How Justin Ellen Went From Camera-Shy to 3 Million Social Media Followers

Disclaimer: this transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: If you’ve ever opened Google Analytics or Google Search Console and then just looked at it for a little bit and closed the tab because it felt overwhelming, this is for you. And here’s the thing, it’s not just analytics or search console, it’s also WordPress. Maybe you’re trying to find a post quickly, understand how it’s performing. And after a while, you’re jumping from tab to tab, trying to piece together information about how your content is doing. It really is one of the hardest parts about growing a content business. It’s getting clarity. It’s not always necessarily effort, it’s just knowing what you should do next because your data is scattered, your priorities are getting fuzzy, and you’re staying busy, but you’re not confident that you’re working on the right things. That’s why we created Clariti. It’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I. Clariti is a content organization and optimization platform that pulls all that messy data into one clear place so you can audit your content, understand performance, and see real opportunities instead of just guessing.

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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, Bjork is interviewing Justin Ellen from Everything Just Baked. Justin started decorating and selling cakes in high school with the dream of one day opening his own bakery. At the encouragement of his sister, he hesitantly started posting photos of his cakes on Instagram, but didn’t like being in front of the camera. Once he got serious about growing his presence on social media, he realized he needed to put a face to his brand and he slowly but surely overcame his fear of being on camera. Now he has 1.4 million followers on both Facebook and TikTok and over 800,000 followers on Instagram. In this interview, Justin shares how he transitioned from selling cakes to building a business as a content creator online, what his first few brand deals looked like, why he decided to launch his website last year, and dives into the process of self-publishing his first cookbook, which is out this month.

Justin is humble and scrappy and smart and full of lots of good wisdom for content creators at every level, and we really hope you’ll enjoy this interview as much as we did. Without further ado, I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Welcome to the podcast.

Justin Ellen: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited. I’ve been watching this, so it’s almost honor.

Bjork Ostrom: You know, you get it. It’s one of the great joys that I have is talking with creators who are familiar with the podcast, have experienced watching an episode, learning from it, learning from the guests. But the joy is then to be able to see people or have conversations with people on the podcast who then have figured it out. You have built a really incredible following. You have a cookbook coming out, which we’re going to talk about, a self-published cookbook, which is really incredible. But you’ve been in the trenches. You are a content creator. It’s not just a theory. It’s not just something that you’ve aspired to. You are officially doing it. You started when you were really young. When you first started out, take us back to that, did you know this is what I want to do? I know a lot of people who are teens would think like, hey, do they talk about that idea of when I was growing up, kids would be like, I want to be a professional athlete.

Bjork Ostrom: And now kids are like, I want to be a YouTuber. That’s the shift that’s changed over a couple decades. Was that you when you were younger? Did you want to be a content creator?

Justin Ellen: Oh, no. I hated the camera. I did not have a personal Instagram. I didn’t like taking selfies videos. If there was a camera I was running, that was not the case. Honestly, I always say it happened accidentally. During high school, I got into cake decorating. I was watching YouTube videos and I was like, I want to try this out. Not filming, just process of making cake. And my sisters, they forced me, they’re like, post your cakes on Instagram because you’ll get orders and stuff. I was like, no, no, no, I don’t like that. And one day I was just like, I don’t know what happened. I just was like, okay, I’ll post the cakes. You never saw me. It was just my cake.

Bjork Ostrom: Videos at this point or was it photos?

Justin Ellen: No, I don’t even think reels were a thing really yet. Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: This would’ve been like 2018, 2019?

Justin Ellen: Yeah, around that time. And I was just posting photos of my work and I got in a good business during high school. I would literally skip Friday to fulfill cake orders and mostly it was word of mouth and through Instagram. And then one day I was like, I want more followers. And I was like, why does this person have more followers? What are they doing? I realized they’re showing themselves. I was like, oh, I actually have to be seen on this Instagram, this camera. And again, I was afraid. I did not like the camera, but I always was like, the idea of it was, am I going to let this camera stop me from what I want? And at the time what I wanted was followers and I was like, press record.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s one of the things that I notice immediately when you look across your different platforms is you are front and center on those. It’s one of the recurring themes that we have on the podcast and we talk about this all the time, which is the importance of showcasing your humanity, your personality. What is your theory around why that is? Can you distill that down into why that resulted? If we look at your follower accounts, you have 1.4 million on, I think these are up to date, 1.4 million on Facebook, 1.4 million on TikTok, over 800,000 on Instagram, over 400,000 on YouTube. Would you attribute a lot of that to that point where you decided I need to show myself? And if you hadn’t made that decision, my guess is those numbers probably would’ve been not what they are today.

Justin Ellen: Oh, 100%. I think people want to see the person behind the account. Originally when I started this, I was starting it as a cake business. The goal wasn’t being content creator. I didn’t even know that was a business. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I didn’t know there was money in it. And I was like, how do I get more orders? And I just realized everyone’s showing themselves. So if that’s what people are doing, that means it’s working. The successful people are doing it, that’s what’s working. So I was like, I got to do it. And immediately everything just changed. I got in more opportunities, I grew a following, more orders, brand deals. You just create that relationship, like you said, and it goes long. Even with the cookbook today, still the followers who followed me five years ago, they’re still with me and they’re able to see that growth that I went through.

Justin Ellen: And you can’t get that same relationship if you’re never showing yourself or speaking to camera, just you have to engage.

Bjork Ostrom: So you originally had a business, you were baking cakes, decorating those, skipping Friday in order to deliver on those orders. And the function of your social accounts was to drive awareness around that locally. So if people had an event coming up, you’d bake that cake, you’d decorate it. So you had this kind of boutique industry shop where you were doing cake decorating. The original thought was, I’m going to use social to drive awareness around that. And then you were like, wait, I want to get more followers. How do I do that? Okay, let’s look at the people who have a lot of followers. What are some of the things that I can look at and analyze and say, this is different than me? One of the things you distinguished is they are showing up, their personality, they’re putting themselves on camera. At that point, did it shift for you to say, and now I want to build a creator-based business?

Bjork Ostrom: Or was the purpose of it still like, hey, I have this business, my business is selling cake, or did you start to see the opportunities in doing brand partnerships and building a business that is creating content?

Justin Ellen: No, great question. I wouldn’t say content creation still was the goal. I was a young kid. I still wanted followers. I was like, I want that number. I want a lot of followers. And at the time, Cemstone High School, I wanted to open a bakery because I though if you’re a baker, you have to open a bakery, that’s the only option. It wasn’t until I realized content creation could be a real job was when I got on TV, I was on Netflix Is a Cake season one. And when that aired, my following skyrocketed, people started recognizing me, but I also started getting brand deals. One of the early ones that was a big one was Lush, for instance, Lush Cosmetics. I made a bath bomb. I forget what year it was their birthday, but I made a whole video, a whole little campaign of it, and it paid me.

Justin Ellen: I was like, oh, I didn’t realize there was money. And then I also started talking and meeting other creators who had large followings, and I realized this is what they’re doing full time. And it just allowed me to see that is a possibility. You don’t have to open up a bakery. And I was so close to opening up a bakery. I bought ovens, I bought packaging, I just stored it in the storage unit and I was like, okay, let’s take a pause on that. It was also during COVID time too, so I was like, that’s a little risky, retail store. But I was like, let’s take a pause on that and let’s see what I could do with these videos. And I’m so glad I did.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally. What did that look like then? What did the launch, once you had this idea, hey, maybe I’m going to put this bakery on hold, I can turn this creator business into something. Sometimes all it takes is that one deal where you’re like, wow, this brand paid me to create content. What if I did this once a month? Okay, suddenly you have a very good income, especially when you’re, I don’t know, however old you were at the time, 18, 19, making more than probably any of your friends would’ve been. Is that what happened where you started to see the potential there? And then was your first path forward pursuing brand deals? Because we’re going to talk about in a little bit the website that you launched within the last year, but as you stepped into the creator business mindset, did you really go deep on brand partnerships?

Bjork Ostrom: How do I grow my following and then how do I find brands who I can work with that will pay me as my following increases, as my engagement increases?

Justin Ellen: I would say it wasn’t as quick or as clear as it may seem. It was definitely a slow but fast process. It felt slow to me. And I was still selling cakes. I stopped selling cake maybe a year or two ago, so I just recently still stopped taking orders.

Bjork Ostrom: Was that hard to stop or was that a relief?

Justin Ellen: Honestly, a relief. Cakes, if you’ve done it, it’s a lot of work. When you’re taking 10 plus orders a week, it takes a lot of you and it just was a lot, so it was a relief. But I wouldn’t say the brand deals, it didn’t happen one day I reached 100K followers and I was getting brand deals every day. It was not like that at all. I was just constantly, I feel like I’m very good at looking at myself objectively, my work, my content, my social media, my business and saying what’s not working and let’s see the successful people, compare them. I’m not saying copy their work or anything, but see what they’re doing and what’s working. It could be a

Bjork Ostrom: Different industry. It might not even be

Justin Ellen: Food. Yeah. It’s not always baking related, but see where it’s working. And then I would always just

Justin Ellen: Do that analysis of myself and be like, okay, well, let’s try this and see what happens. So I would say it started off trying to get cake orders. Then I had this time where I was teaching more and trying to do cake deckering classes and eBooks and things of that nature. And then I kind of got tired of making cakes, honestly. And I was like, okay, I kind of want to tap into more recipes. And I realized a lot of people don’t bake from scratch or they’re intimidated by it. And I didn’t have that growing up. My grandma’s crazy. She makes everything from scratch. I realized not everyone had that same experience. So I started posting recipes and that led more to where we are today, the blog. But I don’t want to make it seem like it was like I went from selling cakes and then one day brand deals left and right every day.

Justin Ellen: It was not like that at all. I was still selling. Cakes were still my main income for a long time.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s one of the things we often hear in talking with people who have built a creator business, which is you have something that is the foundational kind of base layer income that allows you to have the flexibility to be a creator. And for some people it might be a part-time job, it might be freelance. For a lot of people, it might be something almost services-based or agency type work where for me it was I worked at a nonprofit, not related to anything that we’re doing now in terms of content. It was partnered with schools. But what I was doing was a lot of the web work for them and I was maintaining the server where they stored all their stuff. And a lot of the similar things to what I eventually did within the context of Pinch of Yum, I was doing within this nonprofit and that stuff carried over.

Bjork Ostrom: But it was this slow transition. It was like 30% of my time was on the business and 70% of my time was our full-time gig. This was before we had other commitments. We’re able to do it weekends, early mornings, nights, and then it’s 60 / 40, fifty fifty, and then it flips 80 / 20 the other way. And so it was a very slow transition for us over multiple years. It sounds like similar for you. Biggest difference is that you were also entrepreneurial in that thing that was providing the base layer income. It’s just that it was a services-based business as opposed to a creator-based business. So kind of cool because there’s a little bit of a crossover there. The thing that was the base income for you also was the product that you talked about within your world of content, which I think a benefit if you’re able to document what you’re doing within the context of your services-based business, which is really cool to hear.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s exactly

Justin Ellen: Right. I was just recording my work. I was recording my cake decorating for the orders, delivering orders, and people were just interested. So not only gave me a following, but also gave me more orders. It’s exactly what you’re

Bjork Ostrom: Saying. It’s such a good point because I think sometimes people think about, okay, I need to block off my day and do my content creation, and then I got to do all my other work outside of that. But I think to the degree that we can figure out a way to be light on our feet and actually document the thing that we are doing and then publish it, that can be extremely beneficial. It’s not exactly the same, but I feel like these podcasts are a version of that for me because I get to sit on a call with somebody like yourself and I get to learn. I get to ask questions. It’s interesting for us. And I think if not for this podcast, I’d want to be doing this during the day, which is learning from really smart people. But the benefit is I get to press the record button before and then we publish it and then we work with sponsors who sponsor the podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: And so it’s a great point for anybody listening to think strategically around are there things that you could be doing in your normal life that you document and then publish if you’re interested in being a content creator? So you wrap up, was it ceremonial, like the last cake delivery that you had or was it kind of like, I finally get to deliver this and now I get to be done?

Justin Ellen: It’s kind of also a slow, gradual. I would slowly, my content kind of shifted because at some point I didn’t really want to get as many cake orders as much. So I kind of shifted how I was presenting my content. I was starting to make more content cakes, which is what I call them. So it was just whatever cake I want. I wasn’t displaying it as this is for order and I kind of continued doing that more. So my orders didn’t come in as much. So it kind of happened slowly and the only cakes I was fulfilling were honestly repeats, my old clients.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Somebody you did for their birthday party last year, their birthday party’s coming up. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It was less of a business decision and more of a relational decision. Y don’t want to say no to this person.

Justin Ellen: Yes. Yeah. But I was glad. Now I don’t even have it on my website, so no one knows. You can’t really get it to contact me in regards for the cake. I’m glad that that was a fun time, but I’m glad that I’m in a new era.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And it served you well. It was the launch for what you’re doing. So what does it look like now for you? So you have this multiple millions of followers on social. You launched your website last year. You have the cookbook. What does a business look like functionally right now and how do you think of yourself as a content creator? When people ask what you do, how do you describe it? And then behind the scenes, what does that look like in terms of the most important areas for you within your business?

Justin Ellen: First, I want to say it might look like I got all figured out. I do not. It’s not all perfect over here. Honestly, I’m just going day by day. But I will say, so slowly I decided to start sharing more recipe content. And at this time I was like, I don’t like how I’m relying on a brand deal. I wasn’t taking cakes anymore, so that was my main income and I lost it. So now I was like, brand deals was kind of becoming my main income. I was like, I don’t like that I’m relying on something I can’t control. I can’t control how many people are going to email me in a month. It’s out of our reach. So I was, again, looking at what other people are doing. I was like, why does everyone have a blog? So I was heavily, heavily researching blogs.

Justin Ellen: I didn’t know there was a whole business on blogging. I though it was outdated thing. No one told me there was money in a blog. I wish someone did. I wish I started 10 years ago. But honestly, I saw it and I was like, well, that’s what I need to do because then it gives me a purpose for what I’m posting in my content. Now if I’m sharing a recipe, I can put on my blog and now I’m at least making money this way. I don’t have to only rely on brand deals because you never want to have one bucket that’s all your income and again, it could end and then you’re going to be struggling and stuff. So that was kind of the idea behind the blog and it’s still new and I’m still like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I want to really say, I don’t know what I’m doing.

Justin Ellen: The biggest thing with me is I’m always willing to try something and just work at it. Worst comes to words, you learn as you go, and that’s been the case from the beginning.

Bjork Ostrom: Two things that I think are important within that. We talked about this idea of ready, fire, aim as opposed to ready, aim, fire. And I think if you get stuck in ready, aim, fire, a lot of what we hear people do is they aim. You’re aiming and you’re like, “I got to line this up perfectly. I need to make sure exactly where it is.” As opposed to if you ready, fire, aim, you’re like, “Oh, I missed way to the left. Now I know where I need to adjust.” And the analogy is we will learn quicker. The quicker that we publish something, the quicker that we get feedback, the more that we compress the feedback loop around what we’re doing. And I think that’s super important, that takeaway. Get into it. It’s going to be messy. It’s okay if you don’t know what you’re doing, but get after it.

Bjork Ostrom: Press publish, try the thing. And then the second piece that I think is really important is this philosophy, maybe this mindset, which it seems like what you’re alluding to a little bit, which is if somebody else can do it, there’s probably something that I can learn from them in terms of what they did, how they did it. You’re not going to replicate it and do the exact same thing, but you are going to look at it and say, “Oh, I see this person is showing up on camera quite a bit.” And the other thing that they’re doing is they’re, who knows, leading with a really strong hook on a video within the first three seconds. Okay, maybe I need to adjust that a little bit. And you are simultaneously compressing the frequency of your publishing while also learning from other people who are where you want to be.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think those two things paired together can be a really successful playbook for somebody who’s looking to build a creator business. Do you have an example of what that looked like for you on a certain platform, learning a certain thing that worked well, implementing it and then seeing the benefit of it and knowing it’s all incremental, it’s not like some huge breakthrough, but if you have a thousand little incremental breakthroughs, it’s going to compound. Do you have some examples of maybe what those little compounding moments looked like for you?

Justin Ellen: Yeah, and that’s a hundred percent my playbook, honestly. One, for instance, is my original site was on Squarespace and that’s where I had a blog. It was ugly. But I was like, again, I’m looking at my blog and other blogs. I would just Google chocolate chip cookies, whoever comes up, that’s what I’m going on. And I’m like, okay, their blog’s on WordPress or whatever platform, typically WordPress. And I was like, why is every blog on WordPress? Now I got to let mine’s on Squarespace. I must be doing something wrong. So I’m researching, okay, why is everyone on WordPress? Oh, it’s easier for ads, or oh, it’s easier to customize. And now I’m like, I got to make this shift. And it happened pretty quickly as soon as I learned that, which is where we are today. In a content standpoint, kind of like what you said in my videos, I’m always looking, because I was doing now a new content style because I was sharing recipes.

Justin Ellen: I’m not sharing cake decorating anymore. So I was like, okay, we’re trying something new. We might flop a little bit, but let’s see what people are doing. How do they address a cookie video? And typically people do a nice shot of that gooey chocolate chip pole or something. And I was like, okay, well, that’s what’s working. This is basically data. You’re basically researching what’s working, and if it’s working for this person, it’s got to work for you. Obviously add your creative twist, add your personality to it, but the basis of it is

Justin Ellen: The secret formula, honestly.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It is one of those things where on a platform, you’re able to look at it and you’re able to get a sense for there’s something here and this something worked. And there are for sure multiple things that you could point to. One is the actual creator themselves. I think there is something undeniable about charisma, about personality. I think you are somebody who has charisma and personality and it’s hard to quantify, but it’s a little bit of Lindsay and I often talk about this idea, you have this magic dust and it’s like, what is it? Nobody knows. But you do know your friends who go to a party and they’re charismatic. That doesn’t mean you have to be that, but I do think that there’s something around being a personality online that’s entertaining and engaging. And there are probably components of that that you could break out and say, okay, why is that?

Bjork Ostrom: What is that? So there’s that. But then there’s also the formula and the formula shifts and changes. What works? There’s a reason that something works. And when you can combine those and understand, okay, there’s a structure that you could potentially follow that works well in the way that content is assembled and put together, and you have a personality that’s engaging and interesting and draws people in, and then you consistently post and you have this rhythm around it. All of those things can add up. And it seems like that’s been true for you where you’ve been able to figure out, okay, how do I put the pieces together for all of these respective platforms to figure out what works well? Do you have one that you feel like you understand the best out of all of them when you look at the different platforms?

Justin Ellen: I feel like it changes every six months.

Bjork Ostrom: What is it right now, if you

Justin Ellen: Had to

Bjork Ostrom: Say?

Justin Ellen: Right now, I feel like Facebook, and I feel like people overlook Facebook. If you’re not posting on Facebook, you need to be posting on Facebook two days ago.

Bjork Ostrom: Why

Justin Ellen: Do you say

Bjork Ostrom: That?

Justin Ellen: They’re the best conversion, depending on also what your goal is. For instance, mine is baking and stuff. I feel like it attracts a little bit more middle age, older audience, and Facebook is that. And for instance, my cookbook, most of the sales came from Facebook. That’s what converted the most. And I feel like they just, even for the blog, it’s a little bit more accessible with the link. People are able to click easier. I’m thinking it’s just because it’s an older audience. They’re okay with things slower. They’re going to watch things more. It’s not as fast-paced. It’s not as much competition because not everyone’s on Facebook. People think it’s dead. But I feel like I kind of understand that platform the best, and it’s one of my biggest ones actually.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I know you’ve talked about your site. We’ll talk more about it in a little bit, but as we do our pre-question inventory, you said the site’s made 20 to 25,000 within the last few months. Huge number, especially for a site that has just recently launched a year old essentially. So congratulations on that. Thank you.

Justin Ellen: Facebook.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I was going to say one of the things that I think is important to point out within that is we have a lot of conversations with creators around this idea of search and SEO. And just on the Food Blogger Proforms within the last week, somebody was like, “Hey, we’ve been publishing content online for 16 years, and since we’ve started, the question has always been, is this industry dead?” We’ve had some version of that conversation for 16 years. Right now, the version of that conversation is search traffic is declining. It’s really competitive. The landscape is super competitive. How am I going to get traffic if I can’t get it from Google? What we come back to often is this idea that Google is just a discovery mechanism. It’s a place for your content to get discovered. What we need to do as content creators is think about where is our content being discovered?

Bjork Ostrom: And then once it is discovered, what are people doing with that? If the goal is to do it as a business, how are we creating income from it or capturing value from it? And Facebook is unique in that you are able to drive traffic to your website, but then also create income from Facebook itself. So can you talk a little bit about how you view Facebook as a traffic driver, how you’re making thousands of dollars as a traffic driver, and then maybe speak to the monetization program as well?

Justin Ellen: Even looking through the analytics, for instance, most of my traffic is not from Google, especially because I’m such a new site. It all takes time. So I was in a fortunate position where I did have a following. I was like, “I’m going to utilize it to my potential.” So I would post all my videos. Every blog post I have, there’s a video with it, and that video’s to promote the blog post, obviously. I would just post that on Facebook, engage with people, see how it’s performing. Again, I’m very much seeing how it’s performing. Is this a good hook? Are people not watching anymore? Maybe we need to fine tune it. I’m a big believer on, you could take the same video and repost it a couple times, just change the intro, see which one performs better. Now for the next recipe, try that out.

Bjork Ostrom: Are you remixing the video itself or the caption? What does that look like

Justin Ellen: And

Bjork Ostrom: How far between?

Justin Ellen: Yeah, so I don’t delete anything, even if the post is flopping, which again, even me, I’m big, it still flops. It still makes me sad. It’s a part of the game. You got to get used to it. I don’t delete. So basically my younger sister, she actually is my editor. She works hand in hand with me, and we will take, let’s say if it’s a brownie recipe, I’ll take the same recipe and same video basically of the process, but chop it up in a different way. So the intro’s a little different. So maybe instead of the break shot, I don’t know, it’s just a shot of me saying, “Let’s make brownies.” So I have threedifferent versions. They’re very similar. Maybe one’s a little bit shorter, maybe one’s a little bit longer. And again, this is just trial. It also helps stretch out your content.

Bjork Ostrom: Meaning you get more use out of a single

Justin Ellen: Shoot. Exactly. So now you don’t have to like, “Oh, I don’t have anything to post today.” Well, you could repost your brownie video because you posted it a month ago. They forgot about it. It’s okay. It’s a month ago. And the people who have seen it, they’re going to be like, “Oh, maybe I want brownies today.” It’s almost a reminder. And someone actually told me this and I was like, “Genius, Jessica Seacrest.” She was like, “Think of it like a TV show. When you’re scrolling on cable, the re-ones are on. Friends is playing twenty four seven, so think of your content the same way. You can repost it. People are still going to watch it. People still watch Friends, the office.People are still going to watch it and it’s still valuable and people did not see your video. As much as it’s hard to believe, there’s still people who have never seen that brownie video, even if it went viral.

Justin Ellen: So I’m a big believer in reposting the content. And again, it’s promoting your blog, assuming you do recipes, but it’s promoting the blog post.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you have a window that you try and operate within where it’s like, “Hey, if it was posted a week ago, two weeks ago, I’m not going to post it again.” What space in between a video are you waiting till you post it again?

Justin Ellen: I would say it depends on how often I’m posting. I’ve been quite busy now, so I haven’t been posting as much. So if I haven’t been posting a lot, then I won’t repost as much because then it will appear as more duplicate.

Justin Ellen: But I would say a month and then repost again, especially if it’s fitting, if it performed well, or even if it underperformed, because again, you just got to. I feel like once you understand how to create a video, you have good lighting, you have some personality in it. It looks good. Everything is there. Sometimes just the algorithm didn’t like it. It’s not you always. Sometimes it’s just Facebook, Instagram, whatever. So I feel like just doing those little twists and trying again is really helpful. And again, it just helps stretch out your content because you’re going to be making a lot of content and some days you’re going to be busy, maybe you’re going on vacation, just repost the video.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So are you doing multiple or your sister, is she doing multiple edits of every video? You always say, “Hey, we’re going to do a shoot. We’re going to create this recipe, the brownie recipe. At the base minimum, we’re going to try and get three versions that we are going to post.”

Justin Ellen: Yes, I would say most times, and I’m very particular on these videos. She edits them and then we sit next to each other and watch this video 20 more times to make sure it’s perfect. So she usually gives me three different intro options and then I’m going to see which one I prefer. And that’s usually the one that I post first. Then I see how it performs. If it flops, I was like, “Oh, I made a bad choice. Why did I flop? Okay, let’s try this one instead and try that.” And again, this is just more data. The more data and research, the more you post, the more you’re going to understand what your audience likes, what’s the algorithm liking. It’s just going to take you farther. You just can’t let the numbers get to you. And I’m saying this, it still bothers me, but you just have to keep pursuing.

Justin Ellen: I’m not someone who will. If the video gets five views, let’s say it didn’t perform well, I’m going to be upset, but I’m not going to be upset to the point where I’m not going to do it again. So you have to really make sure you’re just consistent and going to keep going at it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I heard this comment from somebody. I’m trying to remember who it was, but it was really impactful for me as I thought about. Oh, it was Seth Godin. Seth Godin was being interviewed on the podcast, the Diary of the CEO. I don’t know if you know Stephen Bartlett, but he’s incredible and does these great interviews. He’s interviewing Seth. And one of the things that Seth talked about was that feedback, and this was in the context of a negative comment, but I also think it could be within the context of views, but he was talking about it within the context of negative comments. People might say you write a book and there’s a negative comment on it.

Bjork Ostrom: What that’s telling you isn’t necessarily that what you produced was bad. What that’s telling you is that this person wasn’t a fit for the thing that you produced. And that little shift was super helpful for me to think about, and even to frame up conversations that I’m having with creators, which is it doesn’t mean that you are bad as a creator. It means that you are creating a thing for a certain person and when that person who you created it for finds it, it’s going to be a really incredible thing. And there’s going to be people, because we’re publishing things on the internet who will come across the thing, think it’s for them, but it’s not, and they might have a negative interaction with it or you might not get a lot of views on it, whatever it might be. That doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad, it just means that there’s not a good match.

Bjork Ostrom: I think your mindset around this is kind of data, this is information, this isn’t directly focused at you, it’s easier said than done, is a really helpful reminder for us as creators as we’re publishing content on the internet.

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Bjork Ostrom: Tell me about one of the things I’ve been trying to figure out, I would be interested if you have thoughts on this. Meta has these programs, Meta One, Meta Verified, where you can sign up. We signed up for Meta, this was last week, a Meta One account for our Facebook account just today.

Justin Ellen: What is Meta One? I don’t know what that is.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. So this is good. We’re figuring it out in real time. I think there used to be something called Meta. There still is something called Meta Verified, which is like you can pay to get the verification and then there’s these additional benefits for different tiers that you could have. I think relatively new, there is this thing called Meta One. I think it seems like maybe it’s the next evolution of Meta verified with some additional features and functionality. So one of the things that exists with Meta One is that it will auto invite anybody who’s not a follower who engages with your content. So way back there used to. I don’t know if you remember this or if it existed as you were working within Facebook, there’s this little area within the Meta Business Suite where you could do a mass send invite to anybody who interacted with your content that wasn’t a follower. Did you see this or do you ever remember seeing it? Okay. So it was this little. It was kind of buried within the feature set of Facebook.

Bjork Ostrom: And so if a thousand people who weren’t your followers interacted with your content, you could go in and select all and send an invite for them to follow your page. Meta One apparently has this ability now where if anybody interacts with your content, they’re not a follower. I don’t know what it looks like functionally, but it sends an invite to them. It’s something that we just signed up or we’re trying to get an understanding of the benefit of it. One of the things that you can do within it, and this is the question that I have for you, is there’s this linking that you can do on Facebook Reels. Still trying to figure out what that looks like, but from what I understand right now, it’s within the mobile app. You get to the last screen and if you have Meta One, you can add a link within the.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s a field for the link, but then I think when it publishes, it’s kind of buried. You have to click and it’s just a little button or a little chiclet kind of thing that you’d click in. So it doesn’t seem like it’s super beneficial. But where are you putting links with the content that you’re creating right now? We used to have the ability to schedule a comment within the Meta Business Suite dashboard along with the post that was being scheduled. That’s gone away for us. So now we’re trying to figure out do we include it in the captions? I know some people just know when their content is going to be scheduled and then they jump in and put a comment in. So if you are getting that traffic to your site, where are you putting the comment or the link and how are you managing that?

Justin Ellen: And before I jump into that, with the Meta verify and stuff, I don’t use any of the. I didn’t know about Meta One. Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Breaking news. Yeah.

Justin Ellen: And for Metaverify, I was like, “I’m not paying for a verification. That’s stupid to me.” I wasn’t interested in any of that. But regardless of that, for the linking, for Instagram, I just do the grocers list. I find that’s the best just comment recipe and it would DM them to automatically. I’m curious how the Instagram linking feature works that you were kind of explaining, but also as a consumer, I’ve never really clicked on the link unless it was an ad on Instagram. So I’m curious how that would work. Right,

Bjork Ostrom: Within Instagram. Yeah,

Justin Ellen: Right. You

Bjork Ostrom: Have to pay separately. You could pay for a Meta One account for Instagram or for Facebook. We just have the Facebook one right now and we’re trying to work our way through understanding the feature set. Might do Instagram as well. Even just this morning, I was texting Lindsay about it and she was like, “I don’t know. It feels like one of those things where it feels better to just do the organic route where you’re not…” But then also Meta has this creator’s account and there are people who are like, “Hey, I signed up for this thing and it was really great.” The thing that they were talking about, again, I don’t really know exactly what this looks like, is the ability to promote stories in a different way where more people would see it. So still very new to it, which is why I ask.

Bjork Ostrom: Just trying to figure out if anybody else has any experience with it. If anybody listening knows a lot about Meta One, follow up with us because they’d love to have a conversation around it. But yeah, same idea where we’re trying to figure out how does it work well, where are the opportunities for it? But on Facebook, what does that look like for you for linking?

Justin Ellen: Yeah, Facebook, I put it in the comment. I was told that links aren’t good to put in the caption of the video, so I don’t do that. I usually. And it’s stupid, you can’t pin a comment on a Facebook reel. And I’ve told Facebook my contact, I was like, “That’ stupid. You guys need to fix that.” So a way around it is just comment recipe here, post that. Then you could pin that and then reply to your comment with the link and then it would constantly be pinned.

Bjork Ostrom: Are you scheduling that comment or do you do it after? No,

Justin Ellen: I do it after it’s posted.

Bjork Ostrom: And then are you scheduling content or. Sorry, say it again.

Justin Ellen: To answer your question, you’re about to say, I wish I was organized enough to have my content all scheduled out. That is the process, that’s the goal moving forward, that have it posting this, this, this. As of now, I told you I’m day by day. I

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Okay.

Justin Ellen: Day by day. I am not all figured out.

Bjork Ostrom: It is way more common than I think people realize that people are in it, figuring it out every day and building millions of followers, not by having some airtight process, but by creating every day and pressing publish every day. Obviously, personalities are all different and people’s approach is different. There are people who are super scheduled and all of that as well, but I appreciate that. So you’re not having to figure out the how do you schedule a comment because you press publish and then you just comment. I

Justin Ellen: Need to say scheduling. It’s time saver. No,

Bjork Ostrom: It’s great.

Justin Ellen: I’m just not the most organized person myself, so it’s hard for me to get organized in that way. And also I do the link and bio, so I always have it in my bio. Sure. On Instagram. Yeah. Well, Facebook, I have the website, and then TikTok is the link and bio. Okay,

Bjork Ostrom: Great. But

Justin Ellen: For TikTok, I do actually put the written recipe in the caption just because I find, at least for TikTok, I don’t think people as much are going to click the link and then go to your blog. So I am more okay with the recipe being in the caption because at least it creates that relationship and if they like the recipe, then they’re going to go to your blog.

Bjork Ostrom: Follow. Yeah. Anything else on Facebook that you feel like would be important? It sounds like in terms of as it relates to your blog, maybe one of the most important platforms. Does that seem accurate? No,

Justin Ellen: 100%. Even with cookbook sales, that’s where the conversions were happening. Again, at least for me, I don’t know if it’s the aunties support me. I don’t know if it’s specifically to that. I just find the conversions work the best. I just think it’s also just a little bit easier, the fact that you could click the links a lot easier and it’s not as much competition and I highly recommend, but I also post on every platform. I take the same video pretty much and post it everywhere and you never know how it’s going to perform.

Bjork Ostrom: How would you rank order the social platforms for you? If you had to take one, starting with the one that you’d be most likely to take away, this is survivor, this is social media survivor. Which one is getting kicked off the island and then incrementally worked down until there’s the one that you keep?

Justin Ellen: Okay. For me and where I’m at, I would first take out YouTube. Again, this is for me. Ideally, I would wish I had a YouTube long form audience and all that. I just don’t. So I would take that out first. Then it might be TikTok. I would take out next. And then it’s hard because the thing is with Facebook, you don’t get brand deals really. That’s the only thing that Facebook. If you have an audience, you’re not really going to get any brand deal opportunities. TikTok and Instagram are what you get that for. And

Bjork Ostrom: Really Instagram probably more than TikTok.

Justin Ellen: Yeah. Does that

Bjork Ostrom: Feel true?

Justin Ellen: I find most of the deals, I would say 90% of my deals are – Both end. Yeah, syndicated. So you post the same video on Instagram and TikTok. So that’s why it’s like I’m torn. I don’t know which one I would give back. I feel like it depends on my goal. Do I want to continue doing brand partnerships or am I trying to only focus on blogging or whatever that is?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. What does that look like within. If you were to look at your business right now, you have Kik Tucker and has gone to zero, and now you’ve had your website within the last year. You have your cookbook, you have earnings from Facebook, you have brand deals. Very roughly speaking, what would that pie chart look like in terms of percentages for your business?

Justin Ellen: This year I would say is not typical because this is the year of my cookbook. So I would say in terms of my business revenue, that’s 70, 80% of it just because I did really well. And then brand deals actually has been slow this year. I would say. No. Okay, let’s say 70% cookbook, and then let’s say. Honestly, I would put blog. This is hard because it’s also so inconsistent, a brand deal. Once a

Bjork Ostrom: Month, you

Justin Ellen: Might get a

Bjork Ostrom: $20,000

Justin Ellen: Brand deal. I’ve gotten one in a minute. There’s longer campaigns. And blogging is still so new to me, so I just started reaching 20K a month. It’s been a gradual increase. It was first day. I was on Google AdSense for a little bit, and then I went to Mediavine actually pretty quick. But this is going to be my first or second Christmas. I don’t really know fully what to expect. In Q4.

Bjork Ostrom: But

Justin Ellen: It sounds like – blog and then creator fund thing. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Cookbook, brand deal, blog, and then Facebook bonuses or Facebook revenue, whatever it might be. But it sounds like the website is at the point where it’s able to earn a consistent 10 to 20K for you, primarily from traffic from Facebook, which is really incredible. Talk to me about the book. You kind of took a unique path, am I right, in that it was a self-published cookbook? So obviously a huge benefit of that being that you. I mean, downside is you don’t get the advance in the normal way that you would. Huge upside being that it is now your product and you are earning from the sales minus the cost of creating the book. What have you learned in the process of self-publishing a cookbook and then promoting a self-published cookbook?

Justin Ellen: It’s been a long, but very fast journey. I wish I gave myself more time. So I started the cookbook December of 2025, and I noticed a lot of people are asking, “Hey, wh’s your cookbook? Where’s your cookbook?” I didn’t feel like I was ready, but my sisters who I work closely with, they’re clearly asking for it. Get it together. So I was like, “Okay, guess we’re bringing a cookbook.” And it’s always been a dream too. I’ve been baking with my grandma and it’s a full circle moment, honestly. But I first was entertaining traditional publisher, like you said, the typical advance and stuff. I talked to my team because I’m signed to a talent agency, and they told me roughly your advance, maybe 100, 150,000, which I know sounds like a lot, but cookbooks, the advance you have to pay with the photographer, an editor, recipe tester, that’s all coming from the advance.

Justin Ellen: Your agent gets a cut, taxes, it goes down a lot. And that’s usually across three years because it takes time to write a cookbook. I was like, “I don’t want to wait three years. I can do this myself.” And I really felt like I could. So I hired my team. My older sister, she’s a professional graphic designer, which I got lucky with. So she actually designed the book. Cool.

Justin Ellen: I found a photographer, I found an editor, I found a indexer, proofreader. Honestly, I just bought a bunch of cookbooks and I read what each person had. They all had the person –

Bjork Ostrom: What’s the team? Exactly. Okay, there’s an editor. Let’s find an editor. I

Justin Ellen: Was like, “We got to make that team. That’s clearly what’s the process. Th’s the secret formula.” Ultimately, I really wanted creative control too, and you make the most money, self-published. I was like, “I have the audience and I know I can do it.” So that’s the process of that. It took some time. I recipe tested all the recipes. I wrote them, photographed with my amazing photographer. But like I said, I started in December, and then till the summer we started printing the books overseas too. And another thing is you typically. I find most people when they self-publish, they do KDP, which is print on demand with Amazon. I didn’t think the margins made sense. I’m very much like it just has to make sense mathematically. I was like, “I’m doing all this work, but you’re making so little because Amazon, the printing costs, it takes a lot when you print on demand.” So I realized – Essentially

Bjork Ostrom: What’s happening is you don’t have inventory, but then you have a super high cost per print, so

Justin Ellen: You’re not

Bjork Ostrom: Able to make as much. Yeah,

Justin Ellen: But it’s a super high cost. I was like, “Well, this isn’t going to make sense to me.” And again, I was – Either you’d

Bjork Ostrom: Have to charge way more for

Justin Ellen: The

Bjork Ostrom: Book to make more or you would not make as much.

Justin Ellen: Exactly. And I was very fortunate. I have a following already, so I was like, “Well, I have the audience.” So the risk is a little bit tinier, and I saw most books are printed in China or overseas, so I was like, “I’m printing my book overseas.” So I printed a whole. First, I printed a 15K run, and I was like, “I was not going to do that.” My family was telling me do it, you need more. I was only going to print 3,000 books. I was afraid no one was going to buy the book. I know it sounds crazy, but I was like, “I’ve never really sold anything to my audience now.” I was like, “I don’t know how much they like me.” I was nervous. Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Justin Ellen: It’s

Bjork Ostrom: Like when you’ve never sold a thing –

Justin Ellen: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Maybe it’s like people love watching your content, but maybe they’re not going to buy them.

Justin Ellen: I have no idea. Do they even want to cook? They say they want a cookbook, but are they actually going to buy the book?

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah.

Justin Ellen: And

Bjork Ostrom: So originally you were thinking of doing 15,000? No,

Justin Ellen: I was going to do three to 5,000 was mine, but my family was like, “No, you’re dumb. You need to order more books.” More,

Bjork Ostrom: Do more.

Justin Ellen: So I ultimately decided to do 15K for the first one, and then once we started – So how

Bjork Ostrom: Much does that cost when you are ordering 15,000 cookbooks?

Justin Ellen: Oh, it was like 60,000. Yeah. It’s a costly thing. And then

Bjork Ostrom: Where do you order them? Where do they show up? Yeah,

Justin Ellen: That was another concern. Again, I did a lot, a lot of research. I have a fulfillment center that I hired, and they handle all shipping. They store your books, they’ll ship out the books, so you never really touch a book. So it’s almost like KDP printing on demand. You just have a little bit more logistical to handle and obviously the upfront costs. So they have that all. And then as I did pre-orders, I quickly was selling the books. I was like, “Oh, I need to order more books.” So then I did another 15K run.

Bjork Ostrom: Amazing. I mean, 30,000 total, you did that 15, you did presale. How do you do presale for a book like that? Are you sending people to Amazon? Are you sending them to a Shopify page? And then what was the most effective way to get people to sign up and buy the cookbook?

Justin Ellen: I did mine on Shopify to my own website I made. I made a whole nice thing. I had a photo shoot, book product, all that. I set it up, and that’s the only way you could buy the book as of now. In terms of promoting the book, again, I just searched cookbook in TikTok and I saw what kind of videos are people posting, how do they promote the book? I saw a lot of people usually showcase the cover first with a huge poster. I was like, “Oh, that’s cute. Let me do that.” I did my own version of that, and that’s actually how I announced the book. Again, I’m just implementing things that worked and then just putting my twist on it, and it just converts well.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So functionally, what was happening is you said, “Hey, I have this cookbook. You can pre-order it here.” People would be able to click, swipe, whatever the interaction is on the given platform, that would take them to the Shopify pre-order initially page. They would pay the full price for the book. You had a sense then for how many people were interested in it. And through posting primarily to your social platforms, you were able to sell through that initial run of 15,000. Is that right?

Justin Ellen: Just about, yeah. Yeah, that’s

Bjork Ostrom: Amazing.

Justin Ellen: I don’t know when that’s being posted, but we’re technically still in pre-order for another two weeks or so, but just about, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. What a huge accomplishment. And so that obviously, like what you’re saying, becomes a huge driver of revenue for your business because you took the risk, you said no to getting it advanced, you took the risk of the cost, you took the risk of the work, you paid for all of that upfront, and now you’re able to recoup that. One of the things we often talk about is the best thing for a creator is to have a product. Ads are great if you’re able to figure out traffic. Affiliate’s great if you’re able to capture some of that type of income. But man, if you have a product, that can be a really powerful, impactful thing. And it’s cool to see that as an example where you have built this following, you’ve figured out along the way, applied that same methodology to saying, “I’m going to learn by researching, by seeing what other people are doing, going to put my spin on that,” and then being able to capture that start to finish with you’ve built these social platforms, but then you’re also able to capture that on the other side by this cookbook that you’ve created.

Bjork Ostrom: So what would your advice be for somebody who looks at you and says, “I would really love to be doing what Justin is doing, creating content, having this be my full-time job.” What is your advice for somebody who’s interested in doing a similar thing?

Justin Ellen: Good question. And just a quick note too, because as you were saying, and nothing came to me, for the cookbook, another reason why I wanted to be independent was full creativity. I had a certain vision for the book. It’s very close to family. It’s about home. It’s called Better Than Grandma’s, and I wasn’t sure if a publisher would like that. And a very important thing was video tutorials. I wanted a QR code that you could scan and take you to a video tutorials for every recipe so you could learn either written or with me, baking with me. So I really like that process that I can make all decisions. But going into your question, advice, I would say

Justin Ellen: Try not to compare in the sense of like, “Oh, he’s so much further. I won’t get there.” It can happen to you. It just takes a lot of time, a lot of consistency. Consistency is the key. I’ve been doing this for a long time, posting a lot, and I would say always, always be open to learning. You can learn so much from anyone, from anything. Now when I consume content, I try not to consume it as just for entertainment. I try to now pay attention to, okay, how long is our caption? How long is this video? How did the video perform? What was the hook of the video? Because now you’re just constantly getting more data, more information on what’s working for other people, what are the trends, what’s kind of dying out, and it’s just going to help you perform and create better content.

Justin Ellen: And another immediately, like yesterday, start a blog if you don’t put the recipe in the Instagram caption, nothing. It doesn’t make sense. You can be making more money starting a blog, and I wish someone told me that. So I tell everyone, if you’re a foodie, you should start a blog.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s crazy. We’ve seen this really significant shift as we’ve been in this industry where as we came up, people would start a blog and then they’d build social around it. And now, almost always, when we’re having people who have started a creator business within the last five, six, seven years, they’ve started by building a social following and have come around to a blog or a website. And it’s, I think, maybe specific to this industry a little bit, but also just generally interesting in that the sentiment I think is generally like a blog is dead, websites are dead, but it’s still such an important place of interaction on the internet, especially for the type of content that we’re creating. So it’s interesting to see that shift where it’s still important, but it’s downstream of social as opposed to social being downstream of a website. So if people want to check out the book, Justin, obviously it’s a huge launch and a busy season that you have here as you’re doing podcast interviews, kind of prepping for the launch of it.

Bjork Ostrom: It will officially be out. When is it?

Justin Ellen: September15th. Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: So this podcast will be released maybe a week or so after, so it’ll be available so people can check it out. If they want to do that, where can they pick it up? Yeah,

Justin Ellen: You can find the book at shop.everythingjustbake.com has all the information and I would love for you to get it.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. We’ll pick up a coffee for sure, and I’m sure other people will as well. Justin, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate you sharing all your insights and your story. Thank

Justin Ellen: You for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we would really appreciate it if you could share it with your community. It helps so much to get the word out about our podcast. We will be back next week with another interview. We are welcoming back Yvette Marquez from Muy Bueno Cookbook, and she’ll be chatting all about the future of food blogging from her perspective. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you back here next week.