In episode 269, Kristin Hoffman of Baker Bettie, talks to us about how to grow confident in your on-air personality as you grow into creating videos, TikTok and/or YouTube for your business.

We cover information on even though it can take awhile to grow comfortable, the results go beyond helping your business, why you need to start with what you have and not wait until everything’s perfect and remember to give yourself permission to create bad content.

Listen on the player in this post or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Guest Details

Connect with Baker Bettie
Website | Facebook | Instagram

A self-taught cook, Sandra exited a 25 year retail management career to pursue her goal of becoming a full-time food blogger. Her food blog journey began in May 2020. IN July 20201, she reached one of her goals to be accepted to Mediavine Ad Network. In her business, Sandra uses positive mindset to overcome obstacles and achieve both her business goals and personal satisfaction.

Takeaways

  • Video has so much to offer food bloggers in tutorials, courses, YouTube, Instastories, Facebook Reels, TikTok and more!
  • Give yourself permission to make bad content as you learn your craft.
  • Just show up!
  • People who are good on camera are typically good on camera because they have practiced being on camera.
  • Be vulnerable with your audience. They will appreciate you more.
  • There’s always something to learn.
  • When you first begin on video, don’t look at the criticism, the point is to just show up. Get some experience under your belt, some confidence.
  • When you push through something hard, you can get to the other side. It will not always be hard.
  • Allow yourself to just be you on camera, let your audience see you for you to become more confident and find your voice in your business.

Listen To More

Listen as Kathy Hester shares in episode 206 about how live video helps you grow your community.

Transcript

Click for full text.

269 Kristin Hoffman

Kristin Hoffman: Hi, this is Kristin Hoffman from Baker Bettie, and you are listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast.

Megan Porta: Hey, awesome food bloggers. Before we dig into this episode, I have a really quick favor to ask you. Go to your favorite podcast player. Go to Eat Blog Talk, scroll down to the bottom where you see the ratings and review section. Leave Eat Blog Talk a five star rating if you love this podcast and leave a great review. This will only benefit this podcast that adds value and I so very much appreciate your efforts with this. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay. Now onto the episode. 

Hello, food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, Megan Porta, and you’re listening to episode number 269. Today, I got to have a conversation with Kristin from Baker Bettie, and we are going to talk about how to build your on-camera confidence. Kristin Baker Bettie Hoffman is a trained chef and baking educator known for her ability to break down baking fundamentals and baking science in an easily digestible way. She does this through tutorials on her YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok and through in-person workshops in the Chicago area. Most recently, Kristin released a baking fundamentals book Baker Bettie’s Better Baking book. Oh my gosh. Say that 10 times. I love it though. Which focuses on explaining the why’s of baking and was named by Food Network is one of the top 10 baking books of 2021.

Wow. Okay. I’m going to come back to that. Her goal is always to help others build their confidence in the kitchen and feel at ease when baking. Okay. I’m supposed to prompt you for a fun fact now, but I want to ask you about that. You were named as a Food Network top 10 baking book?

Kristin Hoffman: Yes, I was. It was super exciting. So yeah, I just published my very first book actually just about three weeks ago and Food Network named it as one of the top 10 baking books of 2021. 

Megan Porta: That had to feel so amazing and what a way to celebrate your accomplishment! 

Kristin Hoffman: I was very, very honored to be on a list with somebody like Martha Stewart, really surreal to see. So it was really exciting. 

Megan Porta: Well that speaks to the job you did putting it together. So nice work and congratulations. That is a huge accomplishment. Now I feel like that kind of was a fun fact in itself, but do you have another one to share with us? 

Kristin Hoffman: I guess my probably most interesting fun fact about myself at this moment is that I have a pretty extensive vintage glassware collection. So I collect a lot of vintage Pyrex, Fire King, Hazel Atlas. I like to collect all of this really colorful, vibrant, vintage glassware. So if you look at any of my videos on TikToK or YouTube, you’ll see I have a collection behind me and all of my videos with this very vibrant collection of mostly vintage mixing bowls. I love to actually use them in my baking. So some of my bowls are up to 70 years old. It’s really fun to bake with them. 

Megan Porta: That is such a cool fun fact. So I’m looking at your little thumbnail here on Skype as we chat. Is that what you’re referring to? Oh my gosh. They are so pretty. I love the color and I love them, it’s like a teal or a turquoise and orange. Those are great. Oh, I love that. Okay. You are here to chat about building on-camera confidence. I think this is such a hard thing for so many people, myself included. It’s scary, right? Especially at first. It’s almost like we push it away because we just think no way, I can’t do that. I can’t be natural. But we’ve got to start somewhere. So can you talk to us about how you got started with it? Was it scary for you at first? If so, how did you overcome that? 

Kristin Hoffman: Absolutely. So I started my blog Baker Bettie about 10 years ago. Truthfully, where the name Baker Bettie came from was born from the fact that I was an extremely shy person and I didn’t know that I wanted my real name and person to be out in the world. I didn’t know that I wanted people to know who I truly was. So Baker Betty stemmed from something that I was hiding behind. Now it has become my online persona that I fully embrace and am very public with. I started out in this world as being an extremely shy person. Somebody who absolutely would not even think about putting myself in front of the camera. Through the years, I started seeing how much video had to offer this business. I have always been somebody that really enjoyed creating content from an educational perspective. I love to teach about baking and try to make it super approachable. There is a great deal you can do with that through written content, but being visual with doing that and putting myself in front of the camera truly is one of the best ways to teach. So eventually I got to this point where I was like, okay. If I really want to grow this educational part of my business, I think I’m going to have to get in front of the camera. I think I’m going to have to figure out how to do this. The idea of that was truthfully terrifying. Makes me want to throw up terrifyingly. If you go back and look at some of my original videos, they are quite painful to watch because I was very uncomfortable. I was very shy and very scared truthfully. 

I don’t know if you have ever heard this quote. Probably about five years ago, I heard this quote from Ira Glass, where he talks about how people who do creative work, typically start doing creative work because they have good taste. When they first start doing it, their taste is good enough to recognize that their work is not good and that it’s not living up to their ambition. So a lot of people just stop there and don’t push through that painful point in which your work is not good. But the key part of getting to the other side of that is to just keep doing it. That’s how you get from the painful, not good work to work that you’re proud of.

When I heard that quote, it really put things in perspective to me in that I can’t expect myself to be good at something that I’ve never done. I think I had this misconception that there were people who were naturally good on camera and there are, it’s not that there is not any innate talent in that, but I think that’s a misconception. People who are good on camera are typically good on camera because they have practiced being on camera. They have a lot of experience with it. So I just started with Instagram stories first and then moved over to YouTube. Most recently I have done a lot with TikTok. But I just gave myself permission that I could create bad content. I can create bad videos because that was the way in which I was going to get to the other side of content that I was proud of. So that’s really what kind of jump-started me into creating video and putting myself in front of the camera.

Megan Porta: I think it’s great for the rest of us to hear that it was terrifying for you. I’m sorry that it was. Like you said, we see people who have curated videos who seem so confident and we just assume that it’s always been like that. That is so rarely the case. I feel like if that is the case for anyone, it’s such an anomaly.

Kristin Hoffman: I agree. 

Megan Porta: So I appreciate that you’re sharing this, that you even share that it was terrifying to the point of wanting to throw up. That is terrifying. And the fact that you started with an alternate name because you were so shy about it. So what a transformation. Oh my gosh. So you have pushed through some massive fears. Do you find that getting through those fears you’ve found such great rewards on the other side?

Kristin Hoffman: Oh, absolutely. I think in starting this, what I will refer to as an experiment, in that I’m going to create bad content, hoping I’ll get to the other side in which I feel good and confident about it. I don’t think I ever truly believed that it would ever feel comfortable. I think I believed that I would get better at it and that I would start being more proud of my work, but I think I thought I would always be in this place where it felt like a struggle and where it felt very nerve wracking and uncomfortable. The most surprising thing has been that it absolutely has become something that feels very easy for me, very natural. I don’t get nervous or stressed before I have to even go live on something. I did WGN news the other day. I did a live show. Four years ago, if I would have done that, leading up to that would have been sleepless nights. I would have been so stressed about it, but it just feels so easy now. But because I have pushed through all of those hard parts and I think that has been the most rewarding and surprising part of this process, just pushing through those hard parts has really made it feel so much easier.

Megan Porta: I can relate so much to this. So I was probably the shyest kid in the world. I’m not even kidding when I say that. I would only speak to my family for a really long time. It was ridiculous. But I was so shy and the idea of putting myself out there and I don’t do a lot of video. I host a podcast now. So when I started this podcast, the idea of putting myself out there and contacting people and saying, will you be on my show and then not just that, but having them come and I’m in charge of the show and I have to conduct an interview. That was so scary for me. I threw up, like what you were talking about, Kristin. But I did the same thing as you. I was like, You know that you need to do this. It is scary. Just sit down and do it. For the first year that I hosted this podcast, I don’t know if any of you could tell, but I was terrified. I was freaking out. Because I pushed through just like Kristin did, I am now to the point where it is not a big deal to me. I love having these conversations. I feel at ease. I’m never nervous. I do very little prep. It is just so easy. So I think we both have that message to share with you today that if you just face those fears and we acknowledge it’s scary, but if you acknowledge it and then do it anyway, you will be rewarded in the end.

Kristin Hoffman: I think being vulnerable too. When I first started putting myself on Instagram, specifically in Instastories, I was very open and vulnerable with my audience that this is uncomfortable, and this is very scary for me. Your audience can relate to that. That can really take away the pressure off of you, that you’re having to do this really great job. You’re being honest that this is new and difficult. People respond really well to that.

Megan Porta: People don’t like for you to show up appearing perfect. 

Kristin Hoffman: Oh, absolutely.

Megan Porta: Highly curated. They’re like really? Is that really you? But if you can acknowledge that, I’m just a real person. I’m scared. This is a real fear of mine. People like that. They will actually love you more. 

Kristin Hoffman: Absolutely agree. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. So how much of a time investment would you say you put in before you got to the point where you were like, oh, this is easy. Did it just happen overnight where you realized it or was it a progression over time? 

Kristin Hoffman: Yeah, say it was a pretty slow gradual progression. I would say I have been consistently creating video content for about four years. It’s not that I hadn’t done any before that, but that’s when I really committed to it and really started diving in deep with it. I would say that it probably took maybe the first year before I felt like it wasn’t so hard to watch myself and listen to myself. It wasn’t so anxiety provoking. Get on there and do it. But probably at about the two and a half year mark or so it really did start feeling very easy, very natural to just get up and present. I always see it as something that I will never be finished with. There’s always something to learn. There’s always something to get better in the world of being on camera. Now that I have been on camera a lot, you definitely hear feedback and criticism and some of it is valid. So I try to hear that without taking it too personally, and try to put things into practice that could make my video content better.

That, at the beginning, I really had to avoid looking at criticisms and critiques because the point of it was to just do it. Get in there and try. I think it was really important for me to actually avoid looking at criticism at first, because I didn’t want that to get too caught up in my head. But I’m at the point now where I can look at that and take it and put some of that feedback into action. 

Megan Porta: I think that’s a really great thing to bring up is to just be really careful too, about what you’re reading about your content in the beginning. Until you get to that place where you’re more confident and you can look at it and be like, oh, whatever, that’s fine. Do you feel like doing the sort of thing, like pushing through two and a half years of something that’s really scary until you’re comfortable? Do you feel like that can positively impact other parts of your life? Have you seen the show up in other areas of your life in a good way? 

Kristin Hoffman: Oh yes, absolutely. So this whole experiment has really shown me that you can get to the other side. When you push through something hard, you can get to the other side. It will not always be hard. In this business, we are constantly having to learn new things and go through those very painful parts. Whether it’s learning photography or I just recently learned flash photography, which was so painful to learn, but I’m so incredibly glad I did. Or getting on a new platform or whatever it is, to push through those hard parts. The other thing that I think has been such a positive experience from this, is that I feel I have become much more confident just overall in my life, in all aspects of my life. I think putting myself on camera and allowing myself to just be me and not trying to be something I’m not. People on Food Network and they’re these huge, big personalities. I think I always thought, oh, I have to become this persona and be something that I’m not naturally, in front of the camera. Allowing myself to just be me and to let my audience see me for who I am, has really just made me embrace myself fully in all aspects of my life. I’ve just become a much more confident person in general.

Megan Porta: I hope you would say that. I was assuming that is a by-product of what you’ve been doing. This experiment that you’re calling it. I’ve definitely noticed the same with myself and hosting a podcast. It has affected just the way that I interact with people day-to-day. I’m more confident in my conversations. Exactly what you said. I feel like I’m more authentic. I’m talking about things that matter instead of just filling it with fluff. So I really do feel like doing something like this can spill over in positive ways. 

Kristin Hoffman: Absolutely. I think it really helped me find my voice with my business. I’ve always approached my content from this educational perspective and from a teaching perspective, but we get really distracted. It’s very easy to get very distracted in this business by what everybody else is doing. Seeing what was working for other people and it’s hard to not get sidetracked by all of that. But I think making video content and developing my confidence with that has really helped me find my true voice and really helped me find my true audience as well. The people that are looking for what I am making. Video has so many benefits of this business, but I think it can just really help you hone in on your brand. 

Megan Porta: Do you have tips for somebody who is either thinking about getting into video or maybe has started getting into it and is just like, oh my gosh, this is too scary. Do you have tips for just getting over that hump and encouraging them to move forward with it? 

Kristin Hoffman: So I think that I, obviously, the kind of overarching theme is allow yourself to be bad at it. Give yourself permission to make content that is bad. I would just say to myself, okay, I want to make this video and I’m just going to do it. It’s okay if it’s bad, but it’s just as long as I do it. I think also trying not to get too overwhelmed with all of the pieces when you start. When I very first started creating video content, I started with hands and pans. Everybody probably has made one of those videos. So that seems much easier. You’re just showing your hands. You’re not showing your face, but adding a voiceover to a hands and pans video is going to make it much more personal and start showing your personality a little bit before you’re going to put your face in front of the camera. Sometimes that can be maybe just a good little segue into getting some on-camera confidence, is just allowing your voice to be heard.

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Kristin Hoffman: I also think that we need to be okay with not having every perfect piece of equipment to make the perfect video to start. These things can slowly build and slowly get better with time. Phone cameras are pretty awesome these days. I have made many videos on my iPhone. I will even sometimes edit them right on my iPhone. That is a great way to, to take out a piece that might be overwhelming from the process, is keep the equipment very simple. Maybe you’re just going to fill them on your iPhone and you’re just allowing yourself to do it in a way that is super manageable. As you get comfortable with that, then you can think about maybe adding some lights or a nicer camera and some editing software. But you don’t need to have all of that together, right at the beginning, because that’s super overwhelming. It’s a lot to learn and it’s a lot to figure out. I think that can stunt people from starting. 

Megan Porta: I think in any aspect of food blogging, really keeping it simple is such solid advice because we can over-complicate everything in this business, whether it’s photography and buying the perfect lens. Just starting with what you have, literally. You mentioned, Kristin, that you started on Instagram stories. So if you’re considering this, maybe just start there. Do an experiment for, I don’t know, do like a two week experiment where you get on Instagram stories every day. Then after that period, you’ll probably have a little bit more confidence and then you can move to the next level, look around you. What do you have? You probably have a phone and just started there. 

Kristin Hoffman: The other thing that I did at the very beginning, I’m just now remembering, I really struggled to do Instagram stories because of the front facing camera and me not getting distracted by looking at myself and overanalyzing what I’m looking at. So I would tape a little piece of paper over the screen so that I couldn’t see myself while I was talking because it was so hard for me to watch myself. So that was like a little trick that helped me in the very beginning. 

Megan Porta: Wow. I love that. That’s a great nugget. Do you, by chance, use Marco Polo? 

Kristin Hoffman: Yes, that was another thing that was super helpful was I started doing Marco polo with my friends. It’s a very similar kind of platform where your front-facing camera is talking to the camera. If listeners don’t know what Marco Polo is it’s a video communication app. You can start groups with different people. I have one with two of my best friends. You send a video message and then they can watch it and they can send one back and forth. Then you can interact with it like you do on Instagram. 

Megan Porta: I brought it up because. It’s a really good way to practice with the way that you’re looking and talking to yourself, basically on your phone. Because at first, it’s awkward. When I first started getting on Marco Polo, I was like, this is weird. I’m just talking to myself. You’re recording a video of yourself talking but you’re looking at you. That might be awkward if you’re not used to it. But doing that really got me used to, I don’t know, just lighting and angles that looked weird and ways that I was talking. Weird things that I was doing or mannerisms. So if you do that, you will likely be more accustomed to just looking at yourself. 

Kristin Hoffman: Yeah. It really does help. It’s so funny because that is another thing that I was doing at the very beginning that really did help. Then I think once you’re used to that, Marco Polo is something you do with people. Getting on Instagram, it does start feeling like, oh, I’m just checking in with my friends now. I’m going to just post this to people I know. 

Megan Porta: It normalizes it a little bit. So you mentioned before, you’ve said this a few times actually, and I love it. Just giving yourself permission to create bad content. Do you ever take your really bad content and make light of it? Just pull out the pieces. Oh my gosh, look at what I said and just laugh at it. Do you ever do anything like that? What are your thoughts on that? 

Kristin Hoffman: Yes. I probably do more between my assistant and I. We will sometimes go back and send each other clips from my old videos and laugh at how bad they are. One of the things that I really struggled with when I very first started recording video was forgetting that I’m talking directly into a microphone and I would project my voice like I was trapped talking to a crowd. My assistant’s like, you’re right in the microphone. You do not need to yell. So that’s pretty funny to look back at. I have done a few times where I will show even to my audience to just be like, this is where I started. I think it’s so easy for us to see each other in this business and be like, look at this great content they’re making.

We have all been at the beginning. Every single one of us has started from the beginning. Whether you’re at the point where you feel much more confident and comfortable now or not, we’ve all been in that place. So I think it’s really helpful to remember that and to not see the content that’s bad, poor content as something to be embarrassed of. It’s just all part of the process. It’s all part of what got you to where you are or what is getting you to where you want to be. 

Megan Porta: It’s part of your story. I think making light of our quote, bad content, is actually a good way to remind ourselves. Oh, that’s progress we’ve made because when we see it, we’re like, oh I probably wouldn’t do that now. But we’re always on the journey. We’re always evolving and there are mistakes we make now of course, but maybe in the future, we won’t be making them. But I love the idea of just bringing those little snippets, whether you’re stumbling over a word, or you do something like yelling into a microphone, whatever, and saying, just look at this. Oh my gosh. Making light of yourself. I think people really appreciate it. They’re like, oh, she’s a real human. She makes mistakes. It’s a way to really, you mentioned this earlier, too, to connect with your audience more.

Kristin Hoffman: It’s a way to embrace the journey rather than feeling shame about it.

Megan Porta: That was very well said. I don’t know if you knowJason Logsdon. He is a food blogger, but he also speaks a lot on sous vide and he’s a self publishing cookbook guy. So this is something that he does that I love. Whenever he’s speaking and he trips over words and he says some doozies, like we all do, he will actually pull that out and put the clips on Instagram. Then he’ll write out the string of words that you said that made no sense. I just feel like that is so brilliant because everyone that watches it is, I love you more because you are willing to be vulnerable with us and show us your worst string of words that isn’t even a word. I just love that he embraces that. 

Kristin Hoffman: I was just going to say, like you said, our audience doesn’t want to see a perfect person. It’s not relatable. 

Megan Porta: I feel like being someone who curates food too, people see our Instagram feeds that look quote, perfect. They are like, wow, she must be really perfect. She put all that together. So to see a side that is far from perfect, I think is relieving for a lot of people. I believe that people will find you just more likable and more trustworthy because of it.

Kristin Hoffman: I agree. Absolutely. 

Megan Porta: So talk about your audience and once you started doing this and making a commitment to do video more often. Have they talked to you about it? Oh, we love your video. What kind of feedback have you gotten from them?

Kristin Hoffman: Yeah, I feel as though video has really helped me develop what we would call our raving fans. I have people who have followed me, I started Baker Betty 10 years ago, yeah, it was about six years before I was really diving into video. Not that I didn’t have followers before that, but I feel this the video content has really developed my core audience that’s really here to follow me and take in all of the content that I’m creating. I constantly get feedback that while yes, the written recipes are helpful, the video content is what really connects the dots for people. I think a lot of people really struggle to just digest written content in a way that makes sense, especially when learning a brand new technique or something that’s a little more advanced or complicated. I actually created a ton of video content about sourdough pre pandemic. I created it in 2019. I created this whole very detailed video playlist on YouTube that you could go through sequentially. Sourdough became the darling of the pandemic and the people who found that video playlist, I cannot tell you the comments I get on these videos of people that are just so grateful for being able to see step-by-step how to do this process that feels very scary and foreign. I think if I had just only had that written content, it wouldn’t have received the same kind of reviews that it does from YouTube. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I completely agree with this. This is a message I’ve been saying lately a lot too, because I believe so strongly in the power of just the human voice and how people are connected to voices. Also when you connect, when you add video to it, your face and make you human. When you write like a blog post, it’s great. You can put your heart into a blog post, and people can feel that, but there is nothing like hearing a human voice and connecting with that. I think the whole know, like, trust factor that we’re all trying to tap into is huge with that. If someone hears your voice and sees your face, they’re going to be much more likely to know and trust you than if they’re just reading a blog post. I think that is such a big message right now, because we’re all trying to differentiate ourselves in this really competitive space and make ourselves unique and different and set ourselves apart from the rest of the herd. This is a really great way to do that. 

Kristin Hoffman: Absolutely. I also think that my book would not be doing as well as it’s doing right now if I had not created this space where I was very physically present and my audience feels like they know me. They feel like they know who I am. They know my teaching style because they see me. I think that has created a space in which people do trust me to come out with a product. They think that it’s going to be beneficial for them because I have created this space in which they see me and they know me. 

Megan Porta: Which platforms are you putting yourself out on? Are you everywhere? Are you on YouTube? TikTok, Instagram regularly and how often? 

Kristin Hoffman: That’s a great question. This last year, TikToK has really won my heart. I was somebody who was a little hesitant to start. It. There’s always a new platform. It’s very frustrating to learn a new platform. I’m someone who believes that you don’t have to do everything. But TikTok, I jumped in and I tried it and I just completely fell in love with it. For somebody who likes to teach, it’s a great platform for teaching. So I would say I probably do spend most of my social media time on Tik TOK. I try to post at least one TikTok. Often, they’re very quick just responding to a question or showing a quick tip. That’s probably where I spend the most time. I make YouTube videos, like formal hosted YouTube videos. I shouldn’t say formal. They’re casual, but they’re like a full on hosted YouTube video. I try to publish a few a month. I’m not really on a strict schedule with that. I would like to be, but I’m just doing so many things right now that it’s hard to stay on a strict schedule with that. I am pretty active on Instagram too. I would say Instagram is where I am the most casual. I check in most days very casually what’s going on in the world of Baker Betty, keep people updated when I’m hosting classes and things like that. So those are the three places that I spend most of my time with. Now, we usually post my YouTube videos to Facebook and things like that. But reuse that content. TikToK is really where I’m spending most of my time. 

Megan Porta: How important is consistency in all of this? Do you feel like somebody needs to start doing video and be consistent and not drop off the face of the earth?

Kristin Hoffman: Kind of have in the middle thoughts about that. I do think that consistency is always good in this business. I think that when your followers know that you check in every other day or every day or whatever it is, once a week, I do think that helps them stay engaged with you, helps them remember you’re around. So I do think some consistency is definitely important. I don’t necessarily think that it has to be every day. But whatever that consistency is that you set up for yourself, I do think that is important. But I’m also a really big believer that we have to be okay with giving ourselves time and a break. Your core audience is not going to leave you if you do need to do that and you do that. I’m in the middle of that. I try to be pretty consistent with all of my social media platforms, but I’m also human and I think it’s absolutely okay to take breaks when you need to.

Megan Porta: Great message there too. I agree with that. I take long breaks on social media and when I come back, I’m always shocked that people are still there and they reply immediately. They’re never like, where have you been? It’s natural for people to go on vacation and need a mental break. So I think that’s a great message. Is there anything else you want to leave with food bloggers as far as just building up that confidence and getting into video, anything along those lines? 

Kristin Hoffman: Yeah, I would just say, really think about if you want to make a video, really consider why do you want to make a video? For me, it’s because I really enjoy teaching. I think that showing the video and being very visual with what I’m doing is very helpful for my audience. So that’s my reason. I’m trying to be the most helpful and accessible for my audience in regards to my teaching. But you probably have a different way. So I think it’s really helpful to consider what your reasoning is. You want to do a video. Then again, like I’ve said a million times in this. Give yourself permission to do it poorly, and don’t expect perfection from something that you’re just learning. You’re going to get better as you go along, you’ll keep learning and you will meet your expectations, but it’s going to take some time.

Megan Porta: Thank you for encouraging everyone today, Kristin. I think this is such an important message. We need to put ourselves out there more and it’s going to positively impact your business, but also your life. If you do it consistently and just keep showing up, put out that bad stuff, because it’s going to be bad, but it’s okay. Embrace that anyway. So thank you for all of this. I have so enjoyed talking to you today. 

Kristin Hoffman: I’ve so enjoyed talking to you too. Thanks for having me. 

Megan Porta: It’s been so fun. So do you have a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today? 

Kristin Hoffman: Yeah. It’s a very long quote. So I’ll have you look it up on your own, but look for the quote. It’s Ira Glass on creative process. He just talks about how he wishes somebody told him when he was a beginner that you’re going to get into this work because you have good taste, but your work in the beginning is going to be bad. It’s just going to take you creating a huge volume of work to get to the other side of that. Every once in a while, when I’m feeling super, super discouraged, I go and I read that quote from Ira Glass, and it really helps me keep pushing through. 

Megan Porta: I have heard that quote before. I think somebody, another guest on the show has actually used that. I love it. I think it is the most fitting quote for food bloggers, hands down. I’m so glad you brought that up. We will put together a show notes for you, Kristin. So if anyone wants to go look at that, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/bakerbettie and Bettie is spelled with an I E. Tell everyone where they can find you online, Kristin. 

Kristin Hoffman: Yeah, so I am at Baker Bettie everywhere, and Megan said, it’s Bettie with an I E, not a Y. So you can find me at Baker Bettie on TikToK, on Instagram, on YouTube Facebook. My website is bakerbettie.com. My book is Baker Bettie’s Better Baking book, which you can buy wherever books are sold. 

Megan Porta: Thanks again for being here, Kristin, and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

Outro: We’re glad you could join us on this episode of Eat Blog Talk. For more resources based on today’s discussion, as well as show notes and an opportunity to be on a future episode of the show, be sure to head to eatblogtalk.com. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll be here to feed you on Eat Blog Talk.


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