We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jess Jankowski. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jess below.

Jess, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?

We started our website, Easy Budget Recipes, in September 2019. We were a small website with under 100 recipes when 2020 started. We were growing slowly, and then the pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, everyone was at home. Not only was everyone at home, but everyone was cooking meals! The need for more recipes that used pantry items skyrocketed. This is when our website really took off. We began creating new recipes around the clock! While the pandemic was a crazy time and difficult for many people, in a lot of ways, it was a blessing for our business.

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

We’re Beth, Jill, and Jess and we’re the team of 3 sisters-in-law behind Easy Budget Recipes! Combined we have over 50 years of cooking, meal planning, and budgeting experience. Both Jess and Beth grew up with fathers that are accountants, so budgeting and money smarts are literally in their blood!

We started Easy Budget Recipes as a way to help moms like us do 4 things:
Make delicious recipes made from real ingredients.
Meal plan with a budget in mind with little food waste.
Provide tips on how to get kids involved with the cooking.
Get easy, budget-friendly healthy recipes on the table that won’t break the bank.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Just recently, we had to shift our mindset with how we write our recipes for all of our online posts. Google, where we get most of our traffic, made some changes in the fall of 2023, and the changes significantly impacted many food bloggers and their websites. We have had to stop our current practices, put a hold on creating as many new recipes, and focus on updating older posts and recipes to be compliant with Google. This was a frustrating experience to have to suddenly shift the focus of our business, but it has given us a renewed sense of teamwork and overcoming challenges.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social Media is so important to our business. We divide and conquer with our team so we do not get overwhelmed. One of us focuses on Pinterest, one of us on Instagram and TikTok, and the other focuses on Facebook. We each take online courses to help stay on trend and up to date with best practices. We have found the best strategy is to stay consistent. It is a long game, and if we look at our statistics daily instead of with a more long-term lens, it can get discouraging.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.easybudgetrecipes.com
• Instagram: easybudgetrecipes
• Facebook: Easy Budget Recipes
• Youtube: @easybudgetrecipes3715

Image Credits
Victoria Blaine