Evolving Your Brand: When and How to Sell Products as a Food Creator

Bjork Ostrom: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. Here’s the thing, we know that food blogging is a competitive industry, so anything you can do to level up your content can really give you an edge. By fixing content issues and filling content gaps, you can make your good content even better. And wouldn’t it be awesome if you could figure out how to optimize your existing blog posts without needing to comb through each and every post one by one, or I know some of you have done this, create a mega Excel sheet with manually added details for each post that’s soon to be outdated Anyway, that’s why we created Clariti to save you time, simplify the process and make it easy. So with a subscription to Clariti, you can clearly see where your content needs to be optimized, like which of your posts have broken links or missing alt text.

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Emily Walker: Hi. Hello, this is Emily from the FU Blogger Pro team, and you are listening to the FU Blogger Pro podcast. This week on the podcast, we are welcoming back Jillian Leslie, who you may know from her podcast, the Blogger Genius podcast, and as the founder of Milo Tree. In this week’s podcast episode, Jillian explains everything you need to know about selling a product as a food creator. Bjork and Jillian discussed the strategy behind developing a product and the importance of leaning into problem solving for your audience. As recipe developers and food creators we’re always looking to solve problems for our readers, and developing a product to sell to your audience is a really great way to lean into exactly what problems you’re trying to solve and what value you provide to your audience. Julian also walks listeners through the more practical aspects of developing a product, including how to scale products and generate recurring revenue for your business and how to overcome perfectionism within your business. While this interview is primarily about developing and selling products, it’s also a really great interview about adapting to all of the changes in the food blogging space and how to think about your business to continue to be successful in the coming years. As always, if you enjoy this interview, we would love it if you could leave a review or share the episode with your audience. It makes a huge difference for our podcast. Without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Jillian, welcome to the podcast.

Jillian Leslie: Oh, it’s great to be back.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’ve both been doing this for a long time now, where we are at the point where it’s like, oh, we were on the podcast before, was it like two years ago, three years ago? Oh, it was seven years ago.

Jillian Leslie: It’s crazy,

Bjork Ostrom: And I think it’s such a testament to continually showing up every day. We talk about that a lot and the importance of that within the world of business in general, really with anything. But if you’re going to build a business, people underestimate what you can do in a decade and overestimate what you can do in a year. And you’ve been doing this for a while. You’ve been at it for a while, and there’s been many iterations off of it. So we’re going to be talking a lot about product, but I want to start by talking about the origin story of the product that you have created because you are selling that and the inception moment with that is like you are also helping your product is helping other people sell product. So we’re going to talk about how creators, bloggers, publishers can be strategic in selling product. But before we do that, take us back to the moment when you decided to create a product that you were going to sell online.

Jillian Leslie: Oh, so you mean back to our first SaaS product, which means software that we started selling? Well, just like you were sharing with me about your tool clarity, you had your own solution and you thought to yourself, Hey, if this works for us, maybe this could work for other people and that’s exactly what happened with our first product, which was our popup that we still sell called Milo Tree. And now we built out a whole suite of tools for bloggers, but what happened was we needed traffic. Facebook was turning down the spigot and we’re going, oh my God, are we going to go out of business? And this was for our first blog called Catch My Party, which is still there, largest party idea site on the web. And all of a sudden we noticed Pinterest was driving us traffic and we’re like, what is this thing called Pinterest and how do we get more traffic from it? And so my husband who can build anything built us a popup that on Catch My Party, if you go there right now, you’ll see it. And it was saying, Hey, follow us on Pinterest. And lo and behold, it started growing our followers. And I think right now we have, I don’t know, 1.7 million followers that we grew organically on Pinterest just by putting this popup on our site. And we thought to ourselves, if this works for us, chances are it will work for other bloggers. And lo and behold, we built it out and people said, we want it for Instagram, we want it for TikTok, we want it for YouTube, Facebook. So we just did that thing that I recommend all bloggers do, all entrepreneurs do, which is listen one, solve your own problem.

And I call it eating your own Jo Food, meaning we knew we had a problem, we solved it, we continued to use our own product, so we’re like updating it just like every blogger would want it to be updated. And we started listening to people and they said, this is cool for Pinterest, what about Instagram? Or I want to grow my email list with it. And we’re like, Hey, that’s cool. And that’s really the thing when you think of yourself as a problem solver, you got this sixth sense and you’re always looking, is there something that I could do that makes somebody else’s life better’s great. During the pandemic, I was lonely. And so I started a coaching group for bloggers. And what I noticed was a lot of the bloggers had big Facebook groups and they wanted to monetize them. And these are incredible content creators, but they hate technology.

And the one thing that has always been our MO is if we can create technology that is complicated on our end so we can serve it up easy to you, that is our kind of sweet spot. So all of a sudden people wanted to set up memberships and get paid, and I was like, Hey, we could do that. I just was like, Hey, let me try and figure this out. And what I noticed was I had to hack together so many different tools and it was not easy. And I said to David, my husband, could we do this? And he’s like, yeah, we totally could. And so that was the birth of our Milot tree cart product, which is where you can sell unlimited digital products easily. And this is for people like bloggers who have so many, they wear so many hats.

What we noticed was people had audiences they had people to sell to, but putting together the pieces was way too complicated. And that was really how we launched Milot Tree Card, which we now have Milot Tree Card, a tool called Milot Tree Freebies, where we enable you to offer unlimited freebies to grow your email list. And we should talk about email because I think that while it’s always been important, I think people now are really understanding the power of email and also our popup app to grow your social media followers. So really it’s all about saying people always, bloggers are always told solve problems. Okay, well what do you do with those solutions? How do you then take this idea and actually turn it into a product that you can sell to people?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think it’s one of the things that will become increasingly important in the next decade of content creation as information, especially transactional information. How do you boil an egg? If you had a site 10 years ago that was a how to site on all the food stuff, it probably would’ve done pretty well because people are going to Google and they’re searching how to, if it’s SEO optimized, and you’ll go and you’ll figure out how to boil an egg or get a hard boiled egg for the next decade is going to look very different. People are going to be able to get that information, especially when the new version of the iOS comes out that integrates with OpenAI, it’s going to become more conversational. Voice is going to become much easier. People are going to be getting their information in different ways. That’s not to say that being a creator online is going to become less valuable. I just think certain types of information are going to become less valuable. And so what we need to do as creators is think strategically, like you said, what are things, what are the problems that we are solving? And if 10 years ago the problem was getting information to people in a kind of transactional, here’s how to do X, y, Z thing, I think the problem looking forward is going to be much different. And it’s probably based on tribes. Are you somebody who’s in a similar stage of life to me? Do you have similar problems? For us, it’s like we have two girls and they are as of tomorrow, four and six, and both Lindsay and I work and we also try and sit down every night to have dinner together. And so one of the problems we are trying to solve is how do we not be stressed, number one, and still make time to sit down and have dinner together as a family. So that’s a very relatable problem. That’s a little bit abstract and a little bit harder for chat GPT to solve. We could then create free content on that. And most of what we do is that where it’s a blog post, it’s a video, it’s in an Instagram short talking about kind of what that looks like, an example being Lindsay does something called the SOS series for Pinch of Yam. If you’re short on time, it’s kind of an emergency.

What do you do to create a recipe that’s really easy? The next level of that feels like it’s then creating a product that people would pay for those people who are consuming your free content, that people would then look at that and say, Hey, I’m a part of this tribe. I am like you. I have a similar problem and this problem is significant enough that I am going to pay you to help me solve it in a more efficient manner or to the result of the problem solved could look different. It could be time saved, it could be money earned, it could be peace of mind, it could be a thousand different things. But how do you know as a content creator when to stop with free content and move into paid content? Do you have any advice for people to help to transition into that world as they think strategically about free versus paid?

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. So really, to be honest with you, information is becoming commoditized.

And that recipe that you, what’s the difference between you going to a blog for a recipe or eventually just right now going to chat GPT and saying, here are my dietary restrictions or in my refrigerator, or here’s a photo of what’s in my refrigerator, what should I make for dinner tonight? So that becomes less valuable. But in this world of AI where we feel more, I believe isolated alone, kind of like, whoa, I’m kind of floating here and I want that sense of community or somebody to connect to you become more valuable. So it’s like as you’re talking about your dinner, I want to see your dinner because maybe it looks like my dinner and maybe you guys aren’t perfect and maybe your kitchen looks like it’s a mess. Well, my kitchen looks like it’s messy too, and then all of a sudden you become relatable to me. You make me feel like I’m not so alone with my little kids at dinnertime. So it’s not just that I want your meal plan or it’s not just that I want a meal plan, it’s that I want Lindsay and Bjork’s meal plan because it’s the two of them being

Bjork Ostrom: Real struggling

Jillian Leslie: Through their dinner.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s nice of you to give me credit, but it’s Lindsay.

Jillian Leslie: Well, but it’s like to be clear, are you the dishwasher? How does that work? What is it? I’m curious. We are also very curious about other people, and so having a window into that would be valuable to me. So it’s not just that I could go to chat GBT and say, I need quick dinner recipes, but what is that extra step? So now you can, and for bloggers, especially a lot of food bloggers who like to hide behind their blogs, I’m going to say that’s not going to cut it anymore. Now do you need to be putting yourself on camera all the time and stuff? No, but you need to, I say this, have a point of view, have strong opinions about things. This is one of my strong opinions, which is, hey, what used to work might not work going forward in five years. So how do you position yourself, and I’m going to say step outside of your blog now, and B, I’m Jillian, but it’s weirdly not the Jillian show. It’s how Jillian can help you achieve your best life.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. One of the things that we talk about and think about a lot is this idea of what are the defenses against a new version of information acquisition that people have chat GPT as an example, or Gemini or Google AI overviews. And one of the ways that you can create a defense around that is what can that not do well? And it can’t be human. Well, probably in 10 years it be we’re already getting to the the point of you’re crossing the uncanny valley. What is the test where it’s like human or not the test, the test test. Is it a human on the other side or not? We’re there, we’ve kind of passed those points where it’s like, oh, actually this sounds like a person as I’m just chatting with a thing, but it’s still not human. And that’s one of the, for us as creators, one of the things that we have going for us is our ability to connect on a human level. And what that requires, like you said, is being in front a little bit more, being more personality. It’s interesting, there’s this long drawn out kind of conversation around people just want, in our world, people just want the recipe

Jillian Leslie: Get straight

Bjork Ostrom: To the

Jillian Leslie: Recipe. It’s

Bjork Ostrom: Like get straight to the recipe. Nobody cares about

Jillian Leslie: Your grandmother.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think we always said kind of true, but also I think some people do care about story, and I think moving forward, it’s going to be one of the things that is going to be most valuable is connection with an audience and with people who are actually following you, not just coming across your content or discovering your content. I think of our friends who have social followings, not in the food world, but they do comedy videos on Instagram and TikTok, and I’m thinking of one friend specifically who has millions of followers in this stage. It’ll come at some point. But in this stage of things, I don’t think he’s really worried about ai.

He has people who follow him, he produces content. That’s funny. People like him because they know him. His name is TJ Ethere, and if anybody wants to look it up, if we sit down and have a conversation, he’s not going to be like, oh my gosh, I’m super worried about chat GPT and my business because of it. Maybe that’ll change in five years when AI gets really good at creating video content, but it’s not there yet. So as people start to think about how to be more front and center, how to have more of their story included in the video content that they’re creating, how to build more of a tribe with opinions and a following, how are you seeing people think strategically about taking that and building a business around it? Not that you always have to do that. Sometimes you just want to do it because you want to do it or you want to do it because you want to spread a message. But for people who are interested in building a business around that following a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, how do you do that? Well,

As you start to develop following and that audience and that tribe.

Jillian Leslie: So first I want to say that our biggest customer base are food bloggers. Food bloggers have kind of figured out I need to sell something, but I don’t know what that means. And I say, sell an ebook of your best recipes. But here’s the caveat, it’s not just your 10 best recipes. It’s looking at what problem these recipes can solve. Meaning these are the recipes that you can make when your kids are having a meltdown. These are the recipes you can make when you’ve had a busy day or who knows, but wrap them in a solution, not just, these are my a hundred best recipes or these are my a hundred best. Maybe they cookie recipes because that becomes less valuable. What becomes more valuable is, oh my God, what is this problem and why is it relevant to me? Hopefully I understand this problem. I understand you having this problem so I can solve that up for you in a package of a solution. That’s great. And I have seen food bloggers, by the way, they already have the content, but it’s like, what’s the wrapper?

Initially it was like, I’ll just put my 10 best recipes together and sell it. And I’m like, that doesn’t cut it anymore. So we, for example, remember in food blogging, it was like you’ve got to be in a niche which is solving a problem, versus I just make pasta recipes whenever I want. Then I make, who knows that you have niche down? And so now it’s all about, okay, how can I hook somebody up and make their life better with my recipes? Now, are you going to buy your second home from your first ebook of recipes? No. But what you’re doing, and this is something I talk a lot about on my podcast, which is you’re looking for the connection. You’re looking for, I put this out and sell this, and people are taking their credit card and buying it because you’re onto something. I say, you’re a miner, you’re mining for gold. What you are first looking for gold specs

And where are they? And by the way, this is why your first digital product should be something you can put together really quickly and get out there. So this is why, for example, we offer, I was telling you AI generated sales pages. You don’t have to think about putting together a sales page. Boom, you’ve got your sales page, go sell it, go try to sell it. It doesn’t work. No problem. What other problem can you solve? Where can you take your current content, slice and dice it, put a package around it of I am solving a problem and sell that? And once you find gold specs, you dig deeper because guess where the gold specs are? The gold little pebbles are, and then hopefully the gold gets bigger and bigger, and then you can move up a ladder of different offerings.

Bjork Ostrom: Gold bricks, gold bathroom, gold house.

Jillian Leslie: I love that. Yes, absolutely. And then now can, I can tell you where the money is and

Bjork Ostrom: Where the money is. What do you mean by that?

Jillian Leslie: What I mean by that is yes, so lots of food bloggers, especially if they have email lists, can go to their email list and turn it on and probably make a couple hundred dollars if not a thousand dollars the first time they launch it to their list. But

Bjork Ostrom: With if they have a product, you’re saying if you have a product and you sell that product to your list,

Jillian Leslie: And I’m talking about maybe you’ve got a thousand subscribers, there is money in a thousand subscribers, there’s real money there. And if you’re not taking that money out, you should come talk to me because that’s like money for the taking. But

Bjork Ostrom: Now,

Jillian Leslie: Sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: Well, I was going to say, I think it’s a really important thing because a lot of times we talk about email list, we talk about the importance of email list. I think people are starting to understand that becoming more and more important. But when you really start to feel that is when you have a thing and you want to promote that thing and to have the ability to send an email list that’s not going to be impacted by an algorithm, it’s not going to be impacted by SEO, it’s just going to go hopefully usually straight into somebody’s inbox. And what we’ve found is that is the most valuable resource for us in a situation where we have something and we’re hoping that people purchase that thing.

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. Email is for almost everybody. I talk to their best sales channel, even people with enormous social followings because you’re not scrolling through Instagram in a buyer’s mindset. Now you might be able to get sales from Instagram, but it’s usually not as easy as email. And that’s the real value of email, which is why again, we created our product so that you can offer unlimited freebies to grow that list because that is your group that you’re growing your customer base. So it’s like that is really valuable now where the money is in recurring revenue.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask. It’s almost like there’s a friend who lives in the Twin City series. His name is Rob Walling. He created a company called Drip. It was an email company. That email company sold to Lead Pages, which was a company here in the Twin Cities. Now he does Angel, and it’s not really Angel, but he helps bootstrap companies, SaaS companies, grow and scale. He has one of the concepts that he has is called the stair step approach or something like that. But it often is like, Hey, start with an ebook, a one-time transaction, something that is, and that’s the first step. And then eventually you get to this idea of recurring revenue, and that’s really powerful. So within the context of information within the context of a publisher or creator who has a blog and a social following, what’s the best offering that you can have that would also tap into some of that kind of recurring revenue? Gold.

Jillian Leslie: Exactly. Well, just what you were saying, I call it a ladder. So you want to get people in the habit of buying from you, starting with a small item. By the way, another place where people make a lot of money is bundling, bundling products together. Because if I can sell you one thing, but then for example, we offer upsells, Hey, I know you’re going to, if you buy these mittens from me, from me, I probably, I bet you might want the matching hat. And that’s a very strong selling strategy because if you buy the mittens from me, I already have you as a customer. So if you go away, I’ve got to go find another mittens customer. It’s much more lucrative for me to not only offer the mittens, but also offer the hat so that’s something to keep in mind. But in terms of recurring revenue, it could be a meal plan, for example, is a good way to think about it. Another one though that I think is incredibly powerful is if there is a way that you can start a community low-key community where you are showing up with information, but people will come for the information, but stay for the community. That’s the sticky glue. It could be about parenting, it could be about meal planning, it could be about who knows what. Now, it might work in your niche, it might not work in your niche. So maybe there is a type of content you can sell consistently printables, or this works with high-ticket items, like certain kinds of coaching. Think of a mastermind. But if you’re a blogger and you’re good at blogging, go teach other bloggers who aren’t as experienced as you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and in a lot of ways it’s like that’s what Food Blogger Pro was like, we saw this need based on me at the time doing this kind of state of the blog report. We’re like, oh, a lot of people are interested in this. Like you said, it’s a little bit ear to the ground. It’s not like we had this idea out of nowhere to be like, Hey, we’re going to start this thing.

It just was an iteration off of a thing that we were already doing where it’s like, I wonder if there could be a premium level to this free information we’re doing once a month, and there was interest in that. So it’s almost like you think of that latter approach. We’re doing the first rung of the ladder already, which is producing free content and publishing it to the internet. Then it feels like the skill that we need to develop is understanding how people respond to that. Is there an interest, is there a need or people asking follow-up questions?

Jillian Leslie: Can I stop you there for one second? I would argue it’s free content to get intentionally getting somebody on your email

Bjork Ostrom: List. Sure.

Jillian Leslie: That is a very, very important step. So free content could be on your blog, it could be on Instagram, on social media. And so your next job is to figure out how do I take this person off of TikTok, off of Instagram, off of YouTube, give them something of value that they really want, that’s like the first tiny solution to the larger problem I can solve for them.

Bjork Ostrom: And the point I was trying to make isn’t necessarily that from doing free content, you’re trying to sell a product. It’s almost like free content is your first attempt at product development. It’s your first attempt at seeing can you create something that people need or that people are trying to figure out. That is, and I think of Nisha from Rainbow Plant Life and she came on and talked about her meal plans, which I think were really successful. And she talked about the number of conversations that she had with her followers to help develop that product. But I think part of what we do and what I’ve noticed as a pattern is a lot of times people come to me and they’re like, Hey, I have this idea for a thing that I’m going to create, and they probably haven’t talked to anybody else to say, is this a problem for you? It’s almost like just exploring what do I want to do? What do I want to create? Which isn’t necessarily bad, but it is bad if it’s not helping anybody

Jillian Leslie: Or

Bjork Ostrom: If nobody cares about it, well

Jillian Leslie: Nobody, nobody’s going to pay for it. So this is something I talk about inside out versus outside in inside out is this, I’m in this shower and I go, Hey, I got this great idea of our product and I can already picture myself going to Canva and making it look really pretty and what my fonts are going to be and all this stuff, and then I’m going to put it out and it’s going to sell crazy. And I say, please don’t do that. What I recommend is you build your product outside in. That means what are people asking you? Even in your email, if you put links to stuff, you’ve got recipes, what are they clicking on? What are your top recipes, let’s say, and is there a way to think of a product that way? So please don’t have that brilliant. And this is why, again, I can be controversial in that I’m going to say, do not start with a course unless you’ve pre-sold that course at least four or five times because the amount of work you’re going to spend on that course to then go, okay, I’m ready guys. Here it is and hope that people, you kind of think, but to be honest, you don’t. I mean, how many times is it that pin your number one pin on Pinterest is something you could never have imagined? You think, and chances are your hunch is in the right direction, but until you test it, you don’t know. And that’s why I say you got to iterate quickly kind of. I’m releasing a podcast this week of myself talking about B minus work, which is, remember I am a big proponent and it’s the concept that people email me the most about like, oh my God, that’s really resonated with me because I’m going to say don’t do crappy work. B minus is above average, but it’s not a plus work because a plus work, it’s not profitable, but if you can do B minus, and the way that I say you’ve got to B minus is you press like post or you put it out there and you get that cringey feeling in your stomach still because it’s a little embarrassing to you. You’ve hit the sweet spot,

Then you can start getting feedback. You can see, do people like this? Maybe they like it, maybe they don’t like it. And if you, let’s say get three sales, I say, good for you. Now your job is befriend those three people and get on calls with them.

Bjork Ostrom: What do

Jillian Leslie: You like about this? Why’d you buy it? What else could I offer you?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it feels like, and as a quick point, when we launched Food Blogger Pro, the membership component, we had three months of selling it before we actually launched it. We helped use those funds to build the first version of it, and it was a great way to validate do people actually need this and are they interested in it? A great book if people would be interested in product and selling product is called Lean Startup. It’s like a decade old now, but Eric Reese talks a lot about this idea of minimum viable product

And tell me if this feels accurate, but I would say it’s like B minus in pursuit of a plus. I think sometimes people think I need to start with a plus, and I think eventually you want to get to a point where what you are doing is incredible. It is valuable. You’re always in pursuit of that a plus, and you don’t settle with B minus. But in the early stages you have that thing that feels like a little bit early, it feels like it’s not quite polished enough, and you put it out into the world in order to then start to get feedback, like you said, to have those conversations, to take off the rough edges of it because that’s going to get you to a work quicker than going into the lab, having the door shut, pulling the blinds and working on your thing, and then eventually getting to a point where you’re like, and now it’s a plus and I’m going to show it to the world.

But if you start with B minus or C plus even, and you put it out into the world and then you iterate on that, like you said, you have those conversations, it will compress the development of the product and the helpfulness of the product by getting it in front of people. So my question is to what scale do you promote a thing once you have it? Because I think the downside of that is let’s say you produce something that is B minus, you put it out into the world, you promote it super heavily and it’s actually not helpful. Then you’ve kind of cashed in a chip, which is like your promotion chip that I think deters people down the line from feeling confident to purchase a thing again. So would you recommend doing it to a limited list? You have 10,000 people. Do you do it to a thousand people?

Jillian Leslie: Okay, I’m going to say I’ve tested this in my own business and I’ve seen other people test it. Nobody’s thinking about you. So for example, your email shows up and you offer me something, I’m barely thinking about you. I’m barely reading this email and you offer me a thing and I don’t want to buy it, but then you come to me a month later with something else, I’m not going to hold that first thing against you. You’re not that important to me. So I’m going to say go put it out. And if people don’t like you, let them unsubscribe. I’m going to push because I speak to predominantly women, and I will say that we have our own female baggage, which is we’re scared. We’re scared to be judged, we’re scared to not show up perfectly. And so I want to get rid of the word perfect and I want to say nobody’s thinking about you. It’s funny because I’ve shared this, I have a 17-year-old daughter and I’ve taught her this whole idea of nobody’s really thinking about you because at 17 you think everybody’s thinking about you.

Bjork Ostrom: Totally.

Jillian Leslie: And she’ll catch me when I’m obsessed with something. I’ll see a photo of myself and I’ll be like, oh, that’s awful. And she’s like, ma, nobody’s thinking about you. And there’s something very humbling about that. Wait, no, you guys should be thinking about me, but it’s also very freeing. So I say, go. And then you know what? People don’t buy it. Well, guess what? Probably in your audience you have your VIPs, the people who are always commenting on your posts or interacting with you, emailing you, befriend those people, and you go, Hey, can I talk to you? Will you tell me why this didn’t connect with you of all people? I thought you would buy this. What don’t you like about it?

I say, go send the emails to your list. Please don’t hold yourself back. And there’s something I have have tons of post-Its on my desk. I have a post-it. I can’t show it to you right now. I can’t find it called cursive knowledge. And this is something where I think people I talk to struggle with and cursive knowledge is this. You and I could be talking in a very elevated way about SEO and you. I think everybody in this audience knows exactly what we’re talking about because you know it and I know it. And because we know what we assume everybody knows it. And that’s the curse of knowledge. So what we were talking about previously is what do you know that you think everybody knows that I promise you they don’t. And can you sell that?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s a term that we’ve used before, this idea of expert enough where one of your greatest advantages couldn’t be that you are the ultimate expert, but you are expert enough to speak to people who are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 steps behind you. Whereas if it’s somebody who’s a hundred steps in front of you, then it might not be helpful. An example in my world is I’m trying to learn more about health and fitness, and I was talking to a conversation or I was having a conversation with my brother-in-Law, and I was like, I think I might subscribe to jama, which is the medical journal. And he’s like, oh, you should actually look at the New England Journal of Medicine. And so it’s like, I subscribed to the New England Journal of Medicine and I’m getting it now, and I’m like, oh, this is not for me. This is for experts.

It’s way beyond. And it’s like I’ll still probably read it, might find some helpful stuff within it, but if that was 20% of what it is, that’s probably the version that I would need. And I think there are those things in the world where we are expert enough to tell somebody else the things that we know and it’s actually more helpful than if it was an ultimate expert. I think the thing that I’m trying to reconcile, and it’s specifically around a belief that I have with Pinch of Yum, which is one of the things we hear recurring is people coming to us and saying, I love Pinch of Yum because I know that I’m going to come and I’m going to make a recipe and it’s going to turn out.

And I think it’s become a competitive advantage that we have as a creator, which is those recipes are tested four or five, six times, they’re iterated on over weeks. We eat multiple versions of ricotta meatballs. And once Lindsay feels like this is excellent, she ships it out into the world. And that’s become a really great moat that we have in the world of content creation. And I think if you are somebody who does that, that’s a competitive advantage that you have, which is like you consistently create excellence. And I am trying to reconcile those two things. I think I believe both to be true. Number one, get stuff out there, publish something before it’s a little bit ready, but it almost feels like that’s more in the category of product, in service of iterating and becoming better at your craft as opposed to, I think for Pitch of Yum as an example and other maybe food creators who are listening like content at scale. I think if have Pinch of Yum had four B minus recipes in a row, I think that would be detrimental to the business. So what are your thoughts on that, just in terms of reconciling those two truths really?

Jillian Leslie: Okay. But I would argue that your commitment to your audience is excellence in food, meaning that recipe has to work. Where I’m talking about the B minus is that’s kind of your promise. What I’m talking about is maybe the website isn’t beautiful, maybe the photos aren’t perfect, maybe the copy could be improved. But for example, if I, let’s say, I don’t know, I am a psychologist and I’m an early childhood psychologist. If I give you bad information for your child, that would be bad.

I’m talking about maybe I’m going to write, I have this expertise. So you have the expertise of unbelievably delicious food that’s easy to make healthy. I mean, at least that’s how I think a picture of Yu. And so that’s your promise. Now, if I’m a therapist, hopefully I’m an expert at helping you with your relationships with your children, let’s say. I’m not going to skimp on that, but if I’m putting together my ebook and I think to myself, Hey, I could help with tantrums, bedtime, these kinds of things, my book doesn’t have to be perfect, but my information, my promise to you is I can make bedtime better and that I’m not going to sacrifice on, I’m going to sacrifice on turning this into a video series and making sure all my font are perfect or whatever. And so I don’t know if people care that much about bedtime, so I’m going to put that out there. Now, if ultimately, guess what? It starts selling like hotcakes. Okay, maybe I could record that video series. Maybe I could go through the ebook and hire somebody to make it look a little bit better.

Bjork Ostrom: So

Jillian Leslie: I would say that your promise is your promise.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that’s a really good differentiator. And I think what it feels like you’re getting at is how do you help people get out of their own way to move forward on their thing? And a lot of times what happens, and we see this in our world, an example would be somebody who’s tinkering with the logo of their website because they think that’s going to be the thing. But really it’s just like there’s this book called The War of Art, and he talks about it as the resistance,

And it feels like it’s how do you overcome the resistance, which keeps you from sitting down and doing the work, pressing publish. And it feels like in some ways it’s speaking to the resistance. How do you get past that? And one of the ways to do that is to release the tight grip that you have on having every pixel in the exact right space. What I also hear you saying is the information has to be great. If you’re telling somebody you’re going to do something, it has to be the thing that you’re telling them to deliver. But if it’s in a PDF, that if kind of crummy or maybe it’s not arranged in the exact right way or it doesn’t look super professional. And that’s been so much of our story I think of Lindsay created a photography ebook 12 years ago, and you talk about it’s not going to buy you a new house, but it paid our mortgage when we were first married and she worked on it in Apple pages and arranged things in a certain way. And to this day, we were just at a conference and writing next to somebody who had a site that was doing 10 million page views. And he’s like, that book really taught me photography. And if you were to look at that book, it’s like, it’s not super impressive. It’s a B minus in terms of the design, but it solved a problem, it solved a problem, solved a

Jillian Leslie: Problem. And

Bjork Ostrom: Yes, I feel like that’s in our world. A great example of what that looked like was we had a thing, we knew it was good information. Lindsay was good at teaching. She had the background in teaching, she was expert enough to do it, and on her own, she didn’t have a graphic design background cobbled together this book that communicated the information that actually was helpful for people. So I think that’s a really huge unlock to encourage people to show up and to confidently say, I have something that can help you. Here’s what that thing is. You actually deliver on that thing, even if it might be a little rough around the edges in terms of the deliverable landing page, the PDF, whatever it might be.

Jillian Leslie: So people will be like, we have this course conversation a lot. I have a lot with creators. And I say, okay, if you’re desperate to do a course, do it as some live workshops. Put them together and sell them. And then I said, when you do your workshop, hope that your tech fails, not in a big way, but in a small way because you don’t look perfect and be your audience. People who show up to your workshop will get behind you. And this is where I think that human piece matters. I think that my audience, like yours, I’m sure struggles with perfection. And I think perfection is poison. I think perfection keeps us stuck, makes us feel bad about ourselves and that it’s not profitable. And it’s so funny because then somebody that I was talking to did her workshop and had a technical problem and she taught cooking live and there was some dish rag in the background that she didn’t know was there, and she was mortified. And that’s that cringey feeling I recommend you get good at, but there’s something human about that. So it’s like lowering the bar.

Bjork Ostrom: Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. As you know, you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, but maybe you didn’t know that we actually have a membership for food creators and food publishers like yourself. We’ve actually had this option for 10 years. We talk about it occasionally on the podcast, but recently we had this realization of like, we need to let people know that we have a membership because sometimes people don’t know that exists. And there’s a lot of really incredible resources within a Food Blogger Pro membership. We have a community forum where we have FBP, Food Blogger Pro industry experts, a lot of people who you probably recognize from this podcast. We have a deals and discounts exclusive to members page where you can get access to discounts and some of the most popular tools for creators, a bunch of different courses on photography and video and SEO.

And then we do these live Q&As with experts. Recently we did one on SEO and republishing. We talked to Eddie from Raptive and he has years of experience in the world of publishing, and he talks about why the process of republishing is so important. I also do these coaching calls with Food Blogger Pro members that we record, and then we make available to everybody to watch and to learn and to listen. And these are one-on-one calls with other publishers or business owners to talk through the strategy for growing their business. And the cool thing about these live Q&As and these coaching calls is we actually wrap those up into a podcast that’s exclusive for members. So maybe you listen to the Food Blogger Pro podcast and you’re like, I wish there was more episodes that you could listen to and learn from. Well, you get access to additional content, additional podcasts if you join Food Blogger Pro. So if you want to check it out, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com and click the Join Now button and you get access to everything when you sign up the back catalog of all the live Q&As, all the coaching calls, all the courses, all the deals and discounts and immediate access to the community forum. So again, if you want to check that out, go to food blogger pro.com and we would love for you to not just be a podcast listener, but also to be a member.

Jillian Leslie: The other piece that I just want to say where my audience struggles and my hunch is yours does too, is saying this, I’m so used to giving my content away for free that the idea of charging for it feels weird. Maybe I’m not worth it.

Bjork Ostrom: And

Jillian Leslie: That is something I talk a lot about.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s almost like the psychology of selling a thing and behind a lot of those things. Perfection, I think on the other side of perfection is probably fear. It’s easier to be perfect than it is to publish a lot of times because perfection can keep you from publishing, and that’s a vulnerable, difficult thing, whether it’s publishing a product or an email or whatever. And I think anything, it’s a skill. You show up and you do it, whether it’s a podcast like this, publishing an Instagram reel, as you develop that skill, you’ll get better at it. It’ll become easier. Not that it ever becomes easy in general, but it’s like a skill that you can develop. And if you are interested in building a business, I think it’s going to become more important that you understand how to sell a thing over the next decade, whether it be an actual product or somebody else’s product.

The idea of income from ads, which are passive on your site, I think will live on in some form forever, but I think it won’t necessarily be a business that becomes more prevalent moving forward. I think it’ll probably become less prevalent. And so if you do have a following, if you do have an audience, it’s going to become important that you understand how to confidently sell a thing, whether it be through affiliate, through a brand that you’re working with or your own product. And if it’s your own product, I would make the argument that that can be if you land it and if it is the kind of thing where there is a need and it’s helping people and you have the audience that needs the help for the product that you’re creating, that can be one of the most profitable things that you can do. So with that in mind, how do you go from that? Let’s say it’s a PDF, it’s information, it’s an ebook. How do you go then to the next level of recurring? Do you sell to that same group? Do you only sell to the people who have purchased something from you before? And then what does that functionally look like? If you are creating a community and creating content, creating a course, whatever it might be, how do you actually pull that off?

Jillian Leslie: A lot of it is relationships. Again, when you sell those early sales, those become hopefully your VIPs,

And they kind of are like the people who want to help you succeed. So every offering and everybody’s journey up this ladder looks different. Therefore get in contact with those people and ask them what they need and what they would want from you and reward them. Buy them a Starbucks, meaning it’s okay to do stuff like that, but you’re doing all of this research. Did I ever think to myself, oh my God, David and I, when we started Catch My Party, someday we’d be selling some tool to help bloggers sell digital. Like what? No, it’s because this has evolved. Now, ultimately, again, think about is there a skill you have and maybe you could sell it as coaching, maybe you could sell it as a video series. Maybe you could sell this as a community. These are just ideas. I don’t know what it will actually, nobody follows this path directly the same way, but the people who have the most success are the people who continually, I would say this, they know what big problem they solve. Let’s say I’m going to help you get in shape. And maybe what that means is you want to lose 10 pounds and you want to gain lean muscle.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s the transformation. What’s going to be the transformation,

Jillian Leslie: And that’s what I want to sell you on is your future self that I can get you there, but I’m going to paint the picture of how good you’re going to feel when you’re there, how you’re going to look in the mirror and feel better how your numbers are going to, your blood sugar’s going to go down, how you want to be eight, like 90 on the floor with your grandkids. Those, that’s the picture that I want to paint for you and sell that to you. And then what are the little steps along the way I can sell you to get there? And so when you might be listening to this going, I don’t know what big problem I can solve, but that’s kind of, then think about it, okay, what small problem can you solve? And then what’s the next step that you can kind of lead somebody on in their journey? And so it’s like these kind of, when you’re in the shower next time, just start asking yourself, what is it that I solve? How do I help people? And one technique that I think is really helpful for selling is to put on the hat of the helper my solution. I’m not selling snake oil, I’m not pulling a fast one on you. I am selling you something that can help you and improve your life. And all of a sudden, if I can understand that in my own head and I can communicate that to you, I’m not being salesy. I’m a helper.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s interesting. I think even in my own life, I have a friend down the hall who does video, and we have another friend who’s building a, or they have a short-term rental Airbnb, some friends who are building a wedding venue, like a premium wedding venue. And I think about me within the context of them and those projects and it’s like, oh, I want to know about the business. I want to get plugged into the business. It’s hard for me, not with my friend who does video to not be like, Hey, do you need help figuring out some of the structural stuff within it? But my band is to do the things that I feel like we have created as a job for me, which is like, Hey, let’s have conversations about how people can improve their businesses. The nice thing is there’s also a need for that in the marketplace. For us, it’s Food Blogger Pro as a membership, but also then working with sponsors. And so to your point, it’s like this natural outflow of where I would already have a tendency to go, but also where people might ask questions for me. And so what you have is world’s great need and your great passion. I think sometimes we just talk about passion, but it’s like you also have that world’s great need part.

So on a very functional level, let’s say you start to figure that out, even working within a product like Milot Tree, what does that look like to connect all those things? Is milot Tree facilitating some of that? Do you check out and then do you manage the recurring membership component of it? And then do people go into Slack for that? Can you talk about just how people might set that up and what that might look like?

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. So it’s funny because we have strong opinions, and one of them is I don’t want to be your email service provider.

I don’t want to be your course platform. What I want to be is the best way for you to get paid for you to have sales pages and market your product and for you to have a dashboard to watch and manage your sales and your customers. Therefore, we integrate with all major email service providers because I can’t tell you how many people I know have a course platform that’s really expensive and they have an email service attached to it. But wait, they want to use ConvertKit and now they got to hack that together. And I don’t want you to have to hack solutions together. I want you to use best in class services. So for example, when people say, I want to start a membership, I go, great, here’s what I recommend you do. I recommend you show up twice a month on Zoom because everybody knows Zoom. And the first time you show up, say it’s the first Wednesday and the third Wednesday of the month for one hour, you hold it to one hour. You teach something in the first session. Now, by the way, you can listen to this or not. This is just where I see people, just an example, have success. The second time you show up, it’s just q and a talking about whatever you discussed in that first session. I recommend you use a private Facebook group to kind of house everything. Why people are like, no, but there are all these other cool tools. And I’m like, you think you’re going to convince people to put an app on their phone and will know to come to use this app? People know Facebook whether they like it or not, and all you’re going to do is store stuff in that Facebook group and create a place for people to talk to each other. And I want this to be as low stress for you as it is for your people. Don’t burn yourself out. Don’t burn your people out. And then you’re going to communicate them, communicate with them via email. Hey guys, we’re meeting. Here’s this month, we’re talking about this topic, and here’s the link to the Zoom. And after we do the zoom session, I’m going to send you the recording and maybe there’s a PDF or who knows, but make it simple. I am all about keep things simple. Don’t ask too much of people and don’t over provide. Again, the reason people leave memberships, a lot of times, especially if it’s something like a crafting membership is they feel like they’re falling behind.

They can’t keep up. So it’s like, let’s lower the bar and let’s show up and let’s listen. Let’s listen to what people want. So for example, remember I did a membership during the pandemic and what I did, I said, okay, we’re going to talk about blogging and these are the topics I think we should talk about. But I came up with it and I held it lightly. And what I mean by that is we’re into, I don’t know, month three, and I could tell that the people in my group were having difficulty doing the work.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jillian Leslie: So I said, okay, no, no, no. We’re not talking about, let’s say Instagram in month we’re going to talk about is strategies like the Pomodoro technique, which is where you work for 25 minutes and then you get a five minute break, and then we’re going to talk about B minus work, and we’re going to talk about the ways to get your butt in the chair so that you can accomplish this amount of work. And so therefore, if I didn’t know that this would be important, but what I discovered was this is what my people were kind of saying to me like, Hey, how do I get this done? I’m burning out or I’m losing interest, or whatnot. So it’s like you’re listening and you’re adapting, and I think that is the way to, versus I’m going to start a membership and it’s going to have all these moving parts. No, you start simply and build from there very much what you were talking about. Yeah. You want that membership to ultimately be an A. And I’m going to say that’s because the delivery is so good, but really you start, even if you think you’re starting at an A plus, I promise you, for most people it’s B minus,

Bjork Ostrom: Right? Right. Yeah. It’s just your, it

Jillian Leslie: Starts

Bjork Ostrom: Misinterpretation of it. Yeah. So with

Jillian Leslie: Milo Tree, you have all this flexibility to sell digital downloads. Again, we deliver them, just upload it to our platform. You can do coaching, membership subscriptions, recurring revenue, all that stuff. We integrate with Stripe Best in class payment platform. We give you a really nice dashboard to manage all your customers. And I’m available if you have questions, go listen to my podcast, the Blogger Genius Podcast where I’m talking about the value of offering freebies and what is a good freebie. I break that down for you. And because there is ai, I’ve got prompts where you could come up with a freebie, a really cool freebie, like a cheat sheet in what, 10 minutes. So my hope is to support you along your journey.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. And I think one of the takeaways from that idea of not having, in this case Mylo Tree, not having it be all of the things is, and I think this can be confusing a lot of times for creators, publishers, I think sometimes we think the tool is the product, hey I’m going to sign up for this thing. And it’s really cool because you can do all of these things within it, but the tool isn’t the product. In the same way that if you build a home, you have a nail gun, you have a hammer, those are all tools to build the home, but the home is the product, not the tools. And I think what we are doing as creators and publishers who are selling either community or information, a lot of times both is the information back to our previous conversation around having the wrapping of the product B minus, but the actual transformation or the helpfulness of it being an A, that’s the thing that you are selling. It’s the information, it’s the community, it’s the transformation that somebody is going through. The tools are the tools, and if the information is good or the community is good, then it’s going to be helpful. I think of myself, I’m a part of a group, I don’t remember, it’s maybe like $200 a month and it’s a Slack channel.

Jillian Leslie: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you

Jillian Leslie: Care? Do you go, Jesus, you guys, it’s on Slack. I can’t participate in this.

Bjork Ostrom: So it’s a Slack channel, it’s a Zoom once a month Zoom call. There could be other ones you could join as a part of, and then twice a year conference that you could opt into if you want to go. So that’s a perfect example of it’s like I never once thought about like, oh, I wish the tool was better. It’s like, no, it’s a really good community. And the reason that it’s really good is because the founder of that group, it’s called Rhodium, he’s curated that group. He has a one-on-one call with every person to make sure that they’re going to be a good fit. And so that’s the product, is the community, and he’s developed a really great process around that. And then just used widely available, oftentimes free or low cost tools to support that.

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. It’s funny, I live in Austin and we just recently, we went to a restaurant and it’s a James Beard award winning chef, and it’s the crappiest looking restaurant ever, but it’s very Austin, so it’s got picnic tables outside in the heat, and it’s got gravel on the ground and it’s Mexican like tacos.

Bjork Ostrom: What restaurant was it?

Jillian Leslie: It’s called Nixta, N-I-X-T-A. But the beans have duck fat in them. And I love this idea, which is the people in the, and it’s so delicious. And no, the ambiance is this kind of backyard picnic vibe. And I feel like I love that as a way of thinking about building your business because the food is so good, but it’s casual and it’s comfortable and it’s cool. So that’s just like where I go, it is not the tool, it’s the content of whatever it is you’re paying for. And my hunch is nobody’s leaving because it’s on Slack and Zoom,

Bjork Ostrom: Right? Yeah, exactly. That’s not a differentiator in that where people are like, oh, this would be really great if this was all fully integrated into one platform. It’s like people don’t even think twice about it.

Jillian Leslie: And if you’re spending your time having to go to YouTube to watch videos on how to use this incredibly complicated, all-in-one solution, which I was doing, I was subscribed to one, I put my course up, which took a lot, and I had to kind of be on YouTube trying to go, where’s the button for this? And I thought, oh my gosh, this is harder than I thought. And I’m pretty good at figuring out platforms. And so again, I want to take all of that away.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. You mentioned that you have a podcast, obviously Milo Tree as well, and you also mentioned people connecting with you.

Oh, I love it. And as a little teaser, I’m going to be on the podcast, I think we’re recording it next week. I dunno when it actually comes out. So that’ll be fun. So this is almost like a to be continued conversation. We’ll be able to pick it up and take it in a different direction next week. But Jillian, can you talk about if people want to follow along with your podcast, maybe a little bit about what that’s about? I’m guessing people would generally know Milo Tree if they’re interested in checking that out, and then even if they wanted to connect with you personally where the best place to do that would be.

Jillian Leslie: Absolutely. Okay. So please, I love, as I shared, I really do. I love talking to people about building businesses. I started my, how many years have you been doing your podcast?

Bjork Ostrom: Gosh, I should know the date that we first launched. I don’t know, 10 years.

Jillian Leslie: Okay. I think I’ve been doing mine about seven and a half now.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Jillian Leslie: I think I’m coming up to eight years. And you were an inspiration. I was like, you started a podcast. I’m going to start a podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: Alright, love it.

Jillian Leslie: So I started my podcast called the Blogger Genius Podcast. And the truth of the matter is, I started it to support our pop-up app. But really because the great thing about a podcast is you get to talk to people, you get to email somebody and say, come on my podcast, and then ask them lots of questions. So for a curious person, it’s been really fun.

Anyway, so it’s the Blogger Genius Podcast, and I think I’m up to like 350 something episodes. Really what I try to do is get experts on like you Bjork, and pick your brain and go, what’s working right now? And also share what I’m seeing where I sit and say like, okay, here is how a food blogger can have success selling digital products. Here is how to get started. Here is why a freebie is so valuable, but what is a freebie and how should you think about it? So that’s really what it is, and I’d love you to listen or subscribe, but please, I am an open book. Reach out to me at [email protected]. You can DM me on Instagram at Milo Tree, and if you want to get on a free 20 minute call with me, because I love talking to bloggers to future customers to really see if there’s a connection there. If I can help you just go to milo tree.com/meet and there’s my calendar book a time with me. It’s not a hard sell. It’s really because this is how I do our research for what we should be building and how best to serve you as a creator, as a blogger, as the world is changing in this moment with ai.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. It’s one of the things that I’ve found to be most beneficial anytime that somebody has an offer like that. I was at a conference and somebody’s like, Hey, we do an SEO audit. It’s like, okay, I’ll sign up for it. I’ll do it. Because what I’ve found is those are some of the most beneficial interactions that I have. Those conversations. Somebody from an outside world that understands our world, but can look in and weigh in on it. And like you said too, on your end, as we talked about before, one of the most valuable things you can do in creating a product is have conversations with customers. So it’s cool to see as we wrap up, what that looks like for you saying, Hey, I want to have a conversation with you. Not only can you be helpful, but it can also inform the decisions that you’re making with the products that you’re developing,

Jillian Leslie: Which is really cool. And I’ll say, I get this a lot, which is because I’m fresh eyes on your business, and I’ll say something and you’ll be like, oh my God, she’s a genius. And I’m like, no, I’m not a genius. I’m just fresh eyes. You’re so close. And I feel that way about my own businesses. I’m so close to them. Sometimes I’m blind. So it’s just nice to have somebody go, whoa, have you thought about this? Or have you thought about that? Those kinds of things. That is where I love that moment when somebody goes, oh my God, I’d never thought of that before.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. Jillian, great to talk to you. We’ll talk to you in a week next week for your podcast. Thanks so much for coming

Jillian Leslie: On. Thank you for having me.

Emily Walker: Hello there. Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed listening to this week’s episode of the podcast. Before we sign off today, I wanted to mention one of the most valuable parts of the Food Blogger Pro membership, and that’s our courses. In case you don’t already know, as soon as you become a Food Blogger Pro member, you immediately get access to all of our courses here on Food Blogger Pro. We have hours and hours of courses available, including SEO for food blogs, food photography, Google Analytics, social media, and sponsored content. All of these courses have been recorded by the Food Blogger Pro team or some of our industry experts, and they’re truly a wealth of knowledge. We are always updating our courses so you can rest assured that you’re getting the most up-to-date information. As you’re working to grow your blog and your business, you can get access to all of our courses by joining Food Blogger Pro. Just head to foodbloggerpro.com/join to learn more about the membership and join our community. Thanks again for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Make it a great week.