Leveraging 3 Million TikTok Followers to Launch a Product with Dana Hasson

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 speaking with Dana Hassan. She is an entrepreneur, content creator, self-taught baker, and the founder of Homemade Ish, where she has recently launched her first physical product cookie starter kit. Dana has spent the last decade building her business, reaching over 3 million followers on TikTok and launching this first physical product. In this interview, she shares how and why she transitioned from beauty and fashion content to food content and how she balanced networking and creating in the early days of building her brand. She describes that season as one of quiet hustle, which I think a lot of you will resonate with. Bjork and Dana also discussed the process of launching a physical product, why she decided to make cookie starter kits, how she built the team behind the product, developed a scalable recipe and the food science involved, and then everything else you need to consider when developing your own product. Dana shares lots of her tips and tricks for growing a following on TikTok, creating video content, and then how to leverage that huge social media following to support other aspects of your business. It’s a really enjoyable interview. I think you’ll take a lot out of it, so I’m just going to let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Dana, welcome to the podcast.

Dana Hasson: Hi. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’re going to be talking about something that I personally don’t know a lot about. There’s a lot of things I don’t know a lot about, but one of them is TikTok growth. You have millions, multiple millions of followers on TikTok. But the other thing we’re going to be talking about that I also don’t have a lot of expertise or experience in is physical product, like creating a physical product to pair with your social following. It’s one of the things we talk about all the time. It’s great to do sponsor content, it’s great to build a following, but one of the smartest things you can do is start to think about, Hey, what does it look like to create a product adjacent to the following that you have? So we’re going to be talking about all those things, but before we do it, we always like to hear a little bit about origin story, how it got started. I know that you started to create content. Think about creating content when you were in school. Tell us about what that looked like and your exploration stage around what type of content you wanted to create.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, it’s funny because I always had a love for just visuals. Remember just being super young and forcing my family friends to grab their fancy camera and just start capturing myself or other just things around us. And so when I went to school, I studied fashion merchandising. I love fashion and it’s something that I still love very much. And we did a case study about Chiara Ferragni — I don’t want to botch her name.

And she basically is the OG on Instagram. She started with just a blog and the whole blogging and then Instagram kind of came along and at the time I think she had probably over 10 million followers. And it was that light bulb moment where I was just like, Hmm, okay, there’s something here. Maybe I should give it a full shot. And so I basically just started exploring. I downloaded Instagram. I did miss the wave of just weak algorithm where you can just grow blow up, unquote. And I was exploring. I was definitely just trying and posting. I mean, it was basically just my friends who followed me at the time.

Bjork Ostrom: And when was this the wrong time? Probably

Dana Hasson: Like 2016 I would say is when I was exploring and I basically told everyone around me when there’s a new app that comes out, please lemme know. I need to be the first one because I feel like I’ve gained the knowledge with Instagram and what to do on how to basically do it when a new platform comes along.

Bjork Ostrom: You developed the skills of content creation. That’s what you were practicing, that’s what you were getting better at, and then was the bet at that time. You want to know about these new platforms because willing to take the risk of showing up and being an early creator, there might be upside of being able to grow with the wave of the platform. There might be the downside of you spend a lot of time on a platform that doesn’t take off, but that’s what you were interested in at that point was to know about what these new platforms or the new apps might be.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, I had nothing to lose. I was in school. I just wanted to pursue something that wasn’t a traditional nine to five. And I interned to know that I don’t want to be in a nine to five area office, and I basically was just on the lookout, but at the same time making just as many connections as I can. I would just come into the city every day. I was on Long Island at the time with my parents and I was just literally asking everyone to just get coffee with me and I would not stop until they said yes. And so I

Bjork Ostrom: Feel like, yeah. And who were these types of people? Were they other creators or people who had jobs at agencies? What did that look like? I think that even that little nugget there is a helpful piece because sometimes we can look at somebody’s story and their arc and think, Hey, well, you did these things and you grew and you feel like you can understand it, building it backwards. But really there’s a oftentimes season of quiet hustle and it feels like that’s potentially what that was for you, which is quiet hustle. It’s not even you’re creating content, building a following. It’s like you were just trying to learn. It sounds like

Dana Hasson: I was trying to learn and just connect with everyone because my mindset was, your network is your net worth. If I am making as many connections and people can kind of spot me now than when I am hopefully one day becoming something bigger than what they’re seeing, they’re kind of like, Ooh, I watched this process go down and I want to be helpful and supportive. So back to your question, yes, agencies just like Brent pr girls that worked in agencies that are in-house or not and just anyone, and then of course other creators as well and creating content with other creators. But it was just like anyone that would say yes to me at this point.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And what did you learn from those early connections? Were there any takeaways that you could look back to and say, gosh, this was a nugget that I took away from this conversation, or this was the most helpful thing? Or is it more just collectively it was helpful to build your network?

Dana Hasson: I think, and this might be cliche, but being nice, honestly, I will always be just nice to everyone. And I feel like that’s something I learned early on because you do meet a lot of people, so when you’re nice, you honestly stand out. And that just felt to me like, okay, no matter what happens down the line, numbers don’t define me. I want to just be true to who I am. So I feel like them kind of just giving me a mirror of myself was mostly what was going on. But I wouldn’t say anything necessarily learning, it’s just networking, how to work,

Bjork Ostrom: Connecting with people. For a long time, my computer desktop was, there’s that common phrase. I think there’s a poster of it, work hard and be nice to people, but it feels like that’s kind of what that was for you is working hard. It’s networking, it’s reaching out to people. You probably get a lot of nos or non replies, but then you occasionally get somebody and there’s a connection there. And I was just having this conversation with Lindsay, my wife, Lindsay today around the importance, the important things I’ve learned from doing coffee, a lunch, having a connection with somebody where there wasn’t necessarily a clear objective, but it was a chance to connect. But so often what I found when I do have those interactions in those moments is they’ll mention something that I wasn’t aware of and I’m like, oh, that’s really interesting, and there’s a learning from that, or it’s a tool that they’re using that I didn’t know about, or maybe it’s a way that the industry works that kind of helps color the picture in terms of my understanding of the thing that I’m trying to get better at. And so it feels like there’s so much that can come from that, but oftentimes it’s not very well-defined. We don’t know.

How did you balance that type of time with people and connections, networking with the actual process of creating? What did that look like? Were you also trying to create a lot or was that more of a phase of learning and understanding the industry?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so actually back then it was a tiny bit easier for me. I was focusing on just fashion and beauty. So that was just me going into the city, having a meeting and then snapping a photo of my outfit and kind of continuing with my day. Also, videos were not really a thing, so I’m consuming things. Were not really around. I feel like a photo is so much, I don’t want to say easier. There’s still a lot of science behind it, but definitely easier than video. And then I have to edit it and voiceovers and whatnot. So it was kind of like a multitasking meeting with another influencer friend, take a photo of me. I take photo of her kind of.

Bjork Ostrom: And you hear that a lot. There’s conversations I’ve had. I know my conversations with Lindy how content has shifted and it’s just so much more time consuming now, whether it be on social media or if people are creating content online, on a website or on a blog, the amount of effort that goes into any singular piece of content just goes up. A lot of that being video, like you said, but also what it takes to stand out, what it takes to be unique, novel, recognizable. There’s also a level of supply and demand. There’s a lot of people creating content. So you have to do a lot to stand out. At what point did you switch over to start doing video a little bit more? And my guess is that from one of those conversations, at some point when you were like, Hey, tell me about the new app, somebody was like, Hey, you should check out maybe Musically or TikTok, which is what TikTok was originally did right away, that was going to be a platform that was a good fit for you. Talk about the early days of building your following there.

Dana Hasson: So again, I was doing fashion and beauty, and that is what I thought was my biggest thing. And actually I found out about TikTok from my little brother because the little kids know about the hottest apps. And it was just a random summer day in July, 2019. So way before it was a thing. And I just saw him and his friend making a video with coins on the floor, and I was like,

Is going on here? And my parents kind of pulled me aside. They’re like, you should download this and give it a shot. And honestly, to me, the biggest thing is when you go on an app and then you see how many people have followers and you kind of gather and be like, okay, there’s enough people that are interested in this kind of content that I should give it a shot. And that’s what happened. Addison Rae was on my for you page dancing with her mom with 300,000 followers. So I was kind of understanding that there are a lot of people here and that I should try and give it a shot. But again, I did it very innocently. I didn’t tell anyone. I was kind of just like, let me just see what happens. And I was just experimenting with beauty and fashion. And then one day I decided to post a donut recipe for the record. I love food. I always loved food. It was always something I loved doing and hosting, so it wasn’t too out of the blue for me, but I just decided to post and see what happens. And then that video got 4 million views

And I basically was like, oh, it looks like we’re going to be baking for the rest of our lives now because

Bjork Ostrom: It’s naked funny. Yeah, it’s interesting. The same similar thing. There’s somebody I’ve referenced on the podcast before happened with a friend, his name is tj, where he was creating content online, was a really skilled creator, is a really skilled creator. And then one day created this video around birth order, youngest child, oldest child, middle child. And same thing where it went off.

I don’t know the exact story. I don’t know TJ super well. He is more friend of a friend, but I’ve hung out with him a couple times. But I think the general progression then from there was like, Hey, this worked. What if I did an iteration of this? It was a little bit different, but had echoes of that same type of piece of content, would that do well? And part of it is like think about songwriting. You write a hundred songs and then you write one song and it’s like, whoa. Something about this resonated with people you’ve practiced. You had 99 songs that didn’t hit. But I think the same is true with content where you kind of have to create a lot for a long time, be willing to try different things, be willing to experiment, and then to see if something hits. And then from there, see if you can replicate that in some way where it’s not the exact same thing, but it’s maybe a version of that to see if it continues to work. Is that a little bit of what happened with that first video that you created where it was like, Hey, this worked. Let me see if I can create another kind of adjacent piece of content that might also do well and that resulted in some of that early growth for you?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so I would say that, and also reading the comments because I was like, okay, something clearly triggered these people to make this video blow up. And basically I kept on saying, should look like this after every step of the way that I was creating. And so I was just leaning in and I was like, all right, it looks like I’m going to be baking, saying it should look like this all the time. And it just kind of honestly just went viral every time I would post a video. It just did really well. And again, I think it’s the algorithm. Not a lot of creators were there. I was probably the first creator to not dance on the app too, which was very interesting.

Bjork Ostrom: Like Addison Rae, that was a huge thing. It’s like she, that’s what she was known for and yeah,

Dana Hasson: Exactly. I kind of was like, okay, I don’t know how to dance. I’m not trying to dance. Let me educate them in a different way. And I think that’s also why it kind of stuck.

Bjork Ostrom: So your point in that was you did this piece of content, you looked at it and you’re like, why did this go viral? You started to look through the comments to see if you could extract some understanding of what it was from that content that made it perform well. You started to see people reference a line that you said in the content, is that right where you said should look like this? And that for you was a learning? So then that was the thing that you looked at repeating in the content moving forward and started to notice a pattern specifically with that phrase. Is that more or less kind of what you’re saying you learned in that initial piece of content?

Dana Hasson: Yes, but also the baking, so it was kind of just a mix of both. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: That was going to be my next question was did you try and experiment in the world of fashion by doing a similar thing and having a similar phrase, maybe even that phrase to see, Hey, does saying this work with fashion content, was that something that you experimented with?

Dana Hasson: Honestly, no. I was just kind of dividing my content into just a fashion category, a beauty category and baking. So I didn’t really overlap except for the fact that I would get super dressed up to the kitchen, but we’re talking, you couldn’t even upload videos to TikTok. It was straight up, you have to film on the app and post immediately, which is why people did dancing. It was effortless. You put on a sound, you just do it. So it was very different to hold the phone speak. There was no voiceover at the time, speak and bake and altogether. So I kind of just tapped into different categories until it was evolving.

Bjork Ostrom: And it’s interesting, I did an interview, I’m trying to remember what episode it was with somebody who’s a creator, TikTok creator, and she talked about this idea of she had this salad and she’d shake a salad and she noticed that as being this variable within the piece of content. But I think part of what it is is there’s a little bit of experimentation with it, of course, and then saying, okay, what does it look like to create? Could you do this forever potentially? And I think one of the things that we sometimes want to do as creators is we find a thing that works and then we very quickly look for the next thing, and it’s like, well probably go deep with the thing that works and continue to do that. Now obviously there’s the element of wanting to have variety and be creative, but also it’s like if you find a thing that works, continue to iterate in that world as opposed to try and get too far away from it.

In the marketing world, there’s this concept that they talk about that I really love, and they say, one funnel can change your life, which it’s like it’s kind of marketing speak and whatever. But I think it’s really true that if you find one process, one funnel, and you’ve maybe seen this for your case, that can change your life. And I feel like an ultimate example is Tua, that phrase changed her life. But what it requires for us is creators is showing up, putting content out in your case, looking through, understanding that, trying to experiment with it and seeing if you can build and iterate off of it. In TJ’s case, it’s like he found a thing that works and it’s like these birth order humor videos and what does it look like to go deep with that while also then looking at how do you diversify around that without getting too far away from it. So as you’ve thought about your content, the things that have worked for you, what does that look like? How do you strike that balance between continuing to do the thing that works while also building other experiments around that and trying other pieces of content to see if you can get other things that work?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, at first I was very focused on just growing. I didn’t even care. It was definitely quantity over quality. I was just posting five times a day every single day. And then Covid happened, which kind of worked in my favor, and everyone started downloading the app and posting and everyone were on it. But I entered Covid with a million followers, so I was kind of like, okay, what I’m doing is working, I might as well just keep going. So I was experimenting with different videos. I kind of knew, okay, my really big hits are my food, but then let me just do some beauty tutorials and just experiment with other things. And I feel like everything was just picking up at the same time people were coming to my page. So it was kind of being able to do all the things that I like in just different formats.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Lindsay’s talked about that with her. So Instagram is her primary channel platform, and she’ll do videos that are her in person in front of the camera walking through recipe, but then she’ll also do ones that are not her, and it’s more of a focus on the recipe. She’s doing a voiceover with it, and she’s had this kind of understanding of, hey, I think I can kind of understand the format for, it’s not a format, it’s not guaranteed, but the probability being higher with her not being in a video and it just being about the recipe and the potential for that to have some type of virality. All that to say she’s kind of living in this phase of experimenting, but not wanting to get too far away from the thing that works. And

I think it’s so wise as you talk about, Hey, I was growing, why not just continue to do the thing that worked and that was working? So do you feel like there’s anything that you could extract from that period of growth as you get to 3 million followers that you could share with other people who are interested in building a following, maybe on TikTok, it’d be the easiest one, or any social platforms in general, but what did you learn along the way that let’s say everything goes away, you’re back to zero, that you could implement pretty quickly today?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, consistency. Honestly, I think it’s annoying to hear because everyone tells you that, but it really is the secret. I was posting five times a day every single day for probably a year, which of course, I mean we were home, so it was much easier to just do it now even I can’t even, I’m like, how did I do it? I have no idea. But consistency and also just really understanding what are you passionate about? And then do it because it shows when you’re doing something that is forced and you’re just doing it, everyone is doing it, versus when it’s something you actually have some sort of knowledge, for example, baking. I mean, not everyone can just wake up in the morning and be like, oh, I’m going to bake and it’s going to be amazing. No, it’s a learning curve. So I think just finding that one, again, niche. I feel like I’m probably saying what everyone is saying, but

Bjork Ostrom: No, but it’s great finding

Dana Hasson: A niche and I don’t know, just be authentically yourself and if you keep on posting all the time, I mean, I don’t know. I feel like anyone can go viral.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. We talk about this idea of tiny bit better every day. I think there’s one thing, and I think of spectrums. You could post a piece of content, which is like you watching tv and you could post it 10 times a day, and in 10 years you probably wouldn’t have a very successful content business. But let’s say today you started and you posted a video today and it was a video of you watching tv and it got two views, and one of ’em was like, this is boring, a comment on the piece of content. So you’re like, okay, what can I do to make this a little bit better? So the next day you post a piece of content, it’s like you watching tv, but then it’s like you get up in the middle of it and do a weird unexpected thing, and then it’s like, oh, there’s 50 people who watched it. Point being, I feel like it’s consistency paired with continual learning, continual improvement, and that execution paired with improvement, that to me feels like the secret sauce. And I’d be interested to hear your reflections on, if you look at the content that you’re producing in 2019, what have you done to make your content today better in order to allow you to continue to grow?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, first of all, the app evolving I feel like has been helpful. Now I can film not on TikTok and then edit it how I want and then upload. So that alone is huge for me. But also just showing more luxury. I started and I was just putting click bait stuff, so food coloring and the craziest, the dessert the better. It was really just doing over the top things. But then I was like, okay, I want a different demographic of people following me and I want them to actually be going home and recreating my recipes and not just watch me for entertainment. And so I basically took a step back, moved to New York City, I got a really beautiful kitchen, and I just started creating really beautiful content that is not only just another recipe, but something that maybe can educate someone in a way.

But it took a long time and a lot of rejection. I mean, I remember at first when I started shifting away from food coloring, people didn’t even want to watch my stuff, and it was kind like, Ugh, I have to kind of still migrate that old content to show them that it’s still me. But you slowly shift away. And then last and last, and now I really never use food coloring anymore. I feel like my content grew up as I like to call it. I grew up and a lot of people that have been following me five years ago are like, oh my God, we grew up together. I remember when you were at your parents’ kitchen.

It’s kind of like we all evolve and I’m actually feel like I really physically feel like I’m going through that growth pain right now where I feel like content I was doing maybe three months ago doesn’t necessarily react the same that it was. So it’s kind of like trying, and I’m saying this out loud and telling to myself, but trying to not be so fixated about the views. And some videos are not going to perform as good as others, but just breathe in, lean in and see what does work. And kind of going back to square one and what can I do differently?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s such a common refrain that I hear when talking to people who have, it could be a hundred thousand followers or it could be 5 million followers,

But there’s this common refrain of like, oh, things were this way and now they’re this way. And it feels like the decision that you have to make. That’s a really hard one, is do I try and is what I’m doing what I want to continue to do and I’m going to stick with it and feel like, will there eventually be an unlock with that thing? Or do you consider the algorithm and look at something else that’s working? And do you shift a little bit that way? It’s a little bit of personal taste versus algorithm considerations versus observations of what’s working. No point in that other than for anybody listening that might feel that way to know that there’s this universal truth around trying to sort through all of that stuff. And it feels like our brains aren’t very well equipped to process all of that data, especially as it relates to ourselves.

It’s different if it’s something abstract, you’re looking at data from a sports team or you’re looking at data on a spreadsheet, but when it’s like you have a personal brand and that brand is the thing that has numbers attached to it, it feels like a hard thing.

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Are there things that you’ve done from a mental health consideration, mental health standpoint as you’ve been building this business to help protect yourself from that type of stuff?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, first of all, kind of backtracking from what you said is the hardest part about this job is actually not having control. I have no control.

It’s kind of like I’m relying on outside factors, and that’s how I’m getting paid, which is very cruel and hard. And so yes, leading up to mental health, oh yeah. I mean, therapy has been life-changing for me. And then also knowing to just really be present and disconnecting from my phone and hanging out, talking to my friends and family and just, I dunno, doing normal things, which sounds, I mean, what is normal things, but normal things is for me not being on my phone, not thinking about posting or not thinking about filming everything that I’m doing in my life, which I’m very grateful. My content is not necessarily a, oh, I’m walking down the street. Let me film it. It’s very

Bjork Ostrom: Much, yeah, purely lifestyle. Yeah,

Dana Hasson: Curated, yeah. But again, pros and cons, right? Because what maybe I do need to dive into more lifestyle because that is where everything is shifted and it’s constantly, I feel like my brain is pulling me from different directions all the time. So it’s important to just, I dunno, stay grounded. I meditate a lot and just journal. I really try to prioritize my mental health because one, this can get to your head and you can just be like, oh, I am better than everyone. And no, this is just our job and we’re good at it and that’s great, but I don’t want to not be myself.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One of the things I think about occasionally is how would using my grandparents as inspiration? I actually have on my desk, it’s like the 1948 basketball championship for my grandpa. It was like a high school basketball championship, and then it’s like a mint tin from my grandma. But the reason for it is one of the things I occasionally remind myself of or think of is they lived, they had some really hard things in their life, but they also had a pretty charmed life, at least when I experienced life with them. And it was pretty simple. And I think of that for myself and trying to say, when you talk about normal things, it’s like they would really consistently get together with a small group of friends that they had, and they would have patterns around, they would do church on Sunday and they would do coffee on Saturday morning. And those as being the things that, for myself at least, I feel those as the most life-giving. And I think sometimes when I look at, they talk about checkbooks and calendars being moral documents, does my calendar reflect the things that I think would be best for me? Not always. And so I think that piece around, hey, reminding yourself to step back to connect with people is such an important thing.

One of the things I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on is the process of launching a physical product. So you have homemade ish cookies starter kit. One of the things we often talk about on the podcast is this idea of product, having a product, you have attention, it’s the attention economy. And then with that attention, our decision is what we do with it. We can talk about nonprofit, we can talk about a brand that is giving us money to talk about them. We can talk about whatever we want to and monetize via ads, or we could talk about our own product. And if it’s a good product, people go and they buy that. So in launching this cookie starter kit, the brand homemade dish, what have you learned in that process? Because it’s something that not a lot of people have done.

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, I always knew I wanted to have something. I didn’t know what it was. And I think mean the hardest part was probably just where to start. I think we all kind of have this fantasy of like, oh yeah, I want to have my own thing one day and I want to start this thing, but what is the thing? Honestly, looking back two and a half years ago now, I was just like, I’m launching a product. Everyone’s like, great, what is it, Dana? No idea. What is it?

And I remember just writing down, what is it? What is it? What is it? And I would just talk to every person around me and just be like, yeah, so I’m thinking of launching a brand. I dunno. I mean, obviously I like baking. I just kind of gather information and then once I start, I feel like getting some sort of a feel. I then start doing real research, which just like, okay, what is the most popular thing that people are purchasing or just things that people are loving. And I basically just dived really deep into baking mixes and how it’s so powerful, but then how bad it is for you and how there’s so many horrible ingredients. And as someone who touches food basically every single day, and I feel like we all do. I mean we need to eat to survive, but I do it also for fun.

It was just really eye-opening to me to just be like, wow, we really are consuming things without knowing what we’re consuming. And that is so scary. I’m obviously getting older and I’m like, wow, I really do care what I put in my body. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, it’s nice to have a little treat here and there where I don’t have to think about it, but it’s just something that really sunk with me. And so I just start diving deep and was like, okay, what if I actually created a mix that not only was just clean, simple ingredients, it was also something that was so easy, so delicious, and tasted homemade

Bjork Ostrom: From

Dana Hasson: A box.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, sure. That’s the idea of homemade ish where it’s something that you would feel like, Hey, this is, you’d go to somebody’s house and it would feel like they’ve made these cookies, but it’s actually something that’s a little bit simpler to put together. What was that process like? Who are the team members that you need to assemble in order to do something like that? My guess is there’s some, with a content business, you can download TikTok, you can start creating your own content. You can scale that up. You probably eventually work with an agent or maybe have a team member who helps with contracts, maybe a va. But when you get into an actual physical product, it looks really different. You have shipping, you have storage, you have the development process of the product itself and regulations around food. And so how did you go about finding and assembling a team for that?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, I had no idea. Just have to say it because I think people are just like, oh yeah, you launched a sprint, you know what you’re doing. I’m like, no. And actually I still don’t. And I’m kind of just learning as I go, which is honestly the best part about it. But I think the first thing I did was like, okay, I need a recipe and I need someone to develop it with me, so a recipe developer. So I kind of just was backtracking. I’m a very visual person, which is why my product is very visually, I like to say beautiful, because I was just so focused on the visual. So actually first thing I did was hire someone to help me with packaging, even though I didn’t even know what my recipe was. So everything was a bit all over the place, but a graphic designer and then a recipe developer, and then someone who is going to help you with operations because there’s a lot that goes down into operations that I’m still learning and I feel like I still didn’t crack down completely.

And then, yeah, okay, great. Now, so then you need a warehouse. Am I going to shape it for my apartment or is someone else going to be doing it for me? And then also the recipe that we developed, it’s not a normal recipe, it’s a scalable recipe, so the ingredient sourcing is a different game. It was a lot of just learning and asking people and other founders that have been so incredibly sharing just would share information that I’m so grateful that they did, and honestly, that makes me want to share because I’m like, oh my God, they were so generous to tell me things that I honestly would’ve probably taken years to learn if they didn’t.

Bjork Ostrom: Like what? What’s an example of something that you think would’ve taken a long time that somebody shared?

Dana Hasson: Well, one of my friends, they have a pickle company. It’s called Good Girl Snacks. You should check it out.

Bjork Ostrom: Great, we’ll link to it.

Dana Hasson: And they basically connected me to my scientists, and I just know that without that knowledge, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I mean, I’m sure I would’ve figured it out, but it was just kind of like, oh, wow, they really were so amazing to do that for me that I’m so grateful and it would’ve really saved me. Well, it did saved me a lot of time. Of course, you still have to interview and see that it’s a good fit because I’m a people person and if someone has weird energy, I just cannot work with ’em. But it worked out and I still work with ’em and they’re amazing.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say scientists, can you talk about what that person does in the process?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so basically they understand how to create a recipe but not a home recipe. So it kind of goes back to percentages. I’m still trying to understand it myself, or maybe I’m not saying it right, but they basically just think about things differently. So for example, when you’re packing dry ingredients, there needs to be no moisture. I wouldn’t have known. So things that you would buy at the store wouldn’t work for you to just pack it and put in a little box. It needs to be things that are just low moisture and I guess it’s a different product then because it’s not your typical, I dunno, sugar. So it’s just a lot of things that I feel like I didn’t know vanilla we’re using a powder vanilla where I feel like at home I’m using extract. So it’s just a lot of small things that a scientist would know and I can,

Bjork Ostrom: And so are you able to come to them and say, Hey, you work with a recipe developer in this case it’s a cookie recipe. You kind of get it to the point where you personally feel like this is something I’m going to be excited about. So you have this recipe that is fine-tuned for one that you’ve created at home and that you can bake. Then it’s taking that to a food scientist and saying, okay, if we were going to productize this and create it as something that can be sold at scale, how would you do that? Then they kind of apply their scientists formula to it and say, okay, I see you put vanilla extract in here. We actually do have to do a dry vanilla. Here’s what that would look like for the conversion from whatever, two tablespoons to this amount and dry vanilla. Is that kind of what’s happening in that step with the food scientist?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, I would say so. And then also just doing all the backend of things like the nutritional facts and all these things that I’m like, how do you know how to do this?

Bjork Ostrom: And is there some fine-tuning that happens there as well? Because my guess is you have your at home recipe that tastes one way, and then you have the one that will be the packaged version and then it’s tweaking the package version to get it to where you want it to be.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so basically what I would do is they would send me the brands that we would source from would send me their ingredients, and then I would sit there with a scale and just measure it exactly as they would be packed. And then I would be able to kind of test and see what I like and what I don’t like. I remember the biggest thing for me was the salt. I couldn’t figure out the salt because salt is so important in baking, and I remember just baking and then being like, oh no, not enough salt or too much salt. And it was just stressing me out and it took so long. But I think that’s what makes a recipe perfect

Bjork Ostrom: Is the effort that you go through to make sure that you’ve painstakingly made decisions around how much each ingredient should be and whatnot,

Dana Hasson: And not giving up too. I feel like

Bjork Ostrom: That’s a hard sticking it, sticking with.

Yeah, if you were to go, and I can really relate to this, gone through this process with businesses before where you have an idea and you’re like, I’m just going to get after it. That’s the most important thing is you get after it and then you get to the point in your case right now with homemade, you can go on, you can buy this, but if you were to go back and do it again now on the second time, you’d be able to do it all so much quicker because the order to do it in where it’s like you don’t start with somebody from branding and then do the scientists and then the recipe development, the order that you’d go through for it, what would that order be if you were to go back and do it again, how would you stack that up?

Dana Hasson: I think idea first and then nailing the

Bjork Ostrom: Recipe idea being in this case

Dana Hasson: Cookie.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, right.

Dana Hasson: What are you doing? What is your idea? Then I would say developing the recipe. Then dealing with operations, well, operations and recipes kind of hand to hand sourcing the ingredients as well. So it’s kind of the same step in a way. And then finding a manufacturer and then finding, I guess parallelly again, like a warehouse or if you’re going to do it in your apartment or you’re going to get a studio and do it and then

Bjork Ostrom: To store it,

Dana Hasson: To store it, and then you need a website developer to create a website, and then I think you can then launch, but there’s more to it to the packaging takes so long and that’s what delayed us the most, and it’s like things you don’t think about. They always tell you things are going to go wrong, but then it’s your case and you’re like, oof.

Bjork Ostrom: For other people it happens. Not for me, no, for me as well. When you say operations, what does that involve? What’s under operations?

Dana Hasson: Just sourcing everything. Someone who’s going to

Bjork Ostrom: Help every single ingredient, the bags that the ingredients go in, the

Dana Hasson: Things you don’t think about, the seal to close the box, just things that I’m like, oh my God, we need that. Or a barcode, I don’t know, I need a barcode. Just all these things.

Bjork Ostrom: And so you need to make, and my guess, who would be the person that helps with that if you are sourcing those? Is it a connection within the agency that has the food scientist or is there an adjacent operations industry that you work with?

Dana Hasson: So mine is all in one, but I would just look for operation, someone who is some sort of experience with operating literally the operation of the

Bjork Ostrom: Business. We had friends who were thinking of developing a drink,

And what was interesting as they were talking about it was I started to realize, oh my goodness, there’s these companies that exist and they exist in order to help people create and scale a product. And they have opinions on what bottle you would put in there, and then they also are able to create different variations of it that they were able to test and see if they liked one more than the other. And it’s this whole world that exists and you don’t really, I mean, I know there’s web agencies, I know there’s Facebook marketing agencies, but it’s like, oh, of course there’s also food product agencies. It’s just something that I’m not as familiar with. And so talk to me about the point where you go through the product development, you have the package, you’re able to have it, you’re able to ship it. How do you start to intertwine that brand with your content? What does it look like in terms of making sure you mention it enough without doing it too much? How do you make it organic without people feeling like you’re selling all the time? What decisions did you make as a creator in pairing your brand with your content?

Dana Hasson: Yeah. Well, so I feel like series is probably the best way. I basically was introducing something that people didn’t even know I was working on, so it was kind of like a surprise, this has been happening. So I really created a kind of how I built this moment, and I took the how me your mother sound, and I kind of backtracked and I was like, kids, this is what happened. And kind of just took them along of how I developed and what I’m doing without telling them what it is yet until the day I launched. And then the day I launched was kind of like, ah, this is it. So excited. But now that I am doing it, I mean, it’s only been a month and a half now, so it’s still very new, but I don’t think there’s right or wrong because I think if your content is genuine, they don’t feel like you’re selling anything.

And for me, it’s mostly brand awareness. I want people to just constantly see my box all the time, so when they do come across it and I dunno, an ad one day or on the streets or in a market or at Whole Foods, they’ll be like, Ooh, I’ve seen it before. Actually I know this brand, so I’m not even thinking so much conversion, more so just awareness. I want everyone to know about us. And then, I mean, conversion just happens because obviously they see it and they want to try it and they’re curious. So it’s kind of like, I would say a healthy mix of the two. But I’m still trying to figure it out. Sometimes I’ll go a week without posting about it and I’m like, I need to talk about it.

Bjork Ostrom: But I love that idea of investing your effort into awareness. And one of the things that I talked Nathan Barry, he’s the CEO of a company called Kit previously ConvertKit email marketing, he has or had a podcast called The Billion Dollar Creator. And the whole premise with it, which I’ve thought a lot about, and I think it makes a ton of sense, is this idea that creators have this ability to speak to a large group of people and they’re really good at it. And a lot of creators, if they’re interested in value maximization, like building a business that’s big, which not everybody’s interested in, but if that’s your interest, one of the best ways to do that is to build an adjacent brand. Because so often that brand can be bigger than the footprint of your following or the creators that you’re speaking to. It can be a launching platform into something bigger, more significant, more valuable, because it’s scalable in a way that us as an individual creator wouldn’t be scalable. When you think about what you’re doing is that a little bit of your hope is building an adjacent brand in homemade ish that is able to scale. Maybe you create other product lines within it, you create awareness within it, but that becomes, that eventually eclipses the content business side of what you’re doing.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, again, I’ve been doing this for five, seven years now, five years on TikTok and then seven years overall. And you see, obviously it’s an incredible income and I’m so grateful for the opportunities, but I’m thinking about my kids and I’m like, okay, one day I want to have something that is so much more meaningful. Not to say that being a creator is not, but something that is more physical, you can literally grab it and touch. And I feel like that’s something that it’s hard to do and we’re just people on the screen. And yeah, I’m hoping that one day, hopefully not soon, I still love doing content, but it will be my main source of income. And then content is kind of like a side gig and I really do see it happening already. It’s kind of just crazy. But I started this brand actually, and I was like, okay, I’m pretending I don’t have any followers. I want to create a brand how, I dunno, any brand that has been so successful, like a Betty Crocker, how they started. Obviously every story is different and I’m still utilizing my platform, but there’s still so much business 1 0 1 that you still need to know. Just because you have a platform doesn’t mean you can cheat your way through it. And also navigating the fact that you don’t want to be a viral brand because then there’s no longevity really creating a strong foundation and something that I know will be longevity and not just like, oh, another really cool, just whatever

Bjork Ostrom: Flash in the pan kind of thing. And what you’re talking about is this idea that the things that you have learned as a creator also apply in the world of a brand because you’re able to, as a brand, use those kind of cheat codes for creating that you’ve learned over the last seven years, which a lot of times you have a brand who has a great product, but they’re trying to figure out, how do we show up online? Is what you’re saying. You kind of know how to do that. You’ve been doing it for seven years, and now you can do it within the context of a brand.

Dana Hasson: Exactly. And also, I do ads all the time. Brands pay me to create ads. So to me, I’m like, great, let me create my own ads now.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. So can you talk about from a business perspective, if you look at the pie chart of your business, what does that look like? Is it primarily working with brands right now and then you’re backfilling and building homemade ish as your own internal brand that gets revenue for you? Do you have other types of ad income that you get from other places, just percentage wise, kind of at a high level? What does that look like and where are you hoping that it goes?

Dana Hasson: Yeah, I would say right now, I mean, again, I just launched, so I feel like I can’t even speak into the brand giving me sort of income yet.

But I would say right now a hundred percent of my income is from social media, from sponsorships and brands activation. I do a little bit of consulting as well. So that kind of adds in and mix in, since I have a lot of knowledge and I’ve seen it all, but where I’m hoping it would be, I’m hoping that it would be 90 10 of my brand being 90 and content creation is just the 10% that is fitting my income just because, I mean, TikTok is getting banned. That’s just another reason why you should have something that is more than just something you’re relying on. Other factors, my brand, it’s up to me. I can go to the streets every single day and hand out cookies and give people the spiel on this is why you need to buy it. And probably within two months it will blow up. But then it’s like social media, okay, great, I’m creating all this content, but then tomorrow they’re banning it and then I’m like, now what? I don’t have an income.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Can you talk about your thoughts on the TikTok ban and what’s happening with that? I know just from headlines, but I haven’t really done any deep dive on it as of today. We’re recording, this will obviously change and shift after the episode comes out, but what does that look like right now and what’s your understanding of the scene?

Dana Hasson: Well, it’s not looking promising, if I’m being honest. I feel like we’ve had many scares in the past five years, but this one for some reason just feels a bit too serious. Do I agree? And I feel like we have other things in America that they should focus on. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. 1000%. I think TikTok is probably their least of their concerns, and they’re moving it oddly quick, which is also what’s super suspicious to me. But I mean, listen, I’m a big believer with everything happens for a reason. This is out of my control. It seems like they ask for an appeal, I think, from the Supreme Court, and they agreed to basically hear TikTok speak about it on January 10th, I think, which is just probably a week before they do ban it. But I mean, their goal is to sell it. They want people another company to buy it in the us so then it’s a US owned company. And I understand, of course. I mean, who am I to say anything about that? But I don’t know, it just feels like we would potentially go into every session because there’s so many businesses relying on it.

I dunno if you’ve gone just scrolling on your free time, but you can see so many people going live and doing like, okay, we’re selling our product via live. It’s the new QVC. I dunno. I just feel like if they really will ban it, it would be a really tough year for a lot of people. I mean, luckily we have other platforms, so I’m not so worried. My content is my content, I’ll just start binging Instagram content and then hopefully I can master that on YouTube and whatnot. And I’m sure a new app will come. I mean, honestly, we’re due for one, so I feel like that’s probably happening anyways. But I don’t know, it just really feels like it’s touching about freedom of speech here and it feels just a little bit suspicious again. But I have no idea what’s going to happen. I mean, right now I would say, yeah, it’s getting banned, but I hope I’m wrong.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s interesting you hear, I think that’s the counter to it, is freedom of speech. Like, hey, this is a platform. It offers people freedom of speech. Obviously other side is like it’s controlled by an outside government agency, which with a tweak of the algorithm could potentially impact people’s political views or whatever. And so the hope would be that to your point, there’s a lot of people who, their job, they’ve left their full-time job, or they came out of college and this is what they’re doing. And so to take that away would be massively significant for thousands of people, obviously, and other businesses who might use it as a marketing platform. So the hope would be that they are able to kind of thread the needle on doing a sale. Maybe we’ll know by the time this episode comes out, fingers crossed that it’s successful and that all of our creator friends on TikTok continue to create. So we could talk on and on about creating products, the things you’ve learned, best practices for TikTok, best practices for Instagram. I feel like the great thing, like you said about doing what you’re doing is you have the skills and expertise that you’ve learned over the last seven years, and those can transport onto other platforms. Obviously it feels different when you have 3 million followers versus not having 3 million followers on another platform, but you can still accelerate that with the knowledge that you have. So Don, it’s amazing what you’ve done, continued success. If people want to follow along, they can do that on TikTok if it still exists by the time this podcast comes out. But where are the other places that people can connect with you? And then we’ll link to homemade ish as well.

Dana Hasson: Yeah, so Instagram, TikTok, I am a little bit on YouTube now, so all there. And then I have my websites, which I feel like just my name, donna hassan.com, and then homemade ish.com.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Dana Hasson: Thank you for having me.

Emily Walker: Hey there, 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.