029: The Phases of Pinch of Yum with Bjork & Lindsay Ostrom

Welcome to episode 29 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This is a special edition of the FBP podcast featuring… you guessed it! Bjork and Lindsay Ostrom.

Last week on the podcast, Bjork interviewed Casey Markee from Media Wyse. They talked about SEO for food bloggers, both on beginning and advanced levels. It was great! To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

The Phases of Pinch of Yum

It’s always so interesting to hear about the stories people have with their blogs – when they started, how they got going, what keeps them inspired.

However, it’s pretty rare to get a full breakdown of all the phases that the blog and the blogger(s) went through from day 1. Usually the stories talk about the beginning, and then the present.

But today, Bjork and Lindsay sit down together (literally) and talk about the 4 distinct stages Pinch of Yum went through up until today. It’s just so interesting. And if you listen alllll they way through to the end, they also have some cutesy married-couple moments that I distinctly decided not to edit out. It’s adorbs.

In this peek back in time, Bjork & Lindsay share:

  • What the first year of blogging was all about for Lindsay
  • What she would have done differently when they started Pinch of Yum
  • Her advice for those who are still in the “first stage” of blogging
  • Bjork’s favorite Ira Glass quote (again)
  • What it was like when Lindsay started “playing the game” with blog numbers
  • Why Lindsay finds surveys so valuable
  • Whether a custom website design or good content is more important
  • When they entered the “high stakes” game with Pinch of Yum
  • What it was like to work full time and grow Pinch of Yum at the same time
  • Why Pinch of Yum is still a very personal site instead just a collection of recipes
  • And more!

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

Resources:

And since you took the time to read all the way down to the bottom of this post, you get a bonus quote from Sage! This will make sense only if you listened to the whole podcast, so get to it!

Aaaaaand one last bonus – a Snapchat picture of what it actually looks like to be podcasting from the Ostrom household. So glamorous!

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

Be sure to review us on iTunes!

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

Transcript:

Bjork Ostrom: Welcome to episode number 29 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Hey, everybody. This is Bjork Ostrom and believe it or not, I’m excited about this week’s episode. The reason I’m excited is because we’re going to be talking with somebody that I know who’s very near and dear to me, Lindsay Ostrom from Pinch of Yum. Actually, I asked Lindsay if she’d sit down at the kitchen table with me and have a conversation about the different stages of Pinch of Yum, what the stages have been as she’s grown the site over the past 5 or 6 years.

We talked about things that we learned in each stage, what we focused on and share a little bit about the numbers as well and as we built up the site. I talked about this as we get into it by my hope for this is to just have a conversation around this. This isn’t the path that you need to take.

As you know everybody’s path is very, very different but hopefully there’s some things that you hear in this episode that you can take away and apply to your blog as you grow your site and take it through the different stages of your blogs life. All right. Let’s jump in to the podcast. We are here at the kitchen table. Lindsay, welcome to the Food Blogger Pro podcast.

Lindsay Ostrom: Hi. Here I am right next to you.

Bjork Ostrom: Lindsay, welcome to the podcast.

Lindsay Ostrom: Thanks.

Bjork Ostrom: If you could see this right now, it would look a lot less professional than probably what you imagined even.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’ll take a picture and snap it or something or put it on Twitter or something.

Bjork Ostrom: We can put it on the blog post for this. Even if you imagine this to look not very professional, it probably looks even less professional than you would imagine. Just to set the scene here, we are at home. I’m looking out the window. There’s about, I’d say there’s 6 inches of snow on the ground, some cardinals in the trees. Sage is in the other room sleeping and Lindsay is across me at the table here.

If you haven’t put it together, we are not having an outside guest. Today, we are having an inside the team guest and Lindsay from Pinch of Yum, in case you’re not familiar, is joining us today. Welcome, Linds.

Lindsay Ostrom: Thanks.

Bjork Ostrom: You’ve been a special guest on some other podcast and then of course the first ones if you guys have listened to those, Lindsay interviewed me and then I interviewed Lindsay to start things off.

Lindsay Ostrom: When we were like nervous and dorky about podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: Not knowing what to do. Not that we haven’t moved out of that stage yet.

Lindsay Ostrom: That’s true. A good point.

Bjork Ostrom: What we’re going to do today is, I actually asked Lindsay on because I wanted to talk to her about what I’m calling stages and I think it’s an important concept for us to talk about here on the podcast because so often I think that somebody is in a certain stage and they feel like they should be somewhere else and there’s a tension around that.

There’s a few things that I want to say before we get into this, first of all, everybody’s story, we’re learning this as we get into it, is very different. We’re going to be sharing our story today and Lindsay is going to be sharing her story and the different stages that she’s gone through with her blog but that doesn’t mean that’s the stages that you have to follow. It might be that you progressed through things quicker, that maybe it takes you a little bit longer.

It might mean or it could mean that maybe you just pull some things out from this and you don’t even have the same end goal. I just want to say that before we get into it. Do you have anything to add to that, Lindsay, just as a preface before we get into it?

Lindsay Ostrom: No, I think you said it really well.

Bjork Ostrom: Thanks. I appreciate that. What we’re going to talk about is we’re going to talk about specifically 3 different stages and within each one of those stages, we’re going to talk about just what that was like, the things that we did and what Lindsay focused on anything that I maybe helped out with during that stage, things that Lindsay would do differently and I’ll chime in as well. Then things that worked really well and advice that we would give to people that are maybe in a similar stage.

Let’s do a quick outline so you know what to expect and then we’ll jump to it and talk a little bit about it. First stage, we described this as the first year. Lindsay, how did you describe that in a snippet? What was that first stage?

Lindsay Ostrom: I don’t remember if I gave it a formal name but what comes to mind is just the fun stage, so just playing around. Did I have something that I said?

Bjork Ostrom: I have written down here brand new baby blogging.

Lindsay Ostrom: Brand new baby blogging. That’s what it was. I knew there was something clever and fun.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s pretty clever and fun because that’s the fun stage. That’s stage one. We’ll get into that. Let’s wait.

Lindsay Ostrom: Okay. You just want me to …

Bjork Ostrom: Stage 2 is what we’re calling low stakes but it’s out of the brand new baby blogging. There are stakes. You have a stake in the game but it’s not necessarily super high stakes and then stage 3 we broke this up and do 3A and 3B where it’s high stakes but you’re maybe not doing it full-time yet and then 3B which would be high stakes and you’re doing it full time. That’s what you can expect what we’re going to work through here but let’s rewind back here to what we are calling the BNBB stage, brand new baby blogging.

Lindsay Ostrom: Brand new baby blogging.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk a little bit about that stage and just to set a time parameter on this? We’re saying the first year. For Pinch of Yum, that was April 2010 to, let’s say, April 2011. Can you remember back to that what that stage was like for you?

Lindsay Ostrom: It was really, really basic and clueless and really fun. When I think back on it, I just think, “Wow, that was just so dorky and fun.” I just really would not have any plan or intentionality with anything I was doing. It’s just like weird that I started a blog in the first place. I think this has been shared as a part of our story in multiple places, including this podcast but it was never like I set out to start a blog, to have it grow into something. We were sitting around. This is, again, the first podcast where we talk about each other but we’re talking to each other. We’re sitting right next to each other and it’s weird.

Bjork Ostrom: It was a good first interview, it was a weird first interview.

Lindsay Ostrom: It was weird. This will be the same. I just remember sitting around and thinking and saying to you, Bjork like, “I just love sharing recipes. It’s so fun to share recipes and then the idea of a blog coming up in conversation and seriously having no idea what that was. I feel like that first year for me was just like getting my feet wet. Honestly, even learning things like how do I upload a photo. I used to be so clueless that I would write a separate post for my recipes and put the photo in a separate post because I don’t think I understood how to put a picture in a post.

Just learning the ropes and having fun and it gave me an opportunity and an excuse to try fun things. I actually have on my phone in front of me. I have my old version of my blog pulled up which is pinchofyum.tumblr.com if anybody wants to go find some treasures there, but if you go all the way back to the beginning, it’s like I have, maybe, my 5th post is about a spice mix that I got from a little food boutique, kind of grocery store that I liked.

Just weird stuff that I was posting about, but that’s what it was. It was just for fun and it was just me, saying, “Hey, I like food and here’s what I’m going to say to the world about it. I had no real, I think, important distinction or thing to know about that stage for me was that I really didn’t have any sense of voice or direction with my voice in terms of … I was not envisioning a reader. Who they were and I was not writing to anyone. It was more like diary and me saying like this is a really fun spice mix that I found. Here’s a picture of it. I wasn’t writing to anyone during that phase which is something that changed I think when we moved in to the next phase.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that I wanted to ask for each of these stages is what are some things that when you look back, that you would do differently for each stage. Do you have any ideas for this stage? What’s one thing you’d do differently or a few things if you can think of them?

Lindsay Ostrom: One thing would be, for sure, I wish that we would have started on WordPress right away. It’s all fine in the end and I just say to you, Bjork, I’m so appreciative that you were the one that helped us get up and running on Tumblr because I literally knew nothing and would have been so overwhelmed to try to start figuring that stuff out on my own whether Tumblr or WordPress but that was how we got set up was on this free Tumblr page, account, blog, whatever they’re called and …

Bjork Ostrom: All the above.

Lindsay Ostrom: Everything. It works really well in the beginning because it was free and it was super easy to set up at least or so you tell me.

Bjork Ostrom: You didn’t ask to.

Lindsay Ostrom: We did eventually switch to WordPress after a year, was it, or more?

Bjork Ostrom: I think so.

Lindsay Ostrom: It was maybe even more than that, year-and-a-half. Then it was just really a pain because it was just like manually moving all that stuff over and I feel like we just would have been better off to start on WordPress from the very beginning. I don’t know, would you agree with that?

Bjork Ostrom: I would, for sure. There’s a free eBook that we have called 10 Mistakes that Bloggers Make and How to Fix Them. You can get that by signing up on the … if you go to the Food Blogger Pro blog, there will be a place where you can sign up and download that. One of the things that we mentioned that’s probably the most important thing for us at least was this mistake of starting on a site that wasn’t WordPress.

There’s all this different blogging platforms. There’s Tumblr which is a micro blog platform. It’s not necessarily blogging specifically but there’s Tumblr, there’s Squarespace, there’s Blogger. All of these different ways that you can publish content, those are really good platforms but WordPress is so great because it allows you to do things like create microdata or certain schema markup for your post and it’s just easier to use for the type of content that we create.

Side note, a great episode to listen to would be the one with Casey from Media Wyse which was last episode where he talks about some of those things and specifically how you can use those within WordPress from different plug-ins and things like that.

Anyways, long add on to what you said about one of the most important things for us when we were in this first stage was starting out on WordPress versus Tumblr and a big takeaway from that. Then just a follow up question to that, any tips or takeaways that you’d have for people just general advice that are in this brand new baby blogging phase, this first year phase or maybe it’s a little bit longer?

Lindsay Ostrom: I would say just soak it up, man. Have fun with it. I think there’s this perception that we have probably in all areas of life that you’re waiting to arrive. You’re waiting to like, “When I get to this point, then I’m going to be so happy. That’ll be so fun. When I get 100 likes on my Instagram photo, that’ll be so fun. When I get 50 comments on a post, whatever.” I think for me, what I found is that as those things start to happen for me as I start to see some of those metrics or goals being achieved, it’s not like I’m more happy than it was in the beginning.

In fact, I think in some ways it’s harder and it’s obviously fun to see growth and progress but especially if you’re starting, I’m going to bring in a bachelor term here. If you’re starting for the right reasons … I just did that. If you’re starting for the right reasons of just enjoying it and really wanting to be there and wanting to do what you do, there’s really nothing better than that intrinsic motivation and that personal drive and desire to do what you do and to create what you create. I think whether in that first stage of fun, newborn baby blog, whatever we called that, all the way to the end.

Bjork Ostrom: Brand new baby blogging.

Lindsay Ostrom: Brand new baby blog. I newborn wasn’t quite right. All the way to the end. That’s going to be the thread, I think that carries you through. You can have that right from day 1. That’s the fun thing. You can have that right from day 1. Obviously that can’t bring you an income, solely that passion, but I think that’s what’s really going to make it fun at the core for a lot of creators.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure. We talked about this every once in a while but there’s all those different types of income. There’s financial income, but there’s also emotional income, there’s relational income. It’s a bouncing act between all of those and these early stages, I think was when you can really lean in to some of those other types of income where maybe you’re getting a lot of enjoyment out of it.

As a side note, if you feel like you’re not getting a lot of enjoyment out of it, and you’re not enjoying the process and you don’t enjoy the content or the work, it’s probably worth evaluating in saying is there a way that I can pivot or change a little bit to start doing something that I do enjoy more because if you don’t enjoy it now, you won’t enjoy it later so it doesn’t make sense to continue taking time to get good at something that you don’t like doing.

Lindsay Ostrom: One thing I was going to throw in, in addition to that is something that, Bjork, you, always tell me, is … Actually, we’re always throwing this phrase around, that the internet has a short attention span or short memory. Which one is it? It’s both.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, both.

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s both, realistically.

Bjork Ostrom: A short memory and the people that use it have a short attention span.

Lindsay Ostrom: A short attention span. Short memory. Internet has a short memory, but just this concept that you can put something out there and it can feel like, “Oh my gosh. That’s just not quite what I want that to be yet. It’s almost there, but, oh my gosh, I’m not sure if I’m going to like that in 6 months. Even today, I feel embarrassed about how that picture looks or what I wrote.” People forget pretty quickly. I just encourage you if you’re in this new stage just keep doing stuff.

While we were sitting here, talking through some ideas for the podcast I pulled up in my old site and looked at my first post. It’s like so embarrassing. It’s just so embarrassing because it’s like nobody starts out being good, being super, super strong. What’s that quote about the divide …

Bjork Ostrom: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Lindsay Ostrom: No, not that one, but close maybe. Being an artist and kind of that chasm, that’s always there between where you want to be and where you actually are. Do you know what we’re talking about?

Bjork Ostrom: yeah. It’s an Ira Glass quote. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve referenced it a few times in the podcast. Do you want me to read it here?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s long.

Lindsay Ostrom: Could you read it in like a special voice?

Bjork Ostrom: Ira Glass voice?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Like a national public radio voice. I wish. This is the quote and quote Ira Glass, “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste but there’s this gap.” He says, “For the first couple of years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. Your taste, the thing that got you into the game … ” I don’t need to explain this but I’m going to. Not literal taste, even though we’re talking about food but it’s like taste is an artist.

He says, “The thing that got you in the game, your taste is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you,” and that’s the gap you talked about, Lindsay. “A lot of people never get passed this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we wanted to have. We all go through this. If you are just starting out or you are in this phase, you got to know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, you will finish one story.”

“It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions. I took look longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s going to take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve got to fight your way through it.” That’s awesome.

Lindsay Ostrom: It’s super powerful. I think that’s perfect.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s such a good describer of that stage.

Lindsay Ostrom: Give yourself a deadline, get stuff done, ship stuff out the door even if you don’t feel like it’s at the level that you want it to be. I don’t know. Maybe not everyone would agree with that because I know it’s the conversation about minimum viable product on a smaller scale in terms of just like a blog post or a video or something like that but my encouragement personally is to just keep doing stuff. Just keep doing, keep creating, keep refining and use that to find your way.

Bjork Ostrom: Know that tension that you feel is a good thing that gap that you feel is normal.

Lindsay Ostrom: Right, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That makes a lot of sense. That’s stage 1, the brand new baby blogging stage. The best name of all the stages. I’m sorry to say, the other ones aren’t quite as exciting. Let’s talk about this … One other thing I want to talk about real quick for this stage, I feel like in general with the traffic conversation, I rolled my eyes because it’s like traffic matters and it doesn’t matter. It really depends on the niche that you’re in and so often we can focus on it and it’s not the most important thing but at the same time I think people are always interested in it.

I’m going to just share some numbers here for Pinch of Yum. In that first year, traffic to Pinch of Yum on any given month would be, I’m just going to scroll through her. I’m looking at Google analytics. In the first month, it was 75 people, 106, 204 and 617.

Lindsay Ostrom: Not thousand like 100.

Bjork Ostrom: Now, it’s 1,104, 1,164. Literally a thousand people. It wasn’t 200,000, it was just 200. Then January, it start to pick up a little bit 2,000, 5,000 and then in March, it was 22,000 people and then in April 28,000 and then 37,000. There’s a little bit of this flip that switch in these months where it was essentially 10 times more he traffic you went from getting 2,000 in a month to 22,000 in a month. That’s right around the time that we talked about switching into this low stakes game. What is this low stakes game period like? What was that switch for you?

Lindsay Ostrom: I imagined a low stakes game phase of Pinch of Yum and just blogging for us to be this time when I discovered and latched on to numbers and the gamification of blogging. I was in it now, not just for the joy and fun of creating content on my brand new baby blog, but I was also in it for the numbers. We started to see more traffic coming in and we started to try to break down. I guess we didn’t really try to break down where that came from. I just knew that.

I was submitting my photos at the time to Foodgawker and Tastespotting which were a big deal because this was pre-Pinterest or maybe at the very beginning of Pinterest. It’s like basically a place for food lovers to go and find food content. Often my post would be featured on the name page and they would get a ton of favorites or whatever and that was so addicting for me playing the low stakes game, but still the game nonetheless was how I would define this second phase.

It’s not like we’re making money or making substantial money. It’s still very much feels like a hobby but I’m definitely paying attention to numbers and I’m motivated by different metrics like social media and numbers. A number of people come into the site, a number of comments, things like that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, great. This is that early stage entrance into the potential of building something as a business. Like you said, low stakes because it’s not necessarily like at this point, it definitely wasn’t a job for us. I mean, it was a job in the sense of the time that you’re putting in to it and the energy, but it wasn’t like we needed to rely on it for an income.

If you stopped blogging, we’d still have our jobs. We’re working our normal jobs and it’s like if you were creating an income from ads, or affiliate stuff, or products, or anything like that, it was nice and it validated the work that you were doing but it wasn’t stuff that required us. It wasn’t like putting food on the table, literally.

Lindsay Ostrom: It was just bonus money.

Bjork Ostrom: During the low stakes game, the stakes were tangible numbers that you could track, Google analytics or likes on a post or comments or things like that. I’m looking back to specifically that month where it jumped 10X. It went from 2000 visitors a month to 22,000 visitors a month or whatever it was. Do you remember some of the things that you started focusing on and changing and playing around with, that allowed you to take it from the beginner blog to the low stakes game?

Lindsay Ostrom: I think one of the most important things and distinctions that started to happen and how I was approaching the blog was to really think about who’s the reader. Who’s the reader and what do they want. In that first brand new baby blog stage, I was just creating whatever I wanted to create, polishing whatever I felt like publishing I guess, even if we went out to eat for the weekend like I would just post a picture saying, “Hey, we went out to eat at this great restaurant,” which is fun and that’s what that phase was for, but I think ,giving into this second stage, the low stakes game, it’s about more than just me and me like putting out whatever I want to put out there.

It’s about me saying who’s actually reading this and what do they want to see and then using the various metrics social media or analytics or whatever to figure that out and to measure that overtime. I feel like a big part of it for me in getting out of that phase was the fact that you and I together were able to say because that’s your leaning is like let’s look at behind the scenes, let’s look at the numbers and my leaning is more on creating the content, to have you saying there’s this thing called Google Analytics where you can see how many people are coming to your site.

It’s like if I didn’t know about that, I probably would have never moved into that phase of caring about that and paying attention to those numbers. I think at the very, very beginning of that transition is learning what tools exist to find metrics for yourself and for your content.

Bjork Ostrom: Knowledge is power. The more knowledge that you have, the more power you have. Not necessarily power in the sense of authority power but just knowledge can help you make decisions and create a better site. A few things that I want to say about that. Google analytics obviously is the easy answer and the one that you should implement right away. We also recommend using a tool called a hot jar which we’ve been using on Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro to get to know your audience a little bit better.

You can do stuff like surveys or polls or you can ask for feedback like a scale of 1 through 10, they call that a net promoter score, how likely would you be to recommend Pinch of Yum or Food Blogger Pro. All of these things help you to understand your readers a little bit better and even if you go in and just see what’s my most popular post? I mean, that’s a great place to start. Then to click in to that and see why is it popular. Is it coming from Pinterest? Is it coming from Google Analytics?

Where are people linking from back to that post? All of those things help you to enter into the initial low stakes game as we’re calling it where you’re starting to understand your content a little bit better and digging into numbers a little bit. Not necessarily numbers like creating an income but numbers like how do I take my blog from 2,000 to 20,000.

One of the things I’m interested in with all of these and that I wanted to talk to you about is things that you do differently. We have written down here reaching out to readers more and asking questions. Can you talk about what that means and a little bit more about that or do you feel like you hit that before?

Lindsay Ostrom: No. I think that’s really applicable here. Within the last … Was it last year around this time or maybe it was a year-and-a-half ago, I did my first ever Pinch of Yum reader survey where I created a survey and just released it to my blog readers and gather feedback on what they like or didn’t like about the site.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about how you did that, what you used to do that?

Lindsay Ostrom: Just again, to reiterate, this wasn’t during the phase that we’re talking about, this is just recently.

Bjork Ostrom: This is something that you wish you would have done earlier?

Lindsay Ostrom: Why I’m bringing this up is because I’m saying why was I not doing this during the low stakes game because during the low stakes game was the time where I started the care about if how many people were coming if people were coming. It’s like at that point then I should … And I even said that just a minute ago, I’m starting to think about who are my readers and what do they want.

It’s like you can breakdown the numbers to many, many layers and analyze them and make your best guesses about why their coming and where they’re coming from and all these different things. You can also just ask them and that’s something that we really didn’t do, I didn’t do formally early in that stage. I wish that we would have.

How I did that more recently was I think I just used SurveyMonkey and I want to say that we … I’m a little fuzzy on the details because this was a while ago that I created it but I think we ended up paying their monthly fee for a certain level of membership or service because we had so many responses and we wanted to be able to gather a large number of responses. Now, it’s just like an ongoing open thing like I went in to SurveyMonkey. I created a survey. I tried to keep it short. I think I built out 10 different questions.

At the time, I knew a couple other bloggers who had done a similar survey so I asked Ali from Gimme Some Oven was one of them and I know she sent me over her recommendations like, “Hey, I found these answers to these questions. It’s really helpful.” Piecing together based on other people’s surveys. I tried not to ask questions that I wouldn’t know what to do with the data if that makes sense.

There are definitely things that I was interested to ask my readers but then it was like once I get that information, how am I actually going to act on that? If there was no way for me to act on it then I removed it from the survey. Building out 10 questions, keeping it pretty simple and then linking … I just did a blog post and just links to it in a blog post.

Bjork Ostrom: Is this survey still live?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. What we did is we kept it open, collected all these responses and that in of itself was such a process like going through all those responses. Fortunately, at that time because we were in the high stakes game period at that time, we had Abby on our team who Abby started with us as an intern about a year ago and she helped us to go through all that data and break it down into charts and stuff. What was your question again?

Bjork Ostrom: If it’s still there. The reason that I asked was we can link to it in the show notes. If you want to check that out and see what it’s like.

Lindsay Ostrom: The thing I was going to say though was after that initial mass flood of information, we decided what are we going to do with this? Are we going to close it or what, and felt like it was still valuable to be hearing from people. We now have that as part of our autoresponder series when people sign up to subscribe via email. We send them the free cookbook is one of the first things and then another thing for that falls closely on the heels of that is a survey saying, “Hey, Thanks. We’re glad to have you on our email list. What kinds of things can we be helping you with?

Bjork Ostrom: We’ll link to that in the show notes. You can get there by going to foodbloggerpro.com/blog and we’ll have links to that if you want to check it out. 2 quick things actually on that. One, you used SurveyMonkey. This is before we had Hotjar and knew about it. If you’re a Food Blogger Pro member, you know that we have a course on Hotjar. We also have a podcast episode where we interview the founder and that’s a great tool.

That would be an easy place to start and they have a free version that you can start with. The second thing that I was going to say about that is actually a question. As an example of how use that content, can you talk about the grocery store question, where people shop and how that’s impacted, how speak to your audience.

Lindsay Ostrom: This is one of my favorite questions that I put on the survey so feel free to copy this if you’re creating a survey for a food blog and/or just your audience and you’re interested in this information. One of the questions that I put on there was where do you grocery shop. I think that options I listed because it was multiple choice, it was like mainstream grocery store.

I listed some examples, examples of mainstream here locally. We’re in Minneapolis. It would be like Cub Foods, Rainbow. I guess I would consider Super Target pretty mainstream. All the name would be pretty mainstream. Then the second level was Trader Joe’s. A more health conscious Trader Joe’s whole foods, places like that. Then the last one was like, I think, I said a coop or Farmers Market or something like that.

I just found those results super fascinating and just to give you the information, like just to give you the responses. I think it was … I don’t remember the percentage but it was a vast majority of people shopping at a mainstream grocery store which is what I expected but it’s just like there it is. It’s just like hard data saying these are my readers, these are people who shop at a regular, traditional, mainstream grocery store.

How can we cater the Pinch of Yum content to these people. We’re probably not going to put really unusual ingredients in our recipes because most of our readers aren’t shopping at places where they would have access to that. It’s just like a really helpful way for me to say, “Here are my people. I see them and I want to know more about them to provide them the best possible content and then asking a really targeted question related to food and grocery shopping in this case that would help me to provide the most relevant and helpful content for them.

Bjork Ostrom: In quick example for Food Blogger Pro, we asked similar questions. One of the questions we actually asked to members was in a member survey what’s one thing that you would like to improve about Food Blogger Pro and they said I’m having trouble going knowing what order to go through the content. That was a huge tip for us that we need to build out a really easy map for people that they can walk through so we created this thing called the course tracker that allows people to track the different lessons that they need to go through.

Basic idea is and it seems simple but it’s sometimes hard to implement these things if they’re not something that we think about but ask the people that are part of your drive or following or whatever you call it. Ask them questions and take those questions and make decisions about your content or the future of your site or your product based on those responses and I think you’ll find that really to be helpful.

A few things that I want to connect with or connect down here are the tips and advice that you have. One of the things that we talked about before we started was this idea of website updates or design tweaks. At this stage in the 1 to 3 years low sticks, that was the first time that we actually did a real site update or design. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Lindsay Ostrom: I’m trying to think when was that? Are you talking about the one that Shay did?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That would have been April 2012 I think.

Lindsay Ostrom: It was when we were in the Philippines. Do we need to talk about that specifically or just the time leading up to that, or just design in website, in general?

Bjork Ostrom: The idea that we really didn’t have a design for the site like a professional design for the first 2 years.

Lindsay Ostrom: More than I guess 2-and-a-half years really or is that right 2 years? More like 2 years. Now, that I’m clear on what I’m talking about. Wow. We just really didn’t spend a lot of time on that and in hindsight I’m actually pretty glad that we didn’t because I feel like in the beginning, what we really needed to be doing, what I really needed to be doing was creating good content and creating the need for a home if that makes sense.

It wasn’t like we went out and built this home and then tried to bring people into it, it was like we have the home. We have the need for a home and now it makes sense. We’re justified in spending the money to actually build something that we like to look up and that’s really, highly functional, easy to use and well-designed but probably for 2 years, a year-and-a-half, I don’t know whenever we switched over to WordPress, because there was a time when we switched off of Tumblr, into WordPress but we didn’t have a designer working on it.

I think I maybe with some help from you created a logo/header for Pinch of Yum that is just so embarrassing to think about right now but that’s what we used and that was what was right at the top of the sight for a good, solid year at least. It was like, I don’t think either of us really loved it but I literally remember working on it. I remember searching for the little forks that would go on either side and putting them together and be like, “Should we angle them this way or this way?”

That was a decision we made just to put our time and energy and resources more into the content creation side than into the really fancy design or the really beautiful website side of things and I’m really glad that we approached it that way.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that you can do if you’re ever interested in is Google Wayback Machine, but it’s from archive.org. You can look at any URL and they do snapshots like caches of the site. You can go back and see like for instance what a website look like in January of 2012. I’m pulling it up right now and you can look and see what Pinch of Yum look like. You can step through those different progressions.

The reason that we bring that up and that I think it’s important to hit on that is because I think in those early stages, you can really caught up in the things that might not matter that much which is stuff like design. I’ll say this. Design is super, super important and it has a huge impact on how people interact with your site and I would say design is one of the most important things, but it’s not important if nobody sees it.

It’s really easy to get caught up and spending a lot of time, energy and money, getting a really well-designed thing when there’s not enough people coming to that to justify it. That’s why we talked so often about the importance of taking time to develop your content versus to design a really good content based site that doesn’t have the content finely tuned. Does that make sense?

Lindsay Ostrom: For sure. I think that also speaks to what we were saying earlier about this gap between what you’re actually putting out there and signing your name to and where your taste is. I think at the time that we had that header, I could have the look that I created and photoshopped. We both would have looked at that and been like, yuck, this is the best we can do for right now and we now that it’s like not very well-designed. It doesn’t look awesome but that gap existing is I think an okay thing in this phase. You obviously want to be like trying to move closer to that but I feel like the design is specifically the amount of time and energy and resources spent on the actual website itself is a good example of where you might sense that gap.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s easy to get caught up in the tweaking trap where you’re like make really small changes to something because it feels like you’re making progress and doing work but sometimes that can be a distraction from the things that are most important and hardest to start on which oftentimes is that valuable high impact stuff.

Lindsay Ostrom: I feel like am at a parallel. This is going to be a weird parallel but this is my parallel.

Bjork Ostrom: Go ahead.

Lindsay Ostrom: I mean, I like running. I would say I like running. I like the feeling having gone for a run but I like running. I’m a runner. Would I rather go for a run or go shopping for running clothes? I’d rather go shopping for running clothes. It’s more fun. I would pick out a cute outfit, get some good shoes and really feel like I’m making progress as a runner but if I’m not actually running, I’m not doing the thing and justifying the purchase of my running clothes. Does that make sense?

Bjork Ostrom: It’s great. I love it.

Lindsay Ostrom: Good.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s good. Great. This was stage 2 for us. Some of the things that we would do differently. We talked about reaching out to readers, starting to understand them a little bit more, get a better understanding of who we’re talking to and being really intentional about that behind the scenes stuff that helps us develop the content better. Some tips and advice would be to really focus in on the content to not get too distracted on some of things that feel like work but maybe aren’t necessarily work or aren’t necessarily those high reward type of work.

At this stage, just to go back to the traffic thing here, this is when the blog started to pick up a little bit. It would go anywhere from when you first started out is maybe 30 or 40,000 people and then towards the end so I’m fast forwarding here to April of 2013. We 1 to 3-year range. At this point, it’s starting to pick up speed a little bit. You have 500,000 visitors and then in that year was the first year that we had a million people come and visit the site.

That’s when we transition into a little bit more of the high stakes game. We’re not yet full-time. We’re calling this stage 3A. It’s the 3 to 4-year range. What is high stakes mean and high stakes not full-time? Can you describe that a little bit? Stage 3As.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yes, 3A. It’s such a dorky, boring name, so bland. To me, I feel like I can literally imagine the moment when I shifted into this phase and it was the moment we were in the Philippines. It was the moment when you came to me with the income total for one of the income reports. I looked at you and said, “That’s more than I make teaching in a month.” I feel like for me that moment was the moment when it shifted into the high stakes game part 3A or whatever we called it.

Bjork Ostrom: We didn’t call that at the time.

Lindsay Ostrom: High stakes game because the wow. This is an actual income. It’s like this is not just a hobby. This is not a bonus money. This is a real thing which I think for me was just really a unicorn of sorts. I never really thought that was a real thing that would happen or could happen. I think it’s switching over into its the same in terms of like there are stakes you’re playing the game like you’re following your numbers, you’re tracking along but the stakes are higher and that there’s an income tied to it.

Bjork Ostrom: For the first time, you started to think about the potential for that. If I can create an income, that would potentially mean that this would be my job which is a high stakes thing because if it’s going to be your job, then that means if you don’t do it …

Lindsay Ostrom: You better keep it going.

Bjork Ostrom: You better keep it going. The stakes are high because that’s how you pay the mortgage and you put food on the table.

Lindsay Ostrom: Potentially pay employees or pay people that you’re working with.

Bjork Ostrom: Hence, the reason for this idea of moving into high stakes. As a quick background for those that aren’t familiar, we lived in the Philippines for the year 2012 to 2013. Lindsay taught at a school/orphanage there and continued to do the blog during that time. As an aside, can you talk a little bit about how you managed to do that because I’m interested in that? I think people would like to know because …

Lindsay Ostrom: How I managed to do what, teaching?

Bjork Ostrom: Teaching and continue to do the blog while living in a developing country.

Lindsay Ostrom: Specific to the developing country?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think it goes into time management stuff and I think people would be interested to hear that. It’s an aside but I think it’s interesting.

Lindsay Ostrom: We didn’t have a ton of friends in the Philippines so it made it a little easier.

Bjork Ostrom: There was that.

Lindsay Ostrom: We had a lot of children that we knew that we hang out with it. We actually got asked to go to the Philippines. A long story. I won’t get all into it but when we decided to go, at that point, I was playing the low stakes games. It was this question for me like, “Am I going to do this? Am I going to bring the blog with me to the Philippines or am I going to get there and just decide that’s it. It’s too much and I can’t find the ingredients that I need and I don’t know how to cook here and all that stuff.

We just approached it or I approached it I guess with open hands so to speak, holding it, holding it loosely and going to the Philippines and saying maybe this won’t work and that would be okay. I’d be willing to take a break from it. I think I remember having a goal that we would just maintain it while we were there and then being really surprised and excited that it actually was continuing to grow while we were there.

I mean, I do think to speak the time management part, I do honestly … I joke about not having friends but it’s true. We really didn’t have a lot going on. I would come home from school, 4 maybe, 4:30. Bjork would drive up the hill and this old dirt, bumpy hill, really bad potholes everywhere on a motorcycle and pick me up.

Bjork Ostrom: My motorcycle was a Honda motard. It was M-O-T-A-R-D. It was awesome.

Lindsay Ostrom: It was pretty cool. I mean, cool in a dorky way.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool in a nobody would think this is cool if they saw us riding it.

Lindsay Ostrom: No. It is not cool, but feels cool kind of way. Anyway, then he would bring me home and I would just start go get to work right away like just start working on the blog, working on recipes. It was the same as it was here and that I was just doing a lot of nights and weekends. A lot of nights and weekends. I’d work until dinner, we’d have dinner. Maybe, we’d watch a TB show. Maybe I’d work on it a little bit before I went to bed.

In terms of what that actually look like living in a developing country, we were lucky that we lived in … Cebu is like the second largest city in the Philippines so we had access to a grocery store with ingredients that were familiar to me and it wasn’t like I was shopping at a market all the time. having to figure out ways around certain things, there were challenges to be sure. A lot of the challenges actually related to the internet specifically like having pretty poor connection and often having to struggle to figure out how to make that work.

I think, maybe sounds a little more glamorous than it was. It was like a lot of nights and weekends. I remember working on Christmas Eve and being just 100% depressed about it but it’s like, “What else are we going to do?” We’re not with family. We had a couple of hours to kill before going up to the shelter. I think it was the daily grind of this is just the same, “I’m here. I’m doing this. I like doing this.” That’s not a very funny answer.

Bjork Ostrom: No, but I think it’s interesting to hear and I think it’s one of the things we always are trying to figure out is the time piece and how do we balance that which brings me to my next question. Maybe this ties in, maybe it doesn’t but as you look at this stage 3A, which feels very accounting in Excel in terms of the name like you had said but the stage where it’s like the blog is at a point where it’s starting to become a business or it is a business and we’re starting to realize that, do you have anything that you feel, “Man, if I were to go back, and do this again at this stage, let’s say the stage where you’re making 3 to $4,000 from your website or your blog a month, are the things that you would have done differently?

Lindsay Ostrom: I think one of the things that I wish we would have started on earlier in this phase would have been hiring somebody, multiple somebody’s maybe for our team. Actually we did that at the end of that year in the Philippines because we met someone when we were there and I had started thinking about hiring. For a while, she actually worked for us remotely like after we came back from the Philippines. We’re living in the States and she was in the Philippines. She was technically our first hire, very remote, very part-time, kind of a VA situation for social media and food sharing sites and stuff like that.

I really wish we would have done that sooner just because I was feeling the pull of both jobs. I was feeling the pull of a lot of things to do and wanting to do a lot of things and really wanting to pursue the business but also feeling like I was just drowning in the reality of technically more than … I mean, not technically but practicality, more than full-time jobs with being a teacher and then also doing the blog on the side.

I don’t know. I really wish that we would have put more thought and intentionality into hiring. I feel like we’re actually now just literally this week in real life, real-time going through the process of interviewing and hiring someone for a substantial position for Pinch of Yum but it’s like wow, this is so amazing to think about all that this person could do and how much more we could accomplish as a business with having more people on our team.

Especially, because I felt like we were just tipping in. I mean, if we’re defining that stage as the high stakes game stage as that where you actually have more money to work with and there are incomes happening out of that, then I feel like that would have been a really good time to start thinking about using some of the money that the business was earning and putting it back in through hiring really good employees.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a hard thing because I think most business people would probably go there pretty quickly but our background is like you’re a teacher and I worked at a nonprofit which is literally the opposite of a business. The goal is to not make a profit. I think naturally it took us a while to get to that point and the other part is it’s a little bit … The hiring process is a little bit scary. There’s so many potential rules and regulations and what does that look like.

Lindsay Ostrom: It goes from high stakes to high, high, high stakes, really high takes.

Bjork Ostrom: We’ll talk about it a little bit in that stage 3B. Again, a terrible name but we’ll roll with it. It makes sense. What I’ve realized is as you get in into it, there are services out there that make that easier. For instance, we work with a CBA and she helps to make sure that if we hire somebody as a contractor, not as an official employee but let’s say it’s somebody that is working maybe 10 hours a week that we get the right paperwork to them.

It’s not me having to learn all these new systems or you having to learn all these new systems, it’s us moving forward on something and then bringing somebody else on to the team, in this case the CPA that can help us do that and obviously all that comes at a cost but what we found is that in looking back, it’s something that is really worth it and would have been worth it for us to do even sooner, even if it’s spending, let’s say 25% of the income that you have to start building your team which isn’t that much when it’s all set and done but it’s an important step. I think it’s something that’s really important to look at and to implement.

The second question here for this stage, things that worked well in this stage. The 3 to 4-year range as things started to build. What were some of the things that you looked back and you think this was good that I was doing this at this time and spending time working on this?

Lindsay Ostrom: I think one of the more helpful things for me during this time was just really figuring out what to say yes to and what not to say yes to. I was still teaching so I was really still feeling the tug of having my job and having the blog and wanting to work on the blog all the time but there were things that I would just have to say no to and just being okay and accepting that as seeing that as a phase like maybe someday in the future, I’ll be able to go to more conferences but for right now, with my work schedule, it’s not allowing me to do that or even if it were things like there would be a new social media thing that would come up like, “You got to try this on Pinterest.”

It’s like, “That will be great when I take my blog full-time and I’m doing this full-time but right now I don’t have the capacity to be doing that. I think one of the important filters that I put on tied back to that name thing of the core content. At this point we have the house to hold the content which is the site. We have people coming but in order to keep the business running, it doesn’t involve me posting on Facebook every hour.

What it needs to keep the business running right now, to keep it growing is like for me to keep posting really good content. If something came up that didn’t align with that, the core of just creating really great content then I would really try to be firm about saying no that. I think the other realities, I just had to be super disciplined with my time. I would get up really early because I would write my post before I would go in to work for teaching.

I would have things in the queue but I would get up at 5:30 and put my post together for 2 hours before going into teach. I’m not going to even say that I recommend this as a long term thing because I was fried, I was so fried. It came to the point where I could leave my job and I wanted to leave my job because I wanted to keep working on the blog and I’m really thankful for that but, man, that was an intense phase. That phase 3A was intense phase because the game now was being played at such high stakes like we wanted to keep it going.

We knew that I probably would want to leave my job so it’s not like we just let things fall off, it’s high stakes, there’s a lot happening but I also still have my regular 9 to 5 if you will full-time job. Just being really strict with myself in terms of time management and saying no to things, I think was probably one of the more helpful things.

Bjork Ostrom: I think it continues to be. As a blogger, that’s a skill that you’ll probably or in business owner whoever it is that’s listening to this who will continue to develop is that ability to sniff things out and say, “This is something that’s good. I should say, yes, and this is something I should say no to.” My encouragement to you would be to say no to more things than you say yes to which is hard if you’re a Minnesota nice.

Lindsay Ostrom: For sure. I just heard this quote, or not a quote but, like I just said, an idea, thought, way to approach this is from Jen Hatmaker who’s an author that I follow. It has a little bit of a profanity which normally we don’t swear on this podcast but she said, “If it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a no.” You should really approach when you’re thinking about a project, it’s not like is this a yes or a no? If it’s a well maybe, I should do that, then it’s a no. That for me I feel like is a helpful way to approach a lot of those request that come in at this point in the game.

Bjork Ostrom: Absolutely. Cool. All right. Let’s move on to this very last stage and this is where we are right now where it’s the 3B and this probably 4 plus years. This is after 4 to 5 years of really working hard and doing this. We’re getting to the point now where we’re working on it. It’s full-time right so it’s not something that we’re doing nice on weekends, this is our actual job. This is what we’re paying the mortgage to go with and what we’re putting food on the table with and all of that stuff.

Also getting to the point now where we’re bringing on other people and paying them a salary as well. It’s double high stakes for us. As you look at this stage right now, how has it changed for you in terms of how you view the blog and website and the way that you approach it?

Lindsay Ostrom: I mean, I think by nature it means approaching it more as a business than a personal thing. We often have this conversation like because Pinch of Yum is a personal blog and it started as a personal … It’s a food blog but it’s very obviously me writing it. I have a voice and I’m writing to a distinct group of readers and I feel like I can identify them and they can identify what kind of content they’re going to see from me and they know us and they know our story.

A lot of them anyways like are dedicated followers. It is personal in that way but I also have to scale back and zoom out a little bit and try to see it from a business standpoint which is really difficult because I feel like it’s a little bit of both. Also the business perspective isn’t my … That’s not where I go naturally. I feel like I’ve had to learn a little bit like even hiring. We just had that conversation yesterday or whenever that was, talking through like legally as an employer now, we’re going to hire someone.

What does that look like and what do I need to make sure I have set up and putting on a different hat than I’ve really worn before with Pinch of Yum. That’s definitely, I don’t know, that’s a huge change. I think also just the reality of the schedule is so different. I would say, it’s a little less intense but it can still be a really, the word that’s coming to my mind is depleting which is weird word. Draining is the word I’m looking for like depleting.

Bjork Ostrom: Things are falling apart. You’re depleting.

Lindsay Ostrom: I’m back. Just really draining because you’re always working yet you feel like you’re never working but you really are always on. I mean, like I’m sitting on a couch and I’m posting on Instagram which is a part of my business but it’s also personal because I wanted to be the one doing that. There’s a lot more gray area, I think or at least that gray area has become more I can see it more clearly than I could before when things were just such a whirlwind.

One thing that I think might be interesting to note for others who are in this stage and people who might be approaching this stage, even a 3A stage. We used a dull name so we have to keep saying the 3A stage. Basically, the high stakes. Approaching high stakes is just that I think when I was in the 3A craziness of like, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy and this is a business but I’m also working a full-time job.” I thought things will just be so much better and they’ll really settle down when I leave my teaching job.

I don’t feel like that really happened. I’ve been looking over my shoulder, going “Wait. When was that supposed to happen again?” Part of that might just be a personality thing, someone with a propensity for drama. I don’t know. I think that’s one thing that’s been interesting to note about this phase is it’s not like because I’m doing this full-time, I feel like I have everything under control. I really still feel like there’s a lot happening there.

It’s fast-paced. There are a lot of balls in the air at all times. It’s so fun and I love it so much but I think people envision us sitting at home, sipping tea and looking out the window, watching the snow fall and it’s very much not that 99% of the time.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interesting. I think at this stage is where you start … As a content creator and as a blogger, you start to have the conversation or you start to look at the 2 paths and the paths are I am going to create a business and slowly start to remove myself from it. Maybe create less of the content, have more people that are on an editorial staff and create a site that is removed from me and the site is its own thing or I’m going to continue to be a very integral part of this and I’m going to continue to create the content and continue to have this be my voice knowing that it means that I’m going to do less of the business stuff and stand on the front line a little bit more.

For Pinch of Yum, the decision that you’ve made, correct me if I’m wrong on this is you’re saying I’m going to continue to stay on the frontlines. I want to be the voice. I want to be the content creator. Not that doesn’t mean hiring people for it to help with the other pieces of it, but intentionally keeping it a smaller size. Your goal isn’t going to scale it into a huge business where you have 3 riders and 2 photographers and a Pinch of Yum product division. It’s going to stay a personal blog and that’s a very intentional decision but it’s interesting. At this point, there can be that decision where you say, “What kind of business do I want this to be.”

Lindsay Ostrom: Right. I think it’s that something that we’re talking a lot about and especially lately as we think about hiring and adding to the team, and I think for me like how I make that decision for myself. That’s not the right decision for everyone by the way. A lot of people find a lot of success with removing them self from the blog and creating their blog or their whatever it might be, food business as more of a curated collection of recipes as opposed to having the personal element and having the story.

When I think about myself and I said at the very beginning what is the passion or the thread at the core that’s going to intrinsically keep me coming back. For me, that is riding the post and sharing the content and having people engage with it and engaging back with them. To think about getting to the point where I would remove myself from that would essentially removing myself from the thing that gives me the most life in the whole process.

I also think the other part of that is not only thinking about what am I passionate about, what do I want to do? It’s also thinking about what do my readers want. I think we could create a community that just wanted recipes and that exists out there and that could exist on Pinch of Yum. When I look at who are most dedicated readers are in this current moment, I don’t think that they keep coming back every single day because they necessarily want a new recipe.

I see a lot of new recipes all over the internet and it’s just everywhere. So saturated with recipes everywhere but I think the reason that they keep coming back and this goes back to the survey as well and what we explicitly heard from people was what they were coming back for was the story and the personality. That’s how I am when follow blogs.

I would go to a blog not because I wanted a recipe. I would Google search for a recipe. I would go to the blog because I want to read from that particular author. That is how I personally have made that decision for the business. I mean we were at that crossroads and are constantly at that crossroads especially as we’re in this high stakes game where we have to say am I going to step out and move into more of a CEO manager of the other people and manager of the business type role or am I going to stay at the center of it.

It’s probably like not the smarter business move necessarily for me to stay at the center of it but that’s what brings me a lot of joy and I think that’s why people, my most dedicated readers keep coming back. That’s how I’ve come to that decision.

Bjork Ostrom: To book in a concept that we talked about in the beginning, it’s like those type of income, financial, emotional, relational and if you are able to really advance financial income but it sucks your soul dry, it’s like that’s not worth it. While it might not make sense to long term, financially to build a site that is reliant on you, I think it makes a lot of sense because it’s something that you enjoy and that you’re good at. We share a moment where we look at each other in the eyes and smile.

Lindsay Ostrom: Thanks, babe.

Bjork Ostrom: Sorry. That had to happen. Maybe we won’t. Maybe you’re listening to it right now and you’re thinking they didn’t edit it out. I think it’s an important point for that high stakes piece and something to consider is that if you want to create a business or a blog or a website that is a standalone thing that someday you’ll be able to sell, that you have a website, you build it up, it is valuable and you say then I want to exit out of this website and have somebody acquire it which is totally possible.

You really need to be intentional to not have that site be focused on you. If you’re somebody that loves content that wants to stay in the game, that wants to stay in the frontline, know that if that is the decision you’re going to make, that means that long term, it will require you to continue to be a part of that and there is no right or wrong answer but it’s 2 things to consider as you build the website.

We’re coming to the end Linds. The funny thing with this podcast is that technically it’s just like a sitting at home, talking to each other with a really rough outline of what we’re talking about but it was fun so thanks for jumping on and talking about that stuff and I hope that for people that listen that they have some thoughts and insight and hopefully some takeaways from it.

Like we said before, this isn’t necessarily the path you have to take by any means but it’s how we got to where we are and hopefully you can get some takeaways from it. Any last words of wisdom or piece of advice?

Lindsay Ostrom: Sage says hello.

Bjork Ostrom: Sage says hello and be the change you want to see in the world. Another great quote.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Then I’m going to finish by reading the Ira Glass quote one more time.

Lindsay Ostrom: Don’t do it.

Bjork Ostrom: All right. Thanks for coming on the podcast, Linds, I really appreciate it.

Lindsay Ostrom: Thanks for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: All right. Bye.

Lindsay Ostrom: Bye.

Bjork Ostrom: See you in a little bit.

Lindsay Ostrom: I love you.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s a wrap for episode number 29. I feel like I say this almost every time but I really want to make a point to say thank you for tuning in and listening to this podcast. I think it’s so cool that wherever you are that you can hear this, that we can connect and I hope someday that we can connect not just me talking to you but actually in person. If wherever at the same time, same place, be sure to come up to us whether it’s me or Lindsay or any of the Food Blogger Pro team members, Raquel, Jasmine or Beth stop us and say hi because we’d love to connect and chat with you. Thanks so much for listening, tune in next week, same time, same place. Until then make it a great week. Thanks guys.

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2 Comments

  1. Great podcast guys! I loved hearing about the different “stages” of your blog, I kept thinking when you were listing off those years of each of those stages, each one of those years I was thinking about starting a blog and I finally did last year, you definitely have offered a lot of encouragement, thanks for doing what you do!