The Truth About What It Really Takes to Scale Your Business with Bjork Ostrom

Mar 21

Have you ever been tempted to lower your price?

When you think about scaling, or growing, your business — does it seem like an absolute no-brainer “yes!” Or, do you feel some hesitations around the idea of taking your online culinary business of the next level?

In this episode, Bjork Ostrom from Food Blogger Pro shares his honest take on what it takes to scale a business. And it might surprise you!

With over 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur in the online space, Bjork gives us a behind-the-scenes look into how he and his wife Lindsay approach their very successful blog, Pinch of Yum, and their portfolio of online businesses.

In this show, Bjork shares:

The story behind their food blog, Pinch of Yum, which now gets 4-5 million page views per month!
How to think about growth when you’re a solopreneur
The importance of redefining what success means to you

…and much, much more!

I can’t wait for you to dive in! This episode will undoubtedly plant some new seeds for thought in your entrepreneurial mind especially as you think about how you want to grow your business.

Links from this episode

Check out Bjork’s portfolio of businesses at Tiny Bit and Lindsay’s blog, Pinch of Yum.
Tune into my interview with Bjork on the Food Blogger Pro podcast
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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Bjork Ostrom: And I think when we are building something online, we have this expectation that we wouldn't have if I was learning cello. I'm not going to pick up cello and then a year later expect to be part of the Minnesota Orchestra. But I think sometimes we like launch a website and then a year later we expect it to be like somebody who's been producing for 12 years.
Cynthia Samanian: Hi friends! Today I'm chatting with Bjork Ostrom. If you're a food blogger, then Bjork does not really need an introduction as you already know him through the food blog, Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro.
Cynthia Samanian: Bjork is the chief tech consultant, business advisor, and very importantly, taste tester at Pinch of Yum. The Pinch of Yum blog currently averages 4 to 5 million, that's right, million page views every single month. So yeah, it's big time. Bjork is also behind Food Blogger Pro and hosts the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. I've actually had the honor of being a guest on the podcast and I highly recommend you check out our episode. It's in the show notes, and you should also listen to the other episodes. There are hundreds, and it's a really great show whether or not you consider yourself a food blogger.
Cynthia Samanian: Bjork is the husband to Lindsay, who is the creative force behind Pinch of Yum and dad to their child Solvi. Bjork and his family live in Minnesota with their dog Sage.
Cynthia Samanian: Now I have to say this interview went in a direction that I really couldn't be more happy about. I originally thought that Bjork and I would be chatting about SEO and content strategy. But after I had been on his podcast, it became really clear that there were just some topics we couldn't ignore, and I felt compelled to share them with you and so did he.
Cynthia Samanian: We're talking life first. We're talking alignment. We're talking all of the juicy things that happen when you grow a business. Bjork has over 10 years of experience running online businesses, and so today we are chatting about what it really means to scale. In other words, what happens when you grow quickly. It may seem perfect and rosy on the outside, but as Bjork is going to share, There are some tough questions you've gotta ask yourself and a lot of patience required along the way.
Cynthia Samanian: Before we get into the interview, I do want to share that in the coming weeks I'm going to be announcing a very special event and as always, the first to hear about it are those who are on my email list. So if you aren't already on my list, you can do it by going to culinaryroadmap.com. When you sign up with just your name and email, you'll get my free roadmap, which walks you through the 11 steps to a life first online culinary business, and you'll be the first to know when I open up my event.
Cynthia Samanian: Now let's get to the interview.
Cynthia Samanian: Welcome to the podcast, Bjork.
Bjork Ostrom: Hey, thanks. Glad to be here. It's always fun to be, I don't know if it's technically on the other side of the mic cuz I'm sitting in the same spot. But we do a podcast and it's fun to be interviewed. I have my kombucha here, some water, comfortable seat I'm here to answer questions and have a conversation, so excited to be here.
Cynthia Samanian: So this is actually part two of our conversation. I love it. We, uh, actually spoke not too long ago and I had the honor of being on your podcast, Food Blogger Pro, and I think back to that conversation quite a bit because it was really focused on building businesses and the journey of being an entrepreneur. So, we are going to get to the heart of entrepreneurship and some of the lessons that you've learned. You've been at this for a while and I know that you have so much to share with our listeners.
Bjork Ostrom: Great. Yeah, really excited about it and open book. So excited to talk about anything and everything.
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah, I'm excited this time you are gonna be doing most of the talking. For those who haven't heard of Food Blogger Pro and Pinch of Yum, can you share a little bit about what you do?.
Bjork Ostrom: Totally. Yeah. The internet is such a strange place in that, if you get into the right, like micro niche, like I think of my friends who have kids who are around the age where they can watch YouTube and they have their YouTube stars that they love and it's like, I would never know who it is.
Bjork Ostrom: And you probably wouldn't know who it is and most people wouldn't. But if you get in like the gaming niche, it's like they are the biggest celebrity you could imagine. And it's one of the strange things with the internet where if you're in the right circle, people might know who you are, but if you're not like what? Like who you're talking about, I have no idea not only who that is or what they do, like conceptually don't understand it. So for the folks who are unfamiliar with our story, kinda the quick background is my wife Lindsay started a recipe site called Pinch of Yum in 2010. And she started to get really interested in photography.
Bjork Ostrom: Kind of a fun aside, is that when it first started, she's like, can you take the pictures? Cuz I was really into photography and video at the time. And she's like, I just want you to do that. And it lasted two times and I'm like, here's the basics of it and then she took it and ran with it. And is just this incredible photographer and her, um, background is a teacher, so she's really good at breaking down, concepts into bite size pieces of information that are easy to consume. And Lindsay got really into photography, writing, recipe development, all the essentials that you need to build, a successful site about recipes and food.
Bjork Ostrom: While she was getting really into that, I was interested in business and, had this great opportunity to come alongside Lindsay as she was building this thing and think about what does it look like to apply some things that I'm learning to this case study? So Lindsay did all the hard work of building an audience, creating content consistentlyand then for me, I was able to come alongside and say like, great, what does it look like then if you have a thousand people coming to your website in a month to think strategically about creating an income from that? And as we were doing that, I started to share posts on Pinch of Yum about how we were learning, what we were learning and how we were applying that along the way.
Bjork Ostrom: Um, from that we got this following of other people who are interested in doing a similar thing. There was other people who had started sites and they were building those and before us, around the same time as us. And then there's also people who came along and was like, actually, that looks like a really interesting thing. I want to try doing that.
Bjork Ostrom: And so they started their own site with a different twist that was applied to them personally and built a following. And for some people they got into it and they're like, oh my gosh, I love this. I wanna do this. They double down. They work harder. Longer. And we've been able to see in our, 10 years of doing this, some really great stories of people building businesses and having success as an entrepreneur.
Bjork Ostrom: The outcome really that we're hoping for in all the things that we do is to be the conduit for people to find work that they love, that aligns well with who they are. And we just happen to focus at this point within the food space.
Bjork Ostrom: So over time we've developed these other businesses, all under the umbrella of this company called Tiny Bit, which is about showing up every day and getting a tiny bit better, which we really believe to be as like a core thesis of how we work and how we operate.
Bjork Ostrom: Um, and I won't dive into all of those businesses, but if you go to tiny bit.com, you can see, what those are. But the ones that most people would know, at least in this niche, would be Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro.
Cynthia Samanian: I remember the Pinch of Yum income reports and every month you would share basically every penny that was earned through the site, where it came from and I remember using those as inspiration too, thinking wow, okay. And you didn't make it look easy. I think it was just transparency. Maybe you started the trend of income reports, but I know that others have done it and it is such a valuable resource because I think a lot of times people don't wanna talk about the dollars.
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I compare it sometimes to the four minute mile and I forget who I should just look it up cause I talk about it enough. But there's the guy who ran the four minute mile, which had never been done before, at least never recorded and then after that, in the next year there's three other people who ran a four minute mile.
Bjork Ostrom: And it's of like when you see that it's possible and you see somebody else doing it, I think it becomes easier. to see the possibilities. Like, oh, the four minute mile, okay, it can actually be done. Great. I'm gonna train differently.
Bjork Ostrom: Oh, you can create an income from publishing recipes online. Great. I'm gonna apply myself in a way that maybe I wouldn't have because now I know that it's a possibility. And in terms of the income reports, so there was a, like strictly business blogger, named Pat Flynn. He had a, has a site called Smart Passive Income. And he had been doing those for years.
Bjork Ostrom: And there's also this like transparency movement online. Buffer which is a social media scheduling platform, is another really popular company that was part of the transparency movement of really trying to be open and transparent in how they run a business. So it definitely wasn't us and it wasn't like a unique to us idea.
Bjork Ostrom: what it came out of was these two, beliefs that I. would hear people talk about, one was Gary Vaynerchuk, which polarizing figure in the world of like business and online social media. But somebody that in general, appreciate his psychology around business and social media and generosity and a lot of different parts that I appreciate. I know that there's also a lot of parts that people roll their eyes with, but he had a book called Crush It and within that he talked about this idea of if you're really into worms and worm farming, like if you get really good at creating content around that industry, you can build that into a really successful business.
Bjork Ostrom: And then on the other side, as Lindsay was getting into recipes and food content and publishing, I started Googling, can you create an income from, recipes or a food blog or whatever it was? And there's a couple different articles that I read which were like, "Hey, if you wanna do this, like essentially you're gonna be doing it outta the goodness of your heart because there's not a way to make this financially feasible from a business perspective."
Bjork Ostrom: So I kinda had those two different opinions and wanted to do an experiment, and that's what we called it to start was " food blog money making experiment". And it was setting out to see like, Hey, is this possible to do? So that was really the reason behind it. It wasn't what the idea of doing a transparent income report wasn't original though, but came from many other people who were doing it.
Cynthia Samanian: It's awesome to see how looking outside of your industry is where you can get a lot of great ideas and inspiration and. Gary Vaynerchuk is massive in business and marketing and entrepreneurship. But just taking a step outside of the food world, that's where you can draw some ideas that, can change the way that you think about things.
Bjork Ostrom: For sure, and I think that point that you just said is really valuable to shine a light on that, because I think what happens sometimes is we get so,of insular in terms of our industry, that we lose sight of all the possibilities that exist and in our world, creating content online on a blog or a website, maybe monetizing that via sponsored content or ads. Like that's a major focus for a lot of people. I think you can get, focused in on that as the only path. And I think what's important to remember for us as business owners, as creators, but also individuals, is like what we're after probably isn't that as like a function of our day-to-day.
Bjork Ostrom: What we're after is probably like doing something we love in a subject area that we're interested in, creating income to the level that like is comfortable for sustaining us. And that's gonna be different for everybody. But it opens up opportunities to work really different, to think really different and what sometimes needs to happen is like you need to get outside of the echo chamber of a industry in whatever way that might look likeand learn from other people who are doing things differently, because you might have that four minute mile moment where you're like, oh my gosh, I could do like niche consulting around a really specific subject and have this incredible autonomy to be with my kids more.
Bjork Ostrom: That might be the goal for a lot of people. So I think your point about seeing other people doing work, learning from other people, learning from other industries is a really important, healthy perspective.
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah. It's really about the result that you want. It's funny because when I talk to people who come into my program, in the beginning I thought they just wanted to make more money. And maybe you saw this with Food Blogger Pro, it's of course people just want to make more money.
Cynthia Samanian: And as you start to interview your students and get to know them, you realize that It's not just about making more money.There's only so much money that can,change your life in a way that's meaningful. But for a lot of them it was having flexibility to, like you said, spend more time with their kids or to be able to travel, especially now that we can.
Bjork Ostrom: I think the other piece with that, that I'm learning too is for some people it is because that's the gameplay for them. that's their baseball, that's their, golf, that's their chess, whatever sport or activity you wanna pick. and I think of as a kind of quintessential example, like Warren Buffett, he didn't retire because he loves doing what he's doing. And he talks about this idea of skipping to work every day because he loves it so much. And I think for myself, to a degree, am also interested in finance and numbers and business to the point where like, I'll listen to a podcast about, venture capital or listen to a podcast about startups, even though that's not really the world that I'm in, it's just because I'm interested in it.
Bjork Ostrom: I'm interested in how that world works and economics and so the learning for me, and you reference this, talking to people that you're serving, which is really important, is having those conversations and seeing from them like, what are you interested in?
Bjork Ostrom: And what you'll hear is for some people it would be financial. And for all of us, to some degree, it's an important consideration because it's how we put food on the table and pay for a roof over a head. And so that's a consideration, but up to a point. And that looks different for everybody. And if you're not somebody who likes the idea of finances or money as a gameplay, something that you're interested in or really curious about, naturally when you get to that point, whatever you're ceiling is, you're gonna be optimizing for different things.
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so now I'm thinking, what did you want to be when you grew up? Because it probably wasn't food blogger.
Bjork Ostrom: No. What's interesting when I look back at what the through line is for me in my story, it's building things. And the piece that is consistent is in seventh grade, doing the inventor's fair. Like it wasn't a requirement. You didn't have to do it. It was just like, this is something I wanna do.
Bjork Ostrom: I wanna invent something and see if I can be successful with that. Like in whatever way it was being judged. So for me, it was the Wonderwall, that's what it was called. the, I didn't, the way the song probably hadn't come out then, but it would've been a great, promo behind a commercial for it. But the idea was it was a wall where you could plug in, a light or like an electrical outlet, like it could function anywhere on the wall. And so I had built this prototype and I still have it. It's in our basement. And in college, the interesting thing is I got really into music. Like writing songs, recording songs, I had some songs on MTV, like Real World.
Bjork Ostrom: They would do like background music.
Cynthia Samanian: Are you serious?
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. but when I look back at that, I think the thing that I was really good at with that wasn't necessarily music. Like I was good to music to the extent that I could write a song and like it could picked up by a show and play in the background.
Bjork Ostrom: What I was really good at and what I was really interested in was the process of reaching out to music publishers and creating a process around sending CDs to them and booking shows. And it was a business, like that's how I paid the bills in college, was through, music writing and performing.
Bjork Ostrom: So when I look back at it, that's the through line: is like creating a thing and building a thing. That's what I really like. It's like zero to one. I think to get really specific, like when I was a kid, what did I love to do? Like I was just talking with Lindsay about this, but it was sport. That was another thing, which is interesting cause I don't have that in my life at all right now.
Bjork Ostrom: And I feel like it's, I. like you have two kids and you're building a business and, but I went and played tennis with our daughter Solvi, who just turned four the other day for 15 minutes. Like just enough for her to like taste it. And it was this reminder for me of like, oh my gosh, this is awesome.
Bjork Ostrom: And also like I need to introduce hobbies in my life because of how life giving they are and how much, I don't have that right now. So that's a little bit of a tangent, maybe somebody needs to hear that.
Cynthia Samanian: Literally yesterday my husband and I were in the kitchen and we were like, remember when we would work out?
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Totally.
Cynthia Samanian: We just, we have no idea how that's gonna happen because our daughters wake up early and you know how it goes. Hobbies are a tough one because I have a hard time of, just having a hobby without trying to turn it into something.
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah exactly. That's the hard part is like not building it into a thing.
Cynthia Samanian: So let's keep going down this vein, talking about entrepreneurship and the mindset and the hurdles and stuff that my listeners are probably feeling right now. A lot of the people listening have been in their business for a while, they are in the grind and are, looking to grow and looking to expand. And I know one of the things that you like to think about really is this idea of maker versus manager. Maybe you can explain it and articulate what that means.
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. The maker versus manager concept. the way that I like to think about it is, my dad, who's does pottery, who's an art teacher, and like his focus was pottery. And I think for everybody listening, we probably have some version of that in us. Like we are a baker or we make wedding cakes or we just had a gathering with Lindsay's family and family friend made cupcakes as like a side business inside hustle that she has.
Bjork Ostrom: But thinking back to my dad, like he's a ceramic artist, he's a maker, he makes pottery and that's what he loves to do and that's what he's really good at. What can happen is for ambitious people who have access to podcasts and can scroll Instagram and see the successes of other people, is we can start to put ourselves against somebody else who's either explicitly or implicitly telling a story about what should or could be done.
Bjork Ostrom: And usually that's something around growing, scaling, making more money, which inherently isn't a bad thing, but I think what's important to remember is what is it that you really love to do? And I think of my dad and if somebody came alongside him and was like, and in some ways like I've seen myself do this to my dad, Hey, here's how you could scale this thing. There was a period of time where we set up a website and, I was thinking about like, what would it look like to sell pottery online? And what can happen is whether quickly or slowly over time without realizing it, is you can transition from being a maker to a manager and you can be managing people who are making the thing that you at one point really loved to make.
Bjork Ostrom: And that could be bad or it could not be bad. It just depends on you and self-awareness around where you feel most aligned. And if you feel most aligned as a maker, do what you can to protect yourself from the story of needing to be different in service of growth. Because inherently you're gonna hit a ceiling.
Bjork Ostrom: You and I have talked about this idea of we have kids, you wanna spend time with your kids, you have activities, you have other things in your life that you wanna be doing. The best way to both scale a business, to grow a thing and to get access to those things that you want, like time with your kids, is to find ways for other people to do the things that you were previously doing. But that means that you'll transition into a manager role.
Bjork Ostrom: So there has to be some decision. if you want to sit in that maker role and really protect that. I think there has to be some degree of comfort around capacity and hitting a ceiling in terms of your output and being okay with that. Like just being comfortable knowing that you might not scale in the same way, but that's preserving you in a role and doing work that you love that's aligned and is what you wanna be doing. So that's the idea of the maker manager considerations.
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and you see it across all industries, right? When I was working in tech, you would see it where the best engineers, the best designers would actually get promoted into the role of a manager where they were actually spending less time doing the thing that they were really good at, which was building and designing and more time managing people and some flourished in that role and some did not. And I think, like you said, it's a conscious, intentional choice. Like you have to know that, okay, now I'm hiring a staff to make the thing that I was making. That's a conscious decision I'm going to take to be a manager.
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and I think the other piece that's important to remember and that you sometimes, at least myself would forget, is like you're also learning a new skill. So you're kind of letting go of the thing that you were really good at. It might still apply in some ways. I think of this, try not to do like sport analogies too much, but sport is a really good example where you could be like an incredible baseball or softball player, like number one in the world and then try to transition to coach. And you might not be that great of a coach, even though you'd be able to give advice and insight on a specific thing that you were good at. Like maybe you're a really good catcher. You'd be able to give good tips on that. But that doesn't mean that you'd be a good coach. And I think the same is true for maker manager.
Cynthia Samanian: And also if you do have a desire to evolve into that manager role, be gentle with yourself because you're learning a new thing, you're of starting over. And I think sometimes we have this expectation that we actually should be just as good at managing we were making the thing, which just isn't true.You're a beginner again.
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Which as you grow anything in the world is just a constant process of becoming a beginner again.
Cynthia Samanian: I'm nodding my head like, yes, absolutely. I feel like I'm a beginner every six months as things change and the market changes.
Cynthia Samanian: So how did you start thinking about this stuff? Was it inspired by something you were experiencing in your business?
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think it comes from coming up against anything and then sorting through that. So it's in, in our case, we have a small team, but it's still a team. And then also Lindsay and I doing that together. So Lindsay feeling really comfortable in her decision to say you know what, like what I wanna do is make, and I want to do Recipe development, I wanna do photography, I wanna continue to write.
Bjork Ostrom: That's what I love, and I'm okay if I don't grow the biggest thing in the world, the biggest site in the world. Like for her, she wouldn't wanna do that and be miserable in pursuit of that. So it's like, what will make me happy in my work? It's being a maker.
Cynthia Samanian: Just so I can make it clear, an alternative would be for her to hire a staff of writers and contributors and recipe developers and she would manage that and pull herself away from the actual art of making.
Bjork Ostrom: And I think even experimenting with that, like what does that feel like to do that in certain ways. It's not like for Lindsay or for myself, that we had this grandiose idea and self-awareness of who we were. It's learning through the process of experimenting and saying gosh, we're super stressed. We wanna be present at home, but also successful in our work. What if we brought in people to help with these certain things? photography as an example. what does that feel like? Oh, it's really nice to have somebody helping with that.
Bjork Ostrom: But then there's also this piece of like, wait, you know, for Lindsay, I have this idea of what the recipe would look like, and so it's a process for sure. And I think to answer the question of how do we learn about it, I think it's experience and then also education. And education through reading about other people's stories and learning from others.
Bjork Ostrom: It's maybe comparable to the difference between doing a year of an intensive study in person versus a year doing online studies. And I think you can learn a lot from people online. It's what we do. We teach people and talk to people online. But I think an intensive study in person, you learn a lot more. And the point that I'm making with that is by going through a thing personally. Experiencing it, you're gonna learn more than like observing another person going through it, even though I still think you can learn from people going through it.
Cynthia Samanian: You know that it takes a lot of time and effort to build what you've built. I'd love it if you could share a little bit about that journey and the fact that it was not an overnight success. You said you've been at it for what, 10 years?
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, Pinch of Yum started in 2010. So Tiny Bit, the parent company over the other companies that we have is based on this premise, you know, of getting a tiny bit better every day, forever. And really, I think it's like a different way of looking at compounding.
Bjork Ostrom: And I think whether you are like an investor or into health and fitness, so many things come back to this idea of compounding. And the hard part with compounding is you don't really feel like compounding is awesome until the later stage of whatever period of time you're looking at.
Bjork Ostrom: So to use the Warren Buffett example again, I forget what percentage it is, but it's a crazy amount of, his wealth was created in the last 10 years of his life because of compounding.
Bjork Ostrom: It's that example of would you rather have a million dollars today or a penny doubled every day for 10 years or whatever that,
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah.
Bjork Ostrom: don't know what the actual numbers are with it, but where that really starts to pay off is the last part of whatever section of time you're looking at.
Bjork Ostrom: So in our case, if you look at the last five years, you can see stuff starting to take shape and grow because of compounding. But if you look at the first five years, it's not super inspiring, even though it was the same amount of time and effort and work. And what's hard, when you're in it, especially in the first year or the second year or the third year, is it doesn't feel like you're getting traction or it doesn't feel like you're making progress and you're showing up and you're doing good work, right? But it maybe is not being seen or you feel like there's a disconnect between the work that you're doing and the progress you're making.
Bjork Ostrom: And it's really hard to keep going through that. The other piece that I think is abstract, and maybe you have thoughts on this because you've been through this a few times and it's hard to know, but like, when do you double down and keep doing the thing versus pivot, because I think that's part of the story of continuing on, but also you don't wanna just be pivoting all the time. I personally don't have a good answer for that. And I feel like you've been through it a couple times and have it seems landed on something that feels really aligned.
Bjork Ostrom: This is kind of flipping the interview. Do you have thoughts on that, like in terms of pivots and changes along the way? You don't wanna do this same thing for 10 years if it's not successful, but you also don't know if something's gonna be successful usually until you've done it for a while.
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah, there is no formula to it. It's really challenging. And I'm curious how you stay motivated or what your tips are for people to stay motivated in those early days. I'll just say, to answer your question, I had a conversation with someone about this yesterday in fact, and I explained to her how I am pretty decisive. Sometimes that works out well and sometimes it doesn't.
Cynthia Samanian: I do listen to my brain, heart and gut quite a bit. I don't know what you wanna call all of those things, but it does a pretty good job of telling me when something's out of alignment. When I feel that things are out of alignment, I experience certain symptoms, mainly lack of motivation. I just can't bring myself to do the work because I know that's not the right work to be doing. It's so clear to me. It's not clear what the work should be, right?
Cynthia Samanian: That's the hard part is okay, when you recognize that, what do you do with that information? But I'm the type of person, and this is where it comes back to knowing yourself. I love to work, like I love to create, I love to do things. And so it's a huge red flag for me if I wake up multiple days in a row and I'm just not feeling it. That's when I have to reassess.
Cynthia Samanian: It's a judgment call and only you can make it. That's the other thing is asking other people if you should pivot or keep going, unless they've been in the arena of building a business, I would be careful about asking others for advice on that.
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.
Bjork Ostrom: I think the piece that you shared about like somewhere within you having a desire to do the work is important. I like to think of it like, let's say you work on something for two to three years. What are gonna be the things that you can work on for two to three years and at the end if it doesn't work out or if something changes, you could look back at that and not regret the time that you spent working on it, because it was something that taught you a new skill or was something that you enjoyed doing. And that's not always gonna happen. There's always gonna be days that you feel like not doing the work or especially in the early stages, if you're grinding, you'd rather sleep in later than get up and work on something.
Bjork Ostrom: But I do think that there should be some level of fire for whatever it is that you're doing that lights up for you when you're able to take time to, to work on it. And if that fire dies, then you better be crystal clear on what the outcome is that you need because otherwise you'll be working in this ongoing state for something that you're not super drawn to or passionate about.
Bjork Ostrom: So for me, I think it's the advice around how to continue with a thing for a long period of time has to do with continual analysis of work I do and work I don't do. And it maybe is related to the maker manager, but it's more of like, for a period of time there's gonna be something that you really enjoy doing within your business.
Bjork Ostrom: Inevitably, there will also come a time where that same thing loses its appeal. Maybe it's not as challenging. Maybe you've, become really interested in another thing. I think as much as possible, staying aware of what that is and the two options when you come up against that is you either don't do it or somebody else does it, or you automate it. Like maybe software does it depending on what the task is. And, having these checkpoints along the way, maybe it's quarterly or twice a year, where you step back and say, what are the things I do and what are the things that I don't do? And continuing to do the things that feel most aligned and life-giving and impactful.
Bjork Ostrom: And for the things you don't do, those either fall off, maybe they don't need to happen, you find somebody else to do those, or you automate it in some way. It's an ongoing process, but if I were to look at what I'm doing today versus what I did five years ago, those would all be very drastic in terms of the differences, even though the iterations within the day-to-day were small. Like the changes I made were small, but it led to me being in a very different place in terms of how I work and what my day looks like.
Cynthia Samanian: And so it's like you're finally earning that interest based on what you've invested, and you also said that's something that you're starting to see now or you have in the last few years. What does that look like in your business?
Bjork Ostrom: Part of it is autonomy. For instance, we have a, between the businesses, like healthy businesses that provide what we need plus, if we look back to, I was at a nonprofit, Lindsay was a teacher, it's maybe 5, 6, 7 times what we would've been able to earn if we stayed in those professions. So there's the business side of it, like the financial side. That's one thing.
Bjork Ostrom: But it, there's also. Autonomy, like the ability stay, kinda light on our feet and there's kinda the more serious side of it and then the less serious side of it. More serious side is if parents or grandparents, like Lindsay's, um, grandpa recently passed away and so we were able to take time out of our day to go and visit him in his final days or my dad had some health stuff recently, I was able to like, take time to be with him. And you can do that, like with a normal job, you just take time off or you have days off, but not really in the same way where like I could just clear my day in the morning and be like, I'm just gonna go do this thing.
Bjork Ostrom: But that comes from a lot of early mornings and weekends and we were lucky enough to do that in a season where the cost wasn't quite as great. We didn't have kids and we were coming outta college and so it's like our lifestyle hadn't creeped up yet and so the cost of the time that we were investing at that point wasn't as expensive as it would be now if we did that. And it's just a reality, I think, for people who are doing that in a different stage where the mechanics of the equation for time invested looks different. So I think it's obviously financial. It's time.
Bjork Ostrom: And I think the other piece is maybe like flexibility of focus. Like what you're actually working on, to say, to build your own job description, in some way. And there's a degree to that where that is true. Like you can craft and change and evolve. You've done that in a really great way where it's like finding that perfect fit of all the things that you're interested in.
Bjork Ostrom: And then there's also the reality of your job description inevitably includes things that you don't want to do and you just have to because you're a business owner.
Bjork Ostrom: So there is that too. It's not like complete, dream list of things that come along with it. There is the like eating dirt part of business ownership.
Bjork Ostrom: But, I would highlight those as the things that we feel the most.
Cynthia Samanian: So a lot of people ask what do you wish you knew when you started? I'm gonna ask you, what are you glad you didn't know?
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I don't remember exactly how she said it, but my mom at one point was like, I think one of the reasons why you've been able to do stuff is just because you don't really know, like getting into it,what it entails.
Bjork Ostrom: I think I'm glad that I didn't know that there'd be like dips or hard seasons. I think for a long stretch, earlier on it was really hard work, but there wasn't anything that was like, oh, this is business and you wake up early because you're thinking about something and you can't get back to sleep. If you do it long enough, I think you'll hit a stretch like that. And I've hit stretches like that. And it just feels like a grind when you're in it. And I think I'm glad that I didn't know what that feels like to be in it, because I think if I did, then it would be less likely to want to do it.
Bjork Ostrom: I remember having a conversation with, a friend's dad and he has a couple dog kennel businesses, like kind of high-end dog daycare. This was probably like 15 years ago. I was like, Tim, can I take you and your dad out for lunch and just ask him questions about business and because it was, I knew it was something I wanted to do, I didn't really know how to do it.
Bjork Ostrom: And he looped his dad in. His dad was super resistant. And I think even within the meeting, thought that I was gonna do like a Amway pitch. and I, when I look back, I was like, oh, this really is like the perfect setup. It's like ambiguous questions about business.
Cynthia Samanian: I have a deal you cannot refuse.
Bjork Ostrom: Exactly. But it really was just me asking questions. And one of the things he said was, don't do it. He was like, just like nine to five, you won't have to worry about stuff. You come home at night, you go for a bike ride with your family. I just remember that as this moment of like, whoa. I think probably what he was speaking to is like those seasons that are hard and this was a few years ago, but my friend text me, he's like, remember when my dad told you, don't start a business?
Bjork Ostrom: But I also can see that and appreciate that to some degree because there are some really hard things about, what it is that we do or anybody listening what it is that, that we all collectively do. And I'm glad that getting into it, that it wasn't something that was like, even though he had said that, so in some ways maybe I did know it. I don't think I believed it.
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it didn't scare you too much.
Bjork Ostrom: No, and I think,it's what I don't want is to come out of that and anybody being like, oh, like I'm not gonna do this. But I also don't want to paint a picture of it being, this perfect rosy thing. And, I think sometimes from the outside, especially with social media where we share a highlight reel.
Bjork Ostrom: It can feel like,everybody has these things that are super polished and really nice and, as much as possible, I think it's helpful to talk about or share the complete picture, which it's nice. I feel like you can do that easier with podcasts.
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. it's easier to just say what's on your mind. And of course there's the whole layer of working with your partner, which is like another added level of, complexity, right?
Bjork Ostrom: Complexity and consideration. And I think there are a lot of people who would be like, oh, I could never do that, which I get, but I also don't think that like we're unique in our ability to do that. I think it's just we're more siloed than people realize. And I think our roles are almost more advisory to each other. Like we can play supporting roles. I think where it would get complicated, where it quickly like falls apart, it's like super early stages. Like I'm doing the photography and like Lindsay's kind of directing me like what photo she needs. that's really hard work I think to do with anybody, but especially with your spouse. I think the reality of how we work together is coming to each other for advice.
Bjork Ostrom: Like in my work, here's this thing that I'm navigating, what are your thoughts on it? And there are seasons of collectively we need to figure out like if Lindsay wants to stay in this role of being maker and I'm interested in this role of growth, how do we reconcile those things for something that's a little bit shared?
Bjork Ostrom: So I think that's where it's the most, interactive in terms of us working together to feel like how do we both realize our respective vision for a thing and come to a place that feels good for both of us. And that's challenging. that's hard to
Cynthia Samanian: It's
Cynthia Samanian: Marriage and raising children. It's the same sort of concept, but like now you have that in your, work life, which I think it's all one bubble maybe.
Bjork Ostrom: Totally. For sure.
Cynthia Samanian: So let's say someone's starting out in their culinary business and growing through content and they're like, Bjork, what's the one tip you have for me? What's the one thing I need to know?
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I would say one thing that has two points to it. I would say the first point within the one thing is one A: just press publish. Like press publish on the platform that you feel like is most aligned. And that could be podcasts, that could be video, that could be writing. My guess is that if people spend a half an hour, they'd be able to think of the number one thing that feels easiest for them.
Bjork Ostrom: It doesn't have to be this huge introspective thing where you're like, what is my calling for a platform? It's just like, where do you naturally produce best? Are you best when you are having conversations? Are you best on video or are you best writing or maybe photography? So finding something there and then consistently publishing, while you're doing that, I think it'sstaying tuned in with the response that you get from people on those things you publish. And that could be hard metrics, like what gets the most traffic, what gets the most views, or it could be more of the soft like customer development type metrics, which would be interactions with people and asking them questions like,in a category of food in the culinary world, what are you looking for the most?
Bjork Ostrom: You could ask somebody like, what kind of, I'm gonna produce content around cupcakes. What do you wanna know about cupcakes? Like just asking somebody explicitly what they could use help with. What do you wish you had more of? What's the one problem you run into when you're making cupcakes?
Bjork Ostrom: Like having interactions with the people who will eventually be consuming your content will help shape the content. And then also just putting content into the world. will naturally help you take the edges off of it. Ed Sheeran talks about the reason he can write so many hit songs now is because he got all the bad ones out early on. Like he just wrote a bunch of songs and you hear that about The Beatles, where they played 10,000 hours of concerts before,they had a hit. And I think so much of art and skill, whether it be music or whether it be writing content, on social platforms or creating videos is just reps and it's a bunch of reps while also getting feedback on how to get better.
Cynthia Samanian: What I'm hearing consistently throughout our conversation is this idea of maybe taking the pressure off, especially early on, like recognizing that you're not going to really make or break your business with any decision right now for the most part, right?
Cynthia Samanian: If you do the things, if you post a photo and you have a typo in the caption, keep going. Who cares? It's about staying in the game long enough to again, see all of that effort compound into the results.
Bjork Ostrom: And I think it's about reframing what it looks like to be successful with a thing. And I think when we are building something online, when we're producing content, we have this expectation that we wouldn't have if I was learning cello. Like I'm not going to pick up cello and then a year later expect to be part of the Minnesota Orchestra. But I think sometimes we like launch a website and then a year later we expect it to be like somebody who's been producing for 12 years. And I would never as a cello player after a year go to the Minnesota Orchestra and feel bad about not being part of the Minnesota Orchestra. But I think you could work on a website really hard for a year and feel bad that you're not as successful as somebody who's been doing it for 12 years.
Bjork Ostrom: So I think a huge part of it for me is just a reframing around expectation and taking the pressure off of people who are starting a thing. And the other piece with it, it's just a real quick aside, is I think online business or really any business or a website obscures what's really happening behind the scene versus an individual skill like cello. It's just an individual and you're like, okay, it takes 12 years to become a master.
Bjork Ostrom: Whereas a website, it's like you don't know if they have a million dollars that they've put into it. You don't know if they have a team of seven people. You don't know if they've been doing it for 10 years. So it all gets obscured. You don't really know what's happening, but then you place your own reality against it. And I think then people get bummed out. They get discouraged, they stop working on it.
Bjork Ostrom: But I think if you can have this mindset of, hey, I know that I want to be an incredible cello player. I know that I want have this incredible online business or brick and mortar business, whatever it is, to say like, great, I'm committed to that for 10 years and I'm gonna show up every day and figure out how to do that and to do it a little bit better.
Bjork Ostrom: I think that's where, realistic outcomes can happen. I think we were talking about this before the podcast, but this idea that people underestimate what they can do in 10 years, but overestimate what they can do in one year. I think that's just so true in businesses like the ones, that people run who are listening to this podcast.
Cynthia Samanian: Yeah, I love the cello player analogy cause I think everyone understands that. Yeah, you would never expect to pick up a cello and a year later be in the symphony, but then it's why am I not able to get these brand deals? Or why am I not making six figures and all that stuff that we hear when you've only been at it for one year, two years, three years. It just takes time. And like you said, consistent hard work and again, alignment.
Bjork Ostrom: Showing up, repeating, getting better at the things that you're not good at. yeah. There's so much that goes into it.
Cynthia Samanian: Well, thank you so much, Bjork. This was, probably one of my favorite episodes. I'm just going to call it and say it because really, at first I thought, okay, I'm gonna have you on here and we're going to talk about SEO and all these things, but the more I've gotten to know you, the more I've realized, wow, like you've really thought about business in so many interesting ways. And your journey as an entrepreneur certainly inspires people, but also I think just gives people a different way of looking at things and going against some of the noise that people see on social media and online. So thank you for that. Have you ever thought of having a blog to share your thoughts on business?
Bjork Ostrom: Totally. I would love to. And one of the things that I've thought a lot about, which is maybe a little bit of a tease for something that will be like 10 to 12 years from now, is a framewokr around like business and life and what does it look like for these to be solidified conceptually?
Bjork Ostrom: Not that it's an answer, but I think sometimes it's helpful for people to look at something and say, oh, this concept makes sense and I'm gonna like slot this in as like a filter that I view life through. That's the 10 to 12 year range on that. Yeah.
Cynthia Samanian: Awesome. If people wanna learn more about your businesses, where can they go?
Bjork Ostrom: Tiny bit.com is, where folks can go to check out just the different businesses and things that we're up to. And then speaking of social media, I'm not around . Like I don't really use social. We have social for our brands, but if anybody wanted to connect, you can just drop me an email: bjork@tinybit.com.
Cynthia Samanian: Well, thank you again for everything that you shared today, and I, uh, am excited to see what's next for you and Lindsay.
Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Same for you. Thanks Cynthia.
Cynthia Samanian: Thanks so much for listening. I'm really happy to be back in your ears week after week. And if you're also happy that this podcast is back, I would be so grateful if you could help us spread the word. You can support the show by leaving a rating and review, especially on Apple Podcasts. It goes a really long way in helping us reach more listeners like you.
Cynthia Samanian: Alright, I will see you back here next week with another episode.