Building a Creative Life Beyond the Metrics with Sabrina Loyer

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: Are you a food blogger looking to boost your site’s visibility? With Yoast SEO Premium, you can optimize your blog for up to five keywords per page, ensuring higher rankings and more traffic. You can enjoy AI-generated SEO titles and meta descriptions, and automatic redirects to avoid broken links. I love that feature and real-time internal linking suggestions. Plus, take advantage of Yoast AI Optimize, which is their latest AI-driven feature. A simple click provides you with actionable suggestions that help move your SEO score closer to that green traffic light, which we all love so much. It’ll streamline your process and reduce manual tweaks. Additionally, you can get social media previews and 24/7 premium support. Now here’s the wonderful thing for Food Blogger Pro listeners. Yost is offering an exclusive 10% discount. You can upgrade your blog’s SEO game today with Yoast SEO premium. Use the code FoodBlogger10 at checkout. Again, that’s FoodBlogger10, the number ten one zero at checkout for that 10% discount.

Emily Walker 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, Bjork is interviewing Sabrina Loyer. Sabrina is a content creator coach who is recommended to us by Brita from Food With Feeling. Brita was on the podcast in July and is an expert in the Food Blogger Pro community. Brita worked with Sabrina last year to help recenter and refocus her Instagram strategy and said that her experience was really amazing. In my conversation with Brita, she said that she really loved Sabrina’s approach because it wasn’t about gaming the system or hacking the algorithm, but more about tapping into your inner child and creating content that is super authentic and really speaks to your core audience. Brita felt like Sabrina’s message and strategy could be something that a lot of bloggers would really resonate with.

In this episode, we’re chatting with Sabrina about what it really means to be successful as a content creator. Sabrina built a thriving business around helping others go viral, but she also experienced the anxiety, burnout and pressure that can come with chasing metrics, and she started seeing that over and over again with her clients. She shares her journey of moving beyond the comparison trap, creating without boundaries and learning to view social media as a tool in your toolbox rather than the end goal. Sabrina and Bjork also discussed the two powerful tools, morning pages, and artist dates that transformed Sabrina’s creative process and life. Sabrina also shares practical advice for simplifying content creation, for using tools like Chat GPT effectively for improving the quality of your videos all while staying grounded and joyful in your work. Whether you’ve been creating content for a decade or you’re just starting out, this episode can really help you reconnect with your creativity, quiet your inner critic, and figure out how to redefine success on your own terms. I think there were a lot of aha moments for me as I was editing this episode, and I know you’ll get a lot out of it, so I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Sabrina, welcome to the podcast.

Sabrina Loyer Thank you for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’re going to be having a conversation about two things that I think are really important for people. One, we’re going to be talking about growth. People are always interested in growth, how to grow a thing, how to grow your following. But I think one of the things that gets lost in that conversation a lot of times is how do you maintain a healthy engine that is the thing that is growing, that is the most important thing, and it is for us, it is the creator. We are the source of the content that we are creating

The engine. We are the life source of this content, and if we as creators start to decay naturally, you can imagine a tree in the branches. We have a tree in our yard that we recently had to have treated because it was starting to get sick. And it’s like if the foundation is sick, then the branches are sick. And for us as creators, a lot of times we can get to that point where suddenly we feel off, we feel burnt out. There’s different ways that you can describe it, and therefore the things that we are creating, the fruit, the leaves, like the branches also have the potential to not be what they could be. So before we get into that, I’m curious to hear a little bit about your story. You are a creator as well, but also how did you realize that you were interested in and also wanted to pursue this idea of working with creators to help them avoid burnout, but also to still think about growth?

Sabrina Loyer So at the base of everything, I am a video editor. So I grew up in the YouTube age, millennial through and through. So I was watching a lot of YouTube content growing up. I wanted to be a YouTuber, so that’s essentially what I did. I started a YouTube channel, I started learning how to edit content and so on. As I got older and I went into the workforce, I started recognizing that Instagram was something that was very pertinent. So I started getting on Instagram, starting to get into things there. I then ended up taking on a project of managing a social media brand. So that was my very first introduction to management or anything that had to do with showing up on social media. So I actually haven’t taken one course in social media in my entire life. I’ve learned everything from the ground up and

Bjork Ostrom: On the job training.

Sabrina Loyer Yes, exactly, exactly. So from that one management job that I did take, and when I say management job, I want to get real down to earth with it, earth with it. It was my husband. Okay, great. I love it. I was behind the scenes. He’s a barber. I was making content for him, barber content for him. So that

Bjork Ostrom: Was one of my favorite obscure channels is haircut. Harry, do you know Harry? Yep. He came to a barbershop here in St. Paul, Minnesota. And there was a barber that he featured there and is like, oh, what the world of barber and content for me, as somebody who’s not in that world at all, it’s really fun to get into that world and see like, oh, there’s an entire niche. There’s a niche around barbers and style. So anyways, I don’t know that world, but I’ve been

Sabrina Loyer A whole world

Bjork Ostrom: Walked into the room and I’ve looked around. Yeah,

Sabrina Loyer Yeah. So it’s a whole world. And then I also just started taking on jobs like that. So I was taking on Barbara A. Barber client or someone who was selling an ebook, so she wanted help with that. And then slowly but surely I started working up some clients that I was just managing their account. So I was creating all the content for them, posting all the content, essentially they were the creator, they were the face, and I was the one doing everything is what I’m trying to say. And then what ended up happening was during 2020 COVID era, everyone knows that TikTok started going crazy. I got on that train hardcore and I started making videos talking about how to go viral on TikTok, and that took off crazy. So I was going live on TikTok and I was telling people, this is what you’re going to do and to go viral.

And it was actually working. People were actually coming back to me and saying, I’m going viral, it’s because of you. So I didn’t really know what to do with that quite honestly, because I just knew how to create content and I knew what editing styles would work. And then what happened was that I landed my very first blogger client through TikTok and through this idea of helping her go viral. So I hope you can see where I’m coming from with this idea of I was doing everything from a place of going viral, getting the views, getting the likes, and that’s what I built my business on. And what ended up happening was that I had a couple of clients, they were food bloggers and then some other niches as well, and I worked with them. They saw crazy success. And when I’m talking about crazy success, I’m saying like 10 million views, 20 million views like mega viral on TikTok. And they were essentially making jobs for themselves because of the lockdowns and because of everything that was happening. And what ended up happening unfortunately is that they got burnt out. And that was where I started reimagining. You started

Bjork Ostrom: To see that it’s only half of the journey to get to the point where you’re building and scaling. And

I’ve been having this thought a lot lately, and I’ve mentioned it on the podcast before, but there’s this parable, maybe you’ve heard it, but it’s called the Parable of the Chinese farmer. It’s an old kind of proverb that this philosopher guy Alan Watts talks about. And the basic idea is that there’s this farmer, and he’s really sad because I’m going to do a terrible job telling the actual version of it. People should just go and listen to the YouTube video, but you’ll get the idea. So he’s a farmer, he is sad, his son is gone because he needs help in the fields. And then his son comes back and then everybody is like, all his neighbors come around and they’re like, oh, you must be so excited. Your son comes back and his response is maybe. And then the next day his son is in the field plowing the field and his son breaks his leg and all the neighbors gather around and they say, this is the worst news ever.

You must be so sad. And he says, well, maybe. And then the next day there’s an army recruiter who comes and knocks on the door and he says, we’re here to recruit your son. And his son’s leg is broken, and so he can’t go to serve in the army. And anyways, it goes on and on and on. And the idea is that we can’t necessarily ascribe to an event whether it will be good or bad. We only know what is true in the moment. And I think it has a little bit, it speaks to me a little bit to the idea of present gratitude. What is true today for me, it’s like what’s true for me today is I’m having a conversation with you. I have a nice coffee here, I’m going to be able to learn something. I have the privilege of sharing this conversation with an audience.

What I don’t know is if we have the most successful year for a business, is that good or bad? I think we want to say it’s actually good. And I think a lot of times it is, but it doesn’t necessarily result in something good. And you talking about this idea of somebody having this thing that is success from a metrics standpoint and then realizing the result of that is a difficult headspace, not feeling good, feeling anxious, feeling stressed, feeling burnt out, I think is an important reminder for us as humans that we need to be able to hold lightly to anything that we are pursuing. And I think it also allows us to release sometimes this idea of jealousy or envy around what other people have because we just don’t know how things play out.

And so as you think about the journeys that you’ve seen people take and that you’ve been along the way with, can you pinpoint and look to some of the things that resulted in people feeling burnt out or feeling anxious or feeling stressed as they achieved? What many people would be the pinnacle, you have a video and it has 5 million views, or you’re growing by thousands of new followers a day, but then there’s this new reality that you’re navigating and it results in people feeling all these other negative feelings. So what could you point to and say this theories you have around why maybe that happens?

Sabrina Loyer I like to look often at what you define success to be. Our definition of success can be completely different. Yours can be different than mine, can be different than one of your listeners. And that’s something that I often like to pinpoint because if we define success as having 10 million views, then you’ve succeeded. Great. At the end of the day, your goal has been made, you got 10 million views. But if you define success as a very well-rounded approach of, I feel good about the video that I made, I feel like the edit was really great. I feel like I was happy when I was creating the video. All of these different measures of success that may feel like they’re a little smaller, they are all very definitive of how we end up feeling at the end of the day. And I love using this idea is that when we are looking at our social media accounts and we get that dopamine hit of, oh, I got another view, oh, I got another follower.

Is that actually supposed to be what we define our success with? Because if I look at all of the knowledge out in the world, dopamine hits are actually not as sustainable as we may think. And I’m not a scientist, I don’t need to go into all of that science, but I feel from my own even experience of burning out three times, which is something that I talk a lot about with my clients because this is also a part of my own story and what I bring to the table. I ended up using so many of the tools that I now offer with my clients because of my own burnouts and because of the burnouts that I saw previous clients unfortunately go through. And that redefined success for me personally. And then I saw other clients redefine success for themselves. So success is a huge one. I would say. Another one is

Bjork Ostrom: Defining success. What does success look like for you?

Oftentimes, sometimes it might be, I’ve talked to people and they’re like, I just really want to be famous. And if that’s the case, there probably is something to be said about follower count and how many people are seeing your videos, and that can be the motivator for you. But for a lot of us, the definition of success might be I want to have as much quality time with my kids as possible, or like you said, I want to create art that I’m proud of all of those being more ambiguous, harder to track potentially metrics of success. But that’s what you’re talking about, defining success as one of the most important things to understand almost what game you’re playing. Is that a little bit of what you’re getting at?

Sabrina Loyer Yeah, I would say that I view social media in a certain sense as a game. I can’t say even as a social media coach, I can’t even say I love social media. I would actually tend to say I hate social media. And I know that’s a big word to say because obviously my job is literally based in social media. I help others show up and be their best selves on social media. But as social media, what it does for our brains, like the brain chemistry behind that, it can really screw us up at the end of the day. And I mean, research shows that the longer that we spend on our phones, there’s a lot of negative effects with that. So when we are looking at showing up as a creator holistically or without necessarily burning out, we need to go back to things that separate us totally from our phones because at the end of the day, you are, I am me. And if social media dies today, I relying on social media to give me my worth. I hope not. Honestly, I die today. If social media dies, I die and that’s just not going to be the best outcome for my life.

Bjork Ostrom: And the idea is it’s a tool, it’s a valuable tool. It allows us to do the work that we want to do. I almost view a comparable as somebody who we were working with, a really skilled local guy who does drywall, and I don’t know if he necessarily loves the sander that he uses, but it’s a tool that he uses to create a really beautiful product, which is beautiful drywall. And I think sometimes there is the potential for us as creators on social media to view us as social media, but if we view it as a tool to distribute, to create as a canvas. But the hard part is different than a sander where you use it and then when you’re done with it, you’re done with it. There’s naturally addictive. It’s like billions of dollars in the world’s smartest engineers who are creating these as addictive platforms. And so even for us as creators posting on them, you enter into it and suddenly an hour later you find yourself still using the platform, but you’ve lost your way within it. Totally. So how to the point that you made around finding ways to disconnect outside of the phone a screen, how do you do that effectively when you’re working against something that is so good at keeping you in it?

Sabrina Loyer Yeah, so there are two practices that I religiously use with my clients and myself, and it’s two practices. I did not make them up. They’re coined by Julia Cameron. She is an author of the book The Artist Way. It’s not something that I also typically recommend as a reading project for my clients. I just use these two tools that have dramatically changed my life completely and I am seeing now the results in my client’s life of dramatically changing things. The first one is morning pages. So morning pages is a practice where when you get up, hopefully the first thing or one of the first things that you do is that you write out three pages journaling back in front. And that’s just your immediate thoughts throw up. You just, it’s not what I need to do, what I need to buy, the recipes that I’m making to get today, the videos I’m taking, it’s none of that.

It can be, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s just whatever is coming to the forefront. And this practice is really good at engaging your inner critic, which is also is always at war with our inner creative child, the creative child being the creator, the one that is creating all of those delicious recipes, the ones that is behind the camera is filming all of that. The critic is often, I would even, I call it, and Julia Cameron would even say so that it’s often like an older voice, maybe like an adult voice or something like that, that’s typically saying, you’re not good enough.

You need to strive for views, you need to get all of this followers within this year. You need to make all of this money, stuff like that. And so that’s not necessarily coming to the forefront in every journal entry, but you are just journaling what’s coming up right away in the top of your day so that the rest of your day you are just able to show up that teensy bit better because you got all that mental mess out. So that’s a crazy practice that I have seen, I have utilized for years and have seen amazing results. The results being because that is away from my mind, those times where I am being creative or I’m showing up or my clients are, they are just getting these ideas that are flowing and it’s just like, what’s happening? Why are these ideas just flowing? And it’s because we let out all of that mental mess and we are now just more susceptible. Well, better at, yeah, exactly. Open at hearing that goodness and those ideas. The second one is a huge love of mine and it’s called the artist dates. So the artist dates are where you are going out for one hour alone with your inner child. So you are asking your inner child, what do you want to do? And it’s a practice where you’re not looking at, okay, I need to go to this, that, or the other store, I have to buy this. I have to

Bjork Ostrom: Go run some errands,

Sabrina Loyer Run some errands. All of those things. It’s none of that. And it’s also none of those things that you think are going to fill you up. So that’s where the caveat is there as well, because we think maybe working out will fill our cup up, but actually what our inner child is wanting may be different. And so that’s why we really engage that inner child. We ask our inner child in a moment of deep sincerity with ourself perhaps meditation, perhaps prayer, whatever feels resonating to you, just saying like, Hey, what do I need right now? And doing that, accomplishing that and putting that on your to-do list for your week, this practice in itself has in undoubtedly changed my own personal life. Absolutely. And it’s just one hour of my week. There are a lot of hours in the week. It’s just one hour and it has changed my life completely and I see it in my client’s life as well.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about that? I think each of these, it’s worth spending some time with because I think one of the things we often talk about is this idea of a tiny bit better every day forever. How can we as creators, business owners, people find ways to get a tiny bit better in pursuit of a more full life, healthier business, whatever it might be? I think each of these are a really great example of something that we might be able to add to our norms that I always think about this idea of bets. And if I were to place a bet over the next decade and the bet was one version is the version of me that doesn’t do the three page longhand stream of consciousness like journaling and the other version is one that does. So it’s two different versions. What would my bet be around in a decade, the version that is in a better place? And I would say my bet’s probably on the one that does the three page journaling. And so each of these I think are really great candidates for us to think about as introducing into our life because if we do place that bet and our belief is it’s going to make us better,

Probably a good thing to look at introducing into our norms or processes. The artist date, is that what it’s called? The artist date?

Sabrina Loyer Yes, exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: So all within this concept of the artist’s way, we are all artists, we’re all creators, and the idea is that we have this inner child and an inner critic, the inner child, much like our 4-year-old or 6-year-old probably is less inhibited, is more creative or not more creative, but more willing to create without boundaries. And I see that within our girls. It’s like my dad was an art teacher and they talked about this idea. He would always talk about this idea when he would ask his kindergartners, who’s an artist, everybody would raise their hand. And then he eventually taught high school art. And then he said, who of you are artists? And maybe one or two would raise their hand. And so somewhere along the way in growing up that inner critic tells the inner child, the creative, not to raise its hand. And so we need to push back against that. Can you talk specifically, I think it helps to hear examples when you talk about that one hour a week, what does that look like for you? And then what does that do for you as a artist or a creator?

Sabrina Loyer Yeah. Well, now that I’m a new mom, it’s definitely very, very different. My son is 14 months old, so I have a toddler. He’s been walking since eight months. So it’s been a lot. I haven’t had a lot of time. I’m pretty much a stay at home mom as well. So I’m running around most of my days after a little toddler. It looks very different to me now than it did when I was a full-time business owner. I can speak to both. When I was a full-time business owner, I would schedule out my artist dates. I would take more than one because I knew how good the benefit that it would do in my life. So that’s just me. I’m a little bit of an artist in that as well. So I would book out that one hour. I would take a moment of silent prayer or meditation and I would ask myself, what is it that I need?

And sometimes it wouldn’t come to me in that moment. Sometimes it would come to me right before my artist date and there would be times where I would go to the market. I myself am not a food blogger. I’m not really, I’m a at home cook. I don’t do much other than that. So for me, going to a market isn’t necessarily isn’t working at all. I’m not trying to figure out what I’m going to make a recipe for. So I would go to the market and then I would just smell the food. I would smell the flowers. I would embrace my senses. Embracing your senses is also a huge characteristic of embracing your inner child because children are so connected to each of their senses. And I would connect to my senses and my inner child in that way. I would go get a matcha.

I wouldn’t be on my phone airplane mode all the way and just embrace life. Other times it would look very simple like going on a walk. It’s like a meditational walk. So essentially you’re choosing a sense where you are engaging more with. So for example, the sense of sight. I’m going to choose the sense of sense of sight. Today I’m going to go for my sensory walk. It’ll be a meditational walk. I will meditate on what I’m seeing. And so that’s sometimes what I would feel I need to do another time, just a simple girly thing. I would go to go shopping. It’s just so simple. I would get myself a cute little outfit and that’s what I needed for that week. So that is what I did when I was a full-time business owner. Now that I’m a mom, it looks very different. So now it does look like grocery shopping sometimes, and

It is just because my inner child needs to get out and needs to also do some things for the family, but I engage my senses at the same time. So okay, my inner child feels like she wants to go shopping for our family, which I think is awesome because children sometimes love to go shopping, which is great. I used to hate going grocery shopping. So the fact that my inner child is asking me to go grocery shopping, it says a lot, honestly. So grocery shopping, I connect with my senses as well. It’s often a sensory thing for me. And now there are times where I do go to coffee shops, spend some time reading on my own, spend some time just honestly breathing the fresh air that’s really, really good, just for an hour, just sitting outside for an hour. That’s what my inner child needs, and I’m able to show up better not only for my creativity, but for my family and for my child. And I have seen those results just from that hour. So it’s

Bjork Ostrom: Blown

Sabrina Loyer My world apart, honestly.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I have this really distinct memory of probably 10, 11, 12 years ago, and I was at this little rinky dink office and was renting it for 150 bucks and it was like a room in the corner of this moldy building. And I went for a walk and I remember I brought an apple with, it’s just this distinct memory for me. And I was just walking, eating an apple. It felt like a Tom Huckleberry Finn moment. But I just remember in that moment thinking that this is such an optimal experience for me to think it’s to ponder, to ideate. And when I’m at my computer, it’s really good for me to get stuff done. I’m great at email and getting stuff done. And what I’m not great at is creative thinking. And it reminds me too of an email I got this week from somebody. I sent an email, somebody that we work with for some SEO search stuff, and he sent this, it was an autoresponder, and he’s like, Hey, I’m out of the office this week. I’m actually doing the salmon run and I’m going out to experience what this, this once in a lifetime opportunity to see the salmon come. And what he said is, this is often when I come back, when I do my best work. And he was kind of explaining the reasoning behind it and he was like, here’s why I’m doing this. Because what I realized is when I get out into the world, when I experience things, that’s when I have ideas. That’s when, and it almost is like it makes sense when we talk about it, but our brain operates differently within the context of where we are. And for me, I turn into an efficiency machine when I sit in front of a computer and I’m like, email tasks, respond, check things off when I go to go on a walk, go on a hike, when I am walking across a bridge eating an apple, my brain can’t operate in that way. And so it switches gears

And it engages a different part. And I think that part is the creativity, the ideation, maybe a little bit of restoration. Oh yes. And so I think what you’re saying makes a lot of sense. And the hard part is actually doing it, I think because of dopamine. And I’m curious if you have any opinions on that. I’ve thought about this to add a last thought with it is I think sometimes outward success, meaning lots of followers, lots of growing revenue, lots of views sometimes can be a symptom of dopamine addiction. Andpeople who are so into that world that they have gotten so good at it because they have been in that world so much. But I think a lot of times it is an addiction. And so we need to be careful because even though outwardly it is viewed as success, I think we don’t define it as an addiction. And it’s not always an addiction by any means, but I think in some cases it is. And so we need to figure out how to free ourselves from that. Do you have thoughts or opinions on that? I do. The addiction of dopamine. Yeah,

Sabrina Loyer I do. So anything that you’re putting in the highest place is what you’re going to end up essentially I would say worshiping or essentially bowing down to or that’s the thing that you are submitted to at the end of the day. So if you’re submitted to that dopamine hit of social media, then you are addicted. You’re addicted to getting that feeling you’re addicted to. What’s the outcome of that? And this analogy, I know that it feels like it’s very intense, but I see it so much in my own life. I never want to because we’re all pilgrims on a journey. So I myself am still growing. I’m still doing the walk. I’m still on a path as you is the listener here. And so we are all on a path and we’re all growing towards who knows what. But at the end of the day, when I see clients come in and they say, oh my goodness, I’m losing thousands of dollars every month and it’s devastating me.

I don’t know what to do. I feel up in arms. I feel like I cannot live. I cannot breathe. I feel like everything that I have to do, I need to focus on my business double down essentially because I need to make more money. Then I’m often noticing that, oh, we’re putting money in a higher place perhaps than our own joy and our own happiness and our own happiness and joy is then mirrored by what’s going on with what money is saying. And so the same thing happens with social media. The same thing happens with family, the same thing happens with all of these things that we put in these high places. So I tend to look at, yes, social media is a tool. I look at these things as tools. Money is a tool, social media is a tool.

All of these different aspects of this business, they’re honestly really just tools because at the end of the day, your you are you, I’m me, and all of those things. If money was erased, you’re unfortunately, if the internet was erased and we couldn’t go and find blogs, if all of these things didn’t exist, we would be ourselves at the end of the day. And so how do we get back to ourself and then utilize these tools and not put them up here, but put them here and put us above that because we are above that ultimately and value ourselves so much so that we are pouring into ourselves daily, pouring into ourselves weekly so that hopefully when we show up, because we are going to show up, that we show up from a place of being filled and being joyful with ourself, being happy with where we are content.

I don’t need to gain one more follower. I don’t need to make one more dollar. I don’t need my blog to have one more view. It can happen and I’m so happy when it happens. Don’t get me wrong. We can talk about the metrics, we can talk about all those things. I love when it happens for my clients. I’m genuinely like, this is a win, but it’s a cherry on top. It’s not the end all. You are the end all. I want to see you in your full self at the end of the day, and that’s the most beautiful thing for me.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. I love that. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors, what if your content could earn more and do more for your business audience and your future? You might know Raptive as the ad management platform behind thousands of the world’s top creators, including Pinch of Yum. But today, Raptive is so much more than ads. They’re a true business partner for creators helping you grow your traffic, increase your revenue, and protect your content In an AI driven world, unlike one size fits all platforms, riv, customizes strategies for each creator, whether you’re growing a niche food blog or running a multi-site business, they offer expert support in SEO email and monetization strategy. And they’re leading the charge on AI advocacy to protect the future of creator owned content. And the best part, Raptive supports creators at every stage from Rise, their entry level program for growing sites to their top tier luminary level, their offering scale with you so you can get the right support when you need it the most.

Apply [email protected] to get a personalized growth strategy and join a creator community that’s shaping the future of the open web. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

I want to talk more about kind of how we pair a growth mindset with a stable foundation. Right. Before we do that, I also want to talk a little bit about the three page journaling exercise because I think probably what will happen is there are people who are listening to this, they’ll start that practice and it’ll be instrumental in their life. It’s been true for your clients, it’s been true for you. Can you talk about functionally what that looks like? Is it as simple as every day you sit down and you say go, you have three pieces of paper, you write down anything on your mind, and then you stop. And then what do you do with it after you just,

Sabrina Loyer I have my journal right here. I just open it up my desk. I have my journal. I have multiple of these, so many in a bookshelf, I just buy once, one a year. Sometimes I go through more than one a year because I have so much to say. It’s as simple as that. Get yourself a journal. It can be from the dollar store. It can be one of those fancy journals. Actually activate your inner child to ask your inner child, what journal do I want to get? Do I want to put a little sticker

Bjork Ostrom: On it? Phone fun.

Sabrina Loyer Yeah. Yeah. It’s a fun way to engage that creativity within you as well. And yes, so I don’t want to make it sound boring. It is a little boring if you think about it, but it’s keeping it on your bedside and every morning you can brush your teeth, go to the bathroom sort of thing. But as soon as you feel like you’ve got the spiderwebs out your eyes, just take some time to write out that stream of consciousness. As a parent, I have to admit, it’s quite difficult. So yes, sometimes it has to happen a little bit later on. My son had to feed in the morning. It’s just the reality, but you find what really, really works for you. Some people ask me, actually, a lot of people ask me, can I do it at night? I would love to say that at night is a great idea because I think in theory, yes, because you’ve had your whole day and you want to just explode what’s happened in your day. And if you want to do that, that’s super great. But that morning-ish before we start our workday, it’s really, really great practice to get all of that stuff out so that when you are showing up, perhaps recording content, editing your content, making a voiceover or coming up with a recipe, whatever that is, you want to be your most authentic self and to flesh out in the morning is the best way to do so.

Bjork Ostrom: Is the idea almost like I think of the idea of a dream catcher, native American dream catcher and the idea that it’s like, I don’t know specifics about it, but that it’s catching these bad dreams at night. Is it kind of like catching some of the thoughts that would hold you back to get them out of your head? So functionally, you get up, you journal three pages, you’re not stopping, you just are writing whatever’s coming to mind. And the idea is you get that out of your head. You’re in order to allow you to more seamlessly create, show up, be in relationship because you named that and naming it in some way contains it.

Sabrina Loyer Yes, totally.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Sabrina Loyer 100%. That’s cool. And it doesn’t have to be about work. It can be about life. It can be about anything.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Well, that’s cool. I’ve never done that. I’ve done journaling five minute journal type practices a lot, but I’ve heard people talk about this as a practice, but never specifically talk through it. So it’s something that I’ll try. That’s great. So how does that relate to burnout? That’s how we started the conversation was around burnout. Talk to me about ways that you are helping and ways that people can help themselves avoid burnout. This is one of them, it sounds like.

Sabrina Loyer Yeah, so a lot of the creators that come to me, what happens is that they have been in the business for a really long time. They’ve been blogging for perhaps most of my clients has been 10 or so plus years. And some it’s not, but most of them it is. And what happens is that they’re showing up a lot. Social media has been around for a while, so not only have they been making their blog, but they are showing up on social medias. And now with the saturation of everything and that dopamine hit of course, and the fact that we want to also be original, there’s so much going on in our minds. At the same time, I want to make original content. I want to have a good story. I want to X, Y, z,

Bjork Ostrom: Be there for my kids. I want to, what about chat GPT?

Sabrina Loyer Yep, totally.

Bjork Ostrom: Am I a bad parent? Am I a bad creator?

Sabrina Loyer Am

Bjork Ostrom: I a bad business owner?

Sabrina Loyer Everything and all of that. Exactly. And so we’re trying to figure all of that out and then those underlying aspects that we spoke about, what we are putting at our very top, are we putting social media at the top? What’s our definition of success? Are we succeeding if we have a million followers? All of those different things, it’s all coming like arrows against us. And then unfortunately, we’re showing up trying to do the best that we can. And what I see with the people that come to me is that they’ve been in it for a while and they feel like I’m at a point where I’m just throwing spaghetti at the wall. I’ve heard that so many countless times. And because they’re at that point, because they’re just trying to figure it out all over again because this new creator popped up within the past year and they’re all of a sudden super famous

Bjork Ostrom: Doing well. Yeah,

Sabrina Loyer Exactly. It feels like that dopamine hit is like, oh no, I am insecure about that. And it’s normal. It’s so normal because there’s that addictive quality. I get it. I’ve been there. I understand from firsthand experience. So what I’m seeing in relation to, okay, how do we embark on this more connective journey of embracing the inner child and really connecting with our inner child and avoiding burnout, we are trying to also put that together and it feels like it doesn’t fit. What I tend to say, and I tend to look at is again, I’m helping my clients as we’re working together define what success looks like, their authentic version of success. So we look at, this is what we do in my first month, my three month program, we look at what does success actually look like for you? What does your inner child want? I often bring my clients through meditational practice, what does your inner child want? And often, so many times the answer is a little different than what they’ve been currently doing online.

Bjork Ostrom: And the inner child essentially is you and your truest self. What do you want as opposed to this voice, this older authoritative voice that is maybe apparent. It’s maybe a version of you that thinks it’s the responsible thing to do, and it’s a chance for you to say, oh, actually what I want isn’t to grow my following. What I want is to have fun at work, to not have work, feel like dreadful or to go to bed on Sunday and look forward to Monday. Or I would guess some of it might be I want to do as little as possible in order for me to be at home as much as possible. Okay. How do you then reconcile that with your maybe inner critic that’s saying you need to grow more, and it’s like, is it realistic to grow more in an hour and a half a day maybe, but also maybe you should let off the gas on the grow more and think more about how do you grade yourself on showing up for those 10 hours that you’re going to be at home with your family or whatever. Exactly. Is that a little bit of what that looks like?

Sabrina Loyer Yeah, it looks like that. I also love the analogy of what you were saying about the trees and the fruit and trimming the trees. I bring that analogy all the time when I’m with my clients. I say that if our foundation, I talk a lot about the foundation of everything and your foundation is built upon your truest self, your authenticity and who you feel like you are destined to be essentially. And so when we build our foundation of our social media content out of that, then the tree that comes from that, and then the fruit that comes from that ultimately hopefully will be good fruit. But what happens, and what I’ve seen is that we build in a icky, rocky foundation because we haven’t just often, and it’s normal. We just kind of start things up because we are passionate and we want to start something up.

We want to start creating. It feels fun. We get a video that starts doing well, we have more videos that start doing well, and then we forget about that foundation and we’re not able to set that foundation. And then maybe five years, 10 years down the line, we’re looking back and we’re like, oh, what is my foundation? And so we get back to the root system, we look at our foundation, we define success. We look at who you really believe you are to be and what you really, really want. And then when we start defining that, we look at how do we show up holistically based off of simple tips and tricks that I bring to the table when I’m helping my clients because of my knowledge in editing, because of the knowledge that I’ve acquired from working with all of my clients. And typically, I recommend honestly only posting based off of your few content pillars that we create together.

And so most people, what they do is they post five days a week or three to five days a week. And then they’re not only posting on Instagram, they’re posting on TikTok and then on Facebook. And if they don’t have a team, they’re doing that all on their own and then they’re also managing their blogs, and it’s just a lot. And so I just say, okay, let’s choose one platform. Let’s just get to the basics of things. We found out your foundation we’re set in your foundation. Now let’s kind of trim the leaves and figure out what is needed and what needs to stay. That feels like it’s sustainable for you, but that also feels like it resonates with you. So we figure out your content pillars. I never do more than five content pillars. The last time I did five content pillars was honestly when I was working in 2020 trying to get

Bjork Ostrom: Content. Sure, content. Could you have an example of what a content pillar is?

Sabrina Loyer Yes. So content pillar is simple as that. It’s just the topic in which you feel best describes what your mission statement is. So just say your mission statement is healthy, healthy recipes for the family. Well, one of your content pillar is perhaps generational recipes. That’s based off of what me and me and my client will decide feels like, resonates best for their content. And so perhaps it’s generational recipes. Perhaps one of them is stories behind this drink perhaps. And then we’re really defining those three that are major topics that you are going to be posting once a week per content pillar. And typically it’s two times a week or three times a week. And so now we’re figuring out we are doing two or three videos a week. So that’s set. We simplified that already. And then now we’re simplifying things even more because I do bring in Chad GBT in the process, and Chad, GBT has been a huge game changer in my work with my clients because I teach them how to prompt chat GPT in the best way possible so that they’re less busy trying to figure out all of this backend work.

And they are prompting chat GPT to give them the best answer that they need for them to show up based off of those three, two, or three or four videos per week.

Bjork Ostrom: Almost like an ideation partner around

Sabrina Loyer Content

Bjork Ostrom: Creation to take off some of the mental burden around what should I create next?

Sabrina Loyer Yep. Yeah, exactly. And then we vet it together and we see, okay, oh, Chad, GPD was completely wrong on that one. But what we really do in our work together is just clean up those branches, leaves and all of that. And then we really focus on, okay, now that we’re cleaning things up, we’re making things more simple for you. How do we see that fruit? And the fruit, again, is defined by what you feel like that fruit actually is at the end of the day. Typically what ends up happening is

Bjork Ostrom: The fruit being success. Exactly. That’s the harvest of your work. And you don’t want to be harvesting the wrong thing. And so if you’ve defined that and then you curate that and you grow that, then you can harvest that. Yeah,

Sabrina Loyer You’re on the money a hundred percent. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And so one of the interesting things within this is the pairing of having this strong foundation that you can build on to avoid burnout by reducing the amount of pressure that you have to produce a large amount of content also by defining what success looks like for you. So you’re not just churning things out in service of the never ending pursuit of growth, but also there is still a component of strategy. It feels like one of the differences is to use your ordering analogy. You’ve taken growth from the top position, Hey, I want to make more, grow more, build more. You’ve taken it from that top position of service, worship, whatever it might be. That’s at the very top. And you’ve reduced it to a tool in order to work in service of what success is for you. But it still is a tool and you want to get good at using the tool. You just don’t want the tool to be the master you. And so can we talk about how people can use the tool for, I’m guessing when people are listening to this, they heard that part at the beginning and they’re like, I helped people get tens of millions of views and I knew what worked on TikTok and there’s a little bit of Bjork. Please ask some follow-up questions about that because I think people want to know that as well. They want to know, how do I not get burnt out and how do I use this tool really well? And so can you talk about using the tool part as well and how that fits in and even how you work with people and even what you’re seeing working well right now?

Sabrina Loyer Yeah. So I offer a three month program. My three month program is very much based off of that foundation showing up well excellently and the return on investment. And so that’s what I do with my food blogger clients. And in that, there’s a lot of different aspects, the showing up, well excellently aspect, what we do is we really break down every part of how you are making your video. So I’m looking at what your setup is, how you are presenting your recipe, how you’re showing it, actually showing it, and you’re holding your camera. How are you holding your camera? Is it at 45 degree angle? Is it top down? All of these different things? What lighting are you using? Where are you situated in your home or in your kitchen? Actually what I do is I get my clients to send me pictures of their setup, whether it’s yeah, their setup, wherever it is, and I outline, I outline things.

I make a whole mess of the photos just to explain, okay, where should your lighting be? Where should you be standing? Where should your food be? And then we really go through all of these different aspects so that, because I can’t fly to all of my clients’ homes and be, I would love to, oh my gosh, that would be a dream come true, but can’t do that right now. So what I do is I do my very best at getting to all of these micro levels to really help you feel like you’re succeeding in and you’re doing it well excellently in those each levels. So we look at that, then we look at the editing process. We look at, okay, what are content creators doing right now? What are the trends right now? What does well right now, of course we are doing some market research.

It’s very important part of the process. And then we’re saying, okay, how do we somehow in some way emulate this but do it in my way? And I help them define that for themselves, figure out what that looks like by figuring out what their personality is, how they even like to consume content. Some content is not for everyone. I like speedy quick videos. Some people like that slow process. The A SMR style videos. We really figure that out and we define that. Okay, how do we do that for you? What feels like works for you? Then we get to the level of posting. What time are you posting? What has your audience? I don’t love using the term audience, I like to use the term community. I would regard the audience as the people you are trying to reach, so your reach

And then your community or the people that you have reached and then you’re bringing in and you’re building that connection with those people. And then we really look at, okay, how are you posting? How are you showing up? And yes, we’re talking about trends. We’re talking about the trending audio, but we’re talking about, okay, how are you making your voice? Voiceover is a huge, huge, huge part of the process. Voiceover with a storyline or sharing your most authentic self, the story behind the recipe. Perhaps you are sharing just the recipe only, but how do you share yourself in your Instagram stories so that people can connect to you that they feel like they like you, that they’re getting to know you so that you build that trust with people. So all of those different aspects all put together. It creates for a place where hopefully if we add everything up, it’s the perfect little present for the algorithm that hopefully the algorithm will pick that up in the slew of all of the content and it will do well.

Now, again, when we’ve just defined our success. If our success is defined by, I’m so happy that each of this process is done excellently and I’m good with that. I posted it and regardless of what I get on the other end, it is what it’s going to be. That’s going to be the cherry on top, but we’ve done everything on the back end to really make it as beautiful as it could be, and you feel happy. That’s what I want. At the end of the day, I want you to feel happy with your content. I don’t want you to feel like you’re making content just so that you could get a hit of dopamine, because sometimes, more often than not, it’s the videos that we like the least that ends up doing well. I mean, that’s what I’ve seen.

Bjork Ostrom: Lindsay went through a phase, I don’t know if she still does this, but where she would pull up Instagram and she would hover her hand over stats as she was navigating the app. She would have her thumb over.

Sabrina Loyer That’s a great process,

Bjork Ostrom: View count or comments or whatever. It might be hard to do, just even functionally. It’s hard to do. And I don’t know if that’s still something she does, but I know there’s been seasons where she knows that she needs to show up in a way where she just thinks about the content, not the algorithm’s response to the content content. So that’s great. Do you have, one of the apps I’ve started to use that’s been really helpful for me is an app called Clear Space, and it forces me, you can pick what you want it to do, but it’s one short breathing exercise before I open a set of different apps that I have. I love that, and it’s been really transformative for me, and I set a use limit that I want to have for each app. So the news app is once a day, safari is three times a day. Oh wow. Chat, GPT is unlimited. And so there’s these different apps that I want to put restrictions on, whether it’s like an actual tool, like a software tool, or even a mindset as we close out that you could communicate to people who are listening to help kind of aid them in their pursuit of being a good content creator, but also not serving the apps, but instead serving their purpose and their reason for showing up as a creator.

Sabrina Loyer Yeah, absolutely. I bring in a lot of meditational practices in my program, specifically more in the beginning half of my program, and that’s really to get people into the practice of doing these sort of things. And I love that you’re doing this already for yourself. I would recommend something like what you’re doing for every listener out there. I also do something called the Breathe Pause. It’s so simple. You’re just pausing and breathing. It’s just genuinely pausing and breathing. So before opening up the app, you’re just taking a breathe, pause. You’re taking in through the nose, 1, 2, 3, pause

For three seconds and then breathe out. And you are just taking that moment of remembering, okay, I’m grounded here. My heart is beating. There’s life flowing around me in those six seconds that maybe you’re doing it, you’re recognizing also. Okay, there’s distractions around me. Oh, my husband is over there, my wife is over there, my son is over there playing all of these different things. You’re recognizing it, but as you breathe and then you let go, now you’re opening up your app and you are recognizing that you are separate from this. This is me, this is the app, and anything that comes from this cube essentially doesn’t need to define my life because my life is everything outside of here. It’s as simple as that.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. I love that. Yeah. Very similar to the process that I’ve been using with these apps that I find myself having the propensity to lose myself in. And the thing that’s been helpful for me is with this app Clear Space, the three-step process is, I’ll click on the app. An example might be Instagram. There’s a little thing that stands in between with Clear Space and I think it’s called Clear Space. And then it says,

Sabrina Loyer I’ve seen that. It’s like, is it a little orb or something? I feel like I’ve seen that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And it says, do you want to use this app or something like that? And I’m like, yes. And then it does the take a breath in, take a breath out, it gives you a quote. And then what I’ve started to do is in my mind, I’m telling myself what I’m using the app for, so it’s like I’m opening Instagram to watch the sloth video of the mom sloth, reuniting with the baby sloth that my mom sent me. And it’s like,

Sabrina Loyer I love that.

Bjork Ostrom: And then the last part is you select amount of time that you want in it. It’s like 1, 3, 5 or 10, and it’s been super helpful for me and it’s changed how I’ve used the apps because what I’ve realized is seven out of 10 times I hit that screen and I’m like, too much effort. I’m just going to close it out. It’s like, okay. Obviously it wasn’t important enough for me to take the 30 seconds to get into it, so it’s been super helpful. I know that for a lot of people who listen to this, it’s going to be helpful for them because like we talked about at the beginning, to bring it all the way back around, we are the source for all of the things that we are creating, and if we can be as healthy and positive and aligned as possible each day, it’s going to pay dividends not only in our wellbeing, but also within our businesses. And so it’s hugely beneficial to have these conversations. I know a lot of people might be interested in working with you if people do want to be a part of what you’re doing. The introduction to you came through Brita, who we’ve had on the podcast many times, and she talked about how great it was to work with you, and so if people are out there, they’re interested in connecting, following along with what you’re doing, working with you, can you talk a little bit about how they could do that?

Sabrina Loyer Yeah. They connect me, connect. Oh my gosh. Connect to me. I’m so sorry. I saw my son and my husband outside and I got distracted. I was like, oh, I’m so excited to see that

Bjork Ostrom: They’re looking to connect with you. Yeah.

Sabrina Loyer Yes,

Bjork Ostrom: That’s what it is.

Sabrina Loyer Oh my gosh, yes. We

Bjork Ostrom: Need to get you off this podcast so you can get out there.

Sabrina Loyer Yes, yes. Through my Instagram, Sabrina Lawyer coaching, and then you can email me through that. Yeah. I actually love connecting with people through dm, so I don’t necessarily always need to book out a free discovery call all the time, although my discovery calls are free for everyone who’s listening, but I do love connecting through DM so that I can get to know you. So if you want to just even message me on dm, go ahead. I love it.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Love that. Sabrina, thanks so much for coming on, having the conversation. Super important and really appreciate your time.

Sabrina Loyer Thank you for having me again. Thank you so much.

Emily Walker Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I wanted to take a minute and just ask that if you enjoyed this episode or any of our other many episodes of the Food Blogger Pro podcast that you share it. It means so much to us as a podcast. If you share episodes with your friends and family, or if you are a food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share ’em on social media or even in your email newsletters. It really helps us get the word out about our podcast and reach more listeners. Thanks again for listening. We really hope you enjoyed this episode, and we’ll see you back here next week.