How Caroline Chambers Grew Her Substack Newsletter Into a 7-Figure Business

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Foreign 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 we are welcoming Caroline Chambers, who you might know from her super popular substack newsletter, what to Cook when youn Don't Feel Like Cooking. Caroline's career in food started out when she opened her very own catering business and then morphed into freelance recipe development and kind of a surprise cookbook which she did for many years. With the start of the pandemic, Caroline finally made the switch to creating her own recipe content and started her substack newsletter, what to Cook when you don't feel like Cooking. Her newsletter is now the number one food and drink newsletter on substack and she has grown her business into a seven figure business which is totally incredible. Caroline has an awesome perspective on making her recipes unique and useful for her readers and chats more about how she has grown her subscribers and how she converts unpaid subscribers into paid subscribers and way more about her strategy with Substack and growing her business on this episode. Her second cookbook, what to Cook when you Don't Feel like Cooking is coming out today on August 13th. We are big fans of Caroline's here at Food Blogger Pro as you might gather from the first few minutes of this episode and just thrilled to welcome her on the podcast. So without further ado, I'LL let Bjork take it away.

Caroline, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I feel very excited to be here. I told the person who helped us set this up that when I was first starting out in the food world, trying to figure out what the heck I was doing, I used to listen to this podcast all the time. So when I got her email inviting me on, I was like, oh, my gosh, here we are.

Here we are.

And she would like.

She would like to tell you I was reviewing the show notes. She says our team is a huge fan of her Thai steak and noodle salad. So it's not often that I get little, like, fan notes. So that was. And it was in Italy. It was italic text in the. In the show notes.

So that makes me feel very good. That's a really good. That was a recent recipe and I've been getting a lot of. This is your best work yet. It was a, like, noodle, steaky, cabbage, cashews, you know, all the good flavors. So thank you. Thank you.

Thanks. Emily says thanks, and thank you for being a podcast listener at one point. Really appreciate that. And here we are. We're going to talk about your journey as a creator. It's one of the things that we've been trying to prioritize is conversations with people who are building, like, their career arc isn't the same as some of the career arcs of the conversations that we have on the podcast, which oftentimes is like, I'm going to go out, I'm going to build a site, and I'm going to try and get a bunch of traffic, probably from search, maybe a little bit of social media, and that's going to be the path forward. But the reality is there's hundreds of different ways that you can build a successful career by publishing content online. And you've done that. Did you start out kind of thinking about approaching it from the traditional standpoint of, like, I'm going to try and get a bunch of traffic or like, you know, in that stage where you did talk about kind of trying to figure it out, maybe listening this podcast, other podcasts, what was your mindset then? And did it shift, or has it always kind of been in this space of maybe finding a different way?

Oh, yeah, yeah. If we take it way back to when I first kind of got into the food world, I. So I started my career, like my post college career in advertising, you know, kind of hated it. And my husband was in the military, so we had to move. When we moved to San Diego, he was like, figure out a way to work in food. Like, that's what you want to do. Figure it out. So I first. This is 2012. 2012, we moved. I was working in New York in advertising after I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill. I had a few food clients. Don Julio Tequila was one of my big clients. And I got to do a ton of, like, really cool. It was like the early days of Instagram, Twitter. I was, like, being flown across the country to attend, like, Don Julio parties with, like, Lil John and, like, you know, tweet, like, a blurry BlackBerry picture of Lil John.

That was your job?

Yeah, that was my job. That was my job. Like, you know, making like, $22,000 a year, whatever.

The $50,000 of living expenses in New York.

Exactly, exactly. Nothing like it. So I started in advertising. Sort of got this, like, introduction to the food media world that way. But again, Instagram still wasn't really big. I always said I'm not a food blogger. Like, I just don't want to become a food blogger. Once I moved to San Diego and my husband was, like, working food, I was like, I just can't be a food blogger. Like, it's just not my thing. This is like, I mean, maybe Pinch of Yum was around back then, but this is like, Smitten Kitchen was kind of like the food website, the food blog that everyone was going to. I was like, no, I don't. You know, that's not for me. So I started a catering company in San Diego, and I loved that. But through that had to grow a social presence to, like, get it to succeed. And when I think about those days, I think that that's when I first started listening. Do you guys if it. Was it around back then or was it. Was I a couple too early on?

That would have been.

Yeah, I think so. If not, it was, you know, my next iteration. I've been through about 50 food career iterations as we. As we do, but I definitely started trying to build, like, SEO and brand traffic for my catering business and was sort of like trying to create, like, a lifestyle brand around that. And I just.

Like a lifestyle brand, meaning like a digital brand connected to the catering or making the catering business a lifestyle business.

Making the catering business representative of also, like, who I was. So I was always, even in those early days, cognizant of the fact that I wanted. I wanted me and my personality to kind of be, like, at the center of this brand. So Cucina Coronado was the name of the catering business, and it was very Much like pictures of me on the website, at these events, doing these things. I love food and I love the connection to people that food brings. And I didn't know back then like exactly what I wanted that to look like, but I knew that, you know, I, I've always had like aina aspirations. Like I've always wanted to be an INA in some capacity. Was it just as a cookbook author? Was it with a show? Was it with a small food shop in the Hamptons? Like whatever it was, I had you know, like aspirations of like sort of me being at the center of my brand. So, you know, lots of pictures of me doing the food thing.

Yep.

So yeah, it started like trying to figure out the like SEO and how to bring, you know, was I putting, I was putting like random recipes on my catering website. Like I just always really struggled with it and continued that struggle for many years until I kind of landed where I am today. So yes, definitely there's the SEO thing. There's a lot of steps in between that we'll get into.

In between. Yeah.

Yes. But yeah, the SEO and like traditional like blog with ads thing.

Yeah.

Never quite clicked for me. And.

Yeah. And let me know if this resonates. But one of the things we talk about is like sometimes you can see a thing and you, that thing that you see is somebody doing something that is like representative of echoes of what you want to do. And it might be like, hey, I'm building a brand and it's a personality based brand and this person is doing it in this way and you kind of look and say like, okay, the way they did that is like they figure out search traffic and they figured out that it did. So what does it look like to try and do that? It sounds like in you doing that what you discovered is like that's not the path. And so then were you like iterating and saying like, let me try a different path to see if that feels like better for how I. Yep. I'm going to hike to this destination.

Let me take you through my path. So I had the catering business for several years in San Diego. Through that I started getting asked by local magazines, bigger brands, to do recipe development. So recipe development is basically when you know a brand is hiring you to develop a recipe, but if you're not, if you don't have a name of your own, a brand of your own, they're just taking that recipe, they're like white labeling it, so to speak, and they're just putting it on. Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi was and is still one of my like recipe development clients. And so they would take the recipe. I would have nothing to do with it. Like they weren't paying me for my brand to be a part of it. It said Carol. Nowhere did it say Caroline Chambers. And it would just be like slapped up on their website, in a magazine, in like, what are those things called? Point of sale. Like when you buy, when you buy a chunk of cheese and it has like a little fold out tag that has a recipe on it. I created a lot of those. And so I started building a brand around recipe development because what I found was catering was such a slog. I was like literally 22 years old, like with back pain and great, like getting icing your knees at the end of the day. Icing my knees and like laying flat on my ground just being like, what have I done to make like a thousand dollars at the end of the day? I realized how much easier the recipe development side was than the physical. Like being in a restaurant or being in a catering business. Just from like a little literal physical perspective. Like I could sit in my kitchen and spend a day tweaking one recipe and make. I mean, I don't know what I made for recipe development back then. Let's say 150 for a recipe. And that was so much easier than like the labor that went into know, catering a party and making 300 bucks or whatever. So I started kind of building a brand and a, a brand around almost like B2B.

Like you were known as somebody who other businesses could come to and do rescue development. But that probably left out the, the piece that you knew that you wanted, which is like consumer.

It left out that narcissistic. Yes.

No.

And I would say I would push back against that. Like it's like connection, community, like the ability to speak and interact with people. And it's the same thing. Like if you're a musician, you can be a recording artist and you can go into the studio and create and some people love that. But like inevitably there are musicians who, if they were studio musicians and they never got to step in front of a crowd of people. Like, that's just like a different dynamic.

Yeah. And so to take that metaphor one level deeper, there are also musicians who are creating ditties for brands that have their name nowhere attached to it. So I was like creating the Diddy for, you know, a Tide commercial basically. And I was like nowhere attached to it. I would like share it on this Instagram. I had Caro at Caro Chambers. I've had that forever. And I would, like, share it on my Instagram and be like, you can go to the Woodbridge site and find this recipe. But I just wasn't. I was always missing that, like, personal you to me. You're my. You follow me on Instagram to get recipes directly from me. I was really missing that for many years. But I had, like, built this job and this network of people who were coming to me consistently for recipes, and I didn't have the time to. Can you hear my dog?

But it's great. It's like. It's like birds chirping in the park.

That's Hooper. Yeah. I don't live in New York City, but I do have a dog chirping in the background. I had built this. This steady income of recipe development clients. And so I always felt this piece was missing. Like, I didn't have time to post a recipe just on my Instagram for, for fun, for my community that I had built there, but I had, because I had such steady work. And so that piece was always missing.

And it's hard because you know that, like, you could take an hour or two hours to, like, craft a piece of content that you share with your audience, but you can. It's hard when you translate that into like. And then I'm not going to get paid $250 exactly in order to do the recipe development. And so then I was talking to a friend actually this weekend whose brother is like a family therapist. And he's just like, he's working all the time because he's kind of attached this dollar amount to his work. And you know that, like, if you're not going to work in an afternoon, that equates to $500. Or if you are going to work on something, but it's something that's not directly tied to revenue. There's also an inherent cost to that. So how did you. What did it look like to navigate that?

That's so funny you say that. That's exactly because not a lot of people ever bring that up. That's exactly the cycle that I got into. And I think a lot of small business and entrepreneurs can get into that cycle of, well, I can't take the time to build this business because I've got this thing set up where I know that my hourly, you know, in one hour I can make $200. And so what happened to me as a mom is that I also, you know, I would get a babysitter for that. You know, two hours to develop A recipe in which I would make $300. Okay. So I'm going to spend $30. I'm going to make 300. I'm going to, you know, my, My. My profit is 270.

Okay.

What happens when you're trying to build a brand where you're not making money at the beginning is that you just.

Started losing money because you're hiring a babysitter.

Yeah.

And so I. Any amount at this point, when I kind of made this shift, we skipped a point where I. In my mind. So basically, in 2012, I started building this catering business, which then shifts to recipe development. I went and worked for a restaurant consulting brand in San Francisco for a piece, but I was still always side hustling, doing this recipe development on the side, continuing to build that brand on the side, always left that company to go full force with the freelance recipe development because it was just so much more enjoyable, my own time, you know, all the things in that time period. I did a stint where I was food styling for the New York Times. My husband was in business school. We spent the summer in New York City, and I got a freelance gig styling for the New York Times for the summer for Melissa Clark's column with a really great food photographer named Andrew Scribani, who was just such a great mentor and really showed me the ropes. And through that, I reconnected with an old UNC friend who is a cookbook agent. And she was like, okay, you're in the food world, you're doing all these cool things. Like, would you ever want to write a cookbook? And I was like, oh, my God, I don't even, you know, I don't even have like a 1000 Instagram followers, like, left over from my old catering business. I never even post there. You know, I would never want to write a cookbook until I had, like, a very clear POV on. Like, something cool. Like, I just don't. I don't want just another, like, you know, girl gets a community and writes a cookbook. Like, not just like, Caroline Chambers, here are my favorites. He's like, no, I would never. And at this point, I had no community anyway. And she's like, okay, yeah, well, like, you're going to continue to grow your brand. I can tell you're going to work on it. Like, let me know. Like, two weeks later, she calls me and is like, okay, so I know you said you didn't want to write a book, but I have a book with a very clear pov. Chronicle Books wanted to write a Book called Just Married. And they needed a person who was just married to write it, who was like a great recipe developer or whatever. They're like, she was like, they don't need somebody famous. They don't want the book to be about the person so much as the book. I was like, perfect, I'll write my first cookbook. So I got my first cookbook deal in this very back channel way that like doesn't really happen anymore. Like it's pretty hard to get a cookbook deal these days. And I got one, you know, having no community, you know, no, no following anything. So I wrote that book. It's really successful. It's still on the shelves at like Crate and Barrel because it has its own life. And now that I do have, have built a community, it has even more success. But basically 20 so that it published in 2017. So this whole time I'm still doing my thing, freelance recipe development in conjunction with what you were just saying about, you know, your hourly time being so equated to a dollar amount. I also, when you're freelance recipe developing or you're a writer or something like that, your time can only go so far, right? I could only develop so many recipes in a week. I could only do so much with my time. It wasn't a scalable business at all. And I kept. That was always in the back of my mind just kind of needling me that it was so unscalable. Like I can only, I'm selling this, I'm writing a recipe and I can only sell it one time to one person and like then the recipe is over. I can't. So that was always in my mind. It's like something that I wanted to solve.

And you probably also know inherently the value of the thing that you're creating. It's like your years and years of experience going into this and it's like a single kind of transaction as opposed to what they end up using it for, which is like putting it in the magazine or like on a, a packaging that is distributed to like 200,000 people. And so you know, there's like value beyond the recipe itself, but maybe didn't have access to that audience directly.

Totally. It's funny you say that because so I still have, I still retain a lot of those original recipe development clients. I'm pushing them off more and more because I just don't have time with what I have going on now. But I, I have recipe development clients that I got in 2012 when I was, had absolutely no online community. No name for myself that I still write recipes for. And my rate is about like a hundred times what it was when I first started. I mean, truly, I think I was charging like $150 and now I charge like, I don't know, $5,000 a recipe in some of these cases. And they still don't put my name on those recipes. It's just that I now know what those recipes are worth. Yeah, that time is worth. Where they're. Where it's being used, where it's being licensed out. The fact that they have full ownership of it versus, you know, only ownership for one year. There are like these different things you can kind of negotiate. And so I've jacked my rate way up. And every single time they've been like, great in the contract, you know, they never question it. And I'm like, oh, dang it, I could have been making.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Like everybody ever who has done any freelance work looks back and is like, oh, you realize. And part of it too is like, gotta ask. Half of those people say no, but then half still say yes. And the rate is twice as much. You're getting paid the same amount and doing half the work, but you don't know until you try and have that conversation. The other thing that I think is true is like, like I think of when we were first starting out and you get like a branded deal and it's like we're in a season where like a week ago we bought a scratch and refrigerator for, you know, $175 using Lindsay's babysitting money. And it's like just your perspective on money is also different where like, a smaller amount is worth more when you haven't kind of gone through the experience of even seeing like, oh, a company that is reaching out to you probably has a $500,000 budget for this campaign. And so the difference between you asking a thousand or two thousand feels really significant to you. But to that brand, you know, it's.

Like a drop in the bucket.

Yeah, yeah. You don't know that until you know it.

You don't know that. Yeah, you don't. It's another funny thing that I think I've realized with time is these brands, like, you're thinking like, oh, Tillamook is approving this. Like, no, a 22 year old just graduated from journalism and whatever, who's working at an agency that works for an agency that works for Telemuk is who is looking at this. And they've been given, you know, $500,000 to whatever mess with. And so you asking for an extra 1,000, like, is literally easier for her to just say yes to that than go out and find somebody else.

Somebody else. Yeah.

Ask for that money. Yeah, that's.

Yep. That's great. So, you know, we've. We kind of buried the lead here with. With some of this stuff, with your story, because one of the really significant periods for you, kind of an unlock, I would imagine, is the transition into building an audience on Substack.

Yeah.

And you have the number one food and drink substack newsletter. My guess is there's a little bit of that that kind of compounds. I have a friend who wrote a book that's like a number one book in the business world called the Personal mba. And he talks about, like, once you're there, like, you kind of sit there and. But you have to get to a point where you start in order to build it up. So.

Yes. How did we get there?

How did you get there? What did that look like? And in a relatively short amount of time.

Yeah. When you look at it, 2017 is when just Married published. And at that point, I had sort of started being like, okay, I'm gonna be a published cookbook author. Like, I better build up my Instagram a bit. But I still had that issue where I was a freelance recipe developer. Like, that was my main income. And I had so many gigs coming in, and I was just so obsessed with just, like, what you were just saying, the equation of my hourly rate to, you know, or my hour to making a certain amount of money, that I wasn't taking the time to develop those recipes for free to publish on my Instagram or on Caroline Chambers dot com. I just wasn't seeing the value in that. Basically, I was like, oh, you know, I wrote a cookbook. Like, that'll. That'll project me into the universe as like, a food creator. No, it. It will not. So Just Married publishes. It does really well just based on its title alone and where it has placements, whatever, but it certainly does not all this. I don't overnight, because I published a book, grow my Instagram audience at all. Very much realized. A book is a great, prable moment if you are doing the work and you're a creator who's hustling hard.

It's like a multiplier.

It's a multiplier, but just on its own. You can publish a book and no one will ever know about it if. If there's not the right things in place. So between 2017 and 2019, I get pregnant, have my first son. The way that I cook very much changes. And so I have this genius cookbook idea for a book called what to cook when you don't feel like cooking. And all of the ingredients would be like less than 15 ingredients. Nothing you can. Nothing that's difficult to find. Everything you can find in a normal grocery store, all the recipes would take under an hour and it would be a complete meal. So each recipe is a complete meal. Like it's your grain, your vegetable, your main or whatever. It's a lasagna with a side salad. It's the whole thing. The idea was like, you know, you get a cookbook and you have to flip from like the side section to the entrees. And then like, you're not a confident cook, but you have to figure out like, does that broccoli go with that, you know, main. So this is everything all together. So I pitched this book and all these publishers are like, this is amazing, great concept. But oh, Caroline only has 2,000 Instagram followers. Like, nope, pass. Because you're not going to be able.

To sell it is what they're not.

Going to be able to sell it. So the publishing landscape had changed that much from 2015 when I got the book deal for just married to 2019 when I was trying to sell this book that I was like, no, but the name is so good, it'll sell itself. And they were like, no, it won't. Like you don't know that. Like, no. Publishing now is at least cookbook publishing in my experience is you have to be able to sell the book yourself. So whether you, you know, are a rapper who has a huge audience and so they get a cookbook deal or you have a food blog and so you get a cookbook deal, whatever, you have to be able to sell it. They don't want to be in charge of selling it. The publisher doesn't. They want you to be in charge of selling it and have your own built in audience to sell it. So everyone rejects. I am so defeated. And at this point I'm genuinely now looking back, I realize, like, I wasn't putting in the effort, like I wasn't putting in the effort to building my own brand and doing these things. And it was because of that I didn't feel like I had enough time in the day to like, you know, I didn't. I couldn't hire a babysitter for 15 an hour to then do work for free to publish a recipe on my website. Like, no way. That wasn't Good business. And then I am one of the many people whose career trajectory totally changed in March 2020. All of a sudden, my husband and I were both stuck at home with. I was pregnant with our second. Our first was one, like, a little over one. And I was literally working on a huge Cinco de Mayo campaign for, I kid you not, Corona beer. Like, on March 16, I was down in Monterey at a food photography studio shooting this huge campaign for Corona Beer. And we were like, so Corona Beer Coronavirus.

That's funny. Yeah, totally.

So funny. Like, wonder what'll happen. And then, like, the next day, the whole world is shut down and everything.

I, like, takes a collective goal.

Yes. Yes. So I get my. I get, like, my check from. I get my check from Constellation, who owns Corona. I get my check from them. Literally never hear from them again. I don't even know if I ever sent final recipes. They were just like, ah, yeah, I think Cinco de Mayo is kind of canceled for this year. Like, we're good. Like, those recipes went nowhere. And in, you know, in consequence or in. In quick success succession, all of my other freelance recipe development gigs were like, pause on that. Pause on that. We don't know what we're doing. You know, we're not. We're doing it now. Like, take yourself back. The grocery store shelves were empty. Getting food was impossible. Like, you know, it was an issue. And so no one knew how to market food. And the only people who paid me were people who market food. So I was like, okay. I remember, like, March 20, looking at my husband and being like, I think this is my moment to, you know, I'm not making money anyway, so I'm just going to go, like, absolutely. Ham on the Internet. I don't know if for listeners, have you ever had a friend who. You're like, oh, I think they're trying to become an influencer because all of a sudden they, like, start, yeah. Posting a ton of stuff and like, talking, you know, in selfie mode to.

Their camera, kind of trying out new versions of themselves.

New versions of themselves, like, posting, you know, their meals that they've never posted before, like, sharing, like, their. A link to their son's swimsuit. You're like, what the heck is going on? Well, that was. Yeah, that was me in 2020. And so my. My advice to you. I've had, you know, a lot of people since I started trying to be an Internet creator or whatever the heck we call ourselves, I've had a lot of people, like friends, friends of friends, reach out to Me and be like, how did you do it? Were you not, like, embarrassed all of a sudden? Like, you know, it's kind of like you just have to be so vulnerable. And also, like, who cares? Like, if anyone sees you out there, like, posting a link to your son's swimsuit and talking to your camera about the great hike you just went on and they think you're a dork, well, then, like, they can unfollow you. Like, I think there is, I think literally every single person in the world. I don't care if you're completely introverted. You hate talking to other humans. I think every single person in the world can be an Internet creator because none of us are as unique as we think we are. Like, there is a community of people who wants to follow somebody. Like, every single person on the planet. You just have to do it. So, like, if you. If you're like, oh, I could, like, I have so many people be like, I could never. I'm way too shy. I could never. I'm way too, you know, self conscious. Like, then just get on there and be self conscious. Like, do it. So I got on there and I'm. I'm super extroverted. I love chit chatting. So it was honestly, like, the easiest thing for me. I just got in there, started talking about my day. We live on, like, an acre with chickens. I would, like, take the camera, you know, on Instagram, stories down to see the chicken coop, whatever. But my thing that really helped me grow is that I would do. It was called. It was Quarantine Kitchen. Like, quarantine kitchen with a Q. Very chic naming. And I would be like, post because I had nothing else going on. Remember, like, nothing else going on except for keeping on your old life. I would be like, tell me the ingredients that are in your pantry and I'll create a meal for you. So people would write in and be like, I've got eggs, lentils, curry paste, you know, whatever. And I'd be like, okay, we're gonna make an egg lentil curry. Do this, do this. And people just. Even if no made them, they just got such a kick out of, like, the pantry mashups that I was coming up with that I started. And this is like, before reals, which reels are a really great way to, like, quickly go viral and gain a lot of followers. So this was like, all just word of mouth, people being like, oh, you got to follow this girl. She's like, you know, you can type in what you have and she'll tell you what to cook with it. So I started growing really quickly with that, and I started publishing recipes to CarolineChambers.com having. Just because people, like, needed a place for them to live, right?

Where do I get it?

And never got like that. I don't even. I have a. I don't even know my WordPress login. Like, my. I hate trying to deal with websites. And so I knew, like, okay, this isn't how I'm gonna make money. Like, driving SEO. This is never going to be how I'm gonna make money. So I just kept building and trying to get more followers. And I saw. I swear I, like, read on a. Listened on a podcast or maybe it was on. Maybe it was on here. The importance of having your own newsletter. Basically, Instagram can change it, change its algorithm. TikTok could get banned. You know, your website could crash or get hacked, and you could never see it again. Having your own newsletter list of people who, like, you can capture them their attention instantly. And you don't have to. You don't have to hope that the algorithm shows them your story. They're gonna get your email. I just. I saw somewhere the importance of that, and it, like, really spoke to me. And so I started building a newsletter list. And I would just send, like, fun, like, quarantine kitchen things like, here's her idea. And it was like, a great newsletter, but it was just, like, hacked together on whatever WordPress platform I was doing. So I did that for a long time, kept growing my audience. But by. By December 2020, I've had my second son. He's a couple months old. My cooking is getting even more. I feel like cooking even less. And this idea of how that proposal I wrote, like, it just was in my mind, and I couldn't let it go. So I just kept being like, what could I do with that? I still only had, like, you know, 10,000 Instagram followers. It's like, all right, what to cook? You don't feel like cooking? Like, what? You know, do I turn that into its own Instagram? Do I turn that into its own website? And Substack was just starting to gain kind of momentum. People were. Food creators were really turning to Patreon. And I just didn't dig that for some reason. And I guess I had good reason because. Has it flopped? Is it over? Is Patreon over?

Patreon? I don't think so, but I know.

Is it still going?

Any type of, like, left? Yeah, hard if you're not. And Patreon, I know you can Set it up with tiers where it's like you get access to things, but it's. It's maybe a little bit. It maybe leans a little bit into tip jar. It's not that, but if it. If it feels like that, that's different than, like, product or subscription. And maybe there's a little nuanced difference there.

Yeah, maybe. I was, like, seeing Patreons and thinking, like, okay, so people are gonna have to leave Instagram, go to the Patreon app to access this. I was like, I don't think that's. My people are, like, busy either. Young professionals, young parents. Like, I was like, I don't want to make them, like, try harder to get content. And so then I was like, wait, I already have this newsletter. And I kind of heard about substack. And I was like, okay, if I could just continue to create value in my newsletter. I probably, like, first got this idea in October. Like, okay, I already had this newsletter going for many months. Like, people really loved it, but it was just. It was just a regular old newsletter, like, sharing recipes from my website. Sharing, like, what we did, you know, tips, whatever. I don't know. It's just a very basic but well thought out newsletter at that point. And so I shifted it. I shifted it to being a unique recipe every week. And I always. Because it was Covid times, I always provided a substitution for every single ingredient. So literally, I took the ingredient list, I copied and pasted it, and I wrote, like, you know, because that's like the number one thing back then was.

Like, I don't have baking powder, right?

There's no baking powder in my town. I was like, okay, if you don't have baking powder, do this, this. If you don't have flour, do this, this, this. You don't have chicken, okay, you can use shrimp, cook it for two minutes. You can cook beef, cook it for seven minutes. I just. It was like a crazy index of substitutions. And that was when I really started to, like, get a kind of cult following of people being like, whoa, you write these recipes in a way that I could actually follow. And I also write, you know, like, most recipe lists are like, add the flour, salt and butter to the bowl. I write the full amounts. So I'm like, add 2 cups flour, 1 stick butter, and 2 teaspoons of salt to the bowl. And I put it in bold. So people who aren't super confident in the kitchen or following recipes just, like, we're really clicking with these recipes. And so I started just. I knew okay, maybe I'll turn on this, like, paid subscription model with a newsletter. So I switched over to substack for my hosting in like October of 2020. And I didn't change anything. Nobody knew. Like, I never talked about substack. It just kind of looked a little bit better.

Yeah, it doesn't look any different to.

Something doesn't look any different. All they did was receive an email. Yeah, all you know is no, no sweat off their back. But I changed the format so I would still provide these like once a week. Kind of chatty. Here's a soup recipe because it's cold outside, whatever those newsletters. But I sending in the newsletter every single Sunday morning with a full list of substitutions. A unique recipe that I would just talk the heck out of on Instagram and be like, you know, showing them behind the scenes of cooking it. The pictures. You can only get this if you're, you know, on my newsletter. It's just the best place for me to send it. Like, I'm doing a newsletter thing. I've never been good at websites. Like, it's coming your newsletter. So I just would rapidly get tons of new subscribers by being like, you can only access this recipe that looks so good if you subscribe. And so I did that for several months. And then I. December 2020, I think, like December 13, 2020, I transitioned to a paid model. So I was like, if you don't want to pay, it's fine. You'll still get one recipe a month. And that's how I. My model still is to this day. First recipe of every month is free for everyone. But if you want to pay, you know, it's. It's basically like my. I told the whole story about how I tried to pitch this concept as a cookbook. Everybody said no, but that I was gonna like, self publish it and bring it directly to the people one recipe at a time instead. And I was like. So I. So I launched it at the price of a cookbook, $35. And I was like, this is my, you know, non cookbook cookbook. Kind of like f. The publishers, like, they wouldn't give me a deal. So, like, I'm giving myself a deal was like my whole thing around it. And again, I had a very. I probably had, I don't know, 8,000 total subscribers at this point. And I converted a lot, like overnight. Like 500 overnight or something. And I was like, whoa. Like all of a sudden my, you know, let's say I was making $30,000. All of a sudden, you know, annual my. I. I kind of fulfilled on that hope of, like, being able to scale these recipes beyond just being able to sell the month. So instead of selling, that was like.

A singular moment where it was like, the clouds kind of part a little bit and the sun comes through, and you're like, this is the moment where after a decade of kind of pondering it, feeling it, the tension, knowing that you're doing, like, really good work, sticking with it, having a moment where it's like, oh, this is it. Did it feel like that in the moment, or did it feel like that?

Looking back, it felt exactly like that in the moment. I. For weeks leading up to the paid launch, I was like, oh, God, is anybody gonna do this? Nobody's gonna pay for. There are a million recipes on pinchofyum.com. what's gobbycooking.com New York Times Cooking like, those smitten kitchen. Like, why would anybody pay me in my own website, carolinechambers.com there's a million free recipes. Why would people pay? And so that's what I put my effort towards was what sets this apart, what makes this worth subscribing and actually paying for it. And so that's when I really leaned in hard to the way that I write recipes with those bold inline ingredient amounts and providing this huge. It's really a massive list of notes and substitutions. Often it takes me longer to write the notes and substitutions than to write the recipe itself. Really leaning into that because it very much is this, like, teach Amanda fish versus just, like, teach him to give him. Hand him a fish. Like, anybody can follow a recipe for, like, shrimp and orzo, but once you. You have read these, like, notes and substitution substitutions, and you realize, oh, I can swap in rice and chicken and add some cheese, and all of a sudden I have, like, cheesy cheddar rice and chicken using the same recipe, but just, like, slight tweaks. That's where people feel, like, really empowered by what to cook. We don't feel like cooking. But, yes, to answer your question, I. It was this full, like, sun through the clouds moment where I was, like, sitting on substack on my dashboard, like, watching one more subscriber come in. I'd be like, refresh, refresh. And you'd be like, 35 more dollars. You know, 70 more dollars. You know, I'm going up in 35 increments. And people are really supporting me because for. For, you know, almost a year during the pandemic, I've been like, pouring myself out for free to, to give them as much help and assistance in the kitchen as I possibly could. I was doing like zoom cooking classes. Like I've really connected with this community and they were like, like, yes, Caroline, like we are psyched to finally be able to support your work. And I'm watching that, like this desire to create a rest, a product that is scalable. Like I'm watching it scale refresh, refresh, refresh. I'm like watching it scale in front of my eyes and thinking like, okay, so I could have written that recipe for shrimp and orzo for 150 bucks, sold it once, never been able to use it again. But now I'm writing a recipe for the Sky's the Limit. Like I'm writing one single recipe and there's absolutely no cap on how much that one single recipe can make me if I just keep hustling and adding more subscribers. So yeah, that was December 2020 and it's just, it's been a, an exponential growth since then.

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Can you, can you talk about what that's been like to have that change? Because it's a pretty drastic before and after in and it's like in some ways it's slow because it's a decade of pursuing an entrepreneurial spirit, trying to figure out what it is. But, like, it's slow until it's not, and then it's not. And then, like, today looks very different than four years ago. You know, four years and two months. What has that been like to navigate that, you know, everything from suddenly, maybe there's more pressure, maybe not. But also, like, you financially looks different than it did before. And like, what. What does that look like to experience that change?

Oh, my gosh. So. So many things. The pressure thing is what spoke to me first. And so all of a sudden, I am kind of like, okay, I'm, you know, press and launch on this paid feature. And so overnight, I think it was overnight, I got, like, 500 paid subscribers. And I remember so vividly those first couple of months before I hired an editor, because again, we're obsessed with, like, our, you know, how much money we can make to how much we had to spend on this at the beginning as entrepreneurs. Right? So I didn't hire an editor for months, even though I desperately needed one. I so vividly remember. So my. It used to go out on Sunday mornings. I recently switched to Saturday based on a lot of feedback from readers. So distinctly, every single Saturday night was like a full anxiety attack. I would reread, read. Yeah, reread, proofread, have my husband read, have my mom read 500 times. Every single recipe went out because I was so terrified of, like, what if an ingredient's missing? Because that happens all the time when you just post something on Instagram, right? You, like, forget the salt. Somebody says, where's the salt? You add it. Because guess what? That was a free recipe. I don't.

Yeah, well, and you can edit off.

And you can.

Yes, right.

And you can edit it. And so I was just so terrified of these people putting their trust in me, paying me for something. And then, I mean, there's nothing worse being a food creator. Like, you are inserting yourselves into such an important part of people's lives. Like, dinner time, especially. I mean, I just say especially because I am a community member of the young family community. Especially though, to me, as a young mom, like, if dinner gets screwed up because of something I messed up, and then all of a sudden, this young mom or dad is standing there and their kids are starving and they're starving, and, like, the dinner was way too salty or it wasn't salty at all, or you know what? Somehow I screwed up the dinner. That was, like, so much pressure on me.

Yeah.

And so Saturday nights became just like fully anxiety riddled. Like, I was like panicked that I was going to make some mistake. I finally, you know, ponied up and hired an editor. And that has made such a world of difference. So I think it's just like, you know how I had to finally hire a babysitter for my son to do free work to grow the brand that is now a seven figure business. Like, yeah, you had to invest a little even though you weren't making any money at the beginning, to get to where I am today. It's the same thing with hiring people to help with, with the what to Cook brand and with the Caroline Chambers brand. Yuck for even calling myself a brand. But you know what I mean, I, at first I was so hesitant. I was like, oh my gosh, I make, you know, I'm making $30,000 now. It's $40,000. Whatever. I just kept seeing it tick up and I. My husband went to Stanford Business School, so he's like, he's like, oh my God, you've cracked the code. Like, you've created a business with absolutely zero overhead. And I was like, yeah, there's no overhead. I make all this. And so to hire my first editor, I was like, oh, damn it. Like, I'm okay. Yeah, I'm losing some profit, Losing some profit. And. But like, because I now have an editor, it's now such a more beautiful, perfect publication and recipe than I ever would. And thus more people tell their friends about it and it gets shared more. And thus my, you know, subscriber numbers have raised so much. And the same thing went for, you know, hiring my first graphic designer to fully do like a branding sweep for it. I was like, oh, God, you know, whatever. I spent $15,000. Like, is that really worth it? Yes, of course it is. Because then your stuff looks so much more legit and beautiful and people are so much more excited to get it in their inbox because my branding is really like bright and poppy and colorful and I want it to just be like this pop of like joy in their inboxes. So, like, yeah, they get that. And they're like, whoa, Saturday morning, Sunday morning. Yeah, like Caroline time, what to cook time. And that branding, like, really tells that message. So, yeah, it's been a lot of lessons of like, when is it important to spend the money? And also as an entrepreneur and I now have, I've now grown from the one to two to three small boys in this house. I have a five year old, a three year old And a one year old. And so valuing my time as the creator of all of this and knowing when it's okay to outsource has also been a huge lesson over the past four years. Or I guess it's been three and a half years of what to cook. But like you said, yeah, four and a couple months since the beginning of COVID But knowing when it's the most important thing for me to actually handle myself as like the creator of what to cook versus. For instance, we write a monthly meal plan that's hugely popular A. It's popular with my subscribers. So it's basically I take all the what to cook recipes so it could be a recipe from 2020 with a recipe from last week, and I create a week long meal plan that sends out on the 1st of every month. And this is not only. This is a part of our evolution of like, okay, now that we have now, this is a seven figure business. Like, we really need to start providing. Like, how can I provide more? Like, I'm like, I'm making so much more money for doing nothing more. Like, how can I provide more? So that was one of those things. They take us a lot of effort. It's a five day meal plan and we basically turn. We'll like overlap ingredients. So if there's chicken on Monday's recipe and Thursdays, we'll cook all the chicken on Monday and then just reuse it in Thursday. So it really like gets to this message of what to cook when you don't feel like cooking. Like, no, cooking is really hard for people. Like, we want to make that easier. And we write a full grocery list. So I used to write all those myself. And I used to write the grocery list myself because I was so afraid of somebody missing an ingredient. And now I'm like, you know what? My editor's been with me for three years. She knows these recipes just as well as I do, so she fully writes those. And I was so nervous when I first switched from me writing them to Molly writing them. And like, guess what? Nobody knows the difference. And now it's fully Molly's name. And people are like, sweet. Thanks, Molly. Like, people love it. Like, I was so afraid of like sort of losing ownership or something or having people think, oh, Caroline didn't write this, so it's not valuable. Well, like, guess what? They, they don't think that they. I'm not that great. So bringing people into your team and into your fold has. Bringing people into my team and into my fold, I should say, has been Such a huge part of this. Because all, you know, the more it does become a bit of like, okay, if I hustle harder, I know I can get a thousand more subscribers by the end of the week. And with that hustle comes so much more work. Okay, how are you hustling? You're creating another meal plan because, you know, people love meal plans. So you'll get another 100 subscribers. There's, you know, you, you need help to. So that I can. My number one job is being a mom. Right. And. But I also have a full freaking time job with all of this. So making sure that I can also enjoy my life has been huge. And bringing in, I think my, I think my. I feel like my biggest lesson of the past four years has been like assembling the right team to help and knowing that spending more money can make you more money.

Yeah. And even if it doesn't, it's like a resource exchange. You're trading it for time or like, it's all resources that we have. Yes.

Outsource the things that you don't enjoy.

Yeah.

Because that'll mean you're able to be really creative and great at other parts that you do enjoy.

The other piece that I think is important that you pointed out is like figuring out the pieces that you can outsource that don't matter as much if you're not touching those or if you're not a part of those. And, and you know, you kind of have self deprecating and like, you know, who cares if it's me or not doing it? There are some things that like, people would really care if it's you doing it or not. And it's like preserving those. But do people care if you're the one who like figures out how to update their email address if they change emails? No.

Like, great example.

You know, and there's a hundred different things like that that we do as entrepreneurs every day that like, we can figure out out slowly over time as our like, finance resources increase. How do we get those least impactful things passed off to somebody else?

Yes. The things that are like, bringing down our joy. And like, I'm sitting there at the kitchen table instead of hanging out chatting with my three boys. I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry you haven't received your email in three weeks. Like, let me. Yeah, stress the eff out. I had. So funny you bring that example up because I had a meeting with my. I now have like a great team at Substack who are there to like support me and help me grow, because the more I grow, the more they grow and they scrub into my data and help me make decisions. And I was like, you guys, it's killing me. They basically changed their app, and so now, like, more email issues happen. I was like, y', all, the app issue is killing me. Like, I get emails 10 to 10 a week. That's like, caroline, I haven't gotten my email in two weeks. And I'm having to respond to those individually. And they're like, caroline, that's why you're on substack. That's not. That's why you're not hosting on CarolinaTubers.com. just. Just forward us forward the support team. The email. I was like, what?

Oh, awesome. Yeah.

What?

So, yeah, I will. I mean, I will say if anybody out there has been considering a subset, the support within substack from, like, a technical standpoint has been so incredible. But also from, like, hey, I'm thinking about, you know, changing this or adding a podcast or doing this, and they can really, like, look into your data and they've got a lot of smart people there thinking about it. And then also the, like, community aspect of substack. When I first joined, this was not the case. You very much, like, had your own newsletter. It was just hosted on subscribe, Siloed. Now it's really like, when you sign up for one substack, they give you a list of 10 others that you might like that you can click and say, okay, I'll join that. And my, like, I think my latest growth was, like, 40% of my new subscribers are coming from within this substack of ecosystem. So every now and then I'll go, oh, God, okay. It sucks that substack is taking 10%, because that's what their cut is. They take 10 of all of your earnings or whatever. Like, oh, that sucks. Maybe I should, like, build my own thing. Or do I switch to Memberful, which is Patreons? I thought the Patreon had crumbled and was only Memberful, but I'm wrong. Memberful, like, kind of lives on your site. It's hosted by Patreon, but it just looks. It's like white listed, kind of branded as your own. Do I switch to that? I think they have a lower cut. And then I'm like, no, look at subscriber growth just from within this system. Like, people are finding me because they followed, I don't know, Emma Lovewell's podcast or Elizabeth Gilbert's podcast or, you know, Emily Oster, who's A parenting person. She was on Substack and, like, recommended me, and I got like, 30,000 new subscribers through her. So. So, yeah, it's a cool program.

Is there. Is there a way to. Do you have, like, a rough estimate of, like, hey, if I get a thousand subscribers, here's how many of those. We were talking to David Leibovitz on the podcast, and I think. I don't remember if he shared specifically, but he just talked about that as a platform and how great it is. But do you. It's one of the great things that's different than the world of, like, search optimization and getting traffic or even cookbooks sales. It's, like, kind of hard to know with this. It feels like you might have an idea of if I can bring in a thousand free subscriber or free subscribers. My guess is 2% of those. 5% of those. You know, on a landing page, they say like, 1 to 2% is a good conversion rate. Do you have something kind of in a rough number that you think about?

Yeah, I mean, well, I can tell you exactly what my numbers are. I have, as of like two minutes ago, I have 150,000 overall. And then of that 20, 19,500 are paid. So what's that percentage? Yes. So here's one of my issues, and this is actually a role. This is a good therapy because this is a role that I needed to fill. I am really bad at digging into my data, and with my book tour coming up, my team's like, hey, Caroline, where your Instagram subscribers based? And I was like, how do I find. How do I find that out? Where your substack subscribers base? How do I find that out? All of this data does exist. And yeah, basically, I. I take any opportunity I can to get more free subscribers and to provide my free subscribers with, like, really cool, valuable content that not only shows them what to cook is, but who I am as a person. Because I do think. Think that, like, the. I am a person who. On Instagram who, like, my. My Instagram is caro Chambers, and I'm not just talking about food all the time. When I first started in 2020, like, trying to become a, you know, food creator, I was only talking about food, and thus my job was really hard. And I was like, constantly, like, what can I cook next? You know, what can I share next? Duh, duh. How can I create content? And one of my. I was like, God, Mattis, my. The then one year old, I was like, Madison's always in the background. Like, you know, I got. I've got to get him down for a nap, and then I can do my work. And one of my friends was like, don't you think that people wouldn't mind, like, seeing your one year old with you and, like, hearing what he eats for lunch and how you. How you create these meals and what you cook, you know, what you. How you feed it to him? And I was like, nobody cares about me being a mom. Like, you know, nobody cares about that. And she was like, I would give it a shot. This is my friend Alyssa. She was like, I would give it a shot because, like, you're not gonna have a babysitter for the next several months. Like, if you want to be able to create content, like, easily, he's gonna need to be like, yeah, in the background sometimes. And people need to know your mom. And so I started, like, now I think my Instagram bio is like, food and motherhood or something, because I talk about motherhood and my favorite romance books and my favorite Amazon sweatshirts just as much as I talk about food. But food will always be, like, kind of at the center of what I do. So I take any opportunity I can to convert people to become unpaid subscribers, whether it's, hey, I've got this, like, my, you know, I'm interviewing Bjork on the podcast next week. He'll be on mine. You know, come on, you have to be a subscriber to listen, whatever.

Yeah.

And then I once I've got them in my system, just finding a way to convert them.

Yeah.

It's funny, on salad days or so, I do a paywall every unpaid subscribers get every single recipe. There's just a paywall before, like, the directions start. And salad days and pasta days are my highest winners. Those are my conversions.

You know some of the data. You do know some of the data.

I do know some of the data, but I definitely like that. That's one of the places that I'm like, I should really. I could probably have some wins if I understood all this a little bit better.

It's super insightful from your friend. I think of, you know, in the world of content creation, there's so many different angles you can take with it. But Gary Vaynerchuk, kind of eye roll for some people, but he has this phrase that I really appreciate where he talks about document, don't create. And I think it. It's such a great perspective shift on how to approach the creation process, which is you're documenting. You're not like, going into the lab and like, Getting everything perfect. But it's like, how do you best document what's currently happening? And I think that that's.

That's.

It's not the only way, but it's definitely one way, especially for people who are time constrained to create really compelling content, because then you don't have to create a perfect environment. The environment is the thing that makes for good content.

And that's. That's. So. I've never heard that quote from old Gary, but I would say that's the exact shift that I had when I started to see my numbers really tick up was like, less. Less sharing a perfect walkthrough of a perfect recipe. More sharing like, I'm walking down to the chicken coop to get some eggs. Oh, my God. Mattis just wiped out in the pile of chicken poop. And. Okay, now we're digging an outside bat. Like, the funny parts of everyday life that we all have on our journey to, like, cook meals for our family, like, yes, we all are living, like, if. If you have. Whether or not you have kids, like, all of our lives are just like a little bit of a shit show. And so, like, actually sharing that as opposed to this, like, perfect, pristine, finished, polished. Thing is when I really started to notice, like, my community becoming a community versus just a bunch of followers, like, I've got.

Yeah, totally, because they, like, know it, you know, and it's story too. Like, I feel like that's what you're doing is your storytelling, which is such a compelling part of why people want to follow. We could talk for hours, Caroline. And my guess is people would be able to figure out where to follow you online. But can you do a quick shout out for where people can follow you? And your cookbook's going to be coming out soon. You can maybe pre order that. You talked about kind of going through the process of this cookbook. So do a shout out for that. We'll link to it. And where can. Where can people pick that up as well?

Yeah, so the cookbook. So, yeah, basically, after a couple of years of having the substack, I got a call from a really cool publishing house called Union Square. It's owned by Barnes and Noble. And so they just like, have of. They're really interesting. They just published Dan Pelosi's book, if anybody's familiar with her, Him, Grossi, Pelosi, and a lot of really cool people. And so they basically contacted me and were like, listen, because if you've ever written a cookbook proposal, you know, It's a freaking slog they have to be like 50 pages long. Example chapters, example recipes, blah, blah, blah. This editor, Amanda Englander, came to me and was like, you're substack is awesome. It is your proposal. Here's. Here's an amount of money that I'll offer you for a cookbook deal. And I was like, sweet. And my agent was like, do you want to shop it around? And I was like, I sure don't. That, you know, don't want to write a proposal. Like, I'll take it. So the cool thing is what started as I wanted to write a cookbook, couldn't get a deal.

So I did substack to like, then.

Circled me back at getting a cookbook.

Actually, some publishers, I'll be okay with some.

Actually, yeah.

Yeah. Not all publishers. It was funny to my. When I first announced that I was writing a book, I was like, are people gonna be like, caroline, I thought we were anti publisher. And everyone was like, yeah. Like, no.

If.

If anything, people were like, this is hysterical that like, you started this being like, screw all these publishers who wouldn't give me a cookbook deal. Like, you got it. So anyway, what to cook when you don't feel like cooking. The book comes out August 13th. You can pre order it now anywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstore. And I'll be doing a book tour, 12, 13 cities. So check out look out for that. You can find more information on Arrow chambers or Instagram, whattocook.substack.com is my substack newsletter. Carolinechambers.com is my super crappy website that.

Maybe you don't have a login for.

Don't even know the login for. So just say a prayer and hope it delivers you some sort of meaningful information. I am finally working on redoing that website. Everybody will be pleased here, but it will not have recipes on it. I'm completely removing recipes. That would be a whole other conversation about the decision to do that.

And the basic idea is it'll be representative of you and where people can find you, but not the bulk of the information that you're publishing, which like.

Instagram and substance, you know, pinch of yum is so like, I just keep using you as an example, obviously. Or Lindsay as an example is like a, you know, food blog. Like that's. You go to her for food blog. But I realized I have this, like, carolynchambers.com is like, it has recipes on it, but it also has like. It's like, what is this? And I'm not a Food Blogger. So sadly all of those recipes I've ever put up there going away. So if you love them print them out. So yeah carolinechambers.com and come see me on book tour and buy my book and that's where I can get to.

Meet you in person and people can follow on social the book tour is like cities not announced yet. Where where they'll be Cities are not.

Announced yet but probably by the time this comes out they will be. You know I'll be in New York, Chicago, Boston, all over the south sf. Come see me. Yeah and you can find it all on my website or on Carol Chambers or on the substack. You can find it everywhere. All the information can be found everywhere.

Like and follow subscribe for more. You'll find it. Yeah Caroline, super fun to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

So fun to chat with you. Thank you for having me.

Foreign.

Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro Team. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to go even deeper into learning how to grow and monetize your food blog or food business or you're interested in starting a food blog, we definitely recommend that you check out the Food Blogger Pro membership@foodbloggerpro.com membership in the membership we share all of our course content about topics like monetizing, photography, essential tools and plugins, building traffic, and so much more. We also host monthly live Q&As and coaching calls to dive deeper into the topics that food creators need to know about and have a forum where all of our members can ask questions and get feedback from each other from the Food Blogger Pro team and all of our incredible experts. Experts we have received lots of amazing testimonials over the years from Food Blogger Pro members. We've helped over 10,000 bloggers do what they want to do better, including this one from Tammy from the blog Organize Yourself Skinny Tammy said This month, after 12 years working full time in higher education, I resigned from my position to become a full time professional blogger. This was a decision I did not take lightly, but in the last seven months I made more money blogging than I made in my quote, real job and decided it was time to take the leap. I strongly believe that because of the knowledge you share within your income reports and also on Food Blogger Pro, I was able to take my blog to a professional level. I have been and continue to be inspired, motivated and educated by the information you so selflessly and graciously share with all of us. Thank you so much for that incredible testimonial, Tammy. We're so happy to have you as a Food Blogger Pro member. If you are interested in becoming a Food Blogger Pro member and getting access to all of the content we have for our members, head to foodbloggerpro.com membership to learn more. Thanks again for listening to the podcast. We really appreciate you and we will see you back here next week.