Podcasts Archive

095: How Embracing the Mess Propelled a Career with Jillian Tohber Leslie from MiloTree

by Raquel on Apr 25, 2017 in Tech Tips for Food Bloggers

Welcome to episode 95 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork interviews Jillian Tohber Leslie from Catch My Party and MiloTree about making successful career changes by embracing the mess.

Last week, Bjork talked about 5 techniques you can use to keep gooing when you’re feeling overwhelmed with your blog. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

Embrace The Mess

As with life, business isn’t always pretty. No matter how put-together someone’s business looks from the outside, you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ve had their own fair share of messy affairs to deal with in their business.

Jillian Tohber Leslie learned early in her career that the key to moving forward was embracing this messiness and using it to help propel her career and her businesses forward. She and her husband started Catch My Party, the largest party ideas site on the web, and went on to found MiloTree, a social and email growth popup that’s perfect for bloggers.

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094: How to Keep Going with Bjork Ostrom

by Raquel on Apr 18, 2017 in Running an Online Business

Welcome to episode 94 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork talks about how to keep going when you’re not sure you can continue.

Whether you’ve been blogging for a few months or a few years, you’ve no doubt had the thought at some point or another: How do I keep going?

Blogging can be tough. You might be fitting it in after your regular full-time job hours. You might be running your blog as a business with not enough hours in the day. You might be juggling it on the side while trying to raise a family. Whatever your situation, you’ve likely found out that blogging isn’t easy, and on some days it’s tough to imagine how you’ll keep it up.

Today, Bjork talks about some techniques that he and Lindsay have used in their businesses to help them get up in the morning and do The Work.

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093: How Finding a Niche Transformed a Business with Meggan Hill from Culinary Hill

by Raquel on Apr 11, 2017 in Building Traffic and Growing Your Audience, Food Blogger Stories

Welcome to episode 93 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! In this episode, Bjork chats with Meggan Hill from Culinary Hill about how finding a niche transformed her business.

As an internet entrepreneur, it can be tempting to try to appeal to everyone. You don’t want to send potential traffic away from your website, right?

However, successful bloggers have said time and again that a big contributor to success is finding a specific audience and sharing only content that fits that audience perfectly. In other words, finding a niche.

Meggan Hill started her blog, Culinary Hill, with an aim of pleasing everyone. And… it didn’t work out so well. Her blog did okay, but she ended up feeling discouraged and gave it up for a while. A couple years ago, though, she decided it was time to make some changes and make this blogging thing work for her. With the help of a branding agency, she was able to find a niche, free up her creativity by sticking to that niche, and nearly triple her traffic in just one year. Today, she’s here to tell us all about it.

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092: How to Make $40K in the First Year of Blogging with Chelsea Lords from Chelsea’s Messy Apron

by Raquel on Apr 4, 2017 in Food Blogger Stories, Monetizing an Online Food Business

Welcome to episode 92 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork talks with Chelsea Lords from Chelsea’s Messy Apron about making $40,000 in her first year of blogging.

Most bloggers start out with the long-term plan in mind: they probably won’t make much money in the first year or two, but it’ll pay off in the end. And while this path works for a lot of people (Bjork and Lindsay included!), other bloggers decide to do it a bit differently.

Chelsea Lords from Chelsea’s Messy Apron hit the ground running with her blog and ended up making $40,000 in just the first year. Today, she talks about the first steps she took on her path to success, how today is different than that first year, and what she would have done differently looking back.

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091: Optimizing Recipes for SEO with Joost De Valk from Yoast SEO

by Raquel on Mar 28, 2017 in Food Blog SEO, Tech Tips for Food Bloggers

Welcome to episode 91 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews Joost de Valk, the founder of Yoast SEO, about optimizing SEO for your food blog.

SEO is something we bloggers hear a LOT about. It’s so important! But it can also be really confusing, even with the abundance of information out there.

Fortunately, there are tools such as the Yoast SEO plugin to help us navigate this often confusing landscape. Yoast SEO was founded by Joost de Valk and is one of the most popular WordPress plugins in use today. That’s… kind of a big deal. Joost met with Bjork for this interview to discuss a wide range of SEO topics, including why SEO matters for your recipes and how you can optimize it.

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090: How a Legislative Assistant Created Her Own Path to Working for Herself with Brita Britnell

by Raquel on Mar 21, 2017 in Food Blogger Stories, Recipe Videos

Welcome to episode 90 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Brita Britnell about how she stepped off the beaten blogging path and found a new way to work for herself.

Most bloggers start on their blogging journey hoping to eventually work full-time for themselves on their blog. While this is definitely an admirable and achievable goal, some bloggers have found that this is not the only way.

Brita started making videos for her blog about a year ago and unexpectedly found that she absolutely loved it. She knew there was demand for bloggers to create video, but she also knew that most bloggers just didn’t have the time to learn a new skill. So, she started making videos for other bloggers and found the demand so great that she had to start a waitlist for clients. In just a few months she was able to leave her job and work for herself doing something that she loved. Today, she’s here to share her story.

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089: How to Build a Plane with Alexa, Jasmine & Raquel from Food Blogger Pro

by Raquel on Mar 14, 2017 in Running an Online Business

Welcome to episode 89 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews FBP team members Alexa, Jasmine, and Raquel about what goes on behind the scenes, and what they’ve learned about blogging during their time as FBP employees.

Alright, alright. This episode is not really about building a plane. Not a real one, at least! But “building a plane” is an analogy we use nearing the end of the episode when we talk about the most important advice we would give to new (or experienced) bloggers. This advice is so important, in my humble opinion, that I’m wiling to give you a free pass and tell you to skip right to the end if you only have 5 minutes to listen.

If you’ve got more than 5 minutes, settle on in for a listen about how we run Food Blogger Pro behind the scenes, and how you can use the same tools, processes, and techniques as we do to take your blog to the next level.

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088: How We Run Pinch of Yum with Alana Woolley & Jenna Arend

by Raquel on Mar 7, 2017 in Running an Online Business

Welcome to episode 88 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork interviews two key Pinch of Yum employees, Alana Woolley and Jenna Arend, about what goes on behind the scenes of Pinch of Yum.

If you’re not a food blogger, it might seem like it’s a job that would be easy to do in your free time. If you are a food blogger, you know that there’s way more time that goes into it than that!

Many people are surprised to hear that Pinch of Yum employs a team of people, 3 of whom work full-time, to keep the blog up and running. Alana and Jenna are two of those people – Alana is the Pinch of Yum Video Specialist, and Jenna is the Pinch of Yum Office Manager. Today, they’re here to break it down for us and talk about how it all works.

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087: How to Take Permission and Grow Your Business with Andy Traub

by Raquel on Feb 28, 2017 in Running an Online Business

Welcome to episode 87 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Andy Traub, a business coach who specializes in helping you take permission in your career.

The phrase “take permission” might settle a bit weird in your brain. Don’t you ask for permission?

That’s exactly what Andy’s all about. He feels that for your business to really thrive, you have to be comfortable with simply taking permission. Take permission to start. Take permission to invest. Take permission to learn. This mindset is crucial to not only finding success as an entrepreneur, but also finding out what your best, most useful skills and roles are in your business. With this mindset, you can really see your business grow.

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086: How to Make a Successful Career Change with Jon Acuff

by Raquel on Feb 21, 2017 in Running an Online Business

Welcome to episode 86 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week, Bjork chats with Jon Acuff, a New York Times bestselling author who helps you work a job you love.

While many entrepreneur-motivators will promote the strategy of quitting your job first, then figuring your new career out later, Jon Acuff takes a different stance. In his most recent book, Do Over, Jon talks about preparing yourself for a new career well before you ever need to actually start one.

Jon’s books have helped thousands of people reinvent their Mondays, transition to a new career, and start Do Overs in all areas of life.

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