The Importance of Building Community with A Couple Cooks

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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, Burick is interviewing Alex and Sonja Overheiser from a couple cooks. Alex and Sonia are a married couple that work together to develop recipes, write content for their food blog, and have written two cookbooks together. The second of which, 100 recipes to cook Together, comes out later this week. They first started their food blog in 2010 and their website now gets between 3 and 5 million page views every month. They have over 3,000 original recipes on their site, so they know a thing or two about creating sustainable content that lasts. But they've also been really intentional about choosing joy in their business and not doing things that they don't enjoy doing, like spending too much time on Instagram. Bjork and Lindsay have been friends with Alex and Sonja for over a decade and it's really fun to listen in on these friends, catch up about everything in the Food Blogger space. Without further ado, I'll let Bureau take it away.

Alex and Sonia, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having us.

Glad to be here. Glad to be back.

One of the things that I think about, and I've told this story a few times, maybe even with you guys in some podcast or Q and A that we did sometime was you guys were like our first Internet friends that we met in person. And so some people have maybe heard the story, but I remember going to Indianapolis and Lindsay's parents were like, what are you going to do? And we're like, oh, we're going to visit our friend Joe. And then we connected with these people that we've known online, and we're going to go over to their house. And in like, 2010, it was kind of like, still at that point of like, wait, like, you met somebody on the Internet and then you're going to go to their house. But it was this great connection. And what's been so fun, we only have a few people like this friends that we've connected with who through the years have continued to do similar work and have built these really successful businesses. And it's so cool to see the arc of your story through the years, working on what you're doing and all of the different things around it. And so I just want to start the podcast by saying kudos to both of you for having built a really incredible thing in a couple cooks. You guys do really good work. And we're going to talk about kind of through the years, the decade plus of doing that, kind of the different iterations and what. What that's looked like. So I want to hear.

Thank you. An amazing thing. And yeah, I'm. I feel like as I get older, I get more sentimental. And so we're really sentimental about that. Talking about very first Internet from connection.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think one of the things that I really like about it is you have applied conceptually the thing that we talk about a lot on the podcast, which is showing up every day and working on the thing that you're building. And if you do that for 10 years, 12 years, 14 years, 7 years, like, if you string together years and years of showing up and working on a thing after a long period of time, like, you can look back and be pretty amazed at what you have done. But also, 14 years is 14 years. That's a long time. So I want to hear from you as you look back on your journey. Early on, what were the things that kept you going when you didn't have necessarily, you know, those things that necessarily pointed to like, hey, this will be successful one day, or you will have millions of page views one day. What was it that kept you showing up, you know, and producing content and taking pictures and developing recipes in the early stages? Because I think a lot of people are there. And the idea of showing up for 10 years is intimidating. What was it for you that helped you continue to show up every day?

That's a great question. I mean, I would say each other, and I know not all of your listeners have that, but for us, it's been really special to work together. And I think early on we did get very. I don't know, I want to give up pretty much every other week. But having that other person to bounce ideas off of, to be kind of a separate brain working on the same problem has been so helpful for us. So I think that even if you are a solopreneur and you're working on your own, having like that accountability partner, someone who can just say, you know, you're doing a good job, you are learning, you're creating, and you just have to keep going.

Yeah. Anything you'd add to that, Alex?

Yeah, I'd say really early on it was pure creative joy. There was no concept of business, no concept of page views. It was, I created this thing. And Lindsey in Minnesota commented, that looked delidious. And it was like just that joy of community and doing something new was awesome. And then as we turned it slowly into a business, that's where you started feeling like you weren't doing enough or something because was hard. But at the beginning it was just all fun.

Yeah, it's. I think about that and I think there's two different opinions. You know, you hear people talk about, like, you need to do what you're passionate about. Like, do what you can show up every day and be thankful and grateful that you're doing. And on the other side, there's people who are like, actually, you kind of have to embrace the grind. Like, there's going to be parts of any entrepreneurial journey or any job that you're not going to love. And it's actually better if you just accept that and have these things that are kind of passion projects that you do on the side. Do you. What does that looked like for you through the years? Because you talked about Alex, like in the early stages, it's this creative outlet. And I think there are some people who we talk to and we know that that's true. They have this creative outlet and it's really fun for them. And then maybe the business stuff creeps in and then it starts to be not as fun. And then you have people who approach it and they're just like, what? You can, like, build traffic and make money from that on a blog, but they're not actually that passionate about it. And so then they burn out. Because the, the thing that they're talking about, they're not actually passionate about. So how have you navigated that as it has become a business, as it has become your sole source of income, to balance both the, like, necessity of this thing in your life along with the creativity and wanting to make sure that you embrace that as well?

Yeah, I love that you brought that up because that is exactly the tension that we have in our business. And luckily we both love to grind as much as we actually create and have fun. So I feel like as you're talking, I'm thinking more about my journey as a classical musician. So I went to school for classical music. I was a French horn performance major at IU Bloomington. And that's how I ended up in Indiana and met Alex and got married. And this whole thing started. But I had to. I think I really learned those, both of those skills of having this passion, but then working so, so hard and being so, so disciplined. And my entire kind of late childhood and college career was just putting in all the hours, the art that I loved. And unfortunately with that, it grew to be something I didn't love anymore. So I ended up quitting right after I graduated. And it became kind of a really hard spot in my life of, you know, coming to terms with this thing that I loved so much. I just totally burnt myself out on. Yeah. And so I think when you asked the question earlier of, you know, staying in the game and consistency, I think, think I could have, I could have done that. And I've seen people I went to school with for classical music who have succeeded because they did stay in the game. And I think that's what I always try to encourage entrepreneurs with is, you know, having that stick to itiveness or that that just ability to apply yourself to something over the long term does bring results in the end.

Yeah, it's. I, I think of that concept 10,000 hours and think it was like a Malcolm Gladwell book, but it was maybe based on another study. There's also a song. Who is it that. That has that song? You know what I'm talking about?

10,000 hours song.

I don't know if it's the name of it, but he has this. The idea is like, as a musician, in his case, like, what does it take to. It's just called 10,000 Hours Macklemore. But what does it take to reach success? And he talks about this idea in this Malcolm Gladwell book, but also in this song. Like, you kind of need 10,000 hours to get to mastery. And let's say you think of a typical 40 hour workweek as 2000 hours. It's like, okay, you need five years of like doing the same thing eight hours a day to get to this level of mastery. And the. You can think about that within the context of what we do. I often use music as an example. Like, I think a lot of people show up and after a year they're like, ah, why don't I have success with this thing? I'm publishing to Instagram, I'm publishing to a blog. And I think because the act of doing those things is so easy, it's pretty easy to like create a piece of content and publish it similarly. Like, it's probably kind of easy. French horn is maybe like a bad example, but like to make a noise out of like a saxophone or like, but to like be really good at it, that's actually takes a huge level of commitment. And I think the same thing applies in the world of content creation. You have to master it in order to get to a point where you stand out. And the hard part with that though, is that you might burn out because of how much time and effort you're putting in, especially if you're not getting the traction that you want to see or that you'd expect. So do you feel like, Sony, in those early stages of doing this, that you approached it any different in order to like protect yourself from burning out? Or was it just kind of the luck of the work that you're able to operate within the context of this in a way where it doesn't feel like you've hit that burnout point or maybe you have and what did you do if you did for each of you?

Yeah, great question. I don't know how I would answer that. Such a good question.

I mean, I think having a partner, I am a good. I notice when the grind is getting too hard.

Yeah.

Of like we do split up tasks and do things that each of us love more. That way we can kind of balance that. And especially I think during the high pandemic when it was like you saw nobody and if you're a content creator, you can kind of sit in your house and work 24 7.

Yeah.

Got into that. And then we realized, okay, we just need to pull back and like start deciding how much what is our work life balance? What does that look like? And spend a lot of time in gratitude for the ability to do this as a full time career.

Yeah, that's great. We did a podcast interview years ago with Emily Perrin and this was episode number 365. It's all about this idea of how to find your zone of genius. So the episode is called how to find your zone genius and hire the right people. You know, I think within a partnership relationship, like the two of you have, you might be able to kind of task trade a little bit where it's not a great fit for you, Sonia. So, Alex, you pick it up, or vice versa. I know that's true for Lindsay and I in our working relationship. What Emily talks about in that podcast interview is like, let's say you don't have somebody who's a partner in your business, like a business partner or like a life partner. How do you go about approaching that? In order to, like, the goal for us should be to, like, continually adjust the things that we're doing. So as much as possible, we're working in our zone of genius, which is the. Which are the tasks that we are, like, uniquely equipped for, but also uniquely excited about. And. And if you can spend most of your time there, wow, like, that's a really wonderful thing. But I know that you have done that without building a really big team, and I would be interested to hear your reflections on the decision to not build a team. You know, you have some people who have 10 people, and they're all working on different things, and kind of the business is maybe running itself a little bit, and somebody's in the background kind of directing it. We've talked to people who, like, hey, they really like the idea of managing the business, and it kind of runs with themselves. Kind of the e myth of, like, you know, you're working on your business, not in your business. But it sounds like you both really like working in the business and have intentionally decided to not bring in a bunch of outside employees or team members. What's the reasoning for that and what does that look like day to day for the two of you?

Yeah, a lot of our colleagues have been building these great teams, which is wonderful and awesome, and I love seeing these amazing, incredible groups of people that they have assembled. But for us, we worked in business together, actually, outside of a couple of cooks. When we first got married, we worked for the same business, a technical writing business, and we got a lot of experience in people management. And as we transit, we're able to transition out of that environment and work for ourselves. We said, hey, like, this feels good.

Not to be managing people. Yeah, for sure.

And so we made the intentional decision of, like, we love creating recipes, we love writing recipes, we love photographing our own food. And so we decided, hey, we're just gonna, we're gonna keep this small. I think what we also love is spontaneity. Like our art, our creativity stems from spontaneity. And so a lot of times we'll be like, hey, let's make whatever tarragon chicken today and see what happens. And I think when you have a team, you have to plan so far in advance and kind of sketch out your days and you have people reporting to you and if you're, if you don't have work for them, you're making up things. We've been through all of those scenarios and I think for us our dream life was like completely, you know, self driven. I mean, we do have meetings, we do have things tend to. But a perfect day for us is a free calendar and just get to go create and have fun.

Yep. No meetings. Essentially, like you are creating. The, the meetings that you maybe have are like, with the two of you talking through a thing, but it's. The focus is like creating. Is that right?

Right.

And it does limit, like, we realize, like, there's only so much we can get done in a week. And so it took us years to kind of figure out that rhythm of how are we super efficient while spontaneous and creative so that we can get done what we need to get done and do some of that boring stuff we have to do, but be able to do it all. Like, we understand as a max, we're not trying to scale this business and sell it. We're happy to max out and find our balance.

And I think we've made a lot of compromises too. It means that we can't be really great at Instagram reels. We're just not that good at it. And that's okay. We, we decided we're not going to spend time or energy on that because it's not a core focus of our business. And so right now that's not a priority. If any of your listeners are really awesome at it and want to pitch us to one of us. Hear that. But for us, we have really focused on creating recipes and then writing our second cookbook.

Yeah, it's interesting. I am excited to talk to you about that second cookbook that's coming out. It'll be just a week after this podcast goes out. When you're talking about that, it reminded me. So one of the things we will talk about occasionally on the podcast, this is the idea of like defining the game that you're playing. And I have a friend here in the Twin Cities, his Name is Ryan Tansom. He just released a. Started a new podcast called Independence by Design.

And.

And he's interviewed probably like 400, 500 entrepreneurs. Not in the world of content creation or some of them online, but mostly like, it's like H Vac company or, you know, somebody who has a construction company or like all of these different company owners. And one of the things that he realized in all of those interviews is sometimes people would set these arbitrary numbers, like, I want to get to a hundred million in revenue, or in our world, it's, I want to get to a million page views or 10 million page views or whatever it might be. But they didn't really have a strong why behind it. And so he created this podcast series, Independence by Design, because his kind of thesis, his theory is like, what people usually are after, oftentimes what they're after is like, independence. People want to have autonomy. They want to have some. Some level of, like, freedom in what they're doing that looks different to everybody. But what I hear you saying is, like, you know pretty clearly what you want to do, and you know pretty clearly what success looks like for you, and that is awesome. You've defined the game, and then what you do is you show up and you play the game, and it sounds like you guys have done that, but have done that through some iterations. And Alex, you had mentioned, like, you know, it took a while, I think you said, to figure out exactly what that looks like to work efficiently. What, what did you figure out along the way and what does that look like now? Like, if somebody else wants to play a similar game, what have you learned that has allowed you to play the game? Well, at this point?

Yeah, I mean, specifically for bloggers, we, I think we originally would do like two posts per week, and then we realized, hey, if we do five posts per week, that's great. And then you get more content out there and more eyeballs out there. But the thing you can't plan for is recipe development and how many iterations it takes to, like, really get a good recipe down. And so figuring out things like a calendar that was flexible enough to plan ahead, but not inflexible enough that you're depressed if it's the end of the day and you didn't take a photo.

Yeah.

Things like figuring out food photography with artificial light so that we could shoot on any day, anytime at 2 o', clock, only on Mondays that are sunny and stuff like that. So some of those business efficiencies helped a lot. And then just communication was Huge. Yeah, we really.

And I think saying that all, like I was mentioning, I mean, Alex is really good at saying no. I want to say yes to everything. He's like, no, no, no. But saying no to like wasting a lot of time on Instagram, where that's not a big return on investment. For our particular business model, we don't do a lot of affiliate sales or trying to sell products or that kind of thing. Like, we really focus on our recipes. And these days Instagram is not providing a lot of traffic or clickovers. It's a great way to show your brand. It's a great vanity metric if you want to build it really high. And I know there are a lot of people, people who make a really great business model around Instagram. But for us we've been focused on SEO and websites. So for us that hasn't been a great, you know, use of our time. And Alex has been really good at saying, well, let's not waste time on it. But I mean that, that's a trade off, right? And we don't know, possibly now the, the algorithm update that just happened, maybe that weights your social media presence more or maybe more people find out about you on social media and so they're googling you and then that is. So who knows, that might not have been the right decision, but we just had to, you know, make some of those decisions to be like, okay, we're going to stay in our lane and we're going to stay focused on. Yeah, that would be. Enjoy doing.

It's almost like. So we had a plumber come out this morning and had this, you know, Lindsay lost an earring. And so it was like taking the P trap out and like getting that out, which I could have done, but it would have been like three hours for me, you know, and, and leaky toilet. They had to fix that and looked at like water heater anyways, all these random things around our house. And I think of sometimes people would look at a house and they'd be like, in a similar way that you'd look at content creation and be like, oh, building a house. Like you do, you do carpentry, you do plumbing, you do electric, you know, you put a roof on, you design it, you architect it. And I think some of us are showing up to our online business and we're kind of trying to do all of those things as we build it. We're trying to do the plumbing, the electric, we're trying to do, you know, the carpentry and understand all that stuff. And so Often what I see is actually somebody who's really good at one specific thing. Our friend TJ's really good at, like, comedy on short form video. Is he have a blog? I don't think so. Is anybody going to it? Probably not. But, like, he's also showing up to, you know, gas stations and doing shoots with, like, Minnesota Vikings players, working with Quick Trip, like, you know, and so he has that as his skill set. But he's also really clear on what he doesn't do. And I think that part of your story is important because it's so easy to try and do all the things. But if you get really good at one thing, that's what you can focus in on. Go deep on that and be okay with it. I think that's the other part, hard part is like the psychology of letting somebody else be good at one thing, but just embracing what you can be good at and being okay with that. Within the context of that, though, and you alluded to this earlier, you have your blog, you have SEO, and then you've also done cookbooks. You're coming up on your second cookbook now. You did one in 2018. Oftentimes I'll have conversations with people and they'll be like, this was, like, harder than I thought. Took longer than I thought, more stressful than I thought. And you'll have some people who are like, I did one, and now I'm done. And then you'll have other people. Danielle Walker was another interview he did. I think she's on Cookbook 6. She's written seven books total, who just really embrace that and lean into it. What has your approach been on doing a cookbook, and what did you learn from your first one that you applied for your second one coming up here.

Question. The first book was a little overwhelming. Yeah. We put so much of ourselves into it, and I think we put so much emotion into it, so much of our own identity, that it was a really tough process.

And we hadn't quite hit 10,000 hours.

We did it too early. So don't do it too early if you can help it. Yeah. But I do think that process, going through it and then also launching it, having press, going through it all one time was so, so, so helpful for the second time. And I do think possibly back then it was helpful for SEO, or at least, you know, providing some underlying backlink structure around yourself as an expert. So I'm really glad we did it. But we, we learned a ton from that process, and this time around, it has been much smoother we actually hired a photographer this time. So we used Shelley Westerhausen Warel of Vegetarian Ventures blog. She has a couple amazing books out there. And actually, I'll tell the story that we. So we have this idea around Covid because, you know, all good ideas happen when totally your family and trying to, you know, dream of an escape. And so we were like, is it time? Is it time for us to think about the second book? And we went around and around. We landed on a concept and we decided we wanted to switch publishers and switch agents because we weren't quite happy with the first go around or we were happy with it, but we had a different. So we did that and we wrote up a proposal and sent it out to a bunch of publishers and we were all excited and it came back that no one wanted to purchase.

We were like, oh, did they do. When that happens, do they provide explanation? Like, what is it? Is it like a college acceptance letter where it comes back and they're like, thanks, like, what, what, what does that process look like?

I think maybe our agent pitched to the like 20 publishers and 18 just said no at 2, maybe said not quite the right fit or something along those lines. It was very vague and disappointing because you have to create. I mean, we spent months creating the proposal, making a recipe for it, all the ideas. So.

So that was a big blow, especially to be like, well, we, we wrote a cookbook and yeah, you know, we're doing these things and trying hard and feel successful in life. And to be like, okay, no one wants to publish a book was really hard. So we got back together and this is, I guess, where your question of, you know, staying in the game comes in. It was like, okay, like, what can we do to make this a feasible project? And we knew that there are some newlywed style cookbooks out there that do very well. And so we had always kind of avoided that because it felt like, you know, a couple cooks wedding, it feels too, too close, too easy. Yeah, exactly.

Right?

But we were like, okay, you know, this is our brand. Why don't we do something about cooking together? And we could brand it as not just for weddings, but for any two people cooking together via your friend or your family member or your spouse or your roommate or your kid, you know, whoever you want to cook with. Because that's been such a big part of our story is just the joy of doing things together. So we put that pitch together. We found the, the publisher that we loved, which is Chronicle Books. And because we knew their, their books were so Beautiful and giftable. And then we approached our friend Shelly, who had a couple of cookbooks with them already, and we said, hey, would you want to shoot this book for us? Because we love your aesthetic and just the beautiful way you're able to create these giftable items. And so we put that together into a specific pitch. Went to one editor at Chronicle, and miraculously, she's so. Yeah, interesting. So, yeah, so that was, I think, just a good example of, you know, if. If something's not hitting. And this. This. You can speak to this. This works for blogs as well. You know, if you're not. If you're not hitting that target niche, like, niche down a little more, or find the place where your passion intersects with what people want and what the marketplace.

And the funny thing is. Oh, sorry.

No, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

The context of the book probably aren't that different than what the original concept would have been. It's the way that and themed it. The recipes are probably pretty similar. It's more our approach to how we talk about the recipes that change. So we're passionate about making food that people eat. So it was a rework to kind of find that niche.

Yeah, it's almost like you do judge a book by its cover and, like. And so much of it is the branding and positioning. I was talking about that with a friend who's a publisher with book publishing. He has a company called Bard Publishing, and they. They've done a lot of really successful business books. And he was talking about just the importance of a title as it relates to business books and how important that is. Obviously, the book itself has to be really good, but, like, so often, you know, in his case, if people are going through the airport and, you know, quickly looking at a book that's sitting in a, you know, kind of a kiosk or something like that. So can you talk to me about what that process was like? As you are. You have this idea, you're excited about it, you're moving forward with it, you spend time with it. Because I think a lot of people struggle with the question of how long do you continue with a thing that you think is a good idea in the world versus, you know, how quickly do you pivot and change? And we had that recently with some marketing stuff. We were trying, and it was like, first or second time that we did, it didn't really work. And the conversation that we had a team was like, oh, it's just like, we haven't given it enough time. We have to, like, shift and adjust a little bit and change, like, stick with it. And I think that's often the case, but sometimes you can stick with an idea for five years, and it's like, actually, it didn't work and it shouldn't have existed in the world. What was that like for you guys as you navigated this with a cookbook?

Yeah, I mean, I think we're lucky that that one got picked up, because.

Otherwise I don't sure.

Well, that was. That was like the last. The last stop on the road, but.

I think it was a good. This whole book we took as a professional project instead of a personal project, I think. And so we're like, what do you mean by that? How can we make this more professional? Instead of, this has to be my idea that's so important that I will release. If we want to work with this publisher that sells really beautiful, giftable books, let's think about the type of books that they do and the type of zone of genius that we have. And, like, where do they mix? Instead of saying, like, this is my idea. It has to happen. And then as we went through the actual process of the cookbook, we treated it much the same way of, like, taking out that layer of personal emotion and adding a layer of, like, expertise to it.

Yeah, it's. In the world of product development, they talk about, like, one of the most important things is to not hold too tightly to your. The idea that you think should exist within the world. You need it to start, but then being flexible enough, based on feedback or maybe conversations with customers, to shift, nudge, adjust what the product is. In this case would be a cookbook. To get to a place where it's like, hey, there's some indications that the market would be interested in this, and we have some expertise and some, you know, interest in it. And then finding kind of that Venn diagram overlap with those two things can coexist. The market need and your interest and passion and using that to drive things forward versus what it sounds like you were saying, Alex, which is like approaching it by saying, like, well, I just want this to exist, and this is exactly how I think it should look. And so that's what we're gonna do.

Yeah, totally. And I feel like that is the key to any creative business. Right. Where it's driven by both passion and business. It's having that. Having that ability to change and pivot. Like, I was just thinking about our. We had a podcast at one point, and you were asking about, when do you decide it's too much? Like, it was an okay podcast. It was not a great podcast, so we just. No more of that podcast. Yeah, but your podcast is an amazing podcast, so it needs to exist in the world. So just, I guess. Yeah. Not getting too emotionally invested in any one of your business offerings.

Yeah. And. And also to acknowledge what you said, which is like, the creative business. And I think those two words are really important to have in tandem, because if it's just creative, it doesn't really matter. Like, you just go and you create, and it's fun, and you do it because that's what fills you up. But if you have the business part, like my friend Nate down the hall, he does video, and he does some stuff that's purely creative. He's not trying to figure out how to, like, monetize it. And then he does some stuff that's like, creative business. It's like documentaries. It's things like that. He does some stuff that's like, business. It's like a contractor needs a video showcasing the dentist buildings they've built over the last 18 months. And it's like, okay, they could do a really good job of that. But it's not necessarily the most creative thing he's ever going to do. And I think for all of us, within the context of our needs, like, how much of the business do we need for revenue to support ourselves? And within the context of, like, you know, the creative outlet, maybe we have a really great W2 job, and we just really need something that fills us up and so you can lean into that creativity part. You know, there's a spectrum, and we all have to have to make that decision. So one of the things I'm curious about that you've alluded to a couple times with the cookbook is this idea of giftable. Can you talk about that as, like, a concept and a word? And it sounds like almost like a strategy and approach for this specific cookbook.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because we've never, like, formalized it, really. I mean, we kind of have in the past couple months. But, yeah, for us as authors, it really takes the pressure off, because I think with our first book, we were like, this is a great book. You're gonna love it. You should cook from it every day. Like, you want it, you want it. And that was. That's a hard sell. Right? But with this book, we're like, hey, you need a gift for weddings, you need a gift for anniversaries. You need a gift for your friend. Like, you might not need this cookbook at all. But I know that you're going to want to buy it for someone else, and that helps kind of take the pressure off for us.

We've also natural salespeople, so, yeah, we're.

Not great at sales.

It's like encouraging people to buy a gift is the sales approach and marketing approach, as opposed to encouraging people themselves to buy it. And that, like, this is a higher book.

It's a $40 book. And so we're like telling people, stop using our free recipes and buy this seems like a harder sell than saying, like, yeah, we created this wonderful thing that you should make recipes with your daughter. You know, like, that's a more fun concept for why you should buy a book to us.

And also we have a little bit of data behind it. We've been ab. Or you were ab. Testing a little cookbook ad that we have on our website. And it's. It has a little picture of the cookbook and a banner, and at one point it said a hundred of our best recipes or something like that. And then she just changed it to give the gift of recipes and it performs slightly better. So that's what we right now. Yeah, but when I saw it, I was like, yeah, you know, your brain is like, oh, okay, I. I do want to give the gift of recipes versus, like, oh, a hundred recipes I need.

Now there's water, you know.

Well, and part of it too, is.

I think, so much of our mindset as creators, specifically in the food space Lindsay talks about this is like, what we're selling isn't really recipes. Like, it's a readily available resource. You can get it in a lot of different places. We're actually selling, like, the thing behind that, which is for some people, it's like a certain way of eating. For other people, it's a certain way of life. In this case, it seems like. And I'd be interested to hear you validate this one or push back against it. In some ways, it sounds like it's selling connection, it's selling an experience. It's selling or marketing, you know, selling or marketing, whatever you want to say. Like that's the thing that you're pointing people to is like, hey, this is an opportunity to connect. It's an opportunity for, you know, community, whatever the word is that you use within the context. It's not necessarily saying, hey, these are like the recipes that you need, because you might be able to find those anywhere. But what you won't be able to find is kind of like the ethos of what these are all Wrapped up in how much does that feel true as you've approached this?

100%. Yes. I feel like that's exactly what we've been trying to do. So thank you for condominium. I do think, as you're saying that, I think this is what all of us as content creators and food bloggers should be thinking about as we look towards the future where we're competing against AI, where we're not sure if, you know, are people going to be looking for recipes in the same ways on Google? Is AI going to be creating all of our recipes? Maybe they are, maybe, maybe robots will be. But they can't replace us as people who are able to, you know, bring that backstory and bring that connection, the human element of cooking together. So I love that you said that. And I think that is what is going to happen, bring us forward into the next generation of content creation.

Yeah, they talk a lot about, you know, brand, the importance of brand. You know, I was talking to Paul Banister from Raptive, and he talked about this idea of, like, the people who aren't worried about, like, a Google Update. An example would be Disney. Like, see, like, you know, a Google Update doesn't happen and they scramble around somebody who might be, would, you know, Dot dash Meredith, Because a lot of their stuff is not all of it, but a lot of it is, or maybe all of it, I don't know. DOT-Meredith would also do, like, the, the magazines, but I don't know to what degree that's part of their business. But basic idea being you have this brand and brand is inherently like, bigger than just something online. And so often if you are building a brand and that brand has a following, you have some kind of, like, shared belief or you're on a similar journey or you're trying to get to, like, a similar outcome. And so I think the challenge for anybody listening to this and for all of us as creators is like, what is that for us? And then you use these tools, SEO, keyword research, you know, social media, to get in front of people. But that in and of itself isn't the transaction. It's not like you get a page view and somebody comes and looks at it and leaves. You're really trying to build this kind of experience that people are joining and kind of becoming a part of.

Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

This episode is sponsored by Raptive. When it comes to monetizing a blog or a site, display ads are a fantastic, passive way to generate income on the content you're already producing. In fact, Raptive display ads are one of our biggest revenue generators at Pinch of Yum, they make up nearly 80% of our overall monthly income. Raptive, which is formerly AdThrive, is on a mission to empower independent creators like you and to date Raptive has paid out more than $2 billion to creators. Not only do they help creators generate ad revenue, they also offer creators many other benefits to help support them with their audience, revenue and business goals. For example, Raptive creators get access to industry leading tools like Topic, which helps creators discover opportunities to improve their content and plan the structure of their blog posts. You also get access to resources on HR and recruiting, SEO, email marketing, customized AB ad layout testing and more. As a Raptive creator, you can learn more about Raptive's creator levels and what's all included in each level at Raptive Creator levels. Then when you're ready to apply, head to raptive.com and click the Apply now button. Working with an ad network has had a profound impact on the way Pinch of Young monetizes our business and by being a Raptive creator, you're getting access to results based solutions that can really impact the way your business runs and grows. Learn more@raptive.com thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

How do you guys think about that and can you even speak a little bit to this idea of AI and you know, Google algorithm updates? What does that look like for you and your conversations and is it something you're worried about and how do you approach that as you know, online digital business owners?

Yeah, it's definitely something we think about a lot and discuss the end use and use. Yeah, yeah, we use AI in various ways for our website as well. But the big idea I think now that we've been doing this for 14 years is like seeing that a couple cooks as a brand has changed a little bit. But we've kind of existed through these different phases and we just have to assume no matter how strong the current phase is, that there will be a new phase of Internet content creation and if we want to be a part of it, we need to kind of be paying attention to not jumping on every trend but paying attention to those like long term waves that are changing throughout the industry.

I have a follow up question on that, but if you had predictions, it's one of the things I'm curious on asking more on the podcast. Especially for people who have seen years and years like decade plus type creators who have seen the waves come and go, you Maybe start to develop a little bit of intuition. I feel like AI is different because it feels more monumental. It feels maybe more like a hurricane versus a wave. But would you have any guess as to like what the next year or the next two years brings knowing that you are studied and researched and have some awareness of what's coming?

I think that there will be fewer and fewer brands are able to get us control massive amounts of audience and so how you can like take care of your own individual audience will become more important than just that well duck or well created keyword researched page. I just don't think you can get beautiful images for free on AI. Like it works. It's. If you wanted to do that and not take a food photograph you could, you could do hacks that made yourself show up. And I think, I think Google is paying attention and they're trying to elevate these smaller pages. They're not necessarily doing a good job yet but I think that everybody there's just not going to be this singular answer to every question. If you just want a chili recipe, I think you go to chat GPT and they'll give you a decent one. So how do you develop that brand I think will become more important but I think the opportunity for an individual blog to just command millions of eyeballs might slowly dissipate.

Like the Internet will become more fractured in in essence like it's not like.

Just follow Tik Tok star one TikTok star and that's the place you go. Like you don't have that idea that I will go to Google and I will like a billion people are doing that per month, you know.

Yeah. And even, and you alluded to this like even for myself. Like I've noticed quite often now I'm going to to get my answers from ChatGPT. Like I have it on my phone, I have it on my computer and I have a thought and the benefit being that it's like a clear delivery of that content but it's also interactive and I can ask follow up questions and iterate and it's really good and it will only get better. And I think especially once you get to the point where you can interact with voice and I think the advanced Voice stuff with OpenAI is not publicly available but I think it will be shortly. You know Apple as of this recording has you know released their next iPhone that will have open AI ChatGPT deeply integrated. So I think you're right. Like that looks, it looks like people that will get fragmented. It will start to exist in other places. How, how do you do that, though? Like, how do you make sure that you continue to serve your audience and deliver good content? And, you know, when ChatGPT or Gemini is able to deliver a really good recipe, which probably a year from now, it'll be at that point, like, you can get probably a really good chili recipe from ChatGPT in a year. What does that look like? Do you have thoughts on how you'll approach that?

Yeah, I mean, we've already been, you know, everyone's been harping on email lists for the past five plus years and we never quite. We were like, oh yeah, email list, whatever, you know, and now we're seeing oh yeah, email list. So we did switch to convertkit and we're doing more emails and we have a strategy on how we kind of resurface old content. We have so much old content and just kind of re bringing that to the forefront. Dusting off posts and being able to come into people's inboxes is a big privilege. And we've been seeing a pretty good return on that in terms of just being able to give them recipes from a brand that they trust. So I think that that is going to be the key moving forward is having that brand that people trust. I've heard from people who are doing membership sites, some creators who have started doing that. I'm not sure if that's something you guys have talked about on the podcast, but there will be more of that type of, you know, I know I love a couple cooks or I know I love Pinch of Yum. And I'm just going to follow them because I know that their recipes are great. And when I need to look up chocolate chip cookie, I'm not going to Google, I'm going to Pinch of Yum.

Yup. We talk about this idea of walled gardens and how, you know, there is this idea of the Internet just being open. You could search it on Google, you could access it on Google, but maybe there's a future where you kind of shift that a little bit. Food blogger probing an example. It's a membership site. It's a walled garden. Like, our content's not showing up on Google. Some disadvantages to that, but also advantages in that you have this kind of community element and that's the only place that you can get it. One of the things you talked about that I'd be interested to hear you talked about is just using AI tools within your business. What does that look like? What are the ways that you're using it and the ways that you find it to be most beneficial.

The easiest most beneficial is I wrote a prompt for proofreading. It took a while to get the prompt right, but we just copy and paste it in and it's really good at proofreading the entire blog post. The recipe, I have it checked for, like, did we remember to put in the serving amount? And like, you know, all that type of stuff. And it's very good. And so it's a lot better. Previously I was pooping and just missing everything.

So it's amazing. And it does it in like instant. Yeah, two seconds. Yeah.

So there's that. We use it for brainstorming. We use it for boring email communications. You know, if I need to email a problem to our web designer and I, it's a lot easier for me to speak it into Chat Chat GPT and have it spit out an email versus me take the time to write it up. And so I use it for communication quite a bit in that way.

Yep. Yeah.

Use them to help brainstorm meta descriptions or whatever. But pretty careful about, you know, now you can tell what AI likes to use, like elevate or whatever.

Totally. That is a word.

Keywords are. And honestly, now when I get personal emails that are written in certain ways, I'm like, oh, that sounds like they ran into chat GPT or whatever. So we're really here. Well, about not making it sound too AI ish, but it really does help when you're just staring at a blank page of like, what is good about this recipe? Tell me.

Yep, brainstorm. The editing, I feel like, is a great example. There's a podcast that I listen to. His name is Jason Kilikanis. He talks a lot about startups. Has a podcast called this Week in Startups. But his. He has this theory that, like, companies are going to grow in size but not in employee numbers or over the next few years because they're going to be able to outsource a lot of the tasks that they would have hired for otherwise. And I feel like some of those examples are great examples of how as a small, lean team, you talk about not having a team, you can create efficiencies and by writing a prompt as an example, to have somebody edit it. Ten years ago, that would have been an editor sitting down and looking through it and maybe missing stuff as well. Can you talk just real quickly, Alex? Like when you say write a prompt, can you talk about how somebody could do that if they want to? Maybe that one specifically, but just like what it looks like to craft a good Prompt and how you iterate on that, definitely.

So I love just nerding out with AI just to see what its capabilities are. And I found the more specific you get when you ask a question, the better it gets. And with ChatGPT specifically, you can have it create a GPT that you can reuse. So it just saves the prompt, and all I'd have to do is paste in the web page, and it gives me the same result every time. And so in this case, I think it says double check and triple check, because if you tell it to do that, it actually does matter.

Oh, interesting.

You read this as my editor, you're a copy editor for a cookbook magazine. And so I actually treat it like a person. And then I say double check and trickle check. Make a list of 12 possible typos, 12 possible suggestions, and then go through the recipe card and make sure it has all these, like, specific things that aren't messed up. And then it fits out like, a pretty good answer. It hallucinates little things, but it finds things. Like, a good example is it'll find, like, words that are spelled correctly but using the wrong word. I try to take one that we'd use in cooking, but that it's not a typo from. Yeah, stuff spelled wrong, but it doesn't make sense in context. And it picks up stuff like that.

Yeah. If it. What it's. It feels like, what it's great for is, like, a companion sitting next to you that can, like, it's like, you know, I think of if Lindsay and I are ever on a hike and, like, we're going up a hill, and if I'm ever behind her and, like, I push a little bit, she's always like, oh, yeah, like, if you could just, like, keep pushing my back a little bit. It takes. It makes it easier, you know, or vice versa. She pushes me up the hill, but I feel like that's what it can be for us. It's not going to, like, do the walking, but it can, like, do a little bit of the. Like relieve a little bit of the effort kind of in certain places along the way.

So just speeds it up a lot. Like just little beats up your task.

Yeah, that's great. We could talk for another hour, but we can't. We got to wrap up. I know the cookbook is coming out soon. What's the best way for people to. To pick that up? We'll link to it in the show notes. And I know some people who might have some gifting opportunities in the future or just want to buy it for themselves. Would love to pick it up. So what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, go to a couple cooks.com cookbook and we have all the methods on there. Our local bookstore is actually offering to ship signed copies anywhere in the US which is really exciting. We've never had any way to send sign them on the paper and ship them. So that's a really exciting way to do it. So there's a signed copy button and then you can get it on Amazon, bookshop.org Barnes and Noble. There's a bunch of buttons there.

Awesome. And then if people want to best place to follow along with you online would be your site.

Yep. A couple cooks.com or they can follow our Instagram as well. It's slash a couple.

They just have to be prepared. You're not going to have as many reels as other people might have, but they can follow you there.

Low expectation. When you follow us can sign up for our newsletter. That's the best way to keep track of us. They can sign up on our website.

Awesome. Alex and Sonia, it's been so great to be friends with you through the years to watch what you've built and excited for this next chapter.

Thank you so much.

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