7) How an Obscure, Abandoned Facebook Group Turned Me into a Cottage Food Influencer, and Helped Launch The MONETIZATION CHEF
Episode 7 - Background leading up to my foodie career and The MONETIZATION CHEF
Greetings, My Fellow Foodie!
As this introductory sequence about “Mal’s Story” winds down, discussion is now transitioning from the past, toward the future.
And I hope you are excited about what I share in these last emails.
Let’s start by backing up just a bit, to January 2023.
At this point, Sandy is growing the virtual assistant business she started in 2021, and I am still trying to find a post-wildfire focus.
Examples included helping a friend edit and publish his book on Amazon, doing a little freelance writing, and operating a couple small remnant ecommerce businesses, all which occupy time, but… there is more out there.
One day, I’m listening to an online presentation from Russell Brunson, a very successful high school and college wrestler from Boise, Idaho, who’d found his financial calling by creating a 9-figure Internet Marketing software business, ala Clickfunnels.
He helps small companies find massive success online – using “funnels” (something I will expand on in a future email newsletter.)
At one point in the presentation, he said something so obvious and so profound (at least for ME!), that I sat back in my chair, and turned off the volume for a few moments in reflective thought.
“The most successful trainers and coaches, are trying to help people who are where they were five or ten years ago.”
Duh!
(Note: for me that would be more like 20+ years ago! And YOU are that someone sitting generally where I was back then.)
Just like 2002 – when the announcement came out that the University of Idaho was opening a shared-use kitchen incubator, and I knew I would start a food processing business.
Listening to Russ, that same elated feeling of déjà vu came over me, and I knew I could help lots of folks start and grow a food business. I’d never seriously thought of myself as a trainer/coach/consultant to that point. But looking over my life, it was always there, itching the back of my mind.
Sandy’s and my dream of building a 7-figure food business never materialized, with her health issues and an unfortunate business model (wholesale to gift shops) destroyed by the economy (but mostly the internet.)
But at one point, we WERE well on our way.
And after making a living for 17+ years producing and seling specialty foods, I know enough to get you further than what Sandy and I achieved. Along the way, I intend to live vicariously through your success, as you benefit from my wins and mistakes (as well as yours!)
Back to my story…
At this point of (me the) trainer commitment after my Russell Brunson epiphany, I scoured the foodie domain names I had accumulated (about 50), and looked for any past social media fits and starts that I could pick up and grow.
It is now February, 2023. I re-discovered the Cottage Food Business (CFB) group on Facebook I’d started years previously, when we were doing farmers markets. And now, years later, Cottage Foods were becoming a THING nationwide.
Only 123 followers, and no posts for years.
With activity and engagement (thank you dear foodie friend!), we are now on our way to 39,000 members, and here YOU are, because you either offered up your email address when you joined the Group, or you found my CottageFoodology Substack.
Almost 40% of you coming in to that FB group, offer up an email address. I compile those, which is how most of my subscribers (including probably you) got here!
I am now branded as The MONETIZATION CHEF, with plans to help you, as much as you let me, over the coming years. My tagline is “Cooking Up Profits for Foodies!” with the goal of helping YOU profitize from the sensory miracle we call taste!
Over the coming months and years, I will tell you many more stories and learnings about my times in the food processing trenches.
In the meantime, I am developing checklists, cheetsheets, and info-products, along with multiple courses, some coming in bundles.
I did try and launch a Cottage Food Cookbook series, but could not get enough busy foodies to submit recipes. I may try again in 2025.
Interested in having one of your recipes in print?
So many fun things to do… and not enough time.
Mal Dell
The MONETIZATON CHEF
”Cooking Up Profits for Foodies!”
PS If you just got here, check out the previous 6 episodes in the Mal’s Story category on my CottageFoodology Substack:
Episode 1: SPIRIT kept sending me messages about a food career, but...I am a slow learner
Episode 2: Foodie success backwards… but it created opportunity
Episode 3: How a Fortuitous Purchase by the University of Idaho Changed My Foodie Fortune
Episode 4: What goes up… must come down? Noooooooooooooo!
Episode 5: Hanging On, But Nothing to Hang On To... Is That Smoke?
Episode 6: Not Fast Enough... and Nowhere to Go. Will We Become Human Smores?