Episode 611: How to Grow Your Business in 2025 – The Importance of Email with Sena Wheeler

EBT611 – Sena Wheeler

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Supercut  00:16

Hey, food bloggers, check out our new SEO supercut, a bonus 15 minute episode capturing highlights from SEO episodes we have recorded recently. Go to eatblogtalk.com/SEOsupercut to get access today. 

Megan Porta  00:53

There’s so much value in getting information from people who know our food blogging businesses really well, right? But I think there’s also so much value in getting perspectives of people who are not in our food blogging realm. In this interview, Sena Wheeler joined me. Her business is called Sena Sea, S, E, A. She and her husband sell fish online. That is their business. It’s a generational business that’s been around forever. They know fish well. They know how to cook with fish well. So while their business does relate to food, she is not technically a food blogger, one of the ways she’s really grown her business is through her email list. Her approach with the email list has been really simple. There’s nothing complicated about it, and it’s had a huge impact on her business. I love her story. I love the tips that she shares, and some of them are things that we just don’t hear about in our space. So I think you’ll find so much value in this episode, sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor  01:59

Food bloggers. It has been a tough year. Am I right? We have endured a lot of changes in our industry, and it feels like the blows just keep coming. One thing that has remained constant this year is the Eat Blog Talk mastermind group, the way we show up for each other, and the fact that the members in the group are pivoting when needed. Staying in touch with relevant information and thriving is huge, and it says a lot about the group. I want to share this audio clip with you from Kristina. She’s the blogger at when Salty and Sweet Unite. She is part of the group this year, and here are her thoughts about you considering joining the group next year in 2025. For more information and to apply, go to eatblogtalk.com/mastermind. Here is Kristina. “There’s just something about people who are investing in themselves. There’s just something about us that we get it like we want it. We’re gonna go get it, we’re gonna go figure it out, and let’s all do this together, right? There’s no room for negativity. There’s negative things that happen throughout that, course, but that’s not what we’re focused on. Yeah, and I think in free groups, I noticed there’s a lot of negativity, and I don’t know why that is like, is that because this is truly a free group? Is that because we’re not touching on mindset enough? Is that because, like, when you get free, is what you get is free. Like, I don’t know, I don’t have an answer to why that is, but I just feel like, you know you can make it happen, like, if you want, if you want that growth, because I understand not everyone can do a mastermind, but somehow, somehow you can make it happen, whether it be do a payment plan, we found a way to make it work, and it was, yeah, it has really, like you said, it’s absolutely worth it. Now back to the episode. 

Megan Porta  03:47

Sena Wheeler is part of a 5th generation fishing family and the co-founder of Sena Sea, which brings wild Alaskan seafood direct to your door. She’s passionate about sustainability, helping busy families eat healthier and educating people about the brain-boosting benefits of wild fish. She has a master’s degree in Nutrition and Food Science with a specialty in quantifying omega 3’s in fish and determining preferred handling practices for premium quality. She and her husband enjoy running this family business together, spending part of the year in Alaska and having the flexibility to enjoy watching her children participate in their school sports, and of course, eating and cooking fish!

Megan Porta  04:26

Sena, it is so great to have you on the podcast. How are you doing today?

Sena Wheeler  04:30

I’m great. Thanks for having me.

Sena Wheeler  04:32

Yeah, so happy to have you here. We are going to talk about your amazing success with using sales writing to increase your emails and therefore other awesome things in your business. Before we get into all of that, do you have a fun fact to share with us? 

Sena Wheeler  04:48

Yes, I would say, you know, I started this internet business. We sell fish online, and I started this internet business when we lived way up in the mountains and had barely any internet. 

Sena Wheeler  05:00

Oh, yikes. How did that go?

Sena Wheeler  05:02

We couldn’t even, you know, if I wanted to download something, I would have to do it in the night. So it actually made me have to be more careful and planned with my time, I’d say.

Megan Porta  05:12

Very intentional, I suppose, yes. Oh my goodness. Well, that is definitely an interesting, fun fact. I love it. Okay, well, I don’t know a whole lot about your business, so I would love it, if you would just talk through it and tell us what it’s all about when you started, just give us a little bit of a background.

Sena Wheeler  05:29

Yeah, ours is a little different. I mean, no matter where I go, selling fish online is a little different. Yeah, my husband is a commercial fisherman, and, in fact, we’re fifth generational commercial, commercial fishermen. So my dad was a commercial fisherman. My uncle is my grandpa, his dad, his dad, his dad, and all the way back to Norway. So fishing is what we we know, and we’ve done for our whole lives, and we started the business. So we always just sold to off the dock. You know, you sold to a buyer. That’s just what people do. But with the internet, the way it is these days, we’ve been doing for 10 years. We’ve been selling our our fish online. And so we actually shipped the fish. We cut it into six ounce portion, so we now have a facility. And so everything we catch is up in Alaska, we cut it. It’s in six ounce, ounce portion, all packaged. So I just like say that so people can visualize, because getting fish in the mail just seems super weird, or did after COVID. It’s a little less weird, but they’re packaged and vacuum sealed and then frozen. So we ship with dry ice and insulated and all of that, and you get the fish right to your door. Wow, yeah. So that’s been really a lot of learning around that part of that, you know, actual shipping the actual fish and getting it to people’s door, frozen and things like that. 

Megan Porta  06:47

Has it been hard to grow this kind of business online? Do you feel like?

06:52

Everything’s hard. We we do a lot of stuff. Well, we catch the fish, we process the fish, we sell it online, and we pack the boxes. So we do there’s this a ton of steps, but yeah, I think that getting started online is hard, you know, getting the ball rolling. And when we first started, we were also selling fish at the farmers markets, and that really helped us. For one thing, we were talking face to face with our customers, so I’m there talking with them eight hours a day. I can I know what they’re asking, and I’m really honing my responses too. So that was really huge. We got to kind of do what we do online. We got to do it in person. And it really in the beginning it was easier to scale farmers markets because you could just go to more, but you get to that tipping point where, during that time, I was doing all the hard work online, but you don’t, you’re not getting a lot of return because, you know, it’s like you’re sending the emails and doing the things, but your audience is small. So during that time, we were working hard on the farmers markets and just slowly building our audience. And then, and then over time, that same amount of effort makes more sales online. So really, our tipping point was during COVID. We were about four or five years in, so halfway through COVID, and then all of a sudden we stopped doing the farmers markets, and everybody started buying online, and our online business quadrupled. So it really, it helped us really get to that tipping point faster, I would say.

Megan Porta  08:23

That’s great. And then you did focus on your emails, right? And writing quality emails to your subscribers as well. 

Sena Wheeler  08:30

That’s been just really the big I would say, the secret to our success, and the biggest component, is our emails. So back when I had a very limited internet I was, I was at that time, I have been in the food industry, so I was, I used to do R D in a food lab or a big food company. So I definitely have my roots, and I have a master’s degree in food science. So my roots are definitely food science. But at the time, I was home with my three small kids, and we were living way out in the mountains, like I said, and the internet is if you it just had limited bandwidth. So during the day, you could sort of check emails, but if you needed to stream something or download something, you had to do it like after 8pm or before 8am Oh, wow. So the first thing I did was I took an online a business course for for building an online business, which was the best thing I could have done. And I learned a lot, especially since I wasn’t really brushed up on it. You know, at that moment in time, I was kind of home with my kids, not really doing stuff on the internet. And so that business course was really huge, and she had said, in the course, start an email list. And at the time, I was like, I don’t even know what that is. I mean, if you can imagine now, it’s so it’s plain as day, but I wasn’t on anybody’s list. I wasn’t getting emailings from people, and I just. Didn’t even ring a bell. I was going, huh? I wonder what that is. So I just did what they said on this training, and I ended up sending, setting up this email list, and then they said, start sending emails. So I did. And at the time, you know, I’m emailing like 40 people, my friends and family that I know really well. And so I just did it because it was just some people that I already knew. Yeah, it was almost easier because it was a small list. I didn’t have this, like, I didn’t go in going like, oh my gosh, I need to do a really good job and be really professional. Like, I have this big inspiration. It was just like, oh, you know, Rich just went out and caught some Sockeye.

Megan Porta  10:41

No pressure, no pressure. Situation right where now you feel so much pressure to get it right, like you have to have a nurture sequence, and you have to do this, and it’s like the most daunting thing, I see it all the time, where people just kind of freeze because they don’t know where to start with it. 

Sena Wheeler  10:56

Yeah? And you feel like you’re doing this big, huge, scary thing, yeah, you know. But I would just say, you know, when you just start and you just do it and just don’t, it sounds silly, but one of my things, I would tell myself, is, oh, just write a crappy email today, Sena, just anything. Just don’t worry about it doesn’t have to be a really good one. Just write whatever. And it just sort of taking that pressure off of, you know, you it’s hard to sit down and write a masterpiece. It’s easier to just sit down and write a little note about what you’re doing. 

Megan Porta  11:26

One step, one little thing, right? That’s not daunting at all, exactly.

Sena Wheeler  11:30

And so that’s that, that small step that we did back then, and just kind of getting through that beginning part where you’re like, oh, geez, I really don’t know what I’m doing, and just kind of moving through that, I think, was really key.

Megan Porta  11:44

So after you got more comfortable talking to your people, even if it was a small number, did you, I’m assuming, that you started gaining traction with your email list and getting more subscribers at that point.

Sena Wheeler  11:56

Yeah, what I did was we did a little free, downloadable cookbook. We still have it. It it was one of the first things that I did, you know, it’s the kind of free opt in. And so I, just because I had been working at the farmers markets, I kind of knew what people ask. And they, they would typically ask, how do you cook it? But they wouldn’t just be sort of like, well, how do how do you cook it? They would be like, Well, how do you cook it. You’re like, a fifth generation fishing family. Yeah, you know, how do you cook it? And so that really gave me kind of the insight to go, Okay, here’s what, what people when they know our history, they want to know how we cook our fish. So I did a downloadable cookbook about just some of our family recipes. And you know, that sounds daunting at first, until you realize a downloadable cookbook is just a PDF. It’s just a Word document. You know, it sounds cool, but it’s it’s just a Word document with some pictures. 

Megan Porta  12:52

Yeah, it’s very simple.

Sena Wheeler  12:53

It’s very simple to do and and at that time, I had somebody help me, but now I’m like, and I still am glad, because it looks more professional, but it really isn’t that hard, and so I’m glad that I did it. And you know, we still use that same cookbook.

Megan Porta  13:08

That’s amazing, because that’s really the bones of what people want from you. Probably how, not like you said, I love this, not how you cook fish, but how you cook fish, as the true expert in the area of cooking fish.

Sena Wheeler  13:23

Right, and just feeling comfortable leaning into that, you know, going into this, you know, our goal was to sell fish, but we’ve became much more. What we’re trying to do is make it easy for people, you know, really kind of leaning into people’s pain points. It’s often around, how do I prepare it? How do I cook it? What do I do with it? And so it’s been really interesting to just as we’re answering questions and being kind of that guide for our customers, it’s just really is leaning into that, more of that influencer type, you know, here’s what you do with it, here’s how you cook it, here’s a lot of recipes. So we do a lot of recipe work and things like that.

Megan Porta  13:59

It’s interesting how your business translates over to the food blogging business in our world, because it a lot of what you’re saying is the same. You have to lean into what the pain points are. You have to listen really know what they want from you ask the questions and be the guide. That is the same thing with us. I think maybe you have a little advantage because you were able to interact with those people in person, right? I think that is maybe a disadvantage for food bloggers, because we have to kind of figure that stuff out through emails and social media. But it really is the same sort of thing.

Sena Wheeler  14:36

And we’ve transitioned all to online now. So we do one farmers market, and so we do. We have translated that to online, but you’re right. It’s just, how do you push that information out when they’re not standing there going, well, here’s my biggest question.

Megan Porta  14:50

Right? They’re not in front of you, so you have to, you have to work a little bit for it, I think, as a food blogger, but it’s the same concept. And then, so how did your email grow from. From there, and how has it become such an important part of your business?

Sena Wheeler  15:04

I think it just grew through consistency. So just doing it was really the key we we did do a few sort of partnership giveaways, so that kind of helped our list a little bit. But we don’t even run we just kind of starting to run ads, and we’re 10 years in, so we’d never ran a lot of ads, but we mostly grew organically. And, you know, kind of slowly and organically, but I always felt like, well, I’d rather have really good people on our list. You know, we have this kind of list that is people that really care, and they’re really our people, than a huge list of kind of our people and so just being really, kind of letting people in a little bit, it’s been really interesting just to kind of, you know, now I feel like the word authentic is so overdone, but, but people are interested in all different aspects. I mean, to me, it’s funny that I’m still talking about fish on a weekly email. Would think maybe we’d run out of topics, but, right? 

Megan Porta  16:04

But it never gets old. For your people, I suppose they want to hear more and more and more. 

Sena Wheeler  16:08

Right? And it’s about our life, and we’re living it. So we’re kind of like, we’re not running out of topics, because we’re we’re kind of still living it. And so, you know, it’s like, Hey, we’re doing this, or we’re doing that. And in the winter, sometimes I, you know, sometimes I talk about the rest of our life, my son wrestling and things like that. And it’s kind of a challenge to me to go, Okay, well, how do I tie this into selling fish? How do I, how do I transition back, you know? So I feel like sometimes it’s kind of a challenge to just talk about something that seems really unrelated to fish and kind of tie it back and, you know, kind of have some fun with it, and that lets our audience kind of know about us too. So it’s, I think, being in such a one dimensional world of, yes, we sell fish, we talk about fish, letting pieces of us into that. I think.

Megan Porta  16:54

Getting personal, getting real. Like you said, authentic. I feel like I use the word authentic about a million times in every episode I record. So yeah, yeah, I’ll skirt around that word.

Sena Wheeler  17:05

It’s like becoming inauthentic to say yeah, 

Megan Porta  17:07

I know exactly, pretty soon we will not be saying that word anymore. 

Sponsor  17:13

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Megan Porta  17:53

So thinking about food bloggers businesses, because our businesses are structured differently than yours, we don’t often send out products, and it’s just a different business, but the email concept is really the same. So how would you recommend a food blogger approaches this in the way that you did so having that authenticity showing up consistently, yeah? Like, what other advice do you have that a food blogger would be able to resonate with. 

Sena Wheeler  18:21

Well, I guess one thing that I do that might be useful is I do a lot of I try to be very efficient with my time. And I think as a, you know, another crossover with food bloggers. I’m also a mom of three, often juggling, you know, much more than my business. So I I lean into efficiency. So like, right now I have some help on the social media aspect, but what I do is I write my Monday email. So that’s a big deal for me. That’s, you know, kind of my, my biggest driver is that Monday email, it’s very personal. It has to do, like I said, fishing in our life, and then that becomes kind of the cornerstone content for the week. And so then my social media person, she can take that, that kind of weekly email, and turn it into a blog post, or multiple blog posts, and sort of has that backbone, like I might be talking, oh, it’s coho season, so then she’s going to be posting coho and things like that. So I would say just kind of being as efficient with your time and energy as possible is is kind of big. Otherwise, it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels and and you get kind of tired of it.

Megan Porta  19:32

Yeah, how far in advance do you select what you’re going to write about, or do you just do it kind of on the spot? 

Sena Wheeler  19:37

So these days, I’m trying to get better and better, especially when it was, you know, just me, I did a lot of just in time writing. And sometimes that works, and sometimes you get busy and it gets hard. So what I do now is I have a I have the world’s most basic content calendar. It’s just a spreadsheet. And I do this because I had, now have help with social media. And not everybody does. I did it myself for a really long time, but it’s been really nice for me to do that, and it is allowing me to be more more focused. So what I do is I’ll have a theme for the month. So like September, my annual my year is very similar, like the time of year of the fish and things like that. So September, back to school. I have a couple blogs about getting kids to eat fish, brain food. So those are kind of some themes around, kind of going back to school, getting back in the kitchen, cooking fish healthy for kids. So I will kind of list out my themes, and then I’ll just list out kind of what I think my Monday topics might be. And then I give myself a little bit of room to move things around, and then I kind of look at my schedule and I get one easy email a month because we do a giveaway. So just for being on our list, you’re entered into a monthly drawing for a $50 gift card. Oh, that’s nice. It’s great for me, because that tells that means for me that email is really easy to write. It’s pretty much written every month already. It’s a copy and paste. I just have to pick a winner. And so I put that email on my busy week. So I just took my son to college last week, last weekend, and so that was giveaway weekend. Yeah, giveaway email, smart. So kind of building those topics around what I’m doing, but also what I have time for, has been really nice. So it’s like, I get that one freebie every month, and I and I don’t just, you know, I move it around. I I don’t care if they’re even back to back. I if I need the time, I need the time. So that’s been really nice, too.

Megan Porta  21:37

When you have more time in your week and you’re able to sit down and really give thought and effort into an email. What all goes in it? Do you have certain components that always are a part of it? 

Sena Wheeler  21:48

You know, I have, I’ve, I’ve played with a lot of structures and I, and I have sort of just hit on what’s something that just this, it just flows for me. So I start pretty, text heavy, no photos or anything at the top, I just kind of want to jump right in in a familiar, sort of friendly way. So I just kind of mainly do text, and then usually I have a photo with what I’m talking about, you know, family photo, or us fishing, or something like that. And then I’ll kind of use that bottom part after the photo to transition into kind of the pitch. So, you know, for me, because I sell fish, it’s always going to be kind of like, okay, and you know, we’ve got this fish available, so I I always link to the fish. And that’s one thing I know that some people are scared to make the pitch in the email. And that’s hard for food bloggers, because it’s, well, I mean, you’re just trying to send a recipe. You’re Not You don’t have to pitch a product. But that’s I would say, too, is don’t be afraid. I sell fish in every single email. And I don’t feel bad about it, you know, that’s the intent. I wouldn’t send an email if I wasn’t selling fish. So I’m giving a lot of value also, but I am selling in every email on Fridays. I do a, this is new this year. I do a fish Friday email. So I just, I skipped this story, and I skipped everything, and I just go, like, here’s your fish Friday email, and it has a recipe. But, of course, I take the fish from that recipe and I put a link in it. So I’m selling fish also. And so that one is pretty basic, and people really like it. It’s a great addition to the kind of more in depth Monday email. It’s just a really simple recipe. Here’s the link, check it out, and here’s the fish type. So, and we make sales from those too. 

Megan Porta  23:40

Food bloggers need to hear this. They need the permission to sell. Because we do have, I mean, aside from our blog and promoting our blogs, we also have products that we sell, we have ebooks, we have all kinds of things that we create, and a lot of people are so afraid to mention them. I hear this all the time, seeing people just say, I don’t know, like, I don’t want to scare people away and like, I don’t want to sell too soon, I don’t want to sell too often, but like you said, that’s why they’re here. They’re here for you to get the value that you have to offer, right? So sell away,

Sena Wheeler  24:15

Absolutely. And I would just say, I mean, and in the beginning, I might have felt some of that too, but it’s been huge to be like, No, I sell in every email. That’s why I send the email. Yeah, you know. And nobody’s I’ve never gotten any hate mail from. 

Megan Porta  24:30

I was just gonna say that, yeah, nobody complains. If they don’t want to be on your list, they can leave your list. Yes, simple as that.

24:37

Yeah. And I also have just done a lot of work around not worrying about that either. Yes, oh, you know, yeah. So I’m not like looking up the numbers on how many people left, or after an email, I’m not checking to see how many people left. I really, I personally, just focus on the positive. And you know, if people left, they probably weren’t gonna buy anyways. And then I don’t have to worry about a bunch of you know, you have to pay more when you have a bigger list. I don’t want a big list of non buyers. I really want a list of people that are interested in what, what, what I have. So if you know, if you think of it this way, if you offer something to sell and they leave, then they were never gonna buy. Yeah,

Megan Porta  25:17

right, exactly. I think that’s such a good mindset to adopt, and then you said you send to a week or do you send more than that, your Monday and your Friday email?

25:26

Yeah, so I send, I’m it’s the Monday email that’s sort of like near and dear to my heart. That’s the one I’ve always done. And I just do Mondays, because we ship on Monday. So then when people place that order, it goes right out and makes happy people. And then we just added the fish Friday, actually, last January, and I was working with a food blogger on that, and it was her idea, which was really cool. She reached out. She does recipes for fish, all pescetarian, and she reached out and said, and so I’ve done a lot of really fun collaborations with with food bloggers and people doing recipes and all of that, or Instagram and that. And so that was really cool. It was her idea. She said, how about I, you know, send you these recipes and you can do a fish Friday. And I was like, Oh, that’s great. In fact, I was kind of thinking of doing something like that. Let’s just do it. And so she did, we did, I think, eight installments. And then I thought, Well, I’m just going to keep going and and they can be, I’m going to include other bloggers, and I do do a link to their site so that they get, you know, a dedicated email, and it goes to their site. And then when I don’t have a food blogger kind of lined up, I just do one of my recipes. And we have a lot of recipes on our site, so that’s been really fun, and our customers have really enjoyed it, and and I think it’s a nice way to collaborate with other people, because I’m always trying to, you know, a lot of influencers or food bloggers, we’re both looking for the same thing. We want to increase our our lists, and for us, because we sell the fish, there’s a huge crossover with people doing recipes. And you know, our audience, if we’re not competing, it’s a total collaboration, because it’s like, if they’re going to eat more fish, they need the recipes, and the recipes remind them to eat more fish. So it’s a it’s, you know, to me, it’s a really nice collaboration.

Megan Porta  27:15

Win, win. All around, for sure. After having written so many emails, I imagine that you have some types of emails that just generate engagement and get people writing back to this is something we talk about a lot like, how do we get people to engage? How do we get them to respond? Do you have any tips on that?

Sena Wheeler  27:35

Well, you know, for Instagram, I mean, things are changing all the time, but I what I could see just what was very clear when I would look back over kind of just like likes and engagement and things like that, it was like, if our face is in it, it’s going to be double likes. So just having our face, that personal touch, just seems to make a big difference. So I would say just the personal stuff. I mean, even though we’re selling fish, doesn’t sound very personal, yeah, you know, having that, having the face in our socials, really helps, telling our story and then on emails. You know, when I my this, this week was our, my husband and I’s 24th anniversary, and so, you know, I talked about that and and he’s out fishing and things like that. And then I get a lot of responses back, you know, congratulations and things like that. So when I’m talking about personal stuff, I feel great that my list, you know, feels like they can just respond to me and be like, Oh, that’s great. Or sometimes they’ll send me an article about phishing, or just congratulations. And so it makes me feel like we have a reciprocal kind of relationship. But also it helps my deliverables when people respond to my emails.

Megan Porta  28:56

Do you try to coordinate socials and emails? So if something works really well on social media. Do you carry it over to your email? 

Sena Wheeler  29:04

Well, other than I kind of use my email out for content, but I feel like, let me think I would say just in the fact of like, kind of personal. And I do because, again, I like efficiencies, but I think that that personal touch carries over on both

Megan Porta  29:18

people like that they love when I so my Instagram account is very business account. It’s podcast episodes. It’s about the community. It’s about information, how to get SEO information in your head, whatever, right? When I share something like I went to the state fair recently with my family and posted a cute picture me and my boys, oh my gosh. People love that. They just love putting a face to the person behind the business for some reason. Go that bonkers, yeah. 

Sena Wheeler  29:49

And it’s just like, it just shows, I mean, and for us too, you know, with that food component, I feel like people are craving that connection with their food. And so just, you. You know, by putting your face out there, you’re creating that connection that people can see who you are, what you’re about. It’s, it’s really interesting. How big of a difference that makes?

Megan Porta  30:10

Yeah, well, growing email lists seems to be a hot topic in 2024 I would say growing Instagram is a really hot topic. SEO is kind of a topic people are afraid of. But also growing your email list is huge, yeah. So I think this is a really relevant, very, very good topic to cover. Is there anything else you would impart to food bloggers who really want to grow their lists?

30:37

I would say I totally agree. And you know, you hear all the things in the reasons why. But you know, I I put probably the most value in our list, in our business. You know, I put more value than to that than our Instagram numbers, which it helps for certain reasons. But that list is that direct line to your customers. So I would say, if people are thinking, Should I do an email list and how much effort should I put into it? I would say can be the real backbone of your business. And so I think it’s, there’s a lot of value there, and there’s a lot of collaborations, you know, like, I’ve said, a lot of our list growth, we’ve done some kind of giveaways with other companies and things like that. So I think that that it’s not done, it’s not over, and there’s still a lot of collaborations and ways to build that list, and then you have it.

Megan Porta  31:25

Yeah, right, yeah. And it’s something that you own. You don’t have to worry about it being yanked away from you and never getting it back. I hear those horror stories all the time where people lose they spend years and years building up a platform, and then they lose everything overnight. It’s just so devastating I cannot imagine. 

Sena Wheeler  31:43

And that’s so scary. And, yeah, when you’ve put all that time and energy to think that you’re I’ve had troubles with Facebook before. I haven’t had it with Instagram, but I have definitely heard about it, and it is really scary. That’s a lot of time and effort. 

Megan Porta  31:56

Yeah, it is. Can you imagine putting in like, a decade of your life to building I just, yeah, there’s someone in my mastermind group. This happened to she lost her entire Facebook page, her business page, and cannot get it back. It’s like they’ve told her sorry, like it’s there, but she can’t access it so. 

Sena Wheeler  32:19

And anything. I mean, I’ve just dealt with Facebook a little bit on some ad stuff where, you know, somebody ran ads on our account, and it’s like, oh, boy, it’s not really how you want to spend your time. Is trying to get Facebook to do something for you. 

Megan Porta  32:32

Yeah, exactly. So email is where it’s at. I think that’s kind of the message going into 2025 definitely focus there if you haven’t, and we just appreciate your perspective being someone related. Like, obviously your business is food, so we need that, but not from an actual food blogger perspective. So I love your perspective on everything you’ve shared today. So thank you, Sena.

Sena Wheeler  32:56

It’s super fun, and I agree. It’s fun to see where those lines do intersect. I sometimes am like, you know, we’re in the, what do you call it ecom? Like, we sell a product, but I do it like a we do, we do a lot of, sort of more, more along the lines of influencer marketing. And then I also sell artificial lot, like a coach would sell, you know, where we’re teaching and stuff like that. So I just, I feel like we’re in a few different categories, which kind of makes it fun.

Megan Porta  33:25

Yeah, you’re educating. You’re Yeah, exactly, and you’re doing so many different angles of it. Thank you, and best of luck to you and your business and growing it more, as well as your email list. I think this will be a really valuable episode. So we appreciate you. Thanks for showing up today. Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today?

Sena Wheeler  33:46

Yes, this is not my own quote. This was from Marie Forleo, who I follow, and she says, everything is figureoutable. And I love that one. And because, especially in the beginning, when you are bootstrapping and you it’s kind of, you have to figure stuff out on your own. It’s, it’s nice to just remember that everything is figureoutable. You know, you can find a way and do a little research or just put a little time in and you can do it. 

Megan Porta  34:13

Yes, no, I think it’s such a simple concept, but there’s so much truth. We often doubt ourselves right, or doubt our network. So yeah, love that you end it that way. We will put together a show notes page for you. Sina, if you want to go look at those. Head to Eatblogtalk.com/Senasea, so that’s S E, N, A, S E, A, tell everyone where they can find you. 

Sena Wheeler  34:37

Well, of course, I’d love if you jump on my email list. Yes, I love to connect with people. We have the free cookbook, but Instagram too. We’re seeing a senasea_seafoods at on Instagram and and because of that crossover with all the food influencer and we got the beautiful photos going and things like that, jump over there and check us out. And let me know. You know, this is not a pitch, but let me know if you want to collaborate.

Megan Porta  35:04

Yeah, oh my gosh, that would be awesome if some people reached out for that. I know some pescatarian food bloggers. I wonder if you already work, work with them. I don’t know, but they’re amazing. 

Sena Wheeler  35:13

Well, I love to, and it’s just super fun to find ways that help both parties. 

Megan Porta  35:19

Yeah, absolutely. Win, win all around. So for your email list, what I’m just looking at your site, is it the, what’s the best way to get on that? Is that?

Sena Wheeler  35:29

Oh, if you go to the home page and then scroll down, oh, I see

Megan Porta  35:33

Join our VIP list. Is that right? Okay, that’s right toward the bottom. Okay, I’m gonna be on it in just a moment. Oh, fun. I’m super excited to see what you deliver, but yeah, thank you, Sena, so much for your time today. Thank you for being here and thank you food bloggers for listening. I will see you next time. 

Outro  35:51

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of eat blog talk. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you posted it to your social media feed and stories I will see you next time you.