Monique Volz On Reinventing Ambitious Kitchen Over 14 Years

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, we are thrilled to welcome Monique Volz from Ambitious Kitchen. Chances are if you’ve been food blogging for a while or a fan of food blogs for a while, you know of Ambitious Kitchen. Monique launched Ambitious Kitchen back in 2011 as a passion project when she was still in college and now has grown into her full-time business with several employees and a New York Times bestselling cookbook. In this interview, Monique shares how she has adapted to all of the changes in the food creator landscape over the last 14 years, how her priorities and definition of success have changed during that time and the different eras of her business do in part to an incredible season of growth during the pandemic. By 2022, Monique was burned out.

The pressure of keeping up with the constant content demands, especially in the age of tiktoks and reels, prompted her to take a step back from social media and refocus. She has shifted away from the pursuit of viral videos and recentered her creative goals and leaned into the process of writing her first and now second cookbook. In this interview, Bjork and Monique talk about the time it takes to build a brand and how important adaptability is. They talk about the balance of managing a team versus creating your own content and how Monique is embracing a new chapter that aligns more closely with her values. I really enjoyed this episode and hope you do as well. So I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Monique, welcome to the podcast.

Monique Volz: Thank you having me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, this has been a long time coming. You are in the category of creator, which is like decade plus, and I think especially in the world of business number one, but especially in the world of online business 10 years, it feels like it’s the equivalent of, I don’t know, there’s a dog years. They do like seven years for every year they should have the equivalent of that. For an online business, I feel like it’s like five. So it’s like we are getting to be senior citizen business owners. We have the wisdom that comes with creating for a really long time. You started creating content online in 2011, is that right?

Monique Volz: Yes, that’s right.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And was that on a site? Was that social? What did that look like at the time?

Monique Volz: Yeah, it was on my website started it probably similar to you guys, just did and kind of took off from there. I was still in college. I was in my senior year and and then just went through the motions of all the different changes of social media and started getting on Instagram, Pinterest, that sort of thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I would love to. I’ve been talking about using, I’ve been stealing some Taylor Swift language. I’ve been talking about eras a lot

With my daughter. I talk about we’re in our frog era, but I feel like what’s nice about that is you can apply it in a lot of different situations. One of which that it clearly fits is within the context of being a business owner. And I’d be interested to break down your story of being a business owner and building business online into different eras, because I think it’s, especially for people who are in their first era of content creation, it’s always interesting to hear how do people evolve and go through the process. Part of that might be, Hey, here were the things that worked. Here were the tools I was using. But a lot of it also might be, here’s what my team looked like, here’s what my schedule looked like, and if you’d be up for it, I would love to talk through, and you didn’t get time to prep for this, so you’ll be building it on the fly. I would love to talk through the ambitious kitchen eras and your involvement with it through the years, because I think it’ll help frame up maybe what that path might look like for other people who are on this journey. So would you have thoughts on what those would be right off the bat, or would you want to go step by step? I feel like it might be fun to do.

Monique Volz: You have to name them.

Bjork Ostrom: You have to name part of the rule for the eras game, you have to name them and then we’ll talk through each one of them. Okay.

Monique Volz: Yeah. So starting in 2011, I would say that was, I mean, this is a very basic name, but my beginner era, I think 2011 to 2013, I was really just doing my job on the weekends. I worked corporate in social at General Mills in Minneapolis,

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Monique Volz: And I was just sort of experimenting, having fun, putting content out there, doing a lot of storytelling and just meeting people who are doing the same thing. There weren’t a ton of bloggers at the time, so you all kind of knew each other. I mean, as an online community it was very, very small. So I was doing that and just doing a lot of learning and gathering and really just experimentation through that time. But at the same time, Facebook was exploding. Pinterest was coming out and Instagram was about to hit the ground. So I think joining at that time was sort of just like, let’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Let’s build an early community, because I think people were looking for that, but there wasn’t a lot of food communities. So that’s kind of what I was doing during that time. What was interesting, I would say in 2013, I had started thinking about taking my site because I was actually looking at you guys. You guys would post your income every single month on Pinch of Yum. And I remember my mom saying, what are you doing? Because I was just in the kitchen all of the time. I sort of abandoned my social life, and I was very young at the time. I was maybe 23,

But was I was so passionate about it and I started realizing that, oh, you could make money off of what I was doing, because I think at the time I was only making maybe $50 here or there. I didn’t really have an ad company coming in to help me. I wasn’t doing a lot of sponsored posts, which is sort of how you made money back in the day was doing a lot of sponsored posts. And so I started reading your income reports and I was like, this is so inspirational. I showed my mom, she was like, oh, wow, this

Bjork Ostrom: Starts to understand, yeah, this

Monique Volz: Is a thing. And so sort of changed the structure and started thinking about it more as a business in 20 13, 20 14 comes and that full year, I think I just put as much as I could into building the site and creating really, really good content. And that is when my income became the same as what I was making at General Mills at the time, which was around $65,000 a year. And when that

Bjork Ostrom: Happened, what is the name of this era? So we’ve transitioned out a beginner era. Oh,

Monique Volz: We’re transitioning. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So 2011 to 2013 was beginner era. It’s like seeing what works, this momentum era. Love it.

Monique Volz: And so in 2014, that whole year, I think it just propelled myself through everything I had into it. Again, worked nonstop. And I think that’s sort of what you have to do when you’re building a business, whether you’re starting now or you started back in the day, it doesn’t really change. You really have to give it your all. And so I quit my job. I moved to Chicago and I started, started from scratch, and I was like, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m just going to make it work. And I did. And so

Bjork Ostrom: When you say started from scratch, do you mean with your business or started from scratch with your life because you had some momentum it sounds like. Okay. In the business context, what were you starting from scratch from?

Monique Volz: I think just really starting to look at the financials of the business and trying to model it a little bit and sort of set goals for myself. Obviously I had the goal of making more than $65,000 a year. I had to support myself. I was living in a bigger city that was more expensive and I was starting my life from scratch. I didn’t really know anyone in Chicago, and so I sort of just had to do all of these things for the first time. And so that was really, really exciting. So I think I took that first year I was in Chicago to sort of set that up for myself, meeting with a new accountant, figuring out all the tax things, learning all those things from scratch. But at the same time, it was a really interesting place to be on social media because Instagram was exploding

Speaker 4: And

Monique Volz: With Instagram came this new, I guess income opportunity with sponsored posts exclusively on Instagram. So that was very lucrative for me during that time. 2015 to 2017 was just this momentum, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow like crazy.

Bjork Ostrom: And would you say during this time you’re focusing on growing Instagram, that would be the primary platform, you have some traction there, you have some momentum, you see partnership opportunities coming in. Talk a little bit about where your focus

Monique Volz: Was. Yeah, it was both. It was both really, because I felt like I had created this really solid community exclusively on ambitious kitchen.com, but I also was trying to grow my Instagram followers, and with that, I felt like was a new set of almost content creation. So I felt like I had to do double the work at times because brands wanted exclusive content for Instagram rather than just you putting a picture from your blog onto Instagram. So it was a lot of just random stuff and I was just again, experimenting, trying to figure it out. I felt at one point, so overwhelmed because it was only me I was doing the photography, I was all of the backend things. It was only me. And so I started outsourcing some of my photography to one of my best friends. She was also a blogger at the time, but she was trying to build her business, and now it’s Sarah from Broma Bakery and just this huge social media.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome

Monique Volz: Blogger. And so I started outsourcing photography to her and I also, what else did I do? Well, hired just my first employee I suppose, and she’s still with me to this day. And that was in 2016 or early 2017.

Bjork Ostrom: And so this is the point where it sounds like you had this beginner area, you’re kind of interested in it, you’re experimenting. It’s almost like the information acquisition stage. There’s all of this really cool opportunity, there’s these things happening. What does that look like? Not only information acquisition, but also doing a lot of work like weekends, weeknights, doing the work to get to the point where it’s like, okay, I’ve matched my income. And when you name it the momentum era, I can see that because suddenly you tip over into, okay, I don’t have to do my full-time job. Now I’m able to look at saying, okay, how do I really dig deep into this? You have more time to think about the business and then also start to think about, okay, what does it look like to start to assemble the team? You talked about you have an accountant who, it’s not like a day-to-day team member, but it’s a resource and somebody who you can go to ask questions. And then photography, okay, what does it look like to work with a photographer? And you bring somebody in, what does it look like to bring a team member in? And so I think part of what’s important within this is it sounds like five to six years after you started and hustled quite a bit, it’s like five to six years of working really hard on the business and then starting to think about, okay, bringing some team members in. So there’s a lot of work up to this point.

Monique Volz: There is a lot of work, but I also think a lot of it was right place, right time. If social media wouldn’t have been there at the same time, I don’t know that my site would be where it was or that I’d be able to create this team. So I think a lot of it was just almost happen chance. It was very meant to be. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: I heard this interview, there’s a YouTube channel, I think it’s called The Iced Coffee Hour, which I’m having an iced coffee right now.

Monique Volz: Me too.

Bjork Ostrom: Alright, cheers. And it’s two guys who are great. They do interviews, it’s finance related, but they were talking to who’s the realtor on the Netflix Sunset Show? Jason?

Monique Volz: Oh yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: Jason. Last name starts with an O, I want to say Oppenheimer, but that’s not what it is,

Monique Volz: I think.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Maybe it is. I don’t know. Jason, my daughter has a bunch of Ruby’s in her class. There’s like three Ruby’s. So it’s Ruby. Yeah, all the rubies. This is all the Jasons, Jason o Jason. They asked him a question because he works with people who have a bunch of money and they’re like, what is it about billionaires? Can you pinpoint something? And he’s like, well, number one, I’m not working with billionaires. It’s a hundred million plus. And he said, to be honest, a lot of it is just right time, right place, and it’s people who are no different than you or me in terms of work effort, in terms of, it’s not like they have this unique secret skill that nobody else has, but I think it takes both. I think it takes right time, right place. And this idea of luck wears overalls, meaning you show up for work and the harder you work the lucky you are, but it takes both of those things. You can’t work really hard on something on an industry that’s disappearing and have the same result as working really hard on an industry that is expanding. And I think maybe that’s what you’re saying is you were working hard on a thing that was expanding. Does that sound fair?

Monique Volz: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there’s also a factor that plays into all of these sort of OG bloggers is what I call ourselves at the time, that a lot of us are very high achievers. A lot of us fall into this category of type A personality. Yes, it’s right place, right time. Yes, it’s a little bit of luck and the industry and all that, but it’s also the pivoting, which I think we’ll get into a little bit of what this has sort of become,

Bjork Ostrom: This

Monique Volz: Job, this career. It’s really being able to do that and to see it and to try new things.

Bjork Ostrom: I was thinking about that just yesterday. So there was this earthquake in the Philippines tragically, and they’re trying to kind of sort through it. Lindsay and I lived in the Philippines for a year, and so it was on the island that we lived when we were in the Philippines. And so I was reading about it, and then I was just looking at the area where this happened and then was just kind of looking at like, man, the Philippines is just this beautiful place and it’s really, there’s so many incredible things about it. And one of the reflections I had was a little bit of regret around the fact that we had this year where we lived in the Philippines and we did some really incredible things. We did a little bit of travel, there was an orphanage that we were working at, and that was the primary thing and the majority of our time.

But also we are still working on these things that we are working on today. And when I look back on that, the thought that I have, part of it is like, Hey, I’m grateful that I worked hard, grateful to be a high achiever and to do what I can to build a cool thing in the world. But the other thought that I had transparently was like, shoot, man, I feel like I missed an opportunity to really explore a beautiful place at a time in life where I could do that. And it caused me to reflect a little bit around what does it mean to be high achiever? And there’s a large bucket of what high achiever looks like, and some people are on the upper end of that spectrum. And I don’t know if I am in that or where I am on that, but I would consider myself kind of similar where it’s generally think a lot about work and do work a lot. And it’s like there’s some really wonderful things that come from that. And also some considerations around opportunities missed. How do you reflect on being a high achiever as it relates to, it’s maybe more of a philosophical question, life and opportunities, and what does that look like for you?

Monique Volz: Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think about this a lot because for me, sometimes I try to define what success might look like. And I think it’s like every time I’m reaching a goal, I’m like, what’s next? What’s next? What’s next? And I don’t know if this is a cycle of what has become social media and the culture of America and all of that, but for me, I think it’s a part of my personality so much more. I do, I love to work. There is something so satisfying about it. And so a lot of times I do look back at that time where I was 21 to 25 and I’m like, oh, should I have been doing more of X, Y, Z?

And then I’m like, no, because it’s led me to be where I’m at, and I, I’m so happy and so grateful to be where I am. And yes, there’s certain times where I think even with having kids now, it’s like if I’m doing well at work, something is not going well at home, people will ask me all the time, how do you balance it all? There is no balance. It’s not like it’s an even line. It’s like one thing’s always up and one thing’s always down. So if I’m enjoying a gorgeous week off with my kids because they don’t have school, it’s like work falls to the wayside and then I can’t perform that as effectively as I would. And so I think it’s just this constant up and down. But yeah, no, I really do. I enjoy working. Something is so satisfying to me about it,

Bjork Ostrom: Which

Monique Volz: Sounds like maybe a little bit cold, but

Bjork Ostrom: No,

Monique Volz: Not at all. Think it’s

Bjork Ostrom: Makes a ton of sense. Yeah,

Monique Volz: I have my Capricorn and I honestly play into that very much. So

Bjork Ostrom: What are the character, I don’t know what the character should

Monique Volz: Determination.

Bjork Ostrom: I mean, it’s in the name, which is interesting. I didn’t think about that until this moment, which makes a lot of sense. Think that what I’ve realized to speak into the ERAS conversation is that as I have gone through different eras, what I need to realize is success changes for me in each one of those eras. What does success look like? And I think what my biggest downfall within it as seasons have changed, eras have changed for me, is holding on too long to the previous version of what I thought success looked like and not realizing that I’m actually in a new era, in a new season, and that I need to re-approach kind of what that calculation looks like and to not hold on too long to the previous version of it.

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So in this speaking still to this kind of momentum era, you’re starting to build momentum. My guess is the business is growing, you’re starting to hire people,

Really exciting season of business. What does that look like for you as you start to build your team here? Because that dynamic changes as you start to pass things off and you don’t have as much control over the day-to-day. Maybe you go kind of from a little bit from maker role to manager role, and is that kind of leading to the next era that’s coming down the line?

Monique Volz: Yes. Yeah, I would say so around 2018, we’ll kind of go into this, oh, I don’t know what to name it, but it is more like an oversight era. It’s less about the creativity and being the creator, and it’s more about, I think, yeah, you’re right, being a and kind of being more business focused more than anything. And so I had to bring on an agency to help me manage my partnerships. I had to bring on a full-time photographer, a full-time videographer, and all of these things instead of you just going in your kitchen every single day, which is why you started and why you love it, you’re now organizing everybody else’s schedule and answering emails about what’s going to happen when, and so your time is cut in half right there. And that was really difficult for me, and it’s still really difficult for me. It’s one of the parts that I just don’t love about my job. I wouldn’t say I love to manage people. I more love being in a creator role. And I think that’s true for a lot of people that are creators. They just love to put content out that’s like their bread and butter, but in order to grow, you really do have to outsource. So it’s like there’s ups and downs of it.

But I think the change for me really, really happened around 2020. My site was the biggest it had ever been, and that was due to COVID. People were cooking more at home. I think it was this discovery for Ambitious Kitchen, a lot of people just coming to my site for the first time, just crazy amount. And I felt so overwhelmed, and I think it was just like I was also having a baby at the time. So everything just sort of shifted for me. And we’re talking about success and priorities and things like that. And I think I went through this big era of change where I was like, this isn’t the only thing that’s important in your life, and you can allow other people to do their jobs and trust them and be able to lean into that as you grow as a person. And so I felt like I was stepping back into this era of growth and development and change, but at the same time, Instagram was introducing reels, which I felt like, and there was TikTok, so that just totally changed the game of social media and as we know it today, it was basically forcing me to create almost triple the content because you couldn’t put the same content on TikTok that you could put on Instagram that you could put on your blog.

They all had to be different. It forced me to hire more people and just honestly take a step back. So now instead of creating a hundred percent of the time or 50% of the time, I felt like I was at 25% capacity and I felt like I went through a burnout in 2021. I totally took a step back in 2022. This is my burnout era.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Okay. Love it, love

Monique Volz: It. It’s just mental health crisis era. But I took a step back and I just had to reevaluate. I think there was a lot of competition in the landscape that I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t really know how to adjust to that or start creating reels so that people would engage with them because the content changed so much. I was used to taking photos and maybe doing a hands and pans video, and then it went to

Bjork Ostrom: All the platforms,

Monique Volz: All the platforms, more realistic, more day in the life, and I’m like, that’s what we were told not to do. So it was just a lot of relearning. And so I took 2022 and I was like, okay, I’m going to take a step back from social media a little bit. And I started focusing on a new project for me, which was my cookbook, and that gave me a little bit of rejuvenation and I was able to just create, and I loved that.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about what taking a step back from social media looked like and even how you let yourself get there psychologically? Because especially coming out of a momentum era, when you have momentum, when you have growth, there’s something psychologically addicting about you wake up and you refresh and you have more followers or you have a piece of content that does well and to let go of that is a hard thing. So how did you do that in service of stepping back? So

Monique Volz: I wouldn’t say that it looked different on the outside, maybe to most people. I hired someone to do videos for me, so she was just taking all of my old content and basically making videos. So

Bjork Ostrom: That was old recipes that existed on the site.

Monique Volz: Yes, old recipes that existed and giving them new life. And so a lot of these people who were new to following me who had come in at the 2020 time were seeing that content for the first time. So it felt really new and fresh, but I didn’t have to do any new work.

Bjork Ostrom: And would this person do all the voiceover and was handling everything okay? We were doing, you were still doing that,

Monique Volz: And we would do a lot of music. It wasn’t like you felt like you had to do voiceovers for everything at that time.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Monique Volz: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But you pulled back the work that you were doing related to social media.

Monique Volz: Yes, exactly. I just really pulled back and she ran videos and social media for me, and it was great. I mean, still, I was there to kind of oversee things, but I didn’t focus on any micromanaging. I wasn’t like, what’s the Facebook calendar look like? What are we posting on Instagram? It was, it was just there and we were keeping the lights on, but for people on the outside, it felt really new and fresh because they had never seen that stuff before. So that was a way that we were able to make that work and felt really effective. And so I was able to stick, take a step back, do recipe development on my cookbook and feel really good in that area.

Bjork Ostrom: And it feels like a different type of content. You hear people talk about this with Substack as well, where

I think there is two different ways to create. One is you are creating with the context of maximum exposure, how do I create something that has virality to it? How do I create something that is going to rank really well? That’s not bad for some people, it kind of is because that’s not how they think, but it feels like that’s what you have to do to play the game. And then there’s also the type of content that you create, which is success-based outcome. How can I create a recipe that’s going to be the most beautiful, wonderful recipe that somebody could make? It doesn’t matter if it’s viral because it’s in a cookbook. It doesn’t matter if it’s viral because it’s in Substack. People are going to be creating that and consuming it differently. The intent of the content creation is differently, is different. Was that a little bit of what was at play for you was you were able to create without consideration around virality or reach or exposure?

Monique Volz: For sure, for sure. Because I think during, I want to say 20 22, 20 23, there was such a focus on what can you create that’s going to go viral. That was all you considered. Substack didn’t really exist. I mean, it might’ve, but it wasn’t as big as it is now.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Especially in the food space. I think the conversation wasn’t as prevalent.

Monique Volz: And so it was just this loss of creativity, and I think you weren’t doing it for the reasons you loved anymore or enjoyed. And so that’s where I felt like I got a little bit lost because there was such a push and you’re comparing yourself like, oh, this person’s doing this trend and now they created this trend and you kind of want to replicate it or do something similar. So that was really, really hard. And I think now I’m happy that social media has sort of shifted where it’s the sub stacks and even Instagram and TikTok, it’s putting content out there that you really love that feels authentic to you. And at the end of the day, that recipe is really, really good. Even if it doesn’t go viral is more important. You’re going to get the people that are more engaged that way than doing just some random viral posts where people will engage for that day or that week, but you’re not really attracting them long term. So yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interesting. What we’ve seen, and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well, is if you stick around long enough, if you are in business long enough, especially online as a content creator, there will be these shifts that happen. And one of the questions you need to ask yourself is, do I want to ride this next wave? And the example I always point to is Instagram a platform, but it could be generally digital content, but we’ll just look at Instagram specifically. It started out as photos, and then it was like, oh, now you can do videos on Instagram. Isn’t that wild? And then it was stories, and then it was reels as the primary driver. And all of those are very different ways to create as a content creator. And we know people who were extremely skilled photographers, and that’s what their focus was. And they would create a really beautiful curated photograph.

And then the idea of switching to doing video was like, that’s just not who I am. And so it’s an intentional decision not to ride the next wave, which isn’t bad. It’s just like you want to create in a different way, and you either look for a platform or a place to create that is more aligned, or you say, you know what? I’m okay going into my next thing. And for some creators that I know, it’s like the next era is working within a startup or working at a food company or shifting and pivoting in that way.

How have you navigated that knowing that, and you’ve alluded to a little bit like, Hey, this is actually, there’s some things that are hard about this. It’s maybe not the thing that I love the most. Love managing a team. When I would love really creating, that’s what I wish I could do. Is it that the growth component of the business is what at the core, the thing that’s really exciting and the ambition around growing a thing? Or is it something you ever consider of scaling back and going more towards creating more, even though you maybe won’t be able to grow more? One of the things we talk about a lot as well, it’s a hard decision.

Monique Volz: Yeah. It’s funny because I think even a year and a half ago I was caught up in this, oh my God, should I join? Do I have to do another thing? Also, I was doing YouTube. I started, I hired this production company. We were doing all these YouTube videos, and I’m like, what is moving the needle? For me? It’s like, yes, I want to make money. I want to keep my income where it’s at. I don’t necessarily need it to keep growing, but I want to keep it where it’s at, but also what’s fulfilling. And I did all of these YouTube videos and I’m like, I’m not making a dime, but I’m paying so much money,

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s expensive. Yeah, I’ve had this conversation with multiple graders. Crazy. Yeah.

Monique Volz: I’m like, what is going on? I make more money off Facebook than I do nothing. You know what I mean? It’s just like I put old links up in photos.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, a text blurb about, yeah, yeah, what you had for breakfast.

Monique Volz: And so I was like, this is really fun, but it is so much work and it’s so expensive. So I just threw in the towel. I was like, you know what? I can walk away from this. It was a hard decision because I loved it and I had hired this team, but I was like, it’s not effective. It’s not working for my business. So I think allowing myself to recognize that I don’t have to be everywhere all at once was really helpful for me because in the beginning, I think it was like you jump on every social platform, you have a blog, that’s what you do. That’s not necessarily the case anymore. And I think moving forward, it is an interesting time because I would say if you are on the cusp of maybe thinking about not doing this anymore, I feel like it would be the perfect time to sell your website. Because with just ai, there’s

Bjork Ostrom: So much change. Yeah,

Monique Volz: There’s so much change and there’s always change. But I think AI has really changed the game for us. And so for me, I know my traffic has gone down a lot just from people purely looking at Google and not going and clicking through to the website. There’s also an

Bjork Ostrom: AI overview. So you search a thing, you get an overview of the answer, and you’re kind of like, I’m good, but I’ve done multiple times.

Monique Volz: Absolutely. I do it too all the time. But it’s interesting too, I could just be like, Chet, GBT, give me a recipe for brown butter oatmeal cookies. It’s going to spit you out a recipe. It won’t cite the sources, but it’s definitely crawling your site. So I think it’s this loss of traffic, which equates to a loss of income in a way. And that’s okay. I’m still really enjoying what I’m doing. I definitely dunno what the future holds in the next five years. I think I can’t even envision it just because the last two years have been so, I don’t know, just

Bjork Ostrom: Transformative. There’s so much that has changed.

Monique Volz: It has in the industry, and I didn’t even expect it. I didn’t think about it. And then it was six months a year, and I was like, whoa, my traffic has dropped tremendously. And I know that so many of us have experienced that. So I think, who knows, I am writing another cookbook right now, so I feel like I’m putting my energy and my focus into that. And after that, I think I’m just going to reevaluate and see what it looks like for me. But yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Is that something that you contemplate think about your business as something that you would sell? Just being that you alluded to it? Yeah. Okay.

Monique Volz: I think about that. I’m like, oh, yeah, I feel like it would have to be

Bjork Ostrom: Like, yeah, it has to be right. Sure, sure. Yeah.

Monique Volz: But yeah, I, and I know people who have done it

Bjork Ostrom: Same,

Monique Volz: Who are just kind of like, I’m done with this. I don’t want to put in that much effort. And it is, it’s just like every single year I feel like I have a new job, something new to add to my resume that I didn’t ever want. And it’s just, again, a shift every single year. But I think we talked about there’s something unique in being able to adapt to that. And I think I see it as a challenge to myself, but it’s stressful and it’s hard with kids and

Bjork Ostrom: The kid piece. I think when I talk about different seasons and eras, man, that’s one that is just undeniably significant is, and I think a huge part of it is one of the greatest gifts that I feel like I have, and I would be curious if you feel like this as well, is autonomy. I can do Friday morning reading with my daughter’s first grade class. Awesome. What a gift. If they’re sick, I can be home with ’em. I was just had a podcast interview with somebody yesterday, Johnny Burnett, who has a great YouTube channel that he’s built, and he just within the last year or two has transitioned to working on it. And he’s like, I just can’t go back because now I know what it feels like to have autonomy in a way that I never did before. He was previously a chef. And so it’s like you’re just cooking for eight hours, but that also means you can also work at any time. We feel that as well. At the end of the day, we’ll put the girls down, it’s the end of the day. Oftentimes Lindsay and I will go down and sit and we in the same office, and it’s like, we’ll work for an hour or two. And that also can be a gift that’s flexibility and autonomy, but it’s something that you maybe don’t feel in a normal job where you have kind of hard edges and

Monique Volz: Some

Bjork Ostrom: Jobs you have that other jobs you don’t. But so there definitely is that where it can kind of creep into all different little pockets of the day and can be ever present. So we talked through these eras. You have the beginner era, the momentum era, kind of this growth and development area, 20 20, 20 22, experiencing burnout and then making some significant changes because of that. Where would you say you are today?

Monique Volz: I would say I’m in my rejuvenation era. I think being able to step away from things that were no longer serving me, and then such as YouTube, and also just, I restructured my team not too long ago and I just made some decisions that made it

Bjork Ostrom: Cut back. Is that what you mean by that?

Monique Volz: Yeah. I cut

Bjork Ostrom: Back not as many team members and simplified.

Monique Volz: Yeah. I had somebody who was helping me with sort of operations and just oversight, and it was like I was just managing too many people. It was the only thing I was doing. I felt like I couldn’t even create any content. So taking a step back was really helpful for me. And actually keeping my team a little bit smaller and more nitty gritty was great. And so now I feel like I’ve set specific days where I don’t really look at my phone. I turn my slack off. People know I put it on my calendar. I’m like, I’m creating this day. I won’t be able to answer anything. And it’s been nice, and I feel so much happier because just it feels like me time, even though it’s work time, but I’m back doing what I love.

Bjork Ostrom: What’s interesting about it is it’s arguably the most impactful thing that you could be doing within your business,

And it seems like the most enjoyable thing. And that to me is really interesting. Whenever you can get that overlap where it almost feels like this is so enjoyable. Should I not be doing this? I occasionally have some of this stuff where it feels like this is not really work, but actually it is, and that’s the best type of work. I think your kind description of going through this process of maker to manager to maker is a really important one for anybody listening, because Lindsay’s gone through kind of a similar transition with what she does in her day-to-day and working with a team. And I think it’s important because sometimes the message that I think we can get as people who are ambitious and eager to grow and wanting to know what’s next is we say, how do you grow? How do you scale? How do you produce more?

And usually the solution to that is you hire bring on a team, you have more hours to do more things. And that is true. And for some people that’s a great solution because they really love to be a manager and create systems and to have processes and to scale a thing. But for some people it’s not a great thing because they love to create. And so if nothing else, I think it’s an important conversation to put on the table for anybody listening, because there has to be some contemplation around that. It’s not just how do you grow, scale and build, it’s also how do you create something that is a really wonderful business for you, depending on who you are. And that’s always going to be different.

Monique Volz: Yeah, it is.

Bjork Ostrom: So as things stand right now for you as you look forward, what does optimal look like? What are the things that you’ve learned in terms of how to work with your team systems you’ve put in place, even some of the rules that you have? And maybe while you’re talking about that, can you talk through some of the things that are working well for you right now in this era?

Monique Volz: Yeah, so like I said, I had somebody who was sort of my director of operations, and she came in and she essentially looked at everything in my business that we were doing and the systems we had in place, which I don’t really have a lot of great systems, I have to be honest. Abra and I had communicated, sorry, she’s my employee who’s been with me for almost nine years. We had communicated honestly via text message for so long. It was only us.

And then I had two more people come on and they’re like, what are we doing? I don’t know if we talked about Facebook. I don’t know if we talked about Pinterest. It was impossible to find things. So we came in, we started Slack channels, we got everything going. We had our affiliate manager in there, our agency, and so everything was just more organized. It was fantastic. Then Asana, which is what we used to put everything in, all of our Google docs and manage, was just chaotic. Nobody knew what they were getting assigned. We didn’t have certain projects, so we didn’t overhaul on that, which was just including Subtask. Who’s the owner? What does that look like?

Bjork Ostrom: Did you get into dependencies at all? This person needs to finish this in order for this person to then take on the next task.

Monique Volz: No, we haven’t, but we have just several subtasks per category instead

Bjork Ostrom: Of, which is great. So us

Monique Volz: Reassigning and then reassigning again, and you’re just like, wait,

Bjork Ostrom: We’re all just figuring it out. That’s what I love about it. It’s like we’re all just out here figuring it out.

Monique Volz: Yes, and so Asana was overhauling. That was fantastic, but honestly, just the way we communicate and setting boundaries was really important for people. So that was really great for me at least. I still work a lot at night too, but I’m able to schedule messages ahead of time and on the weekends it’s kind of like, don’t bother me. I’m with my kids. But yeah, just I think getting ahead to deciding how far in advance content is planned or how far in advance videos need to go to the videographer or photographer or things like that. So that’s kind of where I’m at. And then most of my organization is honestly, for me personally, on the backend of my cookbook and is my recipe tester now testing it after I do it, and who’s editing it and when does it come back to me? And so there’s a lot of that, but I work heavily in Google Sheets and just manage everything through Asana.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. That’s great. I think what’s so fun for me to hear in you telling your story is it’s continually showing up and it’s being willing to reinvent when needed. And sometimes reinventing means taking a step back. And I think in the long arc of business, probably life, but this in the context of business, I think so much of it is showing up every day. How do you show up? Think about where you are in this season of life. Sometimes that means doubling down, working extra hard. Other times it might mean slowing down or even taking a step back. It feels like reducing your team size is something that means that there’s less hours to work on things, but it’s a better match for that season. And I think for all of us as we’re out here building businesses and creating things and trying to do that while also maintaining our sanity, it’s super helpful to hear somebody process through their story. And what you’ve done through the years is really inspiring, and we’re just huge fans of all that you’ve done. So

Monique Volz: Thank you.

Bjork Ostrom: For anybody who wants to follow along, you can do a little shout out. We’ll include some links and then also mention your cookbook so we can link to that as well.

Monique Volz: Oh, yeah. So you can find [email protected]. All of my recipes are there also on Instagram and TikTok at Ambitious Kitchen. And then my cookbook is called The Ambitious Kitchen Cookbook, and it is available everywhere, Amazon, Barnes Noble, target, et cetera.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Monique, this was awesome. Thanks so much for coming on.

Monique Volz: Thanks for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, we would so appreciate it if you could share the episode with your community and leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. We will be back next week with another podcast interview. Bjork is interviewing Krista Linares from the Nutrition Con Sabor Zine and food blog. We’ll see you back here next week, and iEmily Walker: n the meantime, hope you have a wonderful week.