How to Thrive in the Creator Economy and Build Successful Brand Partnerships

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there, thanks for tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Ann, and in today’s episode, Bjork is sitting down with Chandice Probst and Abbey Rodriguez from the Tastemaker Conference team. From the days of bloggers to the rise of influencers and creators, Chandice and Abbey have witnessed firsthand how the industry has transformed, and now they’re working hard to legitimize the creator economy, to show the world that being a food creator is a real business and not just a hobby. They’ll round out the episode by sharing their approach to working with brands, and you’ll also hear them talk about how important it is to lean into the abundance mentality. If you enjoy this episode, we would really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And if you’re interested in attending the Tastemaker Conference in 2025, be sure to check out the show notes for an exclusive discount code for Food Blogger Pro members available from October 15th to the 22nd. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Chandice. Abbey, welcome to the podcast

Abbey Rodriguez: Thank you! Hello.

Bjork Ostrom: Good to be here. We live in similar worlds where we talk to a lot of food creators, food publishers, and we live in this world, which is a very fascinating world of building businesses, digital businesses focused on food. And I remember we had a team member a long time ago, she was coming back from a conference and she sat next to somebody and they were like, what do you do? And she’s like, I work for a company that does training for people who are building food blogs. And they’re like, what in the world? But here we are, and this is really becoming an industry. We’ve been doing a version of this for 14 years, way back when we started Pinch of Yum, and it was new then, but now there’s not only people who are doing it, but also businesses like yours or ours being built, supporting the people who are building their businesses. So Abbey, I know that if we roll the tape back to when you first started it, you had some intuition around this being a thing, and a lot of the work that you’re doing now is continuing to showcase the fact that no, this is a legitimate industry. So where are you at at that time when you were looking at it and you’re like, I think that there’s enough here to support a business, to support these people.

Abbey Rodriguez: Yes. So that was 2017 when we started Tastemaker and I started it and reached out to Chandice as we were about to do our first event. I was like, please come help do us, come help build this.

Bjork Ostrom: How did you know each other? Had you been working together before?

Abbey Rodriguez: So Erin from Meaningful Eats, I knew her independently from my childhood best friend who was roommates with her at college. And so Erin was like, you have to meet my friend. You too would just totally get it off your energy, all the things. So we actually met at Expo West at another food event. Yeah, I was really pregnant too.

Bjork Ostrom: So you had that connection and you brought her in, you had this idea and you brought her in to say like, Hey, I’m thinking of doing this thing, this thing being a food conference, a conference for food creators, food publishers. Would you come alongside me? Here we are, seven years later, it’s still going strong. How have you seen it change in those seven years, the industry of food publishing or the industry of food creators?

Abbey Rodriguez: So I think one of the most interesting things I find fascinating is how we’ve tried to this metamorphosis of what do we even call ourselves? I feel like there’s even been this evolution of, it started as bloggers, then it started as, and then we went into influencers. And I feel like influencer might have a little bit of a negative connotation depending on who you talk to. And creator is just, I think it’s multifaceted fits. And I think the big thing right now that Tastemaker has shifted into is really helping to legitimize the creator economy from the food perspective, but really across the board, the work we’re doing here now is really focused on that. I’m actually getting my thesis in, I’m doing my thesis on the politics of the creator economy, getting my master’s degree in sociology. And I know we had some questions about, well, what does that even mean? What are the politics? What is that? So essentially the thesis is talking about how does the creator economy operate, first of all, and what are we doing to legitimize that? And really there is this element of then arguing the case for creators to be a decentralized business model against big tech monopolies. So very, very relevant to what’s happening with ai, what’s happening with Google, what’s happening with Meta, right? Any big tech that is really influencing, and I know you were on the hill with reactive talking about that. It’s very in line with the work that I’m doing. It takes into account the state takes into account big tech. It takes into account the creators themselves, the consumers, the corporations and brands that are also helping to fund this, how it gets funded, how it operates. Really, it’s the entire ecosystem of what the creator economy is because we know what it is. But I think there’s not much by way of academic research, which that is a huge part of legitimacy within a sociological lens is having research to back it up, having at the FTC is starting, they just came out with these guidelines five days ago. They just made a press release talking about indicators for fake use of social media, the fact that corporations are spending money, the fact that the FTC is coming out with regulations that we’re able to appeal to this, to senators on Capitol Hill against big tech is just huge in terms of the growth and where this is going. So pacemakers doing a little bit of that, but yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And part of it is there are things that are happening, changes evolutions within the industry, but to your point, part of it is researching, studying, understanding those in order to shine a light on it and say, and look, as an example, if you go to tastemakerconference.com, you can see the H one, the creator economy. It says this, the creator economy industry reached 250 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach 500 billion by 2027. Just a small example of showcasing the fact that, hey, this as an industry is important, economically speaking, there’s a lot of flow of money from businesses to one business to another business. Just because you would be branded as a creator or influencer or blogger, whatever it might be, doesn’t mean that it’s not a legitimate business. Is that part of what you’re trying to do is say, remove the just between, oh, I’m just an influencer or I’m just a creator to say, no, this is a business, period. What does it look like for you when you say legitimizing a thing, at what point, and maybe the answer is never, but at what point would you be able to step back and be like, mission accomplished, we’ve done what we’ve set out to do, what does that look like?

Abbey Rodriguez: I honestly think that looks like when you sit down at the dinner table with your extended family for a holiday and you turn to your uncle who’s 70 and they say, Hey, what do you do? And you’re like, oh, I’m a creator. And they respond to you with the same amount of respect and understanding as when you say, oh, I’m an accountant, right? Sure, an

Bjork Ostrom: Engineer.

Abbey Rodriguez: I’m an engineer. What I mean by legitimizing, and some of this I think is academic speak from a sociological point, if anybody is familiar with that, the definition of what you mean by words is different from one academic and researcher to the next. And so legitimizing means that it is socially part of the social fabric that is accepted, and that is a norm essentially. And just the creator jobs, creative jobs in general, I think have always been mistrusted slightly. They’re just somehow not legitimate in some degree. And I just think that a lot of times you can prove that through revenue and economic means.

Bjork Ostrom: I was just going to say part of it that feels like such an important variable within it, and I think one of the reasons is, and I’m thinking of building this in real time, so let me know if this feels accurate, but if you’re an accountant or if you’re an engineer, chances are that you aren’t going to, most of the accountants I know aren’t going to be doing that as like, oh, I really like doing this and I’m going to also do it in the evenings, weekends, and evenings unpaid. But if you’re a musician, it’s almost like you start there. This is the thing I love. This is the thing I’m passionate about. And when you say I’m a musician as a career, as a job, the sliding scale of what that could look like is, you could be Taylor Swift or you could be somebody who’s still taking lessons and playing open mic nights and collecting tips. And that feels like part of the challenge with what we’re doing is you look at somebody who’s publishing on Instagram, well, there’s a lot of people who do that, but there’s also a subset of people who are making millions of dollars doing it. And so like you said, the thing that kind of tips over is to say like, oh no, I’m earning the income equivalent to another business. And I remember a friend who she was having a conversation, and it wasn’t until she showed her dad her tax returns that she said that was this pivotal moment for her where suddenly he was like, oh my goodness, this is a business that you’re running. But she had to prove it to him, Which to some degree makes sense. When you’re an accountant and you kind of know like, okay, you’re grinding at this job. Maybe you like the job, but it’s not something that you’re also going to do as a hobby. And I know that Chandice, a lot of what you’re doing is you’re working in that world of revenue, you’re working in that world of seeing how much corporations or companies or brands are willing to pay. And that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about on this episode is how can we be smart as creators in establishing those relationships. But a lot of the work that you do is working with these brands, these companies. Can you talk a little bit about even from the tastemaker side of things, because you’re coming to these companies and you’re saying, Hey, would you sponsor Tastemaker Conference? Would you be a partner with us in this thing? Can you talk about their mindset a little bit as they look at creators in the creator economy?

Chandice Probst: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I feel like the verbiage of letting them know our goal at Tastemaker Conference is to legitimize the creator economy and to help them work better with creators. They understand, oh, okay, and I’ll use a lot of the same phrases. I’ll say, I am sure you already know this, but influencer marketing is shown to be 11 times more effective now than traditional marketing. And they’re like, yeah, I knew that a lot of times. And sometimes

Bjork Ostrom: The marketing director is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but maybe didn’t actually know that.

Chandice Probst: Those who do really grasp it, and I’ll tell you the tech are the first ones to grasp it are it’s easy. It’s easy with those who already are working with influencers and creators, and they understand that surprisingly within the food community, I’m like, you’re going to have the best food bloggers and influencers there and influencer the food brands, it’s harder because they still have that mentality of just get in front of the sales. We just want to get as much distribution as possible. So the food is harder than the tech, to be honest with you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. So which is interesting, you wouldn’t think that to be the case, but I think of even the companies that we work with for Pinch of Yum, and there’s a handful of, we just had one of these calls today, a handful of conversations that we have where it’s like, Hey, it’s our first time doing this. Can you explain this thing to me? How does it work? And these are established brands with huge marketing budgets, but the general trend is doing more of that. I think marketers, people are building brands understand it to be important, but there’s still a little bit of a lag on them catching up to it. And what you’re saying makes sense where people who operate in tech are familiar with the digital world. Their mindset is like, Hey, we understand generally how this works. We’re going to try and figure out a partnership with you. But for a food company, what you’re saying, Chandice, is they’re just like, how do we get into Costco? How do we get into in Midwest, it’s like Cub Foods, is that what you’re saying? A little bit. That’s their mindset as a marketing person,

Chandice Probst: And I try to explain to them, this will get you distribution. You can talk to the sales manager at a show where you’re just there for sales, but you are in a space with 500 of the best food creators from around the world. These are the people that are influencing what people eat, what people buy. So if they’re talking about your product, you better believe the grocery store is going to be like, we need that product on our shelves and the demand will come. And so it’s just switching that mindset is really difficult because for so long it’s been traditional print media, traditional broadcast media, and then going into sales. And so to combine both and let them know you can use some of your both budgets to do this and overlap, it’s been fun to see those who grasped it early on. And we’ve found that a lot of the ones that have grasped it early on are the foundations, like the National Watermelon Board, for example, people who are at the grassroots of it rather than the brand. So that’s been really fun to see. Same with the Idaho Potato Commission. They understand that. So it’s fun to see that, but it’s definitely a challenge in our community, and I’ve heard that from all of, I’m a blogger, Abbey’s a blogger, and it’s always been a challenge to get those brand deals and to then be legitimized enough that they pay you what you’re worth. That’s a huge part of it as well. And one of my favorite things that watching from year one to now going into year eight with tastemaker, with legitimizing the Creator economy, you asked at what point you see that. And for me, the first year looking at the demographic of our attendees and the way they believed in themselves, I mean many did, but many still didn’t to where we are now. And the diversity is so beautiful, and so many of these people now are like, this is what I’m worth. This is what I charge, this is my trust, the confidence there. And we’ve now moved into two different tracks for our education because education is so important to us. And so we have a beginner, intermediate, and an advanced. And so bringing back people like Holly from spend with pennies and Alyssa from the recipe critic and bringing those women back and them saying, we actually have a place here we can learn too, and then also teach as well has been so fun to be able to bring in that higher tech. Like Microsoft came in and taught about AI in the creator economy, and that was amazing to watch and see. And so we’ve been trying to up it in all areas from our education to our sponsorships, to all of the things that we provide.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. I think when you talk about making sure that you’re getting paid what you’re worth, and this conversation around you are legitimizing an industry, and part of that is establishing your value on an open marketplace. You go to Facebook and you are bidding to get an ad to show up, and it’s like there’s no debate around what the cost should be because people just are transacting and it’s like you buy it or you don’t buy it. But it’s so squishy in the world of working with brands and sponsorships and partnerships like this, because I think back to our first deal deal was like Paula Deen’s, and we got 12 bags of frozen vegetables. It’s like, were we worth more than 12 bags of frozen vegetables? Probably. But we still felt like it was awesome. And that was important for us. It was the first step for us of working with a brand and having them send us stuff. And so for somebody, say it again.

Chandice Probst: Everyone has to start somewhere.

Bjork Ostrom: And for us it was frozen vegetables. But for people who hear that, you have to be able to get what you’re worth, how do you know what you’re worth? Sometimes it’s like you’re just starting out and maybe you haven’t crafted your product very well, your product being content, you’re still learning you as a person. Obviously we all believe people have unpassable worth, but your value in the marketplace might not be there yet. So what would your and both of you might have thoughts on this. Chandice, we can start with you. What would your advice be for people who are trying to figure out either in the early stages, what am I worth and what should I charge? Or maybe you’ve been doing it for a while and you’re like, maybe I’m worth more, I should be charging more. How do you approach that?

Chandice Probst: Yeah, absolutely. Well, my favorite concept is the abundance mentality over scarcity mentality. There’s enough to go around. So find a group of people, and we’ve seen the most beautiful friendships develop from tastemaker where these women now travel the world together, find a group of other like-minded creatives, because you need to have people like you to understand what did you do? What did you charge? And find the right ones. The ones who are willing to have the abundance mentality and be like, yeah, there’s enough to go around. I tell you what I charge. I can tell you that will be the number one helper for you. Because if you have five women in this group that you’ve created a little mastermind telling you what they’ve charged and based on their different following or page views or whatever, then you can really have a scale to build off of for yourself based on the number of or the engagement you have and followers on social compared to your page views and your newsletter. That is the best suggestion I can give you. And that one is just finding the right people, and that is goodness all around. It’s just it supplies. And then also within that goes sharing too, if you have someone reaching out to you for a campaign that you’re like, that is not my forte, but hey, Molly over at What Molly Makes, she’ll kill it for you. And be that person. Be the person who recommends somebody else, that brand will remember you and this campaign didn’t work. Maybe something else will. Or maybe they’ll have a friend in the industry that will see that this is a better fit for you. So be a person with the abundance mentality who’s willing to share and network and communicate. And that is my favorite way to build pricing. And then really just being firm in your communication with sponsors of letting ’em know, I like to say get a feel for what their budget is. I wouldn’t recommend putting the number out first necessarily, unless you have just a base where that’s your minimum, but kind of get a feel for what If they’re reaching out to you, chances are they know a little bit about your fall. They know that you’re going to be charged a certain amount. So ask what their budget is. You might be surprised. Sometimes you may have a number in your head like, okay, this campaign’s worth 7,000, and they may say, we have $11,000. Well, great, that’s wonderful. More for them. So I think talking openly with the people that you’re going to be working with as well and asking ’em what their budget is like also.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. When starting out a new business, it’s a pain to get through the LLC part forming that limited liability company. And my guess is it’s painful enough that many of you listening to this haven’t gone through the process yet. Well, the good news is that Tailor Brands makes it so much easier. Not only is it easy, but it’s also affordable to get your LLC with Tailor Brands. Tailor Brands offers all the legal requirements for LLCs such as a registered agent, annual compliance, EIN, and an operating agreement. All of these are really critical components of forming that LLC and having a nice and tidy business structure. Tailor Brands also walks you through each step of building a successful business and has everything you need all in one place, bookkeeping and invoicing, business licenses and permits, business documents, bank accounts, and so much more. And our listeners will receive 35% off Tailor Brands LC formation plans using the link tailorbrands.com/foodblogger. That’s T-A-I-L-O-R-B-R-A-N-D-S.com/foodblogger or just search, build a biz with Taylor. So get started today with Tailor Brands. I think of other marketplaces, this being a marketplace, you have a buyer and you have a seller. The marketplace of homes, and it’s like most states I think in the United States have this policy where you can see what a house sold for. I think maybe Texas doesn’t, but in Minnesota, we have a house in our neighborhood that just went up for sale, and we’ll be able to see what that’s sold for. And what that does is it helps normalize what your expectation should be for listing a house able to see, oh, this house listed for 500,000 and it sold for 5 75, so underpriced, so what’s our square footage compared to that one? And obviously there’s a lot of little variables that go into it, but what I hear you saying is a similar version of that where you’re able to create a little version of a marketplace to say, here’s where we are all at. And you can kind of normalize off of that. Obviously, the more you expand the scope on that, the more you’ll be able to see the average of what that’s like. But when you’re just operating in a silo, it’s just you. It’s really hard to quantify if you’re over, if you’re under where other people are landing, obviously the ideal would be if somehow suddenly all that data became public, but it never will. And so you have to have that trusted close community of people who are sharing what they’re doing and best practices and how they’re approaching that. Abbey, I saw you. This is, people aren’t going to see it on the audio version, but you kind of tapped your head.

Abbey Rodriguez: I was like, that’s a good idea. Yeah. What am I thinking with that? Well, that’s where, this is why and I are so great. I mean, we’re both visionary people, I think you have to be, but Chandice is very much to put it in research data terms like the qualitative person, the relationships, the nuanced things, getting those networks of people. And that’s kind of what Tastemaker is. But then you said, Bjork, there’s this whole quantitative approach. How do you actually quantify your value? What does that look like? And I think there is some, I don’t remember the creator’s name, that’s going to bother me. Maybe I’ll come back and you can put it in the show notes, in the show notes, include it in the show notes. But they have come up, I think with this app that you can go and post what you’re being paid. And so it is this aggregated.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I also don’t remember what it’s called. Yeah.

Chandice Probst: It’s useful though. And they’re quantifying that so you can see, hey, but the way they’re quantifying it is, should you work with this brand? Walmart pays you on time and they pay you a valuable rate, or this brand does not so beware in it. It’s based on user feedback that they have experienced directly. But I think the other thing I was thinking that might be a cool tool to create within the food space, getting more ideas. But yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: I was just looking through my little research list because there was, now that you’re talking about it, I had made a note like, oh, this is super interesting. I need to look into it. And of course I haven’t yet, but we’ll see if we can dig it up and include it in the show notes. And if nothing else, it’ll be a good excuse for people to go check out the show notes.

Abbey Rodriguez: But we also have our brand pricing calculator too, that I think we’ve talked about even a couple of years ago. Last time we were on here, sorry to cut you off, Chandice. And that’s been a very useful tool for people because we were trying to quantify that to give you a starting point, just to be like, Hey, what am I worth at minimum? And I created the calculator and base that off of just hourly wages and give a beginner immediate advance of just maybe look at this from an hourly perspective as a freelancer of things to consider for your time. And it has different variables in there to calculate percentages of your equipment, just all those things that maybe you’re not thinking of when you’re pricing out a project that we use. So, yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, example being if a brand comes to you and they’re like, our budget’s $250, and you are like, oh, I could get paid two $50 to do a sponsored reel, that would be really cool. Number one, it might be cool and it might be worth doing if it helps you build your portfolio and if it establishes you in a way that allows you to have easier conversations with other people. But it almost feels like what you’re saying is just to get a floor.

Bjork Ostrom: If you’re going to spend eight hours doing a thing, you have your equipment. And the way that I think about it often is if you were an agency and somebody hired you and your agency to create this piece of content, what would that cost? It’s always going to be multiple thousands of dollars at the minimum. And so in those early stages, you could take that agency approach. Now again, if you’re just early on and you don’t have the craft established yet, there’s still kind of that gap that you’re trying to close around photography skills or whatever it might be. There’s always the starting out point, and that’s maybe where you are getting a bag of frozen vegetables, but it’s like you want to move out of that as quickly as possible in order to get to the point where you’re at the floor getting paid what you would if it was an hourly rate or you’re an agency. And then as you build your following, and maybe this is what you’re getting at Abbey, that becomes a multiplier. So you have your floor, but then like, Hey, and I’m also going to be able to put this in front of 500,000 people, put a little bit of my brand equity on the line. There’s some risk with that. And so the cost for that then starts to get folded in as a multiplier On the work that you’re doing to create the content. So I’m curious to know what does that look like for you operationally? And I know Janice, you’re a COO, so you’d maybe have some thoughts on this. When you are having conversations with brands, let’s say you start to feel confident, here’s what our offering is now we’re going to really hit it. We’re going to hit the street, we’re going to start selling. How much of it is selling, how much of it is intentional outreach versus brands coming into you? And I ask within the context of Tastemaker, because I think it applies to anybody who’s out there as a creator as well. I think a lot of times we kind of are waiting around for the brand to come knocking on our door, which occasionally does happen, but the more that I learn about brands that are doing at scale brand partnerships, the more I’m coming to understand they’re out there pitching, selling, reaching out, doing intentional work to keep that pipeline filled. So what does that look like for you? And also what tools are you’re using to help with that?

Chandice Probst: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think part of legitimizing is creating a business that has, we have a marketing, we have a sales team, we have all of these things. And right now, maybe you’re only one person, but you’re going to have to allocate 15% of your time to sales if you want more of those partnerships. And so yes, it is sales. And one of the biggest things we do every year is we create our sponsorship deck and we set our prices and we set those based on the deliverables that are being provided. And our sponsorships are all-inclusive. So from the time you sign up till the end of the conference, so if you sign up right after the one conference, you get a whole year with us and we work together. If you sign up four months before, I mean you’re still getting the same deliverables, but we throw in a bunch more based on early sign up because we just want to reward those early adopters. So our sponsorship deck is set so similar to as your media kit would be set, for example. And another great way to do those media kits is to ask a friend what theirs looks like and let them share and kind of build off of that. So those are set. However, there’s a lot of times when they’ll come and say, this package looks great, but we also need X, Y, and Z. Okay, well we can add that on. No problem. That’s an a la carte. And not that it’s listed in the deck, but we can add it on. So a lot of times you’re building, making a personalized brand package, which is a lot of what the influencers are doing as well. They’re saying, this is the budget we have, what can you do? So you may be in between two of your packages on your deck and then build them something that works. And that’s usually a partnership that works well for everyone because you’re getting paid what you feel you should be paid and they’re getting the deliverables they want. Maybe this package has it, but this one doesn’t. And so it’s kind of a hybrid. So being willing to adjust is very helpful. I wanted to say, I wanted to note that with sales, it’s very hard. I have a very tender heart. Abbey’s a very strong, I’m strong, I’m a strong woman, but I have a tender heart.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally.

Chandice Probst: So you have to remind yourself all the time. Abbey always reminds me business, it’s not personal, it’s fine, it’s okay, but they don’t like me. Me, she’s like, has nothing to do with the package. It’s the brand, whatever. And so I’ve learned that over the years because when we were first starting, it would be really difficult for me, Abbey, when we would get a no, it was a lot harder. And now I’m like not the right fit. That’s fine. Supposed to be here and we are not going to change what we know we are providing you and the value of that unfortunately. But what we can do is maybe you only have this, here’s what we can provide. We’d still love for you to join us. And so maybe it’s in a smaller portion rather than a full package. So keeping that mindset as you go about as a creator with sales, remembering that it’s business not personal. Your business is tied to your personal hobbies and love and passion and drive. You’re like, they don’t like my beautiful hobbies, but that’s not true. So remembering that is very helpful. The way in which we do it is I much enjoy being on the calls with people. I enjoy talking to them. I enjoy connecting and hearing what they’re wanting to do. I could literally cry when I have to do cold pitching and finding emails. It’s rocks in my backpack. That’s what Abbey and I call it. And it makes me want to just cry all day. So I don’t like to do that. And so we have an amazing sales team. They’re really good at it. Candace is incredible. I know Candace and Chandice kind of weird, right?

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yeah. I’m tracking.

Chandice Probst: Yeah, Candace is really, really great on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I don’t even know how to use it. I updated my bio in a picture, but she’s on there finding the CEO of so-and-so and finding the people at DoorDash and great, so that’s her. She’s really good at that. And so she finds those people, she sends an initial email and then once there’s that reply where there’s interest, then I hop on a call with them. That’s where it’s a lot of fun for me. I enjoy that. But there is hours and hours and hours of reaching out on LinkedIn and Instagram and if you want partnerships, you’re going to have to do that. People are not, unless you are the very top, unless you are the very best, people are not usually just going to find you unless the real goes viral, unless you know what I mean. It’s work. And so that’s how we do it with our sales. And it’s been a lot of fun to see how that’s worked out and to try too. And

Abbey Rodriguez: We have a traditional sales pipeline too, in terms of tools that we use that are interesting. Some people use HubSpot for their sales pipeline. We actually use a company called Copper. They’re relatively new, easier for smaller businesses in terms of the sales pipeline and just like a CRM to be managing it to see, hey, here’s our sales goals and here’s a traditional sales pipeline of you have your unqualified leads, then you have qualified, then you have late stage, then you have closed one, closed the lost. And we use Asana and copper to then identify all the reasons why. So that say they’re closed lost, we have a reason why budget wasn’t there this year, or they’re just not interested or they don’t care about influencer marketing because then what that does, it allows us to revisit them the following year. So that that’s important data that we use to rework the people that we’ve already done that work to get the context. Because as Chandice was saying, that’s a huge part of that. And in terms of percentages, Chandice, how many people would you say that we are pitching directly versus those referrals versus people who approach us? I really would say those are the three funnels of how we get people referrals, hold pitches that do turn into a sponsorship or people reaching out directly.

Chandice Probst: Well, the people who are reaching out to us almost always close because they know who takes, they found us see the value. So those are our favorite. Those are really great. Isn’t that the same? The creator being like, okay, whoever wants to work with you, they’ve reached out to you. Great. So easy. The next one is referrals, which we found great success in this. So for example, just barely, Erin, you adore her too. She’s so great from Meaningful Eats. She just published her brand new beautiful linen cookbook and she was like, I have to introduce you to my friends over at FireWire Publishing. They’re so great. She introduced us one email and they’re now joining us at Tastemaker. We’re so excited. They’re amazing. And that was one email for Erin, again, going back to the abundance mentality. There’s enough to go around. And she was an affiliate for a referral program. She was in our referral program, so she got a percentage of that sale, so easy one email for her. So referrals are our favorite. I love those because the relationships are there. It’s my favorite when someone tells me this is who I worked with and they should be at Tastemaker. And so that goes into for your creators that are listening, again, a friend saying, I worked with this brand and they’re looking for another wonderful blogger to create for their holiday campaign, or I really love, they’re looking for someone who really knows how to create Peruvian food, and that’s not me, but that’s you. And so those kind of referrals are so beautiful and the relationships are built and bonds deepened with everybody. So those are great. I would say referrals and people reaching out to us, probably 45 or 50%. And then the 55% is us reaching out and finding those brands. But that also goes back to relationships. I go to Expo West every year and I meet with them in person. I’m there talking to Sarah at Roth Cheese, and I’m like, Sarah, you need to be. It’s a very relationship building. Those are the best ways to make long-term sales and fancy food show. We’re partnering with the Fancy Food Show this year with them, and that is massive for our attendees because a ticket to the show, A, it’s not open to the public, so you have to be a buyer or you have to be a sell or buy or you have to be media. And even still those tickets I think are $1,500, but all of our attendees get a free ticket to the Fancy Food Show. So they’re going to go down and visit with, I mean everyone’s there, is that how you say that? She Roth Jelly Belly, I mean everybody’s there. It’s really fun. And so those be places, connect with people. Those are the best ways to make those sales and naturally use products and tag them when you do and over. See, oh, this is someone who really does use our products all the time.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interesting. Lindsay just did shop at Costco with me and when she’s there tagged eight brands and three of them reached out. And so it was interesting for us to have like, Hey, we’d love to jump on a call with you, not to pitch anything, but just to see do you work with creators? Just a touch point. And so to your point, she wasn’t paid to do it. It’s just like, Hey, this is what I’m going to buy when I’m here at Costco. The other thing that I thought was so interesting, I had a call with a friend recently and his business is in mergers and acquisitions, and he kind of sits in the middle and he helps buyers find digital businesses to acquire. And I was asking them about the playbook that people run post acquisition, what are people doing to improve this thing? And what he said is 95% of the time it comes down to sales. These people are acquiring a business that is a good business for whatever reason. It could be an app, it could be a digital publishing company, it could be software. And what they do, he said 95% of the time to increase the value of the business is they have a preexisting sales team or they put a sales team in place. And I thought about that within the context of our worlds because I would say 95% of the people in our space don’t have a sales team. You maybe have an agent that you’re working with, which I think qualifies as a sales team, but most of your time is spent on thinking, how do I increase traffic? How do I get more followers? Which is all good, but I think if you brought somebody on instead of a blog manager, as a sales manager, there’s some really cool potential there. And you see that once you get outside of other businesses when you’re looking at your business, it’s like, yeah, of course you have a sales team and it’s a huge reason why your business is successful. If you imagine taking that away suddenly it’s like, wait, we really need that in order to operate in the way that we do. And I think a lot of it is, well, sorry, go ahead, Chandice.

Chandice Probst: Saying a sales team with massive, for any successful business, my parents just started their second brick and mortar they have in Utah, and the first thing they did was hire a really good sales manager to hit their first year goals. That was the number one thing that was their goal. Because if they knew if they do that, then they would be much better off in some.

Bjork Ostrom: And part of that comes back to as we start to have this conversation earlier, the question of if you open a brick and mortar store and you’re selling whatever it is, you’re selling widgets. People are like, oh yeah, that makes sense. You have sales, you operate within this context. People know what they’re buying. Part of what feels hard occasionally is you might be having conversations with people and the first thing you’re doing isn’t even convincing them to pick you versus somebody else. You’re almost just convincing them to pick the industry, like, Hey, you should work with us. Because like you said, working with a creator is 11 times better, ROI on your investment. So do you have any advice for creators who are either looking to hire somebody in sales or just they themselves are looking to play the role of sales around? Do you even try and convince a brand or do you just go after brands that are already convinced? It feels like it’s a lot of work to try and both convince somebody and then close a deal versus having an idea of the landscape and saying, I know these brands are already working with creators. I’m just going to try and connect with those brands.

Chandice Probst: We absolutely reach out to the brands who we know are already working with influencers because the education is so time consuming to, like you said, and that’s so great, but come to Tastemaker and we’ll educate you there and then should be done separately. And so I would recommend for anyone listening, make a list of top 10 brands that you use and love. Now, be mindful of your audience. So if you’re someone who has 15, 20,000 followers on Instagram and maybe a hundred thousand page views a month, probably not going to be reaching out to anthropology or for their dishes that you love in your kitchen all the time, or to Walmart, I mean, but maybe think of some of those smaller brands that you work with all the time and make a list of 10 of those brands that you use all the time and you already love the product. It would be an easy sell for you because you already know everything about it. You’ve used it in many recipes. It shows up on your blog when you mention, this is my preferred jam, or this is my preferred whatever. Make that list and then reach out to them personally on Instagram or LinkedIn. Those are the two best that we’ve found. Certainly you can try other places, but those are the best that we’ve found and start that conversation. Now, if you’re someone who has much more traffic, you can go after some bigger brands. And if you’re a smaller one, maybe start with some of your local brands in town. Like someone had said Lehigh Roller Mills, it’s a Utah flower brand. That’s a great place to start because their distribution is smaller and you are a local creator that can even come in and do stuff in store for them and do things like that. So that would be my recommendation for that portion of it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great.

Abbey Rodriguez: In terms of, can I answer the other part of that in terms of as a creator, what do you do to build your own team? How do you hire a salesperson? What does that look like? I think it’s a little tricky. I mean, we hired for the position of a sales manager specifically for this industry, and not a lot of people seem to have experience because it’s a very, very niche sell, which I have found to be interesting. And maybe we also didn’t have a massive budget to put it out there to the world and could have perhaps done that in a different way. But I think to your point of convincing people this is worth it is part of the battle, and that’s why both of our businesses exist, is to show people that this is worth it. And we’re using our time to educate brands. And actually Leslie from our team just helped create this sales funnel that we’re doing and really an educational funnel for brands specifically because we’ve seen a huge gap for that of brands need education. We’ve spent all of our time educating creators, but we’re like, wait a minute. Leslie’s like, well, what about the brands? Why aren’t we doing webinars and things? So we actually have, it’s a totally free thing. It’s the first one we’re doing it quarterly is on September 6th if you want to include that too, for anybody that’s a brand that wants to listen. But I think that’s a huge part of it as well, is the people who have the resources like us at Tastemaker, are you guys at Food Blogger Pro? What are we doing to be educating on the other side and creating those and facilitating that? And like Chandice said, the relationship we have with the Fancy Food Show, that is really our end goal is to facilitate that. We bring the education, we legitimize it. My personal research work I’m doing, it’s all in service of building up the industry so that more and more people can adopt this mindset of, oh yeah, this is just a natural part of our marketing plan. That’s my goal in 20 years from now, marketing teams to look at their strategy and be like, influencer marketing is a huge portion of it. And it’s not even a question, it’s just it’s what it is. And for your uncle or your aunt to know what you do and for it to just be like a normal thing. So anyway, that was the ramble answer. But

Bjork Ostrom: We always joke about how the one time that it was the most obvious moment of within our family, extended family being legitimate was when we were on the morning news segment doing a, for whatever reason TV just carries this weight where everybody’s like, oh my gosh, you’ve made it. Now you must have thousands of people who discovered you through this. And it’s like, absolutely not. I don’t think anybody came to our website because of it, but now our family all thinks that we have real jobs.

Abbey Rodriguez: So social proof is interesting.

Chandice Probst: My husband, he’s a big office fan. So when my chili got featured in Kevin Malone’s Chili Cookbook, he’s like, you’ve done it. You’ve made it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, totally, totally right.

Abbey Rodriguez: But I was going to say Sarvesh from Microsoft when told us that the influencers and creators that utilize AI in the proper way will far surpass those who don’t. And he explained it that, for example, ChatGPT or other, whatever you want to use, utilizing AI as a business partner. And so even having it help you as part of your sales team. And putting together, these are the recipes on my blog line site, this is what I do, this is what I specialize in. Give me a list of brands that I can reach out to that are already spending money on influencer marketing. We literally did that at Tastemaker. We said, this is what we do. Give us brands that are already spending money in this industry that we can reach out to. Beautiful list and it going and going and going. So utilize AI to help you. It’s not meant to take your pictures or create your recipes. It’s meant to serve as a business associate or

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like a research assistant.

Chandice Probst: Absolutely. And it comes up in just minutes, but don’t be afraid of that either, because that’s a great way to start building out your sales team and pipeline is through those resources.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That’s awesome. So this conversation is just like a little snippet of hundreds of conversations that you all are having the year with tastemaker, not only the conference, but also the webinars that you’re doing and the one-offs. And I know you also do, I just saw this incredible retreat in Italy, and I know that the overlap with our group is almost exact. Everybody who’s listening to this would be a great candidate to attend a conference or to go to one of the workshops that you all are doing. Abbey, can you talk a little bit about how people can follow along with what’s happening at Tastemaker? Obviously the conference is kind of the main centerpiece with what you’re doing, so if people want to attend that, and I think you maybe also have a discount code that you can talk about, but we would love to just shine a light on everything that’s happening with Tastemaker and let people know how they can check it out.

Abbey Rodriguez: Yeah, absolutely. So we’d love for you to join us at our conference. You can go to tastemakerconference.com and you can see our events. Just click on events and it shows you everything that is coming up. But we want to give all of the amazing Food Blogger Pro community members a hundred dollars off to the conference. It’s normally $699 for a basic business ticket. We do have VIP tickets as well and general creator tickets, business tickets, and VIP tickets, but it would be a hundred dollars off for any of that. And we also have our sponsorship and referral and our affiliate program for anybody that wants to join that as we’ve been talking about being a part of that community. And then we have a lot of free resources and things that we, we’ve talked about throughout our time here. Happy to include all of those as well. And you can follow us at TastemakerConference on Instagram too.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome.

Chandice Probst: If you have any brands that you’ve worked with and you want to just reach out to me, I’d love to connect with them.

Bjork Ostrom: What was the, Chandice, you had mentioned the referral piece. Is that almost like if somebody refers a brand to Tastemaker? Is that how that works?

Chandice Probst: Yeah, it’s really cool. So we have two facets. The first is the referral where if they have a brand that they’re like, this is a great fit for Tastemaker, and they refer us again, that one email. Then when the sale closes, they get a percentage of that and it’s 5%. Yeah, 5%. But our packages, they’re higher than, you know what I mean? So it’s a really good deal for one email, and so.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s probably your highest hourly rate you’ll ever earn.

Chandice Probst: Correct affiliate program, which let’s say that you are a blogger who actually has a part of your business where other blogger, you talk to other bloggers or creators, maybe you’re a photography expert, and so you talk to other photographers, same thing. We give you a discount code to tell people to grab their ticket with your discount code and you get a portion of the sale from the ticket and they get a discount. So we try to make it kind of a win-win for everybody.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. If people are interested in that, should they just send you an email? What’s the best way to

Chandice Probst: Yeah absolutely. Chandice, [email protected].

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Great. Abbey, Chandice, thanks so much for coming on. Great to talk to you and excited for all that you guys have going on. Thank you.

Chandice Probst: Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. Since this episode is coming out on October 1st, I wanted to fill you in a little bit on what will be going on inside the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. If you are already a member of the Food Blogger Pro community, this is a great way to see what’s coming up. And if you haven’t yet become a member, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership to learn more about our community and join us. We are kicking off the month with a new coaching call with Keanu Taylor from the food blog Taste Test Tales. He is a full-time food scientist who recently launched his food blog on the side. This is a great coaching call about determining your target market, including the possibility of posting on platforms like LinkedIn, focusing on growth, how to narrow your niche, and what kind of time you need to dedicate to your business in the early years to start seeing growth. Next up on October 10th, we’ll have a Live Q&A all about Substack. We’ll be joined by Randa Sakallah from Substack. She manages the food vertical there, and we’ll be answering all of our questions about becoming a food creator on the platform. Next up on October 24th, we will be releasing a new and improved version of our WordPress Deep Dive course. This is a really detailed look into everything WordPress. So if you are just getting started or looking to become more familiar with WordPress, it’s a great course. Of course, we’ll have new podcasts every week and new blog posts as well. But if you would like to join us in the membership, there’s a ton more to explore there. Again, thanks so much for listening to the podcast. Hope you have a great week.