In episode 281, we talk with Cate Brubaker about how she turned her side hustle blog into a full-time income in late 2020 and how she used growing her email list quickly to benefit her blog’s success.
We cover information about how to host a free internet bundle, how a season where you typically have a slump can be the time to dive into the creation of it and be sure not to overcomplicate things for yourself and your audience.
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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Cate makes it easy for home bakers to travel the world from their kitchens, level up their baking skills, and get more oohhs and aahhs from family and friends. For Cate, baking and dessert-making is about having fun, sharing joy, and being a life-long learner rather than creating a picture-perfect product. So grab your apron, get out your mixing bowl, and have some fun with Cate!
Takeaways
- A bundle is a grouping of paid products that are offered for free for a specific amount of time as a great way for your audience and the other people who are part of the bundle for their audience, to get to know other bloggers and to get a paid product for free.
- Think about a time you naturally have a slump in traffic and plan to use that time to launch a bundle.
- Name your bundle and set a date so you know when it’s going to be offered.
- You can pitch ideas and find bloggers to participate in Facebook groups.
- Always ask for recommendations from people who join you to keep finding good recommendations.
- Look for complimentary bloggers/products to offer, not competitive products.
- You can make niche bundles and really target a new audience.
- The commitment level to making a bundle can be 4-5 hours a week in the first couple months, totaling about 40 hours, then the week before it launches, a more concentrated amount.
- Technology is simple products currently being used by bloggers: Google docs, Convertkit, Canva and Air Table
- Important to create scripts and graphics for other bloggers to use to make it simple for them to participate and help give the audience receiving the information the same information.
- A big benefit of running a bundle is that you really get to know other bloggers and have a wider network of peers.
Resources Mentioned
Inbox Besties with Kate Doster podcast
Fresh Start Cooking & Baking Free bundle!
Transcript
Click for full text.
281 Cate Brubaker
Cate Brubaker: Hi, this is Cate Brewbaker from International Desserts blog, 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: Hey there, 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 your business. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, Megan Porta, and you’re listening to episode number 281. Today, Cate is here joining me on the mic today. She is going to talk to us about how to grow your email subscriber list by hundreds in five days or less by hosting a free bundle. CAte is the founder and owner of International Desserts blog, a side hustle she turned into a full-time income in late 2020. She makes it easy for home bakers to travel the world from their kitchens, level up their baking skills and get more oohs and aahs from family and friends. For Cate, baking and dessert making is more about having fun, challenging herself, sharing joy, being a lifelong learner than creating a picture perfect product.
Hey Cate, it’s so good to have you back here for your second Eat Blog Talk interview. I always love talking to you. Thank you for joining me today. Before we get into our talk, which is going to be amazing. Why don’t you give us a second fun fact about yourself?
Cate Brubaker: Sure. I’m really excited to be back. It’s always fun talking with you. So my fun fact is that I have a PhD in German applied linguistics.
Megan Porta: Okay. You have to explain what that is. I have no idea what that is.
Cate Brubaker: It basically means I spent many years learning all about linguistics and how people learn languages, specifically German.
Megan Porta: Oh my gosh. Your last fun fact was also about. Germany. So you had two German themed fun facts. I love it. Awesome. Let’s talk about this because this is something we don’t discuss enough here on Eat Blog Talk. I think this is going to be a really valuable resource and avenue for food bloggers to explore. So free bundles, you have hosted your own free bundle that from my perspective was a wild success. So can you just tell food bloggers what we are talking about? What a free bundle is? Just define it and talk about it just a little bit.
Cate Brubaker: Sure. So it’s basically a bundle of paid products that are offered for free for a specific amount of time. That could be just a few days. It could be five days. It might even be a little bit longer. So it’s a great way for your audience and the other people who are part of the bundle for their audience, to get to know other bloggers and to get a paid product for free.
Megan Porta: That explains it perfectly. I think a lot of us have participated in something like this, but on the receiving end. Because there are some really well-known, Kate Doster, for example. I know that a lot of people are familiar with her and you’re going to talk about her in a bit. But she provides this free bundle a couple times a year. I don’t even know how often. But I know a lot of food bloggers have gotten in on that action. From our perspective, it’s really valuable because you’re getting free content. A lot of it during a really short window of time.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah, exactly. Somebody sent me an email for Kate Doster’s, I think it was a business bundle. I was intrigued because it was free. So I signed up for it and I downloaded a few things. Then I looked at how she did it because I’ve run three summits previously for a different business that I have. I always had a paid bundle for those summits. I hadn’t thought about doing a free bundle. So as I was going through how Kate did everything, I thought, oh, I can do this. This is so similar to what I’ve done before. I loved the idea of doing it for my International Desserts blog and doing something more food blog focused.
Megan Porta: With something like this, the currency is the email subscribers, right? That’s the real reason people put these things on because they want to build up their subscriber lists.
Cate Brubaker: Right.
Megan Porta: Yeah. Okay. So you saw Kate dusters business bundle and you were inspired and you were like, okay, I’m going to try this myself. What did you first do to dig into it? How hard was it? Can you talk us through the process from start to finish of how you built it up?
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. I saw Kate’s bundle first and I thought, okay, I’m gonna do this at some point. That was the spring of 2021, I think. Then about June, July, I suddenly had this big dip in traffic. I had a big dip in people signing up for my email list and I thought I need to get creative here because things aren’t quite going the way I had planned. It was the summer slump. Everybody wanted to finally be out of their house and do things. I think I also got hit by that Google update around that time. So I thought, oh, I can do a free bundle. I can try this out. This is the perfect time. So I set the date for the end of August. I called it The Fresh Start Cooking and Baking bundle. I’d wanted to do something that was going into a new season. So like a fresh start going into the fall season. I was really starting from scratch because at that time I didn’t really know too many other food bloggers. So I thought, okay, I need to find people to be in this. I decided to keep the topic pretty open because I didn’t know a lot of other people who had baking blogs or dessert blogs that had products.
I first went into a Facebook group that I’m part of. I pitched the idea. I said, hey, who wants to be part of this? We can all build our email lists. I got some people that way. Then I met you and I invited you to be in the bundle. Then I started asking people, like I asked you. Can you recommend anyone? Then I just kept asking people who then decided they wanted to join. Can you recommend somebody? So I ended up with this really nice group. This really great group of people who had products that were all complimentary, but not really competitive. It was just a nice well-rounded bundle.
Megan Porta: Okay. So it was a very, just general theme for you, but that worked well as your first foray into this. Would you do something more specific if you did it again?
Cate Brubaker: That’s a really good question and I have thought about it. I think I will for the next one, actually, I’m planning on doing another one and I’m going to focus it more on baking and dessert making. So we’ll see. I’m really curious to see if it works better to make it more niche, or if having something general was a little bit better. I don’t know. We’ll see. I’ll have to tell you the results after I do the next one.
Megan Porta: Okay. To be continued on that answer. So we’ll maybe talk about that again later. But I would be really curious to hear that because I know that as a home cook and a home baker, you might be intrigued by the more general theme. But I can also see being more intrigued by a niche theme. So I’m really curious about that. So after that, you established your theme, got some people. By the way, I love how you just kept asking people. Hey, do you have a reference? Do you have someone to refer to? That is the best way to get people on board with your project or even just to get to know people. Just keep asking people, especially people that you like. If you like them, then probably they’re likable and they have other awesome people in their networks. So I think that’s really smart. So what did you do after that? Did you have a lot to do with setting up tech and all of that, or how did all of that go?
Cate Brubaker: Actually, to me, it didn’t seem like it was too difficult or that much work, because like I said, I’ve run summits before, and those are huge amounts of work. Those take months to plan and implement. So doing this for your bundle seemed super easy compared to that. I gave myself a couple of months and I had that August deadline. Then, like during June and July, a lot of people are out. So I basically just spent that time coming up with a theme and reaching out to people.
Then at the very end of July, that’s when I started confirming with everybody that they were going to be in it. I got the last few people in and I had everybody submit all their information to me in a survey, in Airtable. I kept everything organized in the Airtable because I use Airtable for everything. So I had everyone submit all their information through Airtable. So I had all that in one place. Then when everyone was away during that time in June and July, I was starting to create the sign up page, the download page. I started writing the email. I wrote a lot. I had a lot of copy that the participants could use and they could draw on that and then customize it for their own needs. So I worked on all of those things and then I think it was maybe the beginning of August. That’s when I really started getting everything finalized.
So I created all the graphics, all the images, the promo images. Got the landing page, the sign up page finished. I got the download page finished. Then I started checking in with all the people who were in the bundle. I just kept checking in to make sure everything was on track. Make sure they had everything they needed. See if I could answer any questions and then probably a week before it went live. I actually went through and tested everybody’s page. I went through and tested, went through their entire funnel just to make sure that everything worked really well. Tested all the links a bunch of times. There were a couple of little things where I, I thought, Hey, we need to fix this or just alter this a little bit to make it a smoother process. I also started teasing it to my list, at the beginning of August. I let them know that something was coming and giving them all a few details and what the launch date was. Then the week came, when we launched it, everybody started sending out their emails and promoting on social media. So I just spent the week that it was live, I was emailing my list and then I was emailing the list that the bundle list specifically. The process really wasn’t overwhelming or too difficult at all.
Megan Porta: Yeah. You make it sound so easy and you make it look so easy too. From my perspective, you were super streamlined. You were so efficient and you did all of that upfront work for us. So the promo graphics that you mentioned and the copy, social media copy. I think you even had templates for emails, right?
Cate Brubaker: I did.
Megan Porta: Yeah. Doing that was so helpful for me because food bloggers are busy and we love doing these sorts of things. It’s great to be a part of a bundle and get more email subscribers, but it’s also maybe you didn’t necessarily put it in your calendar, so you don’t have time slotted to spend a ton of time on this. So you doing all of that work upfront made it so easy for me. So it’s like a no-brainer. Of course I’m going to do this. I love supporting Cate and I want more email subscribers. That was my perspective there.
Cate Brubaker: Oh, that’s great to hear. I’m so happy about that.
Megan Porta: Yeah. I have a few questions as you were talking, I came up with a couple. How much time would you say you invested total? Everything that you talked through, could you put a number of hours to that?
Cate Brubaker: Oh, that is such a good question because I did a little bit here and there and here and there over a few months. Oh my God.
Megan Porta: You don’t need to answer that if you don’t want to, but I’m just curious. If someone is thinking of doing something like this and they’re thinking, if it takes 10 hours of prep time, yeah I’m in. If it takes 40 hours of prep, I’m out.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah, my gut is saying around 40. It’s probably around there. I opened it up to anyone who wanted to chat with me just because I love doing these kinds of chats. Not including those kinds of chats, probably about 40 hours, I’m guessing. Maybe a little bit more. That doesn’t include what I did during the week of the launch, but that was only probably four or five hours, maybe tops during the week of the launch.
Megan Porta: It sounds like those 40 hours that you’re talking about are very split up. So it’s not like you have to dedicate an entire week to this. It’s over the course of a few months.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. It really was just, a couple of hours here, a couple hours there. Maybe I spent one day going through and just getting as much set up as I possibly could, but it really wasn’t very intense at all. I also spent time chatting with people. It was so much fun just to get on Zoom. Actually, it was funny because I was talking with one of the participants. We had been talking for 45 minutes or an hour or so before we realized that we live 20 minutes from each other.
Megan Porta: Oh, my gosh. That’s so cool.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. That’s why it’s so fun to actually get to know the people who are in the bundle. Another person that I talked to, we found out we graduated the same year. I graduated from high school the same year. So it’s just really fun to get to know people. One of my goals with this was to build my email list, but I also just really wanted to expand my network of food bloggers because my food blog had always just been on the side. It was fun. It made money, but it wasn’t my main focus. So when I decided that it was going to be more of my main focus, I thought I need to have a community of food bloggers who I can collaborate with and get to know. So this was a great way to do that.
Megan Porta: There is no better way to grow your business and your network than to invite people into really fun projects like this. You did it out of a necessity. You needed these people to come into your project and support you and you support them, but it was like a little bonus, right? You actually get to know people. You find that someone lives really close to you and now you have a connection forever.
Cate Brubaker: It just makes the whole process fun. It really didn’t feel like work. There was maybe a time when I was writing the email copy. That seemed a little bit like work or when I was writing copy just seems like work to me, but everything else was just so much fun. It was really enjoyable. It was actually a really great summer project. It’s one of those things where I would definitely do it again.
Megan Porta: How many people contributed to your bundle and what do you recommend for others?
Cate Brubaker: I think it has about 10 total. It was about 10. There was another person who was going to participate. She had some emergency come up, so she wasn’t able to. But I think that’s right about 10. I found that to be a good number because that made the number of people that the bundle went out to be pretty much perfect. But it wasn’t so big that it was overwhelming to manage on my end. I also think it’s good for the people who are signing up to access the materials. You want to have enough that there’s a good variety, a good selection, but you don’t want too many so that it’s just overwhelming. I actually signed up for a free bundle a couple months ago and they had some huge numbers, like 50 or something. It was this gigantic number. It took me a really long time to go through and even decide what I wanted. It was great that there was such a big selection. I started to get confused as to what I was downloading and, and I thought, okay, this is way too many. So I think 10 is a good number. You could even go up to 20, but personally I would keep it in the range of 10, 15. But I know other people would probably have a different opinion depending on their audience and their topic, they might have a different view.
Megan Porta: I always say 10 is a good number for anything. That’s just kinda my number for filling groups. I love that you align with that. 10 people sounds great to me. You’re right. 50 is way too overwhelming for me. I would be really flustered, trying to sort through that much information, but that’s probably just a personal preference. I don’t know.
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Cate Brubaker: Initially you think, the more the better. Because you’re just thinking about the number of people that it will go out to. But you have to think about the user experience. If you’re going to a page and you’re looking and you see there are 25 different things, you might just say, I can’t decide. I don’t think I’m gonna do any of this. Because with the free bundle, you don’t sign up and get everything. The way that it works is the user signs up and then they get access to the download page. Then they go in, they decide, I want this one and this one. Then they go in and actually sign up for each of those items. That way, that cuts down on the work on the person who’s leading it. But then you’re guaranteed that those people will get those email addresses. So each person has a different way of signing up. Because that’s different, people might stop signing up. If they do two or three and they’re like, oh, I don’t want to do anymore because this is just confusing or this is a complicated process. They might not realize that they have to go through that for each person and you just don’t want to create more confusion and make it more difficult.
Megan Porta: Easy, make it easy for everybody.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah, definitely. That was something that the people who had the easiest signup tended to get more people to sign up. That’s one reason why I went through and tested each one. Also if I got questions, I wanted to make sure that I had been through the process so that I could give them some tips, if somebody had a problem accessing something.
Megan Porta: That’s really smart. So you’re not just like deferring to the person, to the contributor. You’re like I’ve actually tested this rigorously. I know that this is what you do. I think that is such a smart, upfront investment of your time.
Cate Brubaker: I only got a few questions. That was actually something I was really surprised about. I thought that there would be more questions or more challenges, people saying that didn’t work. That really didn’t happen. Everything went very smoothly. But I think it’s because of all the work that we all did ahead of time to make sure that it was an easy process for everyone.
Megan Porta: I didn’t hear much from you. So I’m assuming mine was okay.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. Yours was great.
Megan Porta: Perfect. Do you consider the size of the audience of your contributors before you ask them? If they have a really small audience, does that sway your decision?
Cate Brubaker: I do and I don’t. I always have a rule that, just my personal rule, that I don’t rule people out because they have small lists. Because everybody starts with a small list. Sometimes people who have a small list, sometimes they are so gung ho to make things happen. Sometimes their list is very niche and they know their list really well. So I just look at it as the size isn’t as important. That said, I want to make sure that we have a range because we do need to get this out to quite a few people. This one is great. Naturally, we had a great range of some people who had a bigger list and some people who had a smaller list and some people were in the middle and then some people did really well on social media. So some people said my list isn’t very big, I can do a lot on social media. That works for me, that’s fine for me too.
Megan Porta: Yeah. That’s a great answer. So you mentioned Air Table and that’s how you sent out your survey. What are some other tools you used to help you organize and create all of this?
Cate Brubaker: I used lead pages. Because I use lead pages for all of my landing pages and it’s so easy. So I created the signup page with lead pages, and then I also had the download page. Then I used Canva for all of the graphics. I use Convertkit because that’s my email service provider. So I was able to set up all of the tags and sequences and all of that. Google docs – that’s how I shared all the copy and just a few other things. That’s where I put all of the graphics too. Then Airtable. That’s it.
Megan Porta: That’s simple, right? I mean, those are the things that most of us use probably day to day. Like swapping, Convertkit out for whatever your email subscriber is. Lead pages, maybe people aren’t familiar with as much, but Canva, Google docs and some sort of content organization. It’s really easy.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. It was super easy. Then from what I contributed to the bundle, I also use Send Owl. I had people who wanted to download my ebook, my cookbook. They would click on the link and then go over to Send Owl and type in their information. I had it set up where they didn’t have to put in a coupon code. So when they clicked it automatically came up as zero. So they could see the price, but they didn’t have to do anything to get it to zero. They just typed in their name and email, clicked purchase and then they were immediately taken to download the ebook. So it was super easy. Other people had different things, like you were doing an Instant Pot Class. Tell us about that process because that worked well too.
Megan Porta: Yeah. I have my course housed in Teachable, basically. So I believe what I did was I offered just a coupon code. So you go directly to Teachable, you purchase the class and then you type, I think it was like free something whatever it was, you type it in and then you automatically get access to it. So you have the modules and access to all the material as you would a normal course.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. So that works really well. I’d say probably half of the people had coupon codes and I just made sure to stress in several different places that if it didn’t come up as costing zero that you needed to put in the coupon. Then on the download page, I made it bold and really big and reminded, click over here and then put in the coupon code. Maybe we had one or two questions about that, but I don’t think anyone really had any problems with that. So that was easy.
Megan Porta: Yeah. I remember getting one question and we were able to resolve it. So it was not a big deal. Yeah. Can we talk about numbers? So how many people, how many users participants ended up doing this bundle?
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. So I have to say, I had no idea how many people we were going to get, and I was hoping for 500. We got, it was like right around 1200. I think it was a little over 1200 signed up for the bundle. So I think for this topic, I was really happy with that. We’ll see the next one I do if it’s more or less, but I was happy with that. So we had 1200 total. Not everybody got to add 1200 people to their list because everyone signs up for a main bundle list.
Then I was emailing those people throughout the week. Then each of us who participated, we all added the people who signed up for our specific product. Some people added a couple hundred to several hundred. I think I added between five and 600 people to my list.
Megan Porta: That’s amazing. I think I was trying to remember my number. It was hundreds. I think it was three or 400 or something in there. I don’t know. But that’s amazing. Cate, I have to tell you, you killed it. Because I’ve been a part of bundles before that, I got like 10 email subscribers or something like that. So I had that expectation that it wouldn’t turn out. I’m sorry. I apologize. But I was like, this will be fine. I’ll get a few dozen extra email subscribers. When you brought in all of those subscribers, I was shocked and so in awe of what you had done. So you did such a good job.
Cate Brubaker: Oh, thanks for saying that. I was actually a little bit surprised too. I really wasn’t sure. That was the thing I was the most nervous about because I thought, oh no, what if nobody signs up. I’m going to feel so bad. So I was really happy. Somebody wanted to send out an email ahead of time, before it opened. So I created an early bird list or whatever, and they could sign up there. I think they sent that email out on Saturday or Sunday and we had already like 300, I think, signed up for that. So I thought okay, this is looking good. I’m feeling optimistic about this. Then we had a lot more on Monday and then we had more on Tuesday. Wednesday was a little bit slow Thursday we had some and then Friday we did another push and we got a lot more. I was really happy.
Megan Porta: Yeah, so impressive. The contributors who had products to sell, were they able to tap into that new audience and get their products sold?
Cate Brubaker: Yes. So there were some people who had a tripwire product and so they gave away one product. Then, as soon as somebody signed up to download that, they were presented with a tripwire page that they could purchase another related item. I think somebody had a class, she offered a cooking class for free, and then people went to the tripwire page and they were able to purchase a small bundle of related courses for I can’t say how much it was, maybe 30 bucks. I’m not sure if that’s correct. If it may be $30. Other people had some tripwire products. So there were people who, in addition to adding to their email lists, they also sold a couple of hundred dollars or more worth of products. I didn’t do that. I had wanted to do that, but I just didn’t have another product ready at that point. So I just focused on getting people onto my list. But I think the next time I do it, I will make sure to have a tripwire product.
Megan Porta: That’s a good incentive as the organizer, when you’re trying to find contributors. You can say, if you have products, there’s an opportunity here. You could potentially sell as well as build your email subscriber list.
Cate Brubaker: You can actually build a separate funnel for people who come in, from these free bundles. So if you have a product that you think, okay, I can add this to several different bundles this year, and then you create a really solid email sequence. Even if you don’t have a tripwire. If you have a really good email sequence, then you could earn more money off that as well.
Megan Porta: Oh, I love that. What would you say were your biggest takeaways from your first bundle that you put together and organized for people who haven’t done this yet and who are interested in doing that? What would you tell them as main tips?
Cate Brubaker: I would say do it, because it was just so much fun. I feel like I got a lot out of it in so many different ways. So if you’re thinking about it, definitely do it. Kate Doster does have a product or at least she did. I’m not totally sure that it’s available now, but you can check her website to see if she does. It will take you through the entire process of setting it up and give you all the templates and everything. I didn’t purchase that because I have done these bundles before. So I didn’t feel like I needed that. But if you’re starting from scratch, you can definitely go check that out. But I would say definitely just go for it and do it. Give yourself a couple of months. Set a deadline and then do it. Another thing I would say is ask participants to recommend other people. I think that was one thing that made this really successful. Partly because it was easier for me to find people, but when somebody recommends somebody else and then I go to them and say, Hey, so and so recommended you. I feel good about it. They feel good about it. I felt like the group just felt a little bit more engaged because they knew that there were other people that they knew who were participating.
The next thing I would suggest is to have everybody apply, you might say I’d love to have you in the bundle. Can you send your information? I’m going to be finalizing the bundle participants on this certain date. That way, you can make sure that you have a well-rounded bundle and you don’t have very competitive products or make sure that you have people with different size email lists or different social media. You don’t want to end up with everybody who has a list of 100 or something. Then the third one is related to that, but don’t rule out people with smaller lists. If somebody does have a small list or if they have a small social following. Then, talk to them and find out how they would like to promote it. You might find out that they do have a really small list, but their list is super engaged and that could really be a benefit. Yeah, just definitely don’t rule out people who have small communities.
Megan Porta: Love all of those. I think everyone has a good handle now on how to get started and thanks to some of these tips you’ve shared, they have a leg up because they know what to do and what not to do. So thank you for all of this. Okay. You mentioned that you have an upcoming bundle that you’re putting together. It’s percolating in your mind. Tell us about that and if anyone wants to be involved in it, how can they apply for that?
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. So for the next bundle, I would like to niche it down a little bit more. So I’m looking for people who have a product that is either related to baking or dessert making. So that could be an ebook. It could be templates. It could be a class. I’m open right now. So if you’re interested in participating, then you can go to the link in the show notes. I have a little application where you can just let me know what your product is and give me a little bit of information and then I will get in touch with you.
Megan Porta: Great. I’m excited to hear about it and hear how it goes. I’m sure it’s going to be a wild success and your numbers before 1200. You’re going to double it.
Cate Brubaker: That would be awesome. I hope so.
Megan Porta: Let’s just claim that for you. You’re going to double that. Okay. Done deal. So yes, everyone go check that out in the show notes, if you’re interested and if you have something that aligns with that. Cate, thank you so much for being here today. You’re like an interviewer’s dream. You’re so fun to talk to and I thoroughly enjoy our chats. So thank you for taking the time for us.
Cate Brubaker: Oh thank you. You make it so easy and it’s so much fun to talk with you.
Megan Porta: Before we go, we’re going to ask you again, if you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to share with food bloggers.
Cate Brubaker: Yeah. As I was thinking about this today, I thought of two words. It’s not a quote. It’s just two words. One is WHY and one is HOW. I have been asking myself these questions multiple times throughout the day. Because those words helped me identify what is helpful for my community. I always ask myself, why am I sending this out? Why am I doing this recipe? How is this going to be helpful? It helps me when I start to feel resistance coming up. I asked myself, okay, why am I feeling resistant? What can I do about this? It helps me identify my priorities and important tasks. I think we all kind of struggle with figuring out which of the many tasks we need to really focus on. So the more I keep asking myself, why am I doing this? How does this fit in my goals? How does this lead to the outcome that I want? It’s really helping me focus and do what is really going to create the most impact in my business.
Megan Porta: Oh my God. So profound. Such a great, simple message there. I absolutely love that you do that and it helps you to be as efficient as possible, right?
Cate Brubaker: Yes. It’s something I’ve definitely been working on and I’m seeing progress, so it’s very helpful.
Megan Porta: So if you guys want to go check out Cate’s show notes and get that application she was talking about or see everything that we talked about today, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/internationaldessertsblog2. Tell everyone where they can find you online and on social media, Cate.
Cate Brubaker: I’m at internationaldesserts.com. Then I’m also on Instagram. I just rejoined. I’m trying to be more committed to being on Instagram. My handle is at International Desserts Blog.
Megan Porta: Perfect. Everybody go check Cate out and thank you again so much, Cate for your time today. Thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode.
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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