Key Strategies for Taking Your Blog Full-Time with Alexandra Shytsman from The New Baguette

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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 welcoming Alexandra from the food blog, the new Baguette. In this podcast episode, Alexandra shares the ins and outs of becoming a full time food creator and her reflections on what she might have done differently to meet her goals more quickly if she had the chance to start over. Alexandra breaks down the strategies and decisions that have really moved the needle for her business over the years. She talks about projecting expenses and investing in courses and audits and the importance of surrounding herself with a community of fellow food creators. She also speaks more about the importance of understanding your why as an entrepreneur and how clarifying the driving purpose behind your business can really help provide clarity and direction and help to ensure that your time and efforts are aligned with your core goals. Alexandra also chats more about how she overcame the fear of taking her blog full time and how she reduced her freelance work and decided to commit to her site full time. And she has some really great advice for other food creators who are looking to make the leap into taking their site full time. Alexandra has a really thoughtful approach to growing and building a business as she has taken the slow and steady route to building a full time business for herself. It's a really lovely interview. I know you'll enjoy it and I'm just gonna let Bjork take it away.

Alex, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Probably like everyone else who listens to this podcast, I learned most of what I know about blogging from this podcast. So it's really fun to be on it.

That's awesome. And yeah, that makes me so happy. One of the things that's a great joy for me is having done this. As long as we've done it, you get to connect with people who have. We use this quote sometimes and you'd maybe know because you listen to the podcast where people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. We've been doing it long enough where we can have some of those conversations with people who have been working on their online business on their site for seven, eight, nine years. And a lot of times we've, in the podcast form, been a part of that journey in a really small way. So it's fun for me to hear that. Fun to interview people who know the podcast and are familiar with it. And it's an honor to have you on. So we're going to talk about your story and we're also going to talk about the things that you've learned in making the transition and really successfully working on your site full time. 2023, you won IACP food blog of the Year. Uh, you're working on your site full time. You have a lot of success with it, and we're gonna pull out some of the bits and pieces of what you've learned along the way that has helped you get to that point. One of the things we often do at the end of the podcast is we ask this question, hey, if you were to go back and do it again, you know, what would you do different? What would you change? But we're actually gonna lead with that because as we were trading notes back and forth and you were sharing some ideas, it's one of the things that you said was, I have some reflections on what I would have done differently And I think the reflections that you have are something that people are interested in hearing about and also kind of constantly trying to balance and figure out. So tell us, rewind the tape back to that point and look at or let us know what you would have done differently, the things that you would have changed at the start of your journey after having been doing it for a while now.

Yeah. So I think that the biggest kind of mistake looking back, and I want to use that word sort of lightly because obviously we, you know, we didn't know then what we know now, and we did the best we had with the information we had at the time. But I think one of the sort of things that I would like to re. I could redo is just focusing more on the thing I set out to do, which is building a recipe website. And at the time, you know, when I the, the last full time job I had somewhere else was eight years ago, so.

So you've been doing this full time for eight years?

Yeah, so I've been blogging and you know, freelancing and like recipe development, writing and photography for the past eight years. Yeah. So at the time, you know, my dream was like, I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna build a recipe site, you know, like Pinch of Yum. And you know, at the time I just felt like my focus was really diluted. And I was also, you know, kind of when you're starting out and also when you have to have a full time salary again. Right. Like, money is obviously a consideration here. You know, I was kind of like, I'm just gonna do everything, I'm just gonna do, say yes to everything that anyone asked me to do. And so at that time I was getting so many like inbound requests for different, all different kinds of things like teaching and you know, recipe development, whatever to. And it great that I had like contacts in the food industry and people who wanted to work with me. But at the same time it really set me back with the actual growth of my site because, you know, in the beginning I was like, oh, this maybe It'll take me six months or 12 months or two years. Right. But it really took me so much longer. And I think it's because my focus was so diluted.

Yeah. When you say it, what do you mean? Like, it took me so much longer. It took you so much longer to, to get to a point where your site was earning a substantial income. Is that kind of what you're getting at? Because you had these other things that were maybe a little bit More trading time for money, which isn't bad. It's just in your case, it's not what you were setting out to do. Is that what you're getting at?

Exactly, yeah. So, like growing site traffic, getting accepted to an ad network, actually paying my bills with ad revenue, like, those were my goals and those things took me so long to get to. Yeah, yeah.

And it's hard because in that early stage, it's this, the. It's enticing because you do work and you get money and there's a certain level of comfort in that because there's not as much risk. But when you do get to the point where your site is earning income, you realize, man, this is a really great type of business where it's not passive. You're always having to work on it, you're having to pay attention to it, you're having to, like, feed the fire. But it's different than showing up and, you know, working for two hours and then getting paid a set amount. Again, it's not. Neither one is good nor bad. It's just a question of what is your desire in terms of what your work looks like. And for some people, the desire is. It feels really good for me to show up and to know how much I'm going to get paid to have a set schedule. You know, there's. There's some levels of risk with that, but you also are reducing risk. But in your case, what you're saying is, like, that was really your desire, your hope, your goal was to build your site up. So what did it take for you to get to the point where you did start to dedicate more time to your site and stop or like reduce the amount of freelancing you were doing? Because I think for some people, they might have that desire. But it's hard when you get paid a certain amount of. To not get paid that amount and then work on something where you don't know if you're going to get paid with the potential outcome of that being something. But there also might be the outcome where it doesn't actually turn into something. So how did you navigate that and feel confident dedicating some of your precious time to working on something that maybe wasn't at the time creating income?

Yeah, so I think it was like, I think getting accepted to an ad network. So I got accepted to Media Vine, I think, like in that first couple of months of COVID you know, when people were really searching for recipes a lot. So my site did experience some growth in that time. And when I Actually started to monetize via ad revenue. And I saw those numbers going up a little bit every month, you know, at first, like, you know, you're $300 and then you're $500. And then I feel like when I got to like the thousand dollars in a month, I was like, oh, like I can pretty much pay my rent, you know, if I. And I live in New York City, so everything is very expensive here. So I probably, you know, I need probably more money than people in more states.

Yeah. Out of state, Minnesota.

Yeah. And when I first saw that, I was like, okay, like if I just continue investing, if I invest a little bit more every time, I will get slightly more outcome every time. And sort of putting the faith into that system that was really like key. And then also just being really honest with myself, you know, looking back at the year or looking at my, you know, profit and loss statement, like how much, you know, if I'm really, if I'm really doing this right and if I'm really giving up all the benefits that come with a full time job for this. And I'm really looking back at the progress that I've made in a year and you know, I'm really seeing that my most of my time is going to these freelance projects and, and not the actual business I set out to build. You know, I just had to be really honest with myself, like, do I really need to be doing this? Do I really need to be doing this and just cutting things out as much as possible? And also I do have to say, like, one of the things I think I did well in the beginning of my journey when I still was working a full time job, is I saved money specifically for the purpose that I knew I would not have a full time income for some time. And I guess, you know, I'm not like, I guess I'm okay with money. Like I'm okay with, you know, just kind of planning for the future. And I knew that I needed a certain amount to live on for six months in New York, you know, with knowing what my fixed expenses are. And that was really helpful too. So I know not everybody's able to do that, but if you are able to do that to give yourself some cushion for those first few months, that's, you know, a great strategy.

Yeah, I love that because you said not everybody's able to do that for sure, but also we have a lot of options. You can work more and earn more. Maybe it's a side hustle. Maybe you're doing, you know, some of that trading time for money in order to build up that reserve. Or you can also, if it's not creating more money, it's like spending less money. Like, how do you cut and doing that in service of building Runway, which is what you did. And, you know, if you are a startup and you go and raise venture capital, you might get in your angel round, you know, that first round of investment, maybe you'll get a hundred thousand dollars, and that buys you a certain amount of Runway. Your Runway is dependent on, number one, how much are you spending every month? And number two, how much are you making every month? And once you hit that point where you are making as much as you're spending, your Runway becomes infinite. And so it's great to be able to, when you're trying to bridge that gap, like, when you are in a season where your expenses are more than your revenue, to have Runway to help, you know, fill that in between, to fill the gap in the in between, until you get that. Infinite Runway is a really wonderful thing. And I wouldn't. I, you know, I think most people have the ability to move the levers one way or the other. And so a challenge to people who are thinking of that to have that mindset around if I do want to do this, either try and get to that point of Infinite Runway before making the change or be really clearly defined on how much Runway you have. So, you know, when you need to shift and go back and get a W2 job or, you know, do some more freelance or sell something, like whatever it might be.

Yeah. Or work in a coffee shop on the weekend.

Yeah, yeah. And so one of the things that you mentioned that I think is important in pointing out is your P and L, so your profit and loss. And so for those who aren't in the accounting world, it's, you know, you can look at a P and L for any amount of time. It could be a month. Like, you could say, hey, what's the P and L for January? Or you could look at it for a year, hey, what's the P and L for? 20, 24. And essentially, what it's showing you is, like, how much revenue did you make? How much expenses did you have within your business? And then the bottom line, like, we hear that idea of, like, what's the bottom line? The bottom line is, like, how much profit you made. Tell us a little bit about how you were going about managing that, because it sounds like you had a pretty good handle on managing the books, the bookkeeping for your business, having an understanding of what the P and L was. And that is the dashboard that helps you to confidently make a decision around some of the things that you were contemplating. So what did that look like and how did you manage the process of having a P and L every month? Were you doing that on your own, working with somebody? What did that look like?

Um, I was doing it on my own and I still am, actually. My system is very old school. It's literally just an Excel spreadsheet that I keep updated every month. It has three sheets on it. So one sheet is literally my expenses that I break down by category. So like tech support, you know, domains and subscriptions, groceries, things like that. Another sheet is the actual money that's coming in. So every time I get any kind of paycheck, I log it in there. And then this third sheet is what's coming up. So, you know, if I know I have projects in March and April, I put down the revenue that I'm expecting from them or the, you know, the ad revenue that I know that's coming down the pipeline. And yeah, I mean, I think having. Having. That's obviously like such a. That that's a very basic thing that any person starting any kind of business or side hustle should do. Like my. For very silly example, my sister sells like, old clothes on Poshmark as, like a hobby, and she's like, oh, I make.

We'll go like, we'll go to like a thrift store, find them, buy them, and then resell them pretty much.

Or like. Yeah, have. Yeah. Not to get too in the weeds about it, but. Yeah. Well, just to know. Just to know, like, what. What are my. Basically what are the supplies that I have and what's the revenue coming in when I sell them? So, yeah, that's very basic. And that's something that I did from the first month. And also I should mention that I have like a marketing background back when I was, you know, working in the. In the outside realm. So that's kind of. That's something that I did for my job too. So managing expenses. And that's, you know, I kind of learned that system from then, from there.

That's great. And one of the things that I like about what you're doing is it's. It requires you to manually like. Or like, manually digitally touch each one of those expenses and each, you know, income category that comes in, and it just gives you a better understanding of what am I actually spending money on. You can stay on top of maybe recurring fees that. That you don't need to be spending money on.

Yeah.

And the other piece that I think a lot of people aren't doing that's important is a little bit of projections. Hey, I think, I think this is probably where things are going. Here's how much I made in December of last year. Traffic is maybe up 10% compared to last year. So here's maybe how much I think that I'll get paid in December of this year or I know that I have this freelance gig and this is how much I'll pay. So it allows you to do some projections within your business, which also is a skill within building a business that you get better at over time, which is projecting the future of your business and getting an understanding of where that goes. Related to that. Did you also then have a good understanding of your personal expenses? Like were you keeping track and budgeting of what that looked like? So you knew how much you'd have to earn from your business, but that would be kind of a separate spreadsheet where you had personal expenses that you were keeping track of and then you kind of matched those together. Is that how that works?

Um, that's a great question. I actually didn't do a lot of personal budgeting up until like a few years ago. And that's honestly because I felt like my revenue was not growing and I was like, what's going on? You know, if I'm. If, if. Yeah. Just trying to get a better sense of like, where is this money going? Um, so yeah, those, those. I keep those separate. Um. But yeah, I think when you are looking at those things, like, it also helps you. Like you were saying with like, if, if a client comes to me and maybe it's a project that I would typically say no to, you know, and I'm looking at my, at my P and L and I'm like, I really, I think I'm gonna need like more money in April. I'm probably gonna be more likely to say yes to that. Whether it's for personal or business expenses, like whether I'm gonna wanna take a trip or whatever. So it's always, yeah, like kind of keeping those balances in my mind. And then, you know, if I'm going to be. If I feel like, oh, April's gonna be a great month, I don't need to take any more freelance stuff on. But maybe it's a great time for me to take on a blog project that I've been avoiding, you know? Yeah.

So like non revenue producing in the near future.

Right.

But in the long term, it's gonna be something that's gonna set your site up to be more healthy, to be more profitable potentially in the long term. But it's not like you're gonna get paid for it in that month.

Exactly.

And so what you're saying is projecting allows you to have a better idea of saying, great, okay, April's going to be a good month. It looks like maybe this would be a good time to. Instead of doing a brand partnership or freelance work, I'm going to spend some time working on the recipe index on my site or one of these projects that's not immediately revenue producing but is like holistically a good thing for your site. I love that one of the. I'll just share it kind of real quick because I think people are always interested. One of the tools that. Multiple tools that we use, one of them is QuickBooks. So we do QuickBooks. We have enough, like, transactions that are coming through with all the different businesses. That's been a really good tool for us to use. But I do think if you're just starting out, I would almost encourage people not to go to a tool like that instead to use a spreadsheet because it allows you to get a better pulse on the spending that you have. But QuickBooks is a great resource, QuickBooks Online. And then for personally, we use this tool that I really love. And I'm in this probably once a day on average. And it's a software tool called Monarch.

Okay.

We've actually been trying to reach out to them if anybody knows anybody from Monarch, because we'd love to have them be a sponsor of the show because they just love the tool so much. But Monarch is a great budgeting tool. And we actually do two different Monarch accounts. One is it has all of our different business accounts in it. And so every single transaction that's happening within our businesses, whether it be like our operating businesses or we also have some real estate that we do, it's all coming through there. And so there's a ton of transactions. But in the same way, I'm looking at those probably on average, once a day, once every other day, to see. To stay on top of it and say, like, do I have a pulse on, do we have enough savings within these businesses? What are the expenses within these businesses? What does revenue look like? And then we also have one that's just personal. And so it's only our personal accounts. And so what we see there is like, hey, as a family, how much are we spending every month? And it's been really great for us to be able to see those two, you know, very different buckets, which is like, one is personal and business with our collective kind of entities. What does that look like? And then the second is like, just personally, what does that look like for us month to month in terms of spending and that component? So at what point did you know when you were doing that analysis of business spending, business earning, and personal expenses, at what point did you look at it and say, hey, I'm at the point now where I kind of have that Infinite Runway. Tell us about that moment and what that felt like and how you knew you were there.

Yeah, I mean, I would. I've never heard that term Infinite Runway before. So just for people listening, like, also, if they never heard that.

Yeah, sure.

Don't panic.

Just the idea of, like, you can go full time, maybe that's like. Like, it's a nerd's way of saying you've built up enough to not have to fund your thing in other ways.

Totally. Yeah. I think it was literally when I first saw that I was making $1,000 in ad revenue, I was like, okay, I know that I can build this because I see the steady growth that I've had, so I know that I can build this so I can have enough to actually pay all my bills, et cetera. But honestly, there was no, like, huge moment. It was just little by little, every month that I started to notice that those percentages were shifting of where my revenue was coming from. You know, ad revenue versus freelance. And then every month, I can kind of taper off things that, you know, were no longer necessary on the freelance side. So I knew that I could start dedicating more time to the site. But I think, like, one of the really important things to note here, and it's just, like, knowing your why, like, that's something that I always go back to. And if people listening, like, if you've never heard of Simon Sinek and have never seen his TED Talk, I would really encourage you to check it out. You just search, like, start with why, I think on YouTube. And it really just tells. Gives you the breakdown of, like, how to figure out why you do the things you do and what is important to you. And so once you kind of have that, you can. You can focus. Like, you can make sure that your time is actually going to that thing and not just. Not just, like, staying afloat with projects. And maybe if your why is, you know, having freedom, and maybe you have small children or something, and you want to be able to be flexible with your Time like your why is your freedom. So maybe, you know, those freelance projects are better for you because you can calibrate how much time you need to spend at home, et cetera. But for, for me, my why was like, I want to help people cook healthy food. And so that is kind of always what I go back to every. Every month. You know, how much time can I really dedicate to that?

Yeah. You know, it's one of the things that I think is so important to point out, because if we don't have that defined, you can get into this loop where you're like, you show up, you do work, but do you really know why you're doing the work?

Yeah.

Okay. It's too make income, make money. For some people, that is the why. Like, they need to get to a point where they are able to provide for their family, or they want to feel stable or they have something to prove. Like, maybe that is the why. But I think for a lot of people, that's not the why long term. Like, you'll get to a point where you, you do that, you have enough. And then it's like, okay, so why are you showing up now and continuing to do the work every single day? And so I think it's so important to point out and that idea of the work that we were doing, there's multiple types of income that is creating. There's financial income, but there's also like impact income.

Totally.

Yeah, there's. There's like Y income. And sometimes we have to do work that is like, devoid of why, but it's purely financial. Like, there's not a lot of Y income, but there's financial income. But ideally, over time, and it sounds like this is what you've done, is you can, you can continue to work towards that why income, the purpose income, the impact income. And it also then is financial income as well a lot of times. And it feels like the sweet spot is where you can. It can be. It can become both of those things. Like, you produce content on the Internet and people come and consume that content. It helps them understand how to eat healthier, to access good food. And also that produces an income for you. And that feels like a really wonderful thing if you are able to get to that point. So we'll link to that in the show notes Simon Sinek. I also have shared a couple times on the podcast. Simon Sinek has this idea of like, a business really is a vehicle to get you somewhere, like to get you to your why, to put you in a certain direction and the income we are creating from those businesses is the fuel for that vehicle, which I think is a great concept and a good reminder for us. It's kind of like you're not driving around in circles. Where are you going?

Yeah, totally.

That's the important thing to remember is directionally where you headed. And if you're able to create income within your business, it helps direct you to where you need to go. So as things look right now for you, what does the pie chart of your business look like? You have advertising income from your site, you do some freelancing, maybe still sponsored work. What does that look like if you were to break it out just to give people an idea of what your day to day looks like now?

For sure. So I would say like 70% of my revenue is from ad revenue from Mediavine and the rest is freelancing. So I do recipe development and photography for a couple of other, like bigger food media brands. And then also I teach food photography in person. And then from time to time I'll also teach vegan cooking classes here in New York. So that's kind of like what makes up the complete piece.

I love that. And the thing that's great about that is, you know, we're very similar. You know, I think if people were to know us, us being me and Lindsay in a certain capacity to be like, oh, what you do is Pinch of Yum. But it's like, actually there's a lot of different things that we're doing in any given day. We have obviously Food Blogger Pro. A lot of people don't know about that unless they're in the food world. We have Pinch of Yum. We have some other software businesses, we have a site called Clarity and Curbly. We do some real estate. And if you, you know, roll the tape back further for us, there's a season where we would do, you know, classes and we would speak or. And so the nice thing about that is it provides a little bit of comfort in knowing that any one of those could go away at any time. And anybody listening to this knows there's Google updates and there's social media algorithm updates and you know, or like we have a. Lindsay's sister worked in usaid and then with this company adjacent to that, it's like, oh, you think this is a, like secure government job that can go away? Like all of us are vulnerable no matter where we are, even if we have the perception of we have a secure, stable job. Yeah, A lot of times those secured, stable jobs, things happen and they go away. And.

Or something happens to you and you can no longer do that job.

Yeah, totally. And so it's helpful to have those things that you can fall back on. And I've heard that said, even for people who, let's say you have. You're somebody who has that full time W2 job and. Or part time W2 job, and you're doing a side hustle with that. If that full time W2 or part time W2 job goes away, you have this safety net of a side hustle that you can scale up. And so for anybody listening, I think it's a reminder to them around one of the assets. One of the valuable components of having a side hustle is a certain level of security that you have this safety net that you can scale up if you need to. Yeah, so just that as a. As a variable within all the decision making, do you have advice for just. Well, yeah, go ahead.

One thing quickly is that I would caution people slightly against the idea of, like, having something to fall back on and just speaking from personal experience. Like, obviously that is very sound advice and very, like, parental advice, right? Like, oh, you want to be a theater performer, like, make sure you have a degree. So of course we love that advice. But when you are already on the path of starting your own business or pursuing some sort of passion project or pursuing something else that's slightly unconventional. If you are focusing too much on this idea of, like, I can always fall back on this. Oh, next month, if it doesn't work out, I can always go back to work. It can actually psychologically hold you back because you're not putting a hundred percent into your project. And I know that this has happened to me. And I think that's partially why, like, you know, in the first couple of years of me doing this, I was focusing so much on freelance work because there's also like a little bit of fear, right, of just diving in and being like, the next six months I will dedicate to this one thing I set out to do or the next year or two years or whatever. So I would really be honest with yourself about, like, your priorities and where your head is at every day.

It's a little bit of this idea of burn the. Burn the bridges approach. Like, you go across and you burn the bridge, you're gonna be there like. Or burn the boats, you know, is another idea of, I suppose burn the bridges is like, relationally burn the boats being like the. The army shows up, you are at the shore, you burn the boats, you're not going back, right? And what that means is like, you can't retreat then.

Exactly.

You just are there and you have to figure it out. Yeah, yeah. And I suppose the, you know, it's in each person being very unique in terms of their life situation, the requirements. But to your point, important to think about the potential of putting enough pressure on yourself that you actually do it versus if you are consistently in a place where you're not having that pressure, there's a really good chance you're not actually going to do it.

Totally. Yeah. Like having.

Continue to do the thing that is most comfortable.

Totally. Exactly. Like, there has to be a little bit. There has to be some stakes and like a fire under your butt somewhat. But I think another thing that's, like, interesting about my story and sort of the idea of having this, you know, reflecting on your mistakes in the beginning is because I was already working in the food industry when I set out to build a recipe site. I was working in marketing in a culinary school, so I already had a lot of contacts in the food industry and I was. Was already developing the skills that I needed for my site. Like getting to know how to write a recipe, for example. Like, I got to take a recipe writing course at the school where I used to work. I was doing food photography at my old job, so I already, like, had those skills. And so. And most importantly, I had connections and I was sort of in the food world. So when I left and I, you know, I basically sent out a batch email to all my contacts and I was like, I'm freelancing. Like, let me know if you need me to do anything. Not verbatim, but that's kind of what I did. And I had a lot of projects inbound for a couple of years because of that Runway, and then because I was already out of sort of that world a little bit, like, those things sort of started drying up. And then I looked back and I'm like, okay, so it's been three years, and I was supposed to have been building my site, but I've just been doing these freelance projects the whole time. And now, like, only then was I, you know, sort of really starting to take my sight seriously.

Sure. And it's almost like tying back to that idea of things you would have done differently. It's like, man, if you would have been working on your site those three years instead of doing freelance, you probably kind of played the numbers game a little bit and look at the arc of growth and say, like, it would have been nice if I was working on it.

Yeah.

Which is always one of the hard things. It's like there's. There's no perfect formula for it. Totally knowing what you know now, you can look back and say, like, oh, great. It makes sense that it would have made sense for me to focus more on my site, because you've seen the benefit of growing that and building that. And I think if nothing else, it's helpful for people to hear from somebody like yourself to say, actually, I probably would have done a little bit more site work, you know, building my own business as opposed to just doing the freelance work. And I think one of the other things that's important to point out and a reminder for people, this is actually something going back to that Monarch conversation, Monarch money, which is where we track business and revenue expenses, net worth. One of the things that we do is we track what is the value of the business. And I think sometimes we forget that the thing that we are working on is also inherently valuable. If we are building something that produces income, that income that the thing produces. If it's not just us trading time for money, if there is a system, if there is a process, if it is like scalable, transferable, and repeatable, that inherently has value. Just like if you bought a rental home and you had a tenant, part of the value of that wouldn't just be the home, but like the income that it can produce. Similarly, if you have a website and it makes $10,000 a year, that might be worth $30,000, $40,000. And so you aren't just producing income, you're producing an asset. And I think it's important for us to remember that the work that we are doing building our businesses, if it is the right type of business, could also potentially be an asset. And so just a reminder for people, that's a component with everything that we are doing. One of the things that you talked about was, you know, kind of so along the lines of burning the boats, like, kind of taking this unconventional path, moving away from maybe what would be considered kind of a normal career path, making that hard decision, but especially hard within the context of being an immigrant. And it sounds like. Like part of one of the challenges you had was all of us, I think, feel this to some degree, but it sounds like, especially in your story, convincing family or parents that, like, this is kind of a weird path. It's maybe unconventional, but it's a good path for me. Can you talk a little bit about what that was like to navigate some of the social, parental, relational dynamics around pursuing something that is maybe hard for some people to understand.

Yeah, I mean, that's such a big topic, but obviously one I'm happy to talk about. And also do want to encourage other people who, you know, maybe weren't born here or maybe have immigrant parents. Yeah, just. Just give some advice on what that journey is like. I mean, we. We all grow up in different kinds of families, learning different things from our environment. So it's not just immigrants that this is pertinent to. But yeah, for me, like, I'm Ukrainian. I was born there. I came to the. I was nine. So I still have, you know, the first chunk of my life, and my first memories are still in another country. And so when you do immigrate, you know, the. Obviously, the whole point is, like, I want stability and security and safety for my family. And stability, security and safety are not necessarily synonymous with, you know, entrepreneurial pursuits. Yeah, exactly. So. So, you know, the idea is, like, a lot. I'm sure immigrants from any part of the world, like immigrant kids in America, have probably heard that they should be a doctor, a lawyer, or at least an accountant, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

If all else fails, or, you know, a nurse or something. Not that there's anything wrong with those fields at all. Obviously, they're very admirable careers. It's just something that never, ever resonated with me, I think, like, I'm a little bit stubborn, and I've always just known that this is literally the one thing I want to do. I don't want to do anything else. And I also. Knowing that I'm a creative person, I always knew that this is something that I wanted. And it was, you know, there was always, like, kind of different steps of challenges. Like, first it was like, what are you going to major in in college? And then what kind of jobs are you looking for? And then, you know, all that. So I think that nobody really understood what I was trying to do. And to a certain extent, nobody still does. Like, not nobody, but a lot of people still don't.

Like, many people.

Yeah, sometimes, you know, I don't know, like, even my mom will call me sometimes and be like, oh, hey, what's up? How was your day? Did you work today? And I'm like, I work every day just like everyone else, you know, and, you know, I think it's just hard to understand what this thing is, because, for example, for someone, for my mom, she just, like, doesn't fully understand, like, how this pays the bills. So for her, when she asks, like, did you work? It's more like, did you Go teach a class today or, you know, did you go in?

Did you go into work?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

What were your hours? Like, when were you working today? And you were kind of like, I don't know, kind of the whole day. But also, like, I was at a coffee shop. And then.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that can be very hard and discouraging, you know, when people don't understand what you want to do or don't support it or, you know, tell you, like, oh, don't worry, you can always fall back on something else, like sort of setting you up for failure right from the start, before you even tried. So that can be really hard. I think that the only thing you can really do in this case is, like, just do the thing. Despite what other people are saying, it's your life, right? Like, you're the one who's gonna have to look back on your life and think about the decisions you made and how you got to where you are. Like, it's still your life, so you have to make decisions for yourself. And the only thing you can do is just do it. And then hopefully, you know, two, five, ten years from now, people will be like, oh, okay, I get it. You know, but maybe people won't get it right from the start. So that can be a little bit challenging. But something that's. That's, you know, that's been really helpful for me is like, having a community in this space. Whether it's like, going to conferences and meeting people who do the same thing and actually, like, you know, having a bigger context around it. Like, oh, I'm not the only one, like, publishing recipes on the Internet. There's a whole community of us, and people are having the same challenges as me. So that's really nice. And then, yeah, like, also just having some. Some people in your life who will support you. Like, find those people. You know, maybe they're not going to be the people you in your immediate family or maybe not your spouse will understand, but finding somebody who knows those challenges and can commiserate with you and. And congratulate you when things are going well, like, that's really, really key because this is a really isolating endeavor. Like, most of the time you're just alone in your kitchen, you're alone at your computer, you're talking to a screen on inst. It can be very, very isolating. And sometimes you're just like, what am I doing? And who cares? So it's nice to have people in your corner. You know, it could be friends, it could be people on the Internet that you meet, you know, like, for example, you had a guest on your show a few years back, and I loved her story and I reached out to her. And now we meet, like every month online and we talk.

Who was it?

Karishma. And her site is Home Cooking Collective.

Oh, cool. That's awesome.

Yes.

Yeah. A lot of times it takes the. You taking the initiative to do it. Like, you have to go through the process of connecting with people, reaching out, like saying, hey, let's get a group together. And yeah, that was something that I. This was years ago, pre Covid, but, like, found three people in kind of adjacent industries. One was. His name was Raphael Gentleman's Gazette, who, like, has like a home, or not a home, but like a fashion site. Mark Du started a company called Quiet Light Brokerage, which buys and sells online businesses. And then my friend Bruno, he started a site called Influence Kit and another site called Curbly, which we actually eventually acquired. But we would get together for lunch and it was like, great. You don't. They get it? Like, there's no explanation of how to do a thing. It's just like, you just. You get each other and there's. There's no work in trying to catch somebody up to speed on what you're trying to do or the issues you've had or a Google Update date and what that means.

Yeah. Or try to prove to them that even, like, your goals are worthwhile. Right. And it doesn't have to be somebody directly, like a blogger or somebody, you know, or an influencer. It could be just somebody doing an unconventional thing. Like it could be a theater actor, you know.

Right.

So it's really. Yeah. Somebody. Somebody who just gets it. Yeah.

Yep. That's great.

Yeah.

One of the things I know that has been important for you as you've built up your site is systems and processes. You talked about the idea of batching as being really important. I think it's one of the things that we can always learn from other people around what's working within their business when it comes to systems, processes, things like that. So can you share a little bit about what has worked best for you when it comes to systems and processes and even, like, how you document some of those things and what that looks like for you?

For sure. Yeah. I think that having, like, you know, scheduling templates and batching projects on certain days of the week and things like that has been one of the most transformative things I've had, like, in my business the last couple of years. And I actually had, like, A kind of roundabout way of getting to it. Because in the beginning, when I was first starting out, and I think a lot of people can relate to this, you sort of wake up on Monday and you're like, I guess I'll cook something today and then if it turns out I'll take a photo and then I'll publish it on Tuesday and you know, maybe I'll send a newsletter. And it's sort of this like kind of wishy washy thing. So I think it's really important to think about yourself like as the CEO or as the manager of your company. And certain functions need to take place within your business every week, right? And it needs to be, like you said, repeatable. So one of the things that I do is I have a weekly template and every either Sunday night or Friday afternoon, I look at the next week and I fill in the template, right? So for example, Mondays are my computer dates. So I will, you know, draft my new recipe to publish on Tuesday. I always publish that recipe and send the newsletter in the afternoon. I'll recipe test on Wednesday, I'll shoot reels, on Thursday, I shoot photos. And Friday is kind of like a catch up day. Or if I have any freelance work, I'll do it on Friday. And so that's the general template. And every week I never have to wonder, what am I gonna do on Wednesday? I always know what I'm gonna do. And so that really like takes the guesswork out. And I think it's like one of the really important things is there's so many moving parts of this business, right? Like there's admin tasks, there's writing, there's mood boarding for your photos, there's updating old posts, right? Like going into your analytics and things like that, researching keywords. There's so many things and it is not efficient for you to do 10 things in one day. Because when you're, you know, switching tasks in your brain, it takes your brain a while to catch up and start doing a new function, right? So as much as possible, I like to batch things. So for example, if I'm testing three recipes that week, then I will test them all in the same afternoon. I'm not going to, you know, say, oh, on Monday I'm going to have a couple of hours at night, I'll just slot it in there because in my experience, like I'll be tired. I'm not going to want to switch to that task, right? Or if I'm, you know, if I have a lot of computer work, then I Will do it all in one day. Um, so it's really important to, like, batch those things together or, you know, if I'm going through the trouble of setting up my studio and shooting photographs and going grocery shopping, I'm not gonna do just one recipe. I'm gonna do three. So that's been really transformative. And that just, like, just makes your business so much more efficient. And actually, one of the things that was really also, like, kind of an accidental benefit is that I had. I was working with interns a couple of ago who were helping me with primarily photo shoots. And it was so exciting, you know, to have somebody to come in and work with you. But I quickly realized, like, oh, actually, there is a lot of work that needs to happen in advance before somebody comes in to work with you, because you need to. You need to prepare them. Like, you need to make the day for them. Right. So you have to make sure that your recipe is ready to be followed. Right. It's fully printed. It's ready to go. We're not going to be making any guesses or changes when we're actually doing. Doing a photo shoot. Like, everything has to be perfect. I have to get groceries. You know, I have to plan exactly how many recipes we can do in eight hours. So when I was working with interns, that really helped me with just, like, planning in advance and making the most of my time. And then also, obviously, like, you know, I'm sure most people listening are familiar with, like, keyword research and planning your content in advance. So, like, right now, it's February, so we're probably thinking about spring vegetables right now. Like, maybe we're starting to dip our toes into Easter. And so always knowing in advance, like, what those recipes are going to be that you're working on and doing some preliminary research. So that's really key.

Yeah. Can you talk about. So Friday afternoon, Sunday evening?

Yeah.

Do you have. You said it was, like, a template that you follow?

Yes.

Are you putting that into your calendar? Is it, like something that is a document that you duplicate and then you fill it out like, okay, on Monday, here's what I'm going to be doing?

Yes.

Because I think there's something really great about, like, doing the work of planning the work. And I think sometimes a lot of people just show up and do the work. They don't. They don't do the work of planning the work. And when you do the work of planning the work, when you actually do the work, you're going to get more done. But so can you can you talk specifically around what that looks like with the template? You use the process you follow within that. So you're sitting down. Does it take an hour? How long is it? How much time are you spending with each day thinking through it? Fill that picture out a little bit more.

Sure. So I'm a little bit of a technology dinosaur. I don't love trying out new tech and software. I know that, like, a lot of people use things like Notion or even a Google Calendar. For me, the thing that works best is a Google Doc. Like you said, it's a template. And then I just make a copy of it every week. And then, you know, I call it week of whatever, February 3rd. And then I fill it out. And then, you know, the template has, you know, on Monday, it says, like, basically what. What recipe are we drafting to publish? And then I just fill in that information. But before I get into the template, I actually just start with a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Again, dinosaur. So I like to do everything by hand first and just open my notebook to a blank sheet of paper, and I write down literally everything that needs to happen that week. And these are personal and business things. So, for example, the recipes I'm publishing, the newsletters I'm writing, the reels I'm shooting, the photos I'm shooting, any kind of pitch letters or any kind of important emails that I'm writing. If I have to get a haircut, if I'm taking my cat to the vet, if I need to buy cat food. Like, literally everything that needs to happen that week, I just make a big list. Okay. And that, you know, probably takes me 10, 15 minutes. And then I take those tasks and I plug them into that Google Doc and I write, you know, and then I see what I have to do. And then I think the whole process probably takes me 30 minutes of, you know, upfront work. But then it's perfect because when I, you know, wake up on Monday and I see my week, I know exactly what it's going to look like. And then it's also so much easier to back batch tasks. So, for example, if I'm shooting two recipes for my site and then one recipe that's free for a freelance client, I can batch those into one day. And that really saves a lot of time.

Yeah, that's great. The reason that I think it's important to talk through these things and talk to them specifically is I think back to this is probably 15 years ago when I was at this nonprofit that I was working at, and there was Like a lunch and learn that somebody was doing. And she was explaining how she uses Gmail and she. And she's like, so usually what I do is I'll like go in, I'll respond to an email and then I archive the email so it's no longer in my inbox. And I was like, whoa. Like, the idea of archiving an email never existed for me. And obviously it's like such a important part of my process now to keeping, you know, inbox zero or whatever.

Yeah.

But I think there's little things like that that we can pick up and implement in our processes as we continually look to refine and improve what we are doing. So with that in mind, is there anything is like as we come to the. That you would point out, as, you know, we talked about you looking back and saying, hey, these were some things I would do different. What about things that you would do again? Like the things that you did that you were really grateful that you did along the way. That had a big impact in you being where you are today, for sure.

Yeah. Well, a couple of things that I felt like really moved the needle is I think somewhere like slightly after Covid happened, I had my first audit with Casey Marquis, who, you know, is constant of this podcast. So that was really helpful. Just getting that rundown of like, here are the things that you need to work on that are really going to make a huge difference for SEO. I would definitely, like, that's a great investment. It doesn't have to be Casey. It could be someone else.

Were there anything, like, if you were to think back to the three things within that process that were most helpful, can you think through what those were?

Just having somebody look at my site as like a neutral party. Well, not, not that neutral, I guess, but just, you know, and saying like these things that you're writing are not helpful. This information that would be really helpful is missing, like the, you know, the photo of the ingredients that is labeled with, you know, text overlays. You know, he, he really wanted me to do that. I was reluctant to do it. Then I started to do it and saw big growth or like having step by step photos, for example, was really important. Things like, you know, internal linking, STR closing, like not indexing your tag pages, not that we even use tags anymore sites, but you know, it's just a lot of technical things, some technical and.

Also some user experience things like.

Totally. Yeah.

The step by step images or you know, labeling a picture labeled with ingredients, like not technical, but definitely like a user experience consideration which all of that rolls up into SEO. It's the kind of that art and science.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. So I definitely invest that again, 100%. Also, a couple of years ago, I did the cooking with keywords course with Aleka. I know she's been a guest on here. And yeah, that course was just, like, brilliant. I was doing keyword research obviously before that, but also moving to key search specifically was really helpful. And also just knowing the ins and outs of how to compare a competitor editor's page to your own and like, those kinds of technical things, that was really key. I did that course in, like, one weekend or something, and I was like, this is the best weekend ever. This is the best way I could.

Have spent my weekend.

And then another thing that I think has been really important for me is going to a co Working space to work. So on days when I'm not recipe testing or shooting, and I, you know, my studio is in my house of my apartment. So I've been working at, you know, from home for eight years. So people, you know, I know that Covid was a big shift for people, but for me, it was like, I've been doing this for a long time. And, you know, there are definitely benefits to working from home. Like, you can do laundry in the middle of the day, and that's wonderful, but it. You. It's a completely different state of mind when you, like, put on your big girl pants and you leave the house and you, you know, get your coffee out and you pac your lunch and you're sitting somewhere else for eight hours. Like, the productivity is just like, through the roof. I know that coworking spaces can. Or just like any office space can be really expensive, but, you know, even in New York City, like, I was able to find one that is really affordable. And, yeah, just a complete game changer. And also just like feeling like you're a part of the world because again, like, blogging can be so isolating that just like getting on the subway, going somewhere, seeing other. Other people also working just reminds you, like, oh, this is business time, you know.

Yeah. Generally speaking, we're not meant to be alone for long periods of time. Yeah. And I know there's a. There's a broad spectrum of people's comfort with just being alone, but I think broadly speaking, generally speaking, we are social people. And even if it's not like hanging out and socializing for eight hours, there's something that is undeniably different when you are with other people. So I think that's a great Point and can feel that myself too. Like if I have periods for too long of a time where I'm just on my own, it feels really good. Even just to go to a coffee shop.

Totally.

And it's easy to be around other people.

It really affects your mental health, I think, when you are like. And also, especially in the beginning of your business, when maybe you're not like getting a ton of traction with like your email subscribers or whatever, and you really feel like what you're putting out is going nowhere, like that can really, you know, just accumulate in your brain into a lot of negative feelings. Like, you know, am I wasting my time? Blah, blah, blah. So if you can, like, just get out there, that's really good.

Well, and I think the other thing worth pointing out is, like, the combination of a lot of us, what we're doing is on social media and we are alone. And the combination of working in isolation, pulling, plus increased amounts of time on social media feels like a formula for a lot of people of mental health struggles and mental health. Obviously very broad. But it's just like the idea of having a lot of consumption of social media and being alone would be enough for me to encourage people. And it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing to say, hey, what does it look like? Not only to find a place where you can work with other people, other people just being in the same place and have those interactions, but also to find groups of people that you can connect with. And the analogy that I think of, and it was somebody who was talking about the impacts of working on our own or, you know, without social connection, was she talked about this idea of when we do go into an office, and I think a co working space would be another example of this. She said we are kind of like tires on a car or a bike. And when we have these little interactions throughout the day at a coworking space or at an office office, what's happening is it's like a little pump that keeps some air in the tires. And what happens when we don't have that is our tires just slowly get deflated and they'll maybe get like. Then on Friday night you go out and you have this interaction and you have that tire that gets inflated, but then you have another long stretch where it gets deflated. And so we don't have these little incremental interactions when we are going in and being with other people. People that generally keep our tire inflated all the time.

Yeah.

And so the importance of that and it trickles down into Our work, like, we do better work when we have a full tire. So I think it's an important piece, you know, it's a tool in the tool belt to be a successful online business owner.

Totally. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be, you know, not every day or, you know, if. If you can only afford one time a month. Like, again, these things can be expensive. Like, that'll even add a lot or even if it's just two hours at a coffee shop. Same thing, you know?

Yep. That's great. Yeah. Alex, we could talk for another hour about all the things that you've learned and, you know, all the insights that you have that you could share with podcast listeners. But we'll wrap it up if people want to connect with you, follow along with you. What's the best way to do that?

Yeah, so my site is thenewbaguette.com, baguette, like the bread. It's also the new baguette. On Instagram, I have a substack newsletter, so if you. It's just thenewbaguette substack. Com. You can sign up for my newsletter all over my website. And if somebody wants to email me and chat about anything, it's just. Hello, thenewbaguette.

Awesome. It's nice of you to offer that, Alex. Thanks so much for coming on and for being a podcast listener.

Thank you.

It's one of our favorite things is to have folks who listen and understand the podcast on to interview them around what they've learned and the successes that you've had. So really appreciate you coming on.

Thank you for having me. It was a blast.

Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team coming at you with something special this week. We are really excited to be planning an upcoming episode featuring questions from our listeners. We always love hearing from Food Blogger Pro members and podcast listeners with any questions they have, problems they're solving or anything else that's come up in their blog and business list lately. So we are asking you to call in with your questions. You can head to speakpipe.com foodbloggerpro or we'll have the link in our show notes and send us a recording. You can ask a blogging, business, social media or branding question for Bjork. If you have questions about Pinch of Yum's current strategy or questions about working with an ad network, really, the sky is the limit. For any questions you might have have, just leave us a message and Bjork will answer your questions in an upcoming podcast episode. Again, head to speakpipe.com foodboggerpo to send us a recording. All you need is your phone or a laptop. It's super easy, but head to the show notes and you'll see the link to send us a recording. We can't wait to hear from you.

Sam.