Diversifying Income Series: Cooking Classes with Jess Smith from Inquiring Chef

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, we are really excited to welcome Jess Smith from the Food Blog inquiring chef. This is part two of our diversifying income series in which we’re diving deeper into all the different ways you can diversify your income and your business as a food creator. This week’s episode focuses primarily on cooking classes and cooking camps, but even if you don’t think you’re someone who might be interested in doing cooking classes yourself, I think you’ll get a lot out of this episode and it might even change your mind. Jess launched her blog Inquiring Chefs in 2010 and has slowly but steadily transformed it into a thriving multi-six-figure business with a team. In recent years, she’s expanded her income streams by publishing her debut cookbook, start With a Vegetable, and launching the Inquiring Chef Academy, which offers really popular in-person cooking summer camps for young kids in Kansas City. In this episode, Bjork and Jess dive into the origins of the Inquiring Chef Academy, exploring why and how Jess decided to add in-person experiences to her brand. Her summer camps are a massive hit and the 2025 sessions sold out in just a few hours. Like I said before, even if in-person cooking classes aren’t your thing, this episode will surely provide you with lots of fresh insights on diversifying your income and your creative outlets and how you might go about making decisions about diversifying your business. Bjork, take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Jess, welcome to the podcast.

Jess Smith: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we have a lot to cover. We’re either going to have to talk double time or triple time on the podcast app. You can do 2X, maybe some people listen to the podcast listen on 2x, we might need to talk 2x and then so people who do 2x usually will be hearing 4x because you’ve been doing a lot of great stuff, some new stuff that we haven’t really talked about on the podcast before, and also you’re doing really good work with some of the things we do talk about like building a site and a really successful business around that. But before we do that, one of the things that I think is really important is talking about our story before being entrepreneurs, business owners, owning a digital company, because a lot of times I think we don’t give enough credit to the history that we had before and wrapping that into our next step.

An example that I could give is Lindsay was a teacher and a lot of the valuable skills that she has with Pinch of Yum are around teaching, and she even did some classes and photography classes. And so I think for all of us, we need to think about what are the skills that we have that we can bring into this new thing as we start to work on this and continue to build what we’re building for you. That was working on a meal planning app, so it was pretty squarely overlap with what you’re doing now or in a lot of ways. Can you talk about what that was and maybe some of the things that you learned during that season of your career?

Jess Smith: Yeah, absolutely, and I love talking about it because I think we do often hear from amazing people in the blogging and specifically food blogging industry who just skyrocketed. They started and they took off, and I love hearing those stories. For me, it was a slower growth process, and so I started my website inquiring chef in 2010, in around 2000, so I had twin daughters in 2014. My husband and I lived in Bangkok, Thailand, and in 2015 we were,

Bjork Ostrom: What was that for? Was it work related for him? So

Jess Smith: Yeah, he ran the Peace Corps office over there. So when we went, I wasn’t sure what I would do, but because he worked for the government and I had worked for the government before I was able to, and because we already had housing and we were allowed to be there, I was able to work for the State Department.

So I did that for four years and we loved it there. We had a great time, but it was nice because I was working, but we didn’t have kids yet and I was able to build the blog nights and weekends as so many of us do. So it did grow, but in about mid 2015, we wanted to come back to the US and I just felt like the path for me was not to continue working for the federal government, it was to pursue a career in food. And at that time the blog was, it was growing and my traffic was good and I was monetizing it, but I mean, I dunno, it was probably making four or $500 a month. It was just a nice side business.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Jess Smith: So I didn’t know how to make that jump. And around that time I heard about a company called Cook Smarts, and they also started, they had been a meal planning company that was growing as and had been started a few years before. Very small team, very small business, and they were looking for someone to develop recipes, and I applied basically just mean my entire resume was the blog was inquiring chef, and eventually I got that job and I worked for them for almost eight years as the blog was growing and it was such a good fit because it allowed me to really hone in on my photography and recipe development skills all while building my own business on the side. There was a time when I probably could have left Cooks Smarts and continued just working on Inquiring Chef, but honestly, I have loved that company. I mean, I’ve learned so much from it, and that app is continuing to grow and I continue to be pretty close with them and occasionally work for them on the site. Just it brings me joy, but at this point, acquiring Chef is its own. It’s my full-time job.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s such an important piece to point out is that we can pursue our dreams within the context of another company. I think sometimes we can oversell, Hey, you’re going out and you’re doing it completely on your own because I think there’s always opportunities for, or often, not always, but often opportunities for us to learn adjacent skills within, but the compensation structure is different. If you’re an entrepreneur, your raise becomes effective when you do and if you become less effective, if you work less, there’s a potential that you might not earn as much because that’s directly correlated. There’s other types of roles, W2 contractor, maybe there’s some type of additional compensation structure within there. It’s not directly tied to your performance, it’s maybe tied to your time or it’s maybe tied to a deliverable, but you can find these roles that allow you to learn some of the valuable skills that are transferable to this dream that we might have someday to do this entrepreneurial thing.

All our own. For me, it was worked at a nonprofit and they’re like, Hey, we need somebody to help redesign the website. I was like, great, sign me up, or we need somebody to help figure out how we’re going to do email. I was like, great. Sign me up. It wasn’t anything food related, but it was all stuff I was interested in. It sounds like that was kind of similar for you with Cook Smarts, how do you do a thing that you’re passionate about, that you’re interested in and get compensated for it? And sometimes I think we’re like the only path is to do my own thing, but it’s like no, if you can find something you love doing that you’re excited about getting up to do every day with people you enjoy being with, and you can make money from that, that’s an incredible evolution in your career, especially if you’re leaving something that maybe you didn’t enjoy, you weren’t passionate about, maybe it wasn’t people that you liked being around. So I love that as part of your story, it sounds like there is a season where you said, Hey, I could probably make the jump to doing Inquiring Chef full time. When was that that it started to look like this was a reality for you to launch your business and work on this full time?

Jess Smith: I mean, the real change happened three years ago. I decided that I wanted to write a cookbook, and I think that part of, for me, what worked really well, even though the dream was always to be an entrepreneur, run my own business and have that freedom being in a W2 job or a contractor job where I was kind of making this consistent salary and I had a set schedule for each day and I wasn’t in control of every aspect of the business, it gave me the freedom to explore, to take more risks in my own business

And for me that I think that suited me really well. And that change kind of happened when I decided I wanted to write a cookbook and I was very upfront with the founder of Cook Smarts about the fact that this was happening and that I was kind of exploring this option. And it took about a year where I was still working at Cook Smarts, inquiring Chef was doing really well, but I knew that I would’ve to step back from inquiring Chef to work on the cookbook. And kind of balancing all of that was I was sort of working on that for a year and trying to think about how all those pieces would fall into place. So then when I really started working on the cookbook and I signed the cookbook deal, I stepped away and I said, this is my moment inquiring Chef is going to be my full-time gig and I’m going to write the cookbook and that will build the brand. And that ended up being the right moment for me and for me, just I loved the security and the comfort of knowing I was working with a team that wasn’t solely mine. And so yeah, I think it gave me the bravery and the kind of boost I needed to do some of those things on the side, take some more risks.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. One of the things I think about with this podcast is how do we not think about it as how do you take your blog full-time and work on it full time, but more how do we help people do work they love? And I think what’s important to remind ourselves of, myself included, that’s going to look different depending on the season that you’re in. And in one season before you have kids, it might look different than you have kids. It’s probably going to evolve a little bit and it’s going to shift. Maybe your kids get older and that looks different, or maybe you kind of get burnt out on a thing that you had been working on, or you want to work with a team and you’d been working on your own point being, it’s completely different for every person. And what we’re doing is we’re building kind of our ideals as it relates to our career and our work.

And it sounds like you’ve recently kind of evolved that, again by layering in a non-digital piece of your business and doing actual cooking classes. So maybe you can give us a high level overview here, and if you’re okay with it recap, you provided these great numbers for your businesses and for Inquiring Chef, you talk about this as kind of the breakdown, 71% ad revenue, which I think we all can understand, ad revenue, 13% cooking camps. That’s the one that we’re going to double click on and learn a little bit more about 10% cookbook advanced in direct sales, and then 6% brand partnerships. And this is all within the context of a multi six figure business with a small team getting 8 million page views to your site a year, some really exciting things going on there. But let’s talk about the cooking camps idea because I think it’s fun to hear of creative ways that we can use our skills and maybe our audience and our ability to reach a group of people to build something. And it sounds like you’ve done that. Tell us about ’em.

Jess Smith: Yeah, I mean it’s been a funny, honestly, I think it’s been a funny journey because starting the blog, the goal was always to have a digital business was to have everything online and to be able to and have the flexibility that brings, which of course is amazing. But I just started feeling like the heart of what, the reason I started the blog was to teach, was to help people learn. I was living in Thailand at the time, I was learning about Thai cooking and able to explain that from the context of I don’t live in Thailand. These are new ingredients for me. I’m exploring, I’m learning all of these skills. And I think in 2024, that all started bubbling up in me and I started feeling like I needed another outlet. And I think post covid and being kind of closed up and being away from people for so much, suddenly I really wanted to be among people and I wanted to be

Not only in a digital space, and so I started thinking, how can I make that my reality? And the fact is I have three elementary age kids and I wanted to be teaching kids, and I think the universe was kind of nudging me in that direction. I started having so many parents say to me, I can’t even cook. I don’t know how to help my kids cook, or My kids are picky. My kids don’t even know how to boil water or make an egg and I just don’t know how to support them, or I don’t have time, or I don’t want to deal with a mess. And I just started feeling like this was a niche, a spot that I could fill, and that I wanted to. I decided early on that I did not want to teach adults, not because I don’t think I would love that too, but just because I felt like the place where I really could shine was working with kids. So in 2024, I decided I kind of worked out the logistics and it’s been a huge learning process. There’s been a lot of insurance to navigate. I am renting space from a church, so I have not had to deal with a physical space, which gives me some added flexibility. I don’t always have to be teaching, but I had to work with the health department and get health department approval, and I had to get aton of supplies. So there’s been a lot of sort of added layers to this business, but gosh, I decided I was just going to do it, and I suggested word of mouth. I kind of sent around notes and said, I’m going to be teaching these cooking classes in the summer of 2024. And people came and a lot of it was my friends and friends of friends and words started spreading. And then it was a huge success from my perspective both professionally and just what I heard from families. And so we’re doing it again this summer and the camps filled up almost instantly when I posted them just by word of mouth.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. And it sounds like you sent this over as well, which is so helpful that you’re providing these numbers. In the first summer of doing it grossed 40,000, and that’s over seven weeks. So a shorter period of time profitable, which is awesome. And all of that is in addition to the income that you have from your site. One of the things that I think is important to point out with something like this is that from speaking from a business perspective, it’s really helpful to know that you have the ability to spin something up in case something comes down. We live in a post helpful content world where a lot of people experienced a decrease in the amount of earnings that they have from affiliate or ads on their site because of a search algorithm update. And for some of those people, for many of those people, that was the sole source of income within their business.

And one of the things I hear people talk about is having the ability to have a safety net that isn’t necessarily equal in terms of size or profitability, but it could be if you wanted it to be. It could be something that you could say, okay, we have this system, we have this process. We understand how to do this. Now we’re doing it maybe two in your case, two months out of the year, maybe it’s three months out of the year, but let’s say there’s a huge shift. We’re talking about ai, we’re talking about algorithm updates. There’s a huge shift and something changes. What do you do? What are your options? And it’s nice to know you have something in your back pocket if you do want to scale it up to be diversified a little bit. So there’s the business part of it, but I’d almost be interested in starting with and hearing from you your thoughts on, we talk about different types of income.

There’s financial income, there’s relational income, there’s impact income, and my guess is that there’s a financial income that came from this, and that’s important in order for that to be sustainable. Simon Sinek talks about that’s the fuel in the car, but the purpose isn’t just to get a bunch of fuel. The purpose is to fuel a car that is bringing us somewhere that has a purpose. My guess is the way that you felt navigating this was different than the way that you would’ve felt working on a blog post or working on a cookbook, maybe some good and maybe some difficult as well. Talk to us a little bit about that and the non-financial variables that existed for you within navigating this new kind of business venture.

Jess Smith: It truly might have been the most challenging professional experience of my life from even an energy standpoint. I mean, it took so much emotional and physical energy to get these up and running and just to think about how can I make sure, I mean now I have customers who are spending a lot of money for their kids to attend cooking classes with me, and I want to make sure that the value is there. I mean, I wanted this to be a really high quality product that people believed in and felt like they were getting their money’s worth. So that was really important to me. So making sure that happened, it did. It took so much time. It took so much more time than I thought. It didn’t necessarily the way that I structured it. I don’t think it necessarily had to. I mean, I really chose to create some of my own recipes for the camp because there were some key skills that I wanted the kids to learn. I chose to kind of create a whole curriculum from scratch, which is not, you wouldn’t necessarily have to do that if you were going to recreate this, but

Bjork Ostrom: There’d be other curriculum that you could use. Is that your point?

Jess Smith: Totally. You could find existing curriculum. There’s a lot of places where you could, they’re offering franchises or they’re offering existing curriculum, or you could pull this from somewhere else. And I just really decided over time that I wanted to do that myself and build it from scratch, and it was time consuming. I also decided that I wanted to have my own tools. So like I said, I’m renting a space in a church. They have a huge commercial kitchen. They have a lot of supplies. I probably could have used their supplies, but I loved the idea of having kids come to the camp and having some branded pieces that looked like they really distinguished this camp. So we have aprons that have the names of the Inquiring Chef Academy on them, and we have whisks and bulls and things that I did purchase in order to have this branded look and own that style. That was all a choice that was not necessary. So it took so much time, it took us so much emotional energy, but also it has been the most rewarding piece of my business to date. And so

Bjork Ostrom: What is that? When you say rewarding,

Jess Smith: Explain

Bjork Ostrom: That a little bit.

Jess Smith: Yeah, financially it’s good. I think it does give me this security, of course, long term, but just at the end of those days, I felt like I had really made a difference. And I run into kids now around town that have attended my camps and I hear what they’ve learned. I hear what they’re taking home. I get pictures from parents, kids are home, they’re cooking. They’re talking about the way that they build a plate, the way that they design a meal, the way they read a recipe. Yeah, it’s been so rewarding. Yeah, just feeling like I’m making a difference in some people’s lives. Hopefully

Bjork Ostrom: That’s a piece that I think a lot of people can understand how that feels so good. Speaking just for myself, a lot of times I can show up and it’s like I come into the office, I sit down in this office, I power up my computer, I email, we’re on Slack, I’ll maybe do a podcast episode or have some type of one hour, two hour meeting, almost always digital, five o’clock wind down, I head home. It’s great. That’s a really wonderful thing. But I think what it sometimes feels is number one, lonely, just personally, it feels like you’re doing these things and you’re kind of doing it in isolation. Even though we’re all speaking to potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of people with what we’re doing, it can still feel weirdly lonely. The second piece with it is for Lindsay, she came from working as a fourth grade teacher.

I came from a nonprofit where we’d partner with schools and we’d go in and we would do these day long programs with fourth grade, seventh or eighth grade, ninth or 10th grade, and then sometimes seniors. And so it was kind of on the opposite. When you talk about those types of income, it was really high on the relational and impact income, and you can feel that. I remember coming home from those days and feeling like, man, this was awesome because I made a difference in the lives of these kids. And it’s not to say that by producing content digitally that you’re not making a difference. You just don’t feel it in the same way as when you are in the same room, in the same community. And so there’s something undeniably life-giving about doing that type of work. And I think part of it is almost like how do we sustain ourselves as creators, and we need to find the life sources for us to feed in to make sure that we have enough creative energy and fuel to then create digitally as well. Do you feel like the work that you did in person impacted your digital work at all, or how did you see those overlapping and kind of playing into each other? Yeah, yeah,

Jess Smith: Totally. I mean, because I think for food bloggers specifically, I think we pretty much got into it because we wanted to help people. We were looking to teach in a way or to share our knowledge or to help people get dinner on the table faster or to address dietary needs for people who were navigating those. I mean, there’s so many ways we got into this because we wanted to help and don’t always, sometimes we go whole days without the reminder that we are helping people because sometimes our websites exist. People go to them, they get, and occasionally we’ll get a great email or a great comment and then we’re reminded. But yeah, it was such immediate reminder that I was helping people, that I had kids who were appreciative, that I had families who were appreciative, and it has rejuvenated my energy around my website and my blog. So I don’t feel like this is something that will become, unless it needed to be, it will become my full-time year round thing. I like you. I get a lot of value. I like the balance of having days where I’m quietly working in the kitchen or quietly working on my computer. I am introverted and I’m not ready to be teaching all day every day. And I have so much more appreciation for it now that I have done it.

Bjork Ostrom: Now that you’ve felt like a full day working with kids. I mean

Jess Smith: Emotion, the energy drain is very from extroverting and being there for kids all day. But yeah, it’s made me so even more appreciative of the teachers, the full-time teachers in my life. But yeah, I’ve felt so much more energy for the parts on my, and maybe that some of that is being out in person in front of people. And then now I appreciate so much that I can choose to work quietly on my own schedule and work at my desk when I want to and in the kitchen when I want to. So that’s been great. But yeah, I feel like I’m able to look at what I’m doing more holistically now, and I see how all of the pieces fall into place and how that’s a space.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you explain what you mean by that? When you say see what you do more holistically and pieces fall into place, what does that mean?

Jess Smith: I mean, I don’t want to be too overly dramatic about it. The blog has always felt very fulfilling to me. But I think I did go through a time where I lost, especially because I got so caught up like we do in SEO and making sure that I was prepared for helpful content updates. And I kind of lost track of where I started, which was, here is food that I love and I’m going to share it because I hope you love it too. And the end and not worrying about every other factor that’s bringing traffic to the site. And specifically thinking about SEO and being, is it what is guiding my work? Am I guiding it internally? Is my own creativity, am my own interests guiding it, which I think feels really authentic and that comes through on the site, or is it, I’m doing the SEO research and I’m feeling like this is what needs to be on the site.

And I think in some ways, running the cooking camps pulled my head out of that a little bit and reminded me that why I do it is because I love it. I love food, I love creation. I love photography. I love helping people figure out what to cook in a way that’s easy and somewhat nutritious and balanced and brings them joy. And I feel like after the cooking camps ended for the summer, and we’ve done a few more cooking camps throughout the year when schools have been out. But yeah, I sat back down and I thought, oh, I remember why

Bjork Ostrom: I

Jess Smith: Got into this in the first place,

Bjork Ostrom: Or what I liked about it originally, what

Jess Smith: I liked about it. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: There’s a little bit of a boiling the frog analogy that I think can happen for people who are creating on any platform. It could be YouTube, it could be Instagram, but speaking specifically to a blog and a website for people who have been doing it for any period of time, let’s say four or five years can probably relate to this, where you get into it. And for some people, not all people, for some people it’s like, I’m really excited to speak to an audience to document what I’m doing to share that this is a recipe that I loved. I want to share that. And the boiling the frog for people like that can be five years later they’re spending a bunch of time doing keyword research and figuring out the ideal post structure. And do I share this story about my growing up or do I not share it?

Is that going to hurt SEO or is that going to help it? And for the people who love the art of the content creation and sharing and storytelling, I think that evolution can feel like a little bit, you can suddenly step back and be like, wait, what am I doing? This really not somebody who loves data and all of the technical components of it. And for those people, I think one of the most important things that they or we can do is to find outlets that don’t require that. An example being substack as a creator or cooking classes where you’re getting together with people in person, or maybe it’s videos on Instagram or YouTube, all of those don’t require the same type of technical expertise. That said, there are some people who love the technical component of keyword research and figuring out ways that you can optimize, and they really lean into that and that for them an opportunity, and it’s like they would shy away from doing some of the more the art side.

It all could be art, but what am I going to, I just feel like I’m going to make a recipe that I love and that I think people would love, and I’m going to post about that. If you’re trying to acquire traffic from search, that might not be the best way to go about doing it because you need to make sure that people are actually searching for the term. But if you’re doing it on substack, it might work. Or if you come up with a really creative recipe that kids can create, then that would work. So I think it’s important to point out and for us to think about what type of creator are we and where the places that we are going to be able to create most freely based on what we love, what we’re interested in. Not because you only do things that inspire you, but because one of the most important things to do is to work on something for a long period of time to get better at it. You’ve done this for decades, months, it’s decades, years and years or a decade, and that’s where you really start to unlock those big levels of success. So what have you found, maybe you can speak to that if you felt that a little bit in the world of websites and SEO and that evolution, and do you have other places that have felt like a really good fit for you as a creator where you can have non-technical type creation?

Jess Smith: I think, yeah, I mean you kind of triggered so many thoughts for me, but I do think part of, at the end of the day, we are business owners and we are looking at our businesses as sustainable, profitable entities. But I also think you’re right that there is an argument for doing some things that are just because we are creative people doing some things that are creative and give us a chance to explore a longer term project and get that creativity, find that outlet. It’s been strange for me because I’ve found in my career that often when I’m feeling I’m in a creative rut, the answer is to do more. I need to go take a pasta making class and start making from scratch. And it’s counterintuitive. I mean, certainly there’s times that we have to step back, but I have found that adding into my sort of creative space is where new ideas come.

And so that’s been really powerful and I do think we’re pulled in so many different directions now and I mean, you’re right, I think with social media we kind of have to evaluate that is that going to be the heart of the business? And for some people it is. For some people that’s a great creative outlet, and for some people it’s not. So yeah, I think it has really opened up my eyes to some different ways of growing the business and that aren’t necessarily maybe going to make as much money as I could make doing some other things. But I think will in the long term for the business and for the brand and for the business as a whole, will just kind of build it up and make it sustainable. So yeah, I mean it feels like a really good part of the business, especially when I look at talking about my own skillset and being able to go out and talk about how teaching is a part of my skillset and part of my brand. That has felt really, really good to add that to the basket of skills and offerings that come with my business.

Bjork Ostrom: So I mentioned this before, pinch of Yum went through a season where Lindsay would do in-person classes. She did photography classes. This was a while ago, one of which I attended. Oh yeah, okay, great. Awesome. I did love it. I came to one of her photography classes. Love it. Love it. So that was ticketed event in person. That was an important part of the business. We’ve done other, Lindsay has kind of this sideshow that she does with her friend Nate, where they review snacks and they did a live show, it’s called Snack Dive, so they did a live snack dive show. So we’ve kind of dabbled in having an in-person thing that people pay to attend. Can you talk through what does it take to pull that off? What are the tools that you’re using? It sounds like initially it was word of mouth, anything that you’ve learned in the first year that you’ll apply in the second year? Talk to us about almost like the opposite side of what we’re talking about before, which is the emotional piece of it. What does that look like? How does it feel? What are the mechanics of it? If somebody wanted to do a class, how do you pull it off?

Jess Smith: Yeah, I mean I do think some of it is I just had to go. I had just had to start. And I think there’s so many things like that you just have, and I knew that going into this, I was like, I can never be fully prepared to open these cooking classes. I just need to start and put them out there.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s the idea of ready, fire, aim, and I think one of the biggest issues that people have is they ready. It’s like ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, maybe fire. But if you ready, fire, aim, and then you do it again and again, you’re going to get to the target closer than if you just are to aim the entire time.

Jess Smith: Exactly. I mean, that really was, I think I really, and it was like January of 2024, which is when people start planning for the summer. Unfortunately, we live in this world where summer camps for kids fill up right away and they start in January and it’s snowing and you’re planning their swim lessons and stuff, but I knew that everyone around me was planning their summer camps and I said, I just need to send this out. I’m going to do it. I’ve been thinking about it. The only way I will figure this out is just to do it. And so I was just using, I just had a page on my website. I was using a Google doc for people to sign up. I had started talking to lawyers and insurance companies to make sure that I had all of the legal things in place, so I knew I could pull it off, but I didn’t know how much to charge. I had pulled people on Instagram, and so I had enough information, but I did not have all the information. So part of it really was just jumping in. Since then, it’s gotten really streamlined. I’ve researched registration software, so I use a software called Pembee, which is a very affordable registration software.

Bjork Ostrom: How do you spell it?

Jess Smith: Pembee, P-E-M-B-E-E. And they connect with Stripe. There are some very sophisticated,

Bjork Ostrom: For those who aren’t familiar, Stripe is the payment processor. Yes. So somebody puts in Pembee would manage the ticketing, and then it connects with Stripe so that somebody puts in, it’s like a hundred dollars per ticket and it processes that and it puts it into Stripe, and then Stripe puts it into your bank account.

Jess Smith: Exactly. And there are some very expensive software that you can use like summer camp enrollment software that are very sophisticated. I knew because I wasn’t doing this full time, I did not want to pay $300 a month year round to maintain this software. So Pembee was very affordable but very secure and all the payment goes through Stripe, but pen’s synced up so that if someone cancels, I can easily cancel. They have higher level, I’m using a very basic version of their software, but that you can upgrade to have a wait list. And so right now I’m just using wait list. I’m just using a Google doc to track wait lists. So yeah, that was the biggest piece was getting a registration software in place so that when the camps roll around, I can easily print a roster. I can cut off the, because this year I started, some of the camps filled up so fast that I needed a software to cut off the number to say this, we’re having 30 kids and that’s it, and then it’s

Bjork Ostrom: Shut. How fast did they, just out of

Jess Smith: Curiosity. So fast. So this year, within a couple hours of registration, they all filled up.

Bjork Ostrom: We were just at a friend’s house the other night and it’s actually her friend Melissa from the phone. Martha just this incredible designer and she had post online and stuff, but she was talking about the sport of summer camps and she’s like, you have to be so on the ball to, that would be an example, my guess, that people had it bookmarked or they knew when it was going to open and it’s kind of like a version of Taylor Swift tickets. You’re just kind of refreshing and then you get this ticket, this valuable ticket because you want to make sure that your kid has access to this, which is, it’s fun to hear. And I think the piece from a business perspective that’s interesting to point out is you’re playing a different game because there’s true supply and demand and there’s only so much slots in this class, and we live in a weird world where on the digital side, there’s kind of like this infinite, you could scale up infinitely, and so there’s always more pages you could get or followers, and it’s kind of nice. Sometimes we felt like this with the classes to play in a world where it’s like you have 30 spots and it just allows you to market a little bit different to approach it differently. So that’s really cool to hear and a great validation of the effort that you put into building. So they sell out in just a few hours and you’re using, you’re advertising, how are you sending out an email or

Jess Smith: So last year, because they were brand new, I just let people know by word of mouth and I filled them up about halfway just by letting friends of friends know that I was doing it. And then I did use advertising through a couple of local, there’s some websites that list all of the summer camps in the area. There’s physical copies that get sent out This year. My hope was, and it turned out to be true, was that I could have a separate email list that’s just for camp attendees. They don’t get my regular emails. I keep it very separate. So they know they only get an email from me when there’s information about camps coming up. And so they knew ahead of time at this time on this day, camps will be live. And you’re right, I mean as a parent, I’m very empathetic to this struggle, but one of them, there were people waiting, especially for the later in the summer camps because it’s so hot, it’s nice to have the kids inside and the air conditioning working on this core skill, the later camps just filled up instantly and it was people that were like they had attended last year, they loved it.

It was a priority for them, and they were on there ready to book. And you’re right, dark. Part of it is, I’ve struggled with this, not that I’ve struggled, but I’ve thought about it a lot. I mean, how much would I want to scale this up? I like that. Potentially I could, but I also like that I get to be there for every single camp. I get to see every child come through and learn these skills. And so at the moment, I don’t have a desire to build it. I want to be there for all of it someday. If I want to grow it as a piece of the business, it’s definitely replicable and it could scale up in a really way that I can see, but right now

Bjork Ostrom: It doesn’t need to be,

Jess Smith: No, I want to be there. It’s so rewarding. Yeah, I want to be there myself.

Bjork Ostrom: So you use Pene for the management piece of it, Stripe, is there anything else? You have this email list. And we did that with the food photography workshop that we were doing as well. And then we actually had a waiting page for the times that we weren’t doing it, people could sign up. And so it eventually got to the point where thousands of people on this list, and you have, in our case, it was maybe like 120 spots over a certain stretch of time. And so it’s just kind of a supply and demand thing. There’s only so many spots and there’s 4,000 people who have said they’re interested, 2000, whatever it was, and you send the email out and it’s just a really different type of marketing because there’s these slots they fill up, people see that you, there’s demand for it. And so that kind of rhythm worked really well. Is there anything else other than the Stripe, pene and maybe the email list that’s needed? I mean, there’s a lot that goes into the business, but from a software perspective, is it those three things?

Jess Smith: The thing is, as someone who has run a website for so long, I was very equipped to do all other pieces. So even I use Canva a bunch. I’ll use Canva for stuff my accountant does all the books for. We separate out all of the accounting pieces, but I have the same accountant she does. My bookkeeper keeps track of everything. I use the same bank account. So if you were someone, and I use my website right now, I’ve asked for advice. I’ve kind of shopped around to see if I should

Create a separate website and at a point I will need to, but right now it just lives on a page on the website because it’s not year round, it doesn’t get a ton of traffic. It’s there, all the information is there. So no, I mean it’s been a really seamless fit in terms of what else I have needed. Like I said, it’s been purchasing supplies, but then all the other skills that I already had in terms of knowing what recipes would work for this age group and then creating the recipes and using Canva to design them and make them look fun and pretty and branded, that’s all been just, I already know how to do it because of running and front chef. So

Bjork Ostrom: How long is a class in a day and is it like a week of cooking?

Jess Smith: So we do right now, and I’ll use the same model again this year. It’s a four hour camp and it’s five days a week. So campers attend for five days and we really do a lot of scaffolding where they’re learning some core skills on Monday that build then all of the skills they put them to work on the last day. And we host a VIP lunch where they get to invite one guest and they prepare a three course meal for that guest. I have 12 high school and college students that I hired to help manage the workflow. And so I do a big training with them so that they’re ready

Because it’s a big ask for them to help a bunch of five-year-olds prepare this three course meal. But the meal’s pretty, pretty simple. But they learn how to fold the napkins, they write the menu, they write an invitation and they deliver an invitation on the first day. So some of it is just my personal as a parent, and there’s some skills that I love having in there in terms of them knowing how to host and knowing how to plan a meal and work on all the pieces on their own. So yeah, so it’s four hours each day and every day basically the kids come and we cook in the morning, we bake one thing each day and we cook something savory each day and the kids are responsible for helping to prepare lunch. And then we all eat the lunch together and talk about, there’s a little bit of a manners piece and etiquette piece that we talk about before lunch, your plates, passing the bowls and serving things family style. And so again, those were just pieces. That’s why I really wanted to do it the way that I envisioned it because I just this idea of what I wanted incorporated, and it’s been cool to see it.

Bjork Ostrom: It feels like you have the ability to, you now have curriculum and my guess is that if you really wanted to, there’d be people who’d be interested in doing a similar thing and using that curriculum. So if you wanted to add another line item as a revenue source, it could be selling the curriculum that you’ve developed

Jess Smith: That’s in the plans down the road. That has been the most time consuming thing is thinking about all of the pieces. And then of course you have 30 kids and you have to keep them entertained for four hours doing cooking related things. So that’s been a part that I love, but I think, I don’t know, I hope to do that soon because I think if there’s other people who want to explore this, it would be nice if you could print out the ideas and have them ready to go and

Bjork Ostrom: Build off of that. I’m

Jess Smith: Thinking about it.

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. So you kind of alluded to this a little bit, and it’s one of the things that I think about as well. There’s in the world of Pinch of Yum in what we’re doing. An example is this show that Lindsay’s working on snack dive. They’ve worked with the brand, they’ve worked with partner, but it’s when you look at like, Hey, what’s the greatest return on time financially? It’d probably be just continuing to double down, work more on Pinch of Yum, grow traffic to Pinch of Yum. In your case, how do you make decisions around additional things that you’re doing? So you have your site and you kind of talked about that being majority of revenue, but you have this idea for a cooking camp and you’re excited about it and you think it’ll be a good thing and it is, and you’re doing it again. But how do you make the hard decision around, Hey, this is going to require a lot of my time. That time is going to be pulled away from the main revenue source for my business.

I think a lot of people can potentially relate with that. You almost master a certain thing, you get really good at it. And 10 years ago that’s kind of what you’re working for. How do I get a site that could, and a lot of people listening to this podcast, they’re really working to get to the point that you are with your site. How do I get to a point where I could have millions and millions of pages views a year? And then you get to that point and then you’re like, Hey, but what if I also did this other thing and this could be kind of cool. So can you walk us through how you think about and make decisions around working on other things when you also have a thing that’s working and you could potentially go deeper with?

Jess Smith: I mean this is something that you cover a lot on the podcast and that I know you all have worked through over the years is there was a point where I had to start delegating and that’s easy when it’s things that I didn’t like doing. I mean, it’s been some of the things that I’ve been able to delegate. I’ve had one marketing manager who’s been with me for almost five years now, and so it’s gotten easier over the years to hand things off to her. She’s perfectly

Bjork Ostrom: Capable, like you free some of your time up.

Jess Smith: And more recently, I mean with the cooking camps, it’s like I also need to hand over some parts of the job that I actually enjoy doing. I’ve needed to say, I only have so much time and I really want to work on these camps. And even though I love writing blog posts, I need a writer to come in and help me and otherwise I can’t continue to update old posts and keep the site growing. So that’s been the weirdest thing. It’s like we all want to get rid of the tasks that we don’t like, but at some point I had to get rid of the tasks that I do because I can’t do everything. And then maybe I take a slight revenue hit for a while, but

Bjork Ostrom: Because you’re paying somebody, you mean

Jess Smith: Because you’re paying somebody.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, profit’s a little bit lower, but your time is freed up.

Jess Smith: Exactly. So my net revenue goes down for a little bit because I bring on a rider, but of course we hope in the long run that is an investment that pays off on the site as well. Because at the end of the day, I knew going into this starting to teach cooking camps, cooking classes and leading these camps, I could not, my site is, that is the base, that’s the foundation of the business and it needs to keep growing and it needs to keep increasing revenue. And so I needed to keep that going. So that’s the thing. This side business, this arm of the business, I mean it’s not a side business, but this arm of it, it needed my full attention in the first year and I had to balance all of that. Now I even have high school and college employees who will take on a lot more responsibility this summer, so I won’t have to do as much with the cooking camps either. So it’s just been a balance. The first year was hard and a lot of it was giving up things that I like to do because I knew I couldn’t do everything. And then

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about your team? I think those two pieces that you talked about are really important. Like you said, the easy one is what are the things that have to get done that you don’t want to do? Man, those are great first places to look to delegate, but there’s also this category which is like, Hey, I like to do it, but somebody else could do it just as well as I could and maybe even better. And just because you enjoy it doesn’t necessarily mean you should do it if you’re thinking strategically about the business and how you can grow it and delegate. So maybe talk about your team a little bit. Who’s on your team and advice for people who are wanting to go through the process of delegating to free up time to then do another fun thing.

Jess Smith: Yeah, totally. And I feel like I’ve heard so much lately. I hear people talk about only hiring people that are going to help your business, your profits grow. And that always has felt really challenging to me because as I’ve just described, I’ve been through this process where I am having to hire people to help me with things that are going to keep the business moving along, but maybe aren’t going to directly create revenue.

But a lot of the things that I’ve been able to outsource have been great for me. I have three people who are all technically but who have worked for me for a long time and I have someone helping me with emails. I have someone helping me with writing, especially with updating old posts and doing the SEO research, doing the keyword research on older posts. And then I have sort of an overall virtual assistant who’s been with me for five years and she is part-time, but she works solely for me now. She’s nearly, yeah. So that’s been really helpful. So she is my go-to, but then we have other people working on these pieces and I do have an accountant who also does all of the bookkeeping, and that’s been huge. So yeah, so now I’m having to, with the cooking camps and classes, especially if I want to start adding on one off because I’d love to do some Saturday classes where we would just do two hours and we would work on one skill. And so I’m hoping in 2025 that we get there by the end of 2025, but then I need to find some, especially some high schoolers and college students that are willing to do a lot of the coordination for that,

Bjork Ostrom: Where you become the person who has the idea and the vision, you document that so they know what the process is. It’s almost like a different version of a recipe. It’s like you’re training one group of kids, fifth graders, fourth graders, how to make a recipe. You’re training another group of kids of how to follow the recipe for teaching kids to do the recipes. There’s two different recipes being developed. I think about that a lot within the businesses that we’re building is like, how are you, they talk about businesses being more valuable, the more that they are transferable, scalable and repeatable. And I think even with businesses that we just want to own forever, those are great businesses because there’s a little bit of a process that you can follow. There’s a template there. And it seems like cooking classes would be a candidate for that where you are maybe still involved with them day to day.

You are the face of them, but you’re not having to do all the grocery shopping or prep all of the items before or clean up after. That’s where it feels like the grind of some of that work really is felt as opposed to executing the idea, maybe teaching or that would be a little bit more life giving. So one of the things that is great about this that I really love is we’ve talked in the past about this idea of the egg carton method where if somebody is looking to get to a certain point to earn a certain income, one of the things that you can do is think strategically around where’s that going to happen? And we are the CEOs of our own life and we can say, Hey, I want to do some contractor work or W2 work, or I want to have a side hustle and do a little bit of that on the side.

Or maybe it’s, I’m going to do halftime W2 work and then halftime building my business. You can kind of build all of those pieces and we talk about it as an egg carton. So you’re eggs in the carton that eventually fill up whatever your salary desire is and thinking strategically about how to get there that shifts in the seasons like we’ve talked about. And it’s cool to hear you reflect on the ways that you’re doing that talked about even a little bit saying like, Hey, if there’s a need with Cook Smarts, that was a fun thing. And so there’s still a connection there. Ad revenue from your site, these cooking cabs, brand partnerships, and then you also have your cookbook as well. That’s a piece that I want to make sure that we talk a little bit about and shine a light on that, because that recently came out within the last couple months. So talk to me about how that kind of fits into the greater scheme of things with your business and what you’re up to.

Jess Smith: I mean, I think it is true, and I love that analogy because it’s not all or nothing. And I think that’s my journey. I’ve kind of embraced that. I went from thinking, I want to have this website and it will be my source of income and it will be passive income. And I think I had this vision of running it and that being my full time gig. And then, I don’t know, I guess freedom was what I was after, but then as my journey has gone along, I’ve found that I also want to pursue these sort of passion projects, but that also build up the business as well. And yeah, it hasn’t been linear. It hasn’t been exactly the way that I pictured it would be, but I think that’s something I’ve loved about it, that I could try something new. And even though I went all in on these cooking camps and I did these, I did, last year I did seven cooking camps, seven weeks of cooking camp, which was a lot, but that was just,

Bjork Ostrom: Is it repeated? So each week is the same?

Jess Smith: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Jess Smith: Yeah, it’s really just coming up with one curriculum over five days. One of the more challenging things I did was over Thanksgiving I did single day camps when kids were out of school. And that was a lot to do it, to figure out the whole plan and then do it one time is a lot. And to not have the staff fully trained on all of the things. It’s all a learning process, but repeating them I think is the key to the long-term sustainability of the business. But again, I’m learning too. I mean, I’m trying to figure it out,

Bjork Ostrom: But I interrupted anyways. You were saying they’re all different, they’re all passion projects that all play into the success of the business overall.

Jess Smith: Yes, and I really do think that’s part of what this teaching, these cooking camps has given me is just it’s strengthened the brand and the business. And I feel that daily, and I did write a cookbook. I think that too has given me this other, it’s given this other element to the business. And I don’t know. I mean cookbooks now, it’s unclear if that will be financially, if that will build on the profit of the business in the long term. A lot of times cookbooks don’t these days, but it’s hard to quantify how much that helps the brand overall. I’m hoping it just kind of boosts the

Bjork Ostrom: Brand. And I think so much of the conversation lately has been around the shift of you don’t want to be building traffic, you want to be building a brand. And what does it mean to build a brand? I think a lot of times it, there’s some unquantifiable things like you have a published cookbook or you’re doing in-person classes. How does that play into the overall stability foundation of a brand unknown? But my thought is in a world where there is AI content and people are trying to understand where are the humans to look and see, to go to a site and say like, oh, there’s in-person cooking classes. This person has published a cookbook. All of those are brand positive things, especially when they’re human forward like that and are differentiators in a world where certain types of content are being commoditized. And so I think aligned with you on the kind of thought process with that around the unquantifiable, but undeniable impact that some of these things have on your brand.

Jess Smith: Totally. And it’s like we said, like I said about, I know that people are cooking from the blog. I do hear from them every day, but gosh, putting a cookbook out there, I’m hearing from people that I haven’t talked to in 30 years and they’re cooking from the cookbook and sending me pictures. And the same with the camps. I’m getting to see kids that go home and their parents say, look who came home and Julian the Pepper for dinner. And the reward of that is huge. And I think the long-term benefit for my brand and my business will be there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. So number one, if people want to check out the classes, where would they have to be and how could they sign up? And then number two, if they’re not around, how can people follow along with you online and maybe pick up your cookbook?

Jess Smith: Yes, totally. If you are in Kansas City, I would love to have you join us. And right now the camps are full for this summer, but I have an email list that is where, that is really the only place I publish these camps. So anytime. And I’m hoping to do more classes in the fall. So if you are in the Kansas City area, I would love to have you join the email list because we just have so much fun. It’s such a blast. And then I wrote a cut book, it’s called Start With a Vegetable. It’s available everywhere and everywhere else is inquiring chef.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Jess, thanks so much for coming on. Really fun to talk about a new venture. I’m sure it’ll spark some ideas for people. So appreciate you coming on sharing your story.

Jess Smith: My pleasure. Thanks so much.

Emily Walker: Hey, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I wanted to take a minute and just ask that if you enjoyed this episode or any of our other many episodes of the Food Blogger Pro podcast, that you share it. It means so much to us as a podcast if you share episodes with your friends and family, or if you are a food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share ’em on social media or even in your email newsletters. It really helps us get the word out about our podcast and reach more listeners. Thanks again for listening. We really hope you enjoyed this episode, and we’ll see you back here next week.