We talk a lot about author platforms on this podcast, but today we're going to hear from an author on why platforms are so important and how she built hers. Welcome to Everything Cookbooks, the podcast for writers, readers, and cooks. I'm Kate Leahy and today I'm joined with Kristen Donnelly. Hey, Kristen. Hey, Kate. I have to ask, when you hear the word platform, a word we say a lot on this podcast, what is the first thing that comes to mind? It is social media following. That's what comes to mind first, but I'm like, no, it's so much more. And then I'm like, it's access to an audience. That's what I've decided a platform is access to an audience. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, but I think in modern terms, a lot of times that means social media following. A few weeks ago, we talked a little bit about that book, Hungry Authors and what platform can be. And they did say you don't always need a huge platform to be really successful, being an author, but they did say that when it comes to prescriptive nonfiction, which I think cookbooks would fall into, it's a little different. People want to know the face, they want to know the person behind these recipes, right? Yeah, and they want to already trust you. The book is not going to be the thing. I think a lot of people do think like, well, no, I'll build my platform when I have the book. Right. But now it seems that maybe 10 years ago, that was true. You could have the book and then continue to build your audience from that starting point of a book. Like the book would be like, I'm legitimate. I have this book and you just keep building your following from that and get another book and so on and so forth. And now it's like, no, no, no, no, we want to know you've got this following before we grant you the golden ticket of a book. Exactly. And there's something to be said. There is something smart because you get to test out ideas and see what people respond to and also just have people clamoring by the time your book comes out. Yeah, and that's so true. Being able to test ideas and just saying, hey, what kind of recipes are resonating? You can see how popular certain topics are before you even start to go down the huge undertaking of writing a book. Yeah. So that's why we're really excited today to talk to someone who has a lot of experience both with creating a massive platform. But also in writing her first book today, we're talking with Sarah Fennell. I think this is such a great story because it shows there's no such thing as an overnight success. You know, she started her website, Broma Bakery, in 2010, when she was still in college. Fast forward to 2024. She has this beautiful book, Sweet Tooth. In between that, though, she has built this really large following across a lot of different platforms, not only on her blog, her website, but also on TikTok, on Instagram. She's getting millions of views per month. So just changes things a little bit when you can really test an audience and say, hey, thousands of people are telling you what they think. Maybe I'm onto something if I post this cookie recipe and it goes viral, right? Yeah. I'm also interested to hear, you know, 14 years from when you start your blog to your first book is actually in some ways a long time because I remember a lot of bloggers starting out in that sort of like 2010, 2012, and they came out with books sort of like mid 2010s. So I'm curious to talk to her just about like why wait so long and if she has words of wisdom around the benefits of waiting. I'm sure she'll have so many good things to say. So let's bring her on. Sarah, welcome to everything cookbooks. Thank you so much for having me excited to be here. Let's just talk about your origin story because it's really fascinating. So you started your website in 2010. Yeah, I started at my sophomore year of college, like 14 years to the month pretty much. It was the day after Halloween. I was literally hung over in my costume from the night before, and I was like, I really miss photography and I really miss my mom's baking and I literally just decided to start photographing things and I put it onto this blog and it was like a dot blog spot blog and I called it from a bakery and just yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada. Right. So you're in college, you're doing this thing. It's sort of like this fun project but when you were done with college, how did you know you had a business? So I think my story is a little bit different than some other people who especially around that time were doing blogs and then turning them into businesses. So I was working in the restaurant industry. I was front of house but you know, loved hospitality, food, connecting through food, all of that kind of stuff. I basically got really burnt out and was working for a company and a culture that was not so great as a lot of restaurant cultures aren't. Basically, I, well, I quit my job. I told them I was like, I'm done and I went home and I had to make this decision if I wanted to go and start working at another restaurant or if I wanted to try to figure out what the heck I wanted to do with my life because my undergrad degree was an anthropology. I had never done like business marketing photography, any of it. And I honestly don't know why I thought that my blog would be a good thing to try to do. But at that time it was 2014, I was seeing other people start to take blogging seriously and start to go full-time on it. So I literally went home and I googled how to make money on a food blog because it was truly just a hobby for me. I had $8,500 to my name and I was like, okay, I'm going to give myself two months, eat into the savings that I built up and see if I can make my blog into a business. I say my story is a little bit different than a lot of other people's because most people when they're transitioning to go full-time, they already have income generating opportunities. And I think for me, not having anything really lit a fire under my bum. And I was like, okay, we need to make this work or we're going to have to go back into the restaurant industry, which I already knew like I was dead from. It was just way too much. So it made me try to figure things out really, really fast. I think one thing that's really cool is the stuff that I really leaned on and focused on then is the stuff that I still would recommend that people focus on now. And it's a really understanding and getting really good at content creation. I think one thing that's amazing about the food industries, there's so many different ways for people to succeed. For me, leaning on content and really turning my business into a platform has been the way that I've succeeded. And I feel like continue to try to iterate and figure out how to get to the next step. When you say content, can you define that a little bit? So I have a lecture where I literally define content itself. Content is three things. It's art that gets published on an app that is directed at a specific audience. So it's this combination of like art, marketing, and app context and culture. So when I was starting out content for me, it looked like blogging and creating blog posts and creating photos and creating recipes. As time went on, it looked like posting static images on Instagram. And now content for me kind of means both of those things plus video, which has become such a huge thing. But really, I think for content to be content, it has to be all those three things. It has to have an artistic component. It has to be directed towards a specific audience that finds it useful, finds it valuable. And then it has to be on some sort of app online form. So people can get it. So people can get it. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But that's interesting too, because you're changing what you're doing over time, seeing what you need to do to keep growing that audience, to keep finding people. Absolutely. And I think it's so interesting because the fundamentals of marketing, I think, don't really change. But the way that we market things and the way that we're producing content has changed over time. And I see that difference even from like two years ago to now, the type of content and the type of videos I was producing that worked really well two years ago, aren't necessarily resonating with people now. And it's because people's preferences are changing, sort of the overall culture of what people want to see on apps is changing. I think our media and internet literacy is changing. And so I think if you are somebody that's in the online space, or wants to be in the online space, I think really trying to have a handle on what that looks like is super important. And I think the only way to start being really good at that is maybe unfortunately for yourself to be a little bit chronically online. Yeah. Because you have to be able to understand from this user perspective what everybody's interested in. Yeah. Can you give an example of like something that was working really well two years ago? And now not so much. So two years ago, doing ASMR style videos that were mostly focused on the food was working really well for me. I put out a lot of content. So one of my strategies is to take old content and recut it in a different way, maybe add a voiceover or something like that. But sometimes I'll recut that old content and I'll post it just pretty much as it was. And that style of ASMR mostly food focused is by far not working compared to the content where I am at the forefront. I'm shown in the first five seconds. I'm on screen for half of the time. This sounds like a real old school like 1980s radio host question, but like how does that make you feel? I love it. Terry Gross. I love Terry Gross. Okay. I was such an NPR like kid family growing up. So like obsessed. Wait, oh my god. I want to say this really funny thing. This is totally a tangent. We were at a family dinner about a year ago. Somebody at dinner said like if you could have dinner with one person dead or alive, who would it be? And my mom literally said Steve Inscape. She's like, I think he's just talked to so many interesting people. I love that. Okay. Anyways, so it's very complicated. For me naturally, I love performing and I don't mind being in front of the camera, but I also am a pretty private person. And I think I like performing because I'm able to like kind of create a persona and it doesn't feel fully like me. And I think that as social media becomes more and more persona forward, it puts a lot of pressure on everybody to feel like they are the brand. And being in the food space, I've always loved relying on the food as the thing that people connect to it. And I'm kind of like that filter through in that pass through. It's been interesting personally to navigate seeing people want to connect more with me and who I am and still very much sticking to like the food space as my niche, but also trying to find that balance of incorporating myself and like the outfits I'm wearing and the things that I'm doing without then also turning people off who also just want to see the food. It's weird. Yeah. Because he talks about embracing this persona. Does that help sometimes with maybe the discomfort or even if you're dealing with like haters online? Yeah. I absolutely think it does. And I think, you know, this is something that celebrities talk about all the time, like really trying to have their public persona be different than who they are. And one, I think it's helpful to think about from a strategic standpoint, because then you can dial things up and you can dial things down and like sort of tweak things based on what people are liking. So when I'm on stories or something like that, I am dialing up my energy. I mean, you can hear me talking in this conversation. It's a little bit early, but in general, like I'm a little more low key in my daily conversations. So that really helps because you can kind of play with things and tweak them strategically. But also, yeah, in terms of haters online, I think it really helps to like mentally separate. Okay, but they're seeing this very curated thing that I'm clearly putting out. And yeah, it's me because there are these things that like naturally I'm doing and are a part of my personality, but I am dialing them up a little bit. And so, okay, if they don't like that, that's cool. Like, this is my strategy that's working for the most part, but it definitely gets murky when you start having people who are now not commenting on your food being like, well, I actually really hate bananas. They're like, I think like you look really weird today, or like, oh my God. Right, that's really hard because it's almost like what we tell like authors not to read the reviews of your book because like it just usually doesn't get you anywhere. But for you, do you like is working with a team helpful for that? Like, do you have other people kind of look at DMs or? Yeah, no, I do, I do get help with DMs. So it's not just me in there, but something that I talk about a lot with like friends who are influencers, being an influencer, I'm not saying it's hard, but this part about being an influencer, I think, is hard. It's so hard because so much of your job is being tapped into your community. And so much of your job it is. And I think for me, this is just so important, reading every DM, reading every comment, understanding what people are liking, what they're not liking, what they're gravitating towards, so that then you can dictate your content to serve them better. But when you're taking in all of that information and constantly looking at all of these things, you're naturally going to find a few haters. And so it becomes this little bit of a mind fuck it, if I can say fuck. There comes a little bit of a mind fuck when you're having to take in this information and process it and decide, okay, so do I throw this out? Or do I pay attention to this? Is this one of those things that maybe I should think about? And it just comes very mentally taxing. I could see that. Looking at your strategy over time, starting in 2010, you went all in, and you built this site and the site kind of branched off into other arenas. But was there a tipping point? Or you just sort of blew up and you just was like, oh my gosh, I have twice as many followers as I did a couple of months ago. When was that time? I would say I've had a few tipping points. I think the first tipping point was more of a monetary tipping point, where I felt like, oh, okay, there's no glass ceiling here. I can just keep making more money, and that was really, really cool. So that was where I felt stability in what I was doing and still seeing growth but being nice. And then the second tipping point, yeah, was the rise of video. So before video and COVID, I didn't start doing video until 2021, I think. But before all that, I had 350,000 followers on Instagram, so I was doing well. Didn't have a TikTok presence because it didn't exist. My blog was bringing in like 300,000 pages a month. So doing good. COVID hit the blog skyrocketed to, I think within the first few months of COVID, one and a half million page use, so huge change. We've leveled out now in 2024. Slow months were at like two million pages and large months were at three million page use. There's been a huge growth in the last four years there. Social media went from 350,000 followers on Instagram to within the first eight months of me doing TikTok. I had about a million followers on TikTok that then really translated over to Instagram. And I think it brought my Instagram to 500,000 within those eight months. And so then both just continued to grow and grow and grow. And there was like more crossover from TikTok following through to Instagram and getting Instagram followers. So I think overall that video era really was this next level of stuff that translated to all of these other things that translated to more pages, more Instagram followers, just like a bigger audience in general. And like with revenue streams, did it start with like monetizing the blog through advertising and then became more like influencer brand deals or? Again, because I've been doing this from 2014 on, I've had like a lot of different runners. So when I was starting out, my three main streams were blog advertising and I was making like 500 or $1,000 a month, like it wasn't a lot. But that's basically when like traditionally you partner with an ad provider and ad company put ads on your blog is like you just provide the space and then you get a cut. I was also doing sponsored posts and that has continued to stay obviously. But then it was kind of looking like more sponsored posts on the blog. And it's translated over to social media forward sponsored posts. And then the third thing I was doing was I was doing a lot of freelance photography. So I was photographing for companies photographing for other influencers who are way bigger than me to take photos for recipes that they had already created that they then put on their blogs. I was photographing for restaurants. So doing a lot of that sort of freelance stuff today. And then I've had a lot of income streams between them and here. And then today, my main two income streams or maybe I would say three are blog advertising income. That's like my biggest stream, sponsored posts and companies like influencers, stuff like that. That's second biggest. And then third biggest, like I guess you would call the cookbook and income stream as well. Yeah, I really want to get into the cookbook because I had imagined so you're constantly growing your audience. And I'm sure throughout these years, you've had a lot of agents who have pinged you and said, Hey, have you ever thought of doing a book? So tell us a little bit about how you found your agent. I have gotten, yeah, a lot of like emails or DMs from agents and from publishing houses saying like we're interested in doing a book with you. Some I vetted, but I feel like for me, I never felt fully ready. Like, I knew that if I did a cookbook, just understanding a little bit about the world of cookbooks and coming from this influencer perspective, I knew I did a cookbook. I wanted to have a giant audience so I could have a really good sell. I wanted to feel so confident in my photography. I want to feel so confident in my recipe development. Like, I just wanted all of those aspects to feel like I was really at the top of my game so that my first cookbook, I could really blow it out of the water as much as I could like to the best of my abilities. And I think as a caveat, people do cookbooks for so many different reasons. If you have a different reason, that's great and you should follow your heart. That was just what it felt like for me. Did you ever think to yourself like, why should I do a cookbook? I'm doing all this great content. Yeah, like there's no reason. I don't need a print product. Yeah, I'm doing all this great content and I'm making way more money than I will get on a cookbook deal. So, if I'm spending half of my time for two years working on this cookbook, like what? Yeah, exactly. So, I got an email from Clarkson Potter. They said, we want to know if you're interested in doing cookbook. And I was like, that by the way would be like a dream for so many of our listeners. I mean, it was a dream for me. I was like, wait a second. So, I took the call with them. They were amazing. I was very transparent with them being like, I have no idea where to start. And they were like, okay, so here's how the process works. We can send you a list of agents who we've worked with who we recommend. So, they sent me this list of agents and I basically vetted, you know, a handful that seemed like they would be a good fit. And I ended up signing on with my agent, Kitty Cowles. She like, Kitty changed my life, like, I'm obsessed over there. But what I really loved about her was her roster was incredible. And it was this really diversified group of people in the food space. But every single person you could tell was just like really good at what they did. And they really had something to say and something to bring to the table. So, I felt so good about that. And then I could just tell from our conversations that she was such a shark. And she was going to fight for me. And I think that like, if you are listening and you have done a cookbook, but maybe I've never had an agent, I would really recommend getting an agent who you feel like one obviously knows way more than you, but two, you feel like it's going to fight for you. Because that has just been so I'm like literally getting goosebumps thinking about like, because she's just done such an amazing job. But it really fighting for me at every stage in the process. And I don't mean fighting like, po, po, po, but like, supporting me and standing up for me. Yeah, yeah. So we worked together in the proposal, and then we went back to Clarkson Potter, and we gave them first write of refusal. We took the deal with them. Nice, amazing. That was two and a half years ago. And here we are. We made a mug. Yeah, so how was it? Like, how was the process? Okay, I went in hearing from so many, I was hearing from a lot of bloggers, and they were all saying the same thing. Like, the cookbook process killed me. The cookbook process was the hardest thing I've ever done. Oh my God, I never want to do that again. So I went in with low expectations. But honestly, I've really enjoyed it. I thought it was so refreshing to be chipping away at something over a long period of time. Because I for the last 14 years have been producing, putting out doing again, producing, putting out doing again, and just constantly like turning and turning and turning. And so to have something that like you're just, I just think of a marble sculpture that you're just like slowly chipping away at and perfecting, like it felt so gratifying to me. Huge learning curves. Yeah, curves multiple. So many. But I really, really loved it. I also feel like one of the reasons why the process was more manageable for me is because I do have a team and I was able to at this stage of my business hire a copywriter to help me with perfecting my words. I still wrote the book, but I use Alex Beggs, who's absolutely incredible. And she was able to take thoughts that like I had and just make them so much better and make them sound so much better and just polish the things that I was saying. So that was amazing. And then I also have a team on my end who I'm able to like tag team recipe development with so Sophie Janzo, she's a girl who's worked with me for the past five years. And she literally started as my personal assistant and has just grown, she's now like the chief operations officer of the blog like in total integral part of my business. So she was huge with doing the recipe development portion of this book and we were able to do that together. And you dedicate the book to your mother and to her. Yeah, yeah. So my mom was the person who really created my sweet tooth because she has such a huge sweet tooth. But I also felt like it was so important to dedicate the book to Sophie because like I say in the dedication, this is your book too. And I really, really feel that. I think it's just so important to acknowledge how much of a team and a group effort it was. And you did the photography? I did the photography. Yeah. So my second business that doesn't exist anymore, but that I did for so long was this business called Photography School. And it was an online school for food photographers and food bloggers who wanted to grow their online businesses. The photography portion for me has always been so special and so important. I just knew that I wanted to do the photography from the start, like it wasn't even a question. And I worked with an amazing team of stylists. I worked with Sarah Smart and Rebecca Jerkovich. They were phenomenal. They made everything look so good. But I photographed it, which was wild. How did that work? We blocked it off. So I just moved to New York, but I was living in Boston and I have still a studio in Boston. So we were able to shoot in the studio, which was amazing. So we blocked everything off and shot over two weeks. We did one week in October and one week in November or something like that. And we just shot through all of the recipes within those 10 days, which was wild. It's 100 recipes and especially with baking. I mean, it was like a lot. And because of that, we chose to do artificial light for the book, which I had never shot an artificial light. And looking back, I'm like, what was I thinking trying this for the first time? But it helped because we were able to shoot consistently over over those days. Right. So it all looks like it's part of the same book. Yeah. Was that one of the biggest differences between shooting for other types of content and shooting for the book? Yeah, absolutely. I think doing that. And then also, I mean, there's just so much preparation that you have to do creatively so that you can turn through 10 shoots in a day. So really having a very detailed shot list down, talking it through the team ahead of time and making sure we were all on the same page. Does this make sense for what we're doing? Also, then because you're looking at this as a whole huge body of work, making sure that you're printing everything out, seeing it all together, seeing sort of, oh, we have so many tight shots, we really need to do something that pulls out or let's add another dark shot in here because we have some really nice dark moments and all that. We hired one of my very good friends who has photographed me for the last, my gosh, like seven years or something. And she did shots of me over one day. So then I was able to get a few shots of me in the book. Well, and that's something too that I think is really hard sometimes for authors to feel comfortable with somebody shooting them and like it feeling authentic to the book. You had to have somebody there who you really felt comfortable with. Yeah. And I mean, I don't fault my publishers for this at all, but like they wanted to hire a photographer who had done cookbooks before and had done more of these like lifestyle kitchen moments. And my friend who's a professional photographer and shoots for like international companies doesn't do a lot of that. And so I really had to fight to have her as a photographer, but I knew that I was going to feel so much more comfortable shooting with somebody who I knew. So I think that's kind of like an important lesson that I learned. It is okay to fight for these things. When you do, I think it's really important to just fully explain yourself and fully like talk through the reasons why it's really important to you. Were there any other things like that? I would say the cover. We always love a good cover story. So tell us, I didn't, I didn't want the cover. I wanted a different cover. I wanted to do chocolate chip cookies on the cover. So the brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipe that's in the book, it's also on my website. Almost all of the recipes in the book are new, but we included some fan favorites because we have this wealth of 14 years of recipes that are like fan favorites. And I really wanted those to be on the cover. And I explained every single reason why I thought it should be the chocolate chip cookies. And my publisher was like, no, no, no. But I'm really glad that one, I explained all of those reasons. And two, that they one, because the cover that we ended up with, I'm so happy. So that's really good. I mean, covers, I think it's the shock of seeing what your book is going to look like in people's hands. And it's like the first time you see a cover, I think it's sort of like an out-of-body experience like, oh wait, that's what my book is going to look like, you know, it's wild. And it can take a while to sink in. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would recommend for that, like go and print out all of these little mockups that you're getting, like to see what it looks like in front of you from two feet away, you know, that makes such a difference. Smart. That is really smart. So we talked about getting a lot of DMs and, you know, being in tune with your audience. And in your book, you do such a great job of sort of addressing like, hey, I've heard from a lot of people of like, what doesn't work like recipe fails. So how did your audience influence how the book came together? I love that you asked that question because it is such an important part of this cookbook. My audience directly influenced like everything about the book, but very much the tone and the way that we describe the recipes in the asides in the way that we describe ingredients and very much in the way that we wrote the instructions. So I really wanted to be very conversational. And I wanted to make sure that I was calling out any potential pitfalls. One thing that I found in baking books specifically is if you are somebody who you love to bake, but maybe you haven't baked a ton and you open up a cookbook specifically, if you don't understand what's going on, there are no comments that you can scroll to at the bottom and help to figure out. Wait, what is this thing meaner? Oh, did anybody else struggle with this? So I really wanted to sort of fool proof out all of those things. And it's little small things. Like when I'm talking about caramel, like letting people know, like it might seem a little bit weird at this stage, keep it going, you're going to be good, just to make sure that those people who are reading it, who are maybe a little bit less technically savvy with baking don't feel like they're being left out or that they just can't accomplish this recipe. Because I think that with so much of baking, it's really not that complicated there are just these like mental hurdles that people haven't done yet. So they don't know how to get through them. So if you can walk them through that, the caliber of baked goods that they can create becomes so much bigger. I really like what you're saying there because I noticed in the recipes, you call out when things aren't important. So if you want to use cow's milk or plant-based milk, it doesn't matter. And I'm guessing you probably got a lot of those questions throughout the years of like, can I use almond milk instead? But then when it does matter, you say like, yeah, you can't change them, which I really appreciate. You're already thinking of those questions that are in the reader's head. Absolutely. And in that way, I think that being an influencer has really helped in terms of creating the book. One thing that's been interesting is coming into publishing, feeling like I really have to prove myself as an influencer. I'm not just an influencer, I am also one of you. That's one thing that has helped me and made my book better and been really like useful in terms of then becoming like the best recipe developer I can beat, just having so much feedback and having worked through those hiccups or whatever they are already. Use their own pants eyes. Yeah, exactly. What about the title? Because you didn't go with calling it broma bakery as a book. I wanted the book to stand alone from my brand and I wanted to make sure that people who don't know my brand could still like, gravitate towards this book without knowing my brand. Especially, I think since broma is like this made up word, I didn't want that to be a turn off to anybody that would make them be like, eh, but I don't really know. We're like, where's broma bakery? Yeah, yeah, there is. Yeah, where's the address? I want to buy these cookies. So I knew I didn't want to call it that. I also knew I didn't want to be on the cover for that exact same reason. I really wanted the book to appeal to the widest audience possible. And yes, people know my face, but I think more people will respond to a cookie more than my face. But the title itself, I'm horrible with coming up with names. And my sister literally came up with it. Like I was talking with her and she was like, oh my God, what do you call it, sweet tooth? And I was like, that is so kind of not exist. Yeah, I know. Really silly anyway. So full credit to my sister on that one. I also wanted to just talk a little bit about the recipe categories. I love that you have a whole chapter dedicated to tiny servings. And is that something because you were doing that already that you just knew that people will love tiny servings and that went beyond mug cakes? Yeah, yeah. Talk about developing recipes for that chapter specifically. The last chapter in the book is dessert for one. All desserts that are made for one or two people. The reason that we did that is because of exactly what you're saying. We started this single serve series on the blog and on social media. And every single time I would post a single serve recipe, it would go viral. People loved it. I think it speaks to yeah, my audience, which a lot of them are younger, they live alone, or it's just them and their partner, or they're even younger. And it's literally them at their parents house, but they just want a little something. But I think it also speaks to this way that people want dessert, which is they want it pretty immediately and they don't necessarily need an occasion for it. And I think that's kind of an underserved population or like time in people's life when they really just they want something. But it's not because they have a party that they're going to or a birthday or something like that. Creating a whole tray of brownies feels a little overwhelming because do I really want a whole tray of brownies throughout the week that I'm going to be picking through? So it just felt like a really good idea to do a whole chapter of it when people were really liking it. And it's been so interesting to see the reception when people read through the different chapters in the book and they see that there's dessert for one, they're like, Oh my God, I'm so excited you included a whole chapter of this or thank God that you kept that going. So I think that's one of those things that I'm really just relying on what my audience is telling me and then being like, great, let's just keep going. Let's produce more lead into that because I noticed also there's a QR code on those pages. So if they do want the full format, they can also get it. Yes. So we we felt like, okay, yeah, but these recipes are so good and they're so easily scalable. So what we decided to do in that chapter was every recipe has a QR code. It literally links to a custom page on my blog that is just the scaled up version that we also tested. After this process of writing, sweet tooth, do you want to do another book? Is there another book sort of in the works? What are you feeling with that? Or you just want to kind of let this one go out in the world, see what happens and then assess? No, there is another book in the works. I will wait to describe it, but there is and I'm really, really excited about it. And I think the thing that I'm excited about is one that it really builds on so much of I think what makes sweet tooth special, which is creating these desserts that are really based on occasion rather than based on form. I think the way that people like to bake and like that home bakers like to bake is not so much, okay, I definitely know I want to cookie. I definitely know I want a cake. It's much more about like, I know that I want something and I need it in under an hour or I know that I want something and I only want to use the ingredients in my pantry. So it's really building on on that idea. But then I'm also just really excited in general because going through this process as a first time author, there are so many things that you are learning and that you're like, oh, I could totally do this differently next time. And now I have all that knowledge going in. So I think the second book in a lot of ways is going to be easier just because I know exactly what to expect. And I can really approach it with that foresight, which I'm really, really excited about. Awesome. Well, congratulations on your first book. Thank you. For the last question we want to ask, just what words of advice would you have? I'm going to be a little long-winded. Please, please. I was speaking at a conference the other week and somebody said, okay, so I have a lot of things that I'm doing. I am, you know, something like a four-time cookbook author. I host events that I partner with with companies. I do retreats and trips. How do I incorporate all of these things and how do I make my messaging succinct and all of these things. And what I said to her and what I would say is I think it's so important to separate out your goals from the day-to-day of what you're doing to achieve those goals. And especially when it comes to being a content creator focusing on the recipe at hand that you're about to post the next day and then how you can make the next video that you do really, really good and building that audience and really creating this very, very engaged audience is the most important thing you can do. You want your day-to-day to kind of be like fully in social media and content mode because that is the funnel and the starting point to get you everything else. So really focus on how much value you can provide to your audience with free content, with free recipes, with establishing yourself as this source not only of influence but of expertise. And when you develop that audience and you get this audience of people who are like hanging onto your every word then makes going out and selling a cookbook or selling merch or selling a retreat or whatever it is. It makes it so much easier because they're already obsessed with you and they already love everything that you're organically doing and it's going to be able to translate so much better to those more like salesy or goal-oriented things. That's a really great note and on. Sarah, thank you so much for being a guest. We enjoyed this conversation. I know Kristen and I will be, we'll be sharing these notes with our other podcast hosts so we appreciate it. Thank you guys so much. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to Everything Cookbooks. For more episodes and ways to contact us, go to our website, everythingcookbooks.com. This show is available wherever you get your audio and if you like what you hear leave us a review wherever you get your audio. Any book mentioned in the show can be found on our affiliate page at bookshop.org. Thanks as always to our editor, Abby Ser-Quatella and until next time, keep on writing, reading and cooking.
Kate and Kristin speak all things platform building and content creation with Sarah Fennel as we learn what should come first, the audience or the book? Sarah shares her definition of 'content', her path from hobbyist blogger to business owner and what areas she focused on on to build her platform. She speaks about tipping points in her career, how she balances creating persona forward vs food forward content and why she decided now was the best time to write a cookbook. Finally, she talks about shooting the photos for the book, working with her team and leaves us with some wise and inspiring advice and a hint into what she is working on next.
