How to Write Emails Your Readers Actually Want to Open with Liz Wilcox

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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, we are thrilled to welcome Liz Wilcox. Liz is an expert in all things email marketing and has an incredible email marketing membership. And she's chatting with Björk this week to talk about what it actually takes to build an email list that drives real business results, how she transitioned from one-on-one client work to a scalable membership model, and why she believes the biggest thing holding most creators back from email success isn't strategy, it's that they've stopped sounding like themselves. She also shares the mindset shifts, boundary-setting practices, and growth tactics that have made her business not just profitable, but genuinely sustainable. Liz has so much amazing wisdom to share and is also just a joy to listen to, so you won't want to miss this episode. Without further ado, I'll let Björk take it away.

Liz, welcome to the podcast.

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I feel like I finally made it.

You're here. You've made it. Uh, you've actually made it in lots of different ways. We're going to talk about the different ways that you've made it. A lot of them are things that I'm extremely interested in. One is Survivor. A lot of people will potentially know you from Survivor and would love to— we could talk 3 hours on that. We're not going to do that. Funny enough, and also different, very different from Survivor, about as far away as you can get from Survivor, email and an expertise in email and writing and writing compelling emails, connecting with your audience, extremely relevant. For the world of food creators. We're talking more and more about it. But first, I actually want to talk about something that you mentioned in a video on your site, and it was, uh, 10 years ago you weren't doing this. You weren't involved in the world of email or internet. Uh, and you actually talk about this, uh, that you didn't really have internet. You talked about, uh, living in the woods in like a 200-square-foot, uh, I don't know if it was like an, like a, an RV. RV.

RV.

Yeah.

So take us back to that moment where you were far away from this world that, uh, you are in now and decided, hey, I want to get after this.

Yeah. So maybe like you listening, I just wanted something different for my life. I knew that I was not an idiot and I knew that, you know, there had to be something else. And I started Googling and I realized you can make money blogging, right? So like you listening, I was an RV travel blogger and it really came down to, you know, I was a stay-at-home mom. We lived in this RV and we thought, hey, this RV actually has wheels. Maybe we could travel. I was married at the time, uh, with a toddler. Maybe we could travel in it.. But you know, if you're gonna travel, you need a way to work remotely, right? And so in, you know, kind of like discovering a food blog, I discovered travel blogs and I thought, you know, if, if they can do it, surely I can figure it out too. I can figure it out. And so I started this RV travel blog just as a means of, you know, eventually dot, dot, dot, making money. You know, I knew that I wasn't gonna make money right away., but I knew that I could, if they could do it, I could do it, uh, type of mentality. And I started listening to, you know, amazing podcasts like this, going to webinars, things like that. And the through line, the one thing everybody and their mother said was email marketing. I do all of this for email. I run ads to my, to get people on my email list. I, you know, I have an email list on my sidebar. I go on social and I try to do email. I run webinars so I can grow my email list. And I thought, hmm, maybe there's something to this email thing. So I kind of, you know, skipped the line. Yeah, I was a blogger and I had blog posts and stuff like that, but I really started the email list from day one. The second I launched my blog, it was like, yeah, check out my blog, but if you wanna follow along with the blog, you gotta join this email list. I did that on day one.

Sure.

Because mama didn't raise no fool. I'm nothing if not an efficient chick, you know, if it takes 3 steps, I'm out. I'm, I wanna do it in 2, right? And so, you know, I started the email list really, really quickly and I just started emailing people because I knew that was my direct line, right? I knew SEO was gonna take a long time. People told me on webinars, people told me on podcasts, you know, SEO, that takes a long time to end up in the search engines, right? That's gonna take me a long time to write the blog posts. I mentioned I lived in 200 square feet, right? I mentioned I had a toddler, right? Those things are not conducive to starting a business, right? But I knew that I could email once a week. That seemed relatively simple. So that was what I went all in on. And after about 2, 3 years, I realized, wow, I'm really good at this email thing. And so I sold that blog and went all in on teaching email.

I love that. One of the things that we often find is people will maybe start with like in our world, they'll start with publishing a food blog and they think, hey, this is, I'm excited about this. I like the idea of this. But oftentimes that's just a stepping stone into the thing where they eventually land. And we have stories of people who got into it and they're like, actually really like digital project management. Like I really like that process. Or in your case, email, other people's photography or video. And so one of the things for anybody listening that I'd encourage them to do is just to start, you know, you talked about this idea of, hey, I know I wanted I know that I could do this. I see other people do it and to start. And then as you're doing it to observe, what are the things that you're good at? What are the tendencies that you have? And it sounds like you did a really good job of being aware of that and saying, okay, now that I see that I'm good at this thing, I'm gonna pivot into that. Before we get too far away from it, one of the things that you mentioned in kind of the pre-show was that email actually was a door opener for your time on Survivor. Can you tell that story around how you used email to help like get onto the show? Yeah.

So y'all going on Survivor, you gotta take 5 weeks off, sometimes more. Okay. And then think about the devastating loss it is to lose a million dollars, to lose the game, or if you win, how you're gonna wanna celebrate when you get home, right? So you're gonna need even more time off, uh, when you get home, right? To recover mentally, physically, emotionally, et cetera. Right? And so I always wanted to be on Survivor. I always, you know, I just, and if you're watching the video, you'll get it. Like I always just knew I would get on that show if I applied. I always just knew I was that kind of gritty weirdo. Okay. That resilient weirdo that they just love on Survivor. I don't mind sleeping outside. You know, I'm a marketer, I'm a strategist, right? I, I, I wanna try it out. But I grew up really poor. I, there was no way I could ever go on Survivor. I have to work, right? I have, I got bills to pay. Okay, baby. But email was the window, was the ticket to everything. And that was one of the reasons I started in my travel or in my travel blog. Like, oh, everybody's saying email's the fastest way to cash. And, and it's gonna be long-term for me. I'm gonna go with email marketing. I'm gonna go with talking directly to my potential customers and creating products for them. Right. And so. One day I was watching Survivor with my daughter. She was 7 years old at the time. And I guess I used to say all the time like, oh, I could be on that show. I could be on that show. And I said it, you know, Jeff Probst, he's the host. He comes on and he is like, do you think you have what it takes? Apply now. Go to cbs.com or whatever. Right? And I said, golly, I really think I could do well on that game. And my 7-year-old looked at me. We're sitting in my bedroom, you know, we're sleep— survivors sleep overnight. So we're watching it in bed.

Love that. Yeah.

Eating popcorn.

Oh, that's great.

And she just looked at me and she said, you know, Mom, are you gonna talk about it or are you gonna do it?

All right.

Right. And I was like, oh, mama didn't raise no fool. Like, I ain't going down like this. I'm, I'm not gonna be punked by no 7-year-old. Come on now. And so I looked at my calendar. And I had a canceled meeting, 9:00 AM the next day. And I said, you know, serendipity, right? It's, it's fate. I'm gonna apply at 9:00 AM tomorrow, Chelsea. That's my daughter's name. And she said, you know what, mom, I'll believe it when I see you on that TV. And she pointed to the TV. Wow.

Oh, that is such an amazing moment.

Right?

Especially because then it happened.

It, I know, like imagine the side note, like, wow, does my daughter know her voice matters now?

Yeah.

Right? That's so cool.

I mean, she, the ripple effect. Fact. But I applied, I got on, long story short, right? But when I started, when I applied, I looked at my calendar and I thought, if they, when they call, when they call, 'cause I knew they were gonna call, I just knew it. And they did call that day. And am I actually gonna be able to go on this show? Do I have the money? Because y'all, what you don't know about me yet is I support 3 households with my business. I can't just walk away or leave.

Can you talk about that? It's, it's yours and then—

Yeah, it's It's my business. I support my sister, she works for me full-time, uh, and I support my mother as well. And I've supported my mom financially since I was 16 years old.

Amazing.

So there's a lot riding on this little brain of mine and my internet connection. Okay. Maybe you can relate a little bit as you're listening, but so I'm looking at my calendar and I'm like, can I actually do this? And I thought, you know what, Liz? Yes, you can because you are an email marketer. The way you make money isn't through through paid appearances, sponsorships, etc. It's really just emailing your people and selling your products. And at the time, and even now, I have a, I have a $9 membership. So, you know, $9 at a time, I'm making those sales. And I thought, you know, when I get on Survivor, I can just batch my email content. And as we were going through the process of getting on the show, you know, I there's, there's a lot that goes into that. Um, you know, I, I just started planning like, okay, what am I gonna do in the summer? If you're watching the video, you can see a calendar in my background. Uh, that's when I started planning stuff out and thinking, oh, I can batch this content. Oh, I know, uh, they said the possibility of being gone from these dates. Okay, let me start planning what I'm gonna send on those dates. And I just wrote the emails in advance. And y'all would not believe every day that I was out on that island, despite any prize winnings I won, I made $1,000 a day and I ended up actually taking 100 days off for the show and recovering from the show. I made $100,000 that summer.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

It's crazy, right? But it's all due to email. It's due to that relationship that I built up. It's due to me batching that content. Content, knowing what I'm going to sell, how I'm going to send those emails out. And honestly, all those emails were just, you know, pre-scheduled and they were sent out while I was, you know, making TV magic out in Fiji.

Yeah, that— I feel like that's such a great example of one of the amazing benefits that we have as digital creators. If you strategically and, uh, intentionally look at your schedule, if you look at the things that you want to do, if you look at How do you wanna live your life? In a lot of ways, it's lifestyle design. And for you, this was something that was a huge consideration for your lifestyle forever. It will be this incredible part of your story that you're able to tell for your daughter, that moment where you're like, yes, I'm gonna do it. And then you do it. And, uh, what an amazing thing that you had built your career to be able to, to serve you. And that's one of the things that we talk about occasionally on the podcast is this idea that we need to be aware that there are seasons where we are serving our business, we're investing into it, we're working really hard on it. We're, you know, working in the margins, but then there's also seasons where like we should look at the business serving us and what does it look like to, you know, take withdrawals, not, not even necessarily financial withdrawals, but to say like, hey, I'm gonna take a time withdrawal from the business that I have served over a long period of time and it's really cool to hear you tell your story and how you did that, and such a fun example of that being that it was you being able to be on Survivor. Remind me how many days it was that you ended up, because you were, you finished 4th?

Yeah, so I was out on the island playing the game 25 out of 26 days.

So wild.

I know, it is, it is so wild. Um, what's even more wild is it's not 26 days because I really expected it to be out there the whole time, but that's Totally. You know, that's, that's, that's business, baby. Right? Yeah. We expect one thing, you know, we, we pivot and we adapt. Right? So I really, I was out there 5 full weeks from start to finish, from flying to LA, they take away your phone, you fly to Fiji, you have like a week of prep work and then, you know, the cameras start rolling.

Wow.

And then you come home. It was, it was 5 full weeks. And now it's actually set me up where every summer I take those.

Yeah, because you've done it and now you're like, wait, I can do this. You have the playbook.

Yeah, the business truly, truly serves me. And it's, it's really all about intentionality, right? Maybe you don't want to go on Survivor. 10 out of 10 would not recommend.

Was it worse than you thought it would be in terms of how extreme it was?

I would say no, um, but the, the aftermath— so being on the TV show, being edited in a way, you know, I own my own brand, right?

Yeah.

Uh, the way that I show up online is exactly how I want to show up online, right?

Yep.

And when you're on a TV show, it's something entirely different. You literally sign away, you know, your rights to how you'll be portrayed. And if y'all, if you Google me, you'll be like, whoa, okay, I get it now. Um, but you know, it took—

so there's, you're talking specifically about one scene where it's kind of this buildup and then— yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, they just made me look like a crazy person, but it's like, no, no, because it's good TV. Yeah, it's great TV and it really did actually happen.

Sure.

I really did have a meltdown, but I was exhausted and I was starving. That's all I can say.

Well, and I think that's the thing that's interesting for me about the shows. I think people don't really realize what that's like. And similarly, I kind of a quick aside to kind of as an example of what you're saying, for a long time I had a personal trainer. I didn't know until like a year in that he was actually a part of The Bachelor franchise. And, uh, I had Googled him cuz I, I wouldn't have Instagram on my phone. And so I Googled like Kirk DeWitt Instagram and, uh, and then it, there's a picture of him from like a USA or US, there's some like gossip magazine and I clicked and read an article and I went in that day and I was like, Kirk, I was like, I didn't know you were in on like The Bachelor. And he's like, oh yeah, I've been on all of 'em. Like Bachelor Nation, Bachelor in Paradise. And he said the, the thing that's hardest about those is like, you, they, they will create the story arc that they want, uh, out of, you know, intentionally clipping it. And so he had kind of a similar sentiment coming out of it where he was like, it's, you kind of are giving everything up over to them in terms of how they approach the footage and use the footage. But all that to say, you made it extremely far in the show. It sounds like what you were saying is like, you also needed time in the aftermath to process, decompress. Is that a little bit of what you're saying? So it wasn't just the, those 5 weeks, it was also the time after.

Yeah, it was the time after to process, decompress, like Björk said. But also then the show aired, right? And you know, oh sure.

Yeah. You don't think about that.

Being a person who was on international TV, I had my head up my butt, right? I was like, oh, I'm on TV. And you know, and then they're not showing me in the best light. In my opinion. And so then that's driving me mad, right? But there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. And so, you know, it was, it was a major distraction for about 2 years. But again, I had set up my business to serve me, right? And yes, there were times where, you know, okay, we've got a sale coming up in March, beginning of February. Liz really got to get her act together. We've got to batch these emails. We've got to make sure our list is growing. You know, so we have new leads for this sale, you know, and then during the sale and after I can kind of coast, right? Because I have a membership. It's not a live thing, right? It's just content. And so then the business is serving me in return. It's really this very symbiotic thing, but you have to be really intentional about that or the business— you will just be serving the business for your whole life, right?

Yes.

It's all about just knowing where you want to go, how much time you want to work, and what, what things you need to create to get there.

Can you talk more about that? Because I think that there's a couple of books that I've been reading by this author, Morgan Housel, and he talks a lot about finances. He wrote a book called Psychology of Money. The most recent one that he wrote is called The Art of Spending Money, which sounds a little bit weird, but really it's like a psychology book. And one of the things he says in that book It's something like this. I'll butcher the quote, but I don't think he listens to the podcast, so it's okay. Maybe he does. It's something like 50% of people don't know how to make more money and 50% of people don't know how to stop making money. And I think that last half is interesting to me because I think in our world of entrepreneurship, you know, business ownership, one of the things that I see often is people who are really successful,, but it almost becomes a symptom of a deeper thing that results in them continuing to pursue more, grow more, earn more, uh, and to never be able to, uh, pause or to take time to reflect when they need to, or to take a season off. So can you talk about what that looked like for you and how you knew that you needed that and needed that time from your business?

Yeah. So number one, this was something that I had to do out of necessity at first. So I mentioned, or I think I mentioned, I grew up really poor. Okay. And so when I started this, I sold the travel blog and what I did with those earnings that from the sale is I split it over 12 months because I knew I didn't have any more income coming in. You know, I was, I cut myself off, right? And so it was out of necessity having to be sort of mindful of the cash cash flow, right? So let's split the purchase price, divide by 12 months. I'm going to give myself that as a salary. And then when I started lizwilcox.com and this email marketing thing, I told my bookkeeper, hey, this is how much money I need to make. Like, I need to give myself a month. And it was, it was a very bare minimum. It was like, hey, this is my mom's rent, this is my rent, this is what I think I need for groceries. And that was pretty much it, right? And, uh, you I think it was like $3,600 and I, I just doubled that number and said, you know, I need like $6,800 or $7,000 a month. That's how much money I need to make to pay myself that and pay the bills and, and anything above that I'm going to save. And so then I realized, well, at about $10,000 a month, 'cause I was still taking client work at this time.

Mm-hmm.

I'm going to start a waitlist. I'm going to say no to that money because what I really need to do is build my email list up. I don't need to take more clients. I'm good with the money I have. Sure, I would like more, but I know long-term, again, that intentionality long-term, this membership even at $9 a month is going to make me a lot more than if Bjork just gives me $3,000 to $5,000 today. Right. And so it was that very intentional learning to say no when I've had enough, quote unquote, I have enough money. That has been like a muscle I didn't know I needed to develop, but I've developed. And so it was very easy for me nowadays to say no. Like if I have a sponsorship, uh, but it's gonna take me, you know, 10 days of really hard work to master whatever they want me to do. I can say, uh, actually I don't, I don't need your $10,000. I have enough money. I'm good. But it's really just that practice, that, that financial discipline practice, I think. And just knowing what your enough number is and knowing what you want your life to actually look like. Again, I want my life to look like I don't have to work. And honestly, y'all, at this point in the game, I only work like 2 to 3 hours a day. And normally I don't even work Fridays and sometimes I don't work Mondays either if I'm not feeling it. That didn't happen on accident. That was a lot of financial discipline. Okay. That was a lot of, hey, I've had an— I know my number. I'm not going to overspend on the number. You know, lifestyle creep is a real thing. And, you know, I really want to be rich in time versus rich in money. And that's actually something Kit, formerly known as ConvertKit. They asked me to speak at Craft and Commerce about this last year, and it was just, again, that intentionality point of what do I want my life to look like? How much money do I actually need to get there? And how can I practice saying no? I had a friend of a friend wanted me to write their emails, 9-figure business. They're featured in Michaels. They decorated the White House for Christmas. You know, huge. They would pay me whatever I wanted. And I said, oh, No thanks. I, you know, I don't have time for that. And they even, they, or they called my friend and they said, you know, you know what Liz knows, we will pay her, right? And my buddy said, you can't pay her. She doesn't want to sit down and spend 3 months on your campaign. It's, it, she needs to spend 3 months on her campaign, right? And so it's putting yourself first, I think, as well. Putting those goals, those intentions in front of everything else that, you know, is really to what Bjørn was saying about learning how to spend money and how to stop making money.

Yeah. Well, one of the things that you said there that I think is a really good concrete takeaway for people is that the first part was you had set a number, so you knew what that number needed to be. The second part was you were, you got to that number kind of through, not that this is ex— exactly what it was, but any means possible. And it, in this case it was client work. And so, okay. And people will often say like, hey, I'm trying to figure out how do I transition? Maybe it's a job that they really don't like, or maybe they need to get like reach an in— cover an income gap that they have and they want to do it by starting a food blog or posting food content on social media. And the thing that I often say is like, it's totally possible, but it will take a long time. And so how urgent is it that you do this? And if it's urgent, then you shouldn't start a food blog hoping to monetize it. You should have some type of service that you can offer that gets you to that point. Ideally, it's a service adjacent to the thing that you want to be doing. And that was one of the things that you did. So you set the number, you had a service-based business adjacent to the thing you wanted to be doing, which was an expertise in email. And then as soon as you hit that number of what you needed, then everything additional from a work perspective went to building the next thing that you wanted to create. That was the transition then out of the service business. And then that becomes the thing that allows you time flexibility that a service business, business wouldn't. And I think it's the first time that, you know, it's really been codified in a way that's like, yeah, I think that's a pretty cool playbook for people to follow if they're interested in eventually getting to a business that does allow for that time freedom, but they're trying to figure out how to cover the gap between it. So at this point, have you fully transitioned over and now you are just working on and within your own business as opposed to doing client work?

Yeah, so I have not taken a client in over 4 years. So It actually happened pretty quickly for me once I, so I was doing the service, uh, you know, I was doing a lot of copywriting, email copywriting for people. And then I started a really low-cost membership where it was like fill in the blank copy, right? Fill in the blank email templates. Um, and that membership actually turns 5 years old at the time of this recording in just a few days. It's crazy. So within 9 months of starting that membership, I was able to quit client work. Now that's the exception. That's not the rule. I was going to give myself 2 years. I'm going to slowly work on this little $9 thing for 2 years. I know in 2 years I could get 1,000 members and that'll be $9,000 a month. That's way more than my enough number at the time, right? And now at the time of this recording, 5 years later, we have 4,000 members, right?

Amazing.

And I'm looking— if you're watching the video in the background, it says EMM Road to 10K. I'm looking to hit 10K in the next few years.

Cool.

And so, you know, That's a million.

That's like a $1.2 million business or something like that. But yeah, it really was that, you know, breaking it apart and then knowing like, okay, I hit the number with the service. If Bjork comes to me, hey Liz, I need this copy. Okay, great. I'm going to put you on a waitlist, right? Because I need the extra time now to work on this little $9 thing over here that's adjacent but different.

Um, so you're saying the client would come to you, they put, they're put on a waitlist. And the point of that is if you eventually do need that work, you have another client who turns out or they get what they need, then they would come to the top. You'd reach out to them. So you're, it's almost like not even saying no, it's a soft no. It's saying, I'm, I'm booked right now. Might be able to get to you, but I'll get to you when I get through the queue of other people that I'm working with. Yeah.

Yeah. For me, I would be, you know, yes, I can't wait to work with you. We can, we can start that project, you know, right now it's February 10th. We can start that project April 1st. Does that work for you? Would you like to put a deposit down? And so I'm getting that, I'm getting that, you know, that deal without having to start right away.

It's all, you know, it's working weekends then.

Yes.

And getting burnt out.

Exactly. And it's learning how to set that boundary before the work even starts. And, you know, maybe even get a little cash upfront, right? That's great. So yeah, it's been, it's been absolutely amazing. I always knew I didn't wanna do client work forever, and now, you know, 4 years later I'm able to serve thousands of people and just hang out with, you know, people like Björk talking about email and Survivor.

Love it.

Both great things. Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors. One of the things I hear a lot from food bloggers is that it's getting really hard to stand out as a recipe creator. And honestly, it makes sense. There are thousands or tens of thousands of people creating thousands of recipes, and to stand out, you need to be novel. So the blogs that are gonna do well aren't just the ones with the best recipes, They're the ones creating something around the recipe that is unique, engaging, and helpful. And that's why I'm excited to talk to you about today's sponsor, Zest. That's Z-E-S-T. Zest lets you host live video cooking sessions directly on your blog so your readers can cook alongside you, ask questions, and actually interact with you in real time, all without leaving your site. And what I love about this is that it helps you create connection. And here's the thing, it's completely free to use. Zest only makes money when you do through revenue generated during your live sessions. They're opening up early access to a small group of bloggers right now, and those who join early get a better revenue share. There's a live webinar on May 6th at 1:00 PM Central where you can see exactly how it works. Head to zzest.io to check it out and sign up. I'm interested to hear about two things. Uh, number one, I want to talk about email, how people can start to be intentional with their email, how we can think about email, but also interested to talk about, um, advice that you would have around growing a membership because just this last month I've probably gotten, I don't know, a handful of emails from creators who have said, hey, this used to be great. I would create content, I'd publish it to a blog. I would get traffic from Google, maybe social media, I'd monetize with ads, and that was the playbook and it worked and it was predictable. And if you worked hard at it, usually your site would grow, you'd earn more. But that's really shifted for a lot of people over the past 3 years. People saying, hey, my traffic's down 30%, my traffic is down 40%, which then if you're monetizing with ads means your income is down 30%, your income is down 40%. And there's been a lot of conversations around, membership and community and creating something that is allowing you to have kind of ownership of it, uh, uh, the relationship, which email is that as well, which we can talk about. But what, what have you found around growing a membership that's been helpful and how have you been able to go from 0 to 1,000 to 4,000? What are the things that you've learned along the way?

Yeah, so I think the best way to grow a membership in 2026 and beyond is to really get in front of your people and show your face. And this isn't anything I'm hearing people talk about, but it's not enough anymore, I don't think, to just throw a link out, hey, join my membership, right? Everybody and their mother has a membership, okay? It started with Netflix and now your mom and pop has has a membership. I went to go fix my laptop, they wanted me to start a membership. I'm like, dude, this is not gonna break again. What? Like, it's a fluke. Okay.

Yeah.

And, uh, so everybody's got a membership. So it's not enough just to, even if you have a great relationship with your email list, which I do, I really encourage you, if you really wanna grow a membership and even especially start, you've got to get some face time with your people. What kind of content are you going to create in your membership? What are you gonna, what are you gonna put out there? What are you gonna promise? Can you do that in a live format at first and just give people a taste of what it's like to work with you? That's gonna build a lot of trust so that they're, they say yes to giving you money every single month, right? People are truly practicing discernment right now with their money. It's, I don't believe that people are not spending money. I just went to Hawaii. Holy crap. Pat, you know, shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk.

Okay, people, we just went to Disney World, right?

People are spending, okay? But you've got to give them a reason, right? And you've got to give them a reason to trust you. And so one way that I'm growing, um, in the last 12 months, and something I'm doubling down on right now, is just doing as many live events as possible. And yes, I know this is work and it's going to push you, and you know, it's not going to uncomfortable if you're not used to getting in front of the camera. But I know food creators, you guys are the honor students of the blogging world, okay? I know you can do this. I know you can put, you know, get an— what is it called? Like an OBSBOT, right? Get one, put it in your kitchen, go live, cook a meal with your people, right? Maybe that's your membership, right? And so what I'm doing is a lot of workshops. I do email, right? So last month we did a welcome sequence workshop. Here's the 4 emails you need. Uh, this month we're doing a list building challenge. In April, we're going to be talking about email engagement, and it's all going to be live for people to come and see me write these emails live. Why? Because I want them to trust that I'm the expert and trust that I'm going to show up for them. Because when I show up live, I'm giving it my all, we're having fun, people can get a sense of who I am much more— as much as I love to say it, or hate to say it because I love email— more than just sending an email, right? They need some face time with you. I think that's really uh, where I see people struggling right now with memberships and even just digital products is they're not getting any face time with their people. Gone are the days where we could just plop a link down and people are buying. Okay. We really need to show up for our people and show out for them. And so that's what I'm seeing as far as growth goes. And obviously some other things I've been doing are just a lot of collaborations, right? Like I'm on this podcast. You know, hopefully, fingers crossed, we put a link to that membership.

Yep, we do. Yeah, we will. Yeah, yeah. Right?

You know, just stuff like that's how it works, right? Stuff like that. I also do freebie swaps, which is where, hey, you share my freebie, I share yours, and then on the backend, I'm sending emails about my membership. That helps me grow. And also what is really helping me grow from day one to today is affiliate marketing. So I give people 50% if they sell it for me. So maybe, You know, Björk in the show notes, he's putting an affiliate link. He's going to get $4.50. I get $4.50. You know, we call it a day. It's really fun. And that's a great way that I see people growing their memberships right now.

That's great. It's one of the things that is a mindset shift for people in the world of food who are used to monetizing via ads is that you shift to start to to think about other sources of revenue. With that shift comes a change in how you are viewing yourselves as a marketer, because right now a lot of food creators are saying, hey, this is an awesome recipe. I love this recipe. You need to check it out. Here's where it is on my blog. Go and visit it. That's the marketing that's happening. There's a shift that occurs when you are now a food creator who Hey, I've created this recipe, or in this case, there's now this membership that you can become a part of, go and check it out. And I think that probably what has to happen, and this is where I think email becomes really important, is the steps that people go through right now are top of funnel, create a video, you publish something on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, cookbook, and then there's a link to the page that you go to sign up and, or not to sign up, but just to like get the recipe. But in the world of product and especially in the world of membership where it's recurring, there probably needs to be more that happens in between there in order for you to establish a relationship. And I know you talk about this idea of kind of follower to friend to customer. And so So what does it look like to have that period in between where you see a piece of content that's free, that's on the open web, that's available for people to consume, but then you take it to the next level where you establish connection with somebody before saying, hey, sign up for this membership. What would your advice be for people to build out that middle part and to become better at marketing a product or a membership via email?

Listen, if you think you're not a marketer, I got news for you, baby. You are. Okay? We market ourselves all day long. We go to the gas station, we want the guy to be nice to us. We're marking ourselves as a nice guy. Okay? You know, you want your husband to do something for you, you marketing yourself as somebody worthy of him doing that thing for you. Okay? We are marketers, right? Your kids don't like vegetables. You are marketing those vegetables by stirring 'em into the macaroni and cheese or whatever the heck. I'm not a cook. I'm not a foodie. Blogger, okay? You know, like, we are marketers, okay? So I want you to pause this podcast right now and say out loud, I am a marketer. Because I know you're probably thinking, I'm not, I'm just a food blogger, I'm just a food— I'm just a YouTuber. I'm just— no, you are not just anything, baby. You are so capable. You are already a marketer. You've been marketing since the day you were born. What do you think crying is? That's a baby marketing themselves, like, hey, I need to eat, please feed me, aren't I cute? Right. DNA is marketing. Okay. Everything is marketing. So you are a marketer. You can do this. And so when it comes to taking them from, you know, a visit, they, they found you on Pinterest, they click over to your site, save the, you know, they click the save this recipe, whatever. It's really not that complicated. Just be a human, especially in this world of AI where everybody's just churning and burning AI content. Oh, just put it into Chat and it'll just write my newsletter for me. Me. No, baby, no. You write your newsletter because I know you can do it and I know people want to connect with you, right? So the biggest mistake I see, especially food creators making, is because we are the honor roll students, we want to be pristine. We want our newsletters to be as beautiful as the images on our blog posts. But guess what? If I'm signing up for a food blog recipe I've probably signed up for 10 at the same time. Okay. And so I'm going to get that same email from Shahara, Nahaku, Lakendra, Denise. Hi, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to my website, blah, blah, friggin blah. And it's got this beautiful picture of you in your kitchen with this beautiful apple pie or whatever your thing is, right? It looks the same as everything else. So that middle of the funnel that Bjork is talking about— just be yourself. You don't have to have Liz Wilcox's personality, you know, with a headband and NSYNC earrings and all this stuff. You don't have to be on Survivor to have a personality, okay? You have a personality. So just being yourself, writing emails that sound like you, writing emails like you're just writing to Liz Wilcox. If you were listening to this podcast and you're like, hey, this really resonated with me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give her a shout, I'm gonna DM her, I'm gonna email her and let her know, you know, this, that, and the other really spoke to me. How would you write that email? That's how I want you to write your emails. That's how you're going to market yourself because we're gonna go from, Bjork said it, follower to friend. And how do we create friends? 3 things. Well, number 1, we'll say 4 things. Number 1, be yourself. Number 2, show that you are invested in your people. You've got to email. I know the majority of you listening probably already do email. So that's great. Keep emailing. Also, you know, say, hey, I, I, it took me 10 hours to craft this recipe. Or, you know, I've been making this recipe for 5 years and I've finally perfected it. That shows you're invested in your craft. Even if you've got a podcast or, you know, you take pictures. I spent $1,000 on the camera that takes these pictures. You might think they don't care, they just want the recipe, but they do care because they want to know that you are invested in them. Them so that they will invest in you later. Okay, the second thing is be relatable. And spoiler alert, this is actually super easy. People want to relate to other people, you know. Hey, uh, when I was making this recipe, I burned the syrup 3 times. Okay, people do want to know that. People would love— people would eat that up, no pun intended. Okay, or saying, you know, my toddler got in the way, or, uh, you know, it took me 20 minutes to write this email and I still think it sucks, but I'm gonna send it anyway. That's super relatable. My fridge broke. I had to take the dog for a walk. I do carpool on Tuesdays. All those things are relatable, okay? You don't have to tell these long drawn-out stories, just be relatable. And the third thing is stay top of mind, okay? You can't just email once and expect people to remember you and join your membership. You gotta stay top of mind. So emailing on a regular basis, at least once week is a great way to do that. So again, how are we going to market ourselves? We're just going to be relatable, show we're invested in people, and stay top of mind.

That's great. I think of a friend of mine, his name is Matthew. He started a decaf coffee company and is just somebody who's really good at email. And I've said that before and have I have forwarded his emails to other people and I paused and I thought, why, why is he good at email? Why is it one of the rare newsletters that I continue to subscribe to? And the takeaway that I had was because he's like a genuinely good storyteller and he's vulnerable in them. And there, it's not just vulnerability to be vulnerable. It's also also in, it's connected to the mission of his company, which Wimp Decaf Coffee is all about this idea of living decaf. And so he talks about what is it like for him as a designer and as somebody who like burnt out at owning an agency. And he'll tell stories of, you know, kind of, hey, this was a hard day. Here's why it was a hard day. Hey, here's what I'm doing in order to like process through that. And it's, for me, it's like as his friend, but also as a business owner, it's been interesting to see like, oh, these are the emails that I open and read. And why is that? It's because I'm genuinely curious about what Matthew has to say. And naturally what happens then is whenever he sends these out, it's not once a week, but every few weeks. I open it up and I see like Wimp Decaf logo. I think about it a little bit. It's not like I think, oh, I should buy that every time, but it's top of mind. And I think that's what we need to do as creators is think about how can we create in a way that we genuinely connect with people. And it's one of the great opportunities that we have is sharing and connecting with people in a way that potentially even moves them. It doesn't always have to be that, obviously. But I was reflecting on what you were saying as I was thinking about, you know, these emails that I continue to open from Matthew and saw a lot of kind of corollaries between the two. How about that next step then? Once you are doing that, I think a lot of people are nervous then to say, and join my membership, to take that step to ask. So what advice would you have for people people in the world of email to take that step into asking somebody to take an action that involves buying a thing?

Yeah, listen, uh, you got a stomach, right? That stomach needs to eat. Groceries are expensive, baby. So next time you get nervous about asking, just remember your stomach, baby. Like, we got to be unapologetic over here. And like, we— I, I love you, I say it with love— you're not running a charity, okay? And even if you are running a charity, guess what? Charities need a lot of money to run themselves, to further the mission, okay? Unfortunately, we just live in this capitalist society. I don't know how else to say it. And so you want to serve people. I know you didn't start this business to, oh, I'm gonna be a multimillionaire and not care about anybody, and I'm gonna sell whatever I wanna sell that sells just so I can sell, right? That's not your mindset. I know that's not why you started your blog or your business, right? Right? But the best way you can serve people is through your paid products, right? Nobody wants— I, again, I say it with love— nobody wants to go to your site and have pop-up ads and have ads every paragraph, right? I know we've all heard it from our friends. Oh, you have a food blog? I hate when the recipe is at the bottom and I can't skip through all these ads.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay, so you are doing a service, you You are providing a service by having paid products because you need money to keep this blog going. The blog is not free, right? Your time is not free, right? You can't just do this out of the bottom of your heart. Okay. And so, you know, even saying like, hey, growing this membership allows me to have less advertising on my site. Being transparent, showing how you're invested. Hey, I'm invested in this because I know you don't want more I know you don't want ads in my newsletter, whatever. Like you might think people don't care, but they do care. That if I read that from a Fuuba, oh, thank God. Yes. $20 a month. You got it, baby. I'm gonna tip you too. Okay. You know, like, oh, I can have an ad-free experience. This is great. Right? So when you get nervous, just remind yourself like you are serving your people and the best way way you can serve your people is through paid products, right? I love my people, y'all. My main product is $9 a month. I teach email marketing. The next guy that has a membership like mine, it's $99 a month. Okay? Like, I really do love my people and I, you know, if I could run a charity, I would. But at the end of the day, you know, I support 3 households. Okay? So I've got to charge something. It's $9. $2,500.

That's great.

Very unapologetic about that. I love my price. That's another thing, not to interrupt myself, uh, but I'll let you. Yeah, find a price that delights you. Don't just price something because Liz or Bjork told you, oh gosh, you've got to charge this. You know, find a price that delights you. You know, I had a VIP day, it was $2,500. It delighted me to charge that. It felt I'm like, yep, that's worth getting out of bed for. The $9, it delights me. Yeah, it's only $9. Have fun with it. Check it out. If you don't like it, you know, you can, you can cancel anytime, right? Those are prices that delight me. So find a price that delights you. Remember, you are actually serving your people, um, and, you know, just go for it. It is your job to sell. You are the business owner, uh, so So I say it with love, do your job, baby.

I love that. Good note to end on and a good opportunity for you to sell the membership. Can you talk about what it is and who might be a good fit for it as we close out? And like we said, we'll also be sure to include a link in the show notes.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I thought he'd never ask. No. So my membership is really simple. If you don't know how to show up and relate, if you don't know how to show up and be, you know, tell people, hey, I'm invested in you, if staying top of mind feels really hard. That's what email marketing membership is. For $9 a month, every single week I send you a weekly newsletter template. It comes with a video that shows you like how, uh, and why you would send this email. It shows you what to send. And honestly, with ChatGPT nowadays, you can put the template directly into AI. You can say, hey, I'm a food blogger. Here's my mission. Here's my values. Here's my voice. It's going to get you 99% of the way there. You also get access to live Q&A with me, uh, because I know getting started can be really hard. Um, but really it just is that weekly newsletter template for you to take and make your own so you can turn those followers into friends. And if you really are that nervous, I show you in the video how to turn every template into a sales email. It's super, super simple. I can't wait for you to try it out. Uh, Björk's going to put it in the show notes, but you can also go directly to lizwilcox.com. Com. There's a yellow bar at the top that says something about the $9 thing. You can click that and go directly to the sales page.

Awesome. Liz, super fun to chat about two things I love, Survivor and also email. Uh, it's gonna be the, I, I can promise you the only podcast interview where we ever hit both of those topics, uh, in the depth that we've hit them. Uh, so thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing your story. Uh, super inspiring. And we'll have to have you on again soon time.

Great.

Hey there, this is Emily again from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. We really hope you enjoyed that interview with Liz. If you learned something from today's episode, we would really appreciate it if you shared the episode with your community and left a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Since we are kicking off a new month, I wanted to pop in and let you know what you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. We have a really exciting month of content coming up for Food Blogger Pro members, and we are kicking it off on Thursday, May 7th with a brand new coaching call with Allie Ellis from The Toddler Kitchen. You can find the video and audio replays at foodbloggerpro.com/live. Next up on Thursday, May 14th, we will be releasing an update to our Understanding Ads course. Course. Last up on Thursday, May 21st, we'll be hosting a live Q&A all about Pinterest with our Pinterest expert, Kate Aal from SimplePin Media. As always, there will be conversations going on in the forum, new blog posts, and lots more within the membership. If you're not yet a Food Blogger Pro member and you'd like to join, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more about everything we offer and to join us. And if you are a member, we look forward to seeing you in the membership this month. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you back here next week.