Creating Connection and Equity in the Creator Space with Yoli Ouiya

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Here we are. super fun to connect with you. Your partner that you’ve worked on, we’re gonna be talking about organization that you founded, a little bit about that, Sonia, from a couple cooks, known her for a long time. this is super exciting for me to be able to connect with you and have a conversation with you. and we’re gonna be talking about this thing called the Food and Wellness Equity Collective. but before we get into talking about what that looks like, why it exists, how it works. I want a little backstory before that launch, before that started. What were you doing? What was your day to day? What did things look like for you before you launched this venture? And then we’ll talk about what it looked like to start this new thing.

Yoli Ouiya: Absolutely. I would say I this Corporate girl and serial entrepreneur at the same time. So I had a vegetarian, vegan, catering business while I worked in corporate as a creative director. And I started a blog because I got tired of my friends and family asking me what this whole new eco-friendly journey was. And I started a blog called Yoli’s Green Living many, many, many moons ago. And within a year and a half, I got acknowledged by Black Enterprise as the top 10 bloggers of that particular year, and was notated as the Queen of Green. So that was my introduction into content creation. And from there, I had a myriad of brand opportunities, being representative for brands, and it was still a very new place in the content creation world. I was a brand ambassador for different brands.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Yoli Ouiya: And such and it was still the the early days are drastically different than they are today. Those early days were just there’s like an open playing field, anything would go, and it wasn’t contingent on metrics as much as it as it is now. It was just such an interesting space to be in. And we have definitely evolved or devolved, depending on who you talk to, relative.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Depending on which way you look at it. Yeah. Sure.

Yoli Ouiya: Depending on which way you y you interpret it. So those were my early days and I I enjoyed it for what it was and now it’s a different space and we get to adapt. So that was my life prior to, as well as being a buyer for a local food cooperative. I’ve always very much involved in the sh food sphere in some capacity. So

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. It’s you know, we’ve been creating content in some shape or form for probably like fifteen, sixteen years. And it’s really interesting when you talk about the landscape changing. It’s like, man, when we first started out, it was kind of like wow, wow west. It’s like you’re figuring it out, nobody knows what’s going on, and it’s kind of this new thing. And now there’s like entire businesses built around supporting the businesses that do content creation. You know, it’s like a very different world, a very different industry. I we’ve been lucky enough to kind of be a part of it as as it’s transitioned and it’s seen many different iterations. But yeah, it looks so different today than it did before. one of the things I wanna hear an explanation from from you is this idea of green living. So what does that mean? It sounds like, you know, you have this food background that you had a catering business. interest and expertise in food. green living probably is expansive beyond just food. But what is green living encompass in terms of you being you know, if you’re the queen of green, what does that mean? What does that look like day to day?

Yoli Ouiya: Was figuring that out as I started the blog. And I think that was the impetus for me to start it to just kind of dine to document the journey of uncovering what that looked like. Because it first started with my diet and being more intentional about eating organic and then eventually non-GMO and all these other labels that we have adopted. I look at Being sustainable as your entire ecosystem, not just your own personal ecosystem, but how are you affecting the ecosystem around you? And as a child who had eczema when I was very young, being already sensitive to different products and ingredients and things that were on my body and outside of my body. So I think it’s just looking at how you live your life, how it’s going to impact you internally, externally, and then your greater. Environment. So from the sustainable green perspective, is this going to cause be detrimental to my body? Is this going to cause harm to the ecosystem around me? And what other alternatives are out there that could help mitigate that potential outcome? So that’s where the green aspect comes from. And just try not to do harm to others, and especially yourself.

Bjork Ostrom: Hm. Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing when you s look around and start to examine all of the areas in your life, whether it be from products that you you know, like beauty products or hygiene products or home products, just that is a category. It’s amazing how much opportunity there is to shift and adjust. But also one of the things I think a lot about is just like our homes and our spaces that we live in. I’ve been using for probably six or seven years, the this product called Air Things, which is like an Air Things quality monitor. and it has all different types of air quality. The most important I think is radon. but like in both of our houses that we lived in, this is more common in Minnesota where we have basements, but had radon and like needed to mitigate that. It’s like, man, that’s such an easy thing to do. But even like you know, VOCs and I once when our daughter was little we ordered this like mattress because we needed to like sleep in the room with her and or sleep I don’t remember, it was like sleep in a separate room while somebody else slept with her or sleep with her. I don’t remember what it was, but we got this mattress and we opened it up and it was like immediately VOC chemicals went through the roof. And it’s like you don’t know this stuff unless you examine it and look at it. I know this isn’t the point of the interview, but I’d be interested to hear if you have any advice for people who are looking to audit their life when it comes to green products or you know other areas that they could, you know, potentially clean up or become more green with. Are there ways that you can do that? you know, I think of Think Dirty as maybe an app that you could use, anything like that that if people would want to figure out how to be more green?

Yoli Ouiya: Yes. So my website is still up. It just hasn’t been updated in a while. So I do have a checklist there. A great amazing resource for everything is EWG. They are a nonprofit organization where they vet products. They’ll give you a rating in terms of

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Yoli Ouiya: They have like a scale from I think it’s a letter grade system in terms of what is more harmful. They examine the ingredients. They also are the organization that puts out the top ten clean and dirty produce. So they have a list that they publish every year because they’re testing, you know, randomly testing different produce and saying, okay, this one had the most pesticides, and this would be the the duck the dirty dozen if it’s that’s the list. The clean.

Bjork Ostrom: Hmm. Hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: dozen and a dirty dozen and it’s amazing to see how that list changes over time in terms of who is using more pesticides and Insecticides in their produce versus what industries are moving away from it. I think the f the easiest audit is always going to be your kitchen because that’s where you make all your food and you can have more intentional buying decisions. Next audit would be, like you said, the perfect example is your home. What is the air quality of your home? Even if you can’t have or you don’t have the ability to test the air quality, having a good air filter or air air filtration system, like if you have HVAC, making sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Industry. Yeah. Yeah.

Yoli Ouiya: You’re changing your filters pretty often and checking it. You can see the evidence on the filter when you take it out, it is there and in your face. So I think those are the clean, the easiest ways to audit. And then if you have beauty products and you’re I want to check to see what the effic not the efficacy, but in terms of the clean ingredients, you can go on EWG, plop that into their system, and it’ll let you know where grades on their scale.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Cool. That’s great. Yeah, EWG, I pulled it up here, the top three dirty dozen spinach, kale and strawberries, and then the clean fifteen pineapples, sweet corn, avocados. and so it must just be like from an industry perspective, what what, you know, are carrot farmers more aware of this than, you know, spinach.

Yoli Ouiya: Ha.

Bjork Ostrom: And probably you could use that as an indicator then of like if you’re gonna prioritize organic, which would be the ones that would be most important to buy organic. Is that kind of how you’d think about it?

Yoli Ouiya: Hundred percent. If you’re if you’re if budgeting is an issue, I’m the first person to go shop around. And go to the farmers markets and see where the sales are. Typically, organic tends to be cleaner. I’m not saying it’s absolute, but it’s become by organic standards, there are just certain pesticides and insecticides they cannot use. There are organic varieties of that. First of the list is always berries. Think of this, think of it from this perspective. Anything that has skin that you consume, if you can get it organic, get it organic. If the skin can be taken off.

Bjork Ostrom: Uh-huh. Sure. Banana, yeah.

Yoli Ouiya: Off and you consume it, bananas, pineapples, avocados, you can be a little bit more lenient in that from that perspective. So that’s the usually the rule of thumb. So something like a kale, they have to spray it and it’s gonna sit on the surface. And there’s no amount of there’s some washing that can get rid of certain things, but it can’t get rid of everything. lettuce is another one, microgreens is another. So it’s you you can kind of play with the feel of personal. produce that you have essentially and decide what makes sense and what doesn’t.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. so tell me about your journey, your career. So you had this, you know, you had a catering business, you’re doing some corporate work, you were doing some of your side hustle with your site and working on that, doing brand partnerships. what does that look like today in terms of the balance of your day to day? How has that evolved? And then we’re gonna talk about the Food and Wellness Equity Collective as well.

Yoli Ouiya: goodness, we’re on a journey right now. Of as with a lot of content creators that I’ve talked to especially recently, uncovering what that looks like. So CPG, which for some people is consumer product goods, especially in a natural food space, has been my passion point for ever, since I started this journey. And I was a buyer for different venues in terms of bringing emerging products into retail stores. That journey is evolving for me as we speak and me finding different ways to support brands in terms of consulting. I am doing free consulting for smaller emerging brands this entire month as a way to celebrate my birthday. So if there are thank you. So I was looking at it and there’s some new ventures that I can’t necessarily talk about right now and hopefully when it evolves it’s something we can discuss in the future. But I’m

Bjork Ostrom: Happy b happy birthday. Yeah. Love it.

Yoli Ouiya: really excited about what this landscape of food looks like because food is forever. People will always need to eat, people will always need food, and they just need a little bit more support with product discovery and finding products that have integrity or not changing formulations. And I think that’s one of the biggest things is in this landscape, people formulations change, ingredients change, people get bought out and it completely, you know, degrades the the Fidelity that someone may have towards a brand. So that’s where my career is currently is evolving into this new space, and how can I help our greater community at large maintain the integrity of what I’ve what I personally believe the natural product industry should look like. It is should be inclusive, it should be equitable, it should be consumer safe, and it should also support founders and emerging brands in their evolution.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. That’s great. So CPG, you know, we were talking before about you know, dirty dozen, clean fifteen. That would be more like general produce oriented. You’re talking about CPG products. So these CPG products by necessity of the name are always going to be packaged. Is that accurate? So these would be packaged goods. That would be natural. Would that be the filter for what you’re talking about? So natural CPG. Yep, for you. Yeah. And so this is

Yoli Ouiya: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes, for me. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: This is a space that I’m s I’ve really been interested in for a long time and have thought about even of doing like a little bit of an offshoot podcast on this, would be interested in your thoughts on it. But I feel like more and more what there there will be opportunities for people to create similar to like twenty years ago, twenty five years ago, it was really hard to like stand up a website and to build a following and like there was a ton of barriers, and I think it’s gonna get easier and easier. It’s still really hard. But easier and easier for somebody who has an idea for a certain product that they want to exist in the world to work with a team to like create that product and make it exist in the world. And similar to people starting a website and that getting easier and easier, I think that allows for more optionality for people around dietary preferences and the types of foods that they want. There’s also the competition factor for that. so this there’s a few questions that I have for you within this, but the first is do you feel like that’s true? Do you feel like it’s getting easier for people to create a CPG product or you know a a food product in the world? And at a high level, I know we could go like five hours on this, not the purpose of the podcast, but I’m curious to hear about it. At a high level, let’s say you have an idea for something that you want to exist in the world. Who are the people that you need to be involved to like move that forward?

Yoli Ouiya: First of all you need to vet your idea. I think a lot of people jump in and like, I have this amazing idea, but are you testing the market? Right. Looking to see what the demand factor is. If it’s new in its in its category, are there any other competitors or familiar brands that people are already attracted to? How can you improve on what already exists? And just think about this is like this is another job. This is not just, I make a product and just throw it out there.

Bjork Ostrom: Does anybody else want it?

Yoli Ouiya: and put it on my social and hope that all things work out.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Yoli Ouiya: People can be fickle. You need to bring build brand fidelity. And that is through partnerships. That is through transparency. That is through great marketing. I’ve seen wonderful products fail because it just wasn’t attractive in terms of their packaging. So think about the entire think about the product like you want like you want to present it to the world. What is a person if they see this on the shelf? What is going to be their instinct?

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: Instinctual reaction to it. So a lot of people try to, you know, do it themselves and no, work with someone who knows packaging. Even if you have to go online and get someone who is brand new to the space and you can work with them as they grow their skill set and you grow your brand. I think it’s really important to look at all the factors of it and do it. Like there’s some benefit to doing it like when cooking with food to going low and slow. Have to be everything at once, it can be just a slow growth of looking at what your brand will look like. And I think it doesn’t matter who does it first, it matters who does it first and best. Because there’s lots of people who’ve done first, and it’s not best and they fail. But if you do first and best, your impetus is not to be perfect, but to present in such a way that people resonate with it. So I think, yeah, listen, it’s like but the the the in

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. Sure Yeah, or even third and best or fifth and best. Yeah.

Yoli Ouiya: Intention is to put your best foot forward relative to the brand and not just get the idea of it. Because if you put something out there and the formulation is is still like working around, that’s fair. But if it doesn’t look good, if it doesn’t taste good, if it doesn’t smell good, that’s the first impression you’re making. And people are rarely willing to give something a second, third, or fourth chance.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Do you see when people are doing this, are they like bootstrapping it? Are they putting their own money in and figuring it out or raising money, taking out loans? Like what is the early stage of creating a CPG product look like?

Yoli Ouiya: Interestingly enough, more women and then people of color are bootstrapping and raising from friends and family. There are a copious amount of women-led brands I’ve talked to over the years where there was one particular brand, they were garnering around a million in sales and still could not get a bank loan.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: I think there is opportunity and space for smaller banks, different funds to really get behind brands that are underserved and underrepresented. And I think that’s that’s the but most people I would say bootstrap. There is a small sect of people who are get fully funded. There are grants, there are incubators, there are fellowships. So there’s a there is money out there, but getting to it and finding it has been the biggest and trying to balance it all. If you’re a A single person founder. How do you have time to find the funding, get the products done? Right. So there are, I would start there. Like, what are the resources available to me as I develop this idea where I can get additional support and guidance in developing the brand? And then there are people like me who just are out here giving free advice because we want, I I love, but not even just that. In general, I like helping brands. I want them to succeed because I get excited when I go to

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Fundraising is a full time job, yeah. Yeah. Do you f Yeah, it’s your birthday.

Yoli Ouiya: a trade show and I see a new brand and it’s a good brand, I really enjoy seeing them and seeing them thrive. So I try to help in any way I can. And there are so many people, especially on social media, who have that as well.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. One of one of the things that I’ve thought about, so you know, we speak to a lot of creators who have a large social following, who have a lot of influence. A lot of those creators will do brand partnerships. They get paid five, ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollars, who knows how much, to do a partnership, to promote a brand. That’s great. It’s like the formula works. Then you have some creators who launch their own brand, huge undertaking, you know, like you said, It’s another business. It’s not just like some side thing. You’re really signing up to commit to something that is probably more than most people realize in terms of like a level of effort. but the benefit could be substantial in that, you know, maybe you grow this brand that becomes bigger than what you could have grown with your creative or your creator brand. Like, you know, I think of you know, Newman’s own or like there’s a a paleo brand that was created f by somebody who was a like blogger and then he launched this paleo brand and then that became really big. Primal Kitchen, I think it was.

Yoli Ouiya: Yes. And then they sold, I believe they sold a couple of years ago.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That sounds right. and you know, he probably wouldn’t have been able to build his blog as big as he built that brand, but also it’s a ton of work to do that. It’s a very different you know, business that you’re building. but then there’s this space that I’m interested in and I’d wanna know your kind of hot take on it. you know, we’ve been a part of investing in companies via something called the syndicate, which is like you a bunch of people will put money in for anybody who’s not familiar, a bunch of people put money in. And then you have like a lead who kind of organizes it, gathers all the money. And then you have the, you know, LPs who put the money in as well. And then it’s just like one line item on the cap table. And maybe it’s, you know, in that in the case of a comp I don’t know how CPGs are valued, but like if it’s a million a year, maybe you value it at three million and then you raise three hundred thousand to get ten percent of the company.

Yoli Ouiya: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: But one of the thoughts I’ve had is having a vehicle where creators who have income that’s produced from their site, from their creative business, and they’re wanting to try and find you know, their strategic how to strategically repurpose that in a way that they have more influence than just like investing in the stock market or something like that. collectively investing into these CPG startups where they will have the incentive to promote, to talk about, to you know, mention the brand. And the CPG brand has an interest in having like smart money, but also raising money for whatever they would need marketing, inventory, things like that. This is kind of a buzzy word, but like this symbiotic relationship where you have creators who have

Yoli Ouiya: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: Want to make smart investments and then have the ability to influence. And then you have you know, early stage companies in the CPG world who are looking to raise money and also could benefit from having people with a voice promoting it. What are your thoughts on that? Have you seen anything like that play out? Do you feel like there’s a need for that from the CPG brands that you’ve interacted with? you know, I think the question is always like around equity. Do you want to be giving up equity versus not?

Yoli Ouiya: Right. It’s such a a compound relationship to look at because more often than not, emerging brands don’t have huge marketing budgets. It’s, you know, one, two, three people who come together to produce this brand. There is space in my mind for

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: An incubator of sorts that brings together these two emerging platforms. So you have your brand and you have your creator. And if a creator has a very niche audience relative to a product line that could evolve out of that, that is one space they could look at. I think The biggest issue that I’ve seen in terms of that transition is when you go to the larger levels of raising, you’re giving up more equity. And there have been examples I’ve seen early days where people would completely lose all control of what their name meant in that space. And I’m thinking of two particular people at the top of mind. And it was really infuriating to see this person work so. So hard for what they you know, their name in the space, and now their brands are not actually three now, are not associated with them in any capacity, but the brand lives on because a a board of people decided, well, we know what we’re doing, but the heart of the brand is now gone and what it stood for. There are certain one brand in particular still thriving because they made some sound decisions. But I think as a creator, if you’re gonna go into this space, think about The best question I’ve ever been asked and the one I repeat is what does the death of your company looks like?

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: If you think about what the end of life looks like for your brand, then you can plan around what the life journey of your brand is going to look like. That includes your blog. And unfortunately, the landscape is changing so drastically with algorithms and AI. You have to have plan B and C on deck if things were to change at the at the drop of a dime. If YouTube went away, what is like your next plan of marketing? marketing, I think sitting down and really drawing out not necessarily the pros and cons, but what a healthy outcome would look like if you were to venture in this space. But yes, I think there is space for an agency of sorts that looks at the ho look at looks at different creators and has good representation of all the diverse bloggers that do exist and content creators and say, let’s create product out of this and that’s an idea I had for a while. Honestly, is looking at a brand and saying, what if you did a limited edition line with said content creator just to test the market and not necessarily have a long-term commitment, but just to say, hey, this is something I’m putting out and see what comes of it. And it’s a good way to do something different, and it’s a good marketing tactic. So there are different opportunities for agencies like that and I don’t think there’s an agency that is out there that does that and maybe that’s a niche I could fill eventually on top of the ten thousand other things I’m already doing. Right.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Other things added to the list. It sounds like with the Food and Wellness Equity Collective, you know, you alluded to it a little bit, but it sounds like some of that came out of some of the things that you were realizing. You know, you had you mentioned this idea that oftentimes it’s more you you’ve observed is more difficult for women or people of color to be getting alone, even if the like business is relatively well established. Talk to me more about kind of what you’ve noticed and the reason for for starting this group and a little bit about what that is and how it works.

Yoli Ouiya: So it’s interesting. Sonia and I met at a content creator summit and We kept in touch over the years and at the start of what I like to call the Ponderosa, otherwise known as the pandemic, we got in a call just to catch up and see what what was going on in our lives and I said, Hey, I have this idea. It was after the murder of George Floyd and I said, I have an idea. What if we could bring together all the content creators and bloggers and use our collective voices for change? And she said, You know what? I have a similar idea. And we started workshopping names and that out of that the collective was born and we started off with digital all digital workshops because we were all on Zoom all the time. And initially we weren’t in entirely sure what we wanted to do outside of, hey, educating people about what was going on, how could we use our voices because we all had audiences. Our first twenty founders had a massive following and they were

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. It’s COVID. Yeah.

Yoli Ouiya: very well known and still are very well known in the blogging space. And how and they believed in the mission of, hey, we want to see change and we can’t just sit here and be quiet and post black squares on our Instagram. What else can we do? Now we have I wouldn’t say evolved because

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: That message is always important. I think right now we’re in a space where we see bloggers who need support. And that’s where our mission is. And we transitioned into in-person retreats and summits. And I think my goal was always to have a safe place for any of these content creators and these bloggers to voice their concerns, what’s happening in the industry, give them some education around that, give them some business. business directive, but also just have a place of solace. Like I am amongst my peers because I often operate in a silo and I don’t have other people in my life who understand what this blogging journey is like and the testimonials we get every year.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Yoli Ouiya: Is the only reason I keep doing this. It’s because when we are in that environment and people find like-minded folks and they feel a sense of peace and gratification that even though they don’t have it all figured out, they get encouraged to start figuring it out. Or they find the courage to pivot in another direction, or they find support from people to say, Whatever you need to do, we will support you in that. So I think that’s where our journey is now is just being a safe

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Yoli Ouiya: haven and also providing the resources and guides as much as we can. Our retreat is particularly different because we don’t really make a profit from it. All the sponsorship that we get from our partners

Bjork Ostrom: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: Goes into subsidizing the retreat, literally, our ticket is less than less than $200. That’s you just have to get yourself there. We have a scholarship, we subsidize a bunch of different things so that they have a cohesive experience. And that was it. We do it for the love of our community. And and one I think someone Andrew said in a meeting recently from Nerdpress, he was describing to someone.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: on his team what the retreat was like because she had never been. And he said this going to this retreat feels like what the OG blogging community felt like. Where we all c just kind of came together and it wasn’t about numbers and metrics and competition. It was really about just having community. And I think that is something I have loved about building this with Sonia is

Bjork Ostrom: Hmm. Yeah.

Yoli Ouiya: Literally the same coin gets opposite sides in every capacity. Like my birthday is August 4th, her birthday is February 4th. Literally six months to the day. Yes. And she she thinks about things slightly different, but there’s lots of things we think about very similarly. So building this with someone who has been an ally from the beginning and was an ally before.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s like yin and yang complimentary, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: twenty twenty and all the myriad of things that happened in that year, let’s s set the standard of what allyship looks like. And I think that’s the beautiful thing. It’s not cosplay for her. It’s not, sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. Her and her husband, Alex, have been on this journey before it became the popular thing to do. And I think it’s wonderful now that we have evolved to this point and we still have partners who show up and say, Hey, we believed in your mission since day one. So it’s it’s a ever like we say is the the journey is ever evolving and

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s amazing.

Yoli Ouiya: We appreciate people who have supported us since the beginning.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. So it’s an in-person event. And I think just real quick on that, I was talking to, I think it’s Lindsay yesterday around just how transformative that can be being with people in general. Like being with people, talking about a thing, trying to figure out a thing. We there’s something that shifts that’s unquantifiable but undeniable when you meet in person. when you make space or no it’s my friend it was actually my friend Jeff from Ug Monk. and I had done a couple meetups with him through the years and he was talking about how in one of those he had kind of a pivot that resulted from him meeting up in this group and that that was a beneficial thing for him. For those who aren’t familiar, Ug Monk’s this great kind of analog note-taking system. Jeff’s a great designer, really great guy. But There’s there’s something that happens when you just meet up with a group of people who are have some type of overlap in terms of life experience, work, challenges, struggles, questions, whatever it might be. And a lot of times you don’t even really it doesn’t require a lot of like formality. I think it’s helpful to have some structure, but a lot of it is just being in the same space as somebody. And naturally you find that connection point and discover

Yoli Ouiya: Yep. Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: ideas, opportunities, incredibly beneficial. and life-changing for people. I’m sure that people have attended and been a part of this and have had their life changed because of it. You know, it might be a nudge in terms of their path that they’re going on, but it also might be a significant remapping of where their journey is taking them. and so often these pivot points are these in-person interactions. Who would who would be a good fit for this? If the if there are people out there who

Yoli Ouiya: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: think like this, I I really love the idea of doing this. What does that look like today? Is it people of color? Is it women focused? Is you know, is it people who are in a stage of business? Is it digital? How are you making decisions on like curating this group of people that then meets up to ensure there is some of that overlap? And if people are interested, what does it look like for them to reach out if they would be a good fit?

Yoli Ouiya: Mm-hmm. So It’s so interesting you say that. I would say we’re like the Benetton of retreats. We have everyone. Majority women, equal of women of color, and ever like it’s literally just the full spectrum. When I say Benetton, I had every color, every spectrum. We would love to have more men, but as you know, as the industry as a whole, there’s it’s like it’s just more women content creators. I would say

Bjork Ostrom: It’s the industry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

Yoli Ouiya: In terms of my personal goal every year is I want an OG creator to come who’s been doing this for 10 plus years and feel like they’re walking away with something. That is always my goal. And the test of that was last year for our retreat. We had some people who have been doing this a while. I’ve had like Michelle Tam from Gnome Gnome Paleo, who’s one of our founding members, came and spoke for the first time.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: We’ve had other speakers come and every single person for the most part who attended, I can’t think of anyone who didn’t, got something out of it. And that’s not something people have experienced in a while if they go to retreats or summits or something for content creators because a lot of the content is 101 or 102 level. I’m at the point where I’m like, what’s our 301 and what’s our 401?

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Yoli Ouiya: Because if you’re at those levels, the person who is a beginning a beginner or intermediate blogger in their face is going to fundamentally get something wonderful out of that experience. And that’s what we’ve had. We had the range, but my goal is always, I tell some of you, I’m like, this is my personal, like my personal ethos. Let’s go to a higher level so that way an OG blogger can feel invigorated and renewed in this experience and not just coming in like, okay, this is stuff. I’ve heard before the things I’ve experienced before. We’re always trying to top ourselves in terms of the experience that we create. This particular year is a little bit different. I said, okay, we go hard on the SEO and all the other acoup charmants that comes with content creation. This year is different because it’s in Sedona and is wellness heavy. Yes, we’re gonna do the business of blogging and all the other things, but this is the reset. People need a reset. People need a space to feel relaxed and also just have epiphanies about where they’re going in terms of this space and what that looks like for them. And I’m really excited about that because I’m a wellness girl by nature. I love self-care in all capacity. And this is an opportunity for women who typically just operate in these silos. They have their teams, they have their families, and they when they’re on that computer and they’re auditing and and updating different posts, it’s literally just them at the end of the day. If they they’re lucky to have a partner, yeah, it can be very isolating. And I like this and I’ve had people come to us afterwards and say, You changed my life. Literally from one of the the second retreat we did, someone, a few people

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. It’s lonely.

Yoli Ouiya: people actually came to me afterwards because it’s not just okay, let’s bring us together. Sonia and I really pour into people because it’s important for them to walk away. Yes, you spent money to g come here and be with us. So let’s pour back into you to make sure you feel supported and whatever that looks like. And I think that’s this it’s not a money grab. It’s not, let’s have an event and let’s look cute and take quick photos. There was one year where I was barely in any photos because I was so intent on running around and making sure people were okay.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Yoli Ouiya: because that’s what the impet is. It’s for love of community, if nothing else.

Bjork Ostrom: Hm. That’s great. Yeah, it is one of those things where it is a combination. And I think part of it is disconnecting, having some time away from the computer, interacting with people. That is life giving. But you’re also getting information. You’re having conversations, you’re exchanging best practices, you’re sitting down, you’re learning from people. Also extremely beneficial. the this the twenty twenty six retreat will be retreat will be happening c

Yoli Ouiya: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: October twentieth through the twenty third. This podcast will be coming out kind of mid September. Still tickets? Like would people still be able to like attend if they wanted to? And if they did, where could they find out information on that?

Yoli Ouiya: Yes. So if you look at our website, it’s retreat.foodwellness equity dot com. And you can also follow us on Instagram, Food Wellness Equity, and we’ll we’ll be posting continuously throughout that time. So that’s the best way we launch our well, by the by the time this airs, the scholarship will already have passed, but we do have some funds that we put together aside to help with lodging or housing cost. So we’re providing stipends as well. When I tell you we pour everything into we pour everything and we also have round ship shuttle service from Phoenix to Sedona. So the literally the only cost you have is the ticket. Your flight and that and then your hotel essentially. Everything else that we essentially are paying for everything else because we just want people to come and have a good time. Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a labor of love and I’ve heard that from countless people who have done events like this where it’s not you’re not getting money back. I think in this case the unique thing is like not only are you facilitating this, but you’re also facilitating underneath it all, a conversation around some really important topics, equity, inclusion, like and having that be part of the ethos of the organization. So not only is it how are you thinking strategically about your site, your, you know, strategy, but also missionally as the organization, what’s really cool to see is like you are thinking broadly, how can we make this accessible to all types of people and and beneficial? And then within that, I would guess part of the what happens is as you’re having those conversations, that’s a that’s a part of what people are talking about and having exposure to. So Are there other ways that people can follow along with what you and Sonia are doing apart from just the retreat? you have the website, obviously, some social channels. Why don’t you give a shout out to those as well as we round out the interview today?

Yoli Ouiya: Yes. sure. So we are going back to doing a couple of digital workshops for people who can’t necessarily make it. And then one exciting development is we will be doing some pop-up dinners in different cities where you you apply to be invited and you get an invitation and you come and meet people within your own city. I think that’s important to have people who are local and so that way they can get together locally versus coming all the way out to a retreat. So that’s something we’re

Bjork Ostrom: Amazing. Totally.

Yoli Ouiya: Starting either if not in Q4, definitely in Q1 of next year, and we’ll probably be transitioning more to that. And then we’re working on doing our second summit, which is a larger undertaking next year. Merton talks about having that, and that’s a great place for content creators to come and meet the actual brands, and that is typically will be done that’s completely free of charge. So I’m excited for that for that to come. So

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s great. Yuli, thanks so much for coming on, sharing your story. Thanks to you and Sonia for all the work that you’ve done in putting this together, cheering you on and excited to see it continue to grow and impact lives in the years moving forward.

Yoli Ouiya: All right, thank you Bjork for having us and we’ll definitely be in touch and keep you all up to date. All right.

Bjork Ostrom: Sounds good.