455: Creating Your Own Products and Adding a Revenue Stream with Barbara Hobart

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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 Barbara Hobart. Barbara is a television writer and producer who also happens to work with food bloggers and other entrepreneurs and businesses to help identify, create and manufacture custom products. In this interview, Bjork and Barbara chat all about why food creators might consider selling their own products and what kinds of products they might look into developing. Barbara chats more about the importance of selling your own products as a way to generate new revenue streams and also to increase brand awareness amongst your readers. They walk through all of Barbara's recommendations and tips and tricks for how to develop, manufacture and distribute a product and what kinds of products tend to perform best for food creators. Barbara also started her own company, Best Ever Backdrops, to create backdrops for food photographers and videographers, and she chats a little bit more about how she fell into that line of work and what it was like to develop her own product. We always love to talk about the importance of diversifying your income on this podcast and this is an awesome interview to get you thinking about how you might do that. Without further ado, I'll let Bjork take it away.

Barbara, welcome to the podcast.

I'm thrilled to be here. It's so good to to meet you and beyond. Thanks for having me.

We're going to be talking about something that I try and bring up a decent amount on the podcast, which is thinking strategically around other ways that we, we being content creators, publishers, people who have a following can create an income. And a lot of times, oftentimes what people are interested in is I want to build an audience. And a lot of people are thinking, I want to build an audience and then get traffic and then monetize via ads, which is great. Sometimes people are thinking, I want to build a following, and I want to build it on social. And I'm going to work with brands to create income by getting paid to talk about a product or integrated into a recipe. But today we're going to be talking about creating a following, building traffic in order to then sell something that you own. It's your own product. And I think it's a great category to think about because it, there's a lot of different reasons, and we'll, we'll talk about what those are. But what I want to know is how did you get into this, how did you get to this place where you, you know, are coaching, advising, and working with people to create their own products?

Well, I have a kind of a crazy story because I, you know, and we all came to this business, I think, you know, in a, in a very unique way. I don't think, you know, we all said, like, one day we woke up, we're all food bloggers or something. For myself, just a very brief background is I'm actually a television writer and producer. And, and so I spent like 25 years in Los Angeles working in Hollywood, and I accidentally invented a product back in the 90s. And really quickly, I invented the very first decorative light switch plate cover that required no rewiring. And I launched my company in England. There's a whole long story that goes on with that. And it was an accident. But today I help my.

What do you mean, what do you mean when you say it was an accident?

Okay, well, okay, I'll tell you the story.

Yeah, please do.

I know, it's crazy. Okay. So I was working at the studio, I was on the show, and I was on a hiatus, and I just bought a new house. And so I'm in Encino, and I just bought a new house. And it was the 90s, and I was sponge, and sponge painting was the thing.

So I, I remember at my house, sponge painting our basement downstairs.

Yeah, it was like a thing to do. So I had sponge painted, literally, like every vertical surface there was. So anyway, I went into the blue bathroom that used to be yellow, and there was like this plastic light switch plate cover on the wall, this little plastic thing. And I sponged over it and I ruined it. It was like, ugh. And it was like this again, this 17 cent plastic switch plate. And so I ended up like, Martha Stewart was really big at the time. This is Martha pre prison. And I ended up, she was doing all this decoupage and so she was putting like these pictures on different things. I don't know when she wasn't regrouting her driveway or something. So anyway, I started putting these pictures on this light switch cover. Now I know this is going to sound insane, but back then, light, decorative light switch plate covers were not a thing. It wasn't a product that didn't really exist. So anyway, I did that and whatever and I had some friends come over, they go, oh my God, that's really cute, you should sell these. I said, well, I'm. I'm working at the studio. I don't really have time to like make light switch covers. But anyway, so I ended up hiring. They go, well, these are really cute. And I'm like, oh, well, okay. And so I hired a bunch of stay at home moms that would handcraft these things. And this is now what's crazy about this is this is before Google and I had dialogue. So, you know, and then like. And so I had like this website that was the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen. And but people had started to see them online and some people go, oh, I wanted like to purchase them, like some little craft stores. I was like, whatever. And again, it wasn't really like a business that I was making money at because I was working, you know, as a television writer.

Yeah.

So anyway, I started doing that. We started. And the girls, the women that I had hired, they were doing like craft shows. Everybody was having fun and it was, I don't know, it was just a weird thing. And so what happened was this was like in 1994 and I ended up. It was like 2003. I was visiting friends in London and they had just redone their kitchen and they had just done this, their back switch to this magnificent, gorgeous Italian stone tile. And they had this square light switch, which is what they have in England, sticking out like this hard. I said, oh my God, let me make you a light switch cover. And my friend Jonathan goes, well, you can't. I said what do you mean I can't? He goes, well, our switches are physically molded into the plastic and then wired into the wall.

Sure. So it's like the actual component.

Yes.

Is different.

Yes. Yeah. And I said, you mean like the whole country's like this? He's like, huh? And I was like, oh. I said, well. Well, that's weird. And so I get back and two days later, I said, well, I'm inventing a light switch cover for. For England at all. Now I don't even know what the word injection molding is. I mean, again, I've never done this before. So I basically invented the very first decorative light switch plate cover that required no rewiring. And I launched my company in England nine months later. And my first client, oddly enough, I did a trade show. My first client was Laura Ashley, and they gave me all their wallpapers to match with their light switch cover. And I became their manufacturer. And from there, that's how I ended up in manufacturing, which was weird. So I'm a comedy writer slash manufacturer.

Interesting. The only. The only one.

Yes, the only one. And it was too long and it didn't fit on my business card, and I just stopped telling people. But. But today as I. As I joke around and I always say, you know, but today I help my clients really create custom products on purpose.

Yeah.

And so I've been. I don't make light switch covers anymore. It's because there's so many of them. And so I really diversified and I ended up, you know, changing my company, and I ended up, you know, really creating products for global brands as well as entrepreneurs and startups and people that really want to create a brand awareness and control their own revenue.

Yeah. It's interesting. We had a conversation with a founder I talked to. His name is Nathan Barry. He has a email company called ConvertKit. A lot of creators, publishers, people use it. Yes. And he has this concept that he talks about called the billion dollar creator. And the whole premise is that the least effective way for people who have a following to monetize is through, like, ads and sponsor content. And the most effective way is to build kind of like a sister, brother, sibling brand that can be built alongside of it. He uses the example, you know, like Kardashians would be an example. But there's also, in the food space, like, Primal Kitchen is a really great brand that was bought for, like, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. And that the founder of that company had previously, Mark Sisson had previously had a blog that he was running, and he used that blog to launch Primal Kitchen. And so you see, you know, a lot of these examples of people building these successful companies and leveraging their following to either get all of the majority of the sales or sometimes the initial traction to move things forward and then eventually it maybe gets kind of like enough momentum or it gets to a point where it can kind of sustain itself. But there's a ton of opportunity there. And also it's a little bit intimidating. Like the idea of creating a physical product for people who are used to creating content publishing, Instagram. Yeah, Virtual content. To think about having a product suddenly is like, maybe that's for a lot of people would be intimidating because it's kind of a different business division. So how do, how would somebody know if they're ready to take time to invest in building an actual product or you know, even more so a different brand that sells products?

Absolutely. Well, the first thing is, you know, there's, you know, if you have, for people that have a really huge following, you know, and you're in, you're making money with ads, that's amazing. And you already have a built in audience who's going to buy from you because they're already buying from you, they want you, they're downloading your content. The thing I tell people is if you're making a ton of money with ads, that's great. I'll tell a story later about, about how that, you know, and everybody should keep that. But you're really not in control because of the algorithm. And I mean, all of a sudden in an algorithm changes, you could lose a tremendous amount of your following and your ad revenue. So one of the. I was going to tell the story about creating this cookbook, but I'll look to that.

Well, we can, we can share it now, as long as it's relevant.

Yeah, it is. So there was a very large, very large influencer who. And a baker. She's in the baking space. She does savory baking stuff, but primarily like cookies and sweets and things like that. And she made a tremendous amount of money with ad revenue. And then when Covid hit, I mean, things just stopped. I mean, you know, the ads were not going to shoot. And she's like, oh my God, I don't know exactly, you know, like I'm going to do. And she also, you know, wasn't fond of having somebody else in control of her bottom line and how she generated revenue. And so, you know, people had said to her, you know, well, have you ever thought of, you know, creating a cookbook? And she says, well, yeah, I mean, she had a digital and you know, but she had all the recipes there, just as everybody does. You know, there are hundreds of recipes ready. And so she set out with this goal Because I don't know. Well, like, I don't know, maybe I'll, I'll sell 100. And so she did a whole bunch of research on where to print it and how to print it and whatever. And she didn't want to lay out any money upfront, so she did it all with pre sales and within like a matter of, I don't know, 72 hours that she had like 500 pre sales. So she thought of like, oh, maybe I'll sell 100. And then she went to 500. Well, her second edition, she sold over 4,000. And then last month she sold 12,000. And the profit margins on that now everything that she's making now since 2020, when she decided to get into this, has far surpassed any ad revenue. And she's not having to promote other people's brands. She is in charge of promoting herself. And the profit margin is, is, is amazing. I mean, everybody would have a different size book or. Sure, whatever. But like, for instance, I work with a lot of people that publish cookbooks or any kind of book because I work with a lot of different types of companies. And for instance, like you could do print on demand, which there is really no profit margin to speak of.

Yeah. Because the idea is you're in that for people who aren't familiar, people buy a copy that starts the process of not only getting the book shipped to them, but also the book actually created and manufactured. So it's like on demand production of the product, which is really expensive from a manufacturing standpoint.

Right, right. And I work with all different kinds of printers and publishers of all different, different levels. And so for instance, like, let's say you wanted to print a small cookbook and you know, you wanted it to be 60, 72 pages. I mean, somewhere in there, you know, not a huge book, you know, you want it to be a smaller size. You maybe you wanted a perfect bond. I mean, you could do a hardcover, but let's say you wanted a perfect bond. It's perfect bond, I think is better because it costs less to ship. So anyway, let's say you're printing the book for. I'm going to pick a number here, 60 page book, a 7 by 9, let's say, going to cost you $5, 5, $6. Well, you could sell that book for 1995-2495, which several of my clients have. So if you're selling 10,000 of those, do the math. It's a massive, massive profit margin that you control. And the one thing that I think that scares People the most is like they don't know where to begin. And they're also like afraid of like turning, as I always say to people. They're also quite afraid of like turning their like dining room table to a mailing facility.

Right.

And I always tell people there's so many different options where you don't have to do that. You know, you can, you know, use fulfilled by Amazon, which is my least favorite choice.

Why is that?

The fees they take out.

Sure. And fulfilled by Amazon, meaning you have, let's say a pallet of books. You send that pallet of books to Amazon and they take care of all of the shipping, manufacturing or not manufacturing.

And they take a cut of the sale.

Yeah, sure.

And, and what I do and what I've told, you know, all my clients, especially in the food blogging world, because I'm doing a lot of spices and, and baking goods for a lot of different clients. Right now you use a private fulfillment center and they fulfill. They have cheaper shipping rates and their pick and pack rights are cheaper than, than Amazon and they do not take a cut of your sale and the order comes in from your website and it goes directly to them and they ship it and you don't have to be bothered.

Yeah. And in that case, the biggest consideration would be that your book wouldn't be on Amazon.

You can sell it. No, no. Because you as a seller can sell.

It and then the third party. Yeah, got it.

Right. But the thing is you can. But since you're the, since they're not doing the fulfilled by, you're charging the shipping and it just goes straight out. So you have your, like, if you have your own Amazon store, you could sell it there. You can also just sell it as your own product and you could certainly sell it on your own website, which actually three of my clients are doing and none of them are doing it on Amazon because they don't want to pay the commission.

Sure. And are they doing that with like a Shopify or. Okay, so they'll create a Shopify store and they'll list their products. The products could be actual food, like spices, baking kit, things like that, or cookbook. And people can on that page, that Shopify site, which would be a different URL they could purchase and check out. And then my guess is what happens for those creators is the primarily what they're thinking about is not how do I get people to my website, but how do I have a mention of my product within the content that I'm doing. So suddenly they become content marketers. And content creators with a strategic mindset around marketing their product. Is that the shift that you see happen?

Well, yes, and a lot of things that are great. Like for instance, like let's say you have a recipe that has like your number one recipe. Let's say you use a specific spice. I help people create their own spice lines all the time. You don't have to buy like thousands of bottles. I mean, you know, you could start very small minimums, which, which is fabulous for people that are just starting out. And so on that recipe, you have your product linked to that and they just hit the button and they just check out. And one of the things that's so great about, you know, everybody you know in the food blogging world has their own blog. You don't even need your own website specifically for Shopify. They have something called Shopify Lite where you just can sell. So it's like $9 a month and you just use our URL and you promote it from within your site where your thousands of people are already going. Which is your built in audience, which everybody's so envious of.

Yeah, to have an audience to be able to sell, a lot of times it's one of the hardest things to do is to have an audience. That's why you so often see brands reaching out to creators to do branded content or sponsor content. The other thing that I feel like it opens up is the opportunity for you then to go to other creators and say, hey, I have this thing. What would it look like to pay you to talk about it? Like, you can start to think strategically and think different about how you're promoting your own products in a way where we can't really do that when the product we're selling is content and the content is monetized via ads or sponsorships.

Right.

So what would your recommendation be for somebody who's interested in thinking about or interested in taking the next step with selling a product? And you've talked about cookbooks, but also like spice lines. Like my guess is you could also look at doing things like kitchen utensils. How do you, how do you approach that world?

Well, you can do, you can sell individual, I mean people do subscription boxes or monthly boxes or welcome kits and, or, you know, the baking essentials. One of the things that I tell my clients is to think about what they use every single day. What are they recommending that, you know, what's in every recipe, what are they known for, what will help their followers, what will their audience love? And you know, it could be A line of, you know, like you said, like, you know, cooking utensils, you know, or it could be a special spice that you have. It could be digital scales. I mean, if there's something that you use every single day, you can have that branded with your logo. There is not a product that you cannot brand with your logo. I've been doing this for 30 years. And these are also great giveaways just to create brand awareness. I mean, you can use them in both ways. So I ask people, like, do you have a specific hot sauce or a spice? Or do you have sprinkle? Like, let's say you do cupcakes, like baking tins, or the silicone baking mats for macaroons with little circles. I mean, again, I don't bake. I can't even get cookie dough out of a tube. So I'm not the person to ask about that. But I certainly have made enough of it for different clients. So, like, people, like, they may want to do something where you just want to keep top of mind. And like, for instance, here's something that people don't really think about. Like, everybody loves something that's eco friendly. And you want to keep. I always say this, you want to keep your brand in their hands. And there's this product, like my number one selling product for just everybody, it doesn't almost matter what industry they're in, are custom printed Swedish dishcloths. And one of the things that's kind of cool about them is you could put a recipe on them. You can put your logo and people are washing up in a Swedish dishcloth. Most people don't really know this is that it's eco friendly, it's compostable, it's biodegradable, It's. And they replace. One Swedish dishcloth replaces 15 rolls of paper towels and sponges. And it's such a great way, like, for instance. And it's easy to ship. I mean, it weighs like an ounce. And it's something that is a great gift. And like, you know, you want to give away, like, for instance, holiday gifts. So you might want to put together, like, you know, essential things for your kitchen and put together the top three items that may be something that you know your audience is going to use and love.

Yeah. So can you. In the realm of product creation, can you talk about the difference between white labeling something and like creating a custom product that is a little bit more involved?

Sure. Let's start. Let's do this. With spices. There are. Because that's the easiest way to distinguish you can do your own custom blend. So you give a co packer. If you don't know a co packer, I work with them. Or you can google a co packer that you want to work with. And what you do is you will give them your custom blended recipe. And one of the things that's interesting about this and why I encourage people to do this. So when you think about a recipe, let's say your blend has seven different spices. And let's say that person, your home cook does not have those seven spices. Seven spices also can be really expensive when you think about it. And maybe they don't want to measure it out and they don't want to do a teaspoon of this whatever. So that's another great reason is you love this spice that I'm using for my Indian cooking. Here it is in one jar. You have to measure anything out. So what you do is you give a co packer your recipe and you sign a non disclose agreement and they will blend it up for you.

And can you talk about the non disclosure agreement? That's to make sure that they don't share that and and recipe with somebody else.

Right. Because it's not their business. I mean, nobody wants your blend. I mean people say, would you sign an NDA? And I'm like, yeah, because we don't want you to go out and sell it. I said, trust me, I'm not going out and selling it. I'm too big. First of all, I don't sell people's products.

Your business, that's not my business.

But yes, I'm happy to sign it for you.

Yeah.

And all legitimate companies do this. There's always, you know, your recipe is secure. Now here is something that is like a white label. Okay. You know how you go to the grocery store and now you go to every grocery store from like Kroger to Trader Joe's to anywhere you could think of. How many times will you see everything Bagel? Well, every copiac on the planet to put your label on that. Now that's saturating the market a bit. And you could certainly come up with your own everything Bagel. But that's like the thing where co packers will have, let's say you don't have your own famous blend ready to go. But they have blends that are proven like, you know, hamburger spice or poultry blend or fish seasoning or jalapeno hot sauce spices or you know, jambalaya spices or whatever. They have tried and true blends.

Sure.

That are on the shelves that are really, if you go to the supermarket and you see a famous name, sometimes it's not necessarily their blend. I mean like if it's emerald, it probably is his. And what you do is they'll like you. They have a list of all the blends that are ready to go. And what they'll do is they'll have usually because it's such a, it's, it's like an in house thing, they'll put your label on that and you might only have to like buy like 48 jars as opposed to like when you're investing in your own custom blend. What there is usually with that is there's a development fee and it's not usually, oh my God, it's like, you know, several hundred dollars. It's not like anything but you might have to start with you know, two, three hundred jars. Now for bloggers that have a following that's not difficult to sell if you're just starting out, it may be a great way to build your brand because people go, why don't I have a big following? I said, well, you could think about it in two different ways. People go, well, it's in my five year plan. And I always say to people, well, why do you want to build somebody else's brand for five years? Start now. One of the things that I've always heard, it's also not the size of your following, it's how engaged they are. You can have 1,000 engaged followers and make know, a million dollars, you know, depending on what you're selling.

Right.

You don't need 350,000 followers to, to you know, make a nice, you know, six figure income.

Yep, yep. So in that world, and this is, you know, it's interesting, we had some friends who were developing or thinking about developing a like non alcoholic alcohol. I don't know what the category was. I don't remember. Yeah, non alcoholic. Thank you. Yeah, I don't, I don't remember the specifics of what it was. But one of the things that was interesting is just learning about like, oh, there are companies who do this. Like they go through the process of helping you, you know, pick out what needs to be included and they give you samples and you go through the product development stage and, and but then there's also companies like you said, and a lot of times what's interesting is it feels like companies like Target will sell, let's say a flower, but that flower is actually the same as the branded flower. But it's just Target is buying, it's under Their label. Yeah. And then rebranding it. And so even the biggest, most established companies are doing this where they're relabeling a product that is essentially the same. Maybe cereals would be another example of where that potentially happens. And so. Well, as a. As a creator who's interested in selling a thing, it sounds like the question then is, you know, do you want to create something that is custom and unique to yourself, or do you want to maybe fast track that a little bit and say, I believe in my brand enough and I think people will want to buy from my brand and I'm going to use something that already exists in the world of spices. It's like a spice that's already been developed by a co packer and label that under my own name and sell it. And my guess is there's an appeal to create something custom. Like, I think people probably like the idea of something that's unique to them.

Absolutely. However, if there's a poultry blend out there, let's just like, you know, a seasoning mix for chicken, and your label's on that. They're not going to know you didn't create that. If it's a fabulous spice that you love that makes it oregano and garlic and onion and tarragon and whatever is in there, and your name is on that and you're standing behind it. They don't know that you didn't create that because they haven't tasted. I mean, look, I mean, if you slap your name on everything bagel, I mean, everybody knows what everything bagel tastes like right now, because whatever. But there's so many blends out there right now. Like, if you look in the store for, like, poultry blend, you don't know how different they all are. Maybe they came from. But if your name is on it and you're standing by it, that is your blend.

Yeah. And part of it too is, let's say there are a hundred different poultry blends. Your job then as a brand builder is to make sure that you are picking one out that works really well for the context in which you're going to advertise it and market it. And it's. I think it all comes down to trust. And if you are picking something out and kind of curating that and then selling it to your audience and they get it and they're like, hey, this is exactly like you described it to be. It's helpful. It tastes good. That is a win for your brand. If you're just kind of getting whatever you can and trying to Sell it. And you can also dilute your brand potentially by not doing that work. So it all comes down to you as a curator, as somebody who knows your audience knows what they would find helpful. Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Cultivate wp, specifically, a new offering they have called Cultivate Go. So Cultivate wp, the agency or the company, focuses on designing and developing food blogs. And it was founded by Bill Erickson, who's this incredible WordPress developer. We know because as I'll share, we've worked with him and Duane Smith, who's this incredible designer. And Bill developed a version of Pinch of Yum before we had our own internal team. And it was one of the fastest growing versions of the site that we've had. So, as you know, in this industry, word spreads quickly about people who do good work. And Bill and Duane have really filled their calendar over the past few years with doing these custom websites for some of the biggest food sites on the web. You can see the list on their website and they would create these fully custom designs, but they would cost literally multiple tens of thousands of dollars. And that makes a lot of sense if you're a site that gets multiple millions of page views. But what they realized is there's a lot of really successful sites who need the best technology in the world to power them, but can't justify spending multiple tens of thousands of dollars. So that's why they launched Cultivate Go. It's a semi custom theme design and white glove site setup. So you choose one of the core themes, they have multiple options, and then their team customizes the logo, the brand colors, the typography so it matches your brand exactly. And then they set it up on a staging environment where you can test it out, get a feel for it, and can launch your site within just one week. And the cost is only $5,000. And here's the thing, you have the exact same features, functionality and support as the themes that cost up to 10 times as much as a Cultivate Go theme. So that means your Cultivate Go site can compete on an even technological playing field with the biggest food sites in the world. If you're interested in checking it out, go to foodbloggerpro.com go or you could just search Cultivate Go in Google. Google. Thanks so much to Cultivate WP for sponsoring this episode. How about from a distribution standpoint with that? Let's say you do decide to go the route of, of getting a certain blend of a Spice then do you have that shipped to like just logistically, does that go to somebody who is a. Would it be considered a three Pl? And then they would. Can you talk about what that process looks like?

Yeah, it's the shipping. I mean again, you can have it fulfilled. I mean you could fulfill it yourself if you're starting out and do it at home and print out your own labels or what have you. Or you can use a fulfillment center. As I said, there's Amazon Fulfilled by Amazon, which is obviously huge. Or across the country there are so many fulfillment centers that really fill your product and they'll package it in a nice box or a bag or however you want it done. And the one thing I always tell my clients is when I lived in Los Angeles and I still had the Switchblade company, I actually used a fulfillment center on the west coast and I'll never do that again because one of the things that was so awful about that was if I had a ship product to somebody in New York that's a five day ship. And so I happen to be based in the Midwest right now. But even if I were not based in the Midwest, I love having a fulfillment center because then if you're shipping from the middle of the country, like I ship out of Illinois, it's two days to New York or it's three days to Los Angeles. So it cuts down on that.

Yeah, like Kansas City being kind of that example of like right in the middle.

Right in the middle. And that's really, I think that's really important. I think that, you know, I've been working with, developing a couple of different spice blends with a couple of different clients and they're very, very different types of brands. And one went with her own custom mix because she just loved it better. And what she did is a taste test. She got the. She paid for them to do her own custom blend and then blind tasted it against the CO Packers. Similar flavor profile.

Yep.

And she didn't tell anybody. Well, she had her family, she has a huge family and she had. And the kids were all whatever. And her inner kids, grown kids and everybody tasted this and hands down, hers one and they had no idea, you know, what they were tasting or whatever. So it really depends on, you know, if you come upon a blend that you love and you feel that, you know, if you loved it, go with it. If you want to do your own custom blend of, you know, Indian spice or a Mexican spice or you know, something that's going to make your vegan soup taste Better go with that. You know, it's really, the investment might be, you know, several hundred dollars and you have to get like maybe, you know, two, 300 bottles.

Yeah.

But it's not that huge.

Yep, that makes sense. One of the things that when I think about the world of actual food product that I get nervous about is like you ship something out and then somebody. It has peanuts in it and then somebody has an allergic reaction and they die. Like, yeah. Worst case scenario. Because it's so different than, you know, putting a recipe on Instagram and somebody makes that recipe and, you know, they have success or they don't have success. But suddenly when you're creating a food product, it feels like you're entering into a different category where the stakes are a little bit higher in terms of quality product and making sure that it's, you know, my guess is there's all different types of co paxers as well. Like some would that have this, like. And I was talking to a friend actually who sold his company to Land o' Lakes and he talked about the. All of those considerations that go into it. And if you pick the wrong company to produce your product, it can result in as inferior product. So what, what is, what are the considerations that a business builder needs to be aware of when starting to create food products? And you have expiration dates and you have, you know, customer support. That looks different. Storage, things like that.

Yeah, I mean, I'm doing a line of chocolate for a baker right now. And the main thing is where are those chocolate bits being stored? At what temperature?

Yes, exactly.

And you know, and, and that's all built in. Really. What you need to do is when you find the co packer you want to work with, and I work with tons of them of all different kinds. I mean, some do just confection, some do soup. I mean, it's just, it's everything. It's a whole world of, of co packers out there and suppliers and vendors. And really it's doing your due diligence to make sure you're working with a factory that is certified and you know, that has all the proper FDA requirements. You know, because you are handling food. So that's the first thing. And so, you know, you're getting that. And then you have your own business insurance.

Sure.

Liability insurance. And just like anything else, I mean, like if you were not selling food, let's say you're selling digital scales or like you're selling. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Like a chef knife. I mean, somebody could cut themselves.

Yeah. Or the blade could break.

Or a blade could break or, you know, whatever. So you have your. In your insurance liability.

Yeah. And that would be an entirety. We've actually been looking to get somebody who's an expert on insurance business insurance on the podcast because I think we don't think about that or talk about that a lot, but, like, making sure you have liability insurance and umbrella policy above your current insurance that you have and all of that stuff. We do real estate, obviously, in real estate, you think about that, but I think it kind of gets forgotten in our world and just how important it is to actually have some insurance. Even more so than when you actually are creating products. Is there a way to understand, like, the level of quality for a copactor co packer, co manufacturer, like somebody who's creating these products? Is there any, like, database of ranking for the quality of these different companies?

I think it's a question of doing the. Your. Your research just like as you would to pick any manufacturer. You know, I mean, like, for instance, I have been. I work, as I said, I work with a lot of different suppliers across many different products because I create hundreds of different types of products. And I was. And like, for instance, one of the spice companies that I was working with claimed to have the best spices. I was like, okay. And I'd worked with them before, and I wasn't that happy with the service. So like, in other words, it's who you feel comfortable working with. So anyway, I wasn't sure about how I felt about continuing to work with them. And I had another spice co packer that I wanted to work with. And I said, I've got this blend. And I said, I want you to do this recipe and I want you to blend. It came out two completely different ways. People are also buying spices from different places.

Sure.

You know, I mean, like, for instance, you know, it's. It's as we say, like garbage in, garbage out. I mean, the end result is going to be as good as the. As the ingredients that you put into it. Like, if you're doing something, you know, with Hershey's chocolate versus Calibo or, you know, Guitard versus, you know, Wilbur, you know, whatever. I mean, there's so many different things. So it's really up to your taste, palette and your judgment as to which supplier and, and which spice that you go with. Like, you might say, you know, I really don't look. I mean, if you like, laid out all these different chocolates next to each other, you did a taste test it's like kind of the Coke and the Pepsi taste. Some people are going to go, I want Coke. And other people, I like Pepsi better. It's really going to be up to you. And all the, all the co packers are all, you know, FDA certified and all the labeling is all, you know, done accordingly, you know, with the right Y labeling that you need for. It's not like done in like somebody's kitchen.

Right, right. So you obviously have worked with many different companies that are doing this. Creators, publishers, brands who are creating their own product and selling it. Are you able to pinpoint any kind of commonalities or similar traits with people who have success creating a product, whether it be, you know, cookbook, a chocolate, a spice, a physical product, who are able to successfully build that into either a revenue stream within their current company or a separate company that in and of itself becomes successful? What do you see as kind of the common traits with people who find success selling a product?

I, I think what sets people apart are the people that are tired of promoting somebody else's products like I do on the, on this one, on one video. I, I share, you know, like, you know, Coke doesn't promote Pepsi.

Yeah.

This does not promote Nike. And, and when I got into the food blogging world and I was, I, I was very new to it and I really didn't understand like how anybody in a food blogger made money. They go, well, you know, through brand collaborations and there's nothing wrong with it or ads or promoting other. And I said, but why do you, why are you not. You're building somebody else's brand. And, and I think that the difference is that people want to control their bottom line. And now with algorithms and with the way everything is changing these days, I mean, like, for instance, you want your clients to be your clients. And like, for instance, like, let's say people are successful with affiliate links. Let's say on an affiliate link that you're making only between, say 8 and between 4 and 8% on which is set by Amazon, you are not controlling how much you're making.

Yeah, they can lower it if they want or.

Yep, yep. So, so really what's happening here is that people that, like most people never thought that they would build their brand or their blog to where it is today. Like they started out, they didn't start out with 300,000 followers. They didn't start. They didn't know what they KNEW, you know, 10 years ago or four years ago, what they know today. So it's a learning curve and you have to really ask yourself, what kind of brand do I want to be? Do I want to be? You know, and I know my follow. And the thing is, a lot of people don't even realize how important important they are to their followers because their people are coming to them for advice. You know, these people are seeing them already as an expert. And so one of the things is, I think that in this day and age, people need to be in control of a new revenue stream. And we've got AI taking a huge chunk of authority, you know, and, you know, AI can't create their own spice line, you know, thank God. I mean, maybe they can in five years, but I hope I won't be here for that.

But.

But the thing is, like, when you have your own brand, you can set your own profit margins. So in other words, you can set something between 30, 40, 50 or more than 100% markup, which is certainly better than a 4 to 8% margin. And you are in control of your bottom line. And you don't have to like, guess as, like, am I going to, you know, lose traffic and not be able to, to, you know, make what I'm making a month because somebody else is controlling it. So I think it's the mindset of each individual of where they really want to be.

Yeah, it's interesting. Even Amazon will send a recap email and say, hey, you sold this much in product on Amazon. And for a site like Pinch of Yum, which is the one that we run, you know, it'll be multiple tens of thousands of dollars every month. And we don't really even do a ton of affiliate stuff. We'll have links here and there, but it's not a super strateg strategic kind of approach for us as affiliate. But it's like, oh, you think about, number one, if it was something that we had created and we were selling directly, and number two, if we were then strategic with it, obviously there's a ton of considerations that go along with it. Like, you know, it's a new business unit and it's more consideration and work and effort to get that additional profit margin. But it's also, like you said, controllable. And it's building a brand that in and of itself is also valuable. Like in building businesses, part of what we're doing is building something that in and of itself is inherently valuable. And if you think of creating an associated brand similar to Primal Kitchen, I don't know the exact story, but I think in that conversation with Nathan, he said it was something like you know, it was under 10 years. I don't know if it was like five, six, seven years after he had started the brand. It was sold, and it was sold for, you know, a lot of money. And if he would have been like an affiliate or, you know, a different brand, it still would have been valuable money that he would have been able to quantify in some way in terms of business value, but it would have been very different in terms of the multiple, like the value for another acquiring company. And so that's part of it, too, when you think about what we're doing. And one of the fun things, especially for a personal brand, is if you can have an associated brand that isn't necessarily under the umbrella, it could be, but it's an associated brand that you could promote. That can be where you can start to depersonalize some of your brand as well.

So two of the bloggers that I'm working with now have their name of their blog and how they're known, and their product brand is a different name which they're promoting. And, you know, it's separate and. Yeah, no, I mean, like, for instance, I don't work with them, but, like, for instance, I know Nom Nom Paleo, she came out with a line of spices. You know, she has cookbooks and all these different things. And I know she has. And I think they're in Whole Foods now. I know I was walking Whole Foods the other day, and I said, oh, cool.

Yeah.

You know, and so, I mean, there's so many opportunities, because once also you create your own brand, you can also wholesale it.

Yep.

You could sell it into stores, you know, large stores or specialty stores. And so there's a really lot of opportunity to make quite a nice amount of money.

So what is that? I mean, first step, somebody says, hey, I want to explore this. I want to look into it. A lot of what you're doing now is working with these companies and working with publishers and creators. Let's say that they want to work with somebody like you and go through that process. What can you talk through? How you go from somebody being like, I'm kind of interested in maybe doing this to, like, you're in. Yeah. Like, you're selling a product at a high level. What does that look like?

Well, that. What that looks like. If somebody wants to work with me, for me, it's not about slapping a logo on a water bottle. It's like, I really work with my clients to figure out what product is going to best represent their brand. And sometimes, like, they have this idea like, of this product that they want to create and they're like obsessed with it. And by time we get done talk talking, that's not even like what they're creating. So what would happen would be like, I'm over@barbara hobart.com and in other words, I mean, people could like, you know, take my course. They could book a discovery call with me. And what people I I do is I walk people through the process of what it is that they want to achieve and why do they want to achieve it and how much budget do they have and why and, and what, what is it, you know, and how many. What's their following? And so like I kind kind of like a research an R D on your own company to determine, you know, where to position yourself. Are you going to be a premium brand? Are you going to be a high, you know, are you going to vegan? Are you going to be, you know, help, you know, what, how do you want to be perceived? Do you want to be a luxury brand? You know, and, and once we kind of determine that, then we look at like what your audience, you know, what it is that you're an expert in and helping your audience in. And then we kind of delve into what types of products that you use every day or that you're recommending your clients use every day. Or like you were talking about affiliate sales. Like what is your number one affiliate sales product? Well, you could either a manufacture one yourself and make it better, or you can create a complementary product if you don't want to reinvent the wheel if that market is already saturated. So we kind of look at that and then, you know, if, if something is not something like being designed from scratch, you know that that takes amount of time. But what most people don't realize is you can create a custom product in a couple of weeks. I mean, people think that, oh my God, this could take me like five years. No, like when you work with me, it's like, you know, you want to do spices, let's get going. Or let's. You want to do a digital scale and a bunch of fabulous baking utensils. You find the ones you want to do, we get your logo on it, we figure out whatever, then you decide the price point based on what your manufacturing costs are and you have a product ready to go in a month.

Yeah. So it's doable. Especially if you're going the route of. My guess is the more custom you get, the more product development stage there is, the more you go the White label route. You're using a pre existing either like, you know, scale as an example or spice plan. You'd be able to kind of move a little bit quicker with that. But it's like you said, it's not something that's going to take three years or six years. You know, it's not like you're developing a Apple Vision Pro and going to be in the lab for five years. So that's great. And you know, I think one of the things that I found in the work that we've done is the best way to fast track progress is to work with somebody who's done something multiple times. And so you being somebody who has been through this and experienced it with multiple people, you've seen inside of the inside of kind of the day to day just as a last opportunity for you. You also have in the food world a product that you're going to be launching and releasing for kind of focused on photography, backdrops. Do you want to talk about that quick?

Right, right. Well, when I. Thank you. When I got into the food blogging world, which as I said, I was in it for like an hour.

Sure. As a creator.

Yeah, as a creator, I. Because of the instant pot, anyway, I ended up having to hire. This is about four years ago, I ended up having to hire food photographers to photograph my recipes because that's just a skill I don't have. And it's just not pretty when I have a camera in my hand and I don't have the time. And so what I did is I invented best ever backdrops. And the reason I did that, and this is something also about how I think about what I tell my clients is I was watching my food photographer friends and also the people that I had hired to do my food photography as they were lifting like slabs of marble and chunks of wood. And I'm like, why are you. Are you insane? It was like crazy. I've never seen it and I'd never been around. I didn't even know what a backdrop was. And so what it was is they needed to be waterproof, they needed to be stain resistant, they needed to be lightweight. And so I launched a few years ago best ever backdrops. And now we have a new line of vinyl and we also create. The thing that I focus on because I do everything custom also is we have over 250 surfaces and we have wonderful brands of backdrops created by Nate Crawford, Skylar Bird and Chrissy Olroyd, who have created exclusive lines for us. But one of the things that is really important now for brands, your own brand or with you're working with brands is that we will create any custom color backdrop to go with your brand to really make your, your shots stand out. And so we're relaunching my company in about two weeks. It's online right now, but we're, we're, we're having a refresh and a rebrand.

Yep. And the thing that I love about that is like anytime who's coaching around a thing and then also doing the thing and you know, we do that with pinch of Yum. Like it's our primary thing that we're doing. It's publishing to Instagram, it's publishing to a blog, it's understanding se. And secondarily we have this community where we're teaching and a part of that and for you, kind of a similar thing, you're in the world of product creation and working with customers and then also teaching people how to do it, which I think is so great. We'll link to both of those in the show notes. Barbara, thanks so much for coming on sharing your story. I think it's super important for us as business builders to be thinking about what are the different ways that we can diversify the income that we have. And it's also fun. Like it's fun to think about creating stuff in the world and people using it and it can be like a really wonderful thing. So thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Box Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast. We really hope you enjoyed it. Since we just entered a new month, we always like to kick off the month by highlighting everything new that will be coming in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. And we have a really big month of awesome content coming up. If you are listening to this podcast super early on April 2, then we recommend tuning into our live Q and A with Kate all, our Pinterest expert. We'll be going through all sorts of Pinterest strategy with her this afternoon. And if you can't tune in live, remember that you can always watch our live Q and A replays on the Food Blogger Pro site after the live call. Next up, on April 4th, we'll be publishing our coaching call with Cheryl Norris from the Foodbog Bakes by Brown Sugar. In this coaching call, Bjork and Cheryl talk about hiring and the best way to go about assessing the skill level of a potential hire. They Also talk about pricing for smaller brands if you're doing sponsored content or brand work for a business that isn't able to pay quite as much as some other brands. And talk about incorporating video into your current photo and recipe process. So it's just not quite so time consuming. It's a really great coaching call, so definitely make sure to tune into that Next up, we have another live Q and A. This one is all about AI and food blogging and we'll be joined by Paul Banister from Raptive to talk about all of your questions about AI and how it might affect SEO and food blogging in the future. Last but not least, we'll be releasing a brand new course all about iPhone, photography and editing and that will be going live on April 18th. So like I said, a super busy month. We're really looking forward to all this new content and if you aren't yet a Food Blogger Pro member, you can join by going to foodbloggerpro.com membership and you can learn more about the membership there. And join us in the membership. We'd love to have you. Thanks again for listening. Make it a great April.

Sam.