We were lucky to catch up with Liz Fetchin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Liz, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today, Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I’ve always loved cooking and writing about food. One of my first jobs was working as a food editor at a regional magazine, and pretty soon after I took that position, I realized that dairy was causing my debilitating stomach aches, and my husband discovered his intolerance to gluten and allergy to soy.

I remember feeling overwhelmed at the grocery store, since I was used to cooking with lots of cheese, milk, butter and wheat products, but I quickly learned how to work with whole food ingredients to create delicious meals so we didn’t have to sacrifice taste just because we had dietary restrictions.

I first thought of the concept for Octofree, a blog and resource for people with dietary restrictions featuring recipes free of the top 8 most common food allergens (milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat) when I was walking our newborn son around our neighborhood 9 years ago. I knew I wanted more flexibility than the full-time job I was working at the time offered, and was seriously considering starting my own business.

My husband and I both loved the concept, but we didn’t have the startup funds we would need, and there wasn’t a clear path to a reliable income, so I started a different business instead. I invested in a MacBook and founded Elm Ink, my media relations consulting service for nonprofits, small businesses and women-owned ventures. I quickly built a reputation for high-quality, affordable work, and carved a niche for myself in the Pittsburgh community.

Six years in, the pandemic hit, and a number of my arts and nonprofit clients had to cancel their retainers after being forced to nix performances, shutter museums, and rework programming. I’d been running Elm Ink for long enough that I had some savings, and decided to invest some of it to create Octofree.

Now I do both: I have a number of media relations clients back on board for Elm Ink, and I’m slowly but steadily working to build Octofree, with the goal of helping lots of people, and eventually creating a passive income.

Liz, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Sure thing! I’m a writer, recipe developer, entrepreneur, former food editor, mom, wife and everyday home cook.

My goal with Octofree is to provide beautiful resources to people with food allergies, intolerances and other dietary restrictions. So much of what’s out there that’s “allergen-free” is bland and lackluster, and there’s really no reason it has to be that way. Allergen-free food can be flavorful, appetizing and easy to prepare, which is key, because it can be next to impossible to safely utilize shortcuts the rest of the world relies on, like eating out at a restaurant, ordering pizza or takeout or even using a meal kit service.

Everything I create, from my Instagram content to my digital products, is crafted specifically to make my customer’s lives easier. I’m living in a household with a number of dietary restrictions, and I know that most nights, the most important thing is to get a safe, quick, delicious dinner on the table, so I’m always sharing time-tested favorites, trying out allergen-free versions of what’s popular and easy on conventional blogs, and sharing tips, tricks and honest product reviews along the way.

I send weekly emails on Fridays (sign up at octofree.com/subscribe) featuring new seasonal recipes, roundups, product reviews and more, and have two e-cookbooks: Weeknight SOS, a one-month meal plan complete with weekly shopping lists, and An Octofree Thanksgiving, with top-8-free recipes for the full feast, from turkey to mashed potatoes to pumpkin pie. Visit octofree.com/shop to purchase.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Authenticity. People reach out to me all of the time thanking me for writing recipes they don’t have to modify and for creating accessible, honest content. I share my successful recipes, but if you follow along on my Instagram stories, you’ll see what I also share experiments that don’t work. A recent fail that comes to mind was when I tried to make cookies with leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving and ended up with a giant brownish-pink mega-cookie.

I got a DM the other day that said, “I’m in tears looking at your website. Your ‘about’ page could have been written by me.” I think the fact that I’ve been cooking allergen-free for more than 15 years, and the recipes I share don’t require fancy equipment or techniques, makes people feel like they can do it too. I show up however I am on any given day. I may be sweaty after a workout, or business on the top and sweatpants on the bottom because of a media relations client zoom. I’m a busy mom running two businesses and trying to get dinner on the table, and I don’t try to hide that.

Some specific strategies that have helped to grow my audience include partnering with like-minded brands on giveaways, creating enticing freebies to gather email addresses, doing media relations outreach and collaborating with other allergen-free creators. It’s all slow and steady because I don’t have an ad budget, but I think because of that, I end up with more followers who are truly interested in what I’m putting out there.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

Yes, I’ve been working to create a number of different revenue streams for Octofree, including getting paid to develop and write recipes for magazines and other publications, creating sponsored content for brands on Instagram, selling ad space in my weekly e-newsletter, selling digital products, and setting up limited Google AdSense ads on my website.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://octofree.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/octofree/