IAM1451 – Food Blogger Cook with Authentic Dishes from Around the Globe

Alexandria Drzazgowski is the owner and CEO behind The Foreign Fork, a food blog where she cooks a meal from every country in the world. Alexandria began her blog after 6 months of traveling Europe and eating delicious food in 15 countries! Upon her return from her travels, she got to work building her blog on nights and weekends while working a full-time job. These days, The Foreign Fork is Alexandria's full-time career! She received the Saveur Blog Award for Most Groundbreaking Voice in 2019 and has been featured in Buzzfeed, Bustle, Saveur, Elite Daily, Edible Arrangements, and more.

• CEO Story: Alexandria got a degree in professional writing in 2018. Studied abroad in Rome and then made a lot of traveling to 15 countries in Europe and thought of food as a great way to learn and have an introduction to the culture, history, and geography in each country she visited. When Alexandria got home, she started a food blog, cooking food for every country in the world and shouting it out on her blog and social media.
• Business Service: People can get recipes on her website. Work with other food brands and choose their products and food photography. Making recipes for brands or other bloggers.
• Secret Sauce: The food blog is a food project. It comes with background, history, and appreciation of every authentic recipe she makes from different cultures.
• CEO Hack: Book mention – Profit first ( method of accounting). Making your business profitable, having a good and easy accounting.
• CEO Nugget: For food bloggers and content-based businesses, focus on search engine optimization. Learn to say thank you to yourself and appreciate what you have done in the past.
• CEO Defined: Freedom having the time to enjoy time with your family. Having grit and having to work really hard.

Website: foreignfork.com

Instagram: theforeignfork

TikTok: theforeignfork

Facebook: theforeignfork

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMmCgcQSRJay8ftINQeh33g

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Transcription

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00:23 – Intro 

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEO's without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:50 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Alexandria Dracowski of the foreign fork. Alexandria, it's great to have you on the show.

01:00 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

01:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on as well. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Alexandria so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Alexandria is the owner and CEO behind the Foreign Fork, a food blog where she is cooking a meal from every country in the world.

Alexandria began her blog after six months of traveling Europe and eating delicious foods in 15 countries. Upon her return from her travel, she got to work building her blog on nights and weekends while working on a full-time job. These days, the foreign fork is Alexandria's full-time career. She received the Severe Blog award for most groundbreaking voice in 2019 and has been featured in Buzzfeed, Bustle, Elite, daily, Edible Arrangements, and many, many more. And now, of course, the Imceo podcast. Alexandria, are you ready to speak to the Imco community?AAA

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01:51 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

I am, and I'll add it to my list next time.

01:54 – Gresham Harkless

There we go. Looking forward to it. So to kind of kick everything off, I love everything you're building and growing, but what I wanted to do was just jump in, kind of like that time machine, rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:07 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Yes, absolutely. So I talked a little bit about it in my introduction, but I'll give you a more in-depth view. So I went to school. I graduated college in 2018, and I got a degree in professional writing. At the time, I thought that I wanted to go into book editing and work in the publishing industry. So I got my degree in professional writing, and after I graduated, I went and studied, and studied abroad in Rome.

I took some classes in Rome for three months, and after that, I backpacked for another three months. So over the course of that time, I visited 15 countries. And it was absolutely amazing. It was the most traveling I had ever done, but I did a lot of it alone. So after the three months in Rome and the next three months of backpacking, I did that entirely alone, which is something I was really excited to do. I really wanted to have that independent experience. But also, when you're traveling for three months, you kind of want to make some friends. And so every single country that I went to, I decided to take cooking classes when I was there as a way to, first of all, make friends and meet some people when I got to a new country.

But then also, I just thought that food was a really beautiful way to learn about history and culture. You can learn about geography and religion and pretty much everything based on the food of a country. There's so much that can be learned from that. And so I thought that that was a really fun way to kind of get an introduction to every country that I went to. So I did a lot of cooking during those couple of months when I was abroad. And then I came home and I had to be a real person that had a real job, and I couldn't just travel and eat all the time.

So instead of just missing that experience, I decided to kind of bring it home with me. And so I started my blog where now I'm cooking a meal from every country in the world. So I'm doing an alphabetical order every couple of weeks. I pick a new country. I learn about the history and the culture of it. I share that on my blog and on my social media, and then I cook a few dishes from that country, and I've been traveling the world from my kitchen ever since.

04:08 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love, you know, everything you've been able to build and grow. And I'm a big. Whenever I like to travel to a place, I always like to try out the cuisines, the different foods, the different tastes, and all of those things. So I love that you brought that to life and you took that experience and just kind of ran with it.

04:24 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Thank you. Yeah, it's the best part of traveling, in my opinion. As other people travel for, I don't know, shopping or sightseeing and stuff, I do like those things, but I am entirely focused on the food for the most part, I'm always researching what restaurants to go to and the history behind the national dish and all of that stuff. So it's a lot of fun.

04:42- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that very much. So, I like to shop, but the shopping I like to shop for is food, of course. So I appreciate you being able to kind of do that. So I guess, could you take us through a little bit more about the foreign fork? Tell us a little bit more about what we could find on your site and all the awesome things that you're doing there.

04:58 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Yes. Okay. So the foreign fork is a food blog first and foremost. So it's a web page where I have recipes online. And so my main business proposition, the way that I make money for the most part on the foreign fork, is through ads. So it's mostly passive income. I work with an ad agency and when people scroll through my website to read my recipes, I get paid for every person that visits my website. So having the recipes online is a really big part of my business.

But I also do some work with different food brands and also with some other bloggers and things like that. So for food brands, I'll work with them to use their products and make up recipes or do photography for them using their products and recipes. I do that frequently.

And then I also sometimes work as a freelancer making recipes up for brands or other bloggers. For example, some brands that, you know, if you flip over the package and on the back, they have a recipe written there about how to use their products in a recipe. I'm responsible for making some of those recipes sometimes. So it's kind of a two-part business where I have the website and that is mostly what I focus on. But then I also have that other side that's a little bit more reliable when it comes to how much income you're going to make. And you can use that to make extra income for the recipe development and those kinds of things.

06:20 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that as well. And as you kind of spoke to me, I think you said you got your degree and expected to be and do the writing. I'm an English major, so I'm always excited about hearing how the writing, publishing industry, and content creation have kind of manifested and grown into something completely different. So I love the different ways you've been able to kind of build that business to generate those different streams of revenue.

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07:44 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, there's definitely, there's endless ways that you can make money as a blogger, so I kind of tried to pick my favorite ones. The ads on the website are pretty standard, but there are a lot of other things you can do too. But I really like the recipe development and photography and working with different brands to kind of promote cultural recipes using their products. So that's something I enjoy too. So I like building it in.

08:07- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And now anytime I'm opening up something or I'm trying to cook something, I look on the back and I see that recipe, I'll look at it completely differently. I had no idea that there were people who would actually create, and I thought it was the brands that were doing it all.

08:19 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Yeah, totally.

08:21 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:30 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

I think that there are countless food blogs on the Internet. There are so many different food blogs and a lot of them have very blanket kind of recipes. Like, not a lot of them have really strong niches. And so I love that my food blog is kind of a project in addition to having the recipes. I also love that there's a lot of background history and appreciation that goes into the recipes I spent. Because I'm cooking from different cultures. There's a lot of, there needs to be a big level of respect behind that where I do a ton of research on the recipes, I want to make sure that I'm making them authentically in a way that they're actually made in the culture.

I like to make sure that I'm crediting people from the culture that I've learned how to make the recipes from lots of photography that highlight the correct way of making the dish, and then also ways that you can make this dish from around the world at home in America, even if we don't have the exact same ingredients.

So there is a ton, a ton of research that goes into every single recipe that I'm making so that you can really feel like you're bringing the world to your kitchen. And I feel like that shines through on my blog. It's very clear that there's a lot of research attention and appreciation that goes into each recipe so that you can really feel like you're having an authentic experience at home.

09:51 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And I love that you use that word, authentic experience. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective?

10:04- Alexandria Drzazgowski

So something that I started implementing last year that I really have been enjoying is this method of accounting called profit first. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it. Do you know what it is?

10:15- Gresham Harkless

Yes. I had Mike Michalowicz, the author, on the show, too.

10:18 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Yeah. Oh, you did? Amazing. Okay, cool. I scrolled through a lot of your episodes, and I've listened to a bunch of them, but I didn't see that one, so. Okay. I'm sure he's spoken about it more in-depth than I will, but it's a really great method for making sure that you're always turning a profit from your business and always making sure to pay yourself first and then working your expenses around that. And that has made a huge difference in how I view my business, as always, first of all, always being profitable and setting myself up for having a really good and easy method of accounting that I can easily follow.

Because numbers, like I said, I was a writing major, too, just like you. And so numbers, I don't know about you, but they are not my strong seat. So having that book, that really taught me how to put effective processes in place to make sure that I have everything covered, that has been really great for me, for my business in the last year.

11:10- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a phenomenal book. And I think, you know, to me, it's like a real sign of intelligence to be able to kind of take what might not be a simple, you know, way to approach your business or an aspect of your business, but be able to make it simple so that other people can execute in many different ways. So I love that, you know, that book and I had, you know, Mike was on the show, episode number six six six dine as well, too.

So I love that you've been able to kind of take that and be able to hit the ground running because I think so many times when you're talking about blogs, podcasts, things like that, we sometimes will skip over the profit part and just have the enjoyment part and it becomes more of a hobby. So I love that you built that into a business.

11:50- Alexandria Drzazgowski

Thank you.

11:50 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So it's a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:03 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

If I was talking to a fellow food blogger, I would tell them that from the start, focus on search engine optimization SEO. For anyone who has a content-based business, first of all, that is wildly important. When I first started my blog, I was just kind of writing whatever I thought was interesting to me. And it took me a really long time to figure out that I need to be writing about things that people are searching for. So that when those people are searching for a specific recipe or a specific topic, they will be coming to my blog. And there's quite maybe a year or two that I was, I won't call it a waste because I learned from it, but the content that I wrote for my blog in that first year or two, not a lot of it has been seen because not a lot of people are looking for it.

I didn't name it the right thing or choose the right keywords to focus on or anything like that. So for anybody who's starting a content-based business from the ground, learn SEO before you learn anything else because it is so important to getting your business up and running really quickly. And even if you don't have a content-based business, even if you have a service, search engine optimization is still really important. So if someone's searching for a service that you provide, you're the first one that comes up on Google before anybody else.

So definitely focus on that. So that would be my first one and then my other one. If I could hop in a time sheen time machine and say something to my previous self, I think I would just tell myself, thank you, because it's so easy to focus on all of the things that we should be doing as entrepreneurs that we're not doing or things that we want to implement that we haven't gotten to yet, things we want to improve on. I have always been so hard on myself with my business and wanting to do everything and be everything all the time.

And so I would just go back to myself in the past and say thank you because everything that you're doing right now has gotten me to where I am. And I'm sure in three or four years, Alexandria would come back and say thank you to President Alexandria for everything I'm still doing now. So I just want to have an appreciation for past Alexandria for getting me here, too.

14:10 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And that's something that is sometimes taken for granted so much, especially for people that are, you know, like, I'm talking more about myself, type a driven people that want to go to the next goal and the next goal and next goal. Wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition, of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEO's on this show. So, Alexandria, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:31 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Okay, so I've been thinking about this question, and I'm having a hard time coming up with a definitive answer because I feel like it means something different every single day right now. I mentioned before we hit record on this podcast, that I'm up at my cottage right now. There's my family, there's 30 people all hanging out. And I worked a little bit yesterday. I'm not really working today except for this podcast. And so today for me, a CEO means freedom.

But it doesn't always feel like that because sometimes being a CEO means having grit and having to work really hard to do the things that you want so that you can have that freedom. So I think it means something different every day. But I think today I'm really happy with not having to work and getting to enjoy my family on a random Monday. So today I'm going to go with freedom, but with a little asterisk because it's not always like that either.

15:21 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that perspective and that definition. I love that asterisk even more because it does change. It seems like you mentioned from day to day, sometimes from year to year, and challenge to challenge as well, too, where you start to have a different perspective in a way that you look at that. But I think that's part of, you know, the beautiful part of the journey and the not-so-beautiful part of the journey that it is being a CEO, entrepreneur, business owner. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Well, Alexandria, I truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

16:00 – Alexandria Drzazgowski

Of course. Thank you and I appreciate your time as well. It's been really fun to be on the podcast. So if you are interested in checking out the blog, it's www.foreignfork.com. like a foreign country then I'm also on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all of the social media. My handle is the foreign fork and each week about every two weeks, I pick a new country and I share fun facts about that country every day for two weeks. And also some recipes that go with it.

So if you're interested in that, in looking at the blog content, those are the best places to do so. And anybody that is interested in photography services or anything like that, my email is alexandriaorrenfork.com. even if you want to get into food blogging or blogging and you want some advice or help or guidance, I am definitely a fan of paying it forward. I had a lot of help in the beginning, so if anybody's interested in getting a little piece of advice here, and there, I'm happy to answer your emails too.

17:04 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Thank you so much, Alexandria. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. So I appreciate the value provided today. Of course, all the value you're doing as well and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

17:16- Alexandria Drzazgowski

Thank you so much and your podcast has been really wonderful to listen to too. You always have a lot of value, so I'm happy to add to it today. It was really fun.

17:23 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at Imceo Co. ImcEo is not just a phrase, it's a community. Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at CeOhacks Co. This has been the CEO podcast with Gresham Harkness Junior. Thank you for listening.

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