We were lucky to catch up with Julia & Ben Kowalczyk recently and have shared our conversation below.

Julia & Ben, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?

We manage our own social media as it’s just us and our account is more of a hobby than a way to make money. We want to keep things as “real” as possible, so I guess our biggest tip is to just be yourself. Followers can spot a fake easily.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We started Beard & Broad in 2015. as a beer blog. We do quite a bit of traveling and wanted a space to post about where we were going and what we were drinking. It evolved to include what we were eating, what we were making at home, products we liked, restaurants that were opening, people we found interesting, etc.

I think what sets us apart the most is that we share a little bit of everything, whether it’s happy, sad, goofy or depressing. Everyone goes through a wide range of experiences and we want to be as relatable as possible. This helps us connect with our followers better, they trust us more, and that adds more value to the companies we work with.

We recently made the choice to start sharing updates about our fertility journey. We wavered a bit, but ultimately thought it would help others to realize they aren’t alone in dealing with these challenges. It can be really tough and very lonely, but we’ve become a source of support for a lot of people and its in turn helped us. We’ve also heard from many people they had no idea how difficult the experience of trying to have a baby can be for some people, so it feels good to enlighten people on the topic.

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

It began pretty organically, which was a conscious decision. We just started tagging places we went and creating a short post on instagram about our experience. Whenever we traveled we would write a longer post on our blog about all the places we went, what we ate, what we drank, people we met, etc. We’d tag all of them and often they would repost us, and then their followers became our followers.

Find places or products you like and just start telling people about them. Your enthusiasm will be obvious so it’ll get others excited to experience what you did.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Ben (Beard) was living in Los Angeles and came home to Cleveland for a wedding one summer. Julia (Broad) crashed the after party since it was the wedding of mutual friends from high school. We hung out and talked all night. After I flew back to L.A., we kept in touch and decided to meet up when I came back for Thanksgiving. Besides our respective holiday dinners, we were with each other the entire break. We agreed upon a similar arrangement for Christmas, but were basically inseparable for two weeks. We decided to give long distance a shot and dated for 3.5 years, flying back and forth during work holidays (Ben work for a talent agency as an assistant) and breaks (Julia was in law school). We think it worked because we were both on three year timelines, Ben to get promoted and Julia to get her degree.

When it came time for Julia to move…well, she didn’t. Ben eventually moved back to Cleveland. One duplex, two houses, one Murray Pup, and six cats (currently four) later and we’ve been married for six years this July.     

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thebeardandbroad.com
• Instagram: @beardandbroad
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beardandbroad
• Twitter: @beardandbroad

Image Credits
Please credit Greg Murray Photography for the main photo and the photo with the cats.