Although I am a business, I'm a businessman as well.

My goal is to create the best content, but also share on all platforms because that's what I do for a living. I don't really leave any platform out there.

There's an older crowd on Facebook that I can't tap into on TikTok and Instagram…and that crowd seems to engage a lot more.

It seems like that crowd is looking for something out of it as well, like they usually ask me:

Do I have a cookbook coming out?

How can they find my recipes?

When am I gonna publish something?

What do I have for sale?

The hope is that when you do release it, you'll get the results that you're looking for.

So operationally, what I do is I post my video on TikTok and Instagram, and…what I do on TikTok is say in my captions that my recipe will be posted on Instagram.

For monetization, TikTok in my experience has been better by far, especially with their new rollout on longer form videos.

I realized that people won't follow me for the same content because what's the point of following me on Instagram if you're gonna get the same content on TikTok?

In order to differentiate, I had to add something more, give a little bit more value.

They're more interested in trying the food, rating the food, trying to figure out what they can make for their families or, you know, husband or wife throughout the week. So they take that a little bit more seriously - not only the entertainment aspect, but “How can I apply this to my daily life?”

I saw a lot of the top Creators using it, and I thought to myself:

“If they like it, I'm gonna use it as well.”

And it's been really great. There's great metrics for it. You can have a subscriber list with Linktree as well. Notifications, where people get notified every time you add a new link…it's so simple to use that I didn't feel like I had to try and experiment with anything else.

I don't use [email] often because I understand what it's like to receive a lot of emails…I don't wanna bombard them to the point where they unsubscribe.

They wanna know what I'm up to, the products I'm working on. They have input…I cater content to those people because I know that they take it a little bit more seriously.

I think we spoke to four different people about merch…what we liked about Spring is:

1) there was really no upfront cost to get started, and

2) I didn't have to hold a bunch of the inventory at home - like purchase a thousand shirts and then try to sell it…

They had an in-house designer that worked hand-in-hand with me, they would do all the printing, all the shipping, they took care of all the tax work and everything.

I think I could make more money if I promoted it, but I think in the world of Creators and influencers now, everyone seems like they're selling something all the time.

I'm OK not pushing it that much, and letting people organically purchase it, because I'm already doing so many other things that I'm passionate about with brands.

In the beginning, just like my merch, I was pushing that a lot, but I realized it's not making enough - due to the percentage of affiliates - to bombard my followers with that every single day.

If it was enough, I would probably promote it more, but I'm saving my energy, once again, for things that are probably going to be more meaningful.

I have a CPA and I have a financial planner. Obviously my CPA handles everything tax wise. I'm making sure that my corporation isset up the right way to make sure I'm paying the least amount of taxes, because the SBA tells me it's not about how much I can make, it's about how much I can keep.

I haven't seen the growth that I was looking for as far as YouTube…

I'm hoping that after we, you know, get some things cleared out and really go over the data, that we can figure out a solution on how to really get it up and running. But as of right now, I would say that the improvement isn't drastic. It's probably on par with what I could have potentially done on my own. But then again, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it…

I think it's worth a lot if you're getting the results that you want because I wasn't able to do it on my own in a year of me posting on YouTube. So I'm curious to see what they can do.

It's like I'm in the moment. I'm usually at the grocery store every single day. I'm making different content every single day. And it's not as organized as I would want it to be, but we'll get some standard operating procedures in place and hopefully build a team around us in the near future.

I would say it was probably one of the best decisions I made, because I wouldn't be able to handle all the contracts and negotiate the back and forth of brands.

It would totally take away from the fun of being a content creator…that's really where you get that burnout, if you're handling the whole business.

I think you need a team of people to grow.

One of the biggest things I realized about brands is that a lot of the bigger brands, they go to agencies to find talent…like NFL and MLB or Sub-Zero Wolf…I mean I wouldn’t even know how to get in contact with people like that…

So I do believe that Whalar has been a big part of my success, simply because they have a network of people that they have access to that I don't have access to.