Navigating business ownership with family members, establishing ownership of responsibilities, and creating genuine content with Echo and Erica Blickenstaff.

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Welcome to episode 494 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork interviews Echo and Erica Blickenstaff from the food blog Favorite Family Recipes. 

The Secret to Building a Family Business and Reaching 2 Million Pageviews

In this episode, Echo and Erica dive into the ups and downs of running a family business. The key to their success? Dividing responsibilities and playing to each other’s strengths. After struggling with everyone doing everything (hello, burnout!), they sat down to figure out who would take on what. Once that was sorted, it was like a weight was lifted, and they were able to dive deeper into their areas of expertise.

They also talk about the challenges of growing a business while staying true to your roots. After taking a hit from Google’s algorithm updates, they realized the importance of diversifying their revenue streams and not relying too much on search traffic. With 2 million monthly page views (!!!) and a focus on authentic, family-driven content, they’ve learned to balance growth with staying genuine. Whether you’re running a family business or just trying to keep things organized, this episode is full of actionable tips and inspiring insights!

Three episode takeaways:

• Dividing Responsibilities for Success: Working with family can make decision-making tricky, but once the three sisters divided up their responsibilities based on each person’s strengths and weaknesses, everything fell into place. It helped them work more efficiently and allowed everyone to dive deeper into their areas of expertise.
• Navigating the Business Roles: Inspired by the E Myth framework, they identified who best fit the roles of the entrepreneur, manager, and technician in their business. Understanding these roles helped them streamline operations and keep the business running smoothly.
• Adapting and Staying Authentic: After being impacted by Google’s Helpful Content Update, they’ve been focusing on diversifying their revenue streams and staying true to their roots by creating authentic, family-focused content that AI can’t replicate.

Resources:

• Favorite Family Recipes
• The E Myth: Why Most Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• Slicing Pie by Mike Moyer
• The EOS business framework
• The Minne Stuga
• Snackdive
• Clariti
• Semrush
• Asana
• Most Requested Copycat Dishes — their third cookbook!
• Follow Favorite Family Recipes on Instagram
• Join the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Facebook Group

Thank you to our sponsors!

This episode is sponsored by Yoast and Memberful. Learn more about our sponsors at foodbloggerpro.com/sponsors.

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