459: How Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone Diversified Her Business and Found Work-Life Balance

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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 chatting with Lisa Bass from the blog Farmhouse on Boone. Lisa has been one of our most requested podcast guests and we are so thrilled to welcome her onto the podcast this week. She first started her site in 2016 and has since diversified her brand to include a podcast, a really successful YouTube channel, courses, and more, all while raising and homeschooling eight children. In this podcast interview, Bjork and Lisa chat a little bit more about balancing her business with her family life, how she's built a team to support her business and grow her business, and how she ranks each arm of her business in terms of what she enjoys doing and the income it contributes to her business overall. She also shares more about why she continues to prioritize YouTube and share some insight into the tools she uses to help run her business. It's an awesome interview and just so much fun to learn more about Lisa so so I'm going to let Bjork take it away.

Lisa, welcome to the Podcast.

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

Yeah. So this is old hat for you. You have a podcast as well, and so you have your nice mic. It sounds great. You have your connection. It's like you've done this before.

Yes.

And it's actually going to be one of the things that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about kind of diversification and the different platforms and kind of intentionally building in multiple places. But before we do that, it's always fun to hear a little bit of a backstory for what brought you to this point. So take us back to the moment when you decided that you wanted to start publishing content online. Did you know you wanted to do.

It as a business?

Was it something that you just wanted to do for fun? What was that moment like?

So I am one of those people who started it as a business. Yes. I was writing about things that I was excited about, sharing and passionate about and all that, but I definitely was doing it to earn an income and to be a business. I started it way back in early 2016, so in Internet years, that's like a century, basically ago. And, yeah, I started with a blog, and then I ventured into YouTube two years after that, and then podcasting about two years after that. And I've just continued to add things and grow my team and what I have going on. So that's kind of a nutshell.

It's. I love that the. That's how you approached it. It's great also, if people are like, I did it. And then I kind of stumbled into it and it became a thing. But I think what's really helpful to hear is people who have a story of like, I got into this because I wanted to start a business, and the business that I wanted to start was publishing content online. And you did it. Like, now here we are eight years later, and you have a successful business with the team, and I would be interested in talking about kind of the different parts that make up your business. So, you know, you started with your site. It's at. At this point, it's getting multiple millions of sessions a month. That in and of itself is really successful. How did you go about building that up? Because in those early stages, it can be a grind and can feel like you're just hustling and you don't really have any payback for the work that you're doing. What was it like in the early stages? And how did you continue to show up every day and to get to this point.

Well, so when I first started my blog, like you said, I didn't gain traction right away. I definitely didn't understand search engine optimization. I didn't understand Pinterest and how that could be, you know, like, bringing traffic to my blog. And then I kind of got sidetracked a bit the year after I started my blog because I got an Instagram and I think like everybody else, but thankfully I didn't quit. I didn't think, you know, this is where it's at. I saw it and thought, okay, this is where you're actually supposed to be creating content. I didn't quite understand how you're going to monetize either one of those, but it seemed like everybody was trying to build an audience over on Instagram. So I got a little bit sidetracked with that. I would say the year after I started my blog, and then the next year after basically building my Instagram up to 20,000 followers, not really seeing a whole lot of return from it, I decided to go all in on the blog. And by all in, I just mean I was going to publish two posts per week, no matter what, in that year, which. Whatever year that was, I think it was 17. Yeah, it was 17. And then by the end of that year, I had enough traffic to get on mediavine at that time, I believe. And so then I was earning an income, you know, like 500 bucks a month, which for me was such a game changer. And once I was able to see some money from it, it wasn't hard for me to keep plugging away because after that year, I had a hundred posts. They were all. They weren't really search engine optimized. I did not understand that at all. But they were on Pinterest, and I was making graphics that were good, and so I was gaining a lot of traffic. And so I thought, if I could have a hundred posts on Pinterest, what If I had 200 posts circulating Pinterest, what would that pay me? And so that helped me to stay pretty motivated.

You. It's. Once you are able to get to that point where you're earning an income, you can start. Kind of start to play the numbers game a little bit.

Exactly.

You can say, like, wow, what does it feel like to make 500 from this business that I created? And you can look into it and say, I see that this traffic is coming from Pinterest, or, you know, it's coming from a search engine. Okay, how do I replicate that and turn this 500 into a thousand? So what did that look like? Like, what was it just a matter of doing the early kind of hustle and grind of building content, starting to get some traction with it, and then from there, seeing what worked and replicating and building on that. Like, what did it look like to go from 500 to, you know, tens of thousands that you were earning as you start to scale up the amount of traffic to the point where you are now? Because there's a. There's a lot that has to happen between where you are now and where you were then.

Yeah, Honestly, it really has just been more of the same. I don't have some key thing, except for that over the last eight years, two blog posts have been published every single week, the entire time through babies being born, vacations, you know, all we homeschool, we have eight kids. So through all of that, I have just kept going. And then, of course, we have 2020, which for a blogger like me, I specialize in from scratch food. I do sourdough. I started. I had a sourdough starter back in 2011, and I was cool sourdough before it was cool. So I was creating sourdough content. You can go on YouTube and you can find my video from 2016 of me doing sourdough. So, yes, there has been a little element of luck definitely thrown in the mix there. But I was there with my. I mean, I have, I don't know, thousands of blog posts at this point. And then, you know, it's just been. It really has been more of the same. I have definitely learned search engine optimization. I've learned how to title posts, how to write them, know what the format is and all of that. And that has definitely helped. But I don't feel like the workload has majorly increased as much as just more of the same. And the income is definitely increased.

Yeah, it's. I think there's so much to be said about that, which is like continually showing up over a long period of time. Like, it's eight years of publishing two posts a week. And to your point, like, every once in a while you'll get lucky, and some of those will perform really well. But you wouldn't have gotten lucky if you didn't show up twice a week for eight years.

Yeah, exactly.

And so it's this. And I think it maybe kind of is all of us. It keeps us all humble in that, like, there's Google algorithm changes or there's, you know, events that happen that suddenly people are interested in a certain type of food and you're producing that Certain type of food as the content. But there's also the element of like showing up and working really hard and being consistent and improving over time. And there's this idea of luck. Wears overalls like you. Hard work often results in luck, whether it's publishing content online, writing songs. Like, I think some of the greatest songwriters have written, you know, 99 of the songs that they've written, we probably haven't heard.

Right.

And it seems like, oh my gosh, the only thing that Ed Sheeran does is write hits. And it's like, well, he's probably also. And he taught. Yeah. And he talks a lot about, you know, in the early stages getting the bad songs out. Like, you just have to have that repetition and continue, continue to show up. So I'm interested to hear a little bit about the part where you talk about having eight kids, homeschooling and doing all of this. Like, that's an incredible amount. And I think, I even think back to before we had our kids. It was still a lot like without having kids and juggling homeschooling. So how do you do that? What does it look like on a day to day and week to week basis for you?

Yeah, and I do want to say we are just on the last point. Stuff has definitely improved. Like when I look at my photography from back then, I'm like, oh my word, what was I thinking? But I think it's. It's just been like over time, it just all gets better. But with the whole family and eight kids and all the homeschooling, it is a lot. Now I will say my husband has been home from his job for six years, so we have been able to do this together for the last six years, which means that he was home for the birth of our last four kids, which is significant because we do all of this together. It definitely takes two people sometimes. It could probably take more, but we have a little schedule at this point. Very much, you know, we have the whole thing like the flow of the day and how it goes. We have fine tuned that. And so we know when I can have some time to do things like this, that I need quiet time in the house. But then most of the day it's very much kind of on the fly. Like we have our homeschool hours and then we have a time where I have a little bit of time and then we have family evening hours. I think the key for us is we have a lot of or very few outside obligations. So we don't do a whole lot of sports and this is just the kind of things that we've prioritized for our family.

Totally.

You know, you can. If you can have all, you can have everything, but not at the same time. So it's kind of like what we've chosen. So we. If we're home and we don't have a lot of stuff going on, it's actually very manageable. I also have a team, of course, so I have a lot of help. My business gets worked on way more hours in a day than I actually do. So that. That's. I mean, that's completely key. Like, I could never have a YouTube channel, a podcast, a blog, and all of this without that outside help.

I. I love the idea of, like, you can do. And tell me if this is kind of what you're getting at. You can do anything, but you can't do everything.

That's. That's the quote I was trying to get out. Correct.

Where it's like, you can, in your case, like, you have a really successful business, you have family that you're spending time with, you're homeschooling, you have eight kids, but you're also not enrolling every one of your kids in soccer and T ball and, like, in theater. And because you're making intentional decisions to say, like, this is what we want our family to look like, our business to look like, and building around that. And yeah, one of the things we talk a lot about is this idea of, like, defining what game you're playing. We talk about it within the context of business, but I think realistically, it's both business and personal. Like, what do you want your life to look like, and how do you work towards that and build around that? And for some people, they might want to be really scheduled and have a bunch of stuff, but to know that that probably means that you're not going to have as much time for other things.

Right.

Because you can do anything, but you can't do everything.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

I love that.

Yeah.

Can you talk a little bit about your team? So it's one of the things that I think about is, like, for all of us, once we have the ability to work with people, whether it's using money that's not coming from our business to accelerate the growth of it, or working on it ourselves until it gets to the point where we can invest back into it and bring people in kind of those. The two options. From a financial resource standpoint, you get to a point where in either one of those scenarios where you start to realize, like, that you could work 40 hours on a thing.

But it's also possible that those 40.

Hours could be somebody that you're hiring who then works on that thing that you need to get done. And what I've found is a lot of the things that I thought I was critical to be involved with, actually there's really smart, really capable, really motivated people who you can work with to do that. And that allows you to kind of craft your schedule, work or life schedule differently, because these people are coming in and they're helping you. It sounds like you've done that. So what does your team look like, and how have you found it to be most beneficial to work with a team on all the different things that you're doing?

So I started investing in a team really early on. I started with a product business. So I was making and embroidering pillows and table runners and all of these farmhouse goods back in our old house in the upstairs bedroom. And I started blogging. I had both of these things going. I thought, this will be the way I'll earn income fast. I'll ship out products and I'll have this more passive income with the blog. And I quickly learned that I could not do both. I either had to give up one or the other or hire somebody to take on one. So I hired somebody, even though we didn't have a whole lot of extra money at that point to come and sew and ship pillow covers. And that way I could focus on the blog. And it's kind of been like that over time as I want to start something new. I don't have the extra bandwidth, the extra hours in the day. So I'll bring on somebody who, like you said, is more capable. Like, I have somebody who's been helping me write for the blog for, I think, five years now. She is better at so many things than. Than me. Like, I'm not an analytics person. I don't log into Google Analytics. It's just not my. I'm just not into that. Same with, like, my YouTube analytics. I don't ever keep track of any of that stuff. But she does. And she'll track whenever I'm losing a ranking on something or something that I should be ranking for. So I have a blog writer. She's kind of moved into blog manager because I now have three writers and she assigns things she reads. We have a checklist. She reads things over before publishing them. I have somebody who manages my Instagram, so I create a YouTube video and then she chops it up and crops it vertically and makes it into really cool reels. She's so good at it. I go on my Instagram and I'm like, that is good. That is very good. She got me 700,000 views the other day on something and I'm like, I didn't even think to make a reel on that. So that's just something I don't even log into ever. And then I have an email writer. She also helps me create funnels for all the different courses and whatnot. I have somebody who helps me make courses. I have a podcast manager. The one thing that I do start to Finish is my YouTube. And that's just because over time I have tried so many editors and I can. It takes me longer to convey my vision of the video than it does for me just to do it myself. And so that's the part that I completely handle. And then all of the content kind of branches out from that content with my team.

Yeah, so you are shooting on your own like you and your husband are shooting, and then you edit as well.

Edit every. Yeah, yep.

And that, that is like, I think of it in the context of. So my wife, Lindsay Pinch of Yum. She'll she. Her kind of place that she owns the voice of is the blog. So she's writing all those articles or blog posts and then Instagram. But anything that's kind of like off of that, you know, example being like TikTok or YouTube, you don't have a big YouTube following. But like those are kind of the supported places from the original piece of content.

Right.

Which is kind of the vision and it sounds like for you, your main. The way that you are manifesting your vision for a piece of content is through a video shooting and editing and that becomes the thing that other platforms then take and build off of. Is that correct?

That's absolutely right. So like my blog writer, you know, I will make several things and recipes in my videos. My videos aren't like a how to or a, you know, this one recipe, I'm kind of sharing it in the context of a day in the life type of video. And I will be making things. And then she will do the keyword research and find the blog posts that can happen from that video. And like you said, all the content from the emails to the TikTok to the YouTube short to the everything Instagram branches out from that long form, horizontal 25 minute YouTube video that has a whole bunch of stuff in it. That's kind of how. Yeah, it sounds like what you do, except for maybe you have the starting point of the blog. And I have the starting point of the YouTube channel. Even though the blog is ultimately the better income earner, it still helps to get all the pieces and parts moving together.

Yeah. And so much of it comes down to where do you find yourself naturally wanting to create? Like, on what canvas are you most compelled to paint? And for you, it Sounds like that's YouTube for other people, Instagram for other people's writing and finding what that is, sticking to that. But it's not necessarily then throwing away these other platforms and saying like, hey, we're not going to post there. It's just saying, maybe you aren't going to post there, but you're still going to have a presence there because it's important to have those other platforms. So how did you find these people? Like, were they followers that you put a job description out and they applied to it? And then to what degree did you have this system built before versus ask them to kind of do it? And then they built the system that followed.

So it's totally been on the fly. It's been one at a time. It's been where I'll sometimes. And I'm sure if you guys have been having your blog for so long, probably even longer than me, I'm pretty sure so you have experienced this. But I have definitely thought in the past, like, oh, just handing something off to somebody and just thinking that would work without a whole lot of my direction. And I have learned over time that that doesn't really work too well. And so I've had things where I've let somebody take something over and then realize over time, oh, that's not going how I wanted it to. So I've had to make a lot of adjustments. I have found them through a lot of things. Followers, like you said, have reached out, they've emailed. I'm sure you've probably had that, but I, I get that all the time. I have a whole folder in my inbox of potential VAs who have reached out to me should I ever need more. But that's where a lot of them have come from is something like that. My blog writer, she's a blogger herself, but she liked the extra very dependable side income of working for me. So she's been fabulous because she already knew everything. Like, she already knew all of you know, how blogging worked. A lot of people I've trained completely, you know, from the ground up. But some have worked out, some haven't. But over time, I've definitely acquired here and there, great team yeah, it's so.

Much of it comes down to it being a skill. And I think sometimes we think like, hey, it should work out in a way where you hire somebody and then it just works out well. But it's like, it's similar to any other skill that you develop, whether it's drawing or playing the saxophone or cooking. It's like the skill of working with a team, communicating a vision. Like, it's something that you get better at over time, and it's something that you always need to be improving on. Just like any instrument. It's like people are always practicing. And I think the same could be said for working with the team, working with other people. It's like you're always figuring out ways to do that better. Just like in life we're always figuring out how to do relationships better, like how to be a friend better. And I think the same thing applies to when we work with people, we're figuring out how to do that better. So I think for anybody who feels like it's kind of intimidating or that it's scary or that it's hard, it's just a validation of like it is. And you hear that, you know in your story too, where it's like, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah, you kind of learn along the way. Before we continue, let's take a moment.

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So when you think of. So you have your different platforms, you have the blog, you have YouTube, you have Instagram. What. How would you rank order the importance of those to your business? It's always interesting for me to hear people reflect on those different places and what's most valuable. Yeah.

And I know it's different for everybody too. If you actually looked at the breakdown of their income, it's totally different across the board. For me, the blog is the most important income wise for sure. Then YouTube and then. Gosh, I'm trying to say if I should even put Instagram next. I hesitate to because I feel that there is so much time wasted on Instagram. I know people make money on Instagram, but just for hour, for hour spent for me, that's definitely third place in importance with those. I would say that I do have core sales and affiliates that come from that. But the bulk of it, I would say definitely blog first, then YouTube for me.

And with the TikTok. Sure. TikTok. We gotta, we gotta TikTok. It may or not be. May or may not be around by the time this episode comes out. There's always a question like, is it gonna be here for the blog, Advertising being the primary income?

Yes. The only, I mean, I guess affiliates too, but yeah, sure, yeah.

So when you think of your kind of strategy, then I'm curious to hear how kind of YouTube fits in because there's advertising dollars from YouTube, but there's also, you know, the potential of doing sponsored content. So with your YouTube mindset on or your YouTube hat on.

Yeah.

How do you think of that as like a platform for your business? And is one of the primary benefits of it that it kind of seeds content for the blog?

Yes. So YouTube. I have kind of probably an unusual strategy in that I do take a sponsor on for every video I. Okay, so with the blog and with the way RPMs are, it pays so much better per thousand visitors than views on YouTube, which is really weird because whenever somebody watches a commercial, you think they're getting a lot more from that, you know, as far as advertising. But YouTube income, ad income compared to blog income, it's not even comparable, honestly.

And what you're saying is essentially if you had a thousand people and you were to pick can I have them watch a YouTube video or can these thousand people go to my website? You would choose the website because on average thousand people are going to earn you, depending on what site it is, how many ads you have? 30, 40, 50?

Yes.

Versus YouTube would be like if you Had a video that had a thousand views, you might make $2. Like what would that.

Like that. I mean I, I never look into analytics, but I know it's something like that. Like it's less than $10 and like you said, it's 30, 40 for, for the blog. So if you're doing it, I mean it's still a great income. Cause I still, you know, I get a lot of views. But if I'm looking at my time and how to spend it, it would make more sense just to spend all of that time on the blog. But I continue on with YouTube for a few reasons. One is like you said, it kind of seeds everything else. Two, I love it. Like you mentioned earlier, I enjoy making videos.

It's a huge part of it.

Yeah, it's fun for me. If I wasn't, if I just quit just to retire, you know, I would still make videos because it's a creative process that I really enjoy. So I guess I also do it because I enjoy it.

Yep.

And then I take on a sponsor to help with that income a bit. For the videos I only post once a week. And then also I do think that it helps blog traffic. Now when I look at my analytics, people aren't clicking the links in my description box and heading over from YouTube, but I get, I get 500,000 views a month on just my homepage. I don't know if that's comparable to other creators or if that's high. I kind of think it's high. And I would say that's because constantly throughout all my videos, I'll make this and I'll make this. And I always say go over to pharmaceutical.com, go to pharmacy.com. so I do think it helps with my overall brand and I really like the diversification, especially with all the things that, you know, people have been scared lately with Google things, I mean I heard they just like they're not getting rid of cookies. So that's cool. But I really like having that diverse business.

Yeah, totally. And with cookies you're talking about third party cookies. This big kind of advertising consideration where on Chrome, desktop and mobile cookies going away. Which means that advertising is less effective. Google keeps punting that. Yes. And saying like it's, it's, you know, it'll happen. But I think most recently there's some considerations around European legislation and.

Okay.

Anyways, it's like it's, it's getting moved further and further down. Yeah. Which is good because advertising then is more effective. But there is always the consideration around like what if that changes and advertising dollars go down or as a lot of people have experienced recently, there's a Google algorithm update and your traffic goes down. And one of the things that we continually hear and that you're talking about as being really important is brand. And you are at the top of somebody's mind not because they had a random search and you showed up as a search result for that. That probably happens and that's great. But to be the kind of brand where people are searching for your name and then coming to your site is really valuable. And I think you're onto something there where, you know, you have this YouTube account where you have, you know, probably millions of views that come from that.

Yeah.

Inevitably a percentage of those people are going to take the prompt that you have around, hey, go over here and go to Google and search.

Yeah.

This recipe or to search your brand name. Like that definitely has an impact. And I had. It was having a conversation. I think this was a live Q A that we had for Food Blogger Pro members. And there's somebody named Paul Banister who works for Raptive and he was talking about this idea of like he said, you know, the, the company that doesn't worry about Google algorithm updates. Like one company that doesn't worry about it is Disney. And his point was like Disney has such strong brand. They have these characters, they have this like these super fans where they're not transactional and like showing up as a search result for something. They have a. They have a brand. And I think for us as creators and publishers, it's one of the best things that we can do is we can think about what does that look like for us to have a strong brand and for people to be attracted to that brand benefit if you can also be smart about like search optimization, but even more strong if you can have the brand surrounding that. So when you think about your YouTube channel, that also is something that has, has experienced significant growth. What do you think has been the most helpful growth kind of variables for you with that account over the last seven or eight years?

I think that it's just. I'm stealing this from Mr. Beast because I listen, I don't watch Mr. Beast, but I listen to his YouTube strategy stuff because I, I love YouTube. Like I enjoy YouTube strategy learning to get better. And he talks about how all he's done over the last several years and obviously I've done it nowhere to the extent that he has.

Sure.

But is just improve the quality of his videos. Always making the videos better. So obsessive about that, yeah, he's obsessed. I mean, he's way obsessed. You know, I'm obsessed as much as a mom of eight can be. So I can only turn so much time doing that. But I do feel that over the last six years of making videos, I mean, I've never skipped a week. I have improved little by little to the point where I feel now that I'm creating something that's entertaining, it pulls people into a certain feeling. I get told that a lot. I try to create these shots that make people feel like, you know, even if they don't want to make a recipe that day, it's still fun to watch me do it because of the way I've shot it or the music or how I've talked about it. I try to pack in a lot of education without it being a tutorial video. But just pack it in and teach them through something that's also entertaining so that it's enjoyable even if it's something you're not going to do today, tomorrow or even next year. It's like, I don't know, an aspirational type of content I, I enjoyed to see trying to make the videos just a little bit better with each one.

Yeah, that's great. We talk about this idea is actually our parent company, we call it Tiny Bit, Tiny Bit Better Every Day Forever.

Yes, yes.

You're a great example of that is like eight years of saying, okay, I'm going to produce a video every week, but I'm not going to produce the same video. I'm going to figure out how do I produce this video and make it better than the last one. What do you think are some of the, like, could you point to key breakthroughs that you've had in terms of what makes a video better?

Well, I will say the biggest thing is I used to do like when I started, I did everything very tutorial based instead of more of the storytelling aspect and bringing people into that story. And I think a lot about the story now. And I also try to make them more beautiful. So I try to get shots that are kind of annoying to get. Like for example, we have down in our basement, we have an old house and we have a stone foundation. We put a little basement pantry and I lug the camera downstairs to grab things off the shelves and I lug the camera into the pantry to grab the oats down from the glass jar. I make flower arrangements. I try to, I kind of take all the things that I really love and try to do them all and make it all Very beautiful. I don't know if that's like, a breakthrough. I just say I pack more into each video. One more thing that I will say is the first five years on YouTube, I did two videos every single week. And the beginning of last year, so 2023, I went down to one video a week. And instead of just doing maybe like one or two things in a video twice a week, I pack all of those things. Whether it's I'm gonna make two recipes, decorate something, organize something, make a flower arrangement. I kind of have a formula of the kind of things I like to include in the video. I'll pack them all into one. So before, people used to choose, so if they follow me and they like to catch up, they wouldn't watch every video because they didn't have time to watch two videos every week. So. So now instead of choosing between the two, they just watch the one. And so I end up getting, I would say, more than double the views on the one video as I used to get on the two. And so going down to one video actually really helped my views instead of hurting it.

Yeah. I think of the ultimate example of that being Mark Rober. Rober, yeah.

Mark Rober. Yeah. Yeah. My kids like. He's the crunch Labs guy, right?

Yeah.

Maybe it's Robert. Either way, my kids like him.

He does. I don't know if it's like one a month, but.

Oh, not even that. I feel like.

But yeah, once every two months.

High quality.

Yeah, but it's just like they're so compelling and interesting and have such great story, and it's obvious that it. Each one probably takes, you know, multiple thousands of hours to produce and create. But what happens is then they get, you know, they all get watched. Millions of views. Yeah.

They get watched. Yes.

And there's something to be said about doing less from a quantity standpoint, but taking the same amount of time and just making it better.

Exactly. Yeah. And that's what I did. And it's also relative because some people will say I do two videos a week, or I do four videos a week, and then the other person, oh, I only do one a week. And then you watch them, you're like, yeah, but you put all of that effort into. Into that one. It's very relative thing to say, the number of videos you do, because I spend as much time on YouTube now as I always did. I just pack it all into one. And it also makes me feel less bad about putting a sponsor because I've. I've put. It's A. It's like a one or two minute spot in a 25. Not all are 25 minutes, but I try to aim for around 20, 25 minutes. So much stuff, so many recipes. I really put everything I can, you know, for a once a week video. It's, it's kind of a treadmill. So I can only do so much. If I was Mark, I could do, yeah, way more. But yeah, I try to pack.

How about on the sponsor side of things? How do you find those people? Are they ongoing relationships that you have or are they people that like, you do work with an agent? What have you found to work best? You know, we understand sponsorships within the context of like Instagram or maybe on the blog, but like YouTube, it feels like it's maybe a little bit different. What does that look like?

It is, it is different. So I do have an agent. I actually, I've, I've switched, but I, I always have had an agent. And like you said, ongoing relationships are the best thing about YouTube. Most of my contracts are with a handful of brands for the year. So at the beginning of this year, I already had half the year booked out with brands that I've worked with over and over. And people say like, oh, sponsorships, it's not all it's cracked up to be. It's so much work. And I'm not saying it's not. It does add on additional work. But with the brands I've built relationships with, I know exactly what they want from me. I know exactly what to say. I can set up the camera and get it all done within just a few minutes because it's not like I have to read through the brief and familiarize myself with the product. All of that is what's so time consuming. But I have found some brand and every once in a while I'll do a one off. But very rarely, for the most part, it's brands that I know and love, I've worked with for years. And so it's very easy and straightforward.

And in that relationship is the agent going out and pitching you to those brands and then you know the people that you want to work with. And you're kind of saying like, yes, no on, on the different companies.

Yes, that's correct. So, yeah, I'll get. I get pitched a lot more than what I take. I like to take ones that I know well. I can very easily endorse. And then every once in a while, like for my podcast, I have a whole different thing going on. It's sort of like the dynamic Ads. And so that's different, but for YouTube, it's, you know, it's. It's really straightforward. Whenever you work with the same brand 12 months out of the year, which does happen.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah. The podcast ads. We're just starting to get into the world of podcast ads. Anybody who's listening to the podcast would know kind of. We're kind of experimenting with that, what you talked about. There's this thing now where you can do dynamic ad insertion where you have like a slot that. We haven't done it yet, but like a slot that started you designate in the podcast and then it will run similar to like your blog. Like, it just inserts an ad potentially based on location or demographic, or just anybody could kind of bid on that ad slot. Is that more or less kind of what you're doing?

Yes, yes. And it's. It's real easy because it's. There's no video component, so you don't have to like, memorize the brief or memorize all the things. You know, brands always have a certain promo that they're trying to. To certain talking points for certain times of the year. So that can get confusing. But with the sponsorships on the dynamic ads, it's more of a read, which makes it a lot simpler. But it's also. It pays less too, of course.

Sure, that makes sense. What platform are you using for that?

True Native.

Okay, yeah, that's the po. The podcast publishing platform or the podcast advertising ads. Okay. True native. And then you do that through which podcast platform?

Oh, my goodness. I just switched and now I'm trying to remember. I had to switch to do the ads. I was on anchor, but I had to switch. So I can't even remember what it is now because my. My podcast managers upload everything.

Sure. They take care of it.

Yeah.

Which is great. Going back to that, like working with a team and capable people to help. Help with that. So how about tools? One of the things that's always interesting to hear from people is like, you know, you are doing a lot, and it could be like, personal as well. You're doing a lot in your personal life. You're doing a lot in your work life. And my guess is that you have some tools that help to make that easier, whether it's like software or systems or processes, or even like a framework of a mental framework that you use to make decisions. Is there anything that you would point out to people around, like, hey, here's a tool that I'm using that's really helpful for me to do what I need to do.

So my tool that I use for my team is Trello. We tried using Slack, and I just could not get in the habit of checking it all the time. And so people would send messages in Slack and then I'd miss them. So it's. I'm kind of bad about this. I'm one of those people where whenever something works, I don't change it. Even if there's a better alternative. Just for forever. I have to be so convinced it's like, so significantly better for me ever to change. I'll pay more. I'll deal with some headaches just to not change. That's kind of how I am. So, Trello, the way I have it set up, it's pretty easy. But all my team logs in and we have colors for each person. So we'll have, like, the blogs listed out and the pod for each week. The. The blog posts, the podcast, the video, the sponsors, and then each person has a color on what they're supposed to work on. That's the main thing I use. For True Native, I use something called teamwork, and that's where I log in to see what ad reads I'm supposed to do. But that's kind of it. I mean, it's kind of basic.

Yeah, no, that's great. How about in the video side of things, when you're editing and shooting? Is there anything that's helpful with that?

So I use Final Cut Pro for editing all my videos. It's very easy, very straightforward. Highly recommend Final Cut Pro. I've tried other things, and that's for sure the easiest and best one, but that's it. And I use Epidemic Sound for music. I use ConvertKit for email. I mean, you know, I use Easy webinar. I use teachable. So many things across my business, but to organize everybody. Trello is kind of the hub for that.

Yep. That's great. So how about this? Let's say that everything goes away. You wake up tomorrow and it's like something happened. Who knows what it was a digital apocalypse, and you have to start building your business over again. What would that look like? Like, how would you approach building a business in 2024, a digital content business, knowing what you know now?

Okay, so everything's gone but farm. Everything is gone but the platforms. Sorry, nobody recommends Farmhouse on Boom. The platforms are still there.

All the platforms are there in this digital apocalypse, clear of the memory.

They don't know who I am. Okay.

Yep, yep. Men in Black. Like the flasher thing.

Oh, Man, I have actually thought about this a lot. And to be honest, I would do YouTube. And that's not to say that I don't think blogging is a great opportunity. Oh, my word, I'm so glad I didn't quit blogging. What other people thought that Instagram was where it was at because I'd be leaving so much on the table. So I want to say I would do blogging, but I don't know if I have it in me to restart now. That's not because I think it's that hard. It's because I already did it and I would just be like, no. But the one thing that I really enjoy doing is making videos. So I think from a perspective of like, okay, I'm worn out. I already did all that. Been there. Because my mind hasn't been wiped clear. Right. I have to still know when I go.

In this hypothetical. Yeah, yeah.

In this hypothetical, I have already gone through all of this and now it's gone. The only thing I'd have the motivation to continue would be YouTube, because I still enjoy it. I, you know, the blog, I love the blog, But I enjoy YouTube. So I would. I think with what I know now, I do think I could pretty quickly become successful again on YouTube. I really believe that.

So, yeah, I think so much of it comes down to what you're talking about there, which is like, how do you, as a content creator or a business owner? Because sometimes for some of the people listening, they start out creating content and they get to a point where they don't love it anymore, but maybe they do love a different component of it. They love the spreadsheets or the analysis or the keyword research. Like, everybody is so different. And I think one of the key takeaways is how do you get as close to. As close as possible to the thing that is still valuable and that you love? I think sometimes people are like, find what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Which is true. Unless what you love doing isn't valuable.

Yeah.

And. And then it's going to be hard to, like, justify the work and time and effort that you put into it. But I think what you've done is you've worked hard and intentionally to craft the majority of your day to be the thing that you enjoy doing the most with the limited amount of time that you have. And you've brought on other very capable people to do the things that you aren't as excited about, but that are still important.

Yeah.

And I think that's such an important takeaway. Does that feel accurate?

Yeah, that absolutely feels accurate. Yeah. Because, I mean, it would make more sense probably monetarily, to put all my eggs in the blogging basket, but, like, I can only do it so long, you know, because I just. I hate writing. I mean, it's. You know, I just. Yeah, that's exactly right. I spend the time doing the thing I really want to.

What it does. It would be monetarily more beneficial. Except it wouldn't. Because realistically, you do the thing and then you get burnt out on it, and then you don't sustain it. And so part of it for us is even, I was just on somebody else's podcast yesterday, and we were talking about the idea of, like, starting a new thing, and he's like, in the case of, you know, pinch of Yum, you started Food Blogger Pro, would there have been a scenario where it would have made more sense to just like, focus on pinch of Yum and. And it was the exact same thing where it's like, monetarily.

Probably. Yes, probably. Yeah.

But part of it is like, how do we continue to show up, you know, in your case, seven, eight, nine years. In our case, you know, 12, 13, 14 years. And the way that you do that is like, you get as close as possible to the thing that you can do every day and actually enjoy it.

Yeah.

And it might not be as monetarily beneficial, but it actually is, because that's the.

Because it's what kept you going.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I know people who are. They love. Like, I have blogger friends who just enjoy, at the end of the day, getting on Google Analytics and looking at things and tracking other bloggers. And so for them, the whole game of blogging is so fun. But I just. That is not my personality. And so for me, like, I lay at night in bed thinking about videos and shots and different things I could make and create. And so I'm driven by the fact that it's literally fun for me. And so, like you said, it is monetarily beneficial because it kept. It kept pushing me along all this time. And it gave me the starting point to hire out people to do the things that I just cannot stand.

Yeah, that's awesome. I know. Lisa, you also have some content where you talk about blogging, where you talk about business, a lot of places that people can connect with you and follow with you along along with you online. Can you do kind of a quick shout out, maybe mention some of the resources you have, and then also mention some of the places that people can follow along with you. So after this podcast they can stay connected.

Yeah. So farmhouseonboone.com is where I have. Like you said, I have some business resources. There's a blog masterclass. I have all my sourdough recipes, so that is the main bread and butter.

Over there on the bell.

And then you can find me on Farmhouse on Boone on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. And then I also have a podcast called Simple Farmhouse Life.

Awesome. That's great. We'll link to those as well. Lisa Some thanks so much for coming on. Super fun to talk to you.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Hello there Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed listening to this week's episode of the podcast. Before we sign off today, I wanted to mention one of the most valuable parts of the Food Blogger Pro membership and that's our courses. In case you don't already know, as soon as you become a Food Blogger Pro member, you immediately get access to all of our courses. Here on Food Blogger Pro, we have hours and hours of courses available, including SEO for food, blogs, food photography, Google Analytics, social media, and sponsored content. All of these courses have been recorded by the Food Blogger Pro team or some of our industry experts and they're truly a wealth of knowledge. We're always updating our courses so you can rest assured that you're getting the most up to date information as you're working to grow your blog and your business. You can get access to all of our courses by joining Food Blogger Pro. Just head to foodbloggerpro.com join to learn more about the membership and join our community. Thanks again for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Make it a great week.

Sam.