Joanie Simon of The Bite Shot on Scaling, Burnout, and Finding Joy Again

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey:: Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This is Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team. In this week’s episode, we’re sitting down to chat with Joanie Simon of The Bite Shot to peel back the curtain on what really happens when your creative passion turns into a full-blown business from hiring her first team members to hitting burnout. Joanie walks us through the behind the scenes moments. Most people don’t talk about the tug of war between chasing creativity and managing spreadsheets, the pressure to please everyone and what happens when you lose touch with your audience and with yourself. But here’s the heart of it. Joanie didn’t just survive. She found her way back to her why? Through mentoring, self-care, and some serious rethinking of what success even means. She’s redefined her path on her own terms, and she’s sharing the full story with us. So if you’ve ever felt stuck between your passion and your business plan, or if you just need a little reminder that growth is messy, but worth it, this episode is 100% for you. Now, without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Joanie, welcome back to the podcast.

Joanie Simon: Oh my goodness, it’s an absolute pleasure. I love hanging out with you, Bjork.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we have had multiple times that we have talked about your journey as a creator, the business that you’ve built. We’re going to be talking more about that today, but we’re going to be taking a unique angle on it and talking about your process of scaling up and scaling down intentionally, both intentionally. But before we do that, can you frame up the conversation a little bit by telling people what it is that you do? What does day-to-day look like for you right now? If we met on the street, we didn’t know each other, and I said, what do you do? How would you describe it?

Joanie Simon: Oh, man. I mean, I always lead with the food. Photography is sort of the thing that people know me for and is the thing after all these years going on, 15 years of creating in some way, shape or form on the internet, food photography has always been a part of that and is the thing that I still love the most. Yesterday I was photographing something and I’m like, it’s still my favorite thing to do is just take pictures of food. So where kind of the bulk of my business that probably folks here on Food Blogger Pro would know me from is teaching on the Bite Shot, which started as a YouTube channel in 2017, which was born out of some local workshops I was doing with local food bloggers who were like, your photos, can you teach us to do that? And lo and behold, there were certain number of skills that I was like, I don’t need to teach these in a workshop. I could just put these on the internet and then you can come to my workshop so that we don’t have to go through the basics. But lo and behold, there was a whole Internet’s worth of people out there who really resonated with the way that I was teaching food photography. And that sort of then unintentionally snowballed into a whole business where I teach online courses and host a community and get to interact with food photographers all around the world. So yeah, that’s a big part. But the other thing that I like to say, when people are food photography, they’re trying to grapple with what that is and like, oh, the fake ice cream. I’m like, no, it’s not the fake ice cream. That’s at least not what I do. I do a lot of cookbook photography for a variety of different authors. Actually just sent final images to a publisher for one that’s coming out this fall. Awesome. And then also packaging and campaigns and other things like that for brands, businesses, restaurant stuff. So I like to as a multi-passionate person to dabble in a lot of places.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s one of the great things about the work that we do is we can craft our own job description. And for you, it sounds like part of that is actually doing the work of food photography, whether it’s for a cookbook, whether it’s for a photo shoot for a brand, maybe, but also then to be able to teach people, which sounds like that was a natural outflow of some things that you were already doing and people being like, Hey, I want to know more about this. It’s always important for us as entrepreneurs to have our ear to the ground and to know what are people asking us questions about as an indicator of potential opportunities for us and for you to be able to do both of those things. What we’re going to talk about today is your journey of building this business. And all of us, we start on our own and we are doing all of the emailing. We are doing all of the, in your case, photography, sending out invoices, you’re doing everything on your own. And then slowly over time, maybe you have extra money that you can invest into the business or the business starts to make money. And then you start to think, okay, what do I do now? Let’s bring some people in. Let’s kind of scale this business. And it sounds like for you, really around 2022, 2023, you started to have this idea of scaling the business. So talk about what it looked like for you at that point. What did your business look like? And then what pushed you into this point of starting to think about maybe I should scale this and really bring on a team?

Joanie Simon: So yeah, starting in 2017, sort of just falling into this and starting to go, oh, well, people want to go even more in depth. So now it’s time to start teaching courses. And certainly around that 2017, 2018 timeframe attended the ConvertKit conference, well now Kit their Craft and Commerce conference and really connecting with a lot of people, other people in the course space. And I think that was a booming time for it. And so kind of following that path and seeing some pretty significant surprising success that my husband and I would turn around and go, how did this happen? This is incredible. And that we’re getting to people, just financially.

Bjork Ostrom: You went to a ConvertKit conference, people talking about courses. You launch a course and the course does well financially, and it kind of feels like a little bit of a different version of winning the lottery you worked for. It

Joanie Simon: It does.

Bjork Ostrom: It was really, you put a lot of time and energy into it, but it’s like a singular event, a course launch that results in a financial windfall. Is that kind of what you’re referring to that moment of like, oh my goodness, I launched a thing and it worked.

Joanie Simon: Yeah, totally. And so then you, and I’m having fun and I feel like for the first time, not in a place where I am having mean certainly to your point, you put in a lot of work to make that happen, and that didn’t just happen overnight, but at the same time, it was sort of separating me from this idea of exchanging time for money. We had this thing that could move and scale in theory, so then continued to release more courses, community continued to build, seeing some great growth. And so around 2021 starting to just go, okay, we continue to grow year after year. We’re in such a great place. And also watching a lot of the people who I had kind of come up with in this space and going, well, now it seems like they’re adding teams. And I am sort of that mental head space of, well, I guess I haven’t achieved, I haven’t done the thing if I’m not growing it to another level beyond what it is, so I guess I need to hire people. And just all of those kind of external pressures. And also as an overachiever,

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Joanie Simon: I was like, well, I got to make it bigger. So had met some really amazing, incredible people and it was like, okay, let’s join the team. But in retrospect, which we can certainly get into going, maybe that wasn’t actually the moment to scale or at least the inspiration to do that wasn’t fully fleshed out from the standpoint a business plan perspective. It was more of that external pressure to go, well, this is what it seems like I’m supposed to be doing, so I guess I will do this. Everything else had sort of met this sort of plateau. And also for me creatively, I was like, okay, I probably need some outside influences. I need something to, I can’t see just doing this same exact thing for the next 10 years. So I guess let’s throw some chaos into the mix and see what that brings on.

Bjork Ostrom: If I were to reflect that back, it was like you had built this, you had been doing work and the work was in-person classes or potentially photo shoots for people who are doing a cookbook or brands that was successful. You were also building an audience as you started to talk about best practices as it relates to food photography, producing that content. You launch a course, the course does well, the business is growing year over year, and the general thought is how do you continue to keep this momentum? How do you continue to grow a thing? You look around and you see other people building a team. They have people who are coming in and suddenly it’s one person and that one person becomes five people. And so it seems like that’s the natural path to go down. What I’m interested in hearing about is how much of that was, how much of it can you pinpoint to a certain feeling or desire that you had that resulted in you starting to hire and grow and scale your team? Was it the desire to be perceived as a growing business? Was it the desire to try and grow as much as possible? Maybe it’s a little bit of psychoanalyzing yourself in that stage and saying, what did you anticipate that feeling like if you did grow your team or grow the business, or what did success look like in that moment?

Joanie Simon: Yeah, I think it was, you asked that as such a good question. I’m like, oh, good. This is a therapy session where I get to work through all these.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s what this will be. Yeah.

Joanie Simon: No, I think it was a lot of restlessness that there had been this trajectory and the YouTube channels blowing up. I had worked for five, I’m trying to remember the timelines, but good number of years trying to get a food blog off and never seeing that come to fruition and trying to get this other YouTube channel off the ground, and that never really turning anything in a podcast. And I was throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall. And so all of a sudden we’ve found this thing and locked in and it worked. People are getting value, and it felt explosive. We were hitting a hundred thousand, 300,000 subscribers. It was bonkers to me, and people were buying courses. So I think there got to this point then where it was like, okay, now we’re not growing at that same exponential rate. And so I get restless, and I even now in retrospect, I remember telling my husband, Ryan, saying, what am I supposed to be doing? What do I want to be when I grow up? He’s like, are you crazy? You’ve just built this incredible thing. It’s also some of that inability to really, that I’ve struggled with in so many different places in life is that ability to sit back and just appreciate what you’ve accomplished and give space and time to that as opposed to onto the next thing, onto the next thing that drive, drive, drive. And so I think getting to this little moment of, okay, things are sort of maintaining clearly I need to do something to keep pushing, pushing, pushing, which isn’t always as I’ve learned the right motivation.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think for me, one of the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about is how does work or my job or my career or the things that I’m building, how do they serve me or why am I drawn to them? And I think one of the reasons is because of dopamine, the feeling that I get, which is addictive around creating a thing that people see that resonates, that results in numbers going up and producing revenue, and then you repeat that and do that again. How does that feel? That feels really good. And then when you hit a plateau, it’s not bad. It’s not even a decline. It’s just not the same amount of dopamine that you had before. For myself, what I find is I want to get back to what it was before because it doesn’t feel as good as what it did before. And so I’m seeking out ways to try and get back to what it was. And it sounds like for you, as you looked around and said, how do I get back to this certain level of growth, one of the things that you looked at was like, maybe we should bring in people, hire people in order to do more. Is that accurate? Anything else that you would add to that?

Joanie Simon: Yeah, kind of that idea of if you build it, they will come. And also that mental thought and fear of maybe I haven’t taken big enough risks. Maybe I need to, if you want to be a different person, you have to think differently, but not necessarily weighing what that’s going to actually look like. But yeah, sort of that I remember being in a place of thinking, oh, well, I am not taking enough risks. I’m not living out loud enough. I’m not dreaming big enough. And sort of some of those pressures too, I think.

Bjork Ostrom: Which is a really common sentiment in the world of entrepreneurship or even business influencers who are like, don’t think two x, think 10 x. It’s like, don’t try and grow to 400,000, you got to think about 4 million, which I think there’s something that is worth considering with that. But also the flip side of that is what if you actually are just good with what you have and really enjoy that and embrace that, and we’ll get to some of those conversations. But before we do, talk us through some of those early stages of starting to think about scaling. So who did you hire? What was your vision for when you were scaling in your mind? What did you hope to achieve? Talk us through the early stages of saying, this is something I’m really going to go for and really invest in.

Joanie Simon: So as a creative person, sometimes the details are not, and the systems and the organization is not necessarily firsthand to me. And I was like, if we’re going to make this big, I need somebody who is systems oriented, who’s kind of like a director of operations kind of role. So that’s what I had made connection. Somebody incredible came with so many incredible skills and really did, and I am very thankful for some of the work that we really did during that time, bringing in a lot of formalization of workflows and structures and being able to analyze those in ways that I’m a very feelings and very creative brain. You’re a creator. I’m like, but does it feel good? She’s like, but does it actually save us time? So I think was, she was a really great counterpoint to that and sort of in that process then going, okay, well, here’s some of the other holes and gaps in our business in terms of things that we could take off my plate so that I could focus more on the vision and the bigger picture. Things like day-to-day support in the community, social media content, and also bringing in the idea of I had always grown organically in terms of sharing content and advertising courses and building my email list. And so kind of thinking, okay, well, if we want to scale, we need to reach more people. And so then bringing in the Facebook ads sides of things, Instagram ads, and really kind of formalizing more of that outbound reach that had never been tapped before, because it had always just been what video does Joanie want to make in connection with potentially what’s going on right now course wise and what’s going to be attractive? But really just kind doing that organically as opposed to really bringing in, additionally, also hiring a consultant to sort of go, okay, if you’re going to take this course structure to the next level, you’re going to need funnels and you’re going to need to set up this structure and these email. It was a lot of more of the nitty gritty strategy in terms of, which I think certainly works for some folks, but was definitely completely new world to me in terms of how to take this big mass of the internet, funnel it into really hammering people and really getting those communications going to then really analyzing conversion ratios and things like that that again, I never, I was like, do people want to buy the course if they not want to buy the course? So those were some of just the strategic folks that we brought in. Ultimately, the team in terms of formal employees ended up being three. And then we had, and

Bjork Ostrom: Were those W2 employees?

Joanie Simon: So we were doing all the things, paying all the payroll taxes and all the things that again, were brand new to me as well, and hadn’t really thought through from a financial perspective ahead of time either.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, can you talk about that? What did that look like? Because a big transition from you are a creator working with contractors here and there to get stuff done. You build an audience organically, so you’re not paying for the content or you’re not paying for the sales, and it’s a really lean operation that potentially, especially if you do a course launch, can be highly profitable. And then you make a change into having payroll and suddenly there’s thousands or tens of thousands of dollars every month that’s going out and you’re paying thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for ads, and it’s a very different business. Can you talk about what that was like to change from this really lean operation into maybe a more traditional business with payroll and all these other expenses and what that felt like to make that transition?

Joanie Simon: Yeah. I mean, in the middle of, well, I say to make that transition, it was definitely like, oh, this is, my dad owned a small business since retired, but I remember payroll was a stressful thing. And so then all of a sudden I’m transitioning into that. I’m like, oh, this is why we get stressed out every two weeks because there’s a bucket of money and we’re watching that bucket of money start to, and I was like, we’re working towards this. I mean, essentially the way we had oriented is brought on this team and developed this plan of, okay, here is this big product that will serve our audience, meet the needs, and here’s the price point of that, and here’s what our goal is in order to essentially pay for all, make it worth all of this outlay. And so we were kind of gearing toward that big, massive, I’m trying to remember, they were saying it was going to be a million dollar launch, so we’re gunning for that million dollar launch. And in the meantime, just watching the bank accounts, dwindling, dwindling, dwindling, okay, let’s stay strong. This is what they tell you happens. And so you’re like, you

Bjork Ostrom: Have runway and you have burn, and you’re using up that runway. But this idea that you eventually get to a launch,

Joanie Simon: But

Bjork Ostrom: It’s also a very different type of business, just psychologically. So there’s a financial piece of, okay, now you have money coming out in these tranches twice a month or whatever it ends up being. But also just the psychology of, okay, we really need this thing to work, as opposed to before, it’s like if it doesn’t work, it’s a bummer, but it’s not like then you have this payroll that you have to support along the way. So can you talk about what it felt responsibility of that?

Joanie Simon: Yeah, for sure. Because not just paying. Yeah, I mean, these are people’s lives. People are now working for me. They have families, they have mortgages, they have all, and so that psychological pressure is just completely different as opposed to a 10 99 who I can just, oh, hey, like my video editor who I’ve worked with for five, six years and hey, here’s some new videos and now I’m not doing videos for a while, and now we’re back. And it kind of ebbs and flows.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Can you talk about what that was, that transition as a creator to make this change from working from an inspired place, Hey, I can kind of do this and here’s what I feel like doing today, and it may or may not relate to the courses, to maybe something that was a little bit more structured and required you to show up in a different way and what that transition was like.

Joanie Simon: I mean, we were definitely focused on efficiency of how do we get, because it was prescribed that we needed to be posting to social every day. We needed to be creating YouTube videos every week, which for the first couple of years, I was so motivated and inspired and didn’t have a ton on my plate. So I was publishing weekly in the years of the bite shot. But to that point, things had sort of waned and it was sort of based on the inspiration of the muses. So yeah, suddenly being in this sort of frame of reference where we needed to get Max creative out of it while doing that on a time-bound schedule. So there were definitely some efficiencies that, again, I’ve adopted and I’m super grateful for. We started scripting YouTube videos and then reading ’em from a teleprompter, which there was a transition from that period. But yeah, I mean that did alleviate a lot of mental stress and has been something

Bjork Ostrom: That was a win. Yeah.

Joanie Simon: It was a super win. But yeah, just the volume of how much needed to be produced in a certain period of time while also having a team where we demanded high excellence of ourselves was really, I mean, it really did a number on my nervous system if we’re being totally honest. And it took a good year and a half to really after the later part, which I’m sure we’ll get to, took a lot of coming down from that. It just continued to push and push. And I at that time, was a good pusher and I was like, well, we’ll just continue to rise to the occasion. And we created some really great things in there, but definitely at the expense of personal wellbeing and mental health,

Bjork Ostrom: I think it’s relatable. We’ve had a lot of conversations whether on the podcast or not with business owners, entrepreneurs, creators who have experienced a similar thing. And I think one of the things that’s ourselves included, I think one of the things that’s unique about the business that we are in is that we are also the product. And in a lot of ways, the content that you were producing, you are a part of the product because you are showing up on YouTube, you are teaching, you are the educator. And so if you are looking to increase output, you’re also increasing the requirements of yourself. You are requiring more of yourself, and you are requiring more of yourself in a structured way. Whereas before, it was an inspired way, and I know Lindsay has reflected on seasons where she’s had a bigger team and then feels a certain responsibility to that team to produce content. And so suddenly it changes from producing content because you’re excited about it or inspired by it, or it’s something that you feel like is going to resonate with your audience to, I got to do this because it’s my job and my job is to produce this piece of content for Tuesday so we can get this thing out on Thursday. And what ends up happening is for Lindsay, I think she could say this, there’s this realization that one of the key benefits of the preexisting job description was a certain level of flexibility, autonomy, creativity, that when you create something more structured potentially goes away, there’s a huge personality component to it. But for a personality who values some of the more unstructured inspired nature of creating, which I think is a lot of creators, to have something that is more rigid and feels more manufacturing line in terms of this has to happen at this point and this is what we’re doing, somebody’s keeping a schedule and they’re keeping you accountable to that schedule, still a good thing, but can also be really depleting from a creativity standpoint. Did you feel any of that in the process?

Joanie Simon: One thousand percent, yes. And I don’t think it helps either. I mean, knowing your personality, right? My personality is a people pleaser, and so we want to make everybody happy and we want to make this work. And so was doing that certainly to the, and I would say looking at a lot of those YouTube videos, I mean, there’s some good stuff that came out of that period, but a lot of it, it’s like we were just doing the thing to get the thing done and it didn’t have that same little extra sparkle where you’re super excited about it and which I think propels the machine forward.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think the one piece that has to exist in it still is if you don’t have that kind of rigid structure, you still have the natural engine to create. Because I think for some people, if you don’t have that, you just never end up pressing publish. And so there has to be this sweet spot where there’s still some inherent self pressure around getting something out, but everybody probably has a threshold where once that gets too extreme, then it becomes kind of soul sucking or uninspired. But also if it gets to the other end where it’s like, oh, I’m only going to create when I really feel inspired and you never actually sit down and do the work, then you’re never going to press publish. What do you find to be the sweet spot knowing that you’ve had now kind of both ends of that? How do you show up today in a way where you consistently create, but without the pressure of the extreme, like got to publish at 8:00 AM on Tuesday, this specific piece of content?

Joanie Simon: Yeah, no, that’s such a great point. Yeah, I do think mean the consistency is what built the platform that I have, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Exactly.

Joanie Simon: Is continuing to show up. And so I mean, it took a good solid long break after dismantling everything and took a while and I was like, well, maybe these are the sunset of the bite shot. Maybe we’re just going to float off and I’ll be onto the next project. I mean, I’ve job hopped all my life, so it’s the longest job I’ve ever held down, but suddenly got this. And I think trusting your intuition and my intuition was like, I think you just need to reconnect with people who are food photographers who are in it, and maybe I want to take the skills that I have and start mentoring people. So I started a very small mentorship group. I’ve got six folks who I’m mentoring for a three month period, and it has been so life giving and has inspired me to create content. It’s the old days of The Bite Shot, just all of a sudden my content bank, I’m like, oh, that’s another idea. Oh, that’s another idea. Because they’re asking questions and I’m in it with them and I’m watching them struggle with things, and I go, which is kind of where I had started, is watching these local food bloggers struggling with things. I’m like, oh, you know what you can do. And so I think it’s that I keep telling them, I’m like, you’re my muses. Thank you for being, because I think I had really also in the process of trying to scale, had really distanced myself from the audience for the primary people I am here to serve. And so I need, to me that’s a vital part of the recipe is being connected to those people and seeing their real struggles and the nuances of that. And I think that’s an absolute game changer and is certainly renewing the energy. So there’s more YouTube videos again, and there’s more Instagram content like, okay, so maybe nobody sees it, but at least I’m excited to create it in that same sort of way. And it’s renewed me for some new products and revitalizing old courses and updating those, and not from a place of I have to, but I can’t wait to get this into people’s hands because I legitimately just like to help people.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s such an important point about reconnecting to where you previously were. And a lot of times what I see and I hear people talk about is it comes back to a really close connection to the audience that you’re serving. And the more you distance that as a creator, the more difficult it is to show up in the same way where you’re as passionate and excited. Lindsay talks about it with Instagram and responding to dms and seeing people in comments, and that being a really inspiring piece for her. And in seasons where she’s moved away from that, you start to feel disconnected from the audience and that connection is really what can drive things. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors, what if your content could earn more and do more for your business audience and your future? You might know Raptive as the ad management platform behind thousands of the world’s top creators, including Pinch of Yum. But today, Raptive is so much more than ads. They’re a true business partner for creators helping you grow your traffic, increase your revenue, and protect your content. In an AI driven world, unlike one size fits all platforms, Raptive customizes strategies for each creator, whether you’re growing a niche food blog or running a multi-site business, they offer expert support in SEO email and monetization strategy, and they’re leading the charge on AI advocacy to protect the future of creator owned content. And the best part, RIV supports creators at every stage from Rise, their entry-level program for growing sites to their top-tier Luminary level. They’re offering scale with you so you can get the right support when you need it the most. Apply now at raptive.com to get a personalized growth strategy and join a creator community that’s shaping the future of the open web. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode. I’m curious to know, in your process of scaling, was there a moment that you realized maybe this isn’t worth it? What were those moments like emotionally and then we’re going to talk to the scaling back down and redefining success coming out of that.

Joanie Simon: Yeah, I think it was, we were so intent on hitting this launch date. It was March of 23, we had our big launch and we were just gunning for that date. And I was like, it’s all going to be worth it. It’s all going to be worth it. And we got to the other end and I was super proud, but we didn’t hit our mark of what we had hoped for and what sort of, I mean, to be honest, what needed to happen in order to compensate for all of the choices and decisions that I’d made? So kind of going, oh, I think that was sort of the big moment, but then also feeling like, oh my gosh, I’ve just brought this team of incredible people who I’m so privileged to get to work with and who I really care so deeply about and have become friends and colleagues and now to have to go, I’m so sorry guys. Just a can’t support this. And also, I don’t want to live like this. This is not the road for me and managing people. It’s so funny. I mean, I had managed people in previous jobs and had somehow forgotten that that’s not my favorite thing to do.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Joanie Simon: And not because people aren’t wonderful, it’s just not my gifting. That’s not where some folks are so good at that, and that’s great for them. But I think in the structure that I had built, I had not built it with my own skillset in mind.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s this thing that all of us will have to come up against as we have success, which is this maker to manager transition. And you can always hire somebody else who can be kind of the main person who’s managing day to day or somebody who’s the main person, but ultimately, if you are the business owner, it’s going to come back to you. And so we have this question, do we make or two manager? A lot of times then once you get into that position, you then are questioning, should I actually go manager to maker and transition this back? Because inevitably the more you have to do management type work, the less maker type work you’re going to do, which for some people, like you said, is highly desirable. They actually want to do less making. They want to be less of a creator and they want to be more of a manager of business and systems and processes and people. But the hard part is a lot of times we look around, we listen to what people are saying, and the general sentiment is the path to success is growing, scaling, it’s building a team. People will ask, how many team members do you have as some weird quantifier of success? But for a lot of people, that’s not what success feels like. And so there’s this redefinition of success that has to happen. So what was that like for you and how did you redefine success? Or even we talk about this idea of defining the game that you’re playing. How did you redefine success or redefine the game that you were playing after learning this isn’t how you wanted to be running your business?

Joanie Simon: Yeah, I think really coming back to mean some of that existential crisis component of all of it. What do I really want? What actually makes me happy? What feeds me? And there needed to be some distance and time. So I really took just a lot of space and time to be and to heal and to just take care of myself physically and spiritually, emotionally, all the things. And kind of coming back to, hey, we can maintain this thing, but let’s take a breather. That was intense and that wasn’t healthy. And so something that’s helpful. It was actually an old, I mean I don’t know how long ago this podcast was that you did, but going back to Paul Jarvis and Company of One and re-listening to that, to a lot of books that do sort of redefine what is it you’re really trying to build and what do you hit the pillow at the end of the night and go, that was a great day, and what do you get? For me, it’s about am I excited to get out of bed in the morning? Am I just like, yes, let’s go. Go have an interview with Bjork and let’s go. The things that I’m super stoked about, am I excited to go make some videos because I know it’s going to help the people who I serve and those kinds of things. So for me, it’s really having redefined it because yeah, I mean, could we be making more money? I’m sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, and that’s always true for all of us. We could always be doing certain things that would make more money, but one variable in 10 different variables that we need to be looking at. But it’s the easiest to track, which I think that’s the hard thing with it is these, it’s traffic, followers, revenue, all very easy to track, mental wellbeing, strength of relationships, how much you’re enjoying your day. Those are harder things to track, but equally or maybe even more important than some of the things that are easier to track. So how did you get clarity around some of those things that you realized were really important but were operating in a deficient state?

Joanie Simon: That’s a really good question. I think it was, again, allowing that space and time to let some of those things seep back in and really just seeking out, I’m very lucky to have so many incredible people in my life and just sort of reconnect there and really let go. And I think too, it helped to reframe for me this whole thing. I mean there’s certainly those moments where you go, oh, why did I do that? I was just trying to build this thing. I can see all the places where it was my own pride, it was my own inability to do all sorts of things, but my husband and I, he’s like, you got to let it go first of all. And second of all, you had to learn this lesson. You had to do the thing and give it the go because learn best by doing. And I was like, you’re so right. And we’ve knocked on that door and been like, okay, yeah, that’s not for me, and that’s okay. And I’ve made peace with that and been able to go, okay, now what are the things that are important? And having kids at the age that I do and how much time I’m getting to spend with them and just physically feeling good. And as we get older, certainly your body starts to tell you things and you’re like, oh, okay, I guess I should be listening. So becoming much more attuned to that. But I think it definitely comes back to the relationships and comes back to what also started my business when I left my day job was returning to the idea that it is important for rest and it’s important for space and time, that once you’ve done this big thing that’s left you unhappy, well let’s not just start to rush back. What got me into the, I’m a very impulsive person in a lot of ways, so it’s good to create space and time to let things sink in even as much as I’d love to push it and make it happen fast.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yeah. I think I’m a big believer for anybody who’s done business as long as you have or life really, but we’re talking about it within the context of business. Anybody that’s in business as long as we have, it’s impossible not to have things that you look back on and say, shoot, I wish I would’ve done that differently. And a lot of times for us, I can point to multiple different things that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars of loss if we wouldn’t have done those or months and months, years of time if we wouldn’t have done those. And it’s almost like that’s just table stakes for us as creators who are showing up and doing things. You might have a run of three years where you don’t feel that or four years, but if you do something for a decade, if you do something for five, six years and you are doing it while showing up and trying, not pushing boundaries, but just showing up and actually doing stuff, inevitably you’re going to have these situations that result in the equivalent of baseball. It’s like if you swing, you’re going to hit it. Sometimes you might get a home run. Sometimes a lot of the times you’re just going to strike out. And I think it’s important for all of us to reflect on those. I could list a hundred of the different examples that have then informed moving forward how I want to operate. And it sounds like coming out of that, this was something that informed you around a new way that you want to operate within your day to day. So we talked about the beginning where you were in these early stages, the arc of saying what does it look like to scale, to hire? What does that feel like? Talk to me about what you learned and now how you operate day to day based on the things that the knowledge you accumulated coming out of that season of scaling.

Joanie Simon: Yeah, I think it was reinforcement of, have you ever read the book Art of Possibility? So I reread it every year, and it’s so funny when you read a thing and you take it to heart and then you read it a year later in the context of, And you’re like experienced. And you’re like, oh, now I get it even more. So he’s got this, how fascinating is one of the mantras, which is like what you’re saying is you end up making a mistake and instead of beating yourself up and self-loathing, you go, it’s so fascinating. What can I learn from this? So I think I love that sort of trajectory to move through it. What was the second part of your question though that you just asked? I’m trying to remember kind of.

Bjork Ostrom: So what does it look like for you now knowing what you’ve learned about yourself and how you want to operate your business? What does work look like for you?

Joanie Simon: Yeah, so it’s really fun because I’m giving myself permission to jump around into a lot of projects. I think there was a lot of narrow, we have to get to this and the way my brain works, I really like the popcorn effect and jumping around and we do a little bit of this in the morning and a little bit of that in the afternoon. And yes, it’s going to take me longer to get a product out, and yes, it’s going to take longer. I mean certainly there’s certain projects on deadlines for clients, but by and large, I like that sort of variety aspect. And so coming to terms with, okay, it’s going to just take me a little bit longer to launch a course, but guess what? Good news, the overhead’s not high so we can take longer because I’m going to have more fun getting there. Sort of that we saw how we could do it. There was one way to do it, how fascinating. That didn’t work. Let’s do it this way. So a day today I get to do the interview and then I’m going to go work on some writing. My brain will be kind of spinning in an energized place and then follow up on some emails later in the day. And so it really is very different and it’s that variety that I very much enjoy. And it’s also really putting myself first because again, how fascinating, something I did not do in that season was physically or mentally, emotionally take care of myself. And so really spending what maybe some people would think is an inordinate amount of time to take care of myself. We got one body, I better take good care of it. So as far as walking and meditating and things that is like I’ll get around to it. No, this is the time to get to it. And having the freedom of time to do that is incredible and it’s being here for my kids and it’s baking bread when maybe I could be building the business. I like making a sourdough, we’re going to do that. That brings me joy and happiness. So I think it’s sort of that something that I had needed to learn. And I mean, thank goodness I learned it and it took that experience to bring me to this place. I wouldn’t have probably learned that this is how I actually like to operate and the things that bring me joy and finding pastimes. I would say before the big scale, I wouldn’t say I necessarily had hobbies. I didn’t have things that brought me joy outside of, it was very much all about work and family, but work. And so I think that was the thing that broke me free of that. So for that, I’m extremely grateful and I wouldn’t change it, it wouldn’t have brought me here.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s this story that I’ve, a parable I’ve shared a couple times on the podcast, but I think it’s worth revisiting if anybody hasn’t heard it or just as a reminder, this idea of the parable, the Chinese farmer, and it’s Alan. I always forget his name. Alan Watts, I think a philosopher. But anyways, the basic idea is, I won’t go into all of it, but there’s this farmer and his son isn’t there to help him on the farm, and everybody’s bummed out for him. His son has left. And then one day his son comes back and all of the neighbors are like, oh, you must be so excited. Your son has come back. This is the greatest news ever. And he says, well, maybe. And then the next day his son is out in the field and they’re working plowing the field or whatever, and his son breaks his leg and all the neighbors come around that night and they’re like, oh, your son broke his leg. This is the worst news ever. This is so tragic. And he says, well, maybe. And then the next day there’s an army recruiter who comes and knocks on the door and he’s like, Hey, we need to enlist your son in the army. His son comes to the door with a broken leg and he can’t be enlisted in the army. And all the neighbors come around and they’re like, best news ever. And he is like, maybe. Anyways, you can imagine it goes on and on. And the point is that we have these experiences in our life and we might think we know if this is bad or good, and it’s not to take away from the emotion that we’re feeling in the moment. It is a hard thing. You do experience burnout. There is grief and sadness, but what we don’t know is what does that look like in the months and the years, the decades to come? And we can’t assume is going to be ultimately good or bad. And I think about that within the context of business. Also, with the good things, you make a bunch of money, you get really famous, you grow to this huge level of success. Is that good? Maybe is it bad? Maybe. And I think for me, it’s allowed myself to release some of the desires that I have around certain things because I don’t really know if a good thing or a bad thing is going to play out long-term in a way that’s going to be good or bad. And it feels like your story with scaling is an example of that where it has resulted in you being in a place that feels really good for how you want to be working. Does that feel accurate as you reflect on what your day-to-day looks like right now?

Joanie Simon: Yeah, I mean, I’m the most happy. I mean, I’ll never be a hundred percent content maybe. I dunno. We’ll see

Bjork Ostrom: For sure, for sure.

Joanie Simon: Always pursuing. But I just feel like, yeah, there’s a peace and there’s a wisdom that I didn’t have before that I’m very, very grateful for. So it’s a wonderful place to be.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. So for anybody who’s listening to this, they’re kind of in that stage where they’re maybe thinking about scaling. What would your advice be for them to help process if that’s something they should do? And then I have a follow-up question after that.

Joanie Simon: I don’t know. I feel like, oh, there’s such a responsibility there. I feel like the advice though would be, I mean everybody’s going to have their own trajectory. It’s just like when I advise people in the photography realm who are like, do I leave my day job? Do I not leave my day job? And I go, I and sink or swim, but that’s not everybody’s trajectory. So as far as that scaling, I do think though having, I think where one of the places I went wrong, I think something I would assess would be what needs are the roles that you’re hiring for actually filling and not just to build this thing, maybe there’s an absence, but there’s an actual real need that’s being addressed. This thing is not happening. I feel like I did not have, I was sort of hiring in the, well, this will work, this is what’s supposed to happen, and we’ll grow into it as opposed to really assessing the immediate needs.

Bjork Ostrom: That makes sense. This idea that I’ve heard people talk about where you hire when it hurts. Okay, you’re working 12 hour days and you can list out 12 things or 10 things that are going to help you get four hours back in your day that need to happen regardless of if it’s you or somebody else doing it. Okay, really specifically, here’s what it looks like. Here’s what you’ll be doing. I also think one of the things that’s important to point out, and my guess is it’s a little bit of how you’re operating today, is there’s kind of this third alternative. It’s not do I continue to stay a solopreneur or do I scale up and hire a bunch of people? There’s this third alternative, which is like I work with a flexible workforce that can kind of scale up or scale down as needed. And you kind of alluded to that in the beginning with this idea of contractors. Can you talk about why it’s felt good for you to work with contractors and does that feel like something that you’ll continue to do moving forward?

Joanie Simon: Definitely. I mean, I am a contractor and I love working with contractors and have found some incredible people. The video editor who I work with, who I’m always like, I can’t wait to meet him in person someday. I just feel like he’s such a gem and just works. He is incredible. So if anybody needs a video editor, happy to make a referral. And then I also have a support team who just kind of flexes based on questions that are coming into the community, and they’ve really been woven in as personalities too inside of the community. People are like, oh, I have a business question. Well, Jess is there for that. And Oh, I have a lighting question. Oh, Liz makes these incredible diagrams that Liz thinks in ways that I don’t even think about lighting, and I think about lighting a lot. So it’s really fun to have these other people that can be elevated and brought into that, but it is sort of flexible and they’re not relying on me as their primary source of income, which is also very relieving, but it still allows you that ability to, there’s things like I don’t have to answer every question. The community, I’m still, I’ve got my pulse, I’m involved, there’s things I want to jump in on. I still edit some of my social media videos that scratches that creative itch, but it alleviates a lot of that time for me. And so I think for those opportunities, the bookkeeping, the CPA, all those sort of things that I’m like, yeah, you don’t want me keeping the books.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. Those are the great roles that especially because a lot of people have service-based businesses for those specific things, customer support is another great example. So I think the sentiment is like it’s not if you’re going to not hire or if you are going to hire, it’s just strategically looking to build a business that fits within your ideals. And it feels like you have that right now, which is a really wonderful thing as an outcome from a fascinating experiment,

Bjork Ostrom: How fascinating. That wasn’t the fit that you wanted. And for us, there’s always this need to flex and change and evolve. You taste test a thing and you’re like, wait, if it’s a recipe, you taste test it, and you’re like, that doesn’t taste right, I’m going to change it. I think that same thing can be true within our businesses and our lives where we can taste test a thing and be like, fascinating. I don’t like that. What does it look like to evolve and change that? So super helpful to hear your story can relate a lot and personally with what we’ve experimented with and have tried in the decade of business that we’ve had, and my guess is a lot of other people can relate to it as well and will take insights from your story. But you also are still showing up every day doing creative work, one of which is cookbook shoots, working with creators and publishers. So as we close out, can you talk about if there’s somebody listening, number one who’s interested in working with you, what would that potentially look like? And then number two, how people can follow along with the free content you’re producing, the community that you have, the courses that you have. So a little chance for you to do a shout out in all the different ways that you’re showing up and working with folks online.

Joanie Simon: All the ways. Yeah, I say thebiteshot.com is kind of all roads lead to Rome, bite shot, not shop. That’s one of the things you’re always like, you’re trying to anticipate how people will get confused and you’re like, oh, I didn’t see that one, but that’s great. How fascinating. So thebiteshot.com, and yeah, that’ll connect you out to the YouTube channel. Also Instagram where I share lots of behind the scenes and things like that on stories and have started playing with Reels. And then yeah, we also have courses for lighting folks who are just beginning their journey. We also have a video course, which is really imbued with a lot of storytelling, which is a big passion that I’ve been able to pursue as well. I find storytelling fascinating and as well as a business course. So a lot of different directions there. And if anybody needs a cookbook, although that is something else I learned how fascinating in the process is. I can do about two cookbooks a year, and that’s about my max. So I’ve already done two, so 2026. I’m happy to discuss cookbooks if

Bjork Ostrom: Anybody’s playing ahead.

Joanie Simon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got to keep Joanie’s variety popcorn life going.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Awesome. Joanie, thanks so much for coming on. It’s been great to get to follow you with your story and all your successes, and excited to chat again soon down the line.

Joanie Simon: Yes. Thank you, Bjork.

Emily Walker:: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thank you so much for listening and tuning in today. I wanted to chat a little bit more about one of the perks of the Food Blogger Pro membership. If you are a Food Blogger Pro member, you likely already know about these, but maybe you’re a new member or you’re thinking about becoming a member, and I just wanted to let you know about one of my favorite things in the membership. Every month, we host a live Q&A over Zoom with an industry expert, and usually Bjork. They chat about topics ranging from republishing content to Google, algorithm updates, Pinterest or advanced SEO. Sometimes we’ll do an Ask Bjork anything or even questions about creating content plugins, site speed. Really, we cover every topic you might need to know something about. As a food creator, as a Food Blogger Pro member, you’re given the option to submit questions in advance, or you can submit questions during the live Q&A, and the guest, Bjork, will answer your questions and provide feedback. It’s always a really awesome opportunity to get advice and feedback from experts in the Food creator community, and it’s just a really fun way to connect as members and get to know each other better. These Q&As are hosted live. But we always post replays on our site and for our members only podcast if you can’t make it live. So anyways, it’s just a really great feature of the Food Blogger Pro membership. If you aren’t yet a member, and this sounds like something you would like access to, head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more. And that’s it for this week. We’ll see you back here next week for another episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Make it a great week.