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

Sandie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you share a story that illustrates an important or relevant lesson you learned in school

My most meaningful lesson in school wasn’t something I learned overnight. In fact it was something I learned relatively recently while eating a favorite dessert of mine; a Baklava.

The first time I had a baklava was ironically in a 10th grade chemistry class, at a time where I resolutely believed that I was meant to be a biologist and not a food creative or business owner. It also represented a moment where I actively stole time away from being creative in order to focus on my studies. My studying took me through college as a successful biology major, then through grad school, and eventually brought me to a career as a researcher. As recently as 2019, I held the belief that I was meant to stay simply a researcher with an occasional moment with my sketchbook, or to take some food photos at dinner.

Fast forward almost 4 years to the present and when I took my most recent bite of baklava, this time at a DC restaurant during a photoshoot of mine, I was mentally transported back to my first bite in the 10th grade. Initially I became overwhelmed with a type of sadness and thought “why didn’t I make time for creating content earlier, I would be WAY further along with my business or would be better at what I was doing”. But I realized that ironically like a Baklava, the whole of my journey is greater than the sum of its parts and that even though it might have taken me longer to start my journey as a creative, I wouldn’t change any part of it.

Realizing that it’s not too late and that I didn’t “waste time” by focusing so much on my studies has taught me patience and to trust the process rather than be hooked on results. The lessons I learned along the way as an academic are still worthy and useful to me now in a different setting. No single part of one’s journey is meant to be discounted, because in the end it adds value to your work as a creative and your business acumen.

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

* I initially started my blog, A Dork and her Fork, as a visual diary of my food adventures in the DMV, and as a way to make friends outside of grad school. It wasn’t until mid/late2020, when a majority restaurants closed temporarily (and some permanently) that I realized I wanted to spend more time and effort supporting these spaces. From then on I started working actively with restaurants and other bloggers to help promote and tell the stories of these restaurants to my audience through video and photo media, and learned more effectively how to be an online food content creator.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

* Growing up I was taught/raised with the lesson that you had to be really good at one thing, so that you could be irreplaceable in a work setting and have a sense of job security. As I grew into an adult and left my college years behind, I was plagued with the insecurity that I wasn’t particularly good at anything and found myself trying new things in the hope that “the one” would soon stick. When I think about my success as a blogger and influencer I realized that I had to unlearn the idea that I can only do “one thing”, and rather that it was the culmination of things that I have done that have put me in my own unique and “irreplaceable” setting.

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

* Building an online presence ultimately is about fostering a sense of community through interpersonal relationships. Like building relationships offline, building an audience is most effectively done by sharing your content to find others with similar interests, and consistent communicating/interacting with topics and content that interests you. When starting out building a social media presence, my advice would be to come up with metrics of what success looks like to you early in growing your audience. Whether it’s generating leads, or conversation and engagement, having a personal measure of success helps you evaluate what’s working and makes it harder to get distracted by FOMO on socials.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.adorkandherfork.com
• Instagram: @adorkandherfork
• Facebook: A Dork and her Fork

Image Credits
@charlieinspanish personal photo @adorkandherfork