Hi, Friends! I get so many questions from current and future RDs, trainers, and fitness professionals about starting my own business that I decided to start a Behind the Scenes series. I’ll share as much as I feel comfortable sharing and if you have more questions feel free to ask!
*Side note this post is going to be somewhat long since I’ve never written one of these before. Also, for those of you just looking for workouts or recipes, feel free to skip this one or scroll down to the features around the web section!
I’ve been out on my own since December 2015 and while it hasn’t gone perfectly, it has been an amazing experience. I wake up jazzed to get to work and do what I love to do all day long every day. Like anyone who freelances or runs their own business some months are better than others. Slowly, but surely, things are building and I hope to share my success (and failures) for those of you who are thinking you may want to go a similar route. I’ll continue this mini-series until December, if you guys really like it then I’ll continue it into next year. Just drop me a comment and let me know!
Mission Statement
To empower millions with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to create healthy lifestyles that fills their hearts with joy and positivity.
My philosophy is very much: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I try to see the bigger picture in everything I do, regardless of the activity, I make sure I see how it fulfills that mission statement in one way or another. Hey, a mission statement is supposed to be big right? Go big or go home, that’s my other motto.
Nutrition Services & Communications – www.hungryhobbyrd.com
Where My Nutrition Services Clients Came From:
This is one of the most common questions I get, so for those of you looking to start your own practice here is where I’m at currently.
- 1 new client via google search – 3-month package
- 1 previous client referred by a client I worked with at Life Time resigned for two 30 minute sessions
- 1 previous client purchased a la carte for a sports nutrition tune up
- 1 family member purchased MRT discounted package
- 1 Active MRT Client (bought package in July) – the first MRT testing client is through the first month of her program
- Serviced out a client’s sports nutrition 3-month package – that client also found me on google
- 1 new group home meal planning client via referral – original found me via Health Profs
Advertising:
- TV Segments x 3
- I did a series of three TV segments through the same advertising agency. These were great exposure for my blog and I’ve made several connections from the exposure.
- Saint Annes Bulletin – I placed an Ad in our church bulletin, we budgeted that as part of our tithing.
- Homemade Flyers – Don’t laugh, okay you can totally laugh, I laughed the whole time I was doing it. I gave out free recipes in my neighborhood with my blog info. This might make more sense when you read my post I have scheduled next week about the Success Principles book I read.
- HealthProfs.com
Networking:
YCP – Young Catholic Professionals –
- Mr. Hungry and I attended this event downtown. The benefits were, first, that we actually met someone that goes to our church. Second, we were invited by my MIL’s friend’s kids (if you can follow that.) They are also our age with no children so it was nice to make that connection. However, from a business standpoint, I don’t think we will be going back. Most people were young single professionals, it seemed more of a dating service than a networking event.
Nutrition Entrepreneurs Dietetic Practice Group (NE DPG).
- This month’s call was with Serena Ball. I learned a few really valuable pieces of information from it.
- I found out what RDs charge for TV segments.
- I should pitch to magazine and TV producers on Fridays (um, I should pitch at all really).
- Healthie has superbill and bill templates for you to use.
- I’m in the process of organizing a mastermind group with the other ladies on the call and one I was previously on. For which I plan to use the mastermind resources on the successprinciples.com website.
Volunteer
- I also serve as Website Chair for the Arizona Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Although I missed the meeting because of a miscommunication via email.
TI Fitness
I substitute teach fitness classes at TI Fitness. I’m also working on refining a healthy living group challenge for them and serve their members with one on one nutrition coaching.
Professional Development:
- Food & Nutrition Magazine Recipe Development Webinar – this was totally worth the 45 minutes because I ended up landing a recipe development spot!
Hungry Hobby Blog
Sponsored Posts & Freelance Writing:
- Prep Dish – I met Allison through the Dietitians on the Blog Facebook group, which is one of the most valuable groups I am in.
- Real Food Outlaws – I have a paid writing gig on the Real Food Outlaws blog that is one post per month.
Special Projects
I released my first every ebook – which I plan to offer for free until I make the next one. When I make the next one that will be available for free to current and new subscribers and the old one will go to Amazon Kindle. It will be interesting to see how that goes.
Social Media Following:
Since social media is such a large beast to tackle I try to focus on giving a little more attention to one channel over the others every month. This last month was Facebook, although I can’t say it was a huge success. Since it was the reason I was recently rejected from an Ad Network (more on that next week) I will probably repeat Facebook in September.
I tried three things with Facebook:
1) Facebook Ad Results
Meh? Not sure how I feel about that.
2) Facebook lives
I LOVE doing these but just need to prioritize scheduling them. I feel like my messages need to be more planned then snapchat or IG 15 second videos.
3) Posting more frequently using hootsuite and then co-schedule.
At Blogfest I found out that I was grossly undertaking my old content. The most successful bloggers seemed to be posting their content 5-10 times a day, a strategy I used for twitter but not Facebook. After talking to a friend, I also realized I was vastly under-sharing my content. See co-schedule section for more info coming up!
As of today, I’m now over the 1000 mark, which is great. However, I’ve got a few plans such as a giveaway to help drive more traffic to Facebook. I feel like I ignored Facebook for so long because I was hearing crickets from it. The fact of the matter is we all spend a bunch of time on Facebook, we all love Facebook and their algorithm is now a pay to play the game. Or is it? Clearly I haven’t quite figured that one out yet!
MOM (Month Over Month) Growth
Email List up 39%
Page views up 42%
Visitors up 49%
Feedly Readers up 3%
Twitter 1958 (up 3%)
Instagram 2020 (up 12%)
Pinterest 917 (up 8%)
Tumblr 240 (up 6%)
Snapchat 544 (up 20%) – username hungryhobbyrd
Social Media Helper Services:
Likestagram
I love Likestagram because it keeps you active in the Instagram community, more so than I could ever be in real life. When I first started using it in June I was receiving 50 new followers a day for a while, then slowly it started to die off to almost nothing. I had a feeling that this was because the hashtags should be updated weekly so that you aren’t liking the same people’s photos all the time. Once I changed my hashtags it picked back up to somewhere between 10-20 new followers per day. I try to follow back everyone that follows me and I use crowder to unfollow the people that unfollow me. Usually, it’s random businesses I’ll see follow and unfollow me several times, it is UBER annoying.
Tailwind
I’ve written about tailwind several times. Since paying for the year subscription I have doubled my followers on Pinterest, joined a community of like-minded bloggers with tribes, and 100% decreased my stress. Now I’m using Pinterest the way it was intended, finding things I love from other bloggers and sharing it, it’s fantastic. The interval pinning feature is the best thing known to man, hands down.
Co-schedule
Okay so here is my original post on co-schedule if you want to see how it works.
I was still using their 5 dollar a month plan with none of their features and waiting for them to come up with the automation plan. I emailed them and asked them when the launch date was planned for and they basically sent back – not scheduled. However, they offered me to be part of the beta group for the price of the marketing plan. I immediately upgraded and now I’m working on the process of scheduling automation. I’ll let you know more about that next month after I’ve fully tested it.
Also, I used to only schedule my posts for that day and then a year from now. I’m now scheduling my posts to be shared on Facebook and Twitter about every 90 days for 2 years. Yeah, like I said I was grossly under sharing my content.
Food Photo Submission Sites:
Here is a list of submission sites I submit my recipe photos too:
- Foodgawker – since upgrading my camera it’s gets better every month. Next up, learning to use artifical lighting.
- Healthy Aperture
- Tastespotting
- Finding Vegan
- Foodspreading
- Yumgoogle
- Food Epix
- http://foodyub.com/
- http://foodfotogallery.com
- http://eat365.com.au/
- http://www.delishogram.com
- http://foodporndaily.com
- http://chefthisup.co
- foodfanatic.com
- Tasty Kitchen —> although I haven’t recently been submitting to them. I’m not sure about this one, you have to post your whole recipe so there isn’t a ton of incentive for someone to click back to you.
- Whole Yum
- Food52
- https://allrecipes.com
- Yummly
- Recipe Grazer
- http://foodrhythms.com/
- http://dessertstalking.com/
- http://liqurious.notcot.org/
- http://www.jalapenomania.com/
- Fridgg – I used to submit here but after never seeing any traffic (like at all) I stopped. Anyone have good luck with this?
ONE TIME
*I’ve also had tremendous success from Tumblr Submissions, just check out who I follow on Tumblr to find these sites.
**Link Parties have been hit or miss, my MIL has actually been nice enough to add my daily links to some of these. (When it comes to blog promotion I’ll take all the help I can get.) I’ll share a list once we have it figured out next month.
Most Popular Posts for August 2016
This post went crazy on Tumblr after I retook the photos and posted it on Tumblr. I never submitted to food sites because I couldn’t get a good square crop, though. Just for fun I’m going to let you guys in on a little secret – old picture from my first month of blogging –>
To new picture
I wasn’t insanely happy with how that photo came out but given what was there before I figured it was a vast improvement.
This post was also well received on Tumblr and was picked up on a Buzzfeed round up! The best thing about this post? A friend of Paul’s little sister texted his sister to tell her she was on Tumblr and click on a recipe that looked really good, just so happen to be mine! She was blown away and so was I.
This post currently is my top performer on Pinterest with over 2300 pins.
Another old recipe, reshot and republished!
August Posts:
Features Around the Web:
Thank you to all those who featured Hungry Hobby around the web!
15 of the Most Delicious Pancakes You’ll Ever Eat – Buzzfeed–> FIRST EVER SPOT ON BUZZFEED!
12 Healthy One-Pot Dinners – Fitfluential
10 Healthy Wraps via FITNESS Magazine
17 Smoothies Pack Serious Nutrition via FITNESS Magazine
Top 12 Meal Planning Tips for Success via Holley Grainger
Too Hot For Oatmeal – 6 Other Ways to Use Oats (technically this was July 28th) via Toby Amidor Nutrition
Melt In Your Mouth Monday Blog Hop 270
Diehard Foodie WIAW (technically the end of July but still )
Road Trip Round Up via Living Well Kitchen
Zucchini Recipes via Simple and Savory
Afterschool Snacks via Craftaholicsanonymous
Given Link Love From:
Sunday Skinny via Skinny Fitalicious
Key Ingredients Friday Favorites
Sinful Nutrition – A Little Something Sunday
I feel like that is enough Behind the Scenes action for one month, that is all the analysis I can handle for a day! Don’t forget to let me know if this is something that interests you!
Loved this post, thanks for sharing!
Eeeeee! Nice work lady. So proud of you! I hope all is well. It sure does look like it!
Thanks girly!!!!!
This was so helpful and interesting to read! Thank you for sharing! I will be revisiting this blog post and trying to learn a thing or two from you! 🙂
This is SO insightful, I hope you continue to do these. It’s inspiring to see how hard you have/are working. Thanks for sharing all of your resources and being so transparent!
I’m glad you thought so!
This post is super helpful, Kelli! Great idea to turn it into a series. I’m still working on ramping up my blog/social media/private practice and I totally look to RDs like you as I go. I’m hoping to join one of the NEDPG calls soon, it sounds like it was a big help! Keep up the awesome work!
Thanks girl! Definitely do every single one I have ever done has been amazing!
Definitely love the idea of making this kind of post a series, so helpful! I’m always looking for ways to improve my blog, so it’s nice to have some real life examples to get ideas from. Thanks for sharing!
Great Emily! Glad it’s helpful!