Founder Success Story: From Side Hustle To Online Food Empire

People didn't think it was a real job. People just thought it was a hobby. And then it's grown exponentially.

Monique Vohles is the creator of Ambitious Kitchen. What began as a creative outlet eventually grew into a thriving brand, a bestselling cookbook, and a deeply loyal audience.

When I was growing my business for 5, 6 of those years, that's all I did, right? Once I realized I could make money from it, I was like, let's go.

You have a million followers on Instagram. What are the things that you think made the biggest difference in building a brand versus simply a site? Storytelling.

Storytelling was huge. A lot of people found that inspiring or they could relate to the story, and so they felt a connection point. They were attached to the brand. They wanted to keep coming back, but also the recipes have to work, right?

If you were sitting down with a 21-year-old aspiring creator, what's the advice that you would give them?

Marketing is always shifting. How do you stand out? So for me, it's all about ideas and continuing to be inventive and different. So part of what I'm doing now is just starting to create more. Oh, wow.

So Monique, I want to know what got you into this whole world of food content creation back in 2011, which is basically when I started in the content creation world as well. And so it was a very different landscape then, but how did you start here?

So I started when I was in college. I was 21, 22 maybe, and my dad had passed away a few years prior. So I was in this space where I was like, hadn't grieved things that were going on, and I wanted a place to just connect with people. I wanted to cook recipes that my parents had created when I was young. I was like, why not start a food blog? It was so much fun. Like I was reading all these food blogs all the time. Um, and so that's when I started it and it was really a place for me to just kind of like write everything out, cook nostalgic recipes and feel connected to my parents. So that's when it started and that's. Yeah, 2011. So long ago.

So what was— did you have ambitions for it to turn into something more at that point, or was it really just—

Oh yeah, no, absolutely.

An online journal, basically.

Yes, it was essentially an online journal. I mean, I knew that I wanted to form connections with people, um, and I was living in Minneapolis at the time, so I was like trying to go to all of these food events and meet media, and I don't know what I thought it would become, but I knew that I felt like it was really, really special and unique at the time because there weren't a lot of food blogs. But never wasn't trying to make money off of it or anything.

So was your background, did you go to college for culinary-related things or?

No, business marketing communications. Yeah. But my parents were very involved in cooking and baking my entire life. So I felt like food was just, it's a part of all of our journeys.

But there's definitely people who we know or have friends or all that where food is like, you know, a box that you check.

Yeah.

And then there's other people where it's pivotal and it's such a core part of it.

Yeah.

And so that's— so that was a strong connection with your parents though.

Yeah. That was everything like my family was about, I felt like.

I love that.

When was the—

like, what was the first dollar you made from your food blog?

Oh gosh. I think I made like $50 in 2013, 2012 maybe.

Okay. So a year or two in. Yeah.

But I didn't understand ad networks. There weren't a lot at the time. Um, it was like BlogHer was one of them. That's right. Yes.

Yep.

So I didn't, I wasn't even putting ads on my site and brands weren't working with bloggers at the time really. So I think around 2014 it really shifted. I was working in corporate at General Mills at the time, so I was working in food. I thought that that was gonna be my life, you know, passion goal. And it, it just kind of changed very, very quickly during that time.

And that first, the first bit of revenue you made was from putting ads on the site?

Yeah, putting ads on the site.

Okay. And that started to come in.

Yep.

When was the transition into it being your full-time venture?

I think around 2013, 2014.

So that came pretty quick.

Yeah, it did. 2013, brands started working with bloggers. That became a big shift, but again, it was like $500 for a post. And my blog really had blown up during that time. A couple big, you know, other bloggers had picked it up. Pinterest was becoming a thing. That's right. So I started before Pinterest or Instagram, which is so interesting. Um, and traffic just started coming in. Um, and that's when it really shifted for me. So 2014, I quit my job, moved to Chicago, and started doing it full-time. And it was when I was making the same income as I was making at General Mills, which was around like, I think $65,000. Okay. So I was like, okay, I'm doing it. I don't have a plan, like, but at least You know, I hope it's gonna go well.

I'm thinking there's so many parallels. I think we're the same age. I was born in 1990. So we're right, right.

Oh, 1988.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So pretty close. I also went full-time in, let's see, started this in 2011 and then 2013 was when full-time and like the job that I left was a, as a designer, but making $63,000 a year. Yeah. And like that's the, the number that, uh, you know, you're trying to hit.

Yep.

Um, in that. Was for that first $60,000 or so that you made off of the blog and you're like, okay, I can go full-time on this. That was a combination of sponsored posts and advertising?

Yes. Only those. Wasn't doing affiliate at the time. I don't even think it existed really. People weren't selling clothes or products on Amazon. Amazon was like a baby still. Yes. There was a bunch of these things. So yeah, just me and my little Chicago apartment.

I like it. Okay. So let's contrast to the business now. So the ad revenue, it sounds like really on your website, right? When someone's going to the recipes and all that, seeing those ads. You partner with Raptive on those?

Yes, I'm with Raptive.

Nice.

And I've been with them, I don't know, since before they were Raptive. I want to say it was like 2015, 2016.

Yeah, they're a great team. We've worked with them really a lot.

They're fantastic.

A lot of our customers use them. So I'm fascinated by this juxtaposition of You know, the decision to go full-time.

Yep. The person that actually inspired me was Pinch of Yum. I don't know if you know them.

Oh, yes.

They started posting their income.

Yep.

And I was looking at the breakdown of things and just trying to understand. And I remember talking to my mom and she was like, "You're crazy." Like, she just didn't understand it. You know, is that—

It was not a real industry.

Yeah. People didn't think it was a real job.

One thing we talked about that I was passionate about back then was convincing people that being a blogger or creator was a legitimate career because you'd have a conversation with someone and they'd basically be like, oh, that's so cool. So when you like, how do you make money? Like, or am I going to like, are you going to be serving my coffee at Starbucks when I go?

Yeah. Like people just thought it was a hobby.

Yeah. And then it's just grown in a crazy way.

It's grown exponentially. And so it was like right place, right time. Just just starting with an idea. It wasn't perfect. And I think it was my knowledge of social media. That's what I did at General Mills. And it just grew and grew.

One thing that I've noticed with a lot of these outlier creator success stories, one, I spend all of my time with these outlier creators because, you know, I get to see all of these examples, but people who have gotten to hundreds of thousands of subscribers huge social followings and these businesses doing well into the 7 figures is many of them have a skillset that they established somewhere else where they come in and they're like, an example would be Sahil Bloom, who recently came out the book, The Five Types of Wealth. And he, during COVID got into content creation and all of that, but he was a very sophisticated finance and private equity guy before. Like he was in that world. He knows business inside and out. And so then he just applied that level of like 80-hour work weeks and, you know, all of this stuff to the creator world. And, you know, he's blown up in absolutely a huge way. And so I think I'm picking up on that from you is like you didn't start it just as, you know, oh, this is a hobby and we'll see how this goes. You're like, no, I'm a marketer. This is what I do for a living.

Yeah.

And now I do it for myself instead of doing it for Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I think a lot of things had come into play. Like, I understood food. There was a pivotal point where people were just taking nutrition into consideration more than anything. It wasn't the conversation that it is today, but I think people were just like curious about health. The brands we see out there were shifting, like Simple Mills was becoming a thing. Like, people cared about the food that they were starting to eat. So I knew I had something there. My food is mostly focused on like healthier takes on comfort food.

Yeah.

Um, but I also knew how to talk to people and how to get people to click over to my site. And so I think I just started doing it and it wasn't perfect, but at the same time I was teaching myself. I was using my skills that I had built at General Mills and, um, just learning also as I went, right? Because some of these platforms, like I said, didn't exist. And so it was truly testing and learning. Um, but yeah, I mean, I very quickly, it just, it blew up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the, what's the breakdown on traffic now of where it's coming from?

Yeah.

Search and Pinterest and all the other stuff.

Yeah. So, um, right now it's an interesting shift that we've seen. I mean, Google has always been top for me. Yeah. So SEO coming in at about 60% of site traffic. Um, I would say probably 30% is direct, which is really wonderful because a lot of people don't get direct traffic, especially when it's a food blog. Usually it's like, oh, I'm finding a random banana bread and now I'm coming in from Google. So I'm very thankful to have people that recognize and trust my site. Um, and then from there it's probably Pinterest, Facebook. Instagram's very low on the list, which is interesting.

I would have expected to be higher because you have a million followers on Instagram, right?

But I Also consider all of these platforms funnels because honestly, people from Pinterest or people from Instagram aren't directly clicking over. It's like they're saving it, they're thinking about it later, they're Googling it, or they're just looking it up. So it's not like you're in the middle of the day, you're scrolling, and then you're just going to go make the recipe. It's like, I'm going to do this later.

Right.

So you can't prove a lot of like where that traffic is technically coming from. But yeah, Instagram is—

So that might be some of the direct traffic. That contributes to building the brand.

Yeah.

You have a large email list on Kit.

Yeah.

Is Instagram or some of these other sources like strong drivers for that email list?

It has become— traditionally we didn't promote it on Instagram because the platform felt disconnected from email. It felt like we had a totally different audience. Now we are shifting where we are trying to get people in from Instagram using things like Grocer's List comment for the recipe, and then we're creating sort of these funnels specifically for email versus kind of just using what we did on the website and trying to plug that in. So we're creating the email for the platform, if that makes sense. Which is interesting.

Yeah. I mean, Ben and the team at Grocer's List are fantastic.

Yeah, they're wonderful.

So walk me through like one of those funnels that you would create, 'cause you've got all this Followers and attention on Instagram, it can be ephemeral, right? And all that. But then, so how do you drive people and very specifically get them on the email list? They'll, they'll turn into referral traffic.

Yeah. So recently we just created a carousel that was like 5 really good chicken dinners. People are obsessed with chicken. Dinner is a problem and they're easy recipes. So it was like all 3 of those things were solved. Carousel, we knew if we got them to click over or comment for the recipe, they get sent a kit link, which is basically just like a popup that looks like on Instagram. They sign up and then they get it delivered to their inbox, but they're also now in our email list, right? So it's creating that content for Instagram versus putting that on the website as like a, a pop-up, though it would probably do well. We're here as well, but it's like we're able to do those funnels now 2 to 3 times a week on Instagram specifically.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

And so do you know the growth rate of—

so from that, I think we got 1,500 subscribers.

Oh, that's fantastic.

Yeah. So I mean, we clean out our list quite frequently because for me it's all about having a good open rate and having people engaged versus—

what do you consider a good open rate?

Well, ours is at 65%.

I, I can tell you that's a very good open rate. Okay.

I'm like, I think that's a great open rate. You tell me.

Yeah. Um, for over 100,000 subscribers, that's— yeah, that's a great open rate.

Yeah.

So if you had 1,000 subscribers, it'd be like, eh, that's good. Right.

You know, but so I think right now we have like 165,000, but it's it's, you know, we're cleaning out every 2 to 3 months because it's like if you're not opening, you're not engaging, right?

Then, you know, because for you the big part of the email list is driving traffic back to the website, which is then going to drive ad revenue through Raptive. Is that right?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

So, and keeping an engaged audience, you know, I want to build my community so they're able to purchase my products and just really be a part of the Ambitious Kitchen brand.

I want to get into brand building and all of that in a little bit because it's something that I think you've done really well. But you mentioned products. And so what are the other products that, that you're selling or where do you think that that's going?

Well, obviously my cookbook was huge and I felt like email—

when did that come out?

That came out in September 2024. It was always interesting because when we would put an email out to the email list, we saw huge sales from Amazon specifically, right, from the email list versus if we just put something— yeah, if we put something on Instagram, different story because our email list is so engaged. They chose to sign up. So that was great. But other products not doing anything yet. I'm like the merch thing. I haven't gone down, but I'm thinking about potentially starting a food media brand.

Okay.

Yes.

Who would be like the inspiration? Like what's an example when you say food media brand?

An example is like The Kitchen. An example is Food52. My brand has been around for so long, you know, it's been since 2011. So I feel like I have a really well-established, trustworthy brand, and I would like to create something that isn't just me the face of the brand because it is hard to keep up with. And it's, you know, it's just become a lot of work to be kind of doing everything, have my hands in YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, like a cookbook. It's, it's a lot.

Oh yes.

Um, and so creating a food media brand and having the name Ambitious Kitchen, it isn't just not like my need.

You didn't put it, right?

Even though I am the face of the brand, I think it could be something else.

So that's something—

toying with that.

In my creator brand, I did it all under Nathan Barry. But then, you know, I feel very grateful that the company is Kit. And so I often, you know, I'll have this experience like scrolling Instagram and come across something from us and it's like really good and it's someone else on the team who made this amazing content. I'm just like, I love the content. I'm so proud of it. I'm so glad that I didn't make it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, I think that's very fair.

Yeah. So then building that, you know, that whole media brand around it, like what would that look like of bringing on more creators, more products?

Yeah. Bringing on, I don't, that's something that is interesting. It's like, do you bring on creators or do you bring on like food editors and build sort of this unique just to Ambitious Kitchen? Because I think a lot of times, like what Food52 has done very interestingly is they have food creators who are creating their content. And so it's like they're able to partner with them and build their social platforms because of that. So I think it's something to kind of play around with and think about like how that would work. But there's another brand here in Chicago called The Every Girl. I also, I also know the founder and she's fantastic and they created The Every Mom, but it's, it's this huge website now. They have a podcast and it's just been really fun and inspiring to see them grow. And I'd love to do kind of the same thing but have it be food and nutrition specific.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So I want to talk about building a brand because I feel like so many people across all industries, but I see it a lot in food where they build the recipe site. They have a, you know, a little bit of their story in it or that sort of thing, but people are really there. It's almost transactional. Like I have a need for what am I going to cook this week? You know, I'm doing meal prep or whatever. And you're just, you know, you just fill the need with that. The amount of direct traffic that you're getting and the total revenue and just how you've packaged everything up is very clear that you don't have a transactional relationship with most of your audience. They're here to follow you. What are the things that you think made the biggest difference in building a brand versus simply a site?

Storytelling was huge. This is back when you could storytell on your website. So I think it's different.

I mean, it's part of the recipes.

It was part of the recipes. I wasn't playing the Google gods, as I like to say. But you could just tell a story and relate it to what was going on. And I think a lot of people found that inspiring, or they could relate to the story. And so they felt a connection point. And I felt like a lot of people were attached at that point because of it. You know, they were attached to the brand. They wanted to keep coming back. But also the recipes have to work, right? Right. So it's like you have to have a little bit of both. Now I've sort of shifted so that I'm doing the inspirational storytelling on things like Instagram, Instagram Stories, mostly just that, and TikTok a little bit. I don't really dabble too much in TikTok, but also YouTube to, to find just different audiences, to find new connection points and people that will continue to come in and visit my site. Because now we're dealing with a whole different sort of like social media society versus 10 years ago, right? Like people don't really use the internet the same way. And so I think that that originally is what made people come to my site. It wasn't necessarily the recipes. I think it was like, oh, she's, she's storytelling. She's doing something different versus just making it about the food.

Do you think if you were sitting down with, you know, a 21-year-old aspiring food creator?

Yeah.

Like, what's the advice that you would give them very specifically around storytelling?

Well, I would, I would actually probably just tell them to start a sub stack maybe and, and have a, and also like it's a lot easier for people now to build that versus building a website and just start, start writing and you don't have to start writing and that's a way to make money to get people in. Right. But also like having a good email list now has been my focus over the past few years, building that more than ever. So I think it's like focus on storytelling in an easy way, Um, and having just a really great community.

Yeah. So the newsletter becomes a thing. What about on the top of funnel, right? Because newsletters don't have built-in distribution.

Yeah.

You know, whereas Instagram and YouTube, you can, they've got distribution, you can go viral, you know, all these things can happen. If you had to choose one distribution source right now, you know, for this 21-year-old that we're coaching, what would it be?

Probably I would say TikTok, but I don't know that it's going to be around. So I'll go with Instagram. Like, I'll go with Instagram because I think it's very easy and I think— I don't think it's going away anytime soon. Right. So that would probably be number one. And then probably YouTube, though that takes a lot more. It's just a lot more work.

Yeah.

But I do think that people use— younger people use YouTube more than ever.

I think that If I was thinking about this, someone just getting started, choosing one channel to focus on.

Yeah.

And so saying like, all right, we're all in on Instagram.

Mm-hmm.

Or whatever your preference is, right? Sometimes I see someone who's like really loves written content and they're like, I'm all in on Instagram. It's like, you hate Instagram. They're like, I know, but someone told me it works. It's like, no, no, no. Like find, you know, make sure there's a, a match between what you're doing. Um, but choosing that. You know, I'm making this type of content.

Mm-hmm.

On Instagram and I'm using Grocer's List to convert to email and this is how I write my newsletter.

Yeah.

And like, that's all I do.

Yeah.

And so really narrowing it down.

See, I'm like the type of person that I'm gonna do it all on every— so like I'm terrible at giving that advice. I would be like, get on every platform and do as much as you possibly can. But I do understand what you're saying.

Yeah.

It's like, I think that would probably work best. I also think that content creation is, can be very overwhelming. Like it's It's easy to get burnt out if you're trying to do it. And what works on Instagram doesn't necessarily work on TikTok. I think it's doing things on TikTok are easier than Instagram because of how people consume the content. But I think your best bet to getting people over to email is definitely Instagram.

Okay. Yeah. What, what are the advantages that you see of TikTok over Instagram?

TikTok is, it's just, it's kind of wild to be honest. It's, it's an interesting platform because it, feels, feels like you're just watching someone's FaceTime. Like, it feels very real and relatable and, um, less polished than Instagram. Yeah. Oh, very less polished. Like, it's just, it's hilarious. And so I think people want to stay on that more, but you're also not really following people like you used to. So I also find that on Instagram, like, it's less follower-focused, it's more like what's in my feed. So I think it's just, you could easily go viral on TikTok just by creating content that kind of everybody else is doing. I think that's an easy way to kind of get seen, creating those viral food trends.

Sorry, it's a bit of a naive question. Yeah, it was how little I know about TikTok. But can you do the same comment to get a recipe or that sort of thing on TikTok?

You can't. Okay, you can't.

So getting to an email list is much harder then?

Yes, it is. But also, if you do blow up on TikTok You're kind of, I mean, you're kind of in. Like, it's easier to go viral again and again, but it is more difficult than Instagram.

Yeah. The different aspects of the different platforms.

Yeah.

Fascinating. I have a friend, Dan Martell, who finds that on TikTok, he's not really penalized for posting the same thing over and over again.

Yeah.

And so he'll often test videos on TikTok and post like different edits of the same content.

Yep.

See what resonates and then post the one that worked. Yeah. You know, with the right hook and all of that on Instagram.

Yep.

And so, you know, because you get to play with these different things. Yeah.

No, I think like it's true though. TikTok, it's like I could make a piece of breakfast toast and I'm like, here it is. Like, and I'm not trying for it to be anything and it blows up. Instagram, it's like I feel like I have to try a lot. Harder to capture people's attention.

So you touched on how much work it is to be a creator. There's usually the people selling the course or something else who are like, and I did it in 4 hours a week or whatever. And you're like, that's not my, that's not my experience.

Yeah.

What does it look like, you know, as, as you're, I guess, 14 years in to this journey and how you're thinking about how you wanna spend your time. Whether to push for more income growth versus optimize systems and, and, you know, chill out a little bit.

Yeah, those things. Yeah, I have really started to think about it differently lately because I think it's very easy to get burned out, like, when you're doing so much. And like I said, I'm doing it on so many different platforms and trying to grow. So of course my goal is to grow, to continue to grow the brand, but it's like there's so much saturation in food content right now on every single social platform. So it's like, how do you stand out? How do you continue to remain a trustworthy, like, household name brand that people can rely on and that people will actually go to your site versus just reading a recipe in Instagram or something like that? And that's been, that's been really difficult for me. That's been something that I'm like, oh, people aren't searching the way they used to. Like, people aren't necessarily going to Google, so revenue might change, right? Um, so part of what I'm doing now is just starting to create more real content. And when I say real, less polished. So content that isn't necessarily, um, traditionally the way I would shoot for Instagram. It's like now I'm just like, hey, like it's more like the FaceTime content that we were talking about. Um, and try to think about it in a different way, which is it's just marketing is always shifting and how people, um, want to respond to trends and just what they see is different. And I think attention spans have gone from like, you know, 30 seconds to like 2 seconds now. So it's like just thinking about marketing in a different way. And it's, it's a challenge for me, but it's also part of why I may like be looking to shift my business and what I do and not just be all Ambitious Kitchen, like Monique Ambitious Kitchen. So we'll see. I, I truly don't know, like, what is going to be next.

Yeah. What's your team look like today?

So my team is made up of— I have a digital marketing manager. She's been with me for 8 years. She runs— essentially, she runs the website. So she is, um, writing most of the blog posts. She does SEO. She does all of the email marketing, creates all those funnels. Um, and I kind of oversee all of that. Like, I come up with Oh, let's concept this, ideas, people, ways we can get people in, all that sort of stuff. And then we go from there. Um, then I also have a social media manager, so she helps me create content, helps me film, shoot. She's with me full-time as well. I have a photographer who shoots all my recipes. She's a contractor. I have, um, a videography team for YouTube specifically, production team. I also have sort of like an operations manager.

Is the video team—

Contracted.

Contracted. So you work with them?

Yes. So I work with them and I do about 4 videos now a month.

Okay.

4 to 5 videos a month. And then we shoot 1 to 2 times a month. And then they, they outsource their editing.

Okay.

It's like a whole thing.

The cascade of—

Yeah, the cascade of outsourcing. Oh, and then I have the operations manager and she is the person who has helped me create some of these systems, like just how I can respond easier, how like approvals and how my team works, deadlines, that sort of thing. Um, and she's also excellent at email marketing, so she has kind of influenced us to shift how we create subject lines, how we're increasing that open rate. Um, and she's very familiar with like email funnels for sales, so it's interesting to think about. I'm not selling product, but I, I also am selling a product though because I'm selling a recipe, right? I'm trying to get people to—

we're trying to get them to take action.

Open, take action. Yeah.

So, um, cook the recipe, right? They love it. They come back for more.

Yeah. It's a little bit different than buying a course, but it's like same mindset, like, right? So she's really helped and that's, um, it's sort of the makeup of my team.

What I'm curious about is the, like, how you spend your time to run a business at this scale.

Mm-hmm.

And maybe how that's shifted over, over the years.

Yeah, I mean, I used to work nonstop. Loved it, loved it. Could— if I was by myself, I would work nonstop. But I had 3 kids a couple of years ago, and so I really was forced to slow things down, create this 9-to-5 again, which is interesting because I wasn't used to that. I love working at night. I feel like my creativity just kind of blooms then. So now I'm in the 9-to-5 zone. So it's— I really had to structure my days. So now, like, I have usually 2 days of content creation.

Okay.

And that's whether I'm like doing a brand partnership and filming or just like testing recipes, things like that. I have a day where I'm just doing like admin meetings with my team, catching up, and then usually it just depends on the workweek, like things ebb and flow with social media. So it's like, am I, you know, editing a recipe? Am I retesting a recipe? Am I filming another thing? But a lot of it ends up being the admin work that takes up a ton of my time. It's like going back on like little edits for video, and I'm very much a perfectionist. I'm like, look this way. And it's also led me to be successful. So like, I like to have like the control over the final product.

So I appreciate you like hearing from you that you love to work a ton because that's how I am. And I feel like I encounter people who are really saying, I'm not getting traction with the thing that I'm doing. I'm really protecting my time and really only working on it a little bit. And I'm waiting to blow up and hit things big. And I'm like, this equation is not going to get you to where you want to go. And so many of the people that I talk to, even the ones who, like, so, or certain people that I talk to work obsessively on all this, or they did for that series of time. Now there's a lot of people out there on social who are saying like, oh, you know, you can, like, uh, you shouldn't work nights and weekends, you shouldn't do this or that. And I'm like, you did to get to where you are. And now that you're making millions a year, you're giving different advice. And so he, I like that you're straight up saying like, no, I worked a ton.

Yeah, no, I did. I mean, when I was growing my business, I mean, like I said, I was 22 for 5, 6 of those years. That's all I did, right? I mean, I let go of my social life. Like, I was just focused on doing what I love. It was also my passion. But like, once I realized I could make money from it, I was like, let's go. Like, and I still very much have that mindset. It's just my time is limited because of my children and like, priority shifts. But now I'm hyper-focused on like, if something isn't working, let's just try something else. Let's just try. Let's keep going. Let's not like be so hyper-focused on getting something to work that it's just not. And then we're, we're essentially wasting our time. Like, so for me, it's all about ideas and continuing to be inventive and different. And I'm like, if it doesn't work, so what? Like, I failed at it, whatever. Let's try something else. Just keep going. So I think that's sort of been like the reason why I've stuck around. It's— that's also the exciting part for me, right? Like I'm like, oh, there's something new to work on. Oh, that's fun. Like, so.

Yeah, that makes a big difference. I think content creation with kids is a really interesting area because it totally changes how you spend your time.

Yeah.

All of those things. I remember, I feel like there's lots of times where I was like recording a podcast or something, you know, from a home office.

Yeah.

And then I'm like, actually, I really thought that my 2-year-old was going to sleep for the next hour. Like, I'm— hold on. Or that sort of thing. Or like even last night, you know, we're, uh, out here in Chicago where we've got the launch of Kit Studios here in Chicago. And so, uh, I'm away from home, but like there's little things, you know, I, uh, use the Apple Notes to scan in the next chapter of the book that I'm reading to my 5-year-old.

Oh, cute.

And so that, you know, I like get back to the hotel and I'm like, okay, it's 9 here, so 8, so he is just going to bed. And I'm like, record a voice memo text to my wife of like reading a chapter of the book. And it's just all of these things that you end up fitting in around all of this. And for me, the time constraints has actually forced me to focus on, oh, these are the things that move the needle. Like I was doing the 60, 70 hours of work. And now that I don't have that time as I've compressed it, there's a lot of things, some experimentation that I do miss. But there's a lot of things where I'm like, okay, that was actually not that productive of time. I've been able to cut that out.

Yeah.

Has that been your experience as well?

Yes, absolutely. Recently I just, uh, had to scale back a little bit on YouTube because I was, I was creating— I had shot, had shot 30 videos in like a month.

Oh wow. Yeah, it was not 4 or 5 a month for like last year.

And I was, you know, I was just feeling burnt out on it. And I'm like, I'm getting— it's so hard to build a YouTube channel. It's, it's very difficult. It's like a slow-moving—

How many subscribers are you at on YouTube now?

I only have 65,000.

Okay, and you've been working on it for a year?

A year, yeah.

You've had the channel for longer, but it's been like the focus for the year?

Yes, yes, but just started.

And so you're, you're probably used to Instagram where you're like, yeah, I look, worked really hard at it, but I got to a million.

Yeah.

And so—

Yeah, it's just like very slow moving and I'm still learning a lot. Um, but I'm like, oh my gosh, that only got 5,000 views or 10,000 views. What's the point? Like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Like, should I even be focused on it? But You know, so just I'm trying to figure out like, yes, what is moving the needle in terms of actual growth, in terms of, you know, making money and continuing to grow my brand, but also finding the joy I think is really important, like continuing to be passionate and feel creative in what I'm doing. And a lot of that comes down to like having creativity, the time to have creativity, which is recipe development. And then there's like that marketing aspect. So I think The more you scale your business, the less time you kind of have to do those things. Yeah. It's a struggle. I feel like I, I'm just like constantly in that battle, but it's a good challenge. Yeah. It's a good problem to have.

This might be putting you on the spot too much, so if you don't have an answer, that's fine. But if I were to force you to only work on your business for 10 hours a week, like what would you spend those 10 hours on? Like the business still has to grow, all of that. Like what changes would you make?

Oh, I'm stressed. I don't know. Um, I think I would focus on putting out like one piece of relevant content. Mm-hmm. And then I would focus on just getting people to see that, like however they're gonna see it. You know, it's like one piece of content, that's all you really need. Yeah. You don't need to, like, I post every single day cuz I'm a psycho, but like you only really need to do it probably one time.

Right.

Get people to see it. How do you do that? And then, you know, get people to essentially either subscribe or get to the, or to get to the website.

Yeah.

Yeah. That'd be my only focus.

You've narrowed down. So one piece of content and then really one funnel and one distribution source. Yeah.

That's like, I guess that's the advice for the 21-year-old.

I mean, kind of, right? But then the 21-year-old, it's like, but do it for 70 hours.

Yeah. But do it, you know what, do that times 7.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a, an interesting thing of like, do you then go super broad if you have that extra time or do you go deep within the thing that works? And you do have to have this other experimentation or all of that. I'm, I'm curious in the YouTube journey, what is the thing, like if it comes to mind, what are one or two things that you're like, that was a waste of time to pursue? And what were one or two things that you were like, okay, that actually worked and I'm doing much more of that?

Recently I've discovered that What actually works is getting people to stick around to the end of the video. So like being like, oh, and we're going to make this. So like, stay, you know, stay tuned.

So you actually say in the video, like, stay tuned. Yeah, got that.

Okay. It's like you're going to want to see this storytelling. Like nostalgia is huge. And I don't know if it's the YouTube audience or I don't know if it's just like stories about my grandma or my mom. Yeah, those tend to do well. And then also, again, doing it for SEO.

Mm-hmm. So this is the search engine.

Yeah. Because they, Google and YouTube feed into each other. So I've figured out like sheep hand salmon, for example.

Mm-hmm. I just watched that video.

And when people search sheep hand salmon, if I can get to the first page of Google, cuz sometimes there'll be like little snippets.

Mm-hmm.

You'll get way more views. So I'm like, just, I'm trying to think about it like in those three sort of like funnels. It's like feed one for SEO.

Mm-hmm.

Make fun content that's different and that people actually wanna watch it. Yeah.

There's a lot to it.

There is a lot to it.

Do you feel like you have a better sense now when making a video of like what's going to hit and what wouldn't work?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And I also found that people watch less in the summer.

Just because there's, yeah, kids are out of school.

Yeah. People are just busier and outside. I felt like my videos didn't perform as well.

Yeah. I've seen there's definitely seasonality to different industries.

Yep.

And we see that even growing kids, like, a very random thing. I think early on we targeted so many, uh, people building a side hustle. And so all throughout the week our signups would be the same. Like there'd be a slight difference. But now if you look at who signs up to be a Kit customer, it is way lower on the weekends than, uh, during the week. Because I think so many people see it like it is a thing done by professional creators and they're like, oh no, on the weekend I'm doing other stuff. And so, you know, you see that during the week, you see that seasonally. And again, like summer can be a lot slower.

Yeah, it is pretty much on every platform for me.

That makes sense. One other area that I wanted to dig into is the cookbook.

Yes.

Because that's the product that you're selling. And it's probably a very, if I can imagine, it's a very different process of getting someone to the cookbook and buying that compared to getting their time and attention on the website for seeing ads?

Yeah, it's been really interesting. I mean, the cookbook did phenomenal, like made New York Times bestseller list.

Amazing.

So great, great there.

Actually, really quick on that.

Yeah.

How do you feel like having the cookbook and all the media that came with it, like, did you see a step function in like your brand elevating and all of that?

I didn't. I don't know. You know, I think it's all perception for other people. But it's not like I saw a huge jump in traffic or anything like that, which I kind of thought I would. So that was a little bit different for me. But also maybe it's because I had such an established brand, like it, it was my—

you weren't going from obscurity to New York Times. Yeah, you'd built up to it all the way.

Yes. But I think the thing that I've learned is that it's really much more difficult than I thought it would be to get people to make a sale on a cookbook that only costs $35, right? Versus just going to your site for free. Even though I have millions of people, like, I think it's like 7 million people come to the site a month, right? Like, what, where are you guys?

Yeah.

You know what I mean? So when you're selling like 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 copies, you're like, oh, it could be so much more. And you have it on the popup and you're talking about it for months. It's just really much more difficult for people to make a sale on that. And I think it's, um, I don't know, a part of my thinking is like, you're providing so much free content that they're like, I'm actually good. Yeah. Like, you've, you've done this for years. Like, why would I buy a book? So that was really interesting for me. And I think if I do another cookbook, which I'm hoping I will, it will be a much different mindset going into it. And I also think it's people like people with subsects or newsletters or things like that. Have a different audience that are willing to pay for things like a cookbook, right?

Because the newsletter is so much more established relationship.

Yeah, and maybe they're used to paying for something already, or if they've already purchased something from that person, like whether it's merch or whatever, um, there's something about the value and like, I've already paid for this, so now like I'm willing to buy something else from you. Yeah.

Is there a reason that you haven't gone into like merch or meal plans or some of the other more traditional products?

Yeah, I've thought about the meal plans and then I'm like, I don't know that I, I don't really know that I would charge people for it. I don't know. It's been something I've thought about, but haven't really gone down that path. It's just like, would people be interested? Not sure. But I also think there's something to be said about just giving people what they want.

Right.

But it just creates convenience for people and ease.

Remove as much friction as possible.

Yeah. Yeah. So I totally understand that. And then the merch thing, I don't know. It's like the markup. I don't know if it's there. You know, I don't know. I have a friend who recently did merch and she made like $200,000 off her merch. I mean, that's incredible for like a month.

That's, yeah, that's a huge number.

That's crazy.

And that comes from people sharing numbers, right? So in all that where you're like, okay, I see what you did.

Yeah.

Would you do it again? Did it work? What did you learn? All of that. So I love how the creator community is very open with that.

Yeah.

Is there anything that you would do differently for the next cookbook compared to what you did on the first one?

I think I would have to probably create some sort of merch line and get people used to buying different things. I mean, they've already purchased the first cookbook, but I think it's sometimes the second one doesn't do as well, but perhaps maybe my content is just a little bit more tailored the next time instead of being The Ambitious Kitchen Cookbook, very vague. Something a little more—

You start solving a much more specific—

A problem. Yeah.

Use case. Yeah. That makes sense.

Yeah.

Okay. As we wrap up, I want to go back and like make it really actionable for someone who is saying, okay, I want to scale my food creator business.

Yes.

Maybe they're at the point where they're making $50,000 a year or like they've got traction, they've got traffic, all of that. Um, what's some advice that you would give for someone who's at that point, like, looking to scale to $500,000 a year or that?

Yeah, I mean, I think if you have a website and you can get somebody like Raptive on there, that's going to be critical. So meeting that $100,000, like, minimum threshold for visitors per month so you can get Raptive in.

Okay.

So just continuing to, I think, post content is really important and focus on SEO so you can get people into your website. And so whether that's, like, from Instagram, you're getting people in, But again, you're going to start to make more money once you can get an ad company behind that site.

And that's 100,000 page views per month is kind of the minimum threshold.

I think so. I think so.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

And then how do you think about how SEO is changing and the impact of all of that?

Yeah, I think it'll be really interesting the next, I mean, 3 to 5 years. It's going to be a huge shift. I think Google, is going to have to come up with something that people are using to utilize like their site because people aren't going to Google as much as they were anymore. And I've seen this on my site alone, like the drop in traffic from Google specifically. People are still searching, but it's from, you know, TikTok, Instagram, ChatGPT. And I think a lot of people are using ChatGPT and will continue to.

Yeah, it'll be— I mean, how to optimize for AI search is going to be such a thing. Yeah. Like I'm trying to figure out how do I, if you ask ChatGPT for newsletter platform recommendations, it will put ConvertKit right up there at the top. And I'm like, cool, but it's called Kit now.

Yeah.

And so like, I don't even, you know, that's the thing that we're trying to figure out. How do we get this LLM to like, you know, adopt our rebrand?

I'm founder.

Can you, Would you please? Did you see how I said please? I asked nicely. And so this idea of search optimization for AI is going to be such an interesting thing. And then of course, people gamed so much in search and then the algorithms would change. You're like, now how do we rank the best content? Not just what someone figured out for a hack. And And it'll be the same thing for AI.

Yeah. I honestly don't know what's going to happen to a lot of recipe creators because if you ask ChatGPT for a recipe, it's pulling in, it'll pull in a recipe. So if you're like, hey, give me a recipe for brown butter oatmeal cookies, it'll give you a recipe, but it won't tell you where it's from. You have to prompt it and then it'll say, I pulled it from these 3 sites and kind of made my own. Well, you don't know if it works. Maybe it does because it's pulling from 3 sites, but it's just interesting. It's—

The ad revenue didn't go to the creator.

Right.

There was no page view.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. It just scraped the site.

Yeah. It'll definitely be interesting. But I think that's why I guess this is the trade-off. Earlier I was talking about focus on one channel and all of that, but that's some diversity across your traffic sources matters. But then also I think that having the relationship with your audience, right? So the brand that you've built and then, you know, you and I are both big fans of email lists and being able to push content to them separate from whatever happens with AI or Google or any of those platforms. On the email side, is there anything that you've implemented that you're like, oh, every food creator should implement this?

So two things. One, we started writing our subject lines like The New York Times or Bon Appetit. So it was like 9 orzo recipes you can make this week, or the lemon cake of your dreams, or just like open for dinner tonight. So you're not telling people what the recipe specifically is, or it's like our most popular things like that. My husband's favorite dinner is like, right? There's things that are like, what is that? Like you're sparking curiosity. We weren't doing that before. That was huge for us. Um, and then 2, every single week we've put out a menu, which I guess is kind of like a meal plan for people, but they know what to expect. So every Saturday, that's our newsletter. And that's where we've seen our open rates just go up and up.

That's awesome. Yeah.

And it's the same subject line every week.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. Isn't that—

But, but it's that you've set an expectation and then you're consistently meeting it.

Yep. Yeah.

I like that a lot.

Yeah.

That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on and like—

Thanks for having me.

Giving this behind the scenes into your business.

Yeah.

People want to follow you, Instagram, newsletter, all of that. Check out the cookbook. Where should they go?

Uh, ambitiouskitchen.com, Instagram, Ambitious Kitchen. Pretty much where I am.

Sounds good. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you.

If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.