In our latest ‘What’s Cooking’, we hear from Carolyn Brasher, Director of Whisk Media Group and Founder of myfoodbook. Carolyn is making a mark in food media with impressive content marketing.

Your business name: myfoodbook

How would you describe the business you are in?

We are a publisher specialising in content marketing for cooking & food brands

What do you love about your work?

Working in food is just so exciting – there’s always so much happening in the food marketing space. I’m really lucky to be a part of it.

I’ve been able to take my 25+ years of experience in PR and Marketing to create a unique platform that many initially said would never work. Five years on since our launch, consumers love the concept and the brands we work with have achieved tremendous results.

It also helps that we get to try new products, as well as create new recipe ideas, photography and video through our sister agency Whisk Media Group.

And lastly, but by no means least, we get to work with passionate brand marketers who want to do more to connect consumers with their brands and products and can see the value in our offer which is beyond advertising.

What part of your job would you gladly give away?

Reconciling expense receipts… as my CFO will testify, I’m terrible at getting them in on time even though I’m a numbers person.

If you were starting out in business again today, what piece of advice would you give your younger you?

Nothing will ever be perfect. I probably waited six months longer than I should have to go live because I wanted everything to be perfect. The reality is, it never will be and in-fact, going live before I was 100% happy was a blessing in disguise. The parts of the business model that I thought I needed never went live… the customers didn’t want them anyway!

Get going as soon as you can – you’ll learn a lot more than when you’re in planning mode.

Women start business 41% of the time to solve a problem? Sometimes this means we have a great vision but don’t have enough resources to sustain our business for the long term. Tell us what resources you started your business with.

I started the business from home initially using savings for a renovation we had planned. My husband and I also planned for me not to have an income for at least 2 years as we knew we would have to keep reinvesting to get myfoodbook to the scale it needed to be. Not paying yourself for 2 years is a big deal and I completely understand that few can undertaken such a big commitment. You really have to plan and budget well. I hear a lot of stories about entrepreneurs who forecast unrealistic income and then find they have to shut the business down because they didn’t have a plan B or C to survive the reality of being a start-up.

As you know we are passionate about women #backingthemselves. So tell us about a time in the last twelve months that you’re really proud of. 

I was able to go on a three week overseas holiday this year and for the first time I was able to get away, relax and leave the team to run the show. I take holidays regularly, but they are usually local and when the team was small it was never possible to completely log off.

It’s a great feeling to have grown to a scale that we now have the right senior leaders in place and that the whole team is aligned to our goals and values. When this happens you know your baby is in good hands. This gave me the confidence to let go and enjoy my time away. It was my best holiday in years!

As we are always growing and learning, what is the one thing you would like to take time to learn more about?

 

The time has come for me to consider bringing in an investor so I want to immerse myself in learning how to make this a positive and successful experience for all involved. I’ve heard too many disaster stories and want to avoid that at all costs.

The world is changing so fast and technology enables us to do so much more. We’re interested in which app you could not live without and why?

At the moment, Uber. I love the availability of service and the ease of linking to the business account (see answer about part of job to give away 🙂 )

Why did you decide to become a member of Females in Food®

The opportunity to network with women who want to lift each other up is great! Plus, I believe you should always be learning and this forum is set up just right.

Thank you Carolyn.

Want to read more about another successful Females in Food member? Check out our ‘What’s Cooking’ interview with Dairy Farmer, Carissa Wolfe.