Julian Dorey Podcast - #68 - The CRAZIEST Food You've Ever Eaten - Skyler Bouchard-Oppenheim

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

Skyler Bouchard-Oppenheim is a creator and entrepreneur. Since 2012, Skyler has been the face of her own online culinary brand/blog, Dining with Skyler (@DiningWithSkyler on Instagram). Furthermore, she was one of the first creators who adopted Instagram as a central platform to build business and has leveraged her success there to create content for major brands including Amazon and Food Network. Dining With Skyler IG Page: https://www.instagram.com/diningwithskyler/ ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; Body Image; “Dining With Skyler” & Behind The Scenes on Culinary Content Creation;  23:42 - Craziest foods Skyler’s ever eaten; An exotic bird dish from Asia; Attitudes towards different types of food; The changing narrative behind Lobsters; Seaspiracy (Netflix) talk; Microplastics in the oceans; The Foreign Dog Meat Trade 45:27 - Explaining wine and how it’s judged; The myth behind aged win; The Class Division in foods and drinks like wine; Culture Vulturing in food 1:07:12 - Skyler’s favorite country of origin food; Skyler’s time in Hong Kong; Chinese food and the regional differences; Julian ordered Sushi in a Chinese Restaurant 1:15:38 - Moving out of NYC during the Pandemic; The rebranding process Skyler went through over the past 2 years; Skyler’s work with Amazon and The Food Network 1:33:21 - The rise of the True Crime Genre in entertainment; True Crime go-to’s; The internet changed everything; Skyler’s previous work in Network Broadcasting during college; Skyler tells a story about a hater chef;  2:00:03 - The story behind “Ballsy Bites”; Skyler talks about leaving behind the media company business she also started several years ago; The struggle of CEO’s at the beginning of the Pandemic  2:21:00 - Does Culinary Network TV still have a market?; Cake Boss & Brazil; Building communities online; Skyler tells a story about the moment she realized she was onto something; The FOMO generation ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ Get $100 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover: https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey  ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io  Music Produced by White Hot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's just crunchy. You just have to put salt on it and it's just crunchy. It's like dried out. Is it still like the eyes in there and everything? I didn't look that close. Or grasshopper. I eat grasshopper. They're larger than crickets.

Okay, same shit. Where are you getting grasshopper in New York City? In Toloache. It's a Mexican restaurant. They had grasshopper tacos. I'll never forget it. A Mexican restaurant? And I called them.

Grasshopper tacos? It's pretty traditional. What's cooking, everybody? If you are on YouTube right now, please hit that subscribe button. Hit that like button. And thank you, as always, for checking out the channel. To everyone who is listening on Apple or Spotify, thank you for checking out the show there.

If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button on Apple, hit that follow button on Spotify, and I look forward to seeing you guys again for future episodes. Now, I am joined in the bunker today by Skylar Bouchard-Apennine. Skylar is the founder, CEO, and food blogging extraordinaire of the at dining with Skylar page on Instagram, which has been around for a long time because Skylar was one of the OGs of the platform. She was on there building a community and using the page as her business before pretty much almost anyone was. And so she is very aware of internet culture and how to monetize online. She is very, very deep

in the food industry at this point and has done work for Amazon and Food Network extensively, I believe for years, and a lot of other brands too. And she's killing it. So I actually graduated high school with Skylar back in the day. Hadn't talked to her since then, but I have watched her build this page over the years. It's amazing what she's done. So I had a chance to reconnect with her over the summer and I asked her if she would come on. And so she did. So it was great to catch up after all these years. It was awesome to hear about what she's doing. And there was a lot of good talk around food and food culture around the world. This girl knows everything about that stuff. Also a lot of good talk on like internet culture and stages of media and how things are changing there,

what that whole landscape looks like and a whole bunch of other stuff. So I think there's something in there for everyone to enjoy and I hope you guys do. That said, you know what it is. I'm Julian Dory and this is Trendify. Let's go. This is one of the great questions in our culture.

Where is the nuance? You're giving opinions and calling them facts. You feel me? Everyone understands this, but few seem to do it. If you don't like the status quo, start asking questions. You mentioned extremes, right? I know you were talking about unrealistic beauty standards, and I think that's where you shut it off. Because there are unrealistic beauty standards.

But yeah, I personally disagree with that latter half of that video in that I think you just can't, you can't judge someone by looking at them, right? Like, it's the oldest thing in the book. You can't judge a book by its cover. And you're bringing up extremes. The intentions were good. It was taken out of context. But yeah, with women's bodies, you're a man. Yeah. You don't know.

People are going to hear what they want to hear too you know and that that that works but that's the world we live in it works both ways so you know there are people that took some positive out of that for some of the other parts in it and that's what they heard and then there's people who heard those parts and they're like all right fuck that and i get that yeah but i think it's just like best to always especially if you don't identify with that gender or sex, physical sex of this. I just, yeah, I don't. Like I can understand your intentions were good there, but I also understand all the women who responded that way. Yeah.

It's a complicated body image and relationship with your body health um it's all so complicated and i think we are so sensitive towards that because women have seen we've seen ourselves portrayed wrong and misunderstood in the media for so long um so that's why hearing something like that even from a man it's like no no you can't say that uh yeah i get that no but i like i i'm not i don't hate you for it like i'm okay look i just i wanted to let you know don't say it as as i always say like there's a lot of shit said in here there's gonna be some stuff that's that's wrong and i think but you learn from that yeah and i think even like some of it sometimes like you can the delivery can be wrong and i think you just said it like the intention there i think

my intentions were were good like i feel really good about that but you're really good about saying that beauty standards are unrealistic yes exactly i mean i agree with that yes and then when you when you take it to to the other level i understand when people are like, all right, well, that's not your territory to talk on. Especially like if it's not another female in here with me, that might make it a little different. Maybe it doesn't. A female would have shut you right down. Maybe. They would.

Depends on the female. There were a lot of women that, again, I think they heard the other parts. Yeah, that's what I heard as well. And I'm like i agree sometimes i look at instagram and my self-esteem that day tanks and and then you have to have a talk with yourself and be like well these filters are fucking fake that's crazy and like my cellulite's fine and her cellulite is great i don't care what size anyone is like as long as you are healthy that's all that matters and i think that just circles back like you don't know who's healthy like i know people who are real

thin and they are healthy like i i do and i know people who are have bigger bones and they have a bigger structure different than i do and they are so healthy and that's great so yeah it's just we don't know yeah yeah i agree with that but you, doing this. You've had the microscope on you pretty much like since you've been on the internet here. And you're you're in this where you're a female in this type of industry, and you're making food and stuff. So I think it adds like a whole nother context to it. Because you know what some of the stereotypes are going to be like, oh, this, this girl makes content about's just eating all day why does she look so great and then there's people people saying i'm bulimic exactly so there's people out there that that judge a book by its cover exactly and deal with it personally it hurts and i think that's why i i completely i can be sensitive towards what you said as well um but it's because i feel it for everyone you know you you own like what you do very well though all i'm not just talking about with that i'm talking about with everything like you have a very obviously like you have a great personality for it and

you're very friendly and people like get happy seeing your smile no really like that's small things like that when people are going through a feed and they see like a big smile all the time like it's a vibe check kind of thing you know so people like that but you you know you've added layers to this over the years and moved from starting with the blog all the way to full-blown video studio content and everything and you seem to have adjusted at every step and so i don't care what you do whether it's in a niche talking about food or in some other random niche on the internet. When I see people who sustain for like a decade and then continue to adjust and make a new product and continue to build their audience, that's a beautiful thing because it's very, very hard to do.

Thank you. That means a lot to me. Yeah, I think people who aren't in this industry, sometimes it's pretty difficult to understand how much work goes into it. So I appreciate that. I'm glad to give the compliment because I get it. Yeah, you get it. You're hustling. You're working your butt off.

It's a lot. I don't know why people – and I haven't really personally experienced this, but I know a lot of people who have you know there's such a there is such an instantaneous like urge to to rip people who create and and do well with it right so like you've had you've been successful at this for a while so i don't i don't know how much you deal with that but i'm i'm always curious about that with creators because it's not to it's not like you want to sit here and be like you you know, fuck you, I'm creating or whatever. But people do that from the other end, from their own seat. And frankly, you know, they're not doing shit. Yeah, I mean, you never know.

When I have someone sending a lot of hate, lots of hate, I get it a lot. I always kind of empathize with them first to say like, okay, why do you think they feel this way? And then I try and talk to them because usually if you approach people with kindness, they'll reverse. But it really does upset me when people undermine the work that I put into everything. Like I don't know if you know how much work goes into a culinary post. Like one video. Tell us about it. I want to know.

Oh, I'm going to – I'll'll like you can pull something up here but one of my videos pull it up i'll tell you all the steps or you don't even have to i'll tell you everything that went into on instagram what yeah anything i mean the short ones any lengths of video i'll tell you and then i'll break down every single job that people are hired for that goes into it well that's that's another question real quick how much of what you do because i know for a long time you were doing literally everything but now do you at least have some people who are putting together like some of the cuts no i edit every i well for youtube i did recently hire someone to edit for my youtube and help me with filming um but i cut everything for instagram and prior to april i was doing it all myself for youtube

and instagram yeah oh this whole time i studied broadcast journalism so i learned how to edit and film well i mean that's great and as you should like yeah you have to know everything exactly no pun intended here but if you know how to cook the whole meal and buy the ingredients then it's you know you can at least have that expectation when you bring in people and like you also know everything that goes into it well this is what's so difficult about hiring people i've hired many people i've had many tangents in business and no one cares as much as you and it's very difficult to find someone in a creative space um especially when your face is on it who will care like you do it's about the

person and you have to find that right person it's very hard so true yeah it's like all the littlest things that probably no one real like even some of the ones that no one really cares about but you're in there and you know it's there and you care about it you need it done that way oh yeah it comes down to like 0.01 seconds and a cut for a video i just do it myself because it's faster for me like i tried to hire writers but it's faster for me instead of editing it to just do it myself and it's difficult sometimes to figure out where to outsource as a business person but i want to tell you everything that goes into yeah i have it right up behind you so pull up whatever video you want whatever one that you like let's see all right let's do this one right okay all right so and i'll have this in the corner for people to watch this is a very

simple recipe so this is like as simple as they come this is a block of fried feta and everything goes into this so first should i pretend this is branded and tell you what goes in with my paid stuff? Yeah, let's do it. So say a brand sponsored this. I would talk to the brand. We'd negotiate. My agent does that for me with the fees. Oh, you got an agent.

Oh, I have a team. I'm so blessed. Oh, man. Yeah, I'm extremely grateful for that. This is legit. This is legit. I love them. Seriously, without them, I don't know what I would do at this point.

Anyway, all right. So one video, a brand wants to jump in. Usually, they will lowball the shit out of you. Usually. It is shocking. Are they going straight to your agent now? Yes. Okay, so that you don't have to.

Okay, that's good. But I got an email from a brand. Often. This happens once a week hi we'll offer you a hundred dollar visa gift card yeah no and this happens all the time and this is why i want to say everything that goes on here so how many followers do you have now i have 220 000 on instagram on instagram tiktok i'm only at 23 000 we're trying 220 000 on instagram is a lot we try that definitely monetizes better than 220 on tiktok small wins we all try our best yeah okay so say a brand wants to jump in they're like make this fried cheese for me first off um you have to

pitch three usually i pitch three concepts i send it. They pick one or we talk about one. So this will be like in the video, I'll make a block of fried cheese or I'll make five small blocks of fried cheese, put it on a salad, add avocado, or we will make it the side dish for a seafood and they choose. with what this dish this literal dish needs to be in this hypothetical scenario because this one was different this was just your own but let's say this was one of your branded ones you were deciding everything you were going to make with it yeah you were in charge of all that yeah they didn't have any ideas you just no no yeah well sometimes they'll give you a brief and say this is the direction we want to go in i prefer it honestly when they don't because i'd rather just be like here's how we're gonna do well because this is what my audience likes. But sometimes I'll have a brief and be like, we want to use it with seafood and we want to show a 15-minute meal. And you're like, all right, here are three ideas for that concept. Choose your favorite.

I don't know if everyone does that, but in my – the way that I like to make my clients happy is to provide a lot of options. They'll come back with one. I'll agree. So after they agree i will write a production list all the shots close-ups stand-ups all the art shots right this way you already have that planned no this is concept concept is like a brief explanation like this will shoot a recipe quick question how many how many angles do you have oh i wouldn't say i would say i do like artsy shots here close-ups

and stand-ups it's gonna say because like at just quick eyeball and it looks like you have i don't know if you do on this maybe you're doing a lot of quick camera work but it looks like you have like 10 no i have one iphone camera here i this is i i've got i got help with shooting this one so like prior to having the my guy andrew who's awesome, I didn't have him before. I would do tripod everything and have to shoot twice. So one shoot would be stand-ups. One shoot would be close-ups. I'd make the recipe twice.

Yeah. And then you cut that together. Yeah. One for YouTube, one for Instagram. Wow, that's complicated. I know. Okay, wait. So, okay.

We picked the ideas, right? Yeah. That i they approve i send a production shot list so all the shots you see this is one one thousand of all the shots we actually shot and then um i they approve it and then i shoot it and um you have to get ingredients you have to prep the ingredients. So you need, if you have certain, like a salsa, you got to chop the onions, chop the tomatoes, make sure everything's properly diced, get your mise en place, which means setting your ingredients in bowls, making sure everything's neat. What was that? Mise en place. Mise en place.

Everything in its place. It's a culinary term. Country of Oregon. You know, like when you watch food TV and everything's in the bowls? Yeah. Yes. You know what I mean? Yes.

And I don't watch food TV, but I know that one. Okay. That's great. So you got to prep your ingredients. And then before you film, you have to test the recipe multiple times to make sure the science behind it works. It's got to be good. Yeah. Because you're writing this.

Yes. Like if someone else is going to make this at home, if you made it once, it could be wrong. If you're using a different kind of flour, whatever. Test the recipe, then you approve it, then you film it. Then you get all the angles, then you edit it, and then you submit with the copy and the caption to the brand. So how many days on something like that after they agree to it? The shoot would be, that shoot would probably be four hours because I had someone helping.

And then the edit would take two. And then for revisions like one to two okay the edit that's actually wow you got a humming machine I would have thought that it would have taken a lot longer I'm really good I was gonna say I'm quick I know at this point but usually it would take a lot longer YouTube takes way longer and why is that longer format oh duh yeah yeah because you're getting you get a lot of your stuff i noticed like because on tiktok we can see the bar you get you i know it's just been on a loop i'm mesmerized by it but you get i'll pull up another one too you get a lot of your stuff at that like 30 second

mark too and it's a full and it's literally a full thing my buddy johnny drinks has a great page on tiktok and they do um they do like all different alcoholic beverages and stuff but they they got to take 45 to 60 seconds on all these and i know you do on some as well but like me trying to picture them getting that below 30 seconds gives me agita because i'm like how do you even you know what his dad does like all the smoke in the glass and everything oh that's so cool how do you even, you know what, his dad does like all the smoke in the glass and everything. Oh, that's so cool. I can't wait to check that out. Yeah, it's a lot of work. And I do think like different influencers are offered different rates, but I still think culinary creators are not pitched the same rates that they should be getting.

Why do you think that is? I'm not sure. I don't know. I know fashion has a lot of money, but some large culinary conglomerates also do. Like the brands I work with are wonderful and I use them all the time and they're willing to compensate fairly.

And that's what I hope that the rest of the brands will do. $100 Visa gift card. I wrote back. That's crazy. I wrote back. I was like, this is insulting. Like even if, like if you pitch this to someone who has 5 000 followers it's rude and i was like they are doing production work editing work hosting work they have ad space for you what's wrong with you and you have hundreds of millions of dollars i looked up the net worth

of the company you should yeah i was like are you kidding if someone has 5 000 followers and let's say they have 300 of them like kind of locked in like those people are actually their real fans that's 300 people if five percent of those people decide that they're going to take an action and do this and then be by the way when they do it if they like it what do we do when we like food we talk about it yeah think about the monetization that literally just getting the end result of five to ten of their total following to to follow through with this that's worth a lot long term it's long term repeatable absolutely yeah it's wild i'm so excited to tell you all i i know like i'm so curious i'm very passionate about this you should be you should be

and you've been doing it a long time but show me one let's click one that has a brand in it i love i love every brand i work with they're they're the best oh my god ninja ninja ice cream right here yeah okay and by the way i'm not cool i'm not playing the sound just because it has music in it so we won't be able to have that. Oh, I forgot to mention a process of the video recording the voiceover as well. That's another thing. I've never had to do that. I don't do voiceovers with what I do. So I know some people, obviously, they'll have like on TikTok, they'll have the bot read it.

That's simple. But then the voiceovers people do, they have to do that off the app, right? Well, it's better off the app for better sound quality for that medium. Like I do it for TikTok on TikTok. I do it for Instagram on Instagram. Do you use a mic? No, I just wing it. Like no one cares at the end of the day.

Because you sound pretty good. Like it doesn't sound like a short, but it sounds like you're talking into like at least like a, what's it called? The Yeti mic? I'll take it. Something like that that's pretty good yeah i don't i don't all right so walk me through this one like what went on behind this yeah with so this was with a brand yeah so which brand was it the ninja kitchen they are amazing they have the these incredible kitchen appliances oh it was the thing you were making it with yeah these are exciting i uh this was a long-term partnership it's one of my favorites of the year um so yeah i had they told me about this launch i'm also part of their culinary recipe

team so i write the recipes for their website for the ones that i make. So they use that for their own blog. Do you invent these things? Yeah. All of them? I test them. Yeah. All of them? Yeah. There's nothing that like you rip a little bit of like a popular one?

Well, everything is inspired by something else. So like I made a carbone inspired spicy rigatoni vodka. And they didn't create that dish either. It's a classic italian dish but um yeah i i love to go to restaurants and become inspired by what i'm eating and try and create it at home but i don't have i never would like go look at a recipe and like change one ingredient that pisses me off oh oh my god i can't all right so, so you're taking some leaps. Sometimes, like, you've made some videos, and I bring this one up

because I hate mushrooms with a burning passion. Oh, we can't be friends. I have to leave now. I know, I know. You put the truffle videos up. I need you to leave. I need you to leave your own story. Look, if it's mushrooms or carrots, like... Julian! My mom would try to feed me those when I was growing up.

You know how like parents yeah she probably fed you boiled boring button mushrooms my mom's a great cook so i'll get shot if i don't say that because she might actually probably fed you the most delicious seared mushrooms on the planet and you turn them down no because i i'm not kidding i would projectile vomit i'm serious have you tried them as an adult yes have you tried like the cool ones even when i get like the edge of a carrot in a salad that's like i didn't even notice it was there until it was going down it's like oh my god i wish i told like i wish you told me this so i could have brought you my shredded oyster tacos oyster mushroom tacos you wouldn't know you would

think it was me that's what i'm saying when i watched some of those videos it's almost like an acid trip like what you're making right there because it's like that's what i'm like so much that's why i was asking like if this is like stuff you're just totally inventing because it's like you're not literally doing this but to me it's almost like all right we're gonna try some ice cream with spaghetti and throw some basil on there like it's like what you could you look at all right ice cream is so cool you can do so much you can do spaghetti with ice cream yeah but you can do whatever the hell you want that's why i'm cooking there are no rules if you like it you like it who cares about any one of those things but i'll watch some of those that have truffles in it and i'm like

i don't have truffles on here not this one i'm saying like some of the other ones you've put up mushrooms not truffles you call it like truffle something though when there were like i think two of these were on tiktok you had like a carbonara this is like maybe a month or two ago that was christmas i didn't like that was a special occasion i don't remember but i'll look through these and i'm like i kind of want that and i know it has something in there i don't want, but I'd still eat it. Well, that's what's cool. I think you would love it. I think you would love my mushroom tacos. You wouldn't know.

I wouldn't tell you. As long as you're not allergic. I'm not. I would never endanger anyone's life for the sake of enjoying a food. I don't know anymore. Maybe you are. Maybe we don't do that.

I don't. Like, I feel like you'd know. I feel like you'd know i feel like you know but if you're vomiting then you know but all but it was like a it was a like it was like almost like a gag kind of it wasn't like oh my face is blowing it wasn't like that it was just like oh this is gross like i can't like something about the feeling of it the wrong you had the wrong mushroom for you there's a mushroom for everyone what's the craziest food you've ever eaten? Guys, I'm trying to help you. I really am.

But you got to want the help. You got to help me help you. I can take the horse to the well, but I damn well can't make him drink it. Now, Dick Cheney might disagree with that and call it enhanced interrogation, but the point remains. Every week, I tell you about my friends at 8sleep and how they are changing the sleep game, how they are making it feel like you slept eight hours even if you only sleep six and actually feel energized in the morning in the process. And every week I tell you to hit that link in my description and use the code TRENDIFIRE at checkout to get $100 off either the 8SleepPod Pro mattress or 8SleepPod Pro cover. But at this point, I'm practically begging you.

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throughout the night your rem and a whole bunch of other stuff that i am completely unqualified to talk about to make sure that when you wake up in the morning that whole you're going to feel like you slept eight hours when you really only slept six is going to be a very real thing so use that link in my description along with the code trendifier that's t-r-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R, at checkout and you will get $100 off either the full-blown mattress, if that's what you want, or the Pod Pro mattress cover, which is what I use. Check it out. You won't regret it. I'm glad I could help you. I've eaten crickets. I've eaten duck tongue in China.

All right, back up for a second. Yeah. We're going to get to up for a second I studied food in Hong Kong there was a lot of cool stuff you ate crickets? in a taco and I fed them to people in Washington Square Park for a school assignment it was so funny I was in a journalism class

and my teacher was like everyone do man on the street reporting and I just didn't talk about anything serious I just fed people crickets did they know they were eating crickets of course okay all right i was like would you try this and a lot of people said no and some people said yes what does a cricket taste like it's just crunchy you just have to put salt on it and it's just crunchy it's like dried out eyes in there and everything i didn't look that close or grasshopper i grasshopper. I eat grasshopper. They're larger than crickets.

Okay, same shit. Where are you getting grasshopper in New York City? At Toloache. It's a Mexican restaurant. They had grasshopper tacos. I'll never forget it. A Mexican restaurant had grasshopper tacos? It's pretty traditional.

I like to find restaurant that's why i love restaurant exploration because you can really learn about different cultures and cuisines from authentic restaurants i don't know how authentic toluache was but it was great to experience so you would eat that again yeah i would eat the one thing i won't eat is balut it's a philippine filipino dish um and it's you just look it up but how do you spell it b-a-l-u-t b-a and i have nothing against that dish which is a tradition for this culture right i just personally oh that's fun can't eat the bird developed i'm gonna put i'm gonna put the picture of this in the corner so if people if you if you're listening and you want to come

look on youtube you can look yeah i'm just gonna read what it is i just don't want anyone to think that i am against this dish for cultural reasons it's very important to this culture it is it's a delicacy and i gotta ask the likes of mine about that i just i i personally don't think i could eat it so a balut is a fertilized developing egg embryo that is boiled and eaten from the shell so it's it's an egg but that egg is it's not fresh no it's just it's a bird in the egg wow yeah that's the one thing i don't think i could try that's something you know what is crazy though we have these attitudes towards things and obviously i have all of them but like a lot of us you're a picky eater you know what i'm not i'm not good

i'm a boring eater that's fine i don't have enough time to think about it okay so like you eat to survive before i yeah before i did this and i eat a lot like especially when i was lifting all the time i'll get back to that but like i eat a lot but i don't have enough time to cook it and think about it and when i wasn't doing this i at least you know i had my weekends and stuff so i'd eat i would always order like i like good food but i'm not one of those guys who's like i'm gonna go try this and try that you know i'm not going i don't feel a need to go outside the box just to do it yeah but i've thought about it more not because some of the stuff i think about i'm gonna try it's just wild to me that we have certain attitudes built in so i react the way i did which is genuine about like

grasshoppers or crickets yeah and yet you know it's protein that's what i'm saying like we'll eat a fish we'll eat you know whatever we eat shrimp which is basically a water grasshopper yeah exactly you know what i mean so i don't know why we did that but it's one of those things in society where they just kind of repeat it and it gets passed down generations it's like oh no you don't know why we did that, but it's one of those things in society where they just kind of repeat it and it gets passed down generations. It's like, oh, no, you don't do that. You know, what's crazy is the evolution of food like lobster. It's a delicacy now. It used to be considered not like what is what does that mean?

What do you mean? I know that term delicacy, but like what is that like an official oh like a nice fancy meal i think well that's what i mean in this circumstance like a fancy meal elevated elegant and it used to be thought of as just like a big shrimp really yeah it used to not be considered a now it's like the epitome of wealth what i'm pretty sure are there less of them is that why um so it's more expensive i have no idea i i have no idea but i know that i read something you can fact check this because if i'm wrong i'm gonna be an idiot no it's okay everything i told you before everything we hedge like people if we're saying something we say we don't know please look it up yourself yeah let's

look it up because i i'm like 90 sure lobster used to be considered like peasant food. Really? Yeah. Or something along those lines. Maybe that just wasn't in my lifetime. It wasn't. It wasn't in our lifetimes. I mean, there's Red Lobster restaurant, but that's affordable.

See, how lobster got fancy. In the 1800s. It went prison food. Yeah, I told you. How lobster it went prison food i yeah i told you how lobster went from prison food to an expensive delicacy this is on spoonuniversity.com yeah i worked with them before yeah but let's of course yeah i love them i feel like you know like at this point you've kind of touched a lot like there's a lot of brands i'm gonna pull up and it's like oh yeah at one point i like it i've been doing it a long time. All right.

So I'm not sure about you. The lobster is a rare treat in my household because it's expensive. This example, Luke's Lobster, they charge $16 for a fairly small Maine style lobster roll. Honestly, who wants to pay that for a minuscule amount? I agree. I'm just scrolling down. So here we go. Back when the European settlers came over to North America, they said that there were just so many dang lobsters that they would pile up two feet high and wash ashore in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Just imagine lobsters on lobsters on lobsters.

So, okay, the idea of the lobster was also known as a poor man's meal because the overabundance of these guys made it easy for people with no money to get their protein. In fact, these crustaceans, I think I said that right, were fed to prisoners, apprentices, and slaves. So it probably, and I'd have to look into it more, but it probably has to do with the fact like, yeah, like everything else. When we start overfishing some fish,

the price goes way up. I can't think of examples, but I know there's a lot. Which makes sense. Yeah. But that's another problem lot. Which makes sense. Yeah. But that's another problem too. It is a huge problem. We're like over hunting and fishing.

Oh, and the microplastics and everything. Microplastics are found in fish now because there's so much plastic in the ocean. And what's a microplastic? Microplastics are like tiny particles that now like make up the fish because they've eaten so much of it so when you are eating salmon or whatever you are eating a little bit of plastic i shouldn't be saying holy shit i know did you not know this i didn't know it was like that i knew that i knew that like obviously a a lot of animals are dying because they're just eating the plastic that we dump into there. And so that's affecting the populations.

That's a major problem. Huge problem. But B, the one I always thought about, and I don't know much about it, but the whole, like, mercury in the water. Because then that gets into their, like, it actually gets into the meat itself on certain. I didn't know that. Yes. That was, like, the the old don't eat it it's got mercury in it because some of these contaminated areas the animals swim you know the fish swim

through it so then it's like in their blood so then they'd say it's in the meat but what you're saying is that literal like almost microplastic pieces of plastic yeah i wonder if that's like the bones you you get you know when you get a little bone sometimes in a fish? No, it's not that. I think it's like really part. That's still bones. Like part of the, I think it's still, I don't know. I'm not a scientist, just to preface here.

I just do know that it's pretty alarming. And, oh, I'm not vegan. A lot of restaurants are moving towards veganism. It's an interesting pivotal moment for the culinary industry due to climate change of course yes and uh yeah it's it's a crazy time to be a cook did you see the documentary on netflix this is maybe this might have been like six months ago something like that i forget which one it was called maybe it was called like seafood ink or oh i started it it it's scary and like it's important to watch these things it's very scary it was i i

want to get the names so that people have it but this guy i mean he pointed out a lot of things but the main takeaway that i had was that no matter what countries it is and everything and to an extent it's like every country you have an economic incentive for people to catch certain animals and so what they do first of all some of it's just straight up inhumane because they're doing it to like fucking dolphins and stuff that like have brains bigger than we do it's horrifying but also it's just like they they're taking away the whole population they go to these areas where certain sharks for example will congregate and then they just get all of them it's like cheating where is this the one the one example i can remember that

i'm thinking of i believe was off the coast of china and there's like a place where a certain they still eat shark fin there i'm pretty sure oh yeah like when i was there they had shark fin soup on some menus and that was i was that in the documentary that was in the documentary they were going either this one or another one they were going around to these restaurants and telling them can you stop serving shark fin soup i don't know if it was this one or another one but i know it's like a big big issue the the problem is people do and like you know this so well from social media you see the biggest experiment of it all people do things to impress other people so when something like that costs a lot of money what do you mean the animal yeah when it costs a lot of money or it's more rarefied or it's more like a delicacy something like that people want to show that

they're having it yeah i i'm so messed up like it's like similar to exotic animal hunting it's just so fucked what's wasn't there an animal recently that's like extinct now i don't that they just so many of them i don't know It makes me so sad. I mean, look. It's difficult because difficult. That's dramatic. It's an interesting place. I love traditional culinary arts. I will eat duck.

I will eat foie. I did French duck liver pate very – it's usually inhumane. What's a liver pate? Like a usually inhumane what what's a liver pate like a mousse delicious okay but here's the thing i am traditionally french that is traditional in france to eat foie gras and i'm saying it correctly my husband's gonna kill me that's not frogs what i always thought when they said like frog. La crinouille. La crinouille is a frog? I don't speak French as you can tell. And then there's escargot, snails.

I knew that one. Yeah. So that is traditional French. And a lot of these countries, France, Africa, Asia, anywhere, eating certain animals is traditional. It is how people grew up. It is what their neighborhood would do the local butcher and when it's done locally and it becomes part of your life like that's one thing but here nowadays everything is so mass-produced and it and me being like i love duck i love this. I love traditional foods. I am even against these practices. Oh, sure.

I don't want to eat. I don't want to really touch certain things that I know aren't local or sustainable. Like, it's a very interesting space to be in. And I feel like this idea of traditional foods for certain cultures are now being challenged because it's not ethical. But it's also – there's so many sides to this argument. It's like who are you to say that what someone grew up with hundreds of years, they've been eating this and now you're going to say it's not ethical and then – yeah. I just think there's just a lot. I mean the big most – I think when we try and recreate it at like certain restaurants, it's maybe not as ethical. But if someone from that country, their family's doing it, they should still be allowed to do that without being considered bad.

And it's another thing. It's a cultural thing. Exactly. I mean, look, they eat dogs. I know, and that makes me sick. And it's like, you know, I know a dog. My buddies rescued a dog. Like wild dogs?

No, there's a type. I mean, they eat a bunch of them, but there's a main type they eat. And this breed, my buddies rescued a dog that was bound for that. And this is really bad. It's all like conditions like how you grew up like where you grew up like what you find is acceptable to eat it's you know what we sit here and we judge it and i do because i'm like how could you ever eat a dog but to your point it's also like that's all i know exactly – they don't – they'll even look at a certain breed of animal and be like, well, we eat that one.

There was a similar thing. This is a different subject matter. But like with the whole Michael Vick thing, which is enough to make you sick, like what he did back in the day with the dogs. I don't even know what – what? What is this? All right. Yeah. I might need to help you out here.

But Michael Vick, great football player. Actually played for the Eagles in his second career. He went to jail for 18 months because he financed a dog fighting ring with pit bulls. Michael Vick grew up in it. And I'm not, listen, it was fucked up. It was. And to his credit, he even says that to this day. But where he grew up, pit bulls were raised to fight each other where did he grow up

he grew up in newport news virginia and it was a very common thing and so when he looked at a pit bull or looked at a golden retriever you know you know what i mean like it's like okay dog not dog that's that's fighting dog and and it's wild for us to think about that and it doesn't excuse it or make it right but i'm saying like no but it's uh why is it different with food yeah if that's all you know when you're growing up like everyone's born in different conditions you can't really hold that against anyone like we eat bacon pigs are really smart yeah that's that's it's a common meat too i know pork everything and like i i still eat it i try and source where i eat meat from differently now i i just yeah it's like i i'm not how do you

do that source differently yeah oh honestly i will go organic sustainable local if i can if i can go to a local butcher i can um i have a local seafood truck not like a truck like he he like works with restaurants and he has stuff he offers to our neighborhood so you just try and find good things where you can i just won't go for like the basic basic basic you need at the store i say i'm a huge skeptic now with all of it and i don't i don't have time to do anything about it or whatever but i feel like and you saw examples of this in that documentary too with seafood but this happens with everything the supply chains are so long that even the people who have the best intentions and are legitimately like trying to source it correctly there's no way for them to 100 percent know you never know you do not know at all like you just don't there are some brands like i'll

notice i feel better if i'm eating this stuff but i don't even eat meat very much anymore i love a good steak occasionally nothing's gonna change that because i was raised like that sure um but yeah i'm very careful now and i try my best as a consumer to be informed but like you said you only know as much as you know when you get to the store you weren't there when everything was done the only time you're going to know how fresh something is is uh if you are on the farm yep that's it and usually in small towns like small towns in france my mother-in-law is from Algeria and then she moved to France. She lived there now?

No, she's here. She's here. In New York. But she like, they had their livestock there and they would make it right there. You know where it's from. Yeah, exactly. The other thing, and I've never thought about this, but my friend's wife was like educating me on this. I was like, holy shit.

Good for her. Oh, my God. You're learning a lot. Now I look at all food differently and I'm terrified of all of it, but I just kind of like, all right, I'm going to die of something. You can't live your life like that. But she was, and she doesn't either, but she is just very, very informed. So there are certain things that she can just totally be like, all right're buying this one and not that one you know and at least have like a basic a and b alternative for it but she was talking about like all the things that they feed

oh you don't even want to know especially it's crazy oh it's so horrible that's why i look for grass-fed yeah a vegetarian diet only but then it's like okay how are we defining vegetarian does that box of plastic mean it's vegetarian you know like uh for context a lot of livestock typically pigs are given garbage to eat literally yeah literal garbage and there's there's like these terms too and i'm gonna really mess this up she was talking i think about like pasteurized versus like and then she mentioned like gmo and all that stuff it was that part was a little in one ear out the other but she was explaining that there's ways that they'll even tag foods like this and they're not it's not reliable yeah for some of them that's crazy i mean

i don't know much about it i think gmo like non-gmo all for it but i do think like honey crisp apples they're a genetically modified organism different breeds of apples that farmers create are genetically modified different kinds of grapes and that's all that means i'm pretty sure maybe we should look into this a little more but i remember doing an interview with the local news actually it was like some netherlands company last year about this new brand of apple it was like this new farmed apple and they kept trying to take the stigma away from it being created by farmers all right let's give the definition just to be exact so they can't blame us genetically modified organism is any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques

the exact definition of a genetically modified organism and what constitutes genetic engineering varies with the most common being an organism altered in a way that quote does not occur naturally by mating and or natural recombination unquote so yeah i think you pretty much described it perfectly just taking away it's something that's done in a lab and it's done it's done with tubes that's where it starts and they make something that's previously not available i and i don't know anything about this fine like call me crazy but broccolini is awesome and that is a hybrid i think between broccoli and really yeah i thought that was like a i don't know shows you how much i know well i might be wrong i know that they're like like all the apples are some grapes that are being created to

taste like cotton candy to taste like sweeter yeah well that's the other thing like with wine and this is something i really am not educated on but with this gmo stuff people are inventing i think someone was telling me about this they're, they're looking at inventing new tastes, but then how do you value it the same? Because like the allure of wine is that it was a grape grown in a certain place in a certain year. So if you have like 1956 wine, if you had a 1956 GMO wine, are you going to look at it the same? I don't know. I mean, I'm a level one Somme now. A what?

Sommelier, like level one. So like it's a wine person. It's a what? A wine expert. It's a person. What's it called? A sommelier is somewhat sommelier. Sommelier.

So it's a person at the restaurant who will present the wine, who will tell you about the wine, who understands wine. Usually you have to have a lot of experience. I think like level five. I'm level one. So I'm basic. Well, how'd you get that? I took a class. I got certified. And now I'm doing level two. I'm level one. So I'm basic. Well, how did you get that? I took a class.

I got certified. And now I'm doing level two and three in the fall. Side note. So excited. So that's awesome. But what goes into that? What's the class like? And what's the commitment?

And what do you know that we don't? There's some geography, understanding the grapes, understanding the science of taste, how majority of it really goes through smell and then how your taste buds work. Understanding the soil, the climates for these grapes. And this is basic. So in my first class, I just learned about the noble grapes, which are the original, the OG grapes. There's OG grapes? Oh, yeah, there are OG grapes.

Okay. Yeah, OG grapes. Are they only in a certain country majority of wines it's it's a french thing and then italy as well italy france and now um yeah i don't want to like sound i don't want to say anything wrong here but yes i'm pretty sure the majority of the grapes started in france i should know this is my heart because i've studied this in past but i'm very i'm not fully secure in my knowledge yet you know when you learn something yeah you know when you learn something and you're

like wait oh god am i saying it wrong i'm gonna look so stupid but that's how i feel right now i'm like so new to this industry so what do you want to – is that going to be something that you want to have to be able to make content around it and be able to have the full – I'm a pro with this? Honestly, that is just the icing on the cake. I'm just very interested in it. And it's nice to have a culinary hobby that I don't have to post about. I just have always – my family is very into wine. And I've always grown up around it and i've just wanted to understand it more and it also can elevate an experience i

want to know how to pair different foods with different wines that's the stuff i know nothing about yeah it's very i know not much really i know that like a basic thing like they say i don't know if this is all seafood but like a lot of seafood you want to have a white wine with it or like if you're having if you're having pasta like it goes a little better with red like i know some of that stuff depends on the sauce and like what this pasta is with right so like if it's a clam sauce or something white yes exactly but i don't know when people start doing the whole like taste on the top of your mouth thing and like oh i'm looking at that like hints of forest floor with a raspberry and like a la la la so that's all subjective and

in my opinion it it's not approachable and it doesn't make wine seem interesting to anyone else and that's my personal probably very unpopular opinion i i think it's stupid like it's not stupid it's just it's a lot it's a little too much for the average consumer it makes it seem so elitist and not approachable when in fact you could just say this has red fruit so like bright cherry raspberry pomegranate like that what does that taste like it's lighter than a blueberry or a blackberry what's the science behind the aging, again, with that? Because it doesn't really matter with white wine. Honestly, so a lot of wine, the majority of wines don't get better with age.

I don't know. Including reds. No, reds, yeah. No, yeah. It really depends, but only, I think, 2% to 3% of wines get better with age. So what's the whole thing? It's more, I think, of a lifestyle. Like, the really expensive wines are usually aged longer from previous time periods.

Because there's less of it. Yeah, and, well, I mean, they also taste great. So age will provide a lot of different things to a red wine because it'll soften the tannins tannins are like the dry feeling in your mouth so it does taste better it does but i'm saying some wines are already produced to taste great like you don't need to age it for 10 years for it to taste great you don't need to age it for 10 years to soften the tannins and what were you saying tannins were again uh the so the grape skins skins seeds stems it's all crushed with the grape with a white you typically don't have all of that that's why it's

so smooth like smooth and clean but now there's this natural wine thing happening where white grapes are processed with the skins and the seeds and the stems. So when you're looking... For the orange wine. Sorry, that's orange wine. Wait, orange wine? Orange wine. What's orange wine? So the color is orange because the grape is processed with the stems, seeds, skins, and it adds that color because it's more color to the grape.

Have you seen grapes that are kind of like yellow with a little red yeah yeah it'll change the color the flavor and the structure of the wine so when i'm looking at red wine i've seen people do like where they tilt the whatever yeah and they'll say they'll have a comment where they're like maybe they do say i can see the tannins or something i might be mishearing that though but they'll talk about be able to see the tannins maybe it's not the tannins but there's something yes that's it the sediment see that so if the sediments in there that means it's not settled which means the wine is not like pure old wines typically have sediment you want to place them upright before you serve them for a few hours so the sediment goes to the bottom of the bottle and what's in the sediment i think that is settled tannins

that have gone to the bottom i would look this up but i'm pretty sure that is what and like i've never i've never there's so many things that will like come up on this podcast from like you know i've never checked that on youtube or like watch that but when they make wine like today or even like the last 10 years whatever it is they're not they're not still like in there crushing it with their feet like they have i mean if you go to the local places in italy or france maybe they are but no for large-scale production there's usually equipment there for sure because I was in Italy studying abroad and so I don't know I'm still not at all a connoisseur or anything like that but pretty much what I found is that you almost couldn't

get bad wine there it was all pretty good yeah but we did learn early on because it also wasn't like a big affordability factor oh yeah that's what i love about you oh yeah if you got the if you got red wine you wanted the docg label on it yeah because that was the internal it was yeah it was like the dere'Arezione something, something, something. And it meant that, and it meant a few things. But it was basically like, it was like having like a five-star rating on it approved by like a central wine source in the country. I don't know if that's a thing. You know, you don't know what I'm talking about? The DOCG label?

They're in America too. Oh, okay. Yeah. No. Okay. I know exactly what you're talking about it has that's like federally approved i don't know if it was federally because also i like the italian government i don't know i don't know about those no but there's like a for each maybe it's the

european union but i think italy has its own don't quote me right this is what i'm telling you know yeah okay yeah the u.s has one france spain like i'm pretty sure that's the okay so if you have docg on a bottle of italian wine expect it to be very good i'm just trying to skip to where this would be in the article talking because what i learned a lot about is some of the things on the bottles are all just marketing and not they don't really matter and that's what i'm because now and i wasn't thinking this when i was 21 just having a good time but like fuck it exactly but now i think about this like with food that's why i was bringing that up yeah because you saw the example in c-spiracy but

it's in a lot of different things where they slap a label on it and it's not real. So that in Italy, it could definitely be the case. But what it means, just to make sure we have it, DOCG, Denomination of Controlled and Guaranteed Origin is what it stands for in English. This is the top of the line grade an Italian wine can receive. It's proof of specific ways the wine is made. And a bottle with this label is considered a quality wine. There is a fair amount of regulation here with variants. Var varietals varietals the grape okay methods and aging all considered wines with this designation are in an upper echelon so you know besides the ones that the

mob's paying off people over there to fix it probably is pretty good and like i always found yeah again like i never got a bad one. I never had a bad, like even when we got like at the time three euro bottles. I'm not going to say they were the greatest thing ever, but it wasn't like Franzia. The European countries have a much more specific wine process than the U.S. And I know in France, each kind of grape has to be 100 that grape so a cabernet sauvignon has to be 100 cap in the u.s it's only a certain percentage 80 20 i think and like you can just throw some fluff in there just bring it to the u.s to water down i know

it's other grapes so like it could be another blend um i'm not sure if that's the right percentage clearly i'm not remembering if that's the right percentage clearly i'm not remembering what i learned but you got the point well you'll get level three and four and five no i just for fun level two and three i'm excited about it's in person i think it'd be cool if you had some if eventually i know you're not doing it now but yeah yeah where you work that into like and this is a type of wine that would go great. That'd be amazing. And it's so much more accessible for the home cook.

I also want to like demystify this idea that wine is elitist. Like I have a friend who started doing this. Her account was Black Girls Dine Too. And like it's super inspirational. She's very into wine. And she knows so much and she's educating people on great pairings great wine choices and her career is just like taking off and yeah she's definitely one of the wine people i aspire i'm just pulling it up to do things like

yeah she's so sweet and like she knows a lot of stuff so yeah and and the message i i like the message a lot there because like yeah and she was telling me about times where she would be at a restaurant and the some like she felt like people thought wine was above her as a diner like and like she thought that like it wasn't being presented as something that everyone can enjoy and she's right like lots of times you go to a restaurant and people who are trying to explain why and it can be a daunting process and not approachable for everyone and with her content i learned a lot about how to make that approachable and like you don't have to fall into that like oh there's forest floor and like blah blah blah in this i will never do that straight up about it and yeah so that's what i hope to floor and like blah blah in this i will never do that straight up

about it and yeah so that's what i hope to do and like i'm not gonna be an expert like her she's definitely an expert i'll just talk about pairings and stuff it is kind of wild that that like these things these societal lines to this day go down to food too and it's what do you mean what you were just talking about there's there's these expectations of oh you're the type of person that would have this type of food oh you know what i mean and i know it by the way it goes against everything that like you talked about being inspired by i'm just thinking of one example in my head like an anthony bourdain who literally tried everything and like with all different cultures and wanted people to do that.

And yet, even with people who grew up with that now, there's still some of these like, oh, you eat this, you eat that, you eat that. And that's how it is. Like grouped into certain dishes due to what they look like or their race or ethnicity. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, my God. I saw something the other day. Absolutely. I'm white, so I can't say what anyone else is really thinking from that ethnicity. But they were talking about authentic Indian food. And the only dish they brought up was shana masala.

And it's just, it's a, or chicken tikka masala. Two very classic Indian dishes that are very much made in the U.S. often. But they didn't even try and dig deeper. Like, if these networks really want to talk about food from other cultures, they need to do the digging.s often but they didn't even try and dig deeper like they if these networks really want to talk about food from other cultures they need to do the digging right they need to feature dishes that aren't americanized and they they need to do better really and i'm white and i see that and anyone who enjoys food i would be outraged if like networks just need to do better. I feel. Every good, not every, but a lot of great food, like whether it's complicated and involves like a whole process or is just something you eat.

It emanates or emanated originally from outside of America. Like when you say American food, people go like burgers. You know what i mean it's it's from all these different cultures and you would think that major food networks would have that type of presence of mind the original source of it yes but the problem is a lot of networks tend to put a white face onto a dish that did not come from this person's kitchen. And it came from a culture. And it's someone else from a different ethnicity, different, different country, different culture, different race. And they and this is the problem. There's a lot of food appropriation, cultural appropriation in food. And I know there's been a lot of pushback since last year, thankfully.

A lot of people are taking a stand against these publications, these networks, to say you're not representing us correctly, which is very important. But yeah, it's still unfortunately being done. Well, with the example you give of just going to the most basic thing, like the number one on the menu. It's not – there's no effort into it and it's just checking a box and something i want to say as a white female in the food space i am constantly inspired by different chefs and different people different cultures different things i've experienced all over the world and i want to make them at home i don't think there's anything wrong with making a dish from another culture at home and exploring those flavors there's something wrong with taking credit for it. Like, I will never take credit for any dish that is from another country.

I typically will include a credit in the caption and say, this is kind of influenced by Thai culture, kind of influenced by Korean. I use Korean noodles here. But this is what I wanted to do with it. But, like like i didn't make this up yeah and that's what you should do yeah it's a lot of people don't i guess some people have made um curries and called them soups and i'm not that there's that is a specific instance and there's a lot of that.

Yeah. It doesn't surprise me. I mean, either and that's what's so unfortunate about this. And you bring up that term too, like cultural appropriation. There is such a fine line with this that I generally just get frustrated when I see it because I feel like either people – and it sounds like this happens a lot in food especially but it's in other things too people either just try to check the box and then not even like what do you mean by that meaning like the first example you gave they'll just get the most basic dish to say look we're representing india oh like token exactly yeah that's exactly what it is and then you'll also get people who just kind of like adopt and adapt and then

call it their own and things like that and i think that that's wrong i also think though that sometimes and i don't i can't think of examples of this in culinary because i'm not the guy to like i'm not paying attention to that nearly as close as you are but you'll see other people do things to like adopt another culture because they like it and then they get and they're giving credit for it too. And they're very much like, oh, I'm into this. And they get a lot of shit for it. What I'm not saying, by the way, is that someone like what Rachel Dolezal did, the lady who like faked being black, that's fucked up. Wait, who did that?

Oh, you didn't hear about this one? Oh, my God. Rachel Dolezal. What? She has a different name now. She changed it. When was this? This was like maybe three, four years ago.

She was the president of the Seattle or one of the Washington chapters of the NAACP. Is she actually white? 100% white. Faked being black. Like that to me is textbook that is horrible yeah so that's not at all when i'm talking about like when people are doing things to like celebrate and credit a culture and be like i love this and i want to bring it into mainstream sometimes now and maybe righteously so people are very sensitive to that because

they've seen so many examples of people doing it the wrong way like that. I agree. Sometimes like no one can really win and certain things will bring out reactions in others due to what they've been through. And I think if you are creating recipe content and dabbling in other cultures, which I think every cook does because everything is inspired by everywhere. It will always trigger that kind of response. But I understand where they're coming from. Imagine feeling like you're underrepresented for so long and represented by the wrong people.

And then you see someone trying, and you're still hurt. It's still going to hurt you. So I do understand where they come from yeah a hundred percent and i appreciate good intentions on stuff but i think they're also you have to have you were talking about this with something earlier too you got to have like the right representation with it as well you know if you're just putting out a bunch of white women making all the same meals from a bunch of different countries. And white men.

Yeah, exactly. It's not exactly representative. Yeah. I have a lot of friends who do a great job at representing other cultures. They are white as well. And they give credit where it's due. And I just hope that because there have been so many call outs in the past year that things will actually move forward in that way and we can appreciate when other people when anyone is

making anything if they are acknowledging and crediting the culture which they should yeah yeah and frankly it's a simple solution i think in that way it's not that hard like insane to me because why is your pride and ego so big that you're gonna pretend you're gonna take credit for hundreds thousands of years of a recipe that a culture somewhere else has been working on that's why i'm like why is your ego so big like you can do a great job and add your own spin to it but they did it better they they figured this out like they people yeah people just like people like attention and attention comes with credit and it's the credit for that that's what i'm saying it's very it's it is to me it's a self-explanatory thing i know

i recognize though and obviously it's wrong i I recognize that to a lot of people, apparently it's not. So the only way you do it is you talk about it and say, don't do that. And hopefully some people listen over time. And we have conversations like this. And hopefully people will hear us. Please credit whoever makes the food. That's the cool. You know what, though?

That's also one of the coolest parts, because like with food, we're eating some of the same shit. Like, that's great. That was great 3,000 years ago. And I'm not just talking like a smoked meat. I'm talking like, you know, you look at things like pasta even. Simple, right? But I've been growing that shit forever. Bread is like a killer for me.

I just eat all of it. Wait, have you been to Tuscany? Florence? I was, yes. Tuscan bread though. Did you have that? Yes. And no salt. i'll just eat all of it you know wait have you been to tuscany i mean florence i was yes tuscan bread though did you have that yes and no salt that was the only bread i wasn't like super in love with i still ate it i don't i mean i probably i probably made a comment then but i don't remember any of that i ate everything around that country so yeah why wouldn't you yeah there was bread on every. So I know I had Tuscan bread when I was there.

Yeah, you definitely did. There's like a whole historical reason behind it. Some like feud over the salt. Yeah, but they have no salt in their bread. There's only one bread. I'm like, oh, no. What's your favorite country of origin food? Oh, my God.

It's a hard question. It's very difficult. I love to explore everything i did study abroad in hong kong and i studied cuisine there and it was so eclectic so eye-opening and inspirational i've always been inspired by asian cuisine you studied abroad in hong kong i did it was a month but still that's very cool i know i got i kind of like snuck into this graduate program and they it was like i got accepted and i was like i'm an undergrad and they were like okay fine just like you can come with us because i you know what i was so and i would still say i am

like i'm so under informed on i at least know the basics now but it's such a bizarre situation that i wasn't even aware of until a couple years ago where it's like they're their own country. What they're not their own country. It's bizarre. Yeah. I mean, when I went, things were smooth. Like there were no issues like there are today with everything. But yes, what they've been going through lately is very it's crazy it's it's real

yeah it's it's a human rights issue yes absolutely hong kong when i was there was it was a beautiful diverse accepting eclectic place and yeah to see them challenged and like put in this position is very difficult and how big is hong kong oh i don't know it's an island right i should know i think so i can't look it up i'll look at it on the map yeah it uh it i don't know how big it is like people in the millions though oh i think so it's a major city yeah yeah because it's got a major city yeah it's got to have like it's got it the cities over there are like they're all the size of manhattan population wise yeah a very very very big city and um the food scene was cool what's the like what are the major differences with hong kong food versus traditional Chinese food?

So there really is no traditional Chinese food. It's regional. So it changes. So you have Shanghai, right? You have Beijing. You have different – I don't know all the cities. But Hong Kong is Cantonese cuisine. So the way that they do a pork bun is different than you might find a pork bun. Oh, my God.

OK. Yeah. I thought I said something. Look up a Cantonese pork bun. Oh, there's Sichuan cuisine. Sorry. I was like, I'm blanking on something. There's a lot of different Chinese cuisine and it depends on which region you're in.

I mean, it makes sense. I'm such an ugly American with Asian food. What do you mean? Like, when I tell you I'm misinformed on Asian food, it would give you a heart attack. A lot of people are. Don't worry. Like, when I go with my buddies and they know what's up, like, I've been in a Chinese restaurant before.

Your face will turn purple with all the actual chili you're eating if you get, like, Sichuan. I'm talking about before I eat anything. I'll be like, I've been in the restaurant, like in a Chinese restaurant, and been like, yo, where's the sushi? No! Oh, God. Sorry. I just screamed.

No! I'm one of those. No. I'm like, I'm not great. Yeah. So the steamed pork buns are the Cantonese pork buns. This one right here? No, to the right.

I'll never forget. Okay. I'll put this in the corner so people can look. I'll never forget when I had a pork bun in Hong Kong. Oh, this shit is fire. I've had this before. If you go to dim sum, Cantonese style dim sum, it's lit. It's the best.

We had it in that restaurant I asked for sushi in. I swear to God. You asked for sushi at a dim sum place? I did. I need to fire you. I know. I know. I need to hire you and fire you right now.

This was in New York City. No. Were you in Chinatown? No. No. But my buddies were like- And my buddies were doing it wrong to begin with they're like they're like we're going to a dim sum restaurant i'm like what's that they're like oh it's an asian restaurant they were explaining like i'm like okay and then we got in there and i'm like where's the sushi i'm just so glad i can be here and talk to you about this today yeah i told you at least you are you admit it i have no i was never like a huge i was never as i like most people aren't really

told about all of this i was never a connoisseur of that stuff i mean you know i'm an italian food guy that's what i like there you go so yeah you're in italy there you go yeah this is so good though and what's this so this is just like pork bread and that's like the what the hell is in that stuff pork no no the bread itself i think it's a rice flour yeah it's different i've always tried to make them but it's one of those asian cuisine in general it's worth ordering out unless it's a noodle dish it's very simple typically americanized because that's what oh do to the ingredients we have. Yeah. This is difficult. I mean, it is some noodle dishes you can make.

Usually tastes better when you get it out, though. And why not support the restaurants? Agreed. And also, it's their culture. Majority. I mean, you got to make sure you're going to the right restaurant. That's true. That's true. You can go to some Italian restaurants and not an Italian site.

Yeah, exactly. It's interesting. So you were saying this stuff is big and we were separating Hong Kong and China. And then you were saying China has regional food. So this is Cantonese style? This is Cantonese. I wouldn't say Hong Kong's not a part of China. I would say you just take the Chinese out of it.

So you say Sichuan cuisine, Cantonese cuisine. I think it's Shanghai. Can you look them up? Look up the different cuisines of China. It's like America, right? You go to the south, there's southern cuisine. Like, you have a big presence of barbecue. And also geography plays.

Yeah, Sichuan, hunan cantonese fusion uh jings i'm gonna fuck up all these jeng jeng su i'm not i don't want to butcher anything but if anyone looks it up it's really interesting yeah google chinese regional food is one thing yeah but there's all the and you know what it's actually it makes sense it totally makes because think about how big china is number one absolutely huge yeah and then think about like a very small country like italy which i am somewhat informed on as far as it italy has like 25 regions and they're different like there are some there's certainly overlap but there's like you want dessert food go to sicily don't go to tuscany i mean it's still good in other places sicilian cannoli is that what they have oh yeah i've never

been to sicily but they're red sauce and then you go to passatano amalfi lemon butter. Yeah. And then Tuscany's – what is Tuscany known for? Florentine steak. Yep. Penzanella. Yep. Sorry. I'm very passionate. You're going to know this stuff better than me.

That's why I'm asking you. No, no, no. But I remember like we'd go to places and they'd be like, oh, this is what you have here. It's like, all right, let's try that. Yeah. It's like, all right, let's try that. Yeah, when I went to Italy in 2019, I wish I did a little more research about Tuscan food. Because I just ordered pasta everywhere. And that's when I learned, like, I did it wrong. I have to go back now.

But I didn't have a Florentine steak, which was a big, stupid move on my part. Well, you'll go back. Yeah, I just hope everyone's okay in Italy right now. What's going on in Italy? Well, just everyone with COVID, honestly. I just pray for everyone. I mean, it was bad. So, you know, some of the people I'm still friends with over there, like when it hit, they got hit like harder than we did.

It was nuts. Yeah, they were like after China, really soon after. I think they were the first major breakout. They were about 11 days ahead of us in surge something like that and it was just it was so sad because you see all these historical they're known for their cuisine tourism culture and it's just i definitely cried for them because there was this concert no one was there in the middle of Milan or Rome. Andre Bocelli was there.

He's a very, very prominent. And he just had this concert and no one was there and it was just him. That's so sad. And I watched it with my dad. I'm crying. I cry all the time now. I don't know what it is. And you were still, by the way, this is a good way to talk about this too because it just came up but first of all i was shocked when you moved out of new

york city oh yeah i was like what oh that was recent yeah that was a recent development right and so obviously you've for years now changed from just where you were starting like in college and right afterwards ny NYC dining. And then you went to full dining. Very smart move, by the way. Thank you. It was a long process. I'm sure.

Because like, you know, you're – and we can talk about that, I'm sure. Because like there's a whole – the New York City food scene is so complex. It's – I think it's the best in America. And you had an audience built through taking them through every angle of that city and all these different places. And you were like the go-to. And now suddenly it's like, hey, I'm still your go-to on food, but I can do it anywhere. That's a big change. It was.

Rebranding was a very well thought out process for me. I didn't take it lightly. So I did the restaurants, let's see, for five years. years five years and i knew i'm not going to stay in new york forever i just knew it like so you were thinking about getting out oh yeah i i i love new york i absorb all the energy around me and i tend to get very exhausted by constant everything happening. And I knew one day I wanted to leave. I am a city person, but New York is like the tippity-top of the energy,

the hustle mentality, the never stop, go, go, go, never sleep vibe. And I knew for myself personally I wanted to leave at some point, but not for a while. I wanted to stay for at least, I thought, like 10 years. So in 2017, I was like, I need to change my name to make it all encompassing because one day I'm going to get married and have kids and I'm gonna I love cooking and like that's where I do want to end up. So I changed my name and I kept the same content. And I dabbled some cooking in there. And I kind of put myself through self taught culinary school through my experiences at restaurants and by cooking at home and then pandemic pandemic hit and really forced me to go full throttle into that so it was like my silver lining in that time of doom

was taking a chance on myself I lost like tens of thousands of followers but I gained even more when I finally started doing what I i knew it was time for me wait you lost followers oh yeah when i changed my name i lost like 3 000 not much if you think about like large scale numbers i had like 150 at the time it's a punch in the gut but it's like if you don't want to be here fine these are i'm not gonna force you to stay uh and then when i started not doing restaurants anymore i lost a lot and then when i mentioned i'm leaving new york i did lose a lot as well but it just had to happen all right before we get into the new york thing quick sidebar on the first part yeah you maybe i'm

remembering this incorrectly so correct me if i'm wrong but you were working in like obviously at the very beginning when you were launching in college, it was pretty much restaurants and getting the scene. But then if I remember correctly, like 2015, 2016, 2017, the first one I remember was like the ballsy bites thing you did. Like you started working in all of your own stuff as well. So there was already a big piece of it, in my opinion, from could see where yes you're doing restaurants but you're doing this other stuff too and you didn't lose followers doing that i no i didn't because i was giving and this was part of the rebrand which would take years is you have to stick to your original angle sure and work your new angle into it and if people like it great they will stay when

it changes if it changes and i was also figuring it out for myself. Also, we need to talk about Ballsy Bites and my other stuff later because that was the whole business I was doing on the weekends and night shifts. It was crazy. That was separate. Oh, yeah. But you're not doing that.

No, not anymore. Yeah, we'll start. Let's stay with this. So you left. When did you move from New York to Philly? Like early this year? We moved in October.ober okay so it's almost been a year almost a year we bought our first house and congrats thank you my husband and i

it's a great spot by the way well thank you it's a great like that's a beautiful location thank you we're really happy it was just time My husband was kind of the reason we were staying for so long because his job was fully New York. And what industry is he in? He's in real estate. So totally different from what you do. Oh, totally different. If he worked in food, we'd kill each other, I feel. So he finally got the green light to work remote.

And we had signed a two-and-a-half-year lease a couple months before. We moved in January. Yeah. So we all a couple months before. We moved in January. Yeah. So we all stayed almost a year. We found new tenants. It was an ugly lease break. But yep, we left and we moved. Oh, wait.

Did I miss this? So you moved from New York to Philly in October, signed a lease in Philly, you're saying? No, no, no. We signed a lease in Long Island City. We just moved from the Upper East Side to Queens in January. We signed a two and a half year lease because we thought we were staying for...

Oh, in January 2020. Yeah. Sorry. We were staying... We thought we were staying for a long time and that like maybe after that lease was up

we would move. But then the pandemic hit and we wanted to leave. And breaking a lease in New York during the pandemic was bad. Real estate in general, scary.

Well, yeah. I mean, your husband saw that up close, I'm sure. Yeah. Landlords get pretty vicious. And not that I'm ever on the side of landlords because they are brutal most of the time. Sorry. No, Sebastian's a landlord. He's a great one.

I'm generalizing. But I'm sure your husband's great. He's a great man. I'm generalizing, but I'm sure your husband's great. He's great. There are a lot of horror stories, and I know they're anecdotal, but I hear them so often. And New York is crazy because, I mean, let's be honest, this whole pandemic now, not aside, we'll see how it adjusts. It seems like it's adjusting back. But it's the highest demand neighborhood that in San Francisco was in the country. So they kind of can like they you know you don't want to pay this no problem i got 12 other people that will yeah but so many people

left runs were at an all-time low yep so now it's readjusted but the way i'm saying like i would probably understand a bit is because the amount of money that you know the margins are tight because it's so expensive the amount of money that they had to margins are tight because it's so expensive the amount of money that they had to be losing with people leaving when their leases ended and like the fire sale rates i saw people lock in they were locking in like 40 percent rent number rates on stuff in you know july 2020 and just for reference the average one bedroom walk up like kitchenette not a real kitchen really no frills thing is three thousand dollars a month oh yeah that's average for oh yeah like not great

no doorman no amenities no nothing uh yeah so it was very difficult to leave i remember like looking at the rates when i was out i spent a lot of time in new york like after after college i lived in north jersey but i was in new york all the time all my friends were there a lot of business was there and i remember i would just like have a habit of if if i was feeling like i don't like to be too prying but like if people were talking about i'd be like you mind me asking you know what you pay here and i and they would always tell me and i'd be like get the fuck out yeah like sometimes people would tell me and i'm like, damn, that's not bad. And they're like, yeah, but they pay the same.

Yeah. Pointed to other people. Because you're splitting the entire apartment. It's usually by a room if you have roommates. It's crazy. It is crazy. And now it's kind of back. It's back.

Yeah. And we're lucky we found people to move into our apartment which we got for a good deal for the same price so we thought it was an amicable time to leave like we did our due diligence but yeah we uh so you had to find those people yeah okay we all like we offered we just wanted to make it smooth but it still wasn't a smooth process yeah we oh my god yeah it was crazy see what i didn't know when you said all that though i didn't know i would have never guessed this like when i thought skylar i'm like skylar new york city yeah like that's what it is and yet you were thinking about it for a while

of eventually i'm gonna a long time i new york i absolutely love it and i'm inspired by it all the time but it i knew it wasn't the place for me to live long term for so many reasons financially. Like quality of life for me personally, I want a house. I'm going to own a house. And it's the hustle, go, go, go, go mentality for me. I absorb it and I get really exhausted. So I feel like it's a thing that happens though a lot with, you know, we wanted, like, I'm like that. I do like, I'll admit, I like that.

I don't mind it at all. But a lot of my friends feel the same way. And it's something where- I used to love it. Exactly. You come out, I mean, you were there in college too. So you were there during prime, like having fun years as well.

But like you come out of college and you love it for a few years if you're in the middle of it. And then a lot of people are like, okay, I've done it. I'll live 30 minutes outside the city now. That's good. You know, settle down. So I hear you. But were you guys, so you had signed a two and a half year lease. So you weren't thinking about doing it yet.

But then the pandemic hits. And I guess it was just. It was time. Yeah, it was brutal. Why would we pay what we were paying for? We had a two bedroom because I was expensing for an office and a kitchen. Can you pull that mic in just a little bit? Yeah.

We had a two bedroom and we were not leaving. And your kitchen needs to be your studio too yes so that's like a yeah and then sebastian started working from home and we just we called it and my sister-in-law's in philadelphia it's close to my family and we love it it's the best thing we've done and philly's got a got a very underrated food scene too oh yeah any other city there are so many cities out there that have great food scenes and i just feel like they're all not noticed as much because they're not the hub you know yeah new york is just you know every culture is there so it's natural it's like well what are we gonna do tonight yeah we'll have grasshoppers in in

the mexican restaurant if we want to like it's it's wild the diversity is what i love about new york and so now like a year in everything you're doing we said this earlier but just to reiterate it everything you're doing is now all in-house you move totally away from the restaurant life which you know as much as as sad as it is also the pandemic took away that period. Like you couldn't do that. I could do it now if I wanted to, but I learned a lot about myself. And I think as a business owner in the creative space, it's important to listen to what you like to do and follow your instinct and what you love, your creative passion, or else you're just going to half-ass everything. So that is why I moved to cooking.

I love it so much more. And I love to dine out and be inspired on my own terms. I think that the other thing that's not being said here, though, like we talk about the energy in New York, it also had to be such a, I mean, in any city, period, but especially New York because it's like the hub. Like it had to be such a vibe New York because it's like the hub. Like it had to be such a vibe killer being there during all of the pandemic.

New York during the pandemic was really depressing. Yeah, it's all about the energy. And when no one's outside, it's sad. It's solemn. It's just empty. I was there a week before the pandemic because i was in the city all the time and like we didn't know that was happening at the time at least like people were talking about it and i was like oh this isn't good but when you went outside like in new york people were doing their thing i'm talking until it was called yes yes so like it i think march 11th was the day where sudden that was the

day like the nba shut down and then suddenly it was like oh and now people weren't going on subways but right before that like week week and a half before i'm standing in grand central and there's just it's grand central there's there's there's a million people running around having a good time and it was surreal to me because then I wasn't in New York again. And I went back and visited in January. And I... No one. Everyone left.

It was so scary. I mean, it was sad. It's like people who live there, you're there because it's such a vibrant place. And full of so many characters. And everyone... There was homeless problems obviously like rents are unaffordable you know where to live and people are sick and everything was just very sad and you have to carry as well and you can do what you do i don't know about your husband

but i mean real estate is everywhere too but you at least can do what you do from wherever you want. There's no – It's another reason I love the cooking aspect of everything. You really can do it anywhere and create anywhere. And yeah, you're not limited by your location. And you're not just doing work for yourself either as far as like you're creating all your content every day like for you and things like that and you're working brands into it because that's how you make money but you're also and you've been doing this a while i think you were doing like the snap stories for food network like several years ago and then you're doing work with amazon are you doing any

others as well or what's the full story there um I consistently work with Amazon. I have something coming out with Food Network soon. I know. I'm so excited. I've worked with Insider as well, Mashable. Yeah, I host. So I host segments about different recipes, different food products, and this is not a part of what I do for my blog. And is that all online content or do you do some of the stuff that is still on like the Food Network channel? So for the stuff I did with them, it was online

and digital. I did help launch like new Snapchat stories with them. That's when Snapchat was a thing. And some YouTube series. And now it's for streaming. I think the recipes that I have coming out will be on streaming. So you don't see Snapchat as a thing anymore? I don't. Oh, God, that's horrible. I don't use it. And that, I'm so sorry about that to Snapchat. Listen.

I'm apologizing to them because that's not nice of me to say. Everyone got off it, but the user base. My cousins still use it. That's what I'm saying. The user base of 16 to 21-year-olds is insane. Well, good for that. Like, I feel like you could do something there. With Snap again?

Yes. Yeah, I mean, when you work in this business, you have to pick your top five. Now it's a five. Like, you have YouTube, you have TikTokiktok instagram and a website it's top four for me i would say top three but with everything out there pick whatever is feasible and snapchat for me is just i can do the same on instagram stories and make my life easier true yeah do you get a lot of traffic like to your website? I do. I do. That's awesome. Yeah, it's nice. It's because if anyone wants a recipe, I write the post and I include a recipe for them to print or just look at. So they have to hit the link in bio to go get it.

Yeah. And they're lucky I'm writing. I think, yeah, sometimes it's a little frustrating if someone wants me to write the recipe somewhere like on TikTok sometimes. I'll be like, get the recipe on my website. And everyone's like, I just want it here. And I'm like, I can't. It's a recipe. This is like a long drawn out recipe that I'm giving to you for free.

So go to my bio. I don't. There's too much detail in those. In recipes? For a lot of the things you make, it's very exact. And there's a lot of things that go into it. So especially like even writing that out on the text, it would just be too messy. Yeah.

And the, yeah, exactly. I was going to say something. TikTok's also like a way different, it's a way different animal than Instagram. Yeah, it is. And I was Instagram only. And now I'm trying to understand TikTok. Still trying. You're good at TikTok, though. You know what's up. I'm getting there. You're good. I've done with TikTok. Like I spend a lot of time studying little things. It's like,

there are so many pages on TikTok that are right there. And like, no one's looking at them. But like one or two things, they'll move up. But like yours is growing now. Like yours, since I since you and I connected on there, yours is actually moving a little bit, which is good. Yeah, something that is very important in the social media business is to not take it personally if like your content doesn't do well on one platform i and my content doesn't do as well on tiktok and i'm trying to still figure out how to make my edits better make everything else better without losing my soul like keeping it me and to do well there but yeah i can't win them all it's exhausting you do the instagram reels though how long are you allowed to do them what do you mean are you 60 seconds time limit on those

you can do 60 seconds now however i think for highest engagement shorter is always best yes yes if you could if you could work that like because it's it's different content too like you're working in other things but on tiktok they're trying to do this like three minute thing on there and they'll push some of that content i like that for true crime and true crime only that's interesting yeah i know i don't know if you do a three minute thing but i'll watch yours if you did them i i haven't well i've tried i've tried quickly yeah i just like i wanted to end after a minute except for true crime doesn't work true crime give me eight hours so like the actual case breakdown like that kind of stuff i want everything i love what do you mean everything i just want to know everything i want to know backstory of everyone involved in the true crime

i want to know where it's i want i just't want to know everything. I love true crime. It's bad. That's way different than food. This is interesting. Oh, do you know my hobbies? I'm like a weirdo. You didn't... All right, let's hear the weirdo hobbies.

I love true crime. I'm also very into spiritual things. That could mean a lot of things. Energy. I love to read about the afterlife. I have problems. We've lost a lot of people in my family and i think that's why that comes up but i'm very interested in energy manifesting the law of attraction psychics mediums watching content about that yeah you didn't see that coming did you it doesn't that doesn't surprise me true crime

probably surprises me really oh my god sebastian will come home and i'll be chopping an onion and he'll be listening it's like their ears were cut off their throat was and i'm like hi honey you want some dinner and there's nothing okay about like true crime is awful it's not entertaining it's i like i like to listen to it because i like to empathize and just understand i don't know i'm fascinated by it there's a little bit of a tie there between your two hobbies you just mentioned that like a little like a little bit clearly i'm an emotional weirdo no no like i think i look for personally i love true crime too i don't have i don't have time to listen to podcasts these days so i've never been like the true crime podcast guy yeah but i was early on early on i was like the true crime youtube guy i need to get into that that's my

next when i'm done all the episodes of crime junkie i gotta there's a lot of good stuff on there yeah there's like even like bite-sized stuff like six minutes going over a case it's like i think the connection with like morbid well i mean some people would say that but like you mentioned you're into the afterlife probably because of your own experiences and losing people you love which is it's a wild thing to think about because we none of us know none of us know and you're trying to concept it and add meaning to life and then on like the true crime side you know obviously you hear about the things people do and you're like how's this even a person but that's like the thing you're like i know it's a person because people have a different there's

like they're capable of great things and horrible things and why is that yeah i'm very interested in human psychology and how people think and how situations end up happening that are just so twisted and i love to understand the story i don't love it i just i find it interesting what's like some good true crime content that's like your go-to i love to listen to crime junkie it's a podcast i've heard and then i love the tiktok true crime i don't even know what channel it just pops up because my tiktok my husband's tiktok is like dogs mine is like so depressing it's like it's sad it's like about someone whose relative died and like they sense them in hospice like on the deathbed it's it's sad and then another one's like this murder happened and i and my husband's like can we just watch on my phone like yeah it is amazing how much like

you look at the data the true crime interest is sky high in everything. I wonder why. I think it's some of the same thing. I think you're not a weirdo. I'm not alone. No. I think everyone is interested, especially now. It's the psychology behind it for sure.

Yes. Yeah, that has to be it. It's a meta thing though too. Like because we're so digitized now that it's almost like the farther apart we grow as human beings in a way the more interested we are in the extremes of what a human being can be you think so i mean i've just been interested in this literally since i was a kid my mom didn't monitor like what i watched on tv i'd watch unsolved mysteries when i was eight and hide in the closet i believe it it. I'd be terrified.

Yeah, I'm wondering. I guess I don't know why everyone else is into it either. I mean, some people may have the same kind of backstory with that. Maybe. But also, there's a lot of weird. Yeah, it is. I like that you're into psychology because there's a lot of weird, quote-unquote things that a lot of us do now as far as like interests things we like to look into that 20 years ago you'd say that to somebody and

they'd look at you like you had 10 heads like what you don't want because it was just this different world like we were almost like what We were like blissfully ignorant before the internet. I agree. It's because all of the networks had certain people controlling everything we absorbed. And now we have the freedom to speak for ourselves. It's such a gift and a curse though. I agree. I 100% agree.

I think it's more of a gift than a curse i'll agree with that yeah if the internet didn't exist when i was growing up i would have felt very trapped and i would have felt like i will never be able to make my own dreams come true i will because my family's not gonna pick up move to new york or la because i want to what take a chance and like i wanted to be a tv host at the time like that's what you wanted to do growing up i always knew and i always i actually used to joke about it in high school like i just want to like eat on tv like i used to say that i don't know if anyone listened but i said it i remember saying it and now you're doing it and now i'm doing it but i would have felt isolated and alone and just so trapped and like stuck in one place and in the corporate ladder if the internet wasn't here.

I feel that so heavy. You have no idea. I know because look at you. I was in it. I mean – Yeah. And it's not – it's not the – I'm sure sometimes it is. But it's like not the people.

It's the idea. It's the whole this is what you the whole, this is what you do. And then this is what you do next. And that's what it is. And guess what? For us, it is isolating because we have these passions we wanted to pursue. But on the other side, it's comforting and it's what people love to do. And that's great. it's what people love to do and that's great that's okay but i love having

the option for people like us who are creatively inclined to say let's try to give ourselves that moment to advance our careers in a way that we never thought was possible you know what though i i have a i'm glad you put it that way because i have a very what's the term i want to use here i really looked up to what you were doing and i didn't realize why i was looking up to it because you were doing it literally in like college and then doing it went right into it as your job self-sustaining, building something, supporting yourself, getting clear progress, growing, doing all these things. And I remember because I was so not self-aware of so many things about my own self and my interests. No one is in their early 20s.

Probably. I don't know. I'll speak for myself. I wasn't, but I kind of thought I was. So in my head, and I never put two and two together, I'm like, oh damn, she's cool that's awesome and like she's gonna be famous from our high school we got one great that's nice but i never put it like wait what am i doing do i and and it's not like i wanted to go out and talk about food but as far as like doing things that are interesting where you got to be creatively inclined and you have to build it yourself and so you see an example of that and then eventually you know i'm facing the corporate decision of like oh do i go to the next level and now i've exposed myself to some stuff and now suddenly it like clicks and i'm like god damn i'm envious of the people who figured this out early because like even if you didn't

i'm sure there was like a lot of unknown for you i won't i'll let you explain that but you were on the right zip code you know what i mean you were in you got yourself to the zip code a lot of us are in the wrong country i was in the wrong country you know what's so crazy though um when i saw you pop i saw you pop up on my tiktok i didn't know you had a podcast until i saw you pop up that was hilarious i wasn't the least bit surprised if you asked me what i thought you'd be doing in high school i thought you would do something like sportscaster radio like you always had that kind of persona and energy to me thank you yeah no i

i wasn't the least bit surprised i did want to be a sportscaster when i was growing up then you tell me that or did i just definitely not definitely not we weren't friends in high school no like it wasn't that wasn't i don't even think i told my friends that way yeah oh am i so good yeah no like i think like barksdale and avos and those guys, Nico, they kind of assumed that because I was so into sports. But it wasn't like I ever said out loud, I'm going to be on ESPN. No, I thought you would be. I had kind of thought like, oh, that's what I'll do. Now, because the world changed, I would never want to do that medium of it.

I would never. And I mean, maybe you can relate to like. Absolutely. There's so much freedom you have to be able to just create on the internet. There's downsides with it. You know, you got to do more yourself or you got to build it, but you can just kind of go with it. And it's not like, for example, here, it's not all right, Skylar, we're going to talk for 10 minutes about this. And then we're going to cut the commercial. So make sure you're good five minutes in. It's a different beast when you do that. Yeah, because you don't have, well, hopefully you don't have like all the lawsuits waiting if your network says the wrong thing and upsets this partner and this partner and this partner. Yeah. Have it like I worked at several. I don't know if you knew this. When I was in college, I worked at a lot of TV networks and I got to learn a lot about that.

There's so many moving parts. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you learn a lot about that. There's so many moving parts. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you learn a lot. Where did you work? I worked at CBS This Morning, New York One News. I also worked at Hearst Magazines. It's like all the lifestyle magazines.

Like William Randolph Hearst brand? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Where else did I work? Entertainment Tonight,nn wow yeah cnn and then a magazine i worked somewhere else too and this is all in college all in college i worked like every semester and was wild all the internships except for one were unpaid. And the one that was paid was $8 an hour. I believe that. I know.

And nowadays, I used to think, oh, interning for credit. That's why I could graduate early. But nowadays, I would never hire someone unpaid. The landscape has changed substantially. You also get what you pay for in things. I know. substantially you also get what you pay for and things i know when people when people are not motivated to be doing something because they're literally getting nothing for their time even if they're getting like a credit it's not it's not the same see this is what's so crazy

though because when i was growing up i believed it was an honor to be at these companies for nothing. And I need to prove myself. I need, I am worth nothing. And I need to show them I am worth something because I don't know anyone. I don't know anyone on the team. I have no easy way in. Like I will work for zero just to be seen. I have to hustle. And nowadays the dialogue has totally changed. And it's great that students are understanding they are worth something and when i i don't know about you but when i was in college if you're in the creative field you're told like yeah i wasn't in any of that yeah so i don't know anything you know yeah you're told you're lucky to even be standing there and getting someone coffee and that is drilled into your head like you're

kind of worthless until you make it at the network and usually people who make it i mean i don't know can't speak but a lot of people i knew that were getting internships at places that were very coveted would know someone on the other side of things it is a world of who you know yeah and i didn't know anyone from delaware who do i know and i went to nyu with all these kids from la and new york did nyu have pretty good pretty good connects though i would imagine? It did, but when your classmates are very well connected. True. Yeah.

But, yeah. I mean, there's nothing against that. You take what you get in this life. Absolutely. Right? I'm lucky I even got to go to college, and that is a privilege. But, yeah. In my position, I was just like, I don't know what you want.

I'm never never gonna make it that's why the internet was such a blessing yeah it's crazy though that that wasn't that long ago i know god damn was it different like your experience what you would understand today and i've never been inside there so i i can't say for sure but i'd be willing to bet my bank account whatever's in it that if you went in there today, your experience would be monumentally different for probably a lot of the wrong reasons than it was in like 2012, 2013. I mean, I hope it's for the right reasons. I hope these networks are diversifying. And if I wasn't getting an internship because they were bringing in people who from different backgrounds who needed this opportunity more than me i would

be so great with that but it wasn't the case when i was there and i'm really hoping it's the case now i have i have a feeling things are moving forward i do feel like people are being paid now the interns are yeah so even at even at that level but yeah you were you were saying really early on in here about maybe it wasn't even on the podcast but you were talking about how oh i know what it was it was like with the chefs and stuff because people hate sometimes when someone breaks in through the internet or whatever and so even though you did like the internships and stuff like that you did break in building yourself and doing whatever but i do think and i sense this a lot i try to put myself in other people's shoes like looking what i'm

doing here even where you have people who went to school for this went out and worked up the ranks of like a major network or something like that. And now you see the internet is disrupted so much, which is what happens in life. Certain mediums disrupt other ones and the game changes. Right. But it's, while I have no doubt there are some people who just don't have a ton of talent doing that stuff, there are a lot of people who are,'s just say like in tv in like traditional network journalism who are so talented and now are like they're locked out because they didn't build on their own and now like other people who were doing that i understand i'm not i'm not someone to ever

express bitterness like i just i understand for people but i get where they're where that emotion comes from 100 i always understand so there was this one instance with me because i get it and like if anyone like i always felt like i'm trapped like i'm never going to be noticed and i'm trying so hard i'm working so hard and that's what these people feel everyone feels it so there was this one experience i had recently this um male chef who is super talented and just very talented i looked at his page really very talented guy he left a comment on one of my videos saying you're a fraud and or something but it was like a another word for fraud some like slang term i don't know and cap wait no so this is a cap um definitely cap really i don't know maybe i'm

gonna educate you on something i don't know anything but i looked it up and i was like why would he say this and i messaged him because i'm like i can understand where like why he might feel upset he's like a real chef so i messaged him and in a nutshell i said hi i side messaged so this wasn't public. I'm not going to read the whole thing. But basically, I was like, your comment was pretty hurtful and very unnecessary. Not that I need to justify this. I've been doing this for 10 years. And I'm really proud of the fact I was featured on this publication. I really appreciate your work. And I think you are extremely talented. It's great.

And I hope you have a great Super Bowl Sunday. I hope you can understand where I'm coming from. This was Super Bowl. That was so nice. How you handled that. Wait. Let me read you. He came back.

Oh, I'm going to. I don't want to be annoying. Oh, I'm in. I'm in for the tea. I'm here. I said, I'm sorry. I got i gotta find it give me one second so this was like a full-blown conversation yeah and then oh i said what i love about cooking is that it's accessible to everyone almost everyone no one person who cooks trained or not is better than

the other all of us are fortunate and privileged enough to access to food can be an exceptional cook. That's why food is a universal language. That's why we all love culinary arts in the first place. I hope we can connect over that. He goes, cool story. I have no feelings on this matter. Simply pointing out an obvious fact. I go, that's really sad. And he's like, it's absolute fact people are better than others. And I'm like, yeah, sure. Okay, maybe like it's some things. But when you're a home, when you're cooking in the home kitchen, which was the content I was putting out there, there are no rules in your own kitchen. I'm not feeding him. I'm feeding me. And I think it's great. If you want to slice 90 in a certain way for yourself, I don't give a shit. So I was like, I hope you can be accepting

that there is more than enough to go around i think your work is incredible you're super talented and he goes is he goes like the countless chefs who spend their lives working and killing themselves completely understand that while uppity white women with no expertise fake it to the top spare me i'm not worried about there being enough to go around i'm worried about the parasites who have done irreparable damage to the world of food you don't want to have this conversation with me and then he proceeded to call me a bored housewife i've been i've been in my business for 10 years i'm not a bored housewife well he's just showing his ass yeah he's just

and he's a lost cause and but this is someone I messaged because I really understood where he was coming from. I get it. He worked his ass off and so many chefs. Oh, my God. I can't even begin to empathize how hard they work. And same with people on TV and these traditional mediums like they are working so hard. But just because anyone who's new comes in in a different way, doesn't make them the bad one it's called an opportunity if you have an opportunity you're gonna take it if this guy who's now on a network tv

oh so yeah okay yeah if why does he need to be bitter then well his his following's not big and i think he's just upset with this situation i don't know and i don't know at all but if he had the opportunity he would have done and it's like you said maybe it's people being upset they didn't take the opportunity i get upset i didn't take the opportunity to be on tiktok when they approached me a long time ago i didn't do it i had too much work on my plate they approached me to like be one of their new creators and i just like didn't respond i regret that but am i mad was that like 2018 holy yeah and no and you know what like that's my fault and am i bitter towards people who have become overnight sensations overnight meaning like put lots of work into it on tiktok no that good for you that's awesome

that's good that you have that attitude well everyone really should you know what people did you're not alone people didn't see it i was on tiktok when i say on i worked at a corporate job i didn't have an account i was on there i was very i did side llc so i was very this is when i was turning over being very interested in content i was on tiktok early in 2019 yeah and and I remember seeing it and I was like, holy shit And I called up everyone I knew like in that 20 to 22 age bracket who had a talent And I said stop everything you're doing And go there

and none of them did It's because tiktok then caught like the pandemic really helped tiktok it caught and it went and it's whatever i do think they had a perfect app however most people you can literally go look at the biggest celebrities they might have like 10 followers on tiktok because they didn't get on it on some of them you know no a lot of big celebrities will pop up and everyone's gonna follow but like creators who are saying follow me on this app now right new apps are exhausting yep and now i love tiktok right and uh yeah do i regret it for sure but what am i gonna boohoo about it all day no yeah i think one of the things that definitely

comes across with all this is that you have such an appreciation for all the different people across your niche you know not just exactly what you do but the the chefs and the people that work in it and it's it's it's frustrating and it's relatable to anything in life where you take the time to have such a good empathy for even someone like that chef you were just reading the text on and where he comes from and then even after doing that and being nice and handling it and demonstrating it you know they're still just complete kind of shut down coming back and like a part of me is of course you feel bad because he feels like he's worked so hard as you said and he's not getting the results he should but you know when people are being good people i i just i will never understand not having a sense of i mean we say empathy but like just basic humanity in that situation like clearly you demonstrated you're not just some idiot behind a

camera doing something like you worked your ass off at this he should be able to see that you're nice enough to address his concerns and then he still he still treats you like that it's i don't know that annoys me yeah it annoys me too at the end of the day though i and a lot of people are like why do you even take the time of day to talk to someone like that and i always will make the time because i if i can help one person understand a new perspective and educate them in any way and instead of fighting have a conversation where we can understand each other i will take those conversations and i always do and like sure if you think it's a waste of time okay but isn't the whole point of having such a diverse community on the internet to educate one another and expand our horizons so that's that's why like yeah it

annoys me but at least i tried to show one one guy who thinks he's better than someone like me that you know like no one's really better than anyone else and it doesn't matter like you work super hard that doesn't mean you're better than someone else who works super hard in a different way and also the the market is the arbiter of truth it doesn't it doesn't mean that you can't like if you haven't worked yet like if you haven't blown up you're not gonna like if you're good eventually you probably will but the market responds to what it likes so if people like what you do then that's that's judged as a value in society regardless of how you do it now are there people who take advantage of that and do

things that are not positive to get attention absolutely absolutely but i'm saying like it just surprises me when people are adding value you know because like in what i do here the value i add is like we entertain right it's a form of entertainment but it's it's pure entertainment what i don't give people and what i guess some of my guests sometimes do depending on their expertise what i don't give people is actual things that they then go in and practice themselves right so you're giving people you're making up recipes. You're giving them ideas for food. You are doing the work for them.

You're providing value. So if people see that as, oh my God, Skylar's got all these great ideas. I would have never thought of this. Now I can go do it myself. You've improved something that they're interested in. Thanks. Yeah. What's, yeah, that's a really nice way to put it i'm trying well i think that's i think that's i probably wouldn't have said this before i did

content myself but i think that's how if we were going to do it at the macro level that's how content breaks down when you look at creators and successive of creators, someone like a David Dobrik is an entertainer. Mr. Beast is an entertainer. They make these amazing videos online that people enjoy watching. Even the Kardashians are entertainers. Exactly. Whereas someone like my friend Johnny Drinks, someone like you. I know with John, it's the same thing you would deal with when he puts up

all these different drinks to make it's not only he can it's short enough that he can put the things that go into it there so he can put that on there but they also show you how they make it just like you do with food yeah so people go oh my god i got a 60 second video to make this drink this weekend when i'm out yeah or when i'm hosting people and they can do it. Yeah. What I like to think of for any culinary drink lifestyle creators who are providing something for people to take home and do at home, it's like a smaller scale magazine, smaller scale network. And it's entertainment, but just provided differently. Yeah.

I guess. That's a good way to put it. Like when I worked at a magazine, it's entertainment but just provided differently yeah i guess like that's a good way to put it like when i worked at a magazine it's very similar you have different editors focusing on different things providing different stories different recipes different ideas for people to do at home and and that's really what you're doing as a content creator with a blog you write the recipe the blog behind it and then you post the video of it you're just as a content creator with a blog you write the recipe the blog behind it and then you post the video of it you're just providing that in a different way and not to turn it around but let's turn around i like saying that i just turn it on and done but i i keep on remembering it just came in my head when you were saying that because we've

mentioned it a couple times today but you were saying like back when you were doing the ballsy bites oh yeah first of all tell people what that is and secondly that you were saying like back when you were doing the ballsy bites, first of all, tell people what that is. And secondly, that you were saying that was its own separate business. So you had that as like, that was a different platform. Yeah. There's a lot that I've done. And for anyone who's looking to start a business in this space or any space at all, like what you learn the most from is mistakes. If you're not making mistakes, you're not, you're literally sitting and doing nothing. So I've made a lot of mistakes running my own business. Yes, I had this blog, I was doing a full time. And I really I developed a product called ballsy bites. It was these rainbow tie dye cake balls. I put myself through self taught pastry school by reading a textbook at home. I taught myself how to bake.

And it took me a year to develop the recipe. And I really wanted to create a product. I was like, not only will this be great to establish some credibility, which a lot of people don't even realize. Like no one gives me credit for it. But I love this product and I want to do this. I want to learn something new. So instead of making this, which running a baking business is a full-time job, I made it a side job. I developed the recipe.

And with this, there comes a lot of things. You have to get packaging. You have to learn how you have to get your food handler's license. So you have to understand the hygienic rules that goes into operating a kitchen. You have to rent the kitchen. You have to pay insurance for safety of yourself. You have to rent the kitchen. Which is so expensive in New York. You have to rent a commercial kitchen. So I cannot develop a product in my home kitchen because it's unsanitary. There are some rules around it, but I was melting chocolate,

and that did not meet code. So I had to go rent a kitchen. So what I did – Who legislates that, by the way? State of New York. I think it's state by state. So it's a cottage rule, I think. That's probably like a 15-page code, just that one. It's a big deal. Yeah. I mean, it would save so many business owners money, but that's a side note. Yeah. So I really wanted to launch this brand and I went through all the

steps. It took me about a year and instead of going to these commercial kitchens So I really wanted to launch this brand. And I went through all the steps. It took me about a year. And I instead of going to these commercial kitchens, I really hustled and approached bakeries that were closed on weekends. And I asked, like, do you want to make a little extra money? I can rent your space this like over the weekends, and I'll pay you x and I got it for like a third of the cost of what a commercial kitchen would be. So I started this business on the weekends. I was working five days a week, and then I was working twice over the weekend, and I would bake these rainbow tie-dye cake balls, package them, take orders online,

hand-deliver them, and ship them all myself. And I didn't realize how... Wait, you would hand-deliver from orders online? My first time, I did. I did, because I would go around the city with them, but then if it came too much, I was like, what am I doing? realize wait you would hand deliver from orders online at my first time i did i did because i would like go around the city with them but then it became too much i was like what am i doing so there's only people in the city ordering at first that was so like at first i was hand delivering and then i started shipping nationwide it was such a journey figuring out how to start a food product and it lasted for like two years

i then switched from weekends to night shift so i would work from 9 p.m to 7 a.m and that would be three days a week yeah yeah and i thought that was a side business but i that i was doing that at the time where tiktok came out and that's why i was like I had no I didn't have time uh so that's one business fail I had it made money minimal minimal money just wasn't worth the time no and the product is amazing I want to bring it back but I'm so glad I made that mistake and like totally learned I learned everything about how to have your own food product and create something awesome did you have to learn i don't know how this all works if it's like different across different types of food or like when people are expected to eat it based on when they order it but did you have to work in like preservatives and stuff like that none no so it would stay fresh yeah every week i would take orders and and prepare those orders

the night before they would go out they were all fresh i know yeah that's a tough turn i'm 23 thinking like oh i used to go out really late like i'm fine i'll just like i didn't have time for friends i had time for nothing and that's another thing I've learned through all of this is like, if you don't have time for anything that you really, I don't know. I mean, I really wanted to do that. I wanted to hustle. I wanted to work my ass off, but you're not really succeeding if you're burning yourself out. That's the number one thing I've learned. So that was mistake number one. I'm going to tell you about mistake number two. You didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you about it. Let's go. So I started a media company in 2019.

Did you know this? Maybe, but it's not ringing a bell. I definitely saw a post somewhere along the way where you said it, but I don't remember details or what it was. This is a total fucking fail. So I started in 2019. My idea was to do marketing, Instagram marketing for other companies. I had two clients. One of them was a very well-paying, high-priority startup. And I had to hire someone.

And we were on like the shortest timeline ever. I had to hire my first employee. I had to reincorporate as like instead of an LLC, an escort. Very complicated. Was this for food only? No. This was also another thing. And my own social media brand would technically have been a client of that media company.

Got it. Yeah. So I was like, I'm good at social media. Like maybe I can make some extra money. I can hire someone and delegate like it won't be as time consuming as I'm thinking. The client was extraordinarily demanding. And I hired my first employee. I had to do it really quickly. A lot of moving parts happen so fast. And I started this business once again. But I didn't think it through. I really committed. And it was horrible.

Like, I never want to start a business again. It made money. That made money. But it was bad. And that's when I realized this was before 2020. I literally dissolved that company in September of 2019. And after that is when I finally committed to what I love doing. I know you didn't ask me that, but I feel like it's important if anyone does get into a field that they love and they see like, oh, I'm good at this, I'm good at that, try it.

If you suck, always have a backup. And if you fail, that's a great thing because you can learn more about what you do like to do. Provided you learn from it. Yes, exactly. Every failure is a learning opportunity. Exactly. Because there's people now who kind of bastardize that because it is so important but people will bastardize it and they'll kind of they'll make the excuse of failing ahead

of doing it because they're not going to do anything different they're just gonna be like well if i try enough times it'll work and it's like no you need to adjust and like it's clear you changed actions as each of these things happen i learned about myself i learned like you know why have i never really believed that i could actually cook full time every time i was running my blog i was doing the restaurants and the cooking i never let myself fully cook and um then i had ballsy bites on the side and that was just like fun then i had the media company because i was so scared to fully commit to this new brand change. I don't know.

I was just scared. What? Going? Are you talking about going from restaurants to cooking? I was scared and I started the media company on the side and it was stupid. I learned the most. It's time. And you were hitting on that with like the balance in life. I don't know if you said this, but I'll have this takeaway and then tell me if I'm wrong.

But it's also you have to – you kind of have to make a choice. Where are my priorities? And the farther you spread yourself thin, the more problems you're going to run into. If you are – and look, I don't know how elon musk does it run in six companies he has help oh he has a lot of help exactly but still yeah i know still i don't know how they do it either you know but he's also you know the one there's one elon musk you know i'm not saying there can't be someone who ends up having that ability, but A, he took many years to get there, right? And B, he's Elon Musk.

So now look at all of us, which is pretty much any other human being alive. We're not that. And you start to realize – like I even think about it with this. If I had to run a business on the side of this, this would never work. Yeah. Because it's also like creative work too you need you know how it is you got it when when you're doing when you're making something you're not just making it you're like how does this look what am i doing it's a full thing a full day's work

something i really have learned when i was getting into business this idea of the girl boss was glamorized i don't know have you heard about a girl boss before? Girl boss. It's the name of a book, but there's this overarching idea that a woman as a CEO needs to be stone cold, have no time for family, and needs to be like some like not nice to people. And it's work, work, work, work, work, nothing else work. And like, I believed like, that's what I need to be. And it's work, work, work, work, work, nothing else work. And like,

I believed like, that's what I need to be. And I started my media company. I was like, I need to be this way. And I quickly learned like, we need to stop glamorizing this idea of being a CEO, meaning you treat people like dirt, you nickel and dime them. And you try and it's all about money. It's all about work and that you don't prioritize family. Like this idea that a CEO is just obsessed with work and nothing else needs to change. It does. And what's a healthy company is when someone's prioritizing your and your employees will only be happy if you're allowing them to prioritize what they want on the side. And as a CEO, you're not going to be happy if you're allowing them to prioritize what they want on the side.

And as a CEO, you're not going to be happy if you're not prioritizing your own needs. You're human. This, yeah, this idea of this, especially female CEOs. Because it's such a contrast from like what women have been made out to be, which in the 50s, it's like housewife, soft. And now it's like girl power absolutely i'm a feminist but you any ceo needs to like be a human yeah that's like that's like putting the expectation that you should be like a nasty and i think you said cutthroat like i don't care if you're a male or female if you're running a company ceo founder whatever it is i don't know why this isn't common sense to people but it's not if you don't show a basic level of like understanding for the people that work for

you how are you going to expect them to be in a good mood working for you even if they got to work really hard like if it's a crazy industry or something, they should be pretty motivated to be in a good mood to do it. And yet people still to this day, I mean the amount of resources that are available to study this if you're not naturally like it. But people – the lack of emotional intelligence and the fact that you felt that that was a stereotype, which I believe I'm sure maybe it was. I just never really looked at that. Maybe seen like Devil Wears Prada. believe i'm sure maybe it was i just never really looked at that devil wears product like a lot of movies will showcase women in business as being like i have no time for my love life i have no time for this i'm just i only care about work i only care about work and in reality how going through all these business fails and like changes ebbs and flows has taught me the the best success

is treating your people well building a strong team and making sure you are always satisfied with what you do and you cannot be satisfied in a state of burnout and in a state of treating people like shit i don't care who you are no i know like burn like that yeah they go hand in hand yeah you just and yeah that that's why being a ceo and like managing people it was too much and there's nothing wrong with me saying this it was too much emotionally for me because i really care about who i work with and i i just changed the way i did my business because i just wanted to become friends with who I worked with and I needed to work with experts instead of hiring people here's the other thing though it's not

like if you see and I can't say this about all businesses but let's just take a more of a stereotype business like any kind of industry that's just making a product or something like that when you see the CEO on tv male female whatever they're they're the executive you know they're they're organizing they're they're learning where to properly delegate overall manager yeah figuring out the finances with the people who work for them i do think it's a lot different when you are doing something in an industry where you are the product yeah and you are creating the with i, literally like with your hands and everything. Like that's what you do.

Yeah. And guess what? If you don't have a good product, if you're not on there being entertaining and coming up with wild, cool shit that people want to get value from, then you have nothing to manage because you're not going to have a business. Yeah. So it's like, like, I can't imagine doing something like this and having to be the ceo of something that sends a shiver up my spine because i i'll tell you straight up i'm a human being i don't have time for that it's managing people is sometimes more difficult than the job itself and i there's nothing wrong with not wanting to manage people and to outsource experts for work.

Like I've learned that like having an employee wasn't really what I wanted because God forbid something goes wrong. My company dissolved before the pandemic. So thank God that it was a mutual thing. But if I had to let someone go under that circumstance, I am – I couldn't. I'm too emotionally involved and that's just who I am as a human. And I'm a human doing business. There's nothing wrong with understanding your strengths and your weaknesses. I mean it's a painful thing.

I don't want to say this wrong, but I mean, I never want to see that again, what we saw with the pandemic and what businesses had to go through. But from an emotional standpoint, the appreciation I had for so many, I mean, you saw it all over the internet, all over the news, for so many business owners who sometimes in certain industries can get a bad rap just by generalizing but you see these people bawling their eyes out over their employees and the idea that they can't work for them and stuff and i appreciated that so much because you saw the people who really cared it wasn't just about like oh i have this business i'm making money of course you want to support yourself but these people genuinely were in tears over the fact that i have to let go so and so because i literally have no money to pay her and that's how she supports herself yeah yep it's like what's the future of my business how i'm like i'm hurting this person's entire livelihood where are they going to live like how will they get medical help? They don't have insurance anymore. There are so many layers to having a company and it all needs to be

extremely well thought out. I didn't think through it. And like my experience was great. Like it was it was great. It was a profitable business. I would I don't regret it. I just learned so much about myself. And luckily, it was a mutual thing. It ended. But yeah, it was difficult. And well, now you're not doing it again. I know. That's it.

That's what you had to learn. And it's not like you lost money on it. So it's not like a total loss. It's just, all right, that wasn't worth my time, my stress, or what I wanted. And that's it. But the other point of – I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, no.

I was just going to say I guess I did it because I was scared to fully commit to the cooking, the new angle of my brand. I was really scared. And if anyone wants to take that kind of risk, it is great to have a backup. But make it a backup. Don't make it a full-time job. Like work nine to five and then on nights and weekends do your passion and go 100 for it when you feel confident don't start your own business on the side yeah it's also it's a resource question like people will get like i think i got lucky with time and place like what the fact that the world shut down and I had the time to go build something like this and get it started and get it moving.

I think a lot of people, whether it be carrying around ridiculous student debt or something like that, I get it like when they can't. They can't just leave their job. You cannot. And then building – it depends what it is absolutely like building something on the side god damn is it are you at a disadvantage because there's only so many hours in the day it takes years i mean that's what i did and it it takes years so yeah it is like well how you figure it out and you work through it and you figure out what works. If you only dedicate one Sunday a week to whatever it is you want to do on the side, there is still growth that can happen every Sunday of the year.

That doesn't mean you're not like you're not going to have dinner with your family. It doesn't mean you want to have time to make time for the important things things but there's always a little bit of time and you can make it happen and i know everyone i would say the people who are working multiple jobs that is where yeah yeah that is impossible i'm talking about corporate america nine to five and then beyond that like the hustler hustlers yeah but still i do believe someone working multiple jobs that is a hungry person oh in itself and if they've that quality and that human being who is just grinding if they had something and they felt like they could put a little bit of time into it i feel like they would once again i i have no place to say that because i had the privilege of being able to build my brand for four years and feel okay about it well and you were smart to do it in

college too you know i mean i had the privilege to go to college yeah yeah And there was, I think there's a degree of less life responsibility when you're in there and some extra freed up time that frankly, very few people use and leverage. So I think that was really good that you did that. Because who knows, if you hadn't done that, the chances of you just like living in New York and deciding day one to go off on your own is probably a lot lower. You know, if you graduated college, it's like you're probably not going to jump right into that. I used to worship TV networks. Like I wanted more than anything to go to a network and to work there. And then I realized and I took a risk. Like I started playing with social media and I completely changed my mind. Even to this day, it is a goal of mine to have a show. But it's like not as much as a priority.

I would love the help. I don't want it to just be me producing anymore. I don't really care where the show would live. But I used to want to just be at a network. I used to worship that. First of all, I think that's going to happen for you oh thank you and secondly you're gonna you're gonna well yeah you love manifestation so that's good but you're also gonna do it but you're gonna do it online it's gonna be through something major on

i mean the dream would be that like you got so big you just do it for like scott scott bouchard oppenheim tv or literally like that'd be amazing exactly exactly but yeah it may don't manifest the wrong thing now i know see there you go you believe in it but either way like even if it's like food network i got a big channel there i love i mean i love what they're doing i i mean i think they're making huge strides in who they're putting on the network and the cuisines they're showcasing and the authentic things they are doing. We were talking about diversifying. I'm so excited. I am going to be a part of a few things with them.

I don't know. That's off the record. I can't. I want it. It's so high profile now. No, it's like four recipes it was a branded thing okay yeah but i don't know like again i wasn't growing up watching the food channel you know i wasn't this was not my i was an espn guy right so i don't know how much of what they're doing like i

know they have a big presence online but how much of what they're doing is now laser focus there with a lot of resources away from the actual tv or is there still a major amount of resources going into the tv me i think major i mean a lot of middle america i don't know i do not work for them so i'm not sure i do think the majority of majority of their audience is middle america and they still do really well on tv because you have the tried and true talent that people grew up with. And then I think they're taking more risks. Once again, I'm not 100% sure I don't work there. But it seems they're doing things differently with Discovery Plus, which is the new streaming platform. And that has other shows on it that

seem to skew a little younger. Yeah. And it's also, I forget about this, but the international audience too. I wonder, I don't know if you can get it internationally for Discovery Plus. I don't know about that. Yeah, I don't think so. But I'm saying like on the networks, like Cake Boss, for example. Oh. He's friends with my boss who I worked for.

Oh, no way. He's like, he's in all these countries i i forget the number so i won't say but his show oh yeah it's a lot but like i don't know about now i would imagine still the same but as of like five years ago he'd go to brazil all the time because like when he goes to brazil he's he's the guy wow like buddy valastro is like it's ronaldo and buddy valastro it's nuts but there's there's such a wide world out there a marketplace so like when i'm talking about tv i'm always thinking about the trends here because we see it moving away and then i got to remember i mean it's happening everywhere to an extent but there's also still huge marketplaces

that you know content like food everyone's interested in that so they can put it out yeah absolutely it's i'm curious to see like where everything goes and like it just keeps getting shorter and shorter content just keeps getting shorter and easier to absorb and it's very very interesting. I heard Bill Maher say something. This was a couple of years ago. He was on Joe Rogan and he was talking about content and I never thought of it this way,

but he really, he put it so perfectly. He's like, content is in this weird place where depending on what you're doing, it's getting shorter than ever before every day and it's getting longer than ever before every day and it's getting longer than ever before every day and i was like what and the way he explained it was that if you're talking visuals oh it's getting short like and this is before tiktok like blew up and he and he saw it you know he's in it he's like it's getting short like you can't expect people to sit down and watch and watch

a show he's like some people do but that's not where the majority of your audience is going to come from. He said, whereas what you're doing, Joe, it's audio. People can throw it in their ears and they can go about their day. Oh, yeah, I do that. I love it. My podcast isn't an hour of true crime in my ears. That's what I'm saying. You got true crime.

While I'm chopping and doing my mise en place, then I'm kind of mad if it's just 20 minutes. Exactly. And one and long. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Exactly. And there's a shortage of that, believe it or not, in certain lengths within like podcasting is one example. But if you're talking things that people have to put multiple senses on at the same time and it's not just like ears and intuition is in a sense, but you know what I mean? Like if they're putting their eyes and ears on it, now we're talking like, hey, if you

can win in 10 seconds, win in 10 seconds. And you can make just as much money. Oh, yeah. Oh, the money that's... And it depends what your account is. But I'm always asking people about like their monetization because I'm interested because there's so many different ways to cut the cake. I don't know how comfortable you are talking about that. So we don't have to totally do that.

We can talk about it. I probably won't disclose like rates and stuff. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, but. When did you, here's a good question. When did you get, so you were building it in college and then you went off on your own right away. So you had some monetization by that point. And what, what was that through? Cause you mentioned, I think on the podcast, but the restaurant was making a little bit of money through brand work. I'm talking, I probably made $30,000 my first time doing this, which is equivalent, not after taxes, but similar to what I would make as a PA. Sure. At a network, probably five grand less, but I was trying my best.

I would, at this point, make like a couple hundred dollars per post like but it was like a photo um that's pretty good at the beginning at the beginning yeah i mean i did have over a hundred thousand followers and the amount of work this is before people understood the amount of work before the market really became a place where brands wanted to be and i didn't have anyone on my team so i was was like, Oh, $200. Then I had, I guess I'll talk about rates in this sense. Then I had a larger brand come to me and offer me two grand. And I was like, wait, like people are doing it. Like, is this real now? Like, can we do this? So it's kind of all over the place the first year. And as more people got involved, I think brands were putting more money into it. And now if brands aren't offering creators a substantial amount of money for their work, not the ad space, their work, then it's insulting at this point.

Provided they have a market, obviously. But yes. Of course. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, you pay a producer, their day rate might be $500 to $1,000. That's number one. You pay an editor, might be a day rate of $500 to $1,000.

If you are doing an ad for food, you might hire a food stylist, $500 to $1,000 a day. All right. Food stylist. Food stylist. I'm uneducated. Tell me that. No, it's a real job.

And it's very, very, very popular. So this is people who know how to, who usually have a culinary background. They do, but I meant culinary school experience. And they prepare all ingredients plus backups for these shoots. They make the cheese extra cheesy. They know how to toast just the edge of the bun with a little blowtorch before you get started with your shoot. There are usually, for like large-scale productions, three swap-outs ready to go. So like if this cheese dish got cold and I had to scoop it, swap out another take, swap out another take. Wow. And that is a team.

So that's how they make like the Burger King and McDonald's commercials look so amazing. Well, yeah. I mean, a food stylist team definitely behind that. But sometimes, and I'm not saying those brands did this, but sometimes there's some enhancement there. Oh, sure. Like shaving cream instead of whipped cream. I never knew this. No one should do this if they're just doing self-content but like uh slime cheese i don't know how like the part where they yeah

yeah yeah i know what you're talking about but glue glue or something are you kind of like an expert at this point in that like do you still use a food stylist i don't no but i'm saying because you kind of you gotta like know all the tricks now. No. And everyone who's in this space, the culinary content creation, I'm not speaking for anyone else. They've got to know shooting. You also pay camera guy shooting, producing, editing, food styling, recipe development. If the focus is recipes. Yeah, it's a lot.

Yeah. And that determines the rate. And then you put the followers on top of that the viewership your stats on top of that god that's so time i'm just thinking about like i'm picturing it in my head because i do this now it's like i try to see how other people in different spaces do it but like the ingredients part alone to make the meal i mean if you're testing the smallest things you got to run through this a few different times because oh that didn't work all right i gotta try this and now

it's like i'm sure you can do multiple at once but you're at some point starting from scratch on some things yeah yeah it's it's all i mean if you have experience you like you know what works for certain recipes before you start and it's pretty easy to test it but you still have to test it and time still goes into that another thing that's not accounted for is expense for ingredients um if i'm making a steak and i need to test it three times good thing my husband and i can eat three steaks no problem but i need to buy all those ingredients and there's an expense element so there's a lot of different things that go into it and i the influencer rate space it's not talked about and i i feel bad i'm not disclosing my rates but i'm only doing that because they they vary depending on the ask and what i need to be doing and also when the brand will use it. And I have a team who manages that.

So like, yeah. But I would say if you have the following and you put that kind of work in, creators should be getting at least a couple thousand dollars per post. Yeah. I think a lot of the attitude is just like they take it. People think people are lazy. Sure. Well, that's – I wasn't going wasn't gonna say but yes that's another thing

and also there's such a supply of creators across a lot of different things that brands are just moving fast and they're like okay all right they said no we'll go to the next one and in some ways you don't you don't land on the quality with that and i think like are you talking about like sellout culture like oh yeah not fab i'd like you know there's like flat tummy tea like every girl was drinking it online i don't know flat tummy tea i don't know there's like some brands that like really hook themselves into influencers and you see them everywhere you're talking about that like the brands who just like want to hire everyone that could be an example what were you talking about i totally put that in your mouth no

that absolutely could be one because they're not they're looking at they're looking at reach and not engagement they're looking at let's just get as many eyeballs on it and if people say no we'll go get the other 100 it will say yes so yes that was what i was talking about but even on a more micro level when they're in true when they're going to an individual and being like okay we want this person to do this rollout for this kind of thing. All right, they said, no, no problem. We'll go to the next one. And they're not looking at – I mean I know they do have metrics of who actually like has a real following because that's another thing.

People are buying followers and it's so fake. It's really bullshit but i i found that to be very unjust when i was starting this and i saw so many people doing that but now they have ways they have ways to catch that though i know but still it just made me like sad in the beginning defeated yeah you can kind of like you can tell when i go to a page with a million followers and they have 3 000 likes on a picture honestly though like sometimes engagement sucks so sometimes i give the benefit of the doubt especially for accounts that are older your audience might like part of your audience might not use instagram as

much that happened to me so i don't know i always get benefit of the doubt i don't know you're a true creator. You're rooting for creators. I feel like I... True creator. I mean, I think... I don't know. Sometimes I'm cynical about some of them. Other times, though, I realize that.

I mean, actually, TikTok's like the best example. Some of the early accounts I would look at on there, because TikTok doesn't give a shit, man. Like, the minute your niche is a little run out, if you stay with that, they won't show it to people. So I'll see some accounts I was looking at in 2019 that were like the early accounts up at a million and stuff. They have two million. They're getting 10,000 views on a video.

And it's sad, but it happens a lot. No, on TikTok it happens all the time. When I have a video blow up, I'll get a lot of followers and then i'll post something and i'll get 300 views like so that's why i don't hold it against anyone i you can tell usually who buys followers just by looking at them on their like seeing if they're fake profiles do people buy followers on tiktok is that no i don't know i'm talking about instagram yeah on instagram especially yeah yeah that's fine yeah i i don't even pay attention anymore to that because doing this full time i post my own stuff i engage with typically other female chefs because like i support their work and i

think they're great and then i shut everything off because like why would i sit there and mind fuck myself over exactly over like oh my god and my post isn't doing well and like theirs is doing great there's if you look at it it's like this is something i put into this medium how it performs can be determined by the day the updates a variety of factors it's not about you it's about just it's what's gonna happen then you take the emotion away from it and it's more it's it's more concerning when it happens over a long sustained period because like you said it's a day-to-day kind of thing the piece of content you think is going to be a banger is probably not going to be the one that's a banger you know it's going to be another one and it has sometimes it's the luck of

the day you posted it exactly right and you can't the point is you just got to keep creating a good product and trying different things so it works over time yeah in the creative industry i think it's so important to just not feel defeated when things are not working out even if it's months if it's years if you really believe in what you're doing adapt it to what you see is doing well maybe or maybe find a new angle but keep believing in yourself very cliche but it's true because so many people i feel like you start and then you evolve once you get the ball rolling you change the path a little bit yeah i think another thing though and we haven't said this but you do a really really good job of this is obviously you're there for your niche and that

value and whatever that is but you got to form a relationship with your audience and it's a weird thing because it's very unnatural you're forming a relationship on the internet with a bunch of people you don't know at mass scale but there's a part of it that's weird because you're like sharing your life and some things maybe you don't want to. But the people who have a good balance of also showing that they're a human and they have things going on and there's good things, there's bad things, and they put it out there. Those accounts I appreciate a lot and clearly a lot of people do because it puts that realness behind it it's not just this person posting content about whatever and very quickly but you work in a lot and i know you have your personal page too but like even on your regular page i think you work in like parts of your life as well like on on the dining with sky

with skylar page and talk about like what's going on, your personal life and that, you know, there's a person behind the person putting out all these recipes every day. And I got to imagine, I don't know this because I'm not behind the scenes like you, but I got to imagine a lot of the people, whether they were day one people or people who've kind of come on board in the last year or two, they appreciate that because even if you don't know them, you know, they kind of know you it's really funny thank you by the way for saying i'm good at that i i try and keep like all my personal stuff that i do post on dining

with skylar kind of food related and then for the people who really want to know more and like really personal stuff i have a personal account that i also post about everything else on but it's funny because when people will stop me if they see me somewhere like say hi i'm not trying to be like well they stop me and say hi oh you're a big deal no like i had an event a women's business networking event the other week and a few people from instagram were like oh it's so creepy i know you but and like it's so weird i know that what you did like last night and I'm like first of all it's not creepy like I'm so grateful that you care thank you for showing up and thank you so much for caring because you give me the opportunity of a lifetime and it's not creepy

like so if you follow anyone and you think it's creepy or weird that you're digesting the content that they put out there it's not that's why we do it you know it's also been a while too like i don't i don't find that like five six years ago yeah i just said it's kind of weird you know but now we're so used to it it's like i i don't like the people who are just constantly you know attention whoring out there for every and that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about the people who are humans and and are just well everyone everyone's human but like some people portray differently that's what i mean like portraying like let's not put on a front here yeah but there's a there's an aspect to that and

it's not even something that i'm naturally comfortable with myself i'm forced to do it it because I talk with people in here. So people want to know like they can. You're very vulnerable by doing something like this. I appreciate the people who do that over the long term and actually are willing to maybe even like set an example for people. I'm not saying that's why you do it. But there's got to be a lot of people out there who like you and maybe they don't want to do exactly what you do. But they're interested in opening up their own place, right? And they're going to promote that on social media. So they're like, okay, well, Skylar does a great job promoting food on social media let me let me go see how she does it and then they take that as an example and it's almost like you create a little army of people who can

then go do cool things for themselves and they got to appreciate that it's a community yes the creative space online is totally a community it's either either who I engage with. It's like full on consumers of content, making the recipes, like really committed. It's just viewers who are just like, who like the inspiration or it's the other. Like I want to create too. Like I want to make recipes too. Like those are the three categories that of people to sum it up. Not like I'm categorizing everyone but uh that i notice on instagram it's a cool thing too because you've seen it over like a long haul

yeah oh my god i'll never forget the first time someone stopped me in new york i was so hung over i was 21 and i it was like such a small scale. I was like hungover getting a smoothie. And this girl stopped me. And I was like, no, no. Not right now. No, I was just like, no way. She knows who I am. That's cool.

I was embarrassed, but I was also like, shit. What did your family think of this? Like when you jumped into it? I'm so grateful that my family is very supportive at first i mean i was i grew up in the world that we used to live in where it's like you go work in a network you do it by the steps by the book so my parents were more like we're thinking i should do something like that but it was random right i graduated early to save some money and my parents took me out from college yeah i graduated early from college and my parents took me to florida

random we went to dinner uh at this place balood and um danielle balood his restaurant what was that thing you said earlier the the bird thing? Oh, foie gras. No. The bird and the egg thing? Oh, balut. Balut. I was going to say, is that... Bouloud. Daniel Bouloud.

B-O-U-L-O-U-D, I think? All the French is coming up. No, Boul... I'm forgetting. Either way. All right. Daniel Bouloud in Florida. You were in his restaurant.

Yeah. This is right when i graduated early my parents were still a little skeptical about what i was going to do they were like are you going to apply to like networks like what are you doing and the chef came out because i posted a photo but like i didn't even tag them like i didn't i don't even know oh so he followed you yeah and he was hey, I just really want to thank you for coming to our restaurant. And they gave us a free dessert. And my dad was like, what?

So did you hand him 100? No, no, no, I swear. And I was like, I have such imposter syndrome. Sometimes I feel like I am not worthy. And that was one of those moments where I was like, oh, my God. That's the universe telling you that. Exactly. And that was definitely meant to be in that moment.

And that made my dad kind of realize, okay, this is a thing where she's really getting recognized and I'm not going to poo-poo her for taking a risk. That's awesome though. Because like even if your parents like they're not in that world, maybe they don't get it, but then they see, okay, all right, this isn't fake business. Exactly. And what's so funny is even up to, like, a year ago, I have a huge extended family.

And, like, a lot of people would be like, so what are you doing? Like, are you, like, making money? Like, do you have another job now? Like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm doing this full time. It pays very well. Like, fuck. And no one believes it still. All these years in, they're still. now like what are you doing i'm like i'm doing this full time it pays very well like fuck and

no one believes it still but all these years in there still i mean it's older people i get it and say oh so what are you you are a tv host i'm like yeah that's it that's that's it that's all i do tv on instagram abc123 that's it we'll call it that one one more thing because we're coming up on three hours here and this was awesome so thank you for doing this by the way this was amazing to be able to catch up after all these years watching you so it's it's cool and it was an inspiration as i said but you had said something a while ago maybe like a half hour ago and we went somewhere else but you were talking about burnout with it and i think that was a really important theme that you can speak to because

you've been in it for so long. But like, looking at it from my end, when I just was looking to jump in, I knew I'm like, okay, there's going to be two to three years here where it's like, okay, here, you're building, you're working all the time. And I think that's, that's what I don't want to lose in it. There is an expectation that maybe there is a short time there where you don't have a ton of a life. But if you put that as an unlimited clock and then just say, I'm going to do it because I'm going to do it. Even if you don't burn out and stop, you're going to burn out and hate yourself. And so I'm always very cognizant of that. And that's why I see the progress, and I look at it,

and I go, okay, I'm on schedule here, and I need to try to stick to that, even if there's things out of my control, but for people out there who are looking, whether they're in college right now, or they're 25,

or even like 40, who are listening, and are looking to start that thing they want to do, how did you reach up? I'm not saying you knew it going in, but how did you reach a point where you're like okay i'm still trying a lot of things and i'm spending a lot of time but i'm having a life and i'm um doing it in a way where i'm happy with myself because i have like some form of

balance i didn't realize that i needed this balance until um late 2019 really i didn't realize that I needed this balance until late 2019. Really? I didn't realize it. I mean, I always had time. I always made time. I had a boyfriend at the time, my now husband. We were dating throughout a lot of my business development through Ballsy Bites, through my media company. Then we got engaged and married.

I always had time for that, but it was always work to the bone, work to the bone, work to the bone, pencil in when to hang out. And like, it still is. It still is about figuring out the balance. But to rewind for a second, I think the best way to avoid burnout and to understand yourself and how to balance is to really take progress with your own company day by day. And to I know you have a timeline. Nothing goes according to plan. Oh, no. And I'm not talking about just you. I'm talking about everyone. Right? Like if you asked me a five year plan five years ago, totally different. It's a take it day by day. And to understand if you had to do everything on your to do list, like there's always going to be items on there. To understand what is necessary and important to prioritize in that moment and how to prioritize and make time to be home for dinner and enjoy yourself or watch that show that you like.

Sure. Or scroll TikTok or whatever. And you only figure that out if you get the big picture out of your head. But also like what you're spending that time on and those things are fine too. But I think sometimes people who are building stuff will spend their time on some of the mindless things when they actually get a free moment and then they get very disconnected. And like I'm cognizant. What do you mean by that? Meaning to use this as an example, one thing that I am really, really lucky about is my job is to talk with people, right?

It's a big part of it. So I'm very connected at all times. And when I'm not in here, a big part of my life, too, is constantly talking with people on the phone or seeing people, right? There are a lot of people out there who are building stuff and it's different than this. Totally. And it's like, actually, you won't understand this. You're doing it yourself. You're doing every, and it's like you are relying on you.

You are inherently spending more time disconnected from a lot of people. And I'm generalizing a bit, but I can imagine that has to get in people's heads because naturally, even if like we're not the most social person, people still want to be social. And then when you start really digging into something, you can lose that very easily. How social you are? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, there are two things. Number one, I really – I'm going to rephrase.

I think we need to stop guilting ourselves for disconnecting. I used to feel like I had to be connected to maintain friendships for work. Like I always need to be doing something because I need to keep up with someone, something. We are the FOMO generation. We are FOMO people. And we have to take that guilt away for ourselves. And everyone's journey for doing that is different. The second thing is you have to know know and I disconnect Sebastian and I, we turn everything off, we have Saturdays for ourselves. And it's rare we get together with

people. Because that we are we prioritize our relationship more than some of the friendships that we have. And that's if our friends can't respect that, then that's then so be it, then we should have a bigger bigger conversation same thing like when i was doing this and taking time for myself i like some i had some friends who were just like well why won't you come out with us and and you know that's a bigger conversation and if that friendship will not work out you can respect people and not have the same like love language, whether it's a friend or your significant other or whoever. I mean, if it's a significant other, you should have the same love language, but not the same. You know what I mean?

Yeah, there has to be compatibility. Yeah, you shouldn't feel guilty for taking time for yourself. It doesn't mean you're mean to anyone else. And a good friend, good to anyone in your life will respect you for taking care of yourself i think i've been able to see and separate the people who you know they're not doing something like this so at the beginning they didn't understand but then they learned and they're and they're great supporters for it versus the people who never did and they still and by the way i think some of them

still have really good intentions some of them aren't there's some people who kind of turned into an asshole let me wrong everyone has those people but there's people who they just don't really get it and then they don't take it personally when i have to for the millionth time be like no i can't do that you know what i mean it's it's it's a weird balance but it's hard too because like people are all different you know we all have different lived experiences we have I can't do that. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's a weird balance, but it's hard too. Cause like people are all different. You know, we all have different lived experiences.

We have different dreams and we do different things. We all do different things. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think as we grow older and if anyone's upset with you for how you prioritize yourself, it's something they're struggling with within themselves.

And if, and that's their journey and i i'm a people pleaser i'm such a people pleaser this took me a very long time to figure out and i still feel bad if i upset people but it's it's one of the most valuable lessons i've ever learned that's a great spot then i like because if i touched that point we'd be talking for an hour. But thank you for doing this. I was looking forward to this. It's nice to see a fellow awk out there doing your thing. So same to you. This was cool.

I'm sure we're actually like, I assume no one I know listens to the podcast. It's all people I don't know, which is fine. But this one actually, there'll be people we know. Oh, who knows?

I don't know. So, but anyway, I'll work my way onto your true crime playlist oh my god you should yes i did have one episode i'll tell you afterwards one you should listen to because there was a lot of good true crime stuff in that but i gotta work anyway scholar thank you thank you julie we'll do this again congrats on on all your success and a lot more of it too right back at you thank you thank you julie we'll do this again congrats on on all your success and a lot more of it too

right back at you thank you thank you everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back