We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carlee Scharnhorst a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Carlee, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you manage your own social media?

Social media is such an important part of business and marketing, especially if your business is all digital. Not only is it a way to let people know what you are up to, social media is such a great way to get instant feedback as well. Consistently showing up for your people builds trust, but it is also a way to get ideas that can help to propel your business further.

I started managing my own social media out of necessity. Though my website started as a hobby, I quickly learned that other people were doing similar things as a business. Of course, that piqued my attention. I knew I would need a more active social media presence to grow to the point where I could have a profitable business as well. When I was making very little money, I just couldn’t convince myself to hire out tasks that I could do myself. That included social media marketing.

I have added scheduling software to my portfolio of tools over the years, but have kept my hands on the wheel. While it is tempting to hire it out, I am trying to run a lean business to maximize profitability. Plus, with the systems I have in place, I really only spend a few hours a week on social media. Most of that time is spent replying to comments, which I would have a hard time giving up anyway. That is where I get to connect with my people and I get some great ideas in the comments as well.

As the text in the posts became more and more SEO focused, social media and my email newsletters are where I still get to have a little bit of personality. So, I have opted to keep them in house rather than hiring them out.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi! I am Carlee, the creator behind Cooking With Carlee, a website that shares old family recipes and new ones we have found along the way.

A little over nine years ago, I thought it would be fun to collect some of my favorite family recipes. My grandparents were aging, and I wanted to make sure I got my hands on some of the recipes that shaped my childhood before it was too late. My original intention was to compile them into a cookbook to pass out to family at Christmas or something. On a whim, I started a blog to show the pictures of what I had made with the people who shared the recipes with me. Plus, that way my siblings and cousins could have instant access to the recipes as well.

Before long, I noticed some of the recipes were getting visited by people who weren’t my family. That inspired me to put a little more time into what I was posting. As I learned more, I found out that people were doing this as a business and some were quite successful at it. Things kind of grew organically from there. Obviously, with a lot of time and effort poured in.

The core mission of the site remains the same, and there are members of my family (including myself!) that still pull up those old favorite family recipes to make. It is quite convenient to have your recipe box digitized and searchable. But, of course it has grown into something much more than that. It went from getting tens of visits each month to hundreds of thousands. And it went from making a few dollars here and there to being a very generous full-time income, all while making new friends across the country and around the world.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Almost. My side hustle has become our primary source of income. However, I have made the choice to keep my full time job. I get a lot of satisfaction from both, and am not ready to give either up just yet.

The site started as a hobby, but by the end of the first year it was generating a little bit of fun money. It went from a couple of hundred dollars here and there to a few thousand. My income doubled almost every year from there. The last year or two, the growth has slowed some. However, it still provides a very generous income with growth year over year. It has given us the freedom to make decisions like having my husband reinvest more of his revenue into his growing business and remodeling our home without having to worry about our finances.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I was lucky that I had ignorance on my side when I first started. The fact that I didn’t know I was starting a business meant low pressure and almost no investment. I was able to grow slowly and not have any preconceived notions about what it was going to grow into. As money slowly started trickling in, I made some small investments and improvements.

Even now, I run the site on a pretty small budget. I have one W-2 employee, my son. He does some behind the scenes work and also works in front of the camera when he wants to. I have a few independent contractors that I use pretty regularly to help with photography or videography when I don’t have the time. Otherwise, I employ a lot of software solutions to help make my life a little bit easier.

There are a lot of new creators who come in and spend a lot of money on custom sites and every premium plugin from the start. While that is amazing if you can afford it, the investment also increases the pressure for revenue. That can lead to disappointment if the traffic doesn’t magically appear, and burnout can quickly follow. While there is still a lot of opportunity to build online businesses, it takes time to build a reputation and a following. With time, consistency, and persistence you can get there. But, for most people it is not a get rich quick kind of venture.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cookingwithcarlee.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carleecooks/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cookingwcarlee/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlee-scharnhorst-89a50520/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQLqMNC22STo221s2Jt0mGw