Welcome to episode 150 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork is in the hot seat, and he chats about his favorite music, how he formed his management style, and his favorite Pinch of Yum recipe.

Last week on the podcast, Bjork chatted with Yuka Ohishi about optimizing your posts for Pinterest. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

Get to Know Bjork Ostrom

Happy 150th episode day!! We’re so honored and thrilled to have you listening along to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast each week, so to celebrate, we’re publishing a fun Q&A episode with our fearless leader, Bjork Ostrom.

We’ll focus on some business and blogging questions, and then dig into the personal stuff and discover more about Bjork’s music career (!!!) and his unconventional favorite Pinch of Yum recipe.

This interview was a lot of fun, and we really hope you enjoy it!

In this episode, Bjork shares:

What his most memorable podcast episode is
If there was ever an episode that inspired him to change a part of his business
How he overcomes roadblocks
How they’re using A/B testing on Pinch of Yum
His and Lindsay’s AIM screen names
The books he most recommends
Why he loves living in Minnesota
What he likes to listen to on Spotify
How his music career helped shape his future careers
What his favorite Pinch of Yum recipe is
How it feels to have 150 episodes in the books

Listen to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast below or check it out on iTunes or Google Play Music:

Resources:

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to [email protected].

Thanks to our Reviewer of the Week, Angel from Cheftographer! If you’d like to be featured, leave a review for us on iTunes and include your name and blog name in the review.

If you’d like to jump to the comments section, click here.

Transcript:

Alexa Peduzzi: Today we talk to Bjork Ostrom about his most memorable podcast episode, what his favorite thing to listen to on Spotify is, and the very funny story behind his favorite Pinch of Yum recipe.

Alexa Peduzzi: Hey friends. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. You might have noticed that things sound a little bit different here today. That’s because this is a very special episode. If you check out the title of this episode, you’ll see that it is our 150th episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast, so we decided to switch it up and put Bjork in the interviewee seat.

Alexa Peduzzi: Before we get to that, I’d like to thank our sponsor, WP Tasty. WP Tasty is our WordPress plugin business for food bloggers. We have three different plugins available. Tasty recipes, which is our recipe plugin, tasty pins, which is our Pinterest optimization plugin, and tasty links, which is our newest plugin. It just launched last week. It’s all about linking to affiliate links and other recipes in your blog post.

Alexa Peduzzi: If you’ve listened to the podcast recently, you’ll know that we like to include an actionable and helpful tip called a tasty tip, along with the information about our sponsor. Today’s tasty tip is an exciting one because it’s all about our upcoming free virtual event called The One Day SEO Bootcamp, and it’s happening this Thursday, May 17th.

Alexa Peduzzi: We’ve had a few boot camps in the past, but none of them have ever focused on the exciting and admittedly sometimes frustrating world of SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it helps your recipes and posts rank higher on search engines like Google and Pinterest.

Alexa Peduzzi: Because this is such a technical topic, we’re inviting two SEO experts to be a part of the event. First is Casey Markee, and he’s our SEO expert here on Food Blogger Pro. He also runs an SEO consulting company called Mediawyse. Second is Raquel Smith, who is our WP Tasty lead and Food Blogger Pro developer. She’s a pro at the technical side of SEO.

Alexa Peduzzi: If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, you can register today at FoodBloggerPro.com/bootcamp. As a reminder, we’re going live this Thursday, May 17th, so be sure to sign up if you’re interested.

Alexa Peduzzi: Now the interview. I’m so excited about this interview because it’s totally unlike the 150 other interviews we’ve had on the podcast. Bjork is the head honcho here at Food Blogger Pro. He co-founded the popular food blog, Pinch of Yum, with his wife, Lindsay, and he’s just an all around great guy.

Alexa Peduzzi: That’s why I thought it would be fun to do a little Q and A with him today. You’ll learn about his management ideologies, how he works through tough situations, and how he helped build Pinch of Yum into a profitable business, and then we’ll dive into some more personal and fun questions, like his favorite tunes on Spotify and his favorite things about living in Minnesota. Without any further ado, Bjork, welcome to the podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: Hey. I’m on the other side of the mic, the virtual interview room, and I’m so excited to be here.

Alexa Peduzzi: Me too. This is definitely different from all of our other episodes, but I think everyone’s going to like it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. It’s going to be great. This is a behind the scenes sneak peek into the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We’ve used Skype in the past always whenever we conduct these interviews, so whenever I’m interviewing somebody, we log into Skype and then they call and I record that.

Bjork Ostrom: For the first time ever, on episode 150, not only did our main way of recording it break, which I use this software called ScreenFlow to record the audio, but also our backup didn’t work, so we’re doing it for the second time of the first time ever.

Alexa Peduzzi: Well, I’m glad that it happened on this episode, though. I feel like it would’ve been super awkward with another interviewee.

Bjork Ostrom: I seriously dread the idea of that every time I think of it. I don’t ever wake up thinking about work stuff, but if there would be something I would wake up thinking about, it’d be having to ask a podcast guest or to tell them, “Actually, none of that was recorded. We have to go back and do it again.”

Bjork Ostrom: We’ve switched over officially. We’ve wanted to do this for a while, but now we’re using Zoom. I’m still using ScreenFlow to record it, as well as Zoom builtin recording.

Bjork Ostrom: This is going to get super off track, but the other thing that I thought would be interesting to talk about, the reason why it failed, is because we’re transferring. I’m transferring a bunch of stuff over to Google Drive, so we’re starting to start the process of transferring our files over, so we’re not storing them on an external hard drive.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re using this super cool update that Google has called Google File Stream, along with Google Drive, if you are a G Suite member. What that allows you to do is upload a bunch of files and then it puts them in the cloud and takes them off your computer, so they’re still accessible. It’s kind of like Dropbox without taking up a bunch of space. In the in between, they’re sitting on your computer.

Bjork Ostrom: Basically what happened is I ran out of space on my computer and then the recording went on the fritz, and then we didn’t have anything and then I had to message you yesterday, Alexa, and say, “Any chance you recorded a backup to the backup?” You’re like, “No, I thought about it.” Now we have three recordings going just in case.

Alexa Peduzzi: Just in case, so if this one fails, and I think it’s just in the cards that this is just not going to happen.

Bjork Ostrom: Not meant to be.

Alexa Peduzzi: Exactly. It’ll be an act of God, you guys, if you hear this right now.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Alexa Peduzzi: Let’s jump in on that note, if you don’t mind.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Alexa Peduzzi: We were talking about how you’ve run the podcast in the past before. I was just curious if you have a most memorable podcast episode.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yes. One of the episodes that I really enjoyed, and then I also was really thankful that the Food Blogger Pro podcast community was able to listen to, was an episode that we released recently. I don’t remember the episode number. Maybe you could look it up quick. It was with Shauna Niequist, and Shauna is an author and a speaker and all around incredible person.

Bjork Ostrom: She talked about this concept around a book that she recently wrote called Present Over Perfect. One of the things that I really appreciated about it was that podcast interview contrasted a lot of the things that we talk about on the podcast, which is this idea of hustle. You always have to be working in the margins of your day and late at night and early morning and on the weeks. If you want to make this work, you’ve got to be putting in insane hours.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s truth to that. Especially if you have a full-time job and you don’t have a lot of time in your day, if you want to build something substantial, whether that be a blog, a business, a nonprofit, a strong relationship, you have to put in a lot of time and energy outside of your day job in order to make that work. That can stretch you thin for a period of time, or if you just do that all the time, it can stretch you thin in general.

Bjork Ostrom: Shauna talked about this idea of letting go of some of that hustle mindset and just being present in the moment and not needing to constantly strive for this carrot on a stick, this achievement mindset, or to always be working towards something, but to be present in the moment.

Bjork Ostrom: I just really enjoyed that podcast interview, not only for the interview itself and for what I was able to get out of it, but then being able to share that with the community and to provide another perspective on how you can operate your life, because that’s a lot of what we talk about on the podcast. We’re talking in this really small niche of food and recipe websites, business building, but beyond that, if you take it a step outside of that small niche circle, it’s about finding ways to build a life that you enjoy and that’s a good fit for you and that you’re excited to do when you wake up in the morning. That was a really important piece of the puzzle, that interview with Shauna. Did you find that one by chance, what episode number it was? I can look it up, too.

Alexa Peduzzi: No, I did, yes. It’s 145. We’ll also link that in the show notes so you guys can check it out. I would agree that that episode was just super meaningful for me just as a business owner myself and then also as an employee in a full-time job. I get burnout quite a bit, so just being able to hear from her that I can give myself permission to take a break, to sit back, to just take some, like you said yesterday, me time, that really cringy term. Yes, I found that episode to be really powerful for me, as well, so that’s really interesting to hear.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure.

Alexa Peduzzi: Going along those lines, was there ever an episode or two of the podcast where you learned something that you wanted to hop off, you said goodbye to your interviewee, and you’re just like, “I need to implement this right now on Pinch of Yum or on Food Blogger Pro”?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, sure. The episodes that I think of that I really enjoyed in terms of actionable items are any of the podcast episodes around anything like accounting or bookkeeping related. That sounds like the ultimate boring type of content.

Alexa Peduzzi: So dry.

Bjork Ostrom: Right, but what I’ve found and what I really enjoyed about those interviews and what I was able to apply with those interviews was direct business building tools and advice. I’m trying to think of the episode with Cathy. I’m scrolling through the episode list here. She does accounting and CPA type stuff for bloggers specifically, so she’s in the niche of blogging, and talked about just some of the best practices when it comes to building a business and when it comes to the bookkeeping side of things and the accounting side of things.

Bjork Ostrom: For any of us that are listening, I’m guessing the reason that you’re doing this isn’t because you love accounting or because you love bookkeeping or because you love taxes. I’m guessing the reason you do it is because you love the actual topic that you are talking about. You love talking about recipes. You love talking about a certain type of food.

Bjork Ostrom: Maybe it’s a certain diet that you talk about that’s been really influential in how you feel and operate and has been really important for a turnaround in your health. That’s the core of why we do it, but then if we want to do this as a job or as a career, and if we want to do it as a solopreneur, then we have to understand the mechanics of a business. We have to understand expenses and revenue.

Bjork Ostrom: Some of those dryer podcast interviews, and you can give that one with Cathy, and then there’s a personal finance one that’s also really important with Jeff Rose, a friend of mine who has a blog about personal finance and investing and things like that. Those are fun interviews for me because it’s not only the topic, a topic that I’m interested in, which a lot of people aren’t, but it’s a topic that’s interesting for me, but also because there is really applicable stuff.

Bjork Ostrom: A lot of times, it’s areas where there’s a gap. It’s really easy for us to talk about SEO and Pinterest and traffic and improving your photography and all of these things that are really exciting to talk about and think about, but the real levers of business building have to do with the stuff that’s a little bit drier.

Bjork Ostrom: It has to do with understanding taxes and cash flow and making sure that month over month, you’re doing whatever you can to encourage business growth. Some of those things tie back to it, so traffic grows, revenue grows, but to understand the behind the scenes I think is really important.

Bjork Ostrom: For everybody listening, as much as possible, I would chalk some time out each day, maybe it’s just 15 or 20 minutes, and start to learn the basics of some of those things, accounting, understanding taxes and how taxes work. We just had a massive overhaul in the tax structure for people that live in the US and it’s called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That’s really important for business owners, of which everybody here is a business owner that’s listening to this, even if you’re in the early stages.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s really important to understand those things, so those two interviews stick out to me as ones that were really fun for me but also had some actionable items from a business building perspective.

Alexa Peduzzi: Definitely. That kind of stuff is the stuff that’s totally mind-numbing to me, but something as a business owner, like you said, is just so important to understand because ultimately you’re reliable for all of that going well. I have an accountant who I hired to do all of my taxes, but it’s important for me to understand what he’s doing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, exactly, yes. I think that’s the important thing. One of the things that we’ve learned, the more that we have done this, we have a small business, a small team, but the more business building we’ve done, we’ve realized that we are ultimately accountable.

Bjork Ostrom: Even if we have people that are playing that role of whatever it would be, HR, accounting, somebody that’s helping with taxes, you can delegate that or have somebody doing it like we do and like you do, but like you said, you are the person that’s ultimately accountable for that.

Bjork Ostrom: If you do not understand it and truck along with it, for certain there are things that will be missed, not just because somebody’s going to do a bad job and miss it but because nobody understands your business as intricately as you do. You need to communicate those things to the people that you’re working with in order for them to understand that.

Bjork Ostrom: What we’ve found is the more time that we invest in understanding that, we get an incremental return on that time, because, especially later stages, that becomes one of the most important things is understanding those behind the scenes mechanics of your business.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s not super exciting, but I think once you start to understand the power of understanding it, then you can justify the time and maybe the effort that it takes to learn what would be considered kind of dry content.

Alexa Peduzzi: Definitely. Another one that stands out as in the group of behind the scenes knowledge is a really recent episode. It was two or three episodes ago with Danielle, Danielle Liss, 147. She talked about JDPR, which is going to affect all bloggers, everyone who has an online business who’s making money for their blog, so I would definitely check that out. It’s more legal rather than accounting, but it’s still super powerful and super helpful.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. It’s another great example of the type of stuff you need to understand to be implementing, and that’s not the most exciting thing to understand and implement.

Alexa Peduzzi: Not at all. Going along those lines, how do you work through difficult situations or roadblocks if you’re feeling like you really don’t want to tackle a to do on a certain day or any other kind of difficult situation?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. To that last point that you said, if there’s a difficult decision that you don’t want to tackle or you procrastinate on it, I think one thing that we can always do is take some time to examine that and really understand the why behind your resistance to accomplishing that.

Bjork Ostrom: If I look at something that I’ve been putting off over a long period of time, part of it might be that I’m not equipped to handle that certain task. The option then is to become equipped, so learn something, take on a new skill, or to have somebody else do it.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that I’ve found over the past few years especially is that some of the greatest successes that we have within our business have to do with finding people who are excited about doing something and letting them do that.

Alexa Peduzzi: For sure. Yes, that’s super evident from my employee standpoint, too.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, for sure. An example would be, Alexa, you love writing. You’re really good at it, and I’m not as excited about writing. If I had a task to write an email or for Food Blogger Pro members, you’re doing an update once a week, kind of a newsletter for members and saying, “Hey, here are the conversations that are happening in the forums and here’s the podcast interviews you can catch, and we have a live Q and A coming up. Here’s the topic,” so keeping people in the loop. For me, I wouldn’t be super excited about doing that, but for you, you talk about, “Hey, it’s really fun when I’m able to unplug from the day to day things and write out these emails.”

Bjork Ostrom: For people that are listening, if you have something that’s been a recurring to do that you keep on putting off, it’s probably important because it’s on your list, but maybe you aren’t the best person to get that done. It doesn’t mean that you have to hire somebody full-time to come onto your team and take care of it, but I’m sure there’s somebody out there, whether that’s a college student or somebody that’s a friend or family member that has a specific skillset in that area, that would be excited to do it and would be able to come and help you out with it. Think about, “Do I need to learn something new, or maybe I need to pass this off to somebody else,” and then allow them to take it and run with it.

Bjork Ostrom: The other thing I would say is sometimes you just haven’t broken apart that giant task into enough smaller, actionable items. An example that I think of is we wanted to start doing consistent AB testing on different pages with the different businesses that we have and to always have those running in the background.

Bjork Ostrom: For the longest time, I had this item on my to do list that was start AB testing tasty food photography page. Lindsay has an eBook on food photography and I wanted to start doing an AB test to start to learn, “Okay, what are the improvements we can make to increase the conversion rate on this page?”

Bjork Ostrom: That’s a really big task, and it was really easy then to put off because I was like, “Oh, that’ll take so long to do.” In breaking that out into multiple steps, you suddenly learn, “Oh, this big project is actually just a bunch of tiny little incremental steps.”

Bjork Ostrom: The first step of that was email the designer we work with. His name is John. Email John and ask what information he would need in order to start an update on the page. It’s like, “Oh, that takes literally 15 seconds,” and then after that, then John replies and says, “Okay, here’s what I would need,” so then it’s putting that together.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s building out that bigger project into tiny little steps that you can take. Maybe when you have 15 minutes and you’re waiting for a friend to show up at the restaurant, you just can pull out your phone and say, “Okay, I’m going to do a little bit of work here, get through some things while I’m waiting,” instead of scrolling through Instagram or the news and make some progress. If you had that giant task list or that giant single task, you’d look at it and be like, “I can’t do that,” but if you break it up into smaller steps, you’ll be able to move through that a little bit easier.

Bjork Ostrom: I think those things are important, and then the other thing that I think is important worth mentioning is that sometimes when you’re coming up against those big decisions that you have, Des Traynor, who is the CEO of this company called Intercom, which is a customer support app splash huge piece of software, and you use it all the time, Alexa, so you know Intercom very well.

Alexa Peduzzi: For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: He talks about being a CEO, or for people that are listening to this, being a solopreneur. Essentially, you’re a decision-making factory and your job is all day long, you’re making important decisions.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that’s been most helpful for me when it comes to making decisions or coming up against a roadblock and figuring out how to get through that is having other people that I can lean in on and say, “What are your thoughts on this?” Essentially laying out the situation in front of multiple people and gathering that back from them in order to inform a decision and once I feel like I have enough information, making that decision, and making that decision right.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s the difference between making right decisions and making the right decision. I think too often we try and make the right decision as bloggers or business builders or creators. We think, “What is the right decision?” We can totally wrap ourselves in a knot trying to make the right decision, as opposed to making you decision right.

Bjork Ostrom: What that means is doing a decent amount of information gathering, but up until the point where you feel like, “Okay, I am 70 to 80% informed.” Once you are at that point, then making your decision and then making that decision right. What that means is instead of questioning and going back and wondering, “Okay, maybe I should’ve done something else. I’m going to go back and change that,” you stick with that decision and build on it and make that decision right as opposed to waiting forever until the point where you are like, “Okay, now I know 100% this is the right decision.”

Alexa Peduzzi: 100%. I think that informed decision part is key. We were talking about this during a meeting, just the two of us, a couple weeks ago and just basing our decisions off of data. That’s something that I’m not necessarily the best at. I’m just like, “I just want to get it done,” but being able to do that research and then making that informed decision I just think is gold.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, for sure. A good example is that AB test that I just talked about.

Alexa Peduzzi: For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: We started running this AB test on the ebook page, and we have this beautiful designed page. It looks good. It’s on brand. It was professionally designed. We developed it out. It feels really good. I just pulled this up right now. We use a software called Google Optimize, which is a free software, really powerful, really cool.

Bjork Ostrom: We’ve been running the test. It hasn’t been a super long time. We’ve been running the test for two weeks, but it’s incredible. It’s crazy. The one page, the one variation, it is one to ten. The interesting thing is, the original is the ten.

Alexa Peduzzi: That’s so amazing to me.

Bjork Ostrom: The variant is one. It’s like one to eight, actually, is more accurate.

Alexa Peduzzi: That means … Oh, sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, go ahead, go ahead.

Alexa Peduzzi: That means that the older one is performing more. Your getting more purchases with the older one than the newer.

Bjork Ostrom: Exactly. I think sometimes we think we know what the right answer is and in that case, I felt like I knew the right answer was, “Hey, we’re going to push out this new design. It’s going to look really good and it’s going to perform better,” but like you said, not having that data, we would’ve made that switch and it would’ve been a massive decrease in the amount of revenue that we’re earning that page.

Bjork Ostrom: As much as possible, especially with websites, we can do this, we can test this and learn this stuff, as much as possible, see if you can gather that data to inform the decision making that you’re doing. In this case with the new design it’s easy because we can do an AB test. It’s not always that easy, but I think that’s a great point that you made, as much as possible, gathering data to help you inform that decision.

Alexa Peduzzi: I just love that. That leads me to my next question. You are the ultimate decision maker. You juggle a bunch of different brands, Food Blogger Pro, Pinch of Yum, WP Tasty, Nutrifox. I’m curious where your management style comes from, whether it’s books or podcasts. You manage an entire team across a few different brands, so I’d be curious.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think one of the things that we’ve learned, it’s really been in the past two or three years as we’ve built a small but mighty team, one of the things that I’ve learned is just there’s something incredibly powerful about bringing on really capable people, Alexa, yourself being an example of one of those, and working together to say, “Okay, here’s where we’re going. Here’s where we want to go,” and then giving as many resources as needed in order to help get there, but to not feel like then you as the manager, whatever you’d want to call it, leader, need to then be involved in the extreme micro details of all of that.

Bjork Ostrom: For people listening to this podcast, I would guess the majority of the people listening to this, it’s strange. When that time comes, if that time comes, it’ll be a strange and weird transition because you’re making this transition that Paul Graham, who’s an investor for this company called Y-Combinator, or it’s not a company but it’s an incubator investment company for businesses that come in that are just ideas or really infant stage businesses and then grow really big, like Dropbox, for example.

Bjork Ostrom: He works with these companies, and he talks about this transition from maker to manager. In that context a lot of times it’s engineers or developers who are makers. They’re used to creating things, and then they make this transition into manager.

Bjork Ostrom: For people that are listening to this podcast, if your desire is to continually grow as opposed to grow to a certain point and then cap that and say, “I want to stay a maker,” which is totally okay, it’s not a bad thing to do that, but if you want to grow and continue to grow, there will be this time where you transition into becoming a manager.

Bjork Ostrom: That is a really strange transition, because you are used to being the maker. To make that transition, you have to be okay with letting your old skills fall away a little bit and then becoming in essence a completely new trainee for this new thing, which is working with groups of people and making that transition into a manager role.

Bjork Ostrom: We’ve learned on the fly what that looks like, and we have a unique situation in that we have a team, a majority remote team. For us, it’s been less about making the right decision and more about making our decisions right and building on that along the way. We’ve hit hurdles. We’ve messed up along the way. What we’ve said is we want to do this, and the best way to do it is to step in and learn along the way.

Bjork Ostrom: Alexa, you know this because you’ve been with us long enough to see a little bit of this evolution, but there was a time when we were all working remote and none of us ever checked in and we would have Slack and we would talk to each other when we needed to, but then in listening to you and listening to Raquel, who works at WP Tasty and Food Blogger Pro a little bit as well, both of you were like, “Love what we’re doing, but it feels a little disconnected.” It was like, “Oh yeah, for sure.”

Bjork Ostrom: It’s taking that and tweaking that a little bit and evolving as you go. We started doing this daily stand-up where every day we hop into Slack, which is a communication tool that we use. It’s kind of like AOL Instant Messenger on steroids, where you have chat groups. Did you use AIM back in the day?

Alexa Peduzzi: Of course. Are you kidding?

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. It was like a sweet spot for Lindsay and I back in the day. I was BjorkO13 and she was Swimchick2312.

Alexa Peduzzi: Whoa.

Bjork Ostrom: I remember when Swimchick would come on, Swimchick2312, it was like, “Oh yes, I can chat with Lindsay.” We still have inside jokes from early high school when we would chat on AIM. It’s a super cool tool. We were using it to ask questions and communicate and stuff like that randomly, but now we’re like, “Okay, let’s create a channel where everybody’s a part of this and we all jump in and say, ‘Hey, here’s what we did yesterday. Here’s what we’re doing today. Here’s what I need some help with.’” It’s literally one, two, three.

Bjork Ostrom: Even that’s evolving. Raquel today posted, she’s like, “Hey, I’m going to try something out where I’m going to post my schedule, what I’m going to actually try and do today from a schedule perspective.” Another example is we did this team meeting on Slack, which you can do video calls. It was a bigger team meeting because we had recently welcomed Ann on as our customer support success person for WP Tasty. We had a bigger crew that was logging on. I was like, “Okay, let’s try this. Let’s try having where whenever anybody else is talking, then we all mute.” After, it was like, “Ugh, that was terrible.”

Alexa Peduzzi: It was so awkward.

Bjork Ostrom: We weren’t able to interact. A lot of it, to go back and answer your original question, it’s totally building the plane as we’re taking off and trying to do as best of a job as possible for us as a team and then for me as ultimate decision maker to be aware of the areas that feel in tension and to figure out why those areas are in tension and to do whatever we can to resolve those.

Bjork Ostrom: That could be on an individual level. That could be on a team level. That just comes from as much as possible trying to have conversations around that and to always being aware of the fact that there will be opportunity to improve. There’s always going to be something that we can improve on, and being aware of that has been really, really important because it’s an evolution.

Bjork Ostrom: Today it’s going to be different than it will be three months from now, and so we’re going to have to operate a little bit differently as we change and evolve. To know that there is no right answer and what’s working or us might not work for you, listener, wherever you are, with your team, whether that be actual team members or contractors that you’re working with, but just building in that time, even if it’s five minutes, to reflect and say, “Okay, what’s working, what’s not working,” to have conversations with the people that you are working with and to ask them the same question, then to evolve on that information.

Alexa Peduzzi: That evolution portion that you were talking about, that has been abundantly clear to me since I started two years ago. We have one on ones with you. Everyone on the team has a one on one meeting with Bjork every month, and one of the questions that he always asks is, “What’s part of your job that you think we could either hand off to someone else or just something that’s not really jiving with where you want to take your career and your life?”

Alexa Peduzzi: I just find that to be so fascinating because I’ve always worked in corporate America, so it’s just such a different management style, and that’s just so clear to me. I’m really thankful for it because I feel like I’ve evolved as an employee and as a person much faster and much more than I would’ve in a more corporate setting. That’s really, really interesting.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, and part of it is we have this luxury of working in a small company where if you were like, “Hey, I’d be really interested in learning about AB testing,” it’s like we don’t have an AB test person and optimizer, so we can shift and maneuver those. That’s one of the things that I love about small business and small online business like we have is the flexibility. We get to take advantage of that, both Lindsay and I, as owners of the businesses.

Bjork Ostrom: We can also then create that culture with our team because it’s flexible across the board. We don’t have these set departments, and so as much as possible, trying to figure out those ways to allow all of us, Lindsay, myself, and our team, to figure out ways to work on the things that we’re excited about working on, so it’s so much easier to work on those things than the things that are a drag.

Alexa Peduzzi: Definitely.

Bjork Ostrom: As much as possible, trying to figure out what those are both for ourselves, which we have to do on a consistent basis and also for the team, as well, so it’s fun to hear you talk about that.

Alexa Peduzzi: That’s great. You are much more than your businesses, so we’re going to switch gears a little bit.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Alexa Peduzzi: We’re going to dive into some more personal stuff.

Bjork Ostrom: All right.

Alexa Peduzzi: This question, I think of you almost every time I hear it on the Tim Ferris podcast. He typically does this section at the end of each podcast where he just rattles off some really quick questions and his interviewees give some pretty quick answers, but this one question always makes me think of you. What book do you most recommend or which one do you buy most as a gift?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, that’s great. I think people that listen to this podcast will know one of the books I often talk about is The War of Art, and that was a recommendation from a friend, Andy Traub, who was actually on the podcast many moons ago and just an all around great guy and a close friend that I’ve known for a long time. I knew him before either of us were operating in the online business world, and so it was by chance that we both moved into this and he’s since moved to Nashville, which has become a weird hub of people that are doing online businesses, especially there’s a lot of personal finance people that have ended up there, which is kind of cool.

Alexa Peduzzi: That’s interesting.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. Andy recommended War of Art. He lived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and I was in Minneapolis, and we each drove, it was like two hours, and met at this random coffee shop.

Alexa Peduzzi: Oh jeez.

Bjork Ostrom: It was awesome.

Alexa Peduzzi: That’s awesome.

Bjork Ostrom: It was so fun. We worked for three, four hours and just connected and chatted. While we were there, he said, “Have you ever read The War of Art?” I had heard a couple people talk about it, but I hadn’t read it. He said, “What’s your email address? I’m going to gift this to you right now via Kindle.” He sent me that and I read it probably that week or within that month.

Bjork Ostrom: Really good book, and some really interesting concepts as it relates to creators. He talks about, the author talks about it from the perspective of writing, but I think it applies to anybody that’s doing any type of art.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that would be one that I talk about a lot, but just universally for anybody, if I was going to say, “Hey, I would love for you to read this book,” I would point people to a book that is one of the only books that I’ve read multiple times. I’ve read a lot of books. I love reading. It’s one of my favorite things to do, but I very rarely will pick up a book twice. The book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is one of the most influential books that I’ve read in terms of perspective and a lens to view the world through.

Bjork Ostrom: In this book, he’s a psychiatrist who was in concentration camps and he lost his family and was a survivor of the concentration camps and then went on to write this book, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he talks about what that was like and tells stories of what it was and talks about this idea of suffering and how in a lot of ways, you can’t avoid suffering. It’s unavoidable, and what that then means for us as people living in the world knowing that if we haven’t already, we will face suffering.

Bjork Ostrom: Like I said, it’s one of the only books that I’ve ever read more than once, and every time that I read it, it is incredibly informative in terms of a perspective piece on the realities of life for people and the amount of incredible suffering that people have gone through and the idea of Nazi Germany being the most extreme example of that.

Bjork Ostrom: I think it really helps to have that as a perspective piece as you operate in the world because it’s a reality. I think you can contrast that with your reality and it’s a constant reminder for me of what other people have experienced and therefore a gratitude piece for me in my worst days knowing that there have been other people that have experienced such incredibly terrible things, and also hearing him as a psychiatrist talk about what that was like in order to move through that.

Bjork Ostrom: If you haven’t read it, I would really recommend it. I just pulled it up on Amazon here. It is the number one bestseller in the category of existential psychology.

Alexa Peduzzi: Oh wow.

Bjork Ostrom: Which sounds fancier than it is. I wouldn’t say it’s an easy to read book. It’s not easy. It’s a deep and heavy book, but it’s not like there’s difficult words in it or it’s not like it’s difficult to understand. It’s a really important book. I would put that right up there.

Bjork Ostrom: War of Art is a really interesting book that I talk about a decent amount on this podcast because it talks about the idea of creating and pushing through creative barriers, which I think a lot of people can relate to, but I would say Man’s Search for Meaning would be the one that I would go to for a recommendation.

Alexa Peduzzi: Yes, I’m definitely going to put Man’s Search for Meaning on my to read list. I’m going to order it tonight.

Bjork Ostrom: Nice.

Alexa Peduzzi: I have read like half of The War of Art, and just like a fair warning to all of you, it’s a bit bizarre, but also really powerful. The chapters are a few sentences long, if that. It really puts things into perspective because we all are creators. We’re creating recipes. We’re creating photography. We’re creating just content in so many different ways, and I get hit by the resistance, which is the topic that he focuses on in that book, so much. It just puts that into perspective and I think it is a super helpful book for creators like us.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. If you don’t end up reading it, one of the most important things for people that are listening that I got from that book was the idea that if you feel the resistance, which he considers to be the thing that keeps you from doing the thing. For instance, you are like, “I’m going to write a blog post,” but instead you get up and do the laundry, which has happened to me. I’m like, “Maybe I’ll go do the dishes real quick.”

Bjork Ostrom: If you are feeling the resistance, the thing that’s keeping you from doing the work, then that for you is a signal that you are on the right track. Even that little gem is something that’s important to tuck away in the back of your mind. When that comes up, instead of you feeling like, “Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this,” instead flipping that and saying, “No, this is me being on the right track because I’m trying to go and do something that’s a little bit easier. My brain is trying to distract me with something else. I’m on the right track. I need to sit down and do the work,” because that feeling of the resistance is a little clue that you’re on the right track.

Alexa Peduzzi: For sure. It is also a clue that what you’re doing, that thing that you’re putting off, has meaning to you. That was something that I really took away from the book is just that if I’m finding that resistance on something, then that means that it’s important to me. I thought that was super interesting.

Alexa Peduzzi: The reason why I wanted to rerecord, I was going to try to piece together yesterday’s recording, but it totally missed out on the question about Minnesota. I am super passionate about where I’m from, which is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I know you are, too. What are some of your favorite things about living in Minnesota?

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. I’ll say this. I think one of the great things about rerecording is that whenever I have anybody, this isn’t across the board, but sometimes people will be like, “Oh, I recorded that interview and now I wish I would’ve said this.”

Alexa Peduzzi: For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: That actually allows me to have that experience where it’s like we do the interview and it paves the way, and I’m like not only do I know where I’m going now, but also, I can say all of the things that I wish that I would’ve said so this interview will be doubly as good because of the double recording because now I can say all the things that I thought of after the fact.

Bjork Ostrom: We love Minnesota. We’re both raised in Minnesota, both Lindsay and I. We’re from the same small hometown in north central Minnesota, Cambridge, Minnesota, which is a tiny town. I think this will be a place where we will always call home. We don’t have any plans to move. If not permanently, I think we’ll always have some type of deep connection here.

Bjork Ostrom: I think the number one thing that I love about Minnesota … Well, I’ll say two things. It’s the people of Minnesota and how people in Minnesota view the world and operate, and I think sometimes we get cast as a flyover state. There’s the coast and then there’s the flyover states where everybody just flies over as they’re going one place or the other.

Alexa Peduzzi: For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: I love the idea of being a flyover state. I wouldn’t want to be the place that is the coolest place ever. I’ve always liked the idea of being cast in the forgettable category, not that Minnesota is that, but I think some people have that perspective on Minnesota, like, “Oh, it’s kind of the flyover state.”

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that I love about Minnesota, and you could say Twin Cities, but just Minnesota in general is true, is that we have these really incredible seasons. This is happening right now where all of the leaves are starting to come onto trees. Just two weeks ago, we had a foot of snow.

Alexa Peduzzi: That’s so crazy.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. It’s really, really crazy how drastic the seasons can be and how quickly they can change. As soon as you are getting through one season and feeling like, “Okay, we’ve been here for a while,” the next season is right around the corner. The most obvious example of that in Minnesota is the winter. Winter is really awesome and I am a 100% winter person. Even yet, when it’s March, and this year it was April, once you have feet of snow on the ground, you’re like, “Okay, I’m ready for spring to come,” and spring comes and it’s the greatest thing ever.

Alexa Peduzzi: For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s 45 degrees and people will be running with shorts and have their windows down. We’re just all so ready for spring and acknowledge the incredible reality of what spring is when it comes, and then it’s like in a couple months it’ll transition into summer, and then it will be fall and then it’ll be winter. We have these really defined seasons that just make it a fun place to live because something new is always around the corner.

Bjork Ostrom: I just love the Twin Cities. We have so much that we can access. We have incredible theater. For a gift this year, Lindsay gave me season tickets to the Guthrie, so we’ve been going to this theater in the Twin Cities and seeing different plays, and just what a gift that is to be able to do that. Incredible restaurants. Yet, we can drive an hour and be at a lake with lots of trees and nature and all of that stuff.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a great place. I love living here, and we have super deep connections with family and friends, so we just feel really thankful to be in Minnesota. For all of you that have never visited, you need to come visit Minnesota. I just read an article this morning that there has been 3% growth in tourism in Minnesota, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but I think comparably, it is a relatively fast growth rate for tourism. Congratulations, Minnesota, on the growth.

Alexa Peduzzi: There we go. Yes, I’ve never been there, to be honest with you, but I know we have a retreat planned.

Bjork Ostrom: Team meetup.

Alexa Peduzzi: Yes. I’m so excited, this summer. I’ll also, fun fact, be flying through, not over, Minnesota tomorrow on my way to Everything Food.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, you will?

Alexa Peduzzi: Yes, so I’ll have a nice tour of the airport.

Bjork Ostrom: You should swing by Caribou Coffee. I’m drinking a Caribou Coffee right now. It started in Minnesota, and if you are a true Minnesotan, you go to Caribou over Starbucks. See if you can find one on your stop in.

Alexa Peduzzi: 100% will. It’s bright and early in the morning, so I’ll be in desperate need of some coffee. Moving on a bit to music. I know every once in a while in Slack, which is our communication app just for the team, you or someone else on the team will be like, “I just need something new to listen to.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Alexa Peduzzi: If you open up Spotify, what’s typically your first go to channel or search?

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yes. It depends on the context of when I’m listening. I’ll listen to different music depending on the type of work or non-work that I’m doing. If I am let’s say just doing stuff around the house, I’ll go podcast, or working out, usually podcasts.

Bjork Ostrom: If I am working on something difficult, I’ll use a playlist like Productive Morning, which is this ambient spacey type music. One of my favorite artists from that is Yoste. When Spotify did the most songs listened to in 2017, this song “Moon” by Yoste was my number one song, and I just listened to it over and over and over and over again. I think he’s this young kid from Australia and not super well-known, but has made it onto a couple playlists. Once he was on, I’d listen to his other stuff. I really like that.

Bjork Ostrom: If I’m working out and listening to music, I have a workout playlist of which Chainsmokers gets a lot of play on those, which is the ultimate generic bubblegum EDM millennial pop. I don’t know what category they’d be in. For some reason, I’ve just been like, “Well, I’m going to pull up Chainsmokers again.”

Alexa Peduzzi: Maybe something new will happen.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, for sure. I’m trying to think of some other ones. I always go to Discover Weekly, which is really good. If you don’t use Spotify, they have this category where they create new playlists, Discover Weekly, which is really good.

Bjork Ostrom: One of my favorite bands of all-time is Nickel Creek, and they just had a comeback tour. I’ve never seen them live, but I remember as a kid, I was maybe in, gosh, I was probably in seventh or eighth grade and for Christmas I had gotten a speaker set, Aiwa, which is like the coolest speakers ever, or at least I felt like they were. It was a three CD changer. I had a Nickel Creek soundtrack and I remember just laying in my bed listening to Nickel Creek, and it was just the greatest thing ever. Those are my go tos for music. What about you?

Alexa Peduzzi: I’m a huge Avett Brothers fan. They’re also coming to Pittsburgh and they sold out within a week, which I’m super sad about.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, bummer.

Alexa Peduzzi: They have a bit of everything. If you’re more interested in upbeat stuff, then they have that, and then they definitely some more thought-provoking songs, as well.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. One of my favorite songs of theirs is, “I And Love And You”.

Alexa Peduzzi: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that’s the name of the album, as well. Is that right?

Alexa Peduzzi: Yes. Yes, exactly. That album, if you’re looking for one to get into them, that is the one I would highly recommend. They’re just wonderful. If you have HBO, they also have a documentary that Judd Apatow, he shot and produced I think. I just watched it last week and I was crying the whole time. It was amazing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, one of those documentaries.

Alexa Peduzzi: For sure. Yes, they’re just wonderful, and wonderful people, so definitely check them out. Along those lines, I know that you played guitar and sang. Could you talk a bit about that experience?

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yes. That’s a behind the scenes look into Bjork The One. In my previous life, college, it was late high school, college, a little bit after college, that’s how I paid the bills. I had a couple random odd jobs here and there, but for the most part, it was doing coffee shops and colleges and opening for different artists and was able to get connected enough to play a couple shows. It probably ended up being a show, or it was probably three to four shows a month at its most. It was awesome. I loved it. It was such a gift to be able to do that. Would do just standard typical singer songwriter type stuff.

Bjork Ostrom: Looking back at it, I think one of the interesting things is to see how that version of me is similar to this version of me, and I think one of the things that I enjoyed most about that process was not only to be able to write and record and play music for people and to connect via that medium, but also the process of building a thing.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that I’ve realized about myself is that I just really love building things, and that was one of the things that I built. In some ways, it’s like you’re a little entrepreneur and you’re putting together a website, you’re putting together a product, you’re marketing that, you have an email list, a lot of the same things that cross over into what we do now.

Bjork Ostrom: Those are some of the same things that I really enjoyed, and they were very non-musical things. I think it’s the things that most people would dread doing and consider to be the necessary evil that goes along with recording and playing music for a career, but those are the things that I actually really enjoyed.

Alexa Peduzzi: What are some of those things, then?

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, so the idea of learning what you had to do in order to put together a five song EP, so it’s getting the UPC label. One of the things that I think about is people would put out an email list thing where you’d set a little clipboard out and then people would sign up for the email list. I remember thinking, “Nobody’s signing up for this. How do you get around that?” And solving that problem.

Bjork Ostrom: In the middle of a show, what I would always do is stop and say, “Hey, here’s the deal. Here’s this email list if you want to stay in the loop on what we’re doing. You can sign up for it,” and then I would just literally hand it to people in the first row and then have everybody pass it around.

Alexa Peduzzi: Oh my gosh.

Bjork Ostrom: Instead of getting like three random people, by the end of the day, if there was 200 people at a show, you have 125 people that have signed up. It was things like that that I really enjoyed. It was getting tee shirts designed and then ordering those and then having a system for those.

Bjork Ostrom: It was all stuff that when I look back, it becomes evident as that was I think one of the reasons why I was able to do it was because I enjoyed that as opposed to just only enjoying the writing and playing of music, which I did. That was a really enjoyable thing, and especially to be able to connect with people through that, that was something that I really enjoyed.

Bjork Ostrom: Another thing was, I learned that … It’s interesting to think about because I went to the library in the capital city here in Minnesota, which is St. Paul. They have this resource library. I learned that you can go to the resource library and get information about TV producers and music supervisors that are called for TV shows and there’s a book that had all that information. I think it was available online, but you had to pay, I don’t know, a substantial amount, at least for a college student.

Bjork Ostrom: I went to the library and copied off all these pages of music supervisors and then created this letter and then put a CD in and mailed this out to all these music supervisors saying, “Hey, I would love to have one of my songs featured on your TV show,” so this little hustle around getting placement for TV, and then would intentionally follow up on those and eventually got connected with somebody.

Bjork Ostrom: It was a music company called Bunim Murray. Any time there’s a reality TV show, like Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown or Road Rules or Survivor, there’s always a production company that happens behind the scenes with that. An example is Somebody Feed Phil, the interview we did with-

Alexa Peduzzi: Phil Rosenthal.

Bjork Ostrom: Phil Rosenthal. He worked with a production company to shoot that, and the production company, one of their jobs is to find music. I was able to get this list and email people and was able to connect with somebody from Road Rules. They were like, “Hey, we’d love to use one of your songs,” ironically, a song about Lindsay and I breaking up when we were in high school.

Alexa Peduzzi: That’s so crazy.

Bjork Ostrom: I wrote this song about driving back to college after being home and missing her and being sad about that. They used that for this going away scene when this couple on Road Rules, the girl comes to visit and then she goes away.

Bjork Ostrom: It was the music part, but it was also that problem solving around the business building or getting in front of people or making connections. I think some of that stuff still exists in what I do today and this is the same type of stuff that I enjoy. Yes, that a previous life. We had talked about this. I think it’s on Spotify.

Alexa Peduzzi: It totally is.

Bjork Ostrom: I didn’t know that. If you stream a Bjork Ostrom song on Spotify, I’ll get half of a half of a cent.

Alexa Peduzzi: Yes, definitely go check it out and screenshot it so we can see.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure. The song that was on Road Rules was called “Long Drive Home”. It was my sad song about breaking up with Lindsay.

Alexa Peduzzi: So sad, and it all comes full circle, kind of.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Alexa Peduzzi: Going along with that, Lindsay. She is your partner in crime, your wife. She is the author of the very popular food blog, Pinch of Yum, and you guys started it eight years ago. That’s eight years of breakfasts and desserts and lunches and all of the delicious things. Do you have a favorite Pinch of Yum recipe?

Bjork Ostrom: This is funny, because there was a time when Lindsay and I were hanging out with friends and somebody asked that same question. They’re like, “What’s your favorite Pinch of Yum recipe?” I was really searching for it, and then Lindsay interjected and she was like, “Name one Pinch of Yum recipe.” I had this panicked moment where you can imagine the guy in my mind who finds the memory files suddenly was tasked with this thing and he realized he didn’t know where he put that file and was running around everywhere sweating frantically pulling out files everywhere, creating these file tornadoes.

Alexa Peduzzi: “Name a food, name a food.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. The random file that he eventually grabbed and brought to the front of my brain was this six year old panini with deli meat and strawberry jam sandwich that she made way, way, way back when. Now any time that comes up, that’s the one that I say. I don’t even know the official name of it. I would have to look it up and see.

Alexa Peduzzi: We’ll link it in the show notes if any of you are interested in making Bjork’s favorite recipe.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, for sure. The funny thing is obviously, we’ll like you said have all of those recipes, but I think people probably assume that I’m more integrated into Pinch of Yum than I actually am. There will be a decent amount of stuff that she’ll publish and I just won’t get around to reading it. It’s not like I’m seeing every post that’s published or being a part of all of the content creation side of things.

Bjork Ostrom: Just last night, we had this super tasty salad that she made. In terms of the final product of what that salad is, that doesn’t register as a thing for me. I have this abstract understanding of what the different recipes would be and what I like about them, but not the ability to retrieve them as a brandable thing to say, “Oh, I like the,” and the example I’m thinking of is golden soup. That’s a recipe that she created that people talk about a decent amount, but I just don’t have that as much as she would. She probably knows intimately each one of the recipes. Apparently I know two, golden soup and that random panini.

Alexa Peduzzi: You just don’t have that food mind, which I think is so interesting working in the food blogging space.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, for sure. I think that’s one of the things that actually works out well for us is that we don’t step on each other’s toes very much with the type of stuff that we do. I think there’s probably times when Lindsay would love to have somebody who’s like, “Oh,” critical feedback on a recipe as opposed to general feedback that I could give.

Alexa Peduzzi: “This is good. This is bad.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, exactly. I think the nice thing is that it allows us to operate in our spheres, and then act in a lot of ways of what a “normal” couple would in terms of saying, “Hey, here’s something that I’m working through or trying to figure out. Do you have any thoughts on it?” Not as somebody who’s a total expert, but as somebody who’s like, “Hey, I’m going to speak to you as your significant other to this situation in general broad strokes.”

Bjork Ostrom: We are each able to have our own separate work days and not overlap too much, which I think is just massively beneficial, at least for how we operate, that we’re not sitting in the same room constantly going back and forth on revising copy for an email or something like that.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that’s probably a misconception a little bit of what people think of when they think of who we are and how we work together is I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people think, “Oh, you’re just working together literally in the same room all the time,” whereas in actuality, our days are pretty separate, and then at the end of the day, that allows us to come together and say, “Hey, what were you up today? What was the stuff you worked on?” Which is really nice.

Alexa Peduzzi: Absolutely, yes. It’s just a way to separate your personal life and your business life.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, yes.

Alexa Peduzzi: Although you do work together, you don’t work together, which I think is super helpful.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, exactly.

Alexa Peduzzi: We’re going to wrap up here, but I just wanted to say 150 podcast episodes. That’s pretty amazing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, for sure.

Alexa Peduzzi: How do you feel about that?

Bjork Ostrom: It feels great. I think one of the things that’s worked well for the podcast is figuring out the things that I enjoy doing and then as much as possible, not doing the things that would keep me from doing that.

Bjork Ostrom: An example would be, everybody that listens to this podcast owes a huge debt of gratitude for Alexa and before that Raquel, because Alexa, you do all the editing and scheduling and the behind the scenes stuff for the podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: That allows me to have these conversations with people and that’s what I love doing is jumping on and having these conversations. If not for you, Alexa, then these podcasts probably wouldn’t get published if I was the one that then had to jump in and edit them.

Bjork Ostrom: I think it’s an important takeaway for people as they think about building their thing. It ties in a little bit to what we talked about before, but just how intentional you have to be to be aware of your own limitations and then lean into your strengths.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that’s a huge part of the success of the podcast has been Raquel got it up to speed and was the one that was behind the scenes doing the editing and scheduling and stuff, and then Alexa, you’ve recently taken over. It’s probably been about a year plus now that you’ve been doing it?

Alexa Peduzzi: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. I want to acknowledge that and say thank you for the work and also to Raquel for her work on helping to make this happen. I think the other thing that’s interesting with it is it’s three years, almost three years, of doing the podcast and yet it’s like we still probably have a year, two years, three years before it really hits its stride as a standalone thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Three years seems like a really long time, but then you think of Pinch of Yum and it’s eight years. In a lot of ways, it wasn’t until year four or five or six that Pinch of Yum was hitting its stride. The content creation game just has a really long on ramp before you’re fully up to speed. It’s fun for me to be able to participate in that alongside other people who are also doing the same.

Bjork Ostrom: The irony is that it is a podcast about blogging, but the thing that I think is important to point out is finding the thing that fits well with what you do and how you operate. For me, that is a podcast. For other people, it’s blogging. For others, it’s video, but finding the thing that allows you to consistently create and then sticking with it for a long period of time is so critically important.

Bjork Ostrom: I’m honored and grateful to have a medium in which to do that and to have a team to be a part of that, as well, and listeners to make it all worthwhile, which we just want to thank you wherever you are listening to this because if you weren’t here listening, we wouldn’t do this. Honored to be here at 150.

Alexa Peduzzi: We are honored to have you. We just so appreciate you both as a team and as a food blogging community. You and Lindsay have just been such an impact on all of us, so we really appreciate your leadership and your friendship and your mentorship, so thank you so much.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, and thanks for doing this. It was fun to do and a great idea and it’s just been a blast, and great job being on the other side of the mic doing the interviewing.

Alexa Peduzzi: It was an experience for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. You did a great job.

Alexa Peduzzi: Thanks.

Bjork Ostrom: And twice. Doing it twice.

Alexa Peduzzi: Absolutely. Thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. I hope you guys enjoyed this different kind of episode.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. Thanks Alexa. Super fun to chat and thanks for listening, and we’ll be back here next week with a new episode.

Alexa Peduzzi: Woohoo. See you then.

Alexa Peduzzi: Thank you so much for being a part of the 150th episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We really appreciate you tuning in every week. Whether you are one of those people that tunes in every week or this is the first episode you’ve ever caught, we really appreciate you listening because as I said before, the podcast is one of my favorite things to do at my job ever. I really appreciate it and we all do from the team.

Alexa Peduzzi: Now it’s time for our review of the week, and this one comes from Angel from the blog Cheftographer. It says, “Great podcast. Bjork is a great interviewer and the guests are interesting and informative. I really enjoy how the overall message is very positive and helps me as a new blogger feel like I can do this. One person infinity, right? Thank you Bjork and Lindsay for being such great teachers and sharing your knowledge in such a positive way. Love this podcast.” Such a great review. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it, Angel.

Alexa Peduzzi: Just as a reminder, if you’re still interested in attending our SEO Bootcamp, we still have a few more days to register. It’s going to be this Thursday, May 17th, and all you have to do is sign up at FoodBloggerPro.com/bootcamp. We hope to see you there. Thanks so much for tuning in, and from all of us here at FBPHQ, make it a great week.

150: Get to Know Bjork Ostrom

Get to Know Bjork Ostrom

In this episode, Bjork shares:

Transcript:

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Get to Know Bjork Ostrom

In this episode, Bjork shares:

Transcript:

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