3 Investments to Avoid When You're Just Starting Your Online Culinary Business
When you're just getting started, which investments are worthy of your hard-earned cash?
This week's episode is inspired by that exact question, one that gets asked often by culinary business owners who are new to the online space.
In the show, I’m sharing the 3 business investments you should absolutely avoid if you’re in the early stages of your business. These are common money traps that cause culinary business owners to get distracted from what really matters most in the beginning and can lead to spending more money down the road.
But I won't leave you hanging there! I'll wrap up the show by sharing 3 smart and affordable investments that are crucial in the beginning stages of building an online culinary business.
Links from this episode
Save on your email marketing with Flodesk (affiliate link)
Sign up for my FREE Culinary Roadmap and learn how to start a flexible and fulfilling online business.
Say hello to Cynthia on Instagram → @culinarycynthia!
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Cynthia Samanian: Hi there. It's Cynthia Samanian from The Experiential Table. I help culinary business owners like you teach online so that you can ditch the exhausting hustle of in-person events and stop trading cakes for cash. When you teach online, you can create classes, courses, and more that actually scale beyond your time. This means that you don't have to work more to make more.
Now today's topic is inspired by a question I've gotten asked enough times to know that it had to be its own episode. If you're just getting started with teaching online or perhaps you've been at it, but you want to refresh and revisit the basics, this is your show. I'm going to share the three investments you should not make. That's right money, you should not be spending if you're in the early stages of your online culinary business.
These are common money traps that cause culinary business owners to get distracted from what really matters most in the beginning. So I'm going to walk you through what those not so great investments are, I'll of course explain why they're not the best use of your money, and finally I'll wrap up by sharing what three areas you should consider spending your hard earned money on. Have any guesses? Let's dive in.
So the first investment that most people make way too early is actually one of my favorite investments. It's something that I'm working on right now. It's the fun stuff. It's where you see your business really come to life. And that's when you work on your website and branding. Now they are two separate things, but I'm lumping them together for the purpose of this podcast because oftentimes if you find a really good designer, they'll not only create your logo, help you find the right fonts for your brand, your color palette, but they'll also help you create a website or they'll design the website for you.
I can't tell you how many times people come into Cooking Class, Business School and say, well, Cynthia, I am not sure if I can start yet because I'm still working on my website. Some people want to join my program and they say, well, the timing's not right yet because I just spent a bunch of money working on my brand. And I can't help, but have this knot in my stomach, thinking, oh my gosh. I really, really hope they know who their ideal customer is, because if you just spent all this money working on a brand that is for your current customer and not your ideal online student, then you have more work to do.
When you create a website, if you're working with a great designer, someone who really knows their stuff, they're actually going to ask you questions about your ideal customer. Your site is going to be based on your ideal customer, and you may not know who that person is if you're just starting out. And guess what? It most likely is not the customer you're serving today.
So let's take an example. Let's say that you are a private chef and you cook really healthy meals for super busy working professionals. Okay. We're going to keep it general here, but let's say that's what you do today and you have this dream of teaching healthy meal prep online. You want to scale this, you want to stop trading time for money. You see how big this opportunity is and you are ready to take advantage of it. Okay, great. So now that you've decided you want to teach online, you've got to figure out who you're targeting. Is it going to be the same audience, your same clients who are buying healthy meals from you? Most likely not. Maybe, but more often not because your existing client base maybe doesn't want to learn to cook. Maybe they don't want to spend the time. There's a reason why they're paying you to do it. Now I'm not saying they won't be a student in your class, but are they your ideal student? Are they the people who really want what you have to offer?
That's something you have to think about, and you have to think about it before you build your site, because let's say you go through this branding exercise with a designer or on your own. You spend a lot of time and money building out this beautiful website. It's catering to that audience. You've missed the mark. The prettiest sleekest site doesn't matter if you're not actually solving a problem for your ideal customer or giving them what they want or need. So ultimately you are not only going to waste your time and money, you're just going to get it wrong. Now, of course, there's no way to know with 1000% certainty that what you put out there is going to be perfect, but there are some things that you can do to help you get pretty close. And I'm going to talk about that later, when I cover how you should be spending your money.
Please don't get caught up in the hype that you need a beautiful website, that you need to have a perfect logo, that all of these things have to happen before you even know what you're offering, who you're offering it to and why you're the best person to offer it. These are the core questions that you need to answer and like I said, a good designer is going to ask you those questions and they need to know those answers to come up with your brand. It's exactly what I'm going through right now and my designer has this awesome questionnaire, she is digging deep. She's asking me what my brand values are. She's having me describe my ideal student. All of the decisions that she's making when it comes to my new brand are tied to that. So don't jump to that yet. Again, it's not just about the money and time. It's that you frankly are going to be throwing it down the drain if you're not clear on who your ideal customer is.
Now the second category where I see a lot of culinary business owners spend money on is social media. This could be a variety of things. It could be social media courses, coaches, even ads. Right, running Facebook ads or ads on Instagram.
I think social media is a great tool, but I don't think it is the place to start if you don't have any idea who you're targeting. So if you're going to buy a course on how to use hashtags, but you don't know who your ideal student is, you're not going to know what hashtags to pick. It's not going to help. If you are going to buy a $37 course on how to create Instagram reels, it won't matter if you don't know what content to put in that reel, because you don't know who your ideal student is. It's all related.
Think about a cake. The foundation is made up of who your ideal student is. What is your unique value you can bring to them? What is it that they're looking to learn? What are their pain points? That is your foundation. Everything on top has to be built on a solid foundation or else it's going to crumble. Think of social media as that layer of frosting or perhaps a layer of filling. Okay. It amplifies your marketing strategy, but it can't hold up on its own by itself. Social media is not your marketing strategy. It is a part of it. It is a tool that you can use.
And I'm hoping that this is a relief to some of you, because I know that there is a ton of pressure out there to post on social media, whether it's Instagram Reels or even TikTok. Depending on who you listen to someone's probably telling you that you should be posting every day and some may even say multiple times per day. I know that you have businesses to run and for some of you, your online culinary business is your side hustle. You have catering, private cheffing, you run a bakery, you have other things going on, so of course you're not going to be able to post multiple times a day or once a day, or even every other day. It can be challenging.
So I want you to know that social media is not the end all be all. There are things that you can do, there's money you can spend, there's time that you can use in ways that are going to be much more effective as you're starting out than social media. Again, social media is a fantastic tool but it's especially powerful when you actually know who your ideal student is, when you actually know what it is they're looking for and how you can help them. Because then you can create content that speaks to their needs and speaks to their desires. Otherwise, if you are dancing around, pointing at little blurbs, creating reels and having no idea what it is that you're trying to convey, that is a time suck. You've got to be strategic with social media and you can't do that unless, you know, who you are talking to.
The third and final investment that you should not be making if you're just starting out in your online culinary business is expensive software and equipment. I'm lumping these two together. Software would be like a membership platform or really expensive email marketing service. These are things that you don't need to have right now. There's a very good chance you don't need it right now. And they're monthly subscriptions so they can add up. Some of them are close to $200 a month. That is a lot of money if you don't need it right now.
On the equipment side. Well, this one's pretty self-explanatory, but when you're teaching online, gosh, it would be great to have a super fancy camera. It would be amazing to have professional lights. And a mic that's crystal clear. Of course, those things would be great. But if you haven't taught a class before, if you haven't even dipped your toes in teaching online, then you may just be buying those things because you feel like they're going to make you professional. Sometimes we think that buying things, checking things off of the list is building a business. Now I'm saying that because I've fallen into that trap before. I love checking off boxes on my list. It makes me feel like I'm making progress. And some things are easier to do than others, like whipping out my credit card and buying things okay. So I totally get it when I was starting out and people were telling me what cameras to buy and this and that, I added them to my shopping cart on Amazon and was ready to buy.
But I had to check myself and say, okay, wait a minute, let's start off with the built-in camera on my laptop. And then let's go to a webcam and then let's eventually splurge and get the fancier camera. I upgraded as I was making more money. I upgraded, as I realized, yes, teaching online is what I want to do.
The key is to start small and to keep it basic. You're going to get discouraged if you buy all this equipment, you don't understand it, you're teaching a class, something's not working and you've overwhelmed herself with at all.
I told this to my students in Cooking Class Business School and it's so true. Your tech is really not going to make or break your business. Can it take it to the next level. Absolutely. When you're in a place where you are filling up classes or you're starting to do some big time corporate events. Then, yeah, it makes sense to upgrade to a nicer camera and that will elevate the experience, but it's not what you need today. It's certainly not what you need if you're just starting out.
Sometimes we think of these things as crutches too. So we think that if we have all of the fancy gadgets that, that makes us pro.
But really what makes you pro is having a marketing strategy, knowing who your audience is creating content that speaks to them and actually inspires them to take your classes. Buying is not doing. Okay. Buying expensive software, buying expensive equipment is not the hard work. It's the easiest thing you can do.
I played sports growing up, I played tennis, basketball, and volleyball and to me, the analogy couldn't be any clearer. I think about how there would be the kids with the super expensive brand new shoes. But if they didn't practice, if they didn't really give it their all, if they kind of just went through the motions, it didn't matter that they had the nicest new shoes. They weren't good players. It's the same in your business. Buying things does not make you an expert. It doesn't make you a savvy business owner. It's an investment.
So I share this because I don't want you to make the mistake that I have before. I think I've learned my lesson after several instances of thinking that buying the pro stuff would make me a pro business owner, but that's not it at all.
So to recap, the three investments not to make, if you're just starting out, include your website and branding design, social media courses, coaches, you fill in the blank, and expensive software and equipment. These things are all really important, but there is a time in place to make those investments. If you are just looking right now to the online space and you want to see what's possible for you, these are traps that will take your money way too early in your journey as an entrepreneur.
Now it wouldn't be too nice of me to tell you what not to spend your money on and then leave you hanging. So I'm going to share three things that I would focus on if I were in your shoes. Now, this is of course, just my opinion, based on my years of experience, running my own business. Not only this one, but multiple businesses before. I've made many mistakes and knowing what I know now, here are the three areas that I would spend time and money on.
When I say investment, by the way, it's also your time. Okay? Time is your greatest, most valuable resource. So thinking about how you spend your time and money as a business owner is super important.
Now the first investment I would make. There should be pretty obvious based on what I've talked about already is the investment of time and talking to your ideal customer. This is actually free when it comes to money and pretty easy, but it's something that so many business owners skip. Because you think you already know your customer. As I mentioned earlier in that private chef example. Your current customer today may not be your online customer. So, if you think, you know your customer today, if you think, you know, the person who's buying those healthy meals from you, that's great. But you've got to do the research to understand if that is the same person you're going to sell online to, or if there's a new customer for you in the online space. Essentially there's a series of questions you want to ask to understand what that person's pain points are? What are their challenges? One of my favorite questions to ask people is if you could wave a magic wand and have your number one problem solved, what would it be?
So you're trying to get into the head of your ideal student and see if there's anything there that you can solve for them. I could do a whole podcast series on this topic. In fact, it's something I teach in my program. It's one of the first modules or we call them recipes that I cover. So I'm not going to share all of it here, but I will tell you that you need to invest the time to talk to your ideal customer.
I have to share that I have been doing this as well. In fact, my students tell me that they love that I actually do what I teach in my own business and it's so true. As I'm working through some exciting new things for Cooking Class Business School, I've actually been having conversations with my community. I've been talking with people who have been on my email list, who haven't enrolled in my program to understand their needs, their wants, their dreams. It's been so helpful. I'm telling you. I learned something from every single interview. And I could do these every few months and continue to learn. So I really recommend you do it. Make it something that you do at least once a year, because times have been changing very quickly. I can tell you that the interviews I did in summer 2020 are very different than the conversations I'm having today. So be sure to talk to your ideal customer. This is where the gold is.
Okay. Now the second place where I would invest. If I were you. If I was just starting out in my online culinary business is investing in creating original content. When I say original content, I'm not talking about Instagram posts, I'm not talking about Reels, I'm not talking about TikTok videos. I'm talking about content that is more substantial. It's content that's original, that lives either on your website, maybe even on YouTube or on a podcasting platform. So some examples of this could be blog posts, whether they're recipes or tutorials, podcast episodes like the one you're listening to right now. You could do videos. They don't have to be long. They could be short clips, but when you have things on social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, you've got to be careful because once you put it on there, you are at the mercy of those platforms. If the algorithm were to change tomorrow, your content may not get seen the way it's been seen today so I really recommend focusing in creating content that lives in a place where you have more control.
You can then take that content and share it on social. So, I'm not saying don't use Instagram or Facebook, but that content should live somewhere else. That original content should be in a place that you own or a place that is a little bit more reliable frankly than social media.
Now I mentioned this second, because the content that you create needs to tie back to your ideal customer. So the things that you learned in your earlier conversations, you want to make sure that you create content that tackles that head-on.
So I'll give you an example in my case. When I've been doing these interviews with people in my audience, one of the things that comes up over and over again is that people don't know where to start. They want to teach online, but they're stuck. They don't know how to begin. So I create content that helps people overcome that. That's why I have my Business Cookbook, which is my free guide that has the six steps to get started. So that's how you want to think about creating content. It's not just about creating fun recipes and things that light you up. You also need to make sure that it's speaking to your ideal customer's dreams, their desires, their needs, their wants. Okay?
Now I'm also going to throw email marketing into this mix of original content because email marketing is also really important. It is a way for you to get in front of your audience on a consistent basis and share stories with them, inspire them, whatever you want to do.
I've always believed that email marketing is even more important than social media. It's one of the few ways that you can actually communicate with your audience directly and not have to worry about algorithms.
Email marketing is also an investment. It's not free. I recommend starting out with Flodesk. I do have a promo code that I'll include in the show notes if you want to get started and do so with a pretty good discount.
Now the third investment is one that gets me a little fired up. Okay.
I believe that you should invest in a system. If you want to make big changes in your business, if you actually want to create a new part of your business, right? That's no small feat.
You're not going to do that with a $37 mini course. Okay. You're also going to have a really hard time doing it on your own, if you just DIY it and patch together what you find on Google. That's going to take you a lot of time. It's probably not going to be effective. And along the way, you're going to be spending money.
I also know in my experience in talking with people who've come into my program, a lot of you are working with business coaches. And I think that is fantastic. Business coaches are super helpful when it comes to gaining clarity and understanding what it is you want to do. However, business coaches are not experts in every space. So your business coach is going to be able to coach you to a certain place. But when it comes time to understanding what the step-by-step framework is, what is the system that you need to build? What are the obstacles you're going to face that are unique to the online culinary industry? They're not going to be able to help you there and that's okay. They'll get you to a great place.
I know this because I've been in the position of DIY-ing it. Of buying a bunch of cheap classes. Of working with coaches and realizing that. It was super hard to pull it all together, to stay organized, to have a plan because I had all these differing inputs.
I was scattered. I was disorganized. It almost felt like the more things I purchased, the more people I listened to, the more confused I was getting. It wasn't until I really made a big investment in a program and believed in the expert who was leading it and followed what she had to teach every step of the way. It wasn't until that moment that it all came together.
When you're part of a program and there are all these pieces that fit together. It just makes sense. It's such a relief. You don't feel like you're alone. And you actually feel like you're making progress because you are.
And when you're in those types of programs, when you have a system, when you have the support, you also appreciate and realize that there's no silver bullet. Anyone who tells you that you can turn your business around with a $19 mini course, or that you can make millions of dollars after a three-day workshop. I'm sorry. They're full of it. There's no way. Okay. Business it takes time. It is hard work. It is a grind, but boy, is it rewarding?
Now, if you are looking for a roadmap, if you're looking for strategies, coaching, support, all that good stuff, then I invite you to join me and Cooking Class Business School. We are enrolling our next cohort pretty soon here so to be among the first to know of when doors open, send me a DM on Instagram at HiddenRhythm or you can go to hidden rhythm.com/cookbook, and you'll get our free guide and be among the first to get notified when doors open for our May cohort of Cooking Class Business School. Now I have to mention that we have some exciting things coming up, actually in June, there is a newer version of their program. There's a new name new branding, updated content. It is fantastic. And if you enroll in Cooking Class Business School before it comes out, you will get access to the new program at today's price. So the price will be going up once we release the new program and it's everything that's in Cooking Class, Business School and more. Totally updated for what's happening today in 2022. So don't miss out on that. This is the best opportunity to get in now. So be sure to either send me a DM on Instagram or go to hidden rhythm.com/cookbook to get our free Business Cookbook. And you'll be on the list when doors open.
Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope it helped you think about how you can spend your money wisely and what you should be avoiding especially as you're just starting out.
Remember when you're just starting out the three most important smartest investments you can make of your money and time include talking to your ideal customer, investing in creating original content, and finally investing in a system. Having that plan with support, coaching, and community so that you can make progress quickly, really take the fast track and not make the mistakes that so many online business owners have made before you.
If you found this episode valuable, definitely spread the word and leave a rating and review wherever you're listening to this podcast. When you do that, it goes a really long way in helping other culinary business owners discover this podcast as well. Remember to stay tuned for some very big updates coming soon here and until next week get excited to get experiential.
