Building Brand Relationships that Last with Chris Pieta

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Ann, and in today’s episode, Bjork is joined by Chris Pieta from Creative Biz Launch. Chris starts off the episode by highlighting the need to define what you’re selling, who your ideal client is, and how you can help them achieve their goals. By honing in on these aspects, you can tailor your outreach and messaging to resonate more effectively with your target audience, ultimately leading to stronger connections and greater success. You’ll also hear Bjork and Chris talk about the power of personal connections and how using A CRM can be a game changer for managing leads, tracking interactions and automating tasks. This episode is full of insights on how to supercharge your business, and we think you’ll really enjoy it. If you do, we would really appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Chris, welcome to the podcast. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Bjork, last time, so you did a live Q&A with the Food Blogger Pro audience, which was great. We’re talking about brand deals, talking about building your company, working as an entrepreneur. We’re going to cover some of those things in the podcast today. But one of the things that was, I took a screenshot and I shared it with our team and I was like, it was as if you and I had planned to wear the exact same thing that day. I don’t remember what it was. But then also we have the same mic. It’s like we have a very similar camera. Even depth of field is very similar, so I’m glad today most people won’t see this because it’s a podcast. Glad today we’re not matching. It looked like we could have been brothers last time, missed the model this time. Yeah, we’ll have to make sure to plan that out next time. We’re going to talk about your story as an entrepreneur, but we’re also going to be talking about how bloggers, publishers, creators can be really strategic about brand deals. And one of the things that’s really important in this world is thinking about not only how do you make income from ads with traffic, but let’s say you have a good following on social media. How do you leverage that not just to send traffic, but potentially to do brand deals? Like today, we just got back from a factory tour with a cookware company that we might be partnering with for Pinch of Yum. It’s very much an important part of our business, but even for ourselves, we don’t have a good strategy around it. So I’m excited to talk to you about that. But before we do, I want to hear your story, your entrepreneurial story, kind of the quick version of it because it sounds like you were in a nine to five, you didn’t love it and you knew you wanted to get out. Some of the people listening to this might relate to that. They might have their W2, their nine-to-five, they might want to get out, or maybe they like their W2, and they just want to figure out how to get some additional disposable income doing a side hustle. So what did that journey look like for you and when did you transition into working on your business full time?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, I’d love to dive into that. I was in the boat of, didn’t really like my nine to five, wanted to work for myself. So that was, let’s start with 2016. That’s when I graduated college, went right into corporate America. I graduated in chemistry, started working at a food company, doing kind of quality assurance, stuff like that. Basically desk job. And from 2016, up until 2019 or 2020, that was my main line of work. And through those years, every year that went by kind of disliked my job more and more. The first time I got a promotion or a raise at my job, it was like 2% or something ridiculously tiny, and I was thinking like, wow, I put in so much effort this year and that’s all I get in return. And then hearing entrepreneurship online, putting in all this effort and getting massive returns from it, I thought that would be way cooler. Being able to build something for yourself and see a direct kind of correlation between how much effort you put into something versus what you get out. And obviously with that there’s a lot more risks involved. There’s no security or anything like that, but the reward is so much higher and the fulfillment side of it seemed like so much higher as well. So during that 2016 to 2020 era, didn’t really think much of it. I kind of would read business books on the backend. I like Tim Ferriss’s four hour work week. I was consuming a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk. He was huge back then. So that was the first time I really got exposed to entrepreneurship as a concept because growing up, I didn’t have any family members that were entrepreneurs or any friends that were in that space. Everyone just went to college, got a secure job. That was the path everyone took. So until I got exposed to this stuff, I didn’t know there was any other option. Let’s fast forward to 2019. Now at this point, I’ve been doing some photography on the side. I picked up a camera on a trip to go to Japan, kind of fell in love with the creative side. I was in the STEM side, the science and all that, all my life. So now going into the artistic side of it was this kind of escape from my nine to five would go out, take photos of Chicago sunrises every single weekend, got pretty good at it and figured, okay, I’m not really happy at my nine to five this camera, that’s something I’m decent at. Let’s try and make this into a living. So my goal wasn’t really to be become a pro photographer. My goal was to work for myself. So I think that’s kind of different where a lot of creatives start off as a lot of people want to be professional photographers or professional videographers. My only goal was really to work for myself and the camera was kind of a tool to get to that point. So I started researching how people make money or people make money from a camera, different types of photography, wedding photography events, landscape product. And I kind of landed on product photography and videography because to me that made a lot of sense in my head, okay, I’m going to be taking these photos for brands. They’re going to be using these photos to make money with the photos, so I should be able to get paid for this versus doing landscape photography. I love doing that stuff and I could create really beautiful photos, but the value of hanging a print on a wall wasn’t the same as a brand running ads with this print. So I feel with a photo. So I went down the product photography route, struggled hard for a while.

Bjork Ostrom: What did that look like? What do you mean when you say you struggled?

Chris Pieta: Just didn’t know how to actually get brands to pay me. That was the thing. Okay, I know people make money from this, how the first step is like, okay, do I create a portfolio and post it online? I mean, yeah, that makes sense. People have websites with their photos and videos. So I thought I would do the same thing. So I just went to, I think Whole Foods, bought some hip snacks and started taking photos of that. I mean, I was working in the food and beverage space in my nine to five and I had a camera, so I figured I could niche down to that. I knew a bit about that. So, I created a portfolio around that, put it up on my website, and figured the clients would come. No one did and then they didn’t. Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking. Obviously if I’m not driving to that, no one’s going to come. And I didn’t really understand that myself until I started working in January. I bought this course from this guy in Chicago who was trying to teach cold email, and that kind of opened my eyes up to having a sales process in your photo or video business. I didn’t even think about trying to sell stuff. I thought I just put it on my website and the clients are going to come, but that just doesn’t happen. So I built out a sales process, built out systems around that. I followed his advice and built out my own stuff. And then after about seven months of testing this tweaking, it landed my first client using that system. It was like a cold email system, landed my first client with it, and I quit my job right then and there with that first client. It wasn’t like a 10 grand deal or anything. It was a $500 client,

Bjork Ostrom: Which you knew if I can do this once, I can probably do it

Chris Pieta: Again. And that was the first thought that came to my head. There was a lot of things that led to that decision. I think of myself as a pretty reasonable guy and not super, I’m pretty risk averse, so someone hearing me quitting my job after a $500 client may think that’s really risky, but I had six months of runway saved up, so I figured I got this system, it got me one client, there’s no way it makes sense. Then my head, it could get me a hundred more. So I gave myself those six months to try it out full time. I’m still here five years later. So something seemed to work, and that’s kind of where I got my start.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s awesome. I’m curious about that system. When you say it was a system. When I think of cold outreach to brands, we’ve been personally, when I think of Pinch of Yum, it’s mostly inbound. We’ll occasionally do outbound. We’re not great at it. We don’t really have a system. But one of the things that I found so interesting, I was having a conversation with a friend who does mergers and acquisitions, and he helps brands and companies acquire companies into their ecosystem. And I was saying, what do those companies do when they buy a company and it’s SaaS, software as a service, it’s media companies, it’s content companies. It’s like, what do they do? They get this company and then what? And he’s like, oh, almost always it’s sales. Their secret sauce is that they are selling well. And I have another friend who has built this incredible site and kind of built this conglomerate within the gear space. And similarly, they talk about how important sales are within their company selling to brands. And I think that there’s a huge opportunity for creators or publishers who are ambitious and interested in pitching, selling, partnering with brands to create a really good income that’s not ad based, but it is advertising based, like ad based meaning display ads and partnering with brands. But it’s like the system feels a little bit more abstract or harder to understand versus, well, you publish content, you get traffic and you monetize via ads. Well, those ads are being sold in the backend, either through custom deals or through the ad marketplace. So sales is happening at some point. It’s just a matter of how much of the cut are you getting from it, but we need that system. So what did that look like for you? And it’s getting into it right away, but what are the early steps that people can start to think about if they wanted to develop a system for reaching out to brands?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, definitely. And this is what I spend most of my time on these days, teaching other creatives how to do the brand work, how to pitch these companies. But I think it has, it’s the four steps really, and it starts with what are you actually selling? So being clear about what it is that you offer. If you’re running a blog, there’s lots of different services that you can sell to brands, whether that’s like a sponsored post on your blog, maybe you’re going to do photos for an upcoming launch for them, or product photos that photos are going to be on your blog, maybe it’s going to be videos. So getting clear on what the actual offer is, I think is important. You have to be able to, if you’re doing outreach, you have to be able to super softly hint at that in the first outreach attempt. So get clear on what you’re actually selling. Once you know what you’re selling, it’s time to get that in front of potential clients or leads. So that can be through outreach, that could be through inbound. You have to pick a method to do this. I think if you’re starting from zero, the fastest way to do this is to do outreach because it doesn’t require a backlog of content. It doesn’t require really paying for ads or anything like that. You’re paying with your time. So the amount of outreach you can do is directly correlates to how much time you have here. Cold outreach is great for that. Now, if you’re more established, well, you’ve got content already out there. You can maybe run paid ads, you’re going to get inbound leads that way. But if you’re just starting out from zero or you’re under 10K a month, then doing outreach is how you’re going to get these engaged leads. Step three of this process is once someone responds to your outreach, it’s like you have to figure out how to get them to be a paying customer in your business. So they responded to your outreach, they’re like, Hey, I’m interested. That’s when the sales process really starts. So you kind of dig into like, Hey, what’s your business look like? Who’s your ideal customer? How does my offer fit into your business goals? And then you have a sales conversation with your lead pretty much being like, Hey, I want to learn more about what your goals are. I want to see if I can fit in there with my service and if so, we can work out ideal. So from there, you kind hop on a sales call with the intention of learning more about them. There’s a whole structure to this that I recommend, but then after that, you send usually a proposal over, you follow up until you get a yes or a no, and then step four is actually fulfilling on what you sold. So you want to at the very least, keep your word to what you promised in every single step of the way, and then have a killer fulfillment process so that they eventually become a retainer client or they refer you to their friends. So that’s the sale system as a high level overview there. But each of these steps, I could talk about hours on.

Bjork Ostrom: And that’s your business. So you have your production company, and it sounds like the stages for you were, you had your W2 job and then you had this ambition around creating your own business. You used photography as kind of the tool to facilitate that transition. You were doing product photography and you were doing direct sales product photography. So you’d reach out to brands, you’d say, Hey, here are the services I offer. You kind of perfected that, and then you saw an opportunity to say, Hey, there are people who might be interested in video, they might be interested in photography, product photography. I’m going to teach them this system that allowed you to get your production company off the ground. I think within the context of what we’re talking about, can easily also then be applied to publishers, creators who are looking to work with brands. Very similar idea. One of the things, so let me know if this recaps what you’re saying. Those four steps, it’s almost like what are you selling, defining that, how are you selling it? Are you doing cold outreach? What is the funnel that’s happening? It’s almost like the third step is packaging the sale. So once you know what you’re selling and how you’re selling it, kind of the package that then you present, would you, does that feel accurate?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, so I would say, so the offer, what are you selling? And then getting in front of eyeballs, getting attention to it, and then once someone expresses interest, that’s when you can present them with a sort of package. But I think what a lot of creators do is they kind of skip the step of actually learning about what your lead wants or what your client wants. So they’ll get someone expressing interest and then they’ll be like, okay, cool. This is what I sell, versus, okay, I’m interested in your thing. What you should do is hop on a call and be like, okay, I’m not sure if I can help you right now. So I want to learn on the call to make sure that I’m the best fit for your company, and you make it all about them, and that’s how you portray your value, and actually you get paid what you’re worth, not just by sending an email back and forth.

Bjork Ostrom: I love that. It’s one of the things we try and do as quickly as possible, and it’s now me for pinch of Yum doing this. We had an agent and that was good for some reasons, but bad for other reasons. And what we found was there’s a lot of value in owning that relationship, and it’s one of my favorite calls is the call with a brand or an agency to say, Hey, let me just ask you a bunch of questions about what success looks like, and then let’s see if there’s an opportunity for us to work together. And I think what feels good about it is I think it probably feels good to the people on the other side to just have somebody who’s like, tell me about how we can partner in a way that is good for you. And people just talking about that. And I’ve had two of those versions of that just this week, and I’ve also had once in the past where we get through it and the answer is like, oh, we’re probably not a good fit for you. It’s not going to be a good working relationship. And in this case, it was an example of, Hey, we’re really just looking for links back to our website. It was like, Okay. And it’s like, well, we’re going to make those no follow. And they’re like, well, it’s, you just got to get a semi-reputable brand, which is kind of interesting. And so in that case it’s like, oh, I know what success looks like. We’ve saved a bunch of time by not going back and forth on defining what a deal would look like by just having a call, but as quickly as possible, trying to jump on that call has been super helpful for us. One of the questions that I have for you that we’re trying to figure out is how do you track these right now? It’s like me in my inbox and my head, and we also use a system called Folk, which is like a CRM for keeping track of contacts, but we’re not really doing deal flow management. It’s pretty loose. What would you recommend for maybe formalizing that a little bit as a system?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, so I think that’s a really important part of it, keeping track of things, because the reality is you’ll reach out to brands and you’ll get a lot of maybes that may turn into deals in three to 12 months. And what most people do is they get that maybe, and then they never follow up on this deal that the person said like, Hey, reach out in a while. So getting organized around that stuff I think is important. So having a CRM is going to be key here, and you can have a paid one, you can have a create one in notion, but keeping track of the stages a potential client goes through is going to be important. So for me, when I reach out to someone, they’re just like a lead. They’re a cold lead, they haven’t responded, they haven’t expressed interest in any of my stuff. This doesn’t matter if they’re like, this is me reaching out through cold outreach or someone filling out form on my website before they come into my world. They’re just a lead. Now, once someone expresses interest in your service, they become an engaged lead, and that’s someone who’s been like, Hey, I’m interested. Whether that’s messaging you on Instagram, a contact form, whether it’s a reply to your cold outreach, they become an engaged lead and they get added to your CRM, and from there, your primary goal is to book a call with this person to see if you can work with them. And this is kind of like you’re not trying to hard sell them here. You’re just trying to figure if you can fit inside of a company. So your goal is to book that call. Once you book the call, you prepare for the call, and after the call, your next primary action is to kind of send a proposal over to this company. I’m just kind going through the stages that to my clients here. You send the proposal and once you’ve sent that proposal, your primary goal is to get that signed. So your CRM, what you would do in there is you would add tasks that are assigned to you to be follow up with this lead. Or if they said like, Hey, we’re not interested now, but in three months we’re launching this new product, you’re going to put a task in there to reach out in three months asking ’em about this product launch. And you just have these stages throughout the CRM that align with what your sales process is like. So proposal, sign, proposal, onboarding, form sent, prep call, book, whatever your sales process is, you have stages set in your pipeline with actions associated with each stage so you know exactly what to do. It’s all systemized. Everyone follows the same flow, and obviously there’s room for customization here, but it’s very deliberate about what actions you’re taking depending on what stage someone’s at in your pipeline.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. What do you use for your CRM? Do you use Notion or have another one that you use?

Chris Pieta: So I have a free notion, one that I provide to my coaching clients and my Creative Biz Launch students I’ve used in the past. Right now I’m using Go High Level for my CRM, which I don’t really recommend if you’re starting out because it’s super complex. I’ve used Close in the past, which is probably my favorite of all of them. It’s pretty simple to use. It’s very straightforward, but really, it doesn’t really matter what CRM you use as long as you use it. That’s the hard part actually sticking to it. There’s lots of great ones out there.

Bjork Ostrom: It was called Clove. Close. Oh, clo, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did forget the guy’s name who started that, but I think he had a podcast for a while that I listened to. Close.com. I think that’s it now. Yeah, it used to be io, I think.

Chris Pieta: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the one. Integrates with lots of softwares too.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. So how often, some really specific questions. How often are you reviewing that? You have your CRM, you have the deals at different points, talking about systems and processes. Do you have a daily thing that you’re like or recommend that people, hey, once a day, check in on your CRM, see where things are at? Is it kind of email where you’re always in there to some degree throughout the day? What does that look like?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, I recommend daily basis go in there and just check in on what tasks you have to do. If you’re using a CRM, there should be a tab that shows you what tasks are due today. So at the very least, all you do is go in, see what tasks are due, and then you do them and then you’re good for the day. Now at the start, you might have no tasks due and you’re not going to have many leads, but as this builds over time and you get more leads in there, you’re going to have more and more tasks to do. You’re going to have lots of things to do on a daily basis. Now, the way I recommend actually going through this, which I learned from my business coach starting from the end of the CRM, so the end of the pipeline where people are most likely to buy from you. So someone who’s gotten a proposal, you’re going to prioritize those tasks before the basic ones like reaching out to new people. So you want to be working backwards what that most likely people are going to buy from you to the least likely.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk about your business coach? What has that relationship look like and what have you learned from, is it specifically around deals and sales?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, so I work with Dan Martell. It’s like a group coaching program that I’m in, and I’ve learned a ton from him. He wrote the book up, Buy Back Your Time, which is all about systemizing things, thinking in systems, but I’ve learned everything from sales to marketing to spending money to make money. We cover. It’s a really good program. I’ve learned a ton from it.

Bjork Ostrom: What program is it? I know Dan Martell and we’ve referenced Buy Back Your Time before.

Chris Pieta: He doesn’t advertise this very often publicly. It’s really just through Instagram on stories. He’ll occasionally pitch it to, I mean, if you want, and you just message him like coach or something, and he’ll start a conversation with you.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. And that’s been a good thing for you?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, I really loved it. Yeah, it’s been really helpful.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. So a couple recommendations there for people who are interested. Dan Martell, the book Buy Back Your Time is really great. Close.com, Go High Level, otherwise you have a free Notion system that people could use. I like that idea of being in there consistently checking on that, and also the idea of working on the most valuable tasks, those being maybe the clients that are closest to signing a proposal or who have expressed interest as opposed to sending out a cold email. Do you have thoughts on the frequency? Let’s say you do have somebody who’s a engaged lead or a lead and you haven’t heard from them. I think none of us want to be somebody who pesters, but also you don’t want to never follow up. What’s the frequency of something that feels intentional, but non-intrusive maybe?

Chris Pieta: Yeah. So what I like to do is there’s really two categories here of leads. There’s people who you’ve had a call with and you probably have a good idea of if you’re going to work with them or not. So those people, they’ve received a proposal from you. I like to figure out when I should expect to hear from them. So on a call, I’ll ask them like, Hey, I’m going to send this proposal over to you today. Do you know when you’ll get back to me on this? And they’ll tell me a day. So they’ll be like, okay, yeah, we’ll review this. We have a team meeting Friday, we’re going to review it Then. So if I don’t hear from them on Monday, I’m going to email them asking about what they told me about that team meeting they had. Did they go over the proposal then, because I’m waiting for a response from them. So at this stage it’s on them to get back to me, but I need to keep following up to actually get that response from them. So in those situations, I will follow up based on what day they tell me, and we’ve sent the president that, Hey, they told me I should hear back by then. If I haven’t heard back, I’m going to keep following up until I do hear back. So if they, on Monday, I email ’em, they don’t respond, then I’ll probably email ’em on a weekly basis until I get a yes or a no. If it’s a lead who I haven’t had a call with and I’m trying to set that up, that’s a bit trickier because we don’t know if they’re super interested in us yet. So that I’ll follow up two or three times and then usually drop it from there and maybe they’ll express interest on the road. But yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you remove them then from your database, or do you just put them into a category that’s like not now or check back later or not converted?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, so there’s a column at the very end of my pipeline that’s not interested. I also have one that’s called evergreen marketing. So sometimes I’ll put them in there for my photography and videography company. I don’t do this. I don’t have many consistent marketing assets, but for my education business, create Biz launch. If someone is on the fence of signing up for the program and they’re like, oh, not right now, I’ll put them in my Evergreen marketing column where they’re going to get my weekly newsletter. If I have YouTube videos coming out, they’re going to get those. So I’m still nurturing those leads. They’re interested in my thing, but just not right now. So nurturing your leads is also an important thing you could be doing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Chris Pieta: That’s great.

Bjork Ostrom: Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Raptive. You may be like the many other Food Blogger Pro members and podcast listeners who are working towards increasing their traffic to be able to apply to an ad network. Raptive, which is formerly AdThrive for instance, requires a minimum of 100,000 page views and brand safe content to join the community. These qualifiers attract premium advertisers and ensure creators like you benefit from Raptive’s expansive solutions and services. But if you’re not quite there yet and you want to be, Raptive can still help put together a comprehensive email series. It’s 11 emails in total that will help you optimize your content, understand your audience, grow your email list, and grow your traffic to help you reach your ad network goals. Pinch of Yum works with Raptive to bring in passive income each month. The ads show up on each Pinch of Yum post, and when that ad loads on someone’s screen or somebody interacts with that ad, pinch of Yum earns money. So more page views equals more money, and it can really add up over time. That’s why so many Food Blogger Pro community members are interested in getting their page view numbers up so that they’ll be able to apply to an ad network and make money on display ads. So if you’re in the same boat and are interested in getting some traffic tips delivered to you for free, head to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive. The 11 weekly emails you’ll receive are designed for creators who have a working knowledge of SEO keyword research and email list, but haven’t yet been able to crack that a hundred thousand page view mark. Go to foodbloggerpro.com/raptive to opt into this free newsletter series. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

Bjork Ostrom: Are you, last question on the CRM thing, are you making notes along the way so you have an interaction? Do you go in and make a note? Do you tie that into Gmail or whatever email you’re using so you can see the historical interaction? So I think it’s one of the things that’s helpful. You look back, you come across it in a year from now and you’re like, even for Lindsay and I, it’s like two weeks ago we’d messaged with a brand and we’re like, what do we decide? What was the process for that? Oh, yeah, you have to go back, look at the email chain, but how do you sync that up with the CRM? The conversations?

Chris Pieta: Yeah. If you’re debating investing in any CRM, Notion is free, whatever, any paid one, it should have email integration in it. So every contact, when you go in there, you’re going to see the email chain you’ve had with them, plus you’re going to have a space for notes. So if I had a discovery call with someone and they tell me that they’re launching a new product in six months, I’ll have a note in there talking about that so I can reference that when I reach out to them again. So, a CRM is not only great for adding tasks in there, but also all the information you have on a lead, so you can bring it up on future conversations. So that’s both syncing the emails in there as well as just side notes that you’ll make in there.

Bjork Ostrom: And that hooks into Gmail. Are you sending the emails from the application then?

Chris Pieta: It depends on the CRM, but yeah, I usually send them from the application. So for go high level, which I use for my education company, I send all my emails through there. It’s super easy. It also integrates with Instagram, so if I have a contact that has an email address plus an Instagram account, they sync together. So I see all the Instagram messages we’ve had, all the email chains we’ve had, so everything about this lead is just in one spot, which makes it super easy.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep, that’s awesome. So I think people conceptually probably understand that idea of, okay, you’re either reaching out to brands, brands are reaching out to you. One of the things that you want to do as quickly as possible is get on a call, have a conversation with them. I think in the category of you reaching out to a brand, one of the things that might a little bit of a speed bump, a hurdle or a brick wall depending on where you’re at, is how do you know who you’re reaching out to? How do you get that information for somebody at companies and then feel comfortable emailing?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, that’s a big part of it. Reaching out to the right people is important. You don’t want to be reaching out to a support email address or a hello at, because that’s going to go to whatever the gatekeeper, and they’re probably not going to get to the main person who you’re trying to reach. So you want to use some sort of lead database tool, and if you go to Google and just search lead database, you’ll find a dozen different options there and there you can actually filter by company size, company name, region, job title, and I think most of these, they take LinkedIn’s data source business model is just selling data pretty much. They have their own thing called sales navigator, but there they just have everyone’s data that you can essentially just buy and then find the decision makers, email them. That’s kind of how you get in the right people’s inbox. Part of that also is not to dive too into this, but most people don’t get responses. They end up in the spam folder. You have to set up your emails properly so you don’t get in the spam folder, but we can also dive into that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, can you talk about that at a high level, what that means to properly set up your email?

Chris Pieta: Yeah, so first off, get a Google Workspace account, so your email isn’t at gmail.com, it’s at pietaproductions.com or whatever, so that you seem more professional. But secondly, you want to set up a few DNS records on the backend. So you want a DKIM record, DNS record, DMARC record, and get those set up. If you don’t know how to do that, Google DNS record set up or just send me a DM on the stuff I do in my program.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. So Google Workspace, it’s this. You can get your custom domain, so a difference between [email protected] and [email protected]. We are using Google Workspace to kind of facilitate that. There’s other ways you can do it, but Google Workspace is the best platform for that. Any Food Blogger Pro members, we have a course walking people through that. But then additionally, what’s really important is to have the verification that you actually own the domain. So when you talked about those different acronyms, all of those are different ways to verify like, Hey, I’m sending from this email [email protected] and just to verify I own this and I’m putting this information in the record of the DNS and associating it with the domain. So there’s an additional level of verification that that’s owned by you. So not only are you using this platform, you’re getting information, you’re starting to learn about who you can actually reach out to with these different companies through a lead database. But then when if you’re doing cold outreach, you have an email that is not only branded to your brand, but also has that additional verification that you’ve done, and it’s a little bit technical, but not too bad. If you work with a developer or if you read through an article or go through a course you talked about, you cover that, you should be able to figure it out,

Chris Pieta: Cold email. It’s a bit of a beast. So that’s at the start. I decided it took me seven months to get my first client, and I just have to figure so much out along the way. So what I love about that,

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, what I love about that is that one of the things we’ve been talking about on the podcast a lot is this idea of reps. And I think sometimes people do something for a week, they do it for two weeks, and then they’re like, it’s just not working, but you just haven’t gotten enough reps in and it’s like playing a sport. And it’s like if I were to go to the golf driving range now, I’d be like, oh man, I’m terrible at golf. It’s like, well, it’s true, but if I showed up and golfed every day for two hours in six months, I’d definitely be better. I might be decent. I dunno if I’d consider myself good, but if I did it for six years, I’d probably be pretty good. And I think the same thing applies for business. You think of something really specific like cold outreach. In your case it was seven months of perfecting that as a craft, and eventually the door opened and then you’re like, oh, I see. You get some pattern recognition, you’re learning, you’re applying what you’re learning, and you continually level up. And it’s a great example of the number of reps that it takes to get that initial breakthrough. And then once you have that, you can double down on the thing that’s working. Let’s talk about that call that you have. So let’s say you do have somebody who reaches out. You do have that first cold outreach that comes back and they’re like, Hey, we would be interested in it. There are two things you talked about. One was doing research and then the other was getting on the call. So let’s talk about the research side of things. What does that mean to research before getting on one of these calls?

Chris Pieta: So this is assuming you’re working with businesses. So I mean just basic level of knowledge around the company that you’re going to be pitching to. What’s this business? Where’s it based? Do they have anything that they’re differentiates them? Are they really into sustainability? What makes ’em stand out? So just doing some research on their website, their about page, their Instagram, but also whoever you’re going to be talking to, look them up on LinkedIn. Just some really basic level of research. Spend five, 10 minutes on this and you’re going to be way ahead of anyone else who hasn’t done that base level of research. So just going to the call prepared, it’s going to be helpful as well as going into the call with certain ideas that you can pitch to this company. What is your core offer? For me, it’s photos and stop motions and piano productions. We did do videography, but we’ve kind of gotten away from that now. But knowing what your core offer is now on the actual call, there’s really going to be three parts to it. Part one is going to be to kind of qualify them. So that’s the first part of a call. Then there’s going to be kind of a, I call this the gap. So figuring out where they are today, what their goals are and what’s kind of missing there. And then step three is kind of the solution. So where do you come in, how does your offer fit into their thing? And then you ask for the sale at the end, but how this looks like is at the start, you’re learning more about them. So you’re asking them questions about, Hey, who’s your ideal customer? Who do you serve? What does your company do? What’s important in working with a photographer or videographer or a blogger like myself? And then you also want to build, not so much build urgency, but make it apparent that, Hey, this is something that we want to do now. So you ask them like, Hey, why is this a priority now and why would I be the best person to, why are you on the call with me today versus someone else? So they’re going to kind of reveal like, oh, well, right now we’ve got this marketing campaign that’s going out in a couple of weeks and we’re looking for people, so I’m kind of preemptively setting it up so that there’s some sort of urgency in working with you. So it’s the qualification part. I mean, feel free to cut me off at any point here.

Bjork Ostrom: No, it’s super helpful.

Chris Pieta: Yeah. But then what you want to do is stretch the gap. So here you’re going to be asking them like, Hey, if we work together, what’s the ideal outcome for you? What are the goals of your business? How do I tie into those? Maybe they’re going to talk about their KPIs or their marketing goals for the year, or maybe they have revenue goals, whatever it is, they’re going to open up about something here. And then you’re going to ask them like, okay, well this is the dream. Where are we at currently with this? What’s missing? And that might be like, oh, well, the photos we have on our website don’t really convert that well, or the ad campaigns, we just, no one clicks on them. So that’s going to unlock a few different things that you can then mention in the third part of call, which is the solution part. So you’re going to be like, Hey, you mentioned this, this, and this. Well, our process solves for all these problems. So you’re kind of bringing in your offer now, tying it into whatever they told you was their problem, and you’re just the perfect solution for this, their problem. So you’re going to paint yourself as the perfect solution for whatever it is that they need help with. And then you’re going to ask them if this is a fit now and if they want to move forward with this, and at that point you’re going to talk about pricing, you’re going to handle objections, and that’s a whole other thing. But yeah, that’s largely what a sales call or discovery call should look like.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think what I love about this version of sales is it’s helping people. They have objectives. They’re trying to do certain things, they being individuals that you’re talking to, they have something that they’re trying to do within their job, which their job is within the company and the company’s trying to do a thing. And what you’re doing is you’re coming in and saying, tell me about what you’re trying to do, and then trying to figure out ways that you can help them do the thing that they’re trying to do. And the goal then is to figure out how can you do that as effectively as possible. But sometimes I think we get lost in it where at its worst, it can become like us versus them. Oh, brands are always trying to take advantage of us or underpay or whatever it might be, which in a lot of circumstances might be true, But at its best what it is is you have a company and the company’s looking to do a certain thing, and you have the ability to potentially help them. And if you can agree that you are able to help them and they can agree to the price that you are asking for, that could be a really great partnership that feels like sales at its best, which is what I love about the process. How about for putting together a package? I know that a lot of times you are working with companies and the focus or photographers or videographers, and the focus is like you have a service and they’re selling that service to a brand. We’re going to kind of take a similar angle, but a little bit different where we think about it as the service is a blogger or a publisher maybe doing some of the same things. It’s photography, it’s recipe development, but then they’re publishing it almost as a brand partnership. So kind of similar, how do you recommend people think about pricing and positioning and framing up the offer? Because that’s so many people get stuck with that.

Chris Pieta: Yeah, this is, I think a really challenging part of the process, and people get stuck with this, and they can’t really do the other parts of even starting to sell because they don’t have the offer. What I recommend doing is I don’t recommend starting from a point of like, okay, we can do these photos for you and this is how much it costs. We’re going to have some really beautiful photography. And that’s the offer that’s I think a very generic offer and doesn’t really address what the clients want. I think thinking of what the client’s ideal outcome of working with you, and Hermo talks about this as the dream outcome.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say Hormozi, who is that?

Chris Pieta: Alex Hermozi, he’s a business educator investor on YouTube. Weightlifter, yeah, jacked dude. But thinking of what the client’s dream outcome is. So if you remember, it’s the sales call when we’re asking them questions of like, Hey, what would this partnership look like if it was a grand slam? They’re going to tell you what they want. You have to, before the sales call, think of what their dream outcome would be in working with you as a product photographer. A lot of the time, companies want increased sales because of the product photos I take for ’em. Or they want their brand to be built up more on social media, or they want their conversions to go up on their sales page, or maybe they’re launching a new product, and they want it to be a really great launch. So, thinking of that as the thing that you’re providing rather than you’re providing photos and videos or blog posts, you’re providing this outcome for them. And that way you can talk in terms of what the client actually wants and what their ideal result is. And then you can work backward and build that out. So their outcome is increased sales. Okay, well, you’re going to add in 10 photos into this package, maybe a video into this package, but then you’re also going to add in bonuses. So maybe your turnaround times are going to be really fast to kind of compete on that and make it easier for the client. Maybe you’re going to the entire creative direction and you won’t really need them to hold your hand through this process. You’re going to make it super easy on them to actually get this package done. So, how can you reduce their effort in this process? There are all these little things that you can add that are going to enhance your offer that a lot of people don’t really think about. And this is a core of what I teach inside my stuff by just really thinking of what’s the client’s dream outcome? Let’s work backwards from that with our service and kind of tie these two together rather than it being me against them. It’s like, okay, we’re working together to get your ideal result here.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I have a friend who does video, and he was working with another friend, family friend who is a general contractor, and they built these really incredible buildings for the headquarters of a bank or Duluth Trading Company stores and things like that. And they did this interview with the people that they’ve worked with and all of these different people have talked about just rave reviews for this company, this contractor, this builder. And what was interesting for me in watching that was the things that people said, and what people said repeatedly was he always follows up, or the team always follows up. I always can get ahold of somebody, I can always talk to somebody. Somebody always responds. It happens on time. So there’s deliverables that the team outlined and they delivered on time for those things. And then the budget was the other piece. It came in at budget or even under budget. And I thought about that within the context of what we do. And it’s so simple, but it’s not easy. And I think if you can nail clear communication, if you can deliver the things that you say you’re going to do on time, and not only that, but to your point, go above and beyond to make them look better or to make their job easier, to reduce some of the burden that they have. That feels like it sets you up really well. For the last piece that it sounds like you talk about is a really important step, which is fulfilling what you’ve been doing, but then using that almost as a conversation to say, Hey, maybe there’s a relationship here that could be ongoing. Do you view that as kind of the last step in the process and how do you do that? Well,

Chris Pieta: Yeah. So that is a hundred percent correct there. You’ve sold them, you’ve delivered on your thing. Or let’s just say they signed the proposal. You pitch them like this, whatever, $5,000 package. They’re like, okay, cool. This aligns with what we want. Let’s do it. So that’s kind of where the fulfillment part starts. And I think at the bare minimum, just keep your promise. Everything you say that you’re going to do, you do it. And if you do that, you’re going to be ahead of almost everyone because people will slip up somewhere. Totally, just even your email communication or whatever. Just always say what you’re going to do. And then if for some reason you can’t fulfill on something, proactively communicate that being like, Hey, okay, we need extra two days for this hope you understand. And they’re going to be like, oh yeah, whatever. As long as you proactively do that. But let’s go back to they signed the proposal, it’s like five grand or something. Your next step is to onboard them into your company. So you want to welcome them immediately, as soon as possible. Send a welcome email, say you’re really excited to work with them, and then give them a clear outline of what the next steps are. So usually that’s going to be some sort of intake form. So a quick onboarding form to figure out some project details to make sure that you’re on the same page with things. Maybe ask them what other, it’s going to be dependent on what your service is, but I ask companies like, Hey, what other brands content do you resonated with? What do you love? What mistakes have other service providers made in the past? And these questions are going to help you along the way with the project. After that onboarding form comes in, you want to book some sort of prep call to make sure that you’re on the same page and you just, on that prep call, what I do is I send over a mood board ahead of time with what the shoot’s going to look like, so they can revisit that. I’ll ask them any questions I need clarification on. They’ll ask me questions. And then from there, we just go into production. So we’ll shoot the project photos, videos, wherever they need, produce the project, and then send them the final assets. And at this stage, I think this is where most people just stop. They send ’em the final assets, invoice paid, cool project done. What I recommend is like, this is the post delivery pipeline. So once you get the final assets to them, they’re going to be like, wow, this is amazing. Well, from there, you want to get them to leave you a testimonial. They just told you via email how great your photos and videos are. They’re feeling good. So ask them to leave a Google Review on your Google page, and there you’ll have a public facing testimonial from this client, and that’s the first thing you want to do. Get that social proof right From there. You want to kind of check in on this client after a few weeks. So this goes back to this, I mean, this is all a big, big system. This is why I teach. But you go back to what you talked on the sales call, what your objectives were of the project, and then you ask them like, Hey, did we meet these objectives a month later? And they’re going to be like, yeah, we did. And from there, you can actually write a case study because you promised ’em something that happened and now you have a case study that you can write about this client. You can take this case study, put it on your website, create a LinkedIn post about it, create an Instagram post post about it, and that just further is yourself as a company. From there, you’ve got this case study. You can even ask them for a referral, ask them to go into your referral system. And then lastly, what you could do is ask them for a retainer. So they had a great process with you. They left a testimonial that was like, this is great. You got a case study that they got some positive ROI from you. Well, a retainer now makes sense because the more money they spend with you, the more they get out of it. So you kind of pitch it that way, and then this $5,000 client can turn into 10 x that over the next few years, like the lifetime value of this client by following this type of post-delivery pipeline. That’s

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. I feel like we could, any one of these steps could be multiple hour conversation, but the good news is you have a course that covers this. You’ve alluded to that a couple times. Obviously, you also work with brands. If there’s any brands listening that are interested in having photography and working with a photographer, you have both businesses. So as we wrap up, talk about where people can follow along with you, Chris, what ways that you are speaking to your audience. Also, one of the questions that I wanted to ask you, so you produce content online and we talked on the live q and a for Food Blogger Pro members, and then you created a reel after that and I was like, oh, this is 20 times better than any of the content we’re producing. Are you doing that yourself? You’re a video guy, so you’re creating those, is that right?

Chris Pieta: So I have an editor that does all the editing, that kind of stuff. So I’m recording this call, so it’s like an hour call. I just sent him the footage and he kind of chops it up and we go back and forth if we need to, but he edits, captions, all that good stuff, which is That’s awesome. Super easy on my end and gets a really great content out of it.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. So where can people find you? Yeah, if people want to go through the course, it sounds like it would apply to publishers and creators who maybe want to do brand deals. It sounds like maybe the conversations that will be happening will be within the context of like, Hey, you’re a photographer or videographer looking for clients, but I think it would also apply to anybody who’s looking to do brand deals, and you also have your production company as well, so you can do some shout outs to those who will include ’em in the show notes.

Chris Pieta: Yeah, definitely. So the Creative Biz Launch System, that’s kind of my course. CreativeBizLaunch.com is where you can find more info about that, or you can just message me on Instagram at Chris Pieta, P-I-E-T-A. That’s where I’m most active, and I respond to everyone’s DM. So if you want more info, that’s probably the best place to message me and just use the word Food Blogger Pro and I’ll know that you came from here. I’m also active on every platform, so YouTube, if you want long-form stuff, Instagram, TikTok, short form, so that’s where the business education part of it is. And then, for photo and video work, that’s Pieta Productions. We have a form on there you can submit and we can get in contact there. But yeah, my mission here is just to provide as much accessible creative business education, so tons of stuff for free online, and then also our courses and coaching for those that want to move faster.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Chris, thanks for coming on and we’ll have to have you on again. We can dive deep into some of these individual steps.

Chris Pieta: This was great. Thanks so much for having me.

Emily Walker:: Hello, Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. I wanted to pop in today and thank you for tuning into this episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We are so grateful to you for listening. Before we sign off, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Food Blogger Pro Forum. In case you didn’t know how it works, if you are a Food Blogger Pro member, you get access to our amazing forum. It’s one of my favorite places on Food Blogger Pro. I spend a lot of time there myself, and on the forum, we have tons of different topics for you to explore. We have a building traffic section, a photography section. We have an essential tools section. We chat about generating income and essential plugins, all sorts of areas for you to ask questions and chat with your fellow Food Blogger Pro members. It’s a great place to connect with fellow members, troubleshoot any issues you’re having, and brainstorm together. Our industry experts are always popping into the forum to help members with their questions. Casey Markee and Andrew Wilder are always popping in, and so is Danielle Liss our legal expert. It’s a really great place to get access to these experts and have them help you with your concerns. The forum is also just a fantastic place to find a community in this food blogging space as you’re working to grow your site and your business. If you’re ready to join Food Blogger Pro and get access to our wonderful forum, head to foodbloggerpro.com/join to learn more about our membership. We really hope you enjoy this episode and can’t wait to see you next week for another great episode. Have an amazing week.