad networks and you'll, it'll be much more than, you know, 200amonth, which you kind of joked about earlier. You know, it'll be.

That was the goal. That was the original goal.

Yeah. Which is great.

I, I said, can you imagine how different our lives would look if you could just earn a month? We could just pay for the groceries, babe. Like, we would be set. That's what I was telling.

And I think the trajectory that you have with your site, like pretty soon that will be thousands, you know, and that just feels different. It's not completely passive. As you know, it's a lot of work to get there. It's also a lot of work to maintain it. But there is a certain type of passive to it where in the future you'll do that trip to the, you know, Montreal and you won't even need to send out an email. You'll just check your ad network dashboard and you'll see like, oh, this site earned, you know, multiple hundreds of dollars or a thousand dollars, you know, whatever it might be that's just happening truly passively, you know, in these blocks of time where you're not working on it. So it's, it's exciting to hear.

Yeah, that's important. That's like really? So, so just my wife works on this with me and that's something that we talked about and that's sort of how I was able to hook her into this business, you know, because it was me for a long time and this was my thing. And she's not a baker, she's not a chef. She never worked in a restaurant a day in her life. She works with the government. She has a full time job too. So she was always kind of like living around me cooking and she loves food and we love to go to eat and all that. And I just sat her down one day and I, I was maybe frustrated. I've been doing all this stuff on my own for years. And not to say that she hadn't helped me because she'd help hammer and stuff like that, but. And I kind of just said, what do you see yourself in five years? Like what's your dream scenario and where do you want to be? And I probably heard this on your podcast, to be honest. And she kind of said like, I'd love it if we could do this and this and this. And I just looked at, said, well, it's not going to happen if we just work a regular jobs like that. Life is not there, so we now have this opportunity. And then I showed her, here's the streams of income, here's how much we made on this, here's how much we made here. And I don't know what it was, but I think that was enough to spark her. And so now she kind of manages the blog in some ways and she's the one that's driving it forward. And then I'm managing all the video content. But that's a, that's a huge goal for us is to get that recurring revenue and have that monetization on the blog. It's also fun to do the blog for the most part because it's a really great creative outlet and just learning how to take the pictures and learning how to write the blog and learning how to write better recipes. But I think the best part of it is people making the recipes. And I think that's something that when I started the blog, like that's the number one goal, but I don't know that I really thought of that as the goal. Yeah, but now when you see those tags on Instagram, people respond to the newsletter I've had. I've sent a newsletter out. I send it usually at 8am on Friday. And I've had people sending me pictures of the product that I sent in the newsletter the same day. Like, oh, here's the picture. And I'm like, how did you.

Like, maybe even went out and got ingredients, came back, yeah, 100 for sure did that.

Like, how did you do that? But so I think that's a rewarding side of it that regardless of monetization and it's a skill stack, you know, like, it's only going to help me be a better writer.

Yeah.

I have a book coming out next year and writing the book helped me learn how to write better recipes. And writing the recipes helped me learn how to write the book to how. And the publisher found me through recommendation. The first thing, you know what they do, they go on your website, they look at your recipes. What does he have? And that was like. They instantly were like, well, this is a very different style of blog. You have very different categories of restaurant that no one else really has. And we want you to write a book about it. And that's kind of. Yeah, all those things together. But I think ultimately bringing in my wife is really motivated by the numbers and she's really working hard. And every day this morning she's like, how many pages today? Every day she's like refreshing in the morning. To be honest, I usually stay up past midnight and I'll check it after midnight. But I think she's motivated. Seeing the number, once it becomes a paycheck, I think she'll like, that's really gonna. I think that's really gonna change things.

Yes. And once it, it makes sense, like, and for everybody, the motivation is different. But when you can see the hard work that you've put in result in money deposited into your bank account, that can be an extremely motivating thing. Especially in a season like you have right now where it's generally incrementally up like last month, this month is higher than last month. And that's not always how it goes. Algorithm changes. Maybe a piece of content takes off that doesn't in the week to come. But like, generally speaking, if that's what you're doing as you're working hard on a thing, that can be really rewarding to have those metrics kind of showcase the hard work that you're doing, which you guys have done such a great job of. And a lot of it is like the culmination of decades of work as well. Like, it's your skills and expertise. It's her continued effort around, like, you know, shaping that online. And so it's important to call that out too. Like, it's a lot of time stacked, time experiences, skills stacked over time. And so it makes sense that, that you guys are finding the traction that you're finding. So, Matthew, it's like we've done. We could talk for hours. I know that you literally have things to tend to in the kitchen, but for people who want to connect with you, follow along with what you're up to, what's the best place to do that you're active in multiple places online?

Yeah, I think the best place or the number one place I would promote right now or the place that I would probably send people is to my newsletter. And so I send a weekly newsletter and it's. And I struggled with this for a long time. And it was like one of the biggest pain points for me was doing a newsletter. And I think that it's now my favorite thing to do. And I don't share highly curated recipes. I. I share what I'm doing. So if I'm in the kitchen, I snap an iPhone picture. I don't even turn the light on. Sometimes we have the studio lighting. I just take a picture and that's what's in the newsletter. I'm like, here's what I'm baking this week and I send out my new best. And what I'm kind of like vamping and what's coming up. And it's not. It used to be a notification and I would just send a newsletter, new YouTube video. And so I think that's the number one place. Instagram's pretty big for me. I get a lot of DMS and message on Instagram. I answer all my. I did say before someone answers comments, but if you actually ask a skill question or an equipment question, I will answer it.

It.

If you say nice bread, it might not actually be me that answers you. Sure. But Instagram's a great one. For anyone that is interested in learning more about sourdough and sort of tutorial demos. YouTube is where I put my most intense versions of my recipe. And then of course, that complements the blog. So the blog and YouTube go hand in hand. On the. On the website, we've got sourdough yeasted bread, leftover bread, sourdough discard, and a pizza category, which I'm starting to build out now. So there's lots of great stuff there. But yeah, I think newsletter number one. The other thing that I didn't understand about newsletters is everything can go into newsletters. So if someone listening to this wants to see what I'm doing. If you join my newsletter, I will tell you when the best Instagram posts are the best. YouTube.

Yeah, all of it.

All of it. Yeah. You don't need to go and follow every one. Just follow the newsletter and I'll direct.

You where you need to go each week.

Yeah, yeah. That's the way I've decided to run the newsletter. I think it's the best way to get people the information. It's overwhelming. Everyone has 10 channels and follow me on all these platforms and do all this stuff. Just subscribe to my newsletter. That's it.

That's awesome. Matthew, thanks so much for coming on. Great to chat again.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hey there Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast episode and really appreciate you you taking the time to tune in and listen. In case you didn't know, in addition to the Food Blogger Pro podcast, we also have the Food Blogger Pro membership which is where we teach our members how to start, grow and monetize their food blog. We have lots of incredible resources to help you on your food blogging journey, including our courses, our community forum, our member only live Q&As, our deals and discounts page, and so much more. You'll get instant access to all of this when you sign up for a Food Blogger Pro membership. We have two awesome membership options available to you, our Yearly membership or our Quarterly membership which is just $99 a quarter and allows for some more flexibility. If you want to try the membership out and see if it's a good fit for you. If you're interested and want to learn more or to sign up, head to foodbloggerpro.com join we are so grateful for our Food Blogger Pro community and we would love to have you join us. Thanks so much for tuning in this week and we'll see you back here next week for another episode. Have a great week everybody.