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Episode 332: Curb your Blogging Frustration – Building Community to Grow your Food Blog Quicker with Barbara Curry

In episode 332, Barbara Curry teaches us about why it’s essential to collaborate and build community as food bloggers and why this will help build and sustain our blogs. 

We cover information about how masterminds offer a support structure to learning, everyone has something to offer to these small groups, seeking out a business coach offers that 1:1 personal attention that levels you up and learn to grow with less frustration and gain more confidence.

Listen on the player below or on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Guest Details

Connect with Butter and Baggage
Website | Facebook | Instagram

Bio Married, mother of two strong independent girls, Barbara has been practicing law for 32 years representing people who have been injured at work. Barbara began her blog when she became an empty nester to grow as a hobby, but realized how much she loved it. In 2018, Barbara decided to make it into a business. Her blog focuses on comfort food with a Southern flair.

Takeaways

  • You need community. You might be able to do things alone, but you’ll grow stronger and learn faster with other experienced people cheering you on.
  • You are motivated when others are in the same race.
  • Reach out to other bloggers to ask questions and make connections.
  • Be purposeful in meeting and connecting with bloggers at conferences.
  • You can create informal masterminds of like minded bloggers to help one another until you want/need a formal one.
  • Masterminds are structured and each person in the group gets a hot seat moment. Everyone has something valuable to add.
  • When you pay for something, you’re more invested in showing up and being prepared.
  • Retreats are a great option for people who might enjoy a larger conference.

Resources Mentioned

Book Recommendation:

  • The Common Path to Uncommon Success
  • The Gap and the Gain

Podcasts:

  • EBT
  • The Blogging Millionaire
  • Influencer Entrepreneurs Podcast
  • Food Blogger Pro

Conferences and workshops by

  • Tastemaker
  • Eat Blog Talk

Transcript

Click for full transcript.

EBT332_Barbara Curry

Barbara Curry: Hi there. This is Barbara from Butter and Baggage, and you’re listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

Sponsor: 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. It adds value. I so very much appreciate your efforts with this. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay. Now onto the episode.

Megan Porta: Hello, food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast for food bloggers looking for the value and confidence that will move the needle forward in their businesses. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, MeganP orta, and you are listening to episode number 332. Today I am super excited to have Barbara Curry with me. She’s going to talk to us about building community while building a business. Married mother of two strong independent girls, Barbara has been practicing law for 32 years representing people who have been injured at work. Barbara began her blog when she became an empty nester to grow as a hobby, but realized how much she loved it. Her blog is Butter and Baggage, by the way. In 2018, Barbara decided to make it into a business. Her blog focuses on comfort food with a Southern flare. Barbara, super, super excited to have you on the podcast, finally, today with me. How are you doing? 

Barbara Curry: I’m doing great, a little old nasally with some head congestion, but I’m feeling great. We’ll get through it. 

Megan Porta: I’m a little, I don’t know something going on with my throat too. So we’re in this together. 

Barbara Curry: All right, so we’ll get through it. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. We’ll get through it.

Barbara Curry: So what is your fun fact before we dig into your awesome topic? Normally my fun fact is that I’m a food blogger or a food photographer, but it’s not a very fun fact here. So I picked another one that I think really goes along with what we are gonna talk about today. That is that I became a distance runner when I was 53. So something that I hadn’t done before. I just love running a long distance. My race is a half marathon. That’s what I trained for. But what I realized with running and why I think it’s so like food blogging, is that I couldn’t have done it alone. 

Megan Porta: So you need a team of people supporting you. You probably have running friends, right? 

Barbara Curry: I do. Before I had started, I had always exercised. I loved to hike and things like that, but I had never run more than three miles. So the thought of running, six miles, a 10K or a half marathon was just something I thought I could never do. So I joined a group to train for it, to train for a 10K and then after that, a half marathon. I think that joining the group did help me, and it’s not that I couldn’t have run a half marathon or a 10K without friends and without a group, but I don’t think I could’ve done it well. I think that the end result would’ve been that I would’ve gotten injured. I think that’s what happens with a lot of runners is that they become a distance runner and then they become injured. So I joined a group. With that group, I learned all the basics that experienced runners already knew; what kind of clothes to wear, what kind of things to keep from chafing. Gadgets, the wonderful gels that you can get to get you through a race. Just having that camaraderie and learning the basics, just made this something that I loved and knew that I could do for the rest of my life. 

Megan Porta: There are so many parallels with that in food blogging, and I wrote down, we don’t want to become injured food bloggers. That’s kinda the moral, right?

Barbara Curry: We don’t. I think sometimes we can feel that way. So when I started with this group, the goal was just to finish a 10K and then to finish a half marathon, not to race it competitively, but just to get through it. I think that’s how we are with our blogs, when we start out. But eventually my goals changed. I finished it and I’m like I really like this, but I don’t wanna just finish a race. I wanna be competitive and I wanna improve. I wanna be faster. So I found out that I needed to change. I needed to do something different and find a new group. Find a new group that was more competitive and not just running to complete, but that could run fast. That was really outside of my comfort zone. I felt very intimidated by these really fast runners that had run Boston and all of that. So I went to a running camp. I was just so nervous about going to running camp. Oh, I’m not a runner. How can I go to a running camp? I think that’s what we do with conferences, with the food blog. I know that’s how I felt when I first went to my first conference. Then, from there I learned so much at running camp that I’m like, okay I know that I can do this now, but I know I need more help. Then I got a running coach. So I have a running coach and I’ve had him for years and he helps me train. I just have this camaraderie with him and with the people that I met at running camp. The result was that I am very competitive. I’ve run lots and lots of half marathons. I have not been injured. I run them at a pace that I want to run, but I’m not injured. It’s something that I think I can do for the rest of my life, which is really, that was the goal for me after first finishing.

Megan Porta: Yeah. Because you wanna enjoy it. You want to excel, you want to get better. But what you said is so key. Ultimately you don’t wanna be injured because when you’re injured, everything shuts down. 

Barbara Curry: Yes. Then you can’t do it. I think just what I learned from having this group that I could always go and ask. When I go to running camp, I’ve been several times, you just go and you just get invigorated. It’s oh, you’re so motivated. Okay. They did this or I wanna really try that race. You get so much support from people that do the same things that you do and love the same things that you do. 

Megan Porta: I don’t know that any fun fact has ever tied in so well with the theme. Usually it’s totally off the wall and then we’re like, okay, so anyway, let’s move on to the topic. But this is so perfect because this mirrors your experience with blogging. This is what you’re gonna talk about. Why we need to collaborate, why we need that community. Did your experience with running and everything that you just talked through, make you more aware of this, do you think? Or is it something that once you were blogging, you’re like, oh wait. That’s so crazy. Did you realize it beforehand or after?

Barbara Curry: I wish I had realized it before and made that correlation because I really wish I would’ve collaborated and done it much sooner. But it was something that kind of came to me, I would say in the last year. That wait, I have used this idea. I got a running coach and I went to running camp. There are some correlations and those things helped me there. Maybe they could help me, in the food blogging world too.

Megan Porta: Yeah. So how did things start to change once you realized you needed collaboration? I guess maybe we could talk about first of all, the different ways that you dug into it and then we’ll get to how it helped you. 

Barbara Curry: Yeah. I think that, coming at it, maybe as a little bit older blogger, a lot of it was like a foreign language to me. I didn’t grow up with computers. I didn’t have a computer until I was in law school. It wasn’t that I didn’t have one, but they didn’t have computers really until, like the laptop. Ones that you could have at home and yeah. The same with cell phones. So a lot of that is not intuitive for me. After I started, I just realized that there was so much that I didn’t know. I didn’t really have anyone to ask. I could ask my kids and they could help me out with some technical things. But I think that’s when I realized that I really needed some help from people, someone I could talk to. I think that’s where I started. The journey is realizing how, once I decided to go from a hobby to a business, that I was really going to need some help. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. So where did you look first?

Barbara Curry: I first went to a conference and I went to Everything Food Conference in 2017 and my thought was okay, if I’m gonna make this a business, I need to go and I need to learn. I had done a lot of things online. But again, I think it’s hard to learn things in a vacuum sometimes. So I thought the conference would be great. I felt so out of my league when I went there. I had less than a thousand views a month and I wasn’t doing anything like I am now or things that any blogger should be doing. I didn’t meet anyone. I felt just like, I am in a foreign country and I don’t speak the language. That’s what it was. People were talking about all these words. I don’t even know what that means. But I went and I learned a lot from the actual speakers. But I just did not meet anyone, not a single person. So I decided to go back in 2019 and my goal was not to learn anything, but to meet someone. To find someone that I could meet, that I could continue to form a relationship with. I was successful the second time around and met a couple of people, turned out to be great friends and people I could collaborate with. The start of my collaboration was going to that conference. I know there’s not quite as many conferences now as there was before COVID. That was how I started. 

Megan Porta: Then outside of conferences, because you mentioned there aren’t as many now. And the ones that are around are great, but they only come around like maybe once a year and we need more collaboration than that. So outside of conferences, what are some other ways that you and other people could collaborate with food bloggers? 

Barbara Curry: The first way I did, and this was before I had monetized the blog. It’s hard to invest money and when you’re not making any money from it. So the first way I did that was just an informal mastermind group, I guess is what you would call it. Those were people that I had met at that conference. We just decided that we would have a monthly meeting and just talk about things. So that was so helpful for me to have someone that could walk me through things or could explain what they were doing. I think anyone can do that regardless of where you are financially. Is if you can find someone and sometimes that’s really hard to do. It was hard for me to find someone and I have reached out to people, like on Instagram and they just never respond. But then you’ll reach out to someone and they will. So I think that there are ways that you can find these friends. Find someone, even if it’s just one or two people that you can talk to informally. That really made a huge difference for me. Going into that conference in 2019, I had a thousand page views. Due to these people that helped me and were willing to hold my hand a little bit and say, okay, you need these basics, you need to do some of these things and push me, I was able to get on Mediavine, qualify for Mediavine before the end of the year. That was all just due to this informal group that we had, that met every month. Just chat about things and what was going on with our blogs. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, it really doesn’t require much. Just like you said, reaching out on maybe Instagram or somewhere on social media. If you feel like you align with somebody and just ask them if they wanna start a group with you. Most likely, they’re probably looking for people too. I love how far that took you, just meeting with them. How long would you say you met before you saw those results on Mediavine?

Barbara Curry: I think if I remember right, the Everything Food Conference was in May of 2019 and I qualified in November. Now in that year, you only had to have 25,000 sessions to qualify. I know it’s increased since then. So it was just right before COVID, November before that. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Then after your informal group, you saw the need to maybe start investing in ways to get together with people. Talk us through that. 

Barbara Curry: Then Covid hit. But I was monetized. My thought process was, and this is different for everyone else. Again, I’m practicing full time, so I had a little bit of extra money that I could use to invest. But then once I started to make any money, I put all the money that I made from Mediavine into investing in the business. I started a paid mastermind group in February of 2021. That was very different from my informal group, because it was more structured. We had something that we talked about every week. You had a hot seed where you were, you had an opportunity to talk about some issue that you were working on or something you just wanted a round table with someone or get ideas. That I think really made the difference. I think part of it too, is when you pay for something, you’re more invested in it, or at least I am. If something. Free was like I’ll do it when I get around to it, but this, I put money on the table for this. And I was gonna show up and be prepared and try to help other people. I think that’s what was nice about this first paid mastermind. I was very intimidated and nervous and I’m not gonna have anything to add and I don’t wanna just take information from people. I wanna have something to add. But I think what I learned in that first group was that, regardless of your experience level, everyone has something to add. I think everyone has something valuable to add in the group. It was in that group and I found that I had things that people found were valuable. I was always so surprised. I think people were thinking, oh, I can’t join a mastermind because I don’t have anything to add, or I’m not a big blogger, you don’t have to be to have something valuable.

Megan Porta: Every person brings a unique story, a unique set of skills, unique perspective. There’s so many things that every single person brings that adds value to the group as a whole. You are part of the Eat Blog Talk mastermind. There are people inside of there who are like, I don’t know what I can do. They said this to us out loud. Maybe you are one of them, Barbara. I don’t know what I can add here. I hope that I can add value. All of those people are so valuable in the group and you know who I’m talking about. There’s one person who has intense, immense marketing knowledge and she just brings it to every hot seat. We’re like, whoa. We’ve got so many different perspectives. So even when you don’t think that you do, Barbara’s saying you do. Everyone brings something unique to the table. 

Barbara Curry: You do. I think that, what this mastermind does is, it’s kinda like tough love. You become really very good friends with these people. We’ve been meeting since February or this new group since November, but you get to know these people, all of them. I feel like they are my best friends and I have met a couple of them now in person. But it’s not easy. We will tell you, if you bring an idea and we think it’s just bad, then we’re gonna tell you. Or the one person we were talking about the marketing, she’s always like, why do you wanna do that? What do you think that’s gonna bring to your blog? What’s your ROI? You’re on the spot, but it’s your hot seat. You better be ready because you’re gonna be grilled. Why do you wanna do this? Or why do you think it’s gonna help? That’s what you need. You need someone objective to say, does this really align with what you’re doing? Just because someone else is doing it doesn’t mean you need to do it. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. In the most loving way. It’s never, like I’ve never, ever felt like people were slamming each other and being really critical in a negative way. It’s always helpful, constructive and valuable. Even if it is tough, I’ve been in a few hot seats where I’m like, Ooh, that, that was hard. I’m sure that was hard to hear, but that’s why we do these groups. 

Barbara Curry: I don’t think you need a mastermind for someone to say, oh, you’re Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. You don’t need that. You got your kids and your spouse, your family to do that for you. You need someone who can be objective and is in the same business as you are that can point out the problems that you might be having. Or, wow. Did you think about going in this direction? You’re like, oh my God, I never thought about that. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Or adding this new project to your business or this new layer of your business when someone may have never, literally, never thought of that idea before. Then also just being in a place where people understand you. I think we can all relate to that feeling of in real life being very misunderstood by even someone as close to us as our spouse and kids. They really don’t know the depth of it because it’s just such a weird, odd job, hobby. So to have a group of people who completely get that, I think is so valuable. What do you think about that? 

Barbara Curry: I agree. It’s just a place where you can just ask what you think is a stupid question and it’s not a stupid question. It’s a no judgment place where you can, maybe you knew how to do it once and you forgot, and it’s gonna take you an hour to figure it out again, you can ask a question and they’re like point you in the right direction and in five minutes, you can get it done. So just having that place where you can ask what you consider stupid questions. No one thinks it’s stupid because everyone has questions that they need answered that someone else can answer quickly for them possibly. So I think that’s a nice, safe haven where there just isn’t any judgment. 

Megan Porta: It’s a judgment free zone. It’s very safe. It’s very constructive.

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Megan Porta: Okay. So talk about other avenues that you’ve explored to collaborate. 

Barbara Curry: I read the book, Common Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas. Probably a lot of your listeners have read that. One of the things he suggested was to get a coach. So I reached out to someone I admired and asked if they would be willing to be a coach. I’m like, I don’t know what a coach is going to do. Is this gonna be the way to go? This is a lot of money. Should I really be doing this? But I think as an individual, as much as the mastermind is fantastic, I think that having a coach really focused on me and what direction I should be going or not should be, but different directions. I could receive ideas and that person knows my fears and knows my time constraints and can push me in directions where I can see success. More than anything, it gives me confidence to try things that I would not have tried before or would not have even thought that, oh, this is something I can do. So I thought that was my next step in my collaboration, was getting a coach. I’m really glad that I did that. 

Megan Porta: I think this is something that a lot of food bloggers look over because even if they’re involved in a group, like a mastermind group, they think that covers the coaching side of it. But there’s so much value in having someone who, like you said, knows you, knows your fears. Know where you need to improve. I hired a business coach as well in the past. It’s been a little over a year ago. I had the same fear as Barbara. I was like, holy crap. This is a lot of money. Is this okay? I had never written to check that big in my life. But oh my goodness, the growth that comes from having someone one on one, encouraging you, supporting you. Holding you accountable, telling you like different ways to look at your business and your life even, it’s so valuable. I never would have guessed that. But once I’ve experienced it, now that I’ve experienced it, I think, oh my gosh, everyone who is serious about growing their business, needs to find a great coach.

Barbara Curry: I think one part of it that you touched on is accountability. You’re gonna talk to this person however often, once a month or whatever. You’re like, oh man. I said I was gonna do that the last time I talked to them and I haven’t done that. I need to get up and do that. The mastermind doesn’t really do that. I think the coach really can, but I think a coach can really kinda hold your feet to the fire. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, for sure. Okay. What else have you explored? 

Barbara Curry: One of the things I did was a workshop through Tastemaker on brands. I had never done any paid sponsored brands before. I went to their workshop, just a few people, four people there, total. I was so intimidated. These people are such big bloggers and that’s not me. But out of that would really develop great friendships. It was a great workshop. I immediately got two paid sponsored posts with brands that I just loved. Just some photography work. So it was a great experience, if you can find these small workshops. Again, it’s just a great way to collaborate with a small group of people. And, I know that I can call any of them and ask them a question or get their advice on something and they would stop what they were doing and answer that right away. So it’s just great to have those types of people. If that’s something that’s in your wheelhouse.

Megan Porta: Yes. And tastemaker is known for putting on amazing workshops. The people are always great too. I’m so glad you got so much value out of that. You did join me in a retreat recently. Do you wanna talk about that?

Barbara Curry: I did. That was the last way that I have collaborated with people. I’d never done a retreat before. But since conferences, I would say I’m an introvert and conferences are hard for me. I like to be able to talk to people I know, but if there’s no people I know, then conferences are difficult. I just felt that a retreat would be more up my alley. So I went there to retreat in Minneapolis, and got to see the wonderful state. I had not been before. It was beautiful and we stayed in this great big, old house with 10 of us. I have to say, the people in this group were fantastic. Completely different levels. We had someone that had just started their blog, I think three months ago. And people that are killing it and have been doing it a long time. Some really big name people. Then some kind of us in between. Everyone had a different type of blog and a different style and different things that they were expertise in. Everyone chose something that they wanted to talk about. They didn’t have to, but I think everyone chose something that they felt comfortable with. We just learned all kinds of things that I had not thought about. From organizing your freezer with Lucy’s amazing Air Table template. Which puts me to shame. But also Facebook and Instagram and things that maybe are not my strengths, but are other people’s strengths. So I thought it was just a great way to learn a few little nuggets, but also to bond with people. You were with them for three days and eating together and just enjoying each other’s company and getting to know new people. I think sometimes in your life that you don’t meet a lot of new people, like in your regular nonbusiness life, at a point in your life. So it was fun just to get to meet these people and get to know them. So I thought that was a great experience. 

Megan Porta: And to learn what fake ice was, right? 

Barbara Curry: Yeah. That’s right. Fake ice. 

Megan Porta: Most of us were like, what is this stuff? There’s something called acrylic, fake ice. It looks like ice, but it’s not. 

Barbara Curry: You didn’t master how to open up a can of beans without a can’t opener, but so maybe we shouldn’t be on a survival show.

Megan Porta: Or maybe the moral of the story is to ask beforehand. That sounds a little silly to have to ask if there’s gonna be a can opener and coffee filters in the house, but I will be doing that from now on. You can’t live without coffee at a retreat. Come on. Okay. So you mentioned so many ways to collaborate. I love that you have dug into all of these avenues, and I think you are such a good example of how somebody has used this to really grow your business quickly. So talk through some of the ways, all of these things you’ve just talked about, have helped you. 

Barbara Curry: Yeah. Sure. So part of the reason that, one of the reasons I think,me more than maybe other people needed to collaborate was that I have a full-time job and it’s not just a nine to five job. It can go long and lots of hours. So I really needed information and I needed people that I could talk to. Especially starting out. So what collaboration did for me was it increased my page views so that I initially qualified for Adthrive just a few months after we started with the mastermind and the coaching I was able to get from Mediavine to Adthrive. My page views increased substantially. I was able to get paid sponsored work, which I really enjoyed doing. I was able to get paid photography jobs. That was something that I really didn’t even know that I would like to do, but I just had the courage to go out and ask a restaurant if I could shoot a photograph for them. They said, yes. They hired me. So that was just great because I realized how much I loved doing that. Without someone pushing me, I don’t think I would’ve tried it. I’m like, I’m not a photographer. I can’t do that. That was a great bonus. I also just got, along with the friendships that come with collaborating, that just helps with that I think what all bloggers might have, is that FOMO. Oh, I’m missing out on something or I need to take this course, or I need to take that course. You can talk to someone and say, oh, have you taken this? Or have you heard about this? Did it help you? It helps make decisions easier. But I think that the biggest thing, other than the friendships and obviously my blog is growing and that’s just fantastic. But I went from just being totally frustrated with things and not knowing, oh, am I doing this right? Or do I really need to do this? Or should I be doing that, to a point where I can figure things out. I still need advice and help and collaboration. But it’s not this just total frustration that I don’t know where to go next, or am I doing this wrong? Am I screwing things up? Am I gonna mess everything up? Or is Google gonna start hating me? All of those things that I just got out of it. So what it allowed me is to go from just being so frustrated with it, that am I ever gonna be able to figure this out, to now I can do it and still be frustrated with things. But I can just enjoy it and I love it. So I wanted to be able to succeed in it. Collaborating in so many different ways has just allowed me to get past that frustration with not knowing how to do something. So now when I come across something that I don’t know how to do, I have all these resources. Like, oh last time I did this and I went there, so let me go look there and try to figure it out. So I think I’ve just developed the tools to be able to figure things out on my own. I think that’s just been a great resource.

Megan Porta: So tools, but also confidence. When I first met you, I could sense that frustration. And it’s not just you, Barbara, it’s all of us. We all feel that at some point. We’re frustrated, we’re overwhelmed. We don’t know if we’re working on the right things. You evolved into someone who just had more confidence and with your photography and reaching out to the restaurants and that built on your confidence. Then each new thing that you’ve tried and each new goal that you’ve achieved, like your Adthrive goal you made, in a really short amount of time, everything builds up and it’s really been fun to watch and to have a front row seat to see you evolve in that way. To know that collaborating has been really the base of it all. So from my perspective, it’s been really fun to watch that evolution.

Barbara Curry: I hope people that are just starting out or maybe are just by themselves and don’t have anyone to collaborate with, that maybe listening to this will encourage them to reach out to people. Because I know all the people that I am friends with in the blogging world, if anyone DMs them or emailed them, they would stop what they were doing and help them. I think not just me, but anyone that I know, would do it. I think as a new blogger or just maybe someone that’s been doing it for a while, but doesn’t have friends, they think that, oh, they’re not gonna answer me. They’re big bloggers. But that’s not how it is. I think this community, the community that I’ve learned about and have become friends with, are not like that. It’s not competitive. It’s very much a collaborative group. 

Megan Porta: Yes, it’s so true. 

Barbara Curry: I’m really grateful to be part of it. 

Megan Porta: It is so true. I’ve never had anyone be a jerk to me ever. The worst that has happened is I’ve reached out and people just haven’t replied, but probably because they’re busy. So after listening to Barbara and all of this amazing stuff she’s saying, if you feel like you need your people, you need to find those people that are gonna support you or that person, just do it. Do something today to reach out to somebody to just extend that hand and see what happens. Because most likely they’re going to reciprocate and then you’ll have a friendship, if nothing else. One thing I wanted to touch on. So you talked about all of these amazing ways this has helped you. Collaboration has helped you. Something else that came to mind was just being relevant. Like staying relevant with all of the tools and the platforms that emerge. All of the new ways you can gain traffic. Web stories came to mind because someone in the mastermind group, I think it was the mastermind group, took off with web stories. So then they were like, okay, here’s what worked for me. The rest of you guys have to do this too. So it’s a really good way to just know exactly what’s working for people and then implement it into your own business. 

Barbara Curry: Yes I agree. That’s another kind of benefit of being the mastermind. There’s been some that were early, got into the Pinterest idea pins early. So then when I got approved, I had someone to ask and they were like, okay, this is what we’re doing and this is how we’re doing success. So I didn’t have to experiment quite so much. But yeah, we all just share ways that we’re being successful and that might help someone else. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Like you said earlier, it’s not a competition. We willingly freely share because we genuinely want the others to feel supported and grow their businesses too. Then I wanna mention your podcast because you’re starting a podcast and this is something that maybe you would’ve done otherwise, but I’m thinking you probably wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t have the support of a group.

Barbara Curry: I can say absolutely I would not have done it or even thought about doing it. I had listened to podcasts. I enjoy them. But I just thought, what can I talk about? But I am going to be starting one maybe in the next month. Probably in August, but we’re working on it. Then it’s gonna be about sharing your favorite recipe. So I’m gonna talk to different people. Everyone’s got a favorite recipe. So I thought it’d be a good way to share those with the world.

Megan Porta: And to add a new depth to your business, and you’re gonna attract a new audience. There’s so many things, other things that come along with it that I’m excited to watch unfold for you. But yeah, that’s been super fun too. I can’t wait for your launch date. I will be your biggest fan. Anything we have forgotten Barbara that you wanna make sure we mention?

Barbara Curry: Like you said, we mentioned the web stories and how someone suggested that. I was doing web stories a little bit, but they had a different way of doing it. Once I started doing it, I changed the way I was doing it and getting some of their advice from doing it. My web stories just took off and that really brought a lot of traffic to my site. So I think just those little things that you might not think about. You are like, oh, I can figure this out on my own. Someone that’s already doing it and that’s found success can share those nuggets with you. That’s what we all do in the mastermind group. 

Megan Porta: This was amazing. I have loved chatting with you in this format. I’ve been asking you to come onto the podcast for a while, and I’m so glad that you finally did. So thank you Barbara, for your time today. 

Barbara Curry: Oh, you’re welcome. I loved it. 

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

Barbara Curry: I do. The reason for this quote is that I wanted to start a blog because I just read about people that were successful, later in their life, after 50. Is there still something you can be successful in? I’m very successful in my legal practice, but I just wanted something different. So that’s what the motivation was behind starting the blog. One of my favorite quotes is from CS Lewis, who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. He wrote those in his fifties and those became a really popular children’s book, that they’re still popular now. They were very popular when I was growing up. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Loved them. 

Barbara Curry: But a quote from him that I just love is that, “you’re never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” To me, that just resonates with me.

Megan Porta: Aw. I love that. It’s never too late. Never. Awesome. We’ll put together a show notes page for you, Barbara. So if anyone wants to go look at those head over to eatblogtalk.com/butterandbaggage. Share with everyone where they can find you on your website and on social media, et cetera. 

Barbara Curry: My website is butterandbaggage.com and all my social media is Butter and Baggage. So the, and is spelled out. 

Megan Porta: Do you have a name for your podcast yet? Just to have it because by the time this is published, that could be a thing. Or are we on hold for that? 

Barbara Curry: My goal is August. So, hopefully sometime in August. 

Megan Porta: Okay. And do you know what you’re calling it? 

Barbara Curry: I don’t have an exact name yet. So we’re still working on it. 

Megan Porta: So to be continued. Look at show notes for that information. All right. Thank you again, Barbara for being here and thank you so much for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

Barbara Curry: Bye. Thank you.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Please share this episode with a friend who would benefit from tuning in. I will see you next time.


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Megan
Megan

Megan started her food blog Pip and Ebby in 2010 and food blogging has been her full-time career since 2013. Her passion for blogging has grown into an intense desire to help fellow food bloggers find the information, insight, and community they need in order to find success.

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