IAM1841 – Blogger and Co-author Helps Parents Navigate the World of Plant-based Nutrition

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Alexandra Caspero Teaser 00:00

When it comes to delish knowledge, my value is in providing a healthy recipe from a dietician so that inherent trust in there. I do that in a free way because again, I have ads on my website that pay and help support that business.

When it comes to Plant Based Juniors, again, we're creating so much valuable content. We've decided to package it a little bit differently. So for people that needed information, they're able to read it.

Intro 00:27

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:54

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we've hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners just like you, or what I like to call the CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month we are focusing on CEO hacks and CEO nuggets. This is by far one of my favorite questions I asked on the show. In other words, I asked, what are the apps, books, and habits that make you more effective and efficient? Those were the CEO Hacks. Then I asked for a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or something that you might tell your younger business if you were to hop into a time machine and those were the CEO nuggets. That's what we'll focus on this month and some of the top ones that can instantly impact your business.

I love all the questions, but with every episode, I thought I would walk away with something I could look at and implement right there to save the precious resources, time and money. Or I would also learn about the advice, tips and tidbits or tools of the trade on how to level up our organization. So you'll hear some of these this month. Sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Alexandra Casparo of Delish Knowledge and Plant Based Juniors. Alexandra, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Alexandra Caspero 02:33

Thank you so much for having me.

Gresham Harkless 02:35

No problem. Super excited to have you on. What I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Alexandra so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

And Alexandra is the owner of Delish Knowledge and the author of Fresh Italian Cooking for the New Generation. Her award-winning blog, Delish Knowledge focuses on making whole food, vegetarian eating deliciously simple.

She is a co-founder of Plant Based Juniors, an evidence-based platform that helps parents navigate the world of plant-based prenatal and pediatric nutrition. Additionally, she is a co-author of Joyful Eating Nourish Life, which helps others discover a happier, healthier relationship with food in their body.

Alexandra, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Alexandra Caspero 03:17

Yes. So excited to be here.

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Gresham Harkless 03:19

Awesome. Super excited to have you on as well. I wanted to kick everything off with what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Alexandra Caspero 03:26

Yeah, awesome. So, funny enough, I actually started my business as a hobby. I started my blog back in 2010, and this was really at the time where there was some people who were making other blogs into business, but that wasn't the norm for the days of blogger and WordPress. Most people use the free version, and I really started it just as a way to communicate with my friends and family back home.

I was in grad school in California. I had left Virginia, and I was lonely and doing a lot of cooking. So it was just a fun way for me to share those experiments, share those recipes. Then from there, it slowly built into a business. I would say about 2014, I started realizing that, okay, there was definitely a potential here for income and revenue. I was getting the attention of different brands and companies and started doing some sponsored work.

At that point, I told my husband, okay, I want a year to see if I can make this a viable business, and if I can't, that's okay. I'll keep doing kind of my day job. But if I can, then, that was sort of my number to myself. So I did it in one year. I was able to surpass what I was making at my current job and, I say the rest is history. When it comes to Plant Based Juniors, that really was designed out of a pain point.

I was pregnant with my son. I had been eating a mostly plant-based diet for most of my life at that point, and I was just having a really hard time finding actual recommendations that were based on science when it came to how to raise a baby mostly plant-based and also what that looked like as far as pregnancy. So I teamed up with another dietician to form this community, this platform we could help translate the science into it with other moms and other parents who need it.

Gresham Harkless 05:13

Nice. I absolutely love that. I'm a big blogger myself, so I always love how starting out as a hobby or just something you're using to explore and then it blossoms into a business and then another business. I love the fact that they're all combined. It's not like you're doing two separate things, but they're all in the same pool, so to speak.

Alexandra Caspero 05:31

Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely an overlap. I always say if I had started my blog with the intention of it being a business, I would have done things so differently. But there is beauty in hindsight and starting it mostly as a hobby without any intention of ever making a dollar from it really I think, allowed me to make mistakes without there ever being any pressure.

Because it wasn't designed to be a business at first, but I'm thankful that almost 10 years later it is.

Gresham Harkless 05:58

Yeah, absolutely. I've read a lot of statistics and stuff, and it said that it does take a long time to build up the following, to build up a blog, build up anything really, especially like a blog.

Alexandra Caspero 06:07

Yeah, yeah. I think there's beauty in sort of that grace of there's no certain endpoint that you're having to meet or you have to meet in order to pay the bills.

There's a lot more creativity. I think sometimes when you're allowed the freedom to let it just be something that you're actually passionate about instead of having to combine that passion with the bottom line.

Gresham Harkless 06:26

Absolutely. So I wanted to hear a little bit more about both of those and what exactly people can find.

Alexandra Caspero 06:31

Yeah, so Delish Knowledge is really just sort of your average blog in a sense. What I mean by that is I don't have a lot of specific resources and services that are paid I make most of my money from that service just based on content from ad revenue, and so that's nice because it really allows me to deliver a lot of free content to readers, to subscribers without them having to feel like they have to buy into anything. That business model was my traffic, has really allowed me to create a sustainable income without having to branch out too much and really dive into what my subscribers are asking for in giving them that information in a freeway. There's I think a win-win for both parties there.

When it comes to Plant Based Juniors, that's a little more nuanced. So that community, even though we started it a year ago, in just one year, I've grown it to about the same level as Delish Knowledges, which has been in existence for over nine years. I think a lot of that is really serving my niche. The people that are you know, coming to Plant Based Juniors are parents. They are individuals who are either interested in eating plant-based eating semi-plant-based, or fully plant-based, whatever that means to them. But they really want guidance and they're tired and they're frustrated by seeing, mixed messages online and not showing where to trust.

I think that we've been able to build a really strong, really engaged community because we're giving them exactly what they want. Through that, we have a few different services. We've got a pregnancy guide that kind of walks someone through all the stages of pregnancy trimester by trimester, all the things to be concerned about supplements, exercise guides, et cetera. Then we also have a feeding course when it comes to infants. So, a lot of the questions that are wrapped up and how to feed and what foods are okay and different methods we combine into a paid course for participants there.

Gresham Harkless 08:26

That makes perfect sense and correct me if I'm wrong. Do you find that because you had the blog, you were able to create content? Like you said, it wasn't so revenue base, just value based that it was able to help you laser focus a little bit more with through Plant Based Juniors.

Alexandra Caspero 08:40

Yeah, absolutely. I think so and really, I think that's the heart of it is providing value. I look at both of those communities with those businesses as having a lot of overlap there. When it comes to Delish Knowledge, my value is in providing a healthy recipe from a dietitian. There's that inherent trust in there. I do that in a freeway because again, I have ads on my website that pay and help support that business.

When it comes to Plant Based Juniors again, we're creating so much valuable content. We've decided to package it a little bit differently. So people that needed information they'll be able to reach it.

Gresham Harkless 09:16

Makes perfect sense. You might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel makes you unique?

Alexandra Caspero 09:25

Yeah, so I would say for both Plant Based Juniors and for Delish Knowledge, we hone in on this idea of evidence base. Especially in a world where there are so many nutrition influencers, other dieticians and people in the wellness and health space, I think really being the cornerstone of evidence-based is helpful. What I mean by that is, even though I think that a predominantly plant-based diet has a whole host of benefits, I'm not strict on the dogma. I want to make sure the science matches up and in instances where it does this. I'm very open about that. Might talk about that and I think that can be refreshing where I'm not trying to push a certain diet type.

I'm really just trying to push the science and nutrition is a science. It's confusing. It can be complicated sometimes it can be really simple and it can also be a lot to wade through. I sometimes joke that I've got two nutrition degrees and even sometimes reading the study. I don't understand what's happening. I'm not sure what the methodology is here, how they got these results. So I really try to take it from the standpoint of I can sit here in my office. I can read the studies day to day and figure out what's going on and what the overall message can be. Then I can translate it in a really simple consumer-ready format.

I think that is my secret sauce is, I talked to my participants, my readers as someone who is interested. Some of the science and some of the why behind the nutrition recommendations, but I also do it in a way where they don't have to study. They don't have to read anything. They can just trust that everything that they're getting from Plant Based Juniors and from Delish Knowledge is credible.

Gresham Harkless 11:01

Absolutely. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Alexandra Caspero 11:12

Yeah. So my sort of go-to program that I think really helped transform both businesses is 90 Day Year, and that's by Todd Herman. I'm assuming that had been spoken quite often because I feel like when I talk to other business owners, I hear over and over again, yes, that's really changed my perspective too. What I love most about 90 Day Year is it's really a system that helps you prioritize what you need to do and what you can hire other people to do. I think that as so many CEOs know, there's so much that needs to get done and it can be really easy to get in the weeds when you're trying to figure out every single step you have to do in order to run a successful business.

90 Day Year really helped me take a 10, 000-foot approach to say, okay, if I can focus my time on these things, that's how I'm going to grow my business and all these other things over here, that's what I need to hire out for because it's going to take too much time. It's going to take too much energy for me to learn all of these things I have to do in order to make these small parts work and these small parts successful. My time is much better spent working on the big projects that are really going to drive the business to the next level.

So that one was a mind-blowing course for me.

Gresham Harkless 12:29

Absolutely and I think you're actually the first to mention that. I don't think I've heard it.

Alexandra Caspero 12:34

Now, now, the other secret thought.

Gresham Harkless 12:36

Oh, Really? I was going to say, because I think I've heard somebody mentioned Rocks and Pebbles. So to make sure to focus on the pebbles, but focus on the rocks because they actually make an impact. So along the same lines, just maybe a different.

Alexandra Caspero 12:48

Yes, exactly.

Gresham Harkless 12:50

Of course. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business?

Alexandra Caspero 12:59

So, yeah. I would tell myself, take risk and trust your gut. I was young when I started my first company, my blog. I was in grad school still. Again, I made decisions based on the fact that I didn't know this was going to be a business. I think if I could go back in time, I would tell myself that, more than you think you do, there are a lot of questions that come up, especially at sort of those crucial forks in the road where if you make the wrong decision, that can cut you back. I really questioned by my gut that I knew enough to make the right decisions. Unfortunately, that bit me hard, especially in the early years.

So I think if I could go back and tell myself anything, it's that I know my business better than anyone. So if I'm getting advice from something or if I'm hiring someone and we're out of friction, I don't agree with what they're saying, I know what I need to do more than anyone. I know my readers. I know my content. I know what I want this to be. So if I'm getting kind of pushback that doesn't quite align with those values, then I should really trust my gut and not trust the idea that just because someone claims they're an expert, they actually know what's best for me and my business.

Gresham Harkless 14:06

Absolutely, because deep down, we often already know the answer and we just got to face it and follow through with it. So, I think that's a great CEO nugget.

Now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show. So, Alexandra, what does being a CEO means to you?

Alexandra Caspero 14:24

Yeah, we touched on this a little bit, but really, I look at my job as providing value. So, everything that I do, whether it's an Instagram post, whether it's a Facebook video or a live, every single thing that I put out there, all of my content, I'm really trying to ask myself what value am I giving to someone? I think that we're all so busy and so overwhelmed, especially in the online space that trying to create something that has value, something that is worthy of someone's time is really where I like to position both of my businesses.

I think that not only has it helped me be really successful because, when you're creating a lot of value, even if you're not creating a ton of content, people really gravitate towards feeling like they're getting something from you. And so, in every decision that I make, that CEO perch, I like to make sure that I am giving value. I'm providing something that's actually going to help someone's life and make their life a little bit better.

Gresham Harkless 15:20

Absolutely. No, I definitely think that's a great perspective and a great reminder to everybody, CEOs to always provide value and lead with value.

So, Alexandra, I truly appreciate your time. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know, and then how best they can get ahold of you.

Alexandra Caspero 15:37

Yeah thank you again for having me on. This podcast is so invaluable with all of the nuggets you're providing for everyone. So thank you for doing the work.

You can find me at Delish Knowledge on most of the social media platforms, as well as at Plant Based Juniors. Then I'm also at the delishknowledge.com and plantbasedjuniors.com.

Gresham Harkless 15:57

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes as well. So thank you again, Alexandra. Have a great rest of the day.

Alexandra Caspero 16:03

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Outro 16:05

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

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Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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