452: YouTube, Meal Plans, and Business Growth with Nisha Vora

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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. And this week on the podcast we are welcoming back Nisha Vora from Rainbow Plant Life. Not only is she the YouTube expert here at Food Blogger Pro, but she has also been on the podcast before and we're just huge fans of everything she does. So we're thrilled to have her back on the podcast today. Bjork and Nisha kick off this conversation with a deep dive into the current status of food content on YouTube. Nisha shares more about her current strategy on YouTube, including her approach to YouTube shorts and longer form videos and and what monetization looks like on the platform. Nisha also just recently launched Meal Plans by Rainbow Plant Life and shares more about the process of developing and marketing the meal plans and how she has leaned on her team to help grow this new part of the business. She also chats a little bit about what the future of Rainbow Plant Life might look like and how she balances creating content and managing the business side of her brand. It's an awesome interview. We love Nisha So I'll just let Bjork take it away.

Nisha, welcome back to the podcast.

Hi, Bjork. So lovely to be here.

Yeah, we're going to be talking about. So you are an expert in YouTube. So you kind of in the world of our food blogger pro community, represent kind of our source for all things YouTube, but you also have all the other platforms. You have a site as well. So you understand the world of blogging, you understand the world of content creation, and you also deeply understand the world of video creation. That's kind of the one of the tools that you have used to build an audience. I'm curious to know, like, from your perspective, when you think about what it is that you do, how do you refer to yourself? Like, do you think of yourself as a YouTuber first? A creator, a publisher?

Fantastic question. I literally had to fill out forms for a new doctor appointment the other day and it was like, occupation. And I was like, I don't know. Yeah, so I don't know. I do a lot of YouTube, but I don't know if I identify as a, quote, YouTuber because I do do other things. I think people who identify as YouTub, that's their bread and butter and they're on YouTube all the time.

Yeah.

So I don't know. I also sometimes say cookbook author, I also sometimes say food blogger. And sometimes depending on the audience, I kind of throw in a couple things.

So it almost depends on like, who you're talking to as well. Like if it's people who don't understand digital media, you're like, well, we publish content online. It's kind of like a digital magazine. Like, you kind of have to frame it up depending on who you're talking to. But how about this? What do you feel like is the most important platform or place that you publish content? Your blog? YouTube, Instagram?

Yeah, for me, I think I would say YouTube because the long form content really I think serves my strengths, which for me, I believe are teaching folks how to cook excellent recipes, which you can of course do through a blog, which I have. And that's where all the tips and like written content goes. But I think cooking can be a very visual thing. And so having a long form content for me, I think is really important. I also think that once my YouTube channel started to take off in like 2020, that's also when I started to get a lot more blog traffic. And having that personal connection with people who see me on camera for 6, 7, 10, 12, sometimes 20 minutes makes it a lot More likely that they're going to go to the site, make the recipe, review it. Um, so even though the blog is like our biggest income earner out of, you know, the YouTube, Instagram blog, I think like the connection and the personal. Yeah, the personal connection that I can build on YouTube has been the most important.

Yeah, we just. It's interesting. We had an interview today, this morning, which we don't do a lot of these, but it was like an interview with a journalist for Digiday, which is like this news outlet that reports on digital media and they were interested in Google sge like search generative experience for those who aren't familiar. Like the little box, it's experimental right now, you have to turn it on. But like, it generates a response at the top of a search result and they're like, what does that mean for you? If Google or other like AI interfaces start to create answers? Maybe it's about a recipe, maybe it's something else. And populate those answers. How do you. What's your defense against that? And the best answer we had was like, to lean into our humanity and our connection with people. And it feels like what you're describing is a version of that where video allows you to create a connection, establish trust, feel like there's some sort of understanding of who somebody is. And that's like a really valuable thing that can't be replicated by a chatbot or AI, at least at this point. Hopefully not yet. Yeah, not yet. But that's something that is really important in this space because what we're doing is as we are consuming content online, we're trying to find places that we trust and also people that we know like, that we feel aligned with. And one of the best ways to do that, it feels like, is video. You referenced long form, meaning the traditional horizontal video. You go, you watch 10, 15, 20 minutes. But I also know there's been a really significant shift to short form content like YouTube shorts, comparable to like Instagram reels. And it feels like, I don't know YouTube as well as you do. It feels like YouTube shorts are an important, like, growth consideration for channels. Does that feel accurate in terms of when you look at the landscape of YouTube right now, is it kind of like you have to be doing YouTube shorts if you want to be growing?

It is definitely a good avenue for growth if you are interested in growing the size of your audience. Some of the shorts I've posted have racked up like 3, 4 and 5 million views and they bring in tens of thousands of followers. But I would also say YouTube has not quite found a way to integrate the two. So a lot of the new followers that come from shorts have. They're a different audience, they have different interests, so they want to watch more short form video. They're not the kind of users who are typically watching 10 minute videos. So you might gain 30,000 followers from a short, but that's not necessarily going to translate into those same viewers watching your long form video. I don't think YouTube has quite figured out how to mesh those two together. I think as a creator it's also a struggle because YouTube is like, oh, you should create short form content that kind of aligns with your long form content. So it's possible for some people. I've seen some people do it successfully. For me, like part of my long form content value is teaching you how to level up your skills in the kitchen. And that's a little hard to do in 30 seconds or 60 seconds. And so I struggle with that personally and I think a lot of creators do for many reasons. It's really hard to do both of those well because they are very different types of content. They require different types of attention, they require different types of editing and filming. And yeah, so I think a lot of creators, including myself, are in this kind of like, where should I put all of my eggs? Should I split them between short form and long form? Should I do 70, 30? Should I do 100, 0? And I've toggled back and forth between those as well. And I, I'm not sure I have the right, right answer yet.

Yeah, yeah, what, what is it for you right now? Like, if you were to say what the split is in terms of focus, what is it?

Uh, it's a hundred percent long form. Okay. Uh, a couple months ago, yeah, I posted like maybe five or six shorts just to kind of experiment. Um, and in the past I was kind of doing maybe like 20% short form, 80% long form. But as I mentioned, like my follower count was going up or subscriber count was going up, but I wasn't necessarily saying like, oh, I'm getting more views on my long videos because they have more subscribers. So for me it hasn't felt like it's worth it, but it's possible. I also just haven't been able to create short form content that long form viewers also want to watch and vice versa. It's a tricky bounce.

It's interesting. I've seen a handful of different accounts, like there's a while where YouTube optimized for like trick shot videos. For me, it's just like the best example of a YouTube short where it's like a guy in Iowa like bouncing a ping pong ball off of like seven two by fours and then it goes into like a cup. It's like somehow I find myself being like, oh, I actually do want to watch this. And it has like 42 million views on it. So like other people want to watch it as well. But then you look at the long form content and it, and this is somebody who has like 1.2 million followers. And I remember from a observation perspective, like as somebody who's interested in platforms and creators, I remember checking back in and it's like, oh, this account is growing pretty quickly. And then you look and like you can toggle over and look at like the other like long form videos, like traditional YouTube videos and it's like, oh, like low thousands of views, like 5,000 views or 10,000 views. And it almost feels like it's one platform. Like maybe it's like a grocery store where like you go in and there's like the bakery but then there's also the dairy. And like somebody who's really good at making bread isn't necessarily really good at making cheese. And some people will be good at both of those things, but they're, they seem like they're different departments. Is that how it feels to you?

Yes, yes, yes, a hundred percent. Like there's. I feel like there are two types of YouTube creators right now. One are people who started at least 3, 4, 5, 6 years ago, including myself, who their bread and butter is long form content. They've found a way to make interesting long form videos. And then there are lots of people who started when TikTok came around who are really good at making short form videos and have seen explosive growth on YouTube as well through shorts. But most the time there are exceptions of people who can do it all and hats off to them and their teams. But a lot of the people the latter category are struggling with. The opposite of what I'm struggling is like, how do I get people to watch my long form video? I have a friend who is enormously successful with short form video but just cannot get her long form videos to translate. And you're right there. They are different departments and they kind of rely on different skills and different, you know, I don't know, different little trigger points that people are interested in and can be very hard as a creator to, to not like you want to do it all. But at the same time I Think really focusing on one or the other can work to your advantage if you are really good at one of those. Because it is hard to do both at an, at a very high level.

Yeah, it's like you want to go deep on the thing that you're good at and that's working. But what's tempting is to look at the other thing and be like, oh, this is also YouTube. And so I'm going to do this because I'm good at this thing. And so then it should translate over and it's like, oh, actually it's like a, maybe a different language or it's like in a sport it's a different position and it's not. Or in music it's a different instrument. And just because you can play the saxophone really well doesn't mean like because you're in band, you can also play the French horn. And so I can see how it's tempting to look at it and say like, oh, I'll just kind of do this thing over here. But it's like learning a new skill. It seems like for your friend that has become successful with shorts, what does it look like for them to turn that attention into business revenue? Because I think that's one of the considerations is like the normal mechanism with long form content on YouTube, the easiest is like you have monetization turned on and while you still have to have a significant amount of views in order for that to translate into a meaningful amount, it's the amount of views is less than you would with long form than it would with short form. So can you talk about what that looks like, maybe using a friend or other people that you know as an example who have these big followings with short form content.

Yeah, I do think a lot of people who have found success through short form content. One of the reasons among I'm sure many that they do want to kind of break into the long form content on YouTube is that it is much more monetized. And I think at the beginning of this year or the end of last year, YouTube did announce that they were going to do a profit sharing system for short form content. But, but again like the number of ads you can display In a 30 second video, I guess shorts can be up to 60 seconds, but a lot of the popular ones are like 10 seconds. So the, the amount of advertising you can do through that is so trivial compared to a 10 minute or 15 minute or 30 minute video. Um, so yeah, as far as I know, people like I mentioned my friend who have a lot of Success on with short form video aren't like making a living from that. Whereas if you are a creator, a long form YouTube creator, and you don't have a large team, like lots of people to pay, and you're getting like several hundred thousand views per video, you can, that's, you can make a living from that alone. Of course in order to get to that level you often do need a team to help you out. So then you have other people to pay. But like you can, you can make a living from doing just long form content. But I think where you can leverage the short form content is with partnerships. We, you know, I'm sure people listening are familiar with that, but you'll see lots of short form videos that feature partnerships. And I'm at least as far as I know they can pay quite a lot. So yeah, you might not be able to get the advertising revenue, but you can make up for it in other ways.

Yeah, so you work with the brand. The bet for the brand is hey, you're really good at creating videos that get a lot of attention. And we're gonna see if you can create a video for us. And if that video gets a lot of attention occasionally you'll also see people who will like pay to promote that. So like artificially get attention to that. But it feels like organic content. And so I can see that being an opportunity as well. It's, I think it's an important point. Like in our world I think the easiest thing that we can do is like look at or like a common thing to happen is to look at how many followers somebody has on TikTok or on YouTube or wherever it might be and think like all of those numbers are the same. Like a YouTube subscriber is similar to like a podcast listen, which is similar to like a TikTok follower. But there's probably somewhere where this exists. I haven't looked into it cause I haven't thought of it until now. But like what is the actual value of those respective platforms? And it feels like even within the platforms themselves how people are consuming that content differs. And it seems like one of the most valuable ways that people can consume content is in a long form format podcast as an example, or a long form YouTube video. Because the amount of attention that somebody's giving it makes sense. A 60 second short versus a 15 minute video, like inherently more attention is usually more valuable. And so if it's a longer video, it's more valuable. In the case of YouTube, there's ads, there's maybe more ad inventory that they're selling against those. And so that makes sense. So when you look at your kind of platform, you would say, like YouTube, which is 100 long form for you right now, you'd kind of put at the top, hey, this is my most important platform because of how I communicate with people. The trust that it established establishes the relationship. Would you put your blog kind of alongside that or maybe underneath it in terms of when you look at what is most valuable?

Yeah, I would put my blog sort of right below it. We'll talk about my new subscription as well later. But that is like a new business, and so that's kind of hard to rank those. But yeah, the blog is for sure enormously valuable as an income source, and it's where the recipes live and it's the thing that I own. Um, and I'm sure you talked about this at length with lots of different people about the value of owning a website that, like, you get to control. Obviously you don't get to control whether Google surfaces you in search results, but it is enormously valuable. Um, that's where my recipes live. And because my. The nature of my content is like, super in depth and I want to, like, really help you master every recipe that you make. There's a lot of useful information in there. Um, but I would also say my email newsletter is probably like, right below that. I don't know if that's like, the same as a platform, but.

No, I think different.

Yeah, that is something I do own. Right. Like, no. What? Like, I can't control whether people click or open an email. But there's no one deciding whether my email gets delivered. Right. It's going to get delivered. So I'd say my email newsletter is right there as well. And I think to your point about, like, the value of a YouTube subscriber versus an Instagram viewer versus a TikTok viewer versus a blog reader. I think email newsletter readers have an enormous value in terms of they're taking the time to sit there and read an email that you've written. And they're often more likely to click over to your blog to read your recipes or to buy something that you're selling. And then below that, I put Instagram, which is like a fun little place, but for my business personally, is not like a big part of what brings in money or brings in devoted kind of followers and things like that.

Yep. Which is crazy because you have 800,000 followers on Instagram. Like, I think anybody else would look at that and be like. And I think there probably Are people who are doing Instagram full time with 800,000 followers. Have you made the decision like, hey, I'm not going to pursue sponsored content work with brands and so you could technically do that and be very successful in it, but just have made a business decision to not do that on Instagram?

More or less. I've done, I don't think I did any partnerships last year. I don't have any like on deck for this year. I enjoy Instagram to a certain extent, but I also have realized over the last several years, several years that like, it doesn't. It like is nice to bring people in, but it doesn't necessarily like create a devoted following of people who are going to buy your products and go to your website. Like it's so hard to get people to click over from Instagram. I know they have this new thing called manychat which I literally just experimented with yesterday. No, today. And so that's like maybe an easier way to get people to come to your site. But for a long time I focused so heavily on Instagram, but I don't know if that was like the best business decision for me. On the other hand though, if you are an Instagram 100% Instagram creator or a short form 100% creator, like you can definitely build a great community there and build a great audience there. But I think that you have to be like fully focused on that for that to happen. The creators I've seen take off on those platforms are people who are like 100% there and have their focus 100% there.

Yeah, that's great. So you mentioned ManyChat. For those who aren't familiar, this tool that allows you to kind of do opt ins or like automated communication. It's kind of like a chat bot and you can hook that into Instagram. You can deliver prompts to people that say like, hey, DM tacos to get my taco recipe or whatever it might be. And so that being kind of a place, kind of a playground that you could experiment with, maybe that could result in conversions. Speaking of conversions, you referenced this where you recently released a product, meal plans, and it looks awesome. Like was kind of looking through the sales page and the process and you know, it was obvious that a lot of work went into it. And one of the things that I really appreciated in watching the explainer video that you released, kind of letting people know that this was coming down the line was talking about the number of conversations that you had with people who followed along with you in the world of software. They call it customer development. And it was like going through the hard work of asking people what they actually need, which I feel like is so uncommon when somebody jumps into the world of product creation, information product or software tools or whatever it might be. What was that process like? And how long did you kind of sit in the development stage crafting what these meal plans would be and then we can talk about specifically what that looked like.

Yeah, so I have been creating like kind of mix and match meal prep videos that are sort of like the meal plans for many years that have always resonated with my audience, actually. This is hilarious. Started that kind of version one of this in January 2020, which, as you know what happened in March 2020, nobody wanted to do any meal prep. Then I started working on my cookbook. So it just like went on like a long back. But a couple years ago, as I started to build my YouTube audience and my blog audience and email audience, I wanted to just figure out, what are people actually looking for? I know people come to me for recipes, but what could make your life easier? And so I would ask open ended questions and surveys to my email audience, like, hey, you have five minutes, please complete the survey. And it would be questions like, what are your biggest cooking challenges? Or a dropdown of 10 different answers. What are the things you struggled with the most when it comes to making weeknight meals? And a lot of things that people said were around, I want to eat interesting meals or I want to eat good food, or I want to eat more vegan food, but I find it hard to do this on a regular basis or I find it hard to get dinner on the table without spending an hour every night. And then I just default back to my five 10 minute recipes that like, do the job but aren't very interesting and I get bored of. And so I like. We collected tons of data through that, through YouTube community polls, and tried to like map out like what's a product I could create that still delivers the value that I think I'm known for, which is like really high quality, very delicious vegan recipes that aren't like your standard 10 minute meal with four ingredients and kind of taste the same. But like, how could I do that in a way that would meet some of these or take some of these burdens off that people were mentioning and do it in a streamlined way so that like your weeknights felt a little bit less stressful and more enjoyable and you're still eating meals that you would be excited about. So yeah, we did a lot of surveying. Basically just like, type, type, form. I don't know the names of them. You know, there's just, like, different websites you can use for that. Yeah, so it was a lot of surveying in the beginning.

Yeah. And then how do you take that and craft that into, like, what does that process look like? So you talk to people, you get a general idea, you know, what you're good at, and maybe what you have a vision of for it. And then how do you marry those two things?

Yeah. So I mentioned I had been doing these kind of mix and match meal prep videos, because when I'm not, like, knee deep in recipe testing, the way I actually like to cook is to, like, spend an hour or so on Sunday or whatever day works best for my schedule, and make a couple of components, or what I call components, like maybe a batch of grains, a pot of lentils, a couple of condiments, and then use them in different ways during the week so that I'm eating interesting meals. But I'm not cooking an entire meal from scratch every night. And I know that resonated with people because I think people, at least who follow me, want to cook interesting things and eat interesting things, but planning what to cook, figuring out what you can make ahead of time, making a big grocery list, doing all that stuff is a lot of work. And not necessarily, I think, a skill that a lot of us learned growing up. And so I started kind of imagining, like, what would this look like if I could get people to do an hour or two of meal prep on a Sunday? Not to, like, make a full meal from scratch, because I want the meals to be fresh, but what are the things that they could do? And then combine them. You know, maybe use the same sauces to make two different meals, or maybe use the same pickled vegetable to make three different meals. And so that you're kind of saving on the amount of time you're cooking, but you're still getting completely different meals. So, yeah, I kind of just started making meal plans, writing them down in Google Docs, like, seeing how many I could come up with without feeling like, oh, my creativity has been tapped, or like, it's not actually doable to provide these high quality meals in a streamlined weeknight fashion. And once I got to the point where I was like, okay, I've created, like, many of them, I feel like I'm not gonna get tired of creating ideas. Then I was like, okay, I think we can do this. And so now we need to, like, have everything tested by a recipe tester.

Yeah. So one of the things about like being a creator like you are and also creating product is like you're creating the content, you're publishing content, you're doing the maintenance of like everything that comes along with the day to day. And then you go into product development, you're developing a product, but then you're also having to build a system to deliver that product. So like what did that stage look like and what did you learn? Like you go through the product development stage and you start to get an idea of what the product, what type of product would resonate with your audience? Customer development, like do you feel like you can actually deliver on it? You test that out a little bit and then you have to get into like, how are we actually going to sell this? What did you learn in that process as you started to learn about, you know, the, the system for selling it and like even marketing a product which is a little bit different than just creating content.

Yeah. So many things to think about. So many things. In the early stages I had told my partner Max, Max is both my like domestic partner and my partner in the business. So I have to clarify, some people are confused but I was like we're starting an entirely new business, are you ready for this? And he was like no, no it's not. It's just like a little thing. And I think since we've launched at least once a week, I'm like, do you remember when you thought it wasn't a separate place?

Totally. Let's do the rewind on that conversation. Play it back in slow motion.

I'm not someone who likes to be like I told you so, but told you so. Yeah, but yeah, there were so many points to like explore, like how do we get this in users hands in a way that's user friendly. That's not just my Google Doc with like, you know, my way of processing information. How do we create an email sequence that gets people the right information at the right time or cancels them if they want to cancel or puts them back into a flow if they resign them? Like just so many different things to think about. And so we actually hired last fall when we were like okay, we're doing this. We put out a job opportunity for kind of operations general manager type of role and we were very lucky. We found someone who used to be a product manager at a technology company. So she's used to building products from the ground up and incorporating user feedback and tweaking the product as necessary. So that was enormously helpful for us in like the two and a half months before launch to have someone who could think about these issues, mostly her and Max thinking about them, so that I could like, focus on more of the creative stuff.

Yep, that's great. What is the actual platform that you use for it? Is it a pre existing platform or something you built?

So the meal plans are delivered through ConvertKit, just our email program, and then it's just a PDF, so it's not anything super complicated. But one of the things that we're working on with Rachel, who's our general manager, Operations manager, is like, what does meal plan 2.0 look like? Is there a what, is there a website, is there an app, is there a portal, et cetera. So, like, we're still in the very initial phases of like, I knew I had a product I wanted to sell that I thought would be useful for at least some people in my audience. So I didn't want to, like, wait until it was 100% perfect because that can take forever.

It will never come.

Yeah, it will never come.

That will take literally forever.

Yeah. So I wanted to like, get it out and not be a perfectionist about, like, it being the ideal platform. But yeah, now we're starting to think about how might that change.

Yep. No, that's great. And know, a lot of people, we've done the same thing, like have delivered product through ConvertKit and it's like the system's there and especially if that's a platform that you're already using, I think there's a lot of wisdom to not get like, tool to spread yourself too thin across tools. You have this thing that does this and this and this and this. And like, before you know it, you can have like 12 different things. And there's something to be said about simplicity and, you know, kind of siloing as much as possible. What happens where? Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Raptive. When it comes to monetizing a blog or a site, display ads are a fantastic passive way to generate income on the content you're already producing. In fact, Raptive display ads are one of our biggest revenue generators. At Pinch of Yum, they make up nearly 80% of our overall monthly income. Raptive, which is formerly AdThrive, is on a mission to empower independent creators like you. And to date, Raptive has paid out more than $2 billion to creators. Not only do they help creators generate ad revenue, they also offer creators many other benefits to help support them with their audience revenue and business goals. For example, Raptive creators get access to industry leading tools like Topic, which helps creators discover opportunities to improve their content and plan the structure of their blog posts. You also get access to resources on HR and recruiting, SEO, email marketing, customized AB ad layout, testing and more. As a Raptive creator, you can learn more about Raptive's creator levels and what's all included in each level@raptive.com creator levels. Then when you're ready to apply, head to raptive.com and click the Apply now button. Working with an ad network has had a profound impact on the way Pinterevm monetizes our business. And by being a Raptive creator, you're getting access to results based solutions that can really impact the way your business runs and grows. Learn more@raptive.com thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode. In terms of your different platforms, what did you find to be the most impactful when you go through the process of kind of the marketing part of it because they'd all operate differently. Like you know the we talk about email being kind of this direct connection that's usually my understanding, like one of the best places to kind of direct people to purchase. But also you have this long standing relationship with YouTube people and people who are following along there. And there's a couple like finance people that I follow and they've recently released courses and it's interesting to hear them market those on their channel. And the great thing about YouTube that's different than email is like then that exists forever. Like you always have a link and you'll always have a few people kind of trickling in or thousands of people watching something. So in some sense it's kind of this evergreen piece of content that's always marketing for you in the background. But what did it look like for you? Like if you were to kind of do that same rank order in terms of platforms that were most impactful, would you be able to pinpoint ones that were more or less impactful?

Well, it was kind of a combination of YouTube and the email platform. I didn't do any on Instagram. I still haven't posted on Instagram that I have a meal plan subscription because I actually you got to do it. I know took a break from Instagram in part initially just like I needed a like mental break from it. Just. And then that was also when we were gearing up for launch and I was like I don't have time for this so I didn't do anything on Instagram for it. So I think you referenced Maybe you did, I'm not sure. I posted a kind of like sneak peek announcement video maybe two months, two and a half months before launch. And it was a short video kind of explaining why I wanted to create this product. Because I've had these conversations with people in my audience and then showing like a sneak peek of a meal plan and like how it could help you in your life and how it could transform your weeknight meals. The product was definitely not ready then, but it looked good enough on an iPad. And then from there we like had created an email automation. Like, if you are interested in learning more, sign up for our wait list. And that got lots and lots and lots of people on the wait list. And from there we asked people, if you're on the waitlist, do you want to be a beta tester? So we could have some like beta testers test out the plans in their kitchen, get feedback from them, see if we needed to like do any tweaking to the plans. So through YouTube we were able to build a pretty robust email list. And then in the last, you know, like, I don't know, like, period, before we launched, we emailed people to let them know, like, hey, this is coming soon. Know you've been waiting. Here are some exclusive discount codes that you get as a thank you for signing up for the wait list. And so it was, yeah, it was a combination of YouTube and the email list. We did do like a launch video at the beginning of January on YouTube, which was like how meal planning kind of changed my life and walking you through the steps of how you could do it on your own. But also like, it's a lot of work. So like, here's our service at the end. So it was like sort of a marketing video. It didn't perform very well because I think a lot of people get turned off when you try to sell something. At the same time, a lot of people signed up for it through the video and like it still brings in some number of people even though it's not like a high performing video. So yeah, it was a combination of like starting with YouTube but then using that to leverage our email list and build a wait list and community of people who are interested.

That's great. What do you. So now that you're on this side of it, how long has it been since you've launched that?

Two months.

Okay. What do you feel like you've learned about yourself as like an entrepreneur, as a creator? It. You really, it. It's adding in a really significant additional. Like you said, it's like a new division within your business. And I feel like anytime that happens, you learn things about yourself. What have you learned about yourself in doing this?

I. I don't think that I'm a great entrepreneur, honestly. Like, I like being the creative. And so luckily, I have Max on my team and Rachel who can, like, funnel it in the way that it needs to in order to be, like, a successful business. But I. I love doing the creative stuff. I love coming up with recipes, and I love putting the meal plans together. And it's really hard to, like, toggle off and back and forth between being creative and, like, being, like, the business stuff, like thinking about finances and thinking about marketing and how many people you need to get to hit X threshold. Like, I don't enjoy that at all. So I'm glad that I have people on the team who can handle that. Yeah. I would say for me, like, I did mention it is a separate business, but to the extent that I can just treat it as another arm of my content, it feels better to me because it's just like, oh, these are things I love doing. Not like, oh, I have to think about revenue and, you know. Yep, all the things.

Conversion rates on pages.

Yes, all those things.

I think it's. I think it's insightful, and I think if you were to sit down and talk to Lindsay, she would say a very similar thing. And I think it's something to be aware of for anybody who's listening, who's, like, creator forward. Like, you find your draw towards, you know, creating a video or a recipe development or photography or, you know, recipe writing a recipe or whatever it is. Like, if that's you, you know, the. The tr. I feel like the trick and the really challenging thing is, like, how do you protect that? Like, how do you protect the part of you that is nourished through the work that you're doing and you get energized through it. Because I think sometimes what can happen is there's opportunities and you can get pulled into those. But suddenly you're doing something that even though is maybe good from a business perspective, it's not good from, like, the health of your soul perspective. But then the question is, like, in your life, you have Max, and he's able to step in and he's able to do that. It's one of the reasons why it sounds like you're saying, like, it works well because you create content, you create the meal plans, and then the additional infrastructure around that, you have somebody who's able to come in and help with that. Do you have any thoughts for somebody who is. Doesn't have that? Like they're at a stage where they're a creator, they love creating, they're interested in, in building a business that is around content, but they don't have somebody who's also like, I'm excited to see if I can increase the conversion rate on the sales page. What is, what does that look like for somebody who's in that position?

Yeah. So early on, like, I don't think you should be trying to sell a course or a subscription. So let's start there. One of the things that I think is helpful is to be okay with practice, like getting, getting into the mode of practicing. So I'll just give you my example with YouTube. But this can apply to writing recipes, it can apply to food photography, it can apply to creating short form video is. When I started YouTube, I was still working full time, so it was never a full time thing. But I had no idea what it was doing. I was so awkward on camera, like watching it. Now I'm like, oh my God, man, like, she is so uncomfortable on camera. And I could have just given up. And like, this is not for me. Like this is not. Does not play to my strengths. But I just kept doing it and I started to eventually get better pretty gradually. Never like overnight until the point where like I think I was making a video one day and I was like, oh, I feel totally natural on camera. And it's easy to be myself because I just kept putting in the practice. So I think part of it in the early stages is not giving up. Even if you don't see results immediately, even if you don't see results in the next six months or in the next year. I'm not saying you should like continue doing something that you're really bad at, but if you enjoy what you're doing and it feels good, don't give up. Because it means you probably just need to keep practicing. You keep me, you need to keep honing your craft and you need to keep getting better at what you do. I think it's really hard with social media being so pervasive to see numbers, see folks who have millions of followers, millions of views, and it feels like they did it overnight. Almost always they did not do it overnight. And it can be discouraging when you start something new or you start a new channel or start a new platform and it's not a hit overnight. It can feel very discouraging because you're like, well, so and so and so and so. And so. And so has, you know, all this. All this traction and all this success. So to the extent it's possible, put on little blinders. I try to do that when I go on social media is like, focus on my content and what I want to post and what I want to share and what I want to interact with people and try as much as you can to, like, just not worry about what other people are doing so that you can focus on improving yourself and improving your content and continuing to practice and continuing to, like, strengthen the things that you are good at. I would say that's great. Yeah.

Yeah. I think one of the. Everybody has an app idea, right? One of the app ideas that I would love to create. I don't know what the name would be. Something more creative than this. But, like, send only. Like, you can only post. Like, it's like you have all of your respective logins, but you don't have to ever worry about logging in and then suddenly a feed, you know, seeing the feed or like notifications, it's like it's only a dashboard for you. And you could create different versions of that with different schedulers and stuff. But I think it's trying to solve that same problem, which is like, you get into it, you get discouraged. You have your, you know, other people kind of showing you the content that they're creating, which inevitably you get into this, like, compare and despair mindset if you. If you're there too long. But how about, like, on the, like, if somebody is that creator and they. And they realize that they love creating, they realize that they commit to doing that. One of the things that I. That I think comes up occasionally is like, somebody is working on a thing. They're the creator and they have somebody in their life, whether it's like a domestic partner or just like a business partner that they've, like, connected with somehow, who kind of handles some of that other stuff. I feel like it'd be interesting to talk about that for somebody who's in a place that doesn't have that. And what does it look like for somebody? Let's say they do eventually get good at creating, they do get some momentum, and they do get to a place where, like, hey, they're ready for the next step. It's almost like I'd be interested to chat with you, like, for the sake of that person who's listening. How can they build their business if they aren't the person who wants to do the business stuff or that's not the thing they want to be good at. And I guess maybe the answer is just like you either, like it's a drag and you put yourself through it and you do it, you don't do it, or you hire somebody to do it. It's probably the answer.

Yeah.

Like what would, what would your thoughts be on that for somebody who's in that position, similar to yourself, who loves creating and wants to protect that, but also knows they need some of the business, like, backbone of like all of the different considerations that come with running a digital business online?

Yeah. Okay, so a couple things. One thing that I have done several times when I try to like before, I'm like, I'm too overwhelmed with all these things on my plate. We need to hire someone. I do an exercise that I think it's called the Eisenhower Matrix. It's a four quadrant thing where you have a top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right. And I can't even remember which quadrants you put what in. But basically in one quadrant you put all the things that you currently do that you love and that you were the best at. For me, that's recipe development and making YouTube videos and probably a couple other things, but let's just leave those high level. In another quadrant, you put all the things that you love that you currently do, but that you're maybe not the best at. Like I enjoy food photography, but there are lots of people who are better than it than me. In another quadrant, you put all the things that you actually don't like doing but that you're probably the best at, at least in your sphere in this current space. So for me, that might be like getting the meal plans into a place where that feels really good. I don't dislike it, but it's really time consuming and I wish I could maybe take some of it off my plate, but I'm not sure right now who that would be. And then in the fourth quadrant is all the things that you do that you don't actually really like and that you, you're not necessarily the best at. So obviously those things you should outsource first. And so a lot of those might be the business types of things like an accountant, a bookkeeper. What are all the other things?

Like an analytics guru, like somebody. Yeah.

An SEO person. Who.

Developer. Yeah.

You know, lots of different things that are required of our jobs and start outsourcing there. That's not necessarily like the same as hiring a business partner who will like, know how to do everything. But if depending on how early you are in your career, I definitely Recommend starting in that quadrant and then between the other two quadrants of second and third one. It's kind of like depending on who you can find that fits the bill better. You might hire for things that you're good at, but you're not the best at, or you might hire for things that you don't want to do anymore, even though you are good at. Another thing that I think can be helpful if you are at the stage where you have had some success and you are ready, like for someone who is like going to come on and really help you take your business to the next level is like, this is kind of, I don't know, not awkward to say. But like a lot of people who are, I don't know, I feel like a lot of corporate people who have a lot of like education, a lot of skills, like hate their jobs and are looking for something else and looking for like a more creative, more alternative path. And I feel like there are so many people out there would be interested in working in a creative space, particularly if you are in a niche that they're passionate about. For me, I'm vegan and so I feel like I have a lot of people who are interested in working with me who are vegan because they have the same values or the same kind of things that they care about in life. And so like tap into your circles. Either people, you know, like, maybe if you went to business school, there might be people you went to business school who would be interested in working with you if you have a large enough audience, I guess guarantee you there's people in the audience who would be interested in working for you and have certain skills that you don't. It's gonna vary widely depending on like the skill sets that you do need and the, the type of person you're looking for and like how many hours and like what their strengths are. But we have hired pretty much exclusively through like my audience and it's been very, very helpful and very rewarding. And like we've had like long term employees who are really critical and vital to the team that we found just by asking people, like, do you want to work for me?

Yeah. And what does that look like? So you put together a job description, you develop kind of some of the examples of tasks somebody would be working on, projects they'd be working on. And then do you like mention it on YouTube? Send out an email? It's probably all the above if you wanted to.

Yeah, I mean it, it depends on where your audience is. I think email is probably the Best place for that kind of stuff. I think people are thinking a little bit more professionally when they're reading emails, opposed to like scrolling Instagram. But I think I try to post it wherever it makes the most sense and to get as many eyeballs on it. So I would encourage people who have a sizable audience to tap into that. If they are looking for a new employee, maybe their first employee, that's great.

And the other thing that's so nice about that is like somebody's coming to the table and they know what you're about. They generally know like what you, how you create content, like how you're showing up, like to hire. It's kind of like hiring somebody from your tribe as opposed to somebody from the outside. And like in your case, if you get somebody who's not vegan, that's probably okay, but it feels different if somebody is aligned with kind of worldview or like the type of content that you're creating. And for them as well, like beneficial for somebody who feels like this is important to them to then be doing that work. Like what a gift for people to do work that they feel like is important and matters. And also like autonomous. Like you can operate differently than maybe you can within a big corporate company where it's a little bit more narrow. So I love that and then also love the idea of building that matrix out and saying, hey, what are the most important things that I'm least interested in, least capable of doing? And using that as a starting point to hire out, whether an agency contractor, somebody freelance, maybe it is a part time W2 role, but kind of using that as kind of a starting place, I think is. I love that. So that's awesome. What do you feel like when you look ahead the next year, two years, three years, what do you think is going to be most important? Like where are you pointing the ship and what are you prioritizing as the world around us is kind of ever changing? Algorithms, platforms, AI, all of this for you personally, when you look ahead, where do you envision yourself going at this point? Knowing that it can always change.

Oh, I will preface this by saying, as I mentioned earlier, I love being the creative, not the entrepreneur. So in my mind I'm like thinking like three, six months ahead, not three years ahead. Which is great because for me, I like to just enjoy every day. But I also know I should like put on big picture hat and think about this more. But I do think that with like the increase in AI and just how easy it is to replicate certain things, like I Do want to continue doing video and leaning even more heavily into video until someone can like completely replicate me, which, you know. Yeah, who knows? That might not be that far away, but yeah, I think video has just like leaning more heavily into long form video. Continuing to do it, doing more of it to the extent that I can. I also have my second cookbook coming out this year and as long as it took to, to do, I do genuine, genuinely love writing cookbooks and kind of the creative freedom you have to develop recipes that are about anything and to like just work on this like one big project. And so I would love to do more cookbooks in the future and like have that be a big part of my work. But I also think that like there's room to do more products and more, not necessarily more subscriptions, but like maybe a course, maybe like a physical product. Like people are always asking me for like spice blends and sauces that they can buy at the store. And so like, I think the problem is there's just too many options for me to be like, yes, in five years I will be doing X and I will be making X amount of money. It's like I could be doing a hundred different things. And so I think that's like both a good and bad thing. I don't, I don't know if it's actually bad at all. I think it's a good thing because it's just like there's so many exciting possible things to work on and I don't know, I'm, I, I like to take things not day by day, but like week by week, month by month and see, see how they shake up.

Yeah. And I think part of it too, being a good creator is, is responding to what you're excited to create about, to, to create. And I think that energy comes across in the video or in your writing or in how you are communicating, where if you are excited about the thing that you are doing. And for all of us, primarily what we're doing is we're creating content. That content is either monetized through product or sponsorship or ads. And so it's important for us that our main product, which is our content is captivating, is engaging. And I think one of the best ways to do that is to make sure that it comes from a place of like, true, genuine passion. And I think as the world of information switches from transaction or switches more to transactional with search, hey, like, give me this information. Generative AI gives it to you. Our competitive advantage can be found in our humanity, which is like I'm going to go to this person, I'm going to go to Nisha because I feel like I want to interact with her content and with her as opposed to like a transactional interaction. And you do such a great job with that. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing kind of a state of things for you. But also it's an industry check in to kind of hear what you see as a as a extremely successful creator. For people who want to follow along with what you're up to. Check out the meal plans. Can you do a quick shout out for the best place to follow along with you online and also the meal plans?

Thank you. Yes, you can follow me at Rainbow Plant life. That's Instagram, YouTube. My blog is rainbowplantlife.com and you can check out the meal plans@rainbowplantlife.com mealplans yeah, all things Rainbow Plant Life.

Awesome. Thanks Nisha. Thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me. Hello Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. I wanted to pop in today and thank you for tuning into this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We are so grateful for you, for you for listening. Before we sign off, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Food Blogger Pro forum. In case you didn't know how it works. If you're a Food Blogger Pro member, you get access to our amazing forum. It's one of my favorite places on Food Blogger Pro. I spend a lot of time there myself. And on the forum we have tons of different topics for you to explore. We have a building traffic section, a photography section, we have an essential tools section. We chat about generating income and essential plugins, all sorts of areas for you to ask questions and chat with your fellow Food Blogger Pro members. It's a great place to connect with fellow members, troubleshoot any issues you're having and brainstorm together. Our industry experts are always popping into the forum to help members with their questions. Casey Marquis and Andrew Wilder are always popping in and so is Danielle Liss, our legal expert. It's a really great place to get access to these experts and have them help you with your concerns. The forum is also just a fantastic place to find a community in this food blogging space as you're working to grow your site and your business. If you're ready to join Food Blogger Pro and get access to our wonderful Forum, head to foodbloggerpro.com join to learn more about our membership. We really hope you enjoy this episode and get and can't wait to see you next week for another great episode. Have an amazing week.