282: 9 Things – Helpful, Impactful Takeaways from This Year with Bjork Ostrom

Alexa Peduzzi: Hello. Hello and welcome to the Food Blogger Pro podcast this week. My name is Alexa and I’m part of the Food Blogger Pro team. In behalf of all of us on the Food Blogger Pro team, we’re all really excited that you’re here. So today’s episode is a Bjork solo episode. I call them solo-sodes, also known as solo episodes. But in this one, it’s going to be a really interesting one because it’s a little bit of a retrospective. And in this episode, Bjork is looking back at the year, this crazy, eventful, depressing, sad, but also moving and motivating year.

Alexa Peduzzi: And he’s talking about nine of the most helpful and impactful takeaways that he had from 2020. So in this episode, he’ll talk a little bit about why frameworks are really helpful, why it’s important to remind yourself that it’s okay and to evaluate what’s currently lacking in your life and what you need, how important it is to solidify bookkeeping and so much more. It’s a good one. It’s pretty short, but it’s full of impactful takeaways. So without any further ado, Bjork, take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Hey, there friends, Bjork here. And today I’m recording what we call solo episodes, which is essentially me sitting in an empty room, pretending that I’m sitting here with you talking about a certain subject. And ideally, we would have a back and forth, we’d be at a coffee shop, we’d be at a restaurant, we’d be in a really long elevator ride, and we’d have a conversation about this. But in this case, it’s just going to be me sharing some thoughts, some ideas, because what I’ve found is, as we have journeyed through life, whether that be with our business or with our personal life or any category that you would choose. One of the things that has been most helpful is to hear about other people’s journey, to learn from what other people are doing and what they’ve learned along the way.

Bjork Ostrom: And again, it could be parenting or it could be about building a business and building a blog, building a website, and the latter of which is what we’re going to focus on today. These are actually nine things that are related to our business, our website, our team, the broad category of blogging and business building. Nine things that we did in 2020, or that I did personally, that I’m grateful for, that I’m thankful for. Or if I were to go back and to do 2020 again, which none of us want to do, but if we did, these are nine things that I would do again. They’re not in any order, they’re not prioritize. These were just items that when I sat down and I reflected on the year, these are the things that came to the top of mind that were helpful, that were impactful, and that I wanted to share with you.

Bjork Ostrom: Because the hope for doing a podcast like this, much like if we were having a conversation, is that one of these things that I share might be something that you remember or that you think, “Hey, I could actually do that.” Or, “I thought about doing that and I should really move forward on it.” So my hope is something within here, probably not all of them, but at least one of these is something that you can take away as a little nugget, whether it be a framework for how you think about your work and your life, or whether it be an actionable item that you can apply to your business to help you grow. So let’s go ahead and jump in. I’ll give a little bit of context around each one. And my goal is to only explain it in so far as it’s helpful, and then we will move on to the next item. So these are the nine things that I found helpful in 2020, that I would do again if we had to redo 2020, which I hope we never do. But here we go, starting from the top.

Bjork Ostrom: Number one, asked for help. Now this fits into many different categories, it’s both personal and within our business. When I thought of it, it was within the business. And one of the things that I’ve realized over time, and you’ll see this too, is when you start out, you have to be a semi-expert in all the things. You have to understand email, you have to understand SEO, you have to understand content and photography. Maybe you start to do a video and you’re having to understand the behind the scenes of setting up a business. Maybe it’s an LLC, if you’re in the US. You have to be master, a Jack of all trades where you’re not master of anything, but you’re decent at all of the things. And a Jack of all trades, master of none, I think is the phrase that they use in what I was working towards there.

Bjork Ostrom: But over time, what will happen is you have to start to let go of some of those things and bring on people who are actually masters at those things. People who are professionals and really good at the things that you were kind of good at. And I found that to be really true and also really hard because you get used to doing the things that you’re capable of doing and that you can do, but that you’re not a master at. And a really good example is for a long time on our team, I would have a lot of the conversations or if somebody had a question about something SEO related, we would have a conversation. So somebody come to me and they’d say, “Hey, can you help explain this concept for SEO?” What I started to realize is my SEO skills over time were trending down, they weren’t trending up.

Bjork Ostrom: And the reason was because I was starting to shift my focus into other areas. As that happened, it was important for us to bring somebody on to the team who we could ask for help around that area, around that subject. So we went out, we talked to a couple contacts, a couple of people we knew, and we have somebody on our team now, Ewen who was actually interviewed on the podcast, talking about his journey building websites. And he acts as a consultant for us. We’ll just jump on a call with him occasionally and run different ideas by him to hear his thoughts on all things SEO related. It’s really important, I’ve noticed, as we continue to grow and build to ask for help, that’s true within the business, but it’s also true in our personal life as well.

Bjork Ostrom: We have at home our daughter, Lena, and our daughter Solvi, and we’ve realized time is a scarce resource and we’ve had to ask for help in other areas. Today, as a for instance, I’m back home at my parent’s house and they’re watching our daughter Solvi, Lindsay’s back hanging out with our six week old at this point, daughter, Lena. And it’s a huge help for my parents to be able to help us out. And it’s a hard thing to do sometimes to ask for help, but I’ve realized that you can’t carry the burden on your own. And it’s important to start to make that transition because in the early stages we get really used to doing all the things on our own. But as your business starts to gain some traction, especially if you have some margin from the revenue that your business is creating, you can invest that back into the business by asking for help, by hiring people, by bringing people onto your team.

Bjork Ostrom: And that’s a really important thing to do. And you can also do that in your personal life. And that might not be a financial interaction, it might be family or friends in times where you need help, you ask for that help. And right now that being an example, as I’m sitting out here in my dad’s pottery studio recording this podcast, had to ask them for some help so we could get some stuff done. So that’s one thing that I’ve learned in 2020, and I’ll carry forward into 2021, always thinking about who are the people that we can ask for help for certain things. We don’t have to do everything our own. We don’t have to be the expert on everything. We can reach out, we can connect with people who are smart, who are capable, who are interested in helping with us. And that’s the first thing that I want to talk about.

Bjork Ostrom: Number two, we built on frameworks. Now, one of the things that I’ve learned is if you are wanting to do something, whether that be run a marathon or build a business or train a dog, there’s somebody else out there who has done it before and understands it and has some type of framework that you can work off of. And it’s going to alleviate a lot of the question marks that you have around the next step forward that you need to take. And the most concrete example that I can come up with for building on a framework for us was in 2020, we started a business using a business framework. So a way to run your business called EOS, it’s the Entrepreneurial Operating System.

Bjork Ostrom: And this has been around for maybe 20 years and maybe more. And it was built originally around traditional brick and mortar, maybe manufacturing businesses, but it started to make its way into the online blogging, SaaS, e-commerce space. And essentially, it’s a framework to run your business and operating system, much like your phone has an operating system, your computer has an operating system, rules that it follows and rules for engagement. EOS is the equivalent of that for your business, the rules of engagement for your business. So there’s set meetings, there’s rules about how those meetings are run. There’s a weekly meeting, there’s a quarterly meeting. There’s a way that you set goals, there’s language that you use around what those goals are.

Bjork Ostrom: And I won’t go into the nitty-gritty details of how EOS works, but I wanted to touch on the fact that kind of like asking people for help, frameworks will help you do what you want to do and to do it better because somebody else has done something. They’ve done a good job of it, they’ve documented how to do that, and then they show you how to do that. You’re going to save a lot of steps, but not having to think what is the next step. So maybe a better way to say that is you’re going to save a lot of time by not having to think about what is the next step, how do I do this? But instead, trying to find that framework that you can build on.

Bjork Ostrom: The same is true in the development world, there’s frameworks that people have created. If you’re a front-end web developer, you know that there’s frameworks that people have created, that you can build off of, that make it easier to build a website. You can start from scratch and do it all on your own, but you are going to give up a lot of time by creating your own framework, as opposed to using the framework somebody else has created and building on top of that. And for us, we found that to be super helpful on the business side of things, using EOS. As a note, actually looked into EOS two, three, maybe four years ago. But at that point, our team was too small. So they say that you should probably be a team of around at least 10 in order for you to be able to use that.

Bjork Ostrom: So if you’re still in the early stages of building your business, maybe you can read about it, you can understand it, watch some YouTube videos on it, but specifically for EOS, it’s for the early stage small business to use. But the example of frameworks can be used in multiple different instances. It’s not just for your business, there’s frameworks for how you can have the best lawn, there’s frameworks for how you can use your phone without it being distracting, and there’s experts who have figured that out and have a process for that. There’s frameworks for exercise and how you can stay healthy, all of those, a meal plan is a framework for eating healthy. All of those are ways that you can save time by following preexisting steps that people have created.

Bjork Ostrom: So if there’s somewhere in your life that you’re wondering, what’s the next step, how do I move forward on this? One of the things I’m trying to do is think, is there a framework out there that I could follow that would allow me to just do the work as opposed to figuring out what the next step is? So number one, ask for help. Number two, build on frameworks.

Bjork Ostrom: Number three, learn by doing. This is something I’m continually reminded of, the best way to learn is by doing. Actually had this conversation with my mother-in-law, Mary, via text the other day. And she rolled her eyes at me, but she was going through the process of they’re getting an entertainment system installed and she was talking about how it’s like not something she enjoys doing, but also wanted to do it right. And how’s there’s this gap between like, “Hey, I don’t want to be doing this and I know I want to do it right. And don’t know a lot about this.” And it’s not like she’d be somebody who wants to spend 30 hours researching on Wirecutter. And I said, “Well, the good news is, I’ve learned the most in these moments where I’m stressed and I’m having to do something, and I don’t know a lot about it, but I’m doing it.” And she rolled her eyes a little bit and in a fun, poking at each other way.

Bjork Ostrom: But the point was that the most that I have learned isn’t by doing a bunch of learning and then doing, it’s learning while I’m doing. And there’s a certain subset of people, and you’re going to know who you are when I say this, where you are people who learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, and have trouble actually doing. And I think that’s healthy to an extent, you just don’t want to jump in blind to things. You want to research, you want to be smart. You want to understand what you’re getting into, but you also want to understand if the learning is keeping you from the doing and to have the freedom to make mistakes in the doing, knowing that the quickest way to get where you want to go is to do the thing and then learn along the way.

Bjork Ostrom: It fits into the 1% infinity, a tiny bit better every day mindset, which is, hey, you show up, you do the work, you figure out ways to get a little bit better, and you do that every day on repeat, over and over and over and find ways to become incrementally better, not by just learning, but by doing and learning. That’s something that I’ve realized this year as we’ve done things like implement a new framework for our business, or looked into starting new businesses, looked at new positions, we’re talking about what does a product manager mean? How does that position fit into the roles and responsibilities we have? All of these are things that we’re doing and learning along the way. It’s something that maybe more than any other year we’ve done, and I’m grateful that we did that because we made progress and also learned a lot. So asked for help, number one. Built on frameworks, number two. Learned by doing, number three.

Bjork Ostrom: Number four reminded myself that it’s okay. And 2020 was a hard year, 2021 might be a hard year too. I think the interesting thing about 2020 being a hard year is there’s a higher chance that you meet somebody and they will agree that 2020 is a hard year, it’s a universal global hard year, obviously not for everybody. For a lot of people it might’ve been a really incredible year, but there’s a lot of things about the year 2020 that made it a really difficult year. And a lot of us share in that feeling of it being difficult and can relate to that. And it was a hard year for us. There’s a lot of great things that happened, but there’s a lot of unique, difficult, challenging things that happened in 2020.

Bjork Ostrom: And throughout that process, I needed to remind myself that it’s okay if I felt a certain way. If I was discouraged, if I was feeling down, if I felt lonely, all of those things were okay. It was okay to feel those things, because it was a really difficult time. And for you, I wanted to remind you of that. If we were having a conversation, if we were sitting down, I wanted to remind you that it’s okay to not feel great in seasons of your life. And obviously you don’t want to sit in that and you want to actively be aware of that and think about, are there ways that I could feel better? You might fall in the category of more clinically depressed. Maybe it’s something that would be worth talking to a doctor about, or a psychologist, or working with somebody, a health professional to move through that.

Bjork Ostrom: I don’t have the authority to speak to that or what that would look like, but I do want to acknowledge, that’s a very real thing. And for a lot of people, it’s not just a mindset shift, it’s not like you just need to think more positive or you need to be grateful for things. There’s a category of health, mental health that requires working with a professional. That is 100% true, and I want to acknowledge that. There’s a category of mental health that you might be able to work against by thinking, what are the things that I need, what’s currently lacking? Maybe 2020 has been a really lonely year, and you’re somebody that you realize you need people in your life in a way that you haven’t had before.

Bjork Ostrom: Maybe you can reach out to people. You can schedule that time and be aware of that as a trigger for you if you have long gaps of not being able to connect with people, building that time in, in a way that you feel is safe and healthy during a global pandemic, which is obviously the X factor for all of this. But it’s a year where there are really difficult, hard things happening. And I’ve needed to remind myself that it’s okay to not feel awesome all the time and to not again, to not sit in that, to not say I don’t feel awesome, and acknowledging that means that I’m just going to stay in this. You want to work towards feeling better, but also to not feel bad about feeling bad and to acknowledge that it’s been a really difficult year.

Bjork Ostrom: And one of the phrases that I’ve had internally is to be gentle with ourselves, to be gentle with myself. And as kind of wrapping up this point, number four, I think that’s maybe the core of what I’m trying to express is to be gentle with yourself, to not be too hard on yourself. A lot of the people who listen to this podcast are people who like to work, to make progress, to hustle, for lack of a better word. And there are seasons where you might not feel great and it’s okay to be gentle with yourself and to remind yourself that, that it’s okay to not feel great in seasons. And for me, that was important this year. And it was something that I needed to hear and remind myself of. So that’s number four, remind myself that it’s okay. That is okay, not to feel okay and to be gentle with myself.

Bjork Ostrom: Number five, this bounces back into the business side of things. But we had the… Kind of started to shape and understand the difference between a personal brand and a brand that’s personal. And this distinction, and really that phrase has been helpful in thinking about how we want to move forward with the way that we are building things. And if you look at, for those who are familiar with the tiny bit suite of products, so that would be Pinch of Yum, Food Blogger Pro, WP Tasty, Nutrifox. And then we are working on a site called Clariti, with an I, which you can check out by going to clariti.com, Clariti with an I. And it’s a post log tracking tool. We’re essentially building the tool that we would want to use for Pinch of Yum. And thank you to the beta users who have started to give us feedback on that.

Bjork Ostrom: But a personal brand would probably be Pinch of Yum. It’s the most personal brand that we have. It’s very much so Lindsay, it’s Lindsay forward, so for those who aren’t familiar with the relationship between Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro and Lindsay and myself, I’m Lindsay’s husband, Lindsay is my wife. And Food Blogger Pro came out of Pinch of Yum as a sister site side project. And then we work on Pinch of Yum while also working on Food Blogger Pro. So the great thing about that relationship is that we are actually doing the things that we are recommending and talking about over on Pinch of Yum, and then talking about that here on Food Blogger Pro.

Bjork Ostrom: But personal brand would be Pinch of Yum when people usually think about Lindsay and the team that we have there, but the brand is connected to Lindsay. Food Blogger Pro is a little bit like that as well, but I think less so than Pinch of Yum, especially over the last few years, we’ve built out this team. We have experts, we have the actual Food Blogger Pro team, Alexa and Leslie, who some of you have been able to get to know, some other tiny bit team members. So it’s become a community, so that’s shifting towards a brand that’s personal. And as we think about the projects that we’re building moving forward, I really like the idea of building brands that are personal as opposed to personal brands.

Bjork Ostrom: Now, this isn’t to say, that’s the right answer. It’s just a reflection that we’ve had and I’ve had specifically as we’ve thought about moving forward. And the reason that I like that is because when I’m building a brand that’s personal, the brand itself is the thing that we can build as having personality, and we can have a team that works together to create that thing. So it’s almost like the business or the brand becomes its own entity, becomes its own thing. And we can share in the creation of that, as opposed to it being about one specific person. The ultimate example of a personal brand would be influencers on Instagram, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner. They have massive impact, the ability to build massive brands that are about them as the influencer. It’s not bad, it’s just a different type of business building.

Bjork Ostrom: And for me, I’ve realized I really like the idea of building a brand that’s personal as opposed to a personal brand. I don’t have a super strong draw towards publishing content on social or a to building a following around me personally. I love the idea of building a following around a brand and a team that is cohesive and aligned. And that’s some of the reflection that I’ve had this year is personal brand versus a brand that’s personal. So not really a takeaway, but just more of a reflection that I’ve had throughout the year that has informed how we’ll go forward with certain projects. So number one, asked for help. Number two, built on frameworks. Number three, we learned by doing. Number four, reminded myself that it’s okay. Number five, reflecting on a personal brand versus a brand that’s personal.

Bjork Ostrom: Number six, this is really tactical, but we’ve solidified our bookkeeping process. Bookkeeping is really important. It’s one of the things that you hear a lot about, especially with my friends who… A long time ago, I interviewed Mark from Quiet Light Brokerage. He buys and sells websites. They always talk about, “Hey, your bookkeeping needs to be really tight. You have to have a good understanding of the health of your business.” And maybe you never want to buy a website or you never want to sell a website. If anything, right now we’d be in the category of looking at like, “Hey, is there any opportunities for us to buy a website?”

Bjork Ostrom: So we’re not necessarily doing this to sell a website, but the reason we’re doing it is because the insights that you get from really understanding the numbers of your business are going to pay dividends, and they’re going to pay off the cost that it takes to actually pay to have your books really well done. And an example would be, you’ll have a really clear insight into things that you’re spending money on, that you don’t need to be spending money on, unless you have a system for reviewing that, for looking into that, looking at your bank accounts or your credit card charges, you’re not going to be able to have insight. Maybe you’re spending 10, 15, 50, a $100 on tools that you don’t use.

Bjork Ostrom: Now, this usually comes down the line if you’re early stages, you’re just thinking, “Hey, how do I get to the point where I create enough revenue to spend back on the site. But for those of us who have been at it for a while, who have solidified their business, this is going to be a really important thing. We use a company called Pilot to do that, there’s a lot of online solutions that you can look at, but we’ve found it great to work with Pilot. They don’t endorse this. We didn’t get paid to say it, but sometimes it’s just helpful to know what people are doing and what tool they’re using. So that’s what we use for our bookkeeping.

Bjork Ostrom: Number seven, in 2020, I tried to use a lot of video. I’ve realized that email written text is helpful, but if you add in a layer of video, you’re going to be able to communicate the concept a lot better and quicker. And if you can communicate something quicker, there’s not going to be as much back and forth. If you can save a day or two of back and forth communication, you’re going to save a lot of time if you cuff on that over a year or two years of communication. So when you think about sending an email, when you think about sending a message, how can you communicate everything that you think that person will need in one message? And a lot of times I found that that includes a video. We use Loom, loom.com, to record a screencast. Or if it’s something that’s not on my computer, I’ll just use my phone and then I will send that video to myself and then I’ll upload it to Dropbox, and then I’ll copy that Dropbox link and include that.

Bjork Ostrom: And what I found is it cuts down the back and forth, it cuts down the number of mistakes to create a one or two minute video that explains the concept that I’m trying to communicate. And if anything else, I would do that more, as opposed to less moving forward, it cuts down on mistakes, it cuts down on the time needed to solve and answer questions and problems. And it’s been a huge help for us.

Bjork Ostrom: Number eight, I’ve cleared out social media, at least personally. Now this has been easy for me to do because I was never really personally active on social, but I just went ahead and cleared everything out. I unfollowed people on Facebook, so I only follow a handful of business accounts and groups. I cleared out everything on Twitter, cleared out everything on LinkedIn, and it’s just helped me gain back a lot of mental real estate. What I found was I wasn’t actively using those platforms in any way, and that’s not to say that I never will. And when the time comes, I’ll have to be intentional to say, “How am I going to use this and how am I going to structure my time around this to make it useful?”

Bjork Ostrom: But I had this realization that I had a lot of these platforms that I wasn’t really using, that I was occasionally check in on, but they weren’t really moving anything forward. And they were only adding mental clutter to my day and ideas and thoughts bouncing around in my head that weren’t really the things that I wanted to be thinking about when I logged in, in the first place. So I just went through this mass unfollow and simplified all of my social media, and I’m really glad that I did. There might be a time where I stepped back into it. We still have social for all the business accounts, so this is just for me personally, a step that I took. I kept all of the, like on Facebook, I still have all of my old posts and content that I published, so that’s not gone, but nobody can see it because they don’t have any friends. So it’s just me and then a few groups and pages that I follow that I want to have some information on moving forward.

Bjork Ostrom: Number nine is a bigger one, pondered my legacy. This is something that I’ve thought a decent amount about throughout the year and have felt good on where I’ve settled, which is this understanding that, and this is going to sound maybe sad, but it’s not a sad thing, but I’ve just come to understand that I will be forgotten. And that has helped me to clarify what’s important in my life. And I think it’s important to point out that I will be forgotten, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t have an impact. I believe wholeheartedly, 100% that each one of us can have a massive, significant, deep, everlasting impact on people’s lives. My hope is that by following this podcast, maybe there’s been small ways that you’ve been impacted.

Bjork Ostrom: My hope is that the people in my life, friends and family that I’ve spent time with have been impacted by the time that they’ve spent with me, the things that we are creating in the world, Pinch of Yum has had impact on people. I believe that to be true to my core, and I believe the things that you create will have an impact. I also believe that one, two, definitely three generations from now that I will be forgotten. And that has helped me to not hold so tight to this idea of me being a thing. So like me and the idea of Bjork in the world being important. What is important is the things that I’m putting into the world and the impact that those have on people. So it’s not about me, it’s about the impact that I’m having. And there’s ripple effects to that legacy, the way that I treat people, the things that I focus on, the time that I give to people, the time that I give to other organizations, whatever that might be, that has an impact and that ripples out.

Bjork Ostrom: But it’s less about me, it’s not about me, my name being remembered. It’s not about the legacy of what I’m creating in name, it’s the legacy that I’m creating in impact. And so I guess if you boil it down, it’s the difference between the impact of the things that I’m doing by the time I’m spending with people, the communication I’m having with people, the things that I’m creating and this idea of pushing self forward and trying to do that less and pushing impact forward more. So it’s a little bit abstract, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about, and that’s been helpful to inform the work that I’m doing, because I think it shifts the focus from me to other people. And I think the more that we do that, the more beneficial the work that we’re doing is to other people, and I also think realistically the broader the impact is.

Bjork Ostrom: So a quick recap here as we wrap up the nine different things that I wanted to focus on, highlighting that we did in 2020, that I hope to carry forward into 2021, and I’m glad that we did. Number one, ask for help. Number two, built on frameworks. Number three, learned by doing. Number four, reminded myself that it’s okay. Number five, pondered the difference between a personal brand and a brand that’s personal. Number six, solidified our bookkeeping process. Number seven, used video for communication. Number eight, scaled back on social media. And number nine, pondered my legacy.

Bjork Ostrom: I hope there’s something there that you could take away, something there that sparked an idea. And my hope going into 2021 is that it is for those who have had a difficult year in 2020, my hope is that 2021 is a better year for you. And I have a feeling that it will be, and I have confidence in things looking good. And if not, we are here and would love to connect with you in whatever way that looks like and support you in your journey in any way that we can. It’s a great honor and a privilege to do this podcast. Thanks for tuning in and hope that you have a great week. Thanks.

Alexa Peduzzi: And that’s a wrap on this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Thanks again for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode and you wanted to give us some feedback, we would love if you could take a couple of minutes to review the show on Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show get in front of new listeners and new bloggers and creators and content producers. So we would really, really appreciate your thoughts and feedback. That said, if you want to access any of the links to the resources that Bjork mentioned in this episode, you can find them at our show notes at foodbloggerpro.com/282.

Alexa Peduzzi: Otherwise, we really appreciate you tuning in, and we hope you had some nice takeaways from this episode, I know I did. That last point of pondering your legacy, I think that’s really interesting and motivating, figuring out what you’re doing now that can have a lasting impact on others, on society, on the world. It’s a big question, but I think it’s an important question to consider every once in a while. So definitely a good reminder for me. And that’s that. So we’ll see you next time, next Tuesday. And until then, make it a great week.