How to Write Emails Your Readers Actually Want to Open with Liz Wilcox

Disclaimer: this transcript was generated using AI.

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Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, we are thrilled to welcome Liz Wilcox. Liz is an expert in all things email marketing and has an incredible email marketing membership. And she’s chatting with Bjork this week to talk about what it actually takes to build an email list that drives real business results, how she transitioned from one-on-one client work to a scalable membership model, and why she believes the biggest thing holding most creators back from email success isn’t strategy, it’s that they’ve stopped sounding like themselves. She also shares the mindset shifts, boundary setting practices, and growth tactics that have made her business not just profitable, but genuinely sustainable. Liz has so much amazing wisdom to share and is also just a joy to listen to, so you won’t want to miss this episode. Without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Liz, welcome to the podcast.

Liz Wilcox: Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I feel like I finally made it.

Bjork Ostrom: You’re here. You’ve made it. You’ve actually made it in lots of different ways. We’re going to talk about the different ways that you’ve made it. A lot of them are things that I’m extremely interested in. One is Survivor. A lot of people will potentially know you from Survivor and would love to … We could talk three hours on that. We’re not going to do that. Funny enough, and also different, very different from Survivor, about as far away as you can get from Survivor, email and an expertise in email and writing and writing compelling emails, connecting with your audience, extremely relevant for the world of food creators. We’re talking more and more about it. But first, I actually want to talk about something that you mentioned in a video on your site, and it was 10 years ago you weren’t doing this. You weren’t involved in the world of email or internet.

Bjork Ostrom: And you actually talk about this that you didn’t really have internet. You talked about living in the woods in a 200 square foot. I don’t know if it was like a-

Liz Wilcox: An RV.

Bjork Ostrom: RV. Yeah. So take us back to that moment where you were far away from this world that you are in now and decided, “Hey, I want to get after this.

Liz Wilcox: “ Yeah. So maybe you listening, I just wanted something different for my life. I knew that I was not an idiot and I knew that there had to be something else. And I started Googling and I realized you can make money blogging. So like you listening, I was an RV travel blogger and it really came down to I was a stay-at-home mom. We lived in this RV and we thought, ”Hey, this RV actually has wheels. Maybe we could travel.” I was married at the time with a toddler. Maybe we could travel in it, but if you’re going to travel, you need a way to work remotely. And so in kind of discovering a food blog, I discovered travel blogs. And I thought, if they can do it, surely I can figure it out too. I can figure it out. And so I started this RV travel blog just as a means of eventually … Making money.

Liz Wilcox: I knew that I wasn’t going to make money right away, but I knew that I could. If they could do it, I could do it, type of mentality. And I started listening to amazing podcasts like this, going to webinars, things like that. And the through line, the one thing everybody and their mother said was email marketing. I do all of this for email. I run ads to get people on my email list. I have an email list on my sidebar. I go on social and I try to do email. I run webinars so I can grow my email list. And I thought, maybe there’s something to this email thing. So I kind of skipped the line. Yeah, I was a blogger and I had blog posts and stuff like that, but I really started the email list from day one. The second I launched my blog, it was like, “Yeah, check out my blog, but if you want to follow along with the blog, you got to join this email list.” I did that on day one because mama didn’t raise no fool.

Liz Wilcox: I’m nothing if not an efficient chick. If it takes three steps, I’m out, I want to do it in two. And so I started the email list really, really quickly and I just started emailing people because I knew that was my direct line. I knew SEO was going to take a long time. People told me on webinars, people told me on podcasts. SEO, that takes a long time to end up in the search engines. That’s going to take me a long time to write the blog posts. I mentioned I lived in 200 square feet, right? I mentioned I had a toddler, right? Those things are not conducive to starting a business, but I knew that I could email once a week. That seemed relatively simple. So that was what I went all in on. And after about two, three years, I realized, wow, I’m really good at this email thing.

Liz Wilcox: And so I sold that blog and went all in on teaching email.

Bjork Ostrom: I love that. One of the things that we often find is people will maybe start with, like in our world, they’ll start with publishing a food blog and they think, “Hey, I’m excited about this. I like the idea of this. ” But oftentimes that’s just a stepping stone into the thing where they eventually land. And we have stories of people who got into us and they’re like, “Actually, I really like digital project management. I really like that process.” Or in your case, email, other people, it’s photography or video. And so one of the things for anybody listening that I’d encourage them to do is just to start. You talked about this idea of, “Hey, I know I wanted this. I know that I could do this. I see other people do it. ” And to start. And then as you’re doing it to observe, what are the things that you’re good at?

Bjork Ostrom: What are the tendencies that you have? And it sounds like you did a really good job of being aware of that and saying, “Okay, now that I see that I’m good at this thing, I’m going to pivot into that. ” Before we get too far away from it, one of the things that you mentioned in the pre-show was that email actually was a door opener for your time on Survivor. Can you tell that story around how you used email to help get onto the show?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So y’all, going on Survivor, you got to take five weeks off, sometimes more. Okay? And then think about the devastating loss it is to lose a million dollars, to lose the game. Or if you win, how you’re going to want to celebrate when you get home. So you’re going to need even more time off when you get home to recover mentally, physically, emotionally, et cetera. And so I always wanted to be on Survivor. And if you’re watching the video, you’ll get it. I always just knew I would get on that show if I applied. I always just knew I was that kind of gritty weirdo, that resilient weirdo that they just love on Survivor. I don’t mind sleeping outside. I’m a marketer, I’m a strategist, right? I want to try it out. But I grew up really poor. There was no way I could ever go on Survivor.

Liz Wilcox: I have to work. I got bills to pay. Okay, baby. But email was the window, was the ticket to everything. And that was one of the reasons I started in my travel blog. Oh, everybody’s saying email’s the fastest way to cash and it’s going to be long-term for me. I’m going to go with email marketing. I’m going to go with talking directly to my potential customers and creating products for them. And so one day I was watching a survivor with my daughter. She was seven years old at the time. And I guess I used to say all the time like, “Oh, I could be on that show. I could be on

That show.“ And I said it, Jeff Probst, he’s the host. He comes on and he’s like, ”Do you think you have what it takes? Apply now. Go to cbs.com or whatever.“ And I said, ”Golly, I really think I could do well on that game.” And my seven-year-old looked at me, we’re sitting in my bedroom, we’re survivors sleep overnight, so we’re watching it in the bed

Bjork Ostrom: And

Liz Wilcox: Popcorn.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, so great. And

Liz Wilcox: She just looked at me and she said, “You know, mom, are you going to talk about it or are you going to do it?

Bjork Ostrom: ” All right.

Liz Wilcox: Right. And I was like, “Oh, mama didn’t raise no fool. I ain’t going down like this. I’m not going to be punked by no seven-year-old. Come on now.” And so I looked at my calendar and I had a canceled meeting 9:00 AM the next day and I said, “Serendipity, it’s fate. I’m going to apply at 9:00 AM tomorrow, Chelsea. That’s my daughter’s name.” And she said, “You know what, mom, I’ll believe it when I see you on that TV.” And she

Bjork Ostrom: Pointed to the TV. Wow. Oh, that is such an amazing moment, especially because then it happened.

Liz Wilcox: I know. Imagine the side note, wow, does my daughter know her voice matters now?

Bjork Ostrom: That’s so cool.

Liz Wilcox: I mean, the ripple effect, but I applied, I got on, long story short, right? But when I applied, I looked at my calendar and I thought when they call, when they call, because I knew they were going to call, I just knew it. And they did call that day. And am I actually going to be able to go on this show? Do I have the money? Because y’all, what you don’t know about me yet is I support three households with my business. I can’t just walk away or-

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about that? It’s yours and then- Yeah,

Liz Wilcox: It’s my business. I support my sister. She works for me full-time and I support my mother as well. And I’ve supported my mom financially since I was 16 years old. Amazing. So there’s a lot riding on this little brain of mine and my internet connection. Okay? Maybe you can relate a little bit as you’re listening, but so I’m looking at my calendar and I’m like, “Can I actually do this? ” And I thought, “You know what, Liz? Yes, you can because you’re an email marketer. The way you make money isn’t through paid appearances, sponsorships, et cetera. It’s really just emailing your people and selling your products.” And at the time, and even now I have a $9 membership. So $9 at a time, I’m making those sales. And I thought, when I get on Survivor, I can just batch my email content. And as we were going through the process of getting on the show, there’s a lot that goes into that.

Liz Wilcox: I just started planning like, “Okay, what am I going to do in the summer? If you’re watching the video, you can see a calendar in my background.” That’s when I started planning stuff out and thinking, “Oh, I can batch this content. Oh, I know they said the possibility of being gone from these dates. Okay, let me start planning what I’m going to send on those dates.” And I just wrote the emails in advance and y’all would not believe. Every day that I was out on that island, despite any prize winnings I won, I made $1,000 a day and I ended up actually taking a hundred days off for the show and recovering from the show. I made $100,000 that summer.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s amazing. It’s

Liz Wilcox: Crazy, right? But it’s all due to email. It’s due to that relationship that I built up. It’s due to me batching that content, knowing what I’m going to sell, how I’m going to send those emails out. And honestly, all those emails were just pre-scheduled and they were sent out while I was making TV magic out in Fiji.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I feel like that’s such a great example of one of the amazing benefits that we have as digital creators. If you strategically and intentionally look at your schedule, if you look at the things that you want to do, if you look at how do you want to live your life? In a lot of ways, it’s lifestyle design. And for you, this was something that was a huge consideration for your lifestyle. Forever, it will be this incredible part of your story that you’re able to tell for your daughter that moment where you’re like, “Yes, I’m going to do it, ” and then you do it. And what an amazing thing that you had built your career to be able to serve you. And that’s one of the things that we talk about occasionally on the podcast is this idea that we need to be aware that there are seasons where we are serving our business, we’re investing into it, we’re working really hard on it, we’re working in the margins, but then there’s also seasons where we should look at the business serving us and what does it look like to take withdrawals, not even necessarily financial withdrawals, but to say like, “Hey, I’m going to take a time withdrawal from the business that I have served over a long period of time.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s really cool to hear you tell your story and how you did that. ” And such a fun example of that being that it was you being able to be on Survivor. Remind me how many days it was that you ended up because you finished fourth?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So I was out on the island playing the game 25 out of 26 days, but-

Bjork Ostrom: So wild.

Liz Wilcox: I know. It is so wild. What’s even more wild is it’s not 26 days because I really expect it

Bjork Ostrom: To be out

Liz Wilcox: There the whole time, but

Bjork Ostrom: That’s

Liz Wilcox: Okay.That’s business, baby. We expect one thing, we pivot and we adapt. So I was out there five full weeks from start to finish from flying to LA. They take away your phone, you fly to Fiji, you have a week of prep work and then the cameras start rolling and then you come home. It was five full weeks. And now it’s actually set me up where every summer I take those

Bjork Ostrom: Four weeks. Yeah, because you’ve done it and now you’re like, wait, I can do this. You have the playbook.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: The

Liz Wilcox: Business truly, truly serves me. And it’s really all about intentionality. Maybe you don’t want to go on Survivor. 10 out of 10 would not recommend.

Bjork Ostrom: Was it worse than you thought it would be in terms of how extreme it was?

Liz Wilcox: I would say no, but the aftermath, so being on the TV show, being edited in a way … I own my own brand. The way that I show up online is exactly how I want to show up online. And when you’re on a TV show, it’s something entirely different. You literally sign away your rights to how you’ll be portrayed. And if you Google me, you’ll be like, “Whoa, okay, I get it now.” So

Bjork Ostrom: You’re talking specifically about one scene where it’s kind of this buildup and- Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they just

Liz Wilcox: Made me look like a crazy person, but it’s

Bjork Ostrom: Like

Liz Wilcox: Note-

Bjork Ostrom: Because it’s good TV. Yeah,

Liz Wilcox: It’s

Bjork Ostrom: Great

Liz Wilcox: TV and

Bjork Ostrom: It

Liz Wilcox: Really did actually happen.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Liz Wilcox: I really did have a meltdown, but I was exhausted and I was starving. That’s all I can say. Well,

Bjork Ostrom: And I think that’s the thing that’s interesting for me about the show is I think people don’t really realize what that’s like. And similarly, kind of a quick aside to, as an example of what you’re saying, for a long time, I had a personal trainer. I didn’t know until a year in that he was actually a part of the Bachelor franchise and I had Googled them because I wouldn’t have Instagram on my phone. And so I Googled Kirk DeWint Instagram. And then there’s a picture of him from a USA or US … There’s some gossip magazine and I clicked and read an article and I went in that day and I was like, “Kirk,” I was like, “I didn’t know you were on The Bachelor.” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been on all of them, Bachelor Nation, Bachelor in Paradise.” And he said that the thing that’s hardest about those is they will create the story arc that they want out of intentionally clipping it.

Bjork Ostrom: And so he had kind of a similar sentiment coming out of it where he was like, “You kind of are giving everything up over to them in terms of how they approach the footage and use the footage.” But all that to say, you made it extremely far in the show. It sounds like what you were saying is you also needed time in the aftermath to process, decompress. Is that a little bit of what you’re saying? So it wasn’t just those five weeks, it was also the time after.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, it was the time after to process, decompress like Bjorks just said, but also then the show aired, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, sure. Yeah, you don’t think about that.

Liz Wilcox: Any person who was on international TV, I had my head up my butt. I was like, “Oh, I’m on TV.” And then they’re not showing me in the best light in my opinion. And so then that’s driving me mad, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. And so it was a major distraction for about two years, but again, I had set up my business to serve me. And yes, there were times where, okay, we’ve got a sale coming up in March, beginning of February, Liz really got to get her act together. We’ve got to batch these emails. We’ve got to make sure our list is growing so we have new leads for this sale. And then during the sale and after I can kind of coast, because I have a membership, it’s not a live thing, it’s just content. And so then the business is serving me in return.

Liz Wilcox: It’s really this very symbiotic thing, but you have to be really intentional about that. Or the business, you will just be serving the business for your whole life.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes. It’s

Liz Wilcox: All about just knowing where you want to go, how much time you want to work, and what things you need to create to get there.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk more about that? Because I think that there’s a couple books that I’ve been reading by this author, Morgan Housel, and he talks a lot about finances. He wrote a book called Psychology of Money. The most recent one that he wrote is called The Art of Spending Money, which sounds a little bit weird, but really it’s like a psychology book. And one of the things he says in that book, it’s something like this, I’ll butcher the quote, but I don’t think he listens to the podcast, so it’s okay. Maybe he does. It’s something like 50% of people don’t know how to make more money and 50% of people don’t know how to stop making money. And I think that last half is interesting to me because I think in our world of entrepreneurship, business ownership, one of the things that I see often is people who are really successful, but it almost becomes a symptom of a deeper thing that results in them continuing to pursue more, grow more, earn more, and to never be able to pause or to take time to reflect when they need to or to take a season off.

Bjork Ostrom: So can you talk about what that looked like for you and how you knew that you needed that and needed that time from your business?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So number one, this was something that I had to do out of necessity at first. So I mentioned, or I think I mentioned, I grew up really poor. And so when I started this, I sold the travel blog and what I did with those earnings from the sale is I split it over 12 months because I knew I didn’t have any more income coming in. I cut myself off. And so it was out of necessity having to be sort of mindful of the cash flow. So let’s split the purchase price divide by 12 months. I’m going to give myself that as a salary. And then when I started lizwilcox.com and this email marketing thing, I told my bookkeeper, “Hey, this is how much money I need to make. I need to give myself a month.” And it was a very bare minimum. It was like, “Hey, this is my mom’s rent, this is my rent, this is what I think I need for groceries.” And that was pretty much it.

Liz Wilcox: And I think it was like $3,600 and I just doubled that number and said, “I need $6,800 or $7,000 a month. That’s how much money I need to make to pay myself that and pay the bills and anything above that I’m going to save.” And so then I realized, well, at about $10,000 a month, because I was still taking client work at this time, I’m going to start a wait list. I’m going to say no to that money because what I really need to do is build my email list up. I don’t need to take more clients. I’m good with the money I have. Sure, I would like more, but I know long-term, again, that intentionality, long-term this membership,

Liz Wilcox: Even at $9 a month is going to make me a lot more than if Bjork just gives me three to $5,000 today. And so it was that very intentional learning to say no when I’ve had enough, quote unquote, I have enough money that has been like a muscle I didn’t know I needed to develop, but I’ve developed. And so it’s very easy for me nowadays to say no, if I have a sponsorship, but it’s going to take me 10 days of really hard work to master whatever they want me to do, I can say, “Actually, I don’t need your $10,000. I have enough money. I’m good.” But it’s really just that practice, that financial discipline practice, I think, and just knowing what your enough number is and knowing what you want your life to actually look like. Again, I want my life to look like I don’t have to work.

Liz Wilcox: And honestly, y’all, at this point in the game, I only work like two to three hours a day and normally I don’t even work Fridays and sometimes I don’t work Mondays either if I’m not feeling it. That didn’t happen on accident. That was a lot of financial discipline. That was a lot of, “Hey, I know my number, I’m not going to overspend on the number, lifestyle creep is a real thing and I really want to be rich in time versus rich in money.” And that’s actually something Kit, formerly known as ConvertKit, they asked me to speak at craft and commerce about this last year. And it was just, again, that intentionality point of what do I want my life to look like? How much money do I actually need to get there? And how can I practice saying no?

Liz Wilcox: A friend of a friend wanted me to write their emails, nine figure business. They’re featured in Michael’s. They decorated the White House for Christmas, huge … They would pay me whatever I wanted. And I said, “Oh, no thanks. I don’t have time for that. ” Or they called my friend and they said, “You know what Liz knows we will pay her.” And my buddy said, “You can’t pay her. She doesn’t want to sit down and spend three months on your campaign. She needs to spend three months on her campaign.” And so it’s putting yourself first, I think as well, putting those goals, those intentions in front of everything else that is really to what Bjork was saying about learning how to spend money and how to stop making money.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Well, one of the things that you said there that I think is a really good concrete takeaway for people is that the first part was you had set a number, so you knew what that number needed to be. The second part was you got to that number kind of through, not that this is exactly what it was, but any means possible. And in this case, it was client work. And so, okay, and people will often say like, “Hey, I’m trying to figure out how do I transition? Maybe it’s a job that they really don’t like, or maybe they need to cover an income gap that they have, and they want to do it by starting a food blog or posting food content on social media.” And the thing that I often say is, “It’s totally possible, but it’ll take a long time.” And so how urgent is it that you do this?

Bjork Ostrom: And if it’s urgent, then you shouldn’t start a food blog hoping to monetize it. You should have some type of service that you can offer that gets you to that point. Ideally, it’s a service adjacent to the thing that you want to be doing, and that was one of the things that you did. So you set the number, you had a service-based business adjacent to the thing you wanted to be doing, which was an expertise and email. And then as soon as you hit that number of what you needed, then everything additional from a work perspective went to building the next thing that you wanted to create that was the transition then out of the service business. And then that becomes the thing that allows you time flexibility that a service business wouldn’t. And I think it’s the first time that it’s really been codified in a way.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like, yeah, I think that’s a pretty cool playbook for people to follow if they’re interested in eventually getting to a business that does allow for that time freedom, but they’re trying to figure out how to cover the gap between it. So at this point, have you fully transitioned over and now you are just working on and within your own business as opposed to doing client work?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So I have not taken a client in over four years. So it actually happened pretty quickly for me once I … So I was doing the service. I was doing a lot of copywriting, email copywriting for people. And then I started a really low cost membership where it was like fill in the blank copy, fill in the blank email templates. And that membership actually turns five years old at the time of this recording in just a few days. It’s crazy. So within nine months of starting that membership, I was able to quit client work. Now that’s the exception. That’s not the rule. I was going to give myself two years. I’m going to slowly work on this little $9 thing for two years. I know in two years I could get a thousand members and that’ll be $9,000 a month. That’s way more than my enough number at the time.

Liz Wilcox: And now at the time of this recording, five years later, we have 4,000 members. Amazing. And I’m looking, if you’re watching the video in the background, it says, EMM road to 10K. I’m looking to hit 10K in the next few years. Cool. And so that’s like a $1.2 million business or something like that. But yeah, it really was that breaking it apart and then knowing like, okay, I hit the number with the service. If Bjork comes to me, “Hey, Liz, I need this copy.” Okay, great. I’m going to put you on a wait list because I need the extra time now to work on this little $9 thing over here that’s adjacent but different.

Bjork Ostrom: You’re saying the client would come to you, they’re put on a wait list. And the point of that is if you eventually do need that work, you have another client who turns out or they get what they need, then they would come to the top, you’d reach out to them. So it’s almost like not even saying no, it’s a soft no. It’s saying, “I’m booked right now, might be able to get to you, but I’ll get to you when I get through the queue of other people that I’m working with. ” Yeah.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. For me, it would be, yes, I can’t wait to work with you. We can start that project right now it’s February 10th, we can start that project April 1st. Does that work for you? Would you like to put a deposit down? And so I’m getting that deal without having to start right away.

Bjork Ostrom: Working weekends then and getting burnt out.

Liz Wilcox: Exactly. It’s learning how to set that boundary before the work even starts and maybe even get a little cash upfront, right?

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Liz Wilcox: So Yeah, it’s been absolutely amazing. I always knew I didn’t want to do client work forever, and now four years later I’m able to serve thousands of people and just hang out with people like Bjork talking about email and Survivor.

Bjork Ostrom: Both great things.

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Bjork Ostrom: I’m interested to hear about two things. Number one, I want to talk about email, how people can start to be intentional with their email, how we can think about email, but also interested to talk about advice that you would have around growing a membership. Because just this last month, I’ve probably gotten, I don’t know, a handful of emails from creators who have said, “Hey, this used to be great. I would create content, I’d publish it to a blog, I would get traffic from Google, maybe social media, I’d monetize with ads.” And that was the playbook and it worked and it was predictable. And if you worked hard at it, usually your site would grow, you’d earn more. But that’s really shifted for a lot of people over the past three years, people saying, “Hey, my traffic’s down 30%, my traffic is down 40%.” Which then, if you’re monetizing with ads means your income is down 30%, your income is down 40%.

Bjork Ostrom: And there’s been a lot of conversations around membership and community and creating something that is allowing you to have kind of ownership of it, the relationship, which email is that as well, which we can talk about. But what have you found around growing a membership that’s been helpful and how have you been able to go from zero to a thousand to 4,000? What are the things that you’ve learned along the way?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. So I think the best way to grow a membership in 2026 and beyond is to really get in front of your people and show your face. And this isn’t anything I’m hearing people talk about, but it’s not enough anymore, I don’t think, to just throw a link out, “Hey, join my membership.” Everybody and their mother has a membership. Okay. It started with Netflix and now your mom and pop has a membership. I went to go fix my laptop. They wanted me to start a membership. I’m like, “Dude, this is not going to break again. What?” It’s a fluke, okay?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Liz Wilcox: And so everybody’s got a membership. So it’s not enough just to, even if you have a great relationship with your email list, which I do, I really encourage you, if you really want to grow a membership and even especially start, you’ve got to get some face time with your people. Start, what kind of content are you going to create in your membership? What are you going to put out there? What are you going to promise? Can you do that in a live format at first and just give people a taste of what it’s like to work with you? That’s going to build a lot of trust so that they say yes to giving you money every single month. People are truly practicing discernment right now with their money. I don’t believe that people are not spending money. I just went to Hawaii. Holy crap, packed shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk.

Liz Wilcox: People are spending-

Bjork Ostrom: We just went to Disney World.

Liz Wilcox: Right. People are spending, okay? But you’ve got to give them a reason, right? And you’ve got to give them a reason to trust you. And so one way that I’m growing in the last 12 months and something I’m doubling down on right now is just doing as many live events as possible. And yes, I know this is work and it’s going to push you and it’s not going to be comfortable if you’re not used to getting in front of the camera, but I know food creators, you guys are the honor students of the blogging world. Okay? I know you can do this. I know you can put … Get what is it called? Like an abspot, right? Get one, put it in your kitchen, go live, cook a meal with your people. Maybe that’s your membership. And so what I’m doing is a lot of workshops.

Liz Wilcox: I do email. So last month we did a welcome sequence workshop. Here’s the four emails you need. This month we’re doing a list building challenge. In April, we’re going to be talking about email engagement and it’s all going to be live for people to come and see me write these emails live. Why? Because I want them to trust that I’m the expert and trust that I’m going to show up for them. Because when I show up live, I’m giving it my all, we’re having fun. People can get a sense of who I am much more, as much as I love to say it, or I hate to say it because I love email, more than just sending an email. They need some FaceTime with you. I think that’s really where I see people struggling right now with memberships and even just digital products is they’re not getting any FaceTime with their people.

Liz Wilcox: Gone are the days where we could just plop a link down and people are buying. Okay? We really need to show up for our people and show out for them. And so that’s what I’m seeing as far as growth goes. And obviously some other things I’ve been doing are just a lot of collaborations, right? Like I’m on this podcast. Hopefully fingers crossed, we put a link to that membership.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, we do. Yeah, we will.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Yeah. Just stuff like that’s how it works, right? Stuff like that. I also do freebie swaps, which is where, hey, you share my freebie, I share yours. And then on the backend, I’m sending emails about my membership. That helps me grow. And also what is really helping me grow from day one to today is affiliate marketing. So I give people 50% if they sell it for me. So maybe Bjork in the show notes, he’s putting an affiliate link, he’s going to get $4.50. I get $4.50. We call it a day. It’s really fun. And that’s a great way that I see people growing their memberships right now.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. It’s one of the things that is a mindset shift for people in the world of food who are used to monetizing via ads is that you shift to start to think about other sources of revenue. With that shift comes a change in how you are viewing yourselves as a marketer because right now a lot of food creators are saying, “Hey, this is an awesome recipe. I love this recipe. You need to check it out. Here’s where it is on my blog. Go and visit it. ” That’s the marketing that’s happening. There’s a shift that occurs when you are now a food creator who says, “Hey, I’ve created this recipe.” Or in this case, there’s now this membership that you can become a part of, go and check it out. And I think that probably what has to happen, and this is where I think email becomes really important, is the steps that people go through right now are top of funnel, create a video, you publish something on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and then there’s a link to the page that you go to sign up, or not to sign up, but just to get the recipe.

Bjork Ostrom: But in the world of product, and especially in the world of membership where it’s recurring, there probably needs to be more that happens in between there in order for you to establish a relationship. And I know you talk about this idea of kind of follower to friend, to customer. And so what does it look like to have that period in between where you see a piece of content that’s free, that’s on the open web, that’s available for people to consume, but then you take it to the next level where you establish connection with somebody before saying, “Hey, sign up for this membership.” What would your advice be for people to build out that middle part and to become better at marketing a product or a membership via email?

Liz Wilcox: Listen, if you think you’re not a marketer, I got news for you, baby. You are. Okay. We market ourselves all day long. We go to the gas station. We want the guy to be nice to us. We’re marketing ourselves as a nice guy. Okay? You want your husband to do something for you? You marketing yourself as somebody worthy of him doing that thing for you. Okay. We are marketers, right? Your kids don’t like vegetables. You are marketing those vegetables by sternum into the macaroni and cheese or whatever the heck. I’m not a cook. I’m not a food blogger. Okay. We are marketers. Okay. So I want you pause this podcast right now and say out loud, “I am a marketer because I know you’re probably thinking, I’m just a food blogger. I’m just a food … I’m just a YouTuber.” No, you are not just anything, baby.

Liz Wilcox: You are so capable. You are already a marketer. You’ve been marketing since the day you were born. What do you think crying is? That’s a baby marketing themselves like, “Hey, I need to eat. Please feed me. Aren’t I cute?” DNA is marketing, okay? Everything is marketing. So you are a marketer. You can do this. And so when it comes to taking them from a visit, they found you on Pinterest, they click over to your site, they click the save this recipe, whatever. It’s really not that complicated. Just be a human, especially in this world of AI where everybody’s just churning and burning AI content. Oh, just put it into chat and it’ll just write my newsletter for me. No, baby. No. You write your newsletter because I know you can do it and I know people want to connect with you. So the biggest mistake I see, especially food creators making is because we are the honor roll students, we want to be pristine.

Liz Wilcox: We want our newsletters to be as beautiful as the images on our blog posts. But guess what? If I’m signing up for a food blog recipe, I’ve probably signed up for 10 at the same time. Okay? And so I’m going to get that same email from Shahara, Nahaku, Lakendra, Denise. Hi, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to my website, blah, blah, freakiny blah. And it’s got this beautiful picture of you in your kitchen with this beautiful apple pie or whatever your thing is. It looks the same as everything else. So that middle of the funnel that Bjork is talking about, just be yourself. You don’t have to have Liz Wilcox’s personality with a headband and in sync earrings and all this stuff. You don’t have to be on Survivor to have a personality. Okay, you have a personality. So just being yourself, writing emails that sound like you.

Liz Wilcox: Writing emails like you’re just writing to Liz Wilcox. If you were listening to this podcast and you’re like, “Hey, this really resonated with me. I’m going to give her a shout. I’m going to DM her. I’m going to email her and let her know this, that and the other really spoke to me. ” How would you write that email? That’s how I want you to write your emails. That’s how you’re going to market yourself because we’re going to go from Bjork said it, follower to friend, and how do we create friends? Three things. Well, number one, we’ll say four things. Number one, be yourself. Number two, show that you are invested in your people. You’ve got to email. I know the majority of you listening probably already do email, so that’s great. Keep emailing. Also, say, “Hey, it took me 10 hours to craft this recipe.” Or, “I’ve been making this recipe for five years and I’ve finally perfected it.

Liz Wilcox: “ That shows you’re invested in your craft. Even if you’ve got a podcast or you take pictures, I spend a thousand dollars on the camera that takes these pictures. You might think they don’t care. They just want the recipe, but they do care because they want to know that you are invested in them so that they will invest in you later. The second thing is be relatable. And spoiler alert, this is actually super easy. People want to relate to other people. ”Hey, when I was making this recipe, I burned the syrup three times.“ Okay. People do want to know that. People would eat that up, no pun intended. Okay? Or saying, ”My toddler got in the way,“ or, ”It took me 20 minutes to write this email and I still think it sucks, but I’m going to send it anyway.” That’s super relatable. My fridge broke.

Liz Wilcox: I had to take the dog for a walk. I do carpool on Tuesdays. All those things are relatable. You don’t have to tell these long drawn out stories, just be relatable. And the third thing is stay top of mind. You can’t just email once and expect people to remember you and join your membership. You got to stay top of mind. So emailing on a regular basis at least once a week is a great way to do that. So again, how are we going to market ourselves? We’re just going to be relatable, show we’re invested in people and stay top of mind.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. I think of a friend of mine, his name is Matthew. He started a decaf coffee company and it’s just somebody who’s really good at email. And I’ve said that before and have forwarded his emails to other people. And I paused and I thought, why is he good at email? Why is it one of the rare newsletters that I continue to subscribe to? And the takeaway that I had was because he’s a genuinely good storyteller and he’s vulnerable in them. And it’s not just vulnerability to be vulnerable. It’s connected to the mission of his company, which Wimp Decaf Coffee is all about this idea of living decaf. And so he talks about what is it like for him as a designer and as somebody who burnt out at owning an agency. And he’ll tell stories of kind of, “Hey, this was a hard day.

Bjork Ostrom: Here’s why it was a hard day. Here’s what I’m doing in order to process through that. ” And for me, it’s like as his friend, but also as a business owner, it’s been interesting to see, oh, these are the emails that I open and read. And why is that? It’s because I’m genuinely curious about what Matthew has to say. And naturally what happens then is whenever he sends these out, it’s not once a week, but every few weeks I open it up and I see Wimp Decaf logo. I think about it a little bit. It’s not like I think, oh, I should buy that every time, but it’s top of mind. And I think that’s what we need to do as creators is think about how can we create in a way that we genuinely connect with people. And it’s one of the great opportunities that we have is sharing and connecting with people in a way that potentially even moves them.

Bjork Ostrom: It doesn’t always have to be that, obviously, but I was reflecting on what you were saying as I was thinking about these emails that I continued to open from Matthew and saw a lot of corolaries between the two. How about that next step then? Once you are doing that, I think a lot of people are nervous then to say, “And join my membership,” to take that step to ask. So what advice would you have for people in the world of email to take that step into asking somebody to take an action that involves buying a thing?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Listen, you got a stomach, right? That stomach needs to eat. Groceries are expensive, baby. So next time you get nervous about asking, just remember your stomach, maybe we got to be unapologetic over here. I love you. I say it with love. You’re not running a charity. Okay. And even if you are running a charity, guess what? Charities need a lot of money to run themselves to further the mission. Okay. Unfortunately, we just live in this capitalist society. I don’t know how else to say it. And so you want to serve people. I know you didn’t start this business to, “Oh, I’m going to be a multimillionaire and not care about anybody and I’m going to sell whatever I want to sell that sells just so I can sell.”That’s not your mindset. I know that’s not why you started your blog or your business, right?

Liz Wilcox: But the best way you can serve people is through your paid products. Nobody wants … Again, I say it with love. Nobody wants to go to your site and have popup ads and have ads every paragraph. I know we’ve all heard it from our friends. “Oh, you have a food blog. I hate when the recipe is at the bottom and I can’t wrong exams.

Bjork Ostrom: “Yeah, for sure. Okay.

Liz Wilcox: So you are doing a service. You are providing a service by having paid products because you need money to keep this blog going. The blog is not free. Your time is not free. You can’t just do this out of the bottom of your heart. And so even saying like, “ Hey, growing this membership allows me to have less advertising on my site. ”Being transparent, showing how you’re invested. “Hey, I’m invested in this because I know you don’t want more ads. I know you don’t want ads in my newsletter, whatever.” You might think people don’t care, but they do care. If I read that from a food … Oh, thank God. Yes. $20 a month, you got it, baby. I’m going to tip you too. Okay? Oh, I can have an ad free experience. This is great. So when you get nervous, just remind yourself you are serving your people and the best way you can serve your people is through paid products.

Liz Wilcox: I love my people. My main product is $9 a month. I teach email marketing. The next guy that has a membership like mine, it’s $99 a month. I really do love my people. And if I could run a charity, I would. But at the end of the day, I support three households, okay? So I’ve got to charge something. It’s $9.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Liz Wilcox: I’m very unapologetic about that. I love my price. That’s another thing. Not to interrupt myself, but-

Bjork Ostrom: I’ll let you. Yeah.

Liz Wilcox: Find a price that delights you. Don’t just price something because Liz or Bjork told you, “Oh gosh, you’ve got to charge this. ” Find a price that delights you. I had a VIP day. It was $2,500. It delighted me to charge that. It felt like, yep, that’s worth getting out of bed for. The $9, it delights me. Yeah, it’s only $9. Have fun with it. Check it out. If you don’t like it, you can cancel anytime. Those are prices that delight me. So find a price that delights you. Remember, you are actually serving your people and just go for it. It is your job to sell. You are the business owner. So I say it with love. Do your job, baby.

Bjork Ostrom: I love that. Good note to end on and a good opportunity for you to sell the membership. Can you talk about what it is and who might be a good fit for it as we close out? And like we said, we’ll also be sure to include a link in the show notes.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I thought he’d never ask. So my membership is really simple. If you don’t know how to show up and relate, if you don’t know how to show up and tell people, “Hey, I’m invested in you. ” If staying top of mind feels really hard, that’s what email marketing membership is. For $9 a month, every single week, I send you a weekly newsletter template. It comes with a video that shows you how and why you would send this email. It shows you what to send. And honestly, with ChatGPT nowadays, you can put the template directly into AI. You can say, “Hey, I’m a food blogger. Here’s my mission, here’s my values, here’s my voice.” It’s going to get you 99% of the way there. You also get access to live Q&A with me because I know getting started can be really hard, but really it just is that weekly newsletter template for you to take and make your own so you can turn those followers into friends.

Liz Wilcox: And if you really are that nervous, I show you in the video how to turn every template into a sales email. It’s super, super simple. I can’t wait for you to try it out. Bjork’s going to put it in the show notes, but you can also go directly to lizwilcox.com. There’s a yellow bar at the top that says something about the $9 thing. You can click that and go directly to the sales page.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Liz, super fun to chat about two things I love, Survivor and also email. I can promise you the only podcast interview where we ever hit both of those topics in the depth that we’ve hit them. So thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing your story. Super inspiring and we’ll have to have you on again soon sometime.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily again from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. We really hope you enjoyed that interview with Liz. If you learned something from today’s episode, we would really appreciate it if you shared the episode with your community and left a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Since we are kicking off a new month, I wanted to pop in and let you know what you can expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. We have a really exciting month of content coming up for Food Blogger Pro members, and we are kicking it off on Thursday, May 7th with a brand new coaching call with Allie Ellis from The Toddler Kitchen. You can find the video and audio replays at foodbloggerpro.com/live. Next up on Thursday, May 14th, we’ll be releasing an update to our understanding ads course.

Last up on Thursday, May 21st, we’ll be hosting a live Q&A all about Pinterest with our Pinterest expert, Kate All from SimplePin Media. As always, there will be conversations going on in the forum, new blog posts, and lots more within the membership. If you’re not yet a FoodBloggerPro member and you’d like to join, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more about everything we offer and to join us. And if you are a member, we look forward to seeing you in the membership this month. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you back here next week.