Podcast Episode 300: How to Turn a Passion Project into Profit Transcripts

Jen Chapin: I think this is a great conversation, especially like you said, for women to go out there and pursue their passions, because I think so many women are not financially independent. And I think that’s really important because that gives you agency and choice in your life.

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I am your host, JoAnn Crohn joined here by the delightful Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker: Well, hello, hello, everybody. How are you?

JoAnn Crohn: we have a phenomenal guest for you. She is a working mom who also has a very successful YouTube channel. I mean, this interview was delightful. Wasn’t it free?

Brie Tucker: Oh my gosh. It was so much fun. And before we started, I was ecstatic about the fact that we had some similarities going on. So. The whole midwestern thing, Chiefs, her kids are the same age as yours. I’m like, Jen, you were in the wrong part of the country. You need to come live in Gilbert with us.

JoAnn Crohn: Yes. So Jen Chapin YouTuber, and the author of the essential pantry cookbook. She sees how women and moms often put their own ambitions on the back burner to take care of others. And she makes it her mission to show other moms that you can have it all. And with that, let’s get on with our interview with the lovely Jen Chapin.

JoAnn Crohn: Hey, Jen, welcome to the no guilt mom podcast. We are so happy to have you here.

Jen Chapin: Thanks for having me.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s funny. Cause like I have to mention this cause it’s just on the top. I spurred out things. Bri, you mentioned that you didn’t have any coffee yet today. It’s

Brie Tucker: Kansas City and they’re Chiefs fans, I’m like, this is my best friend to be like, I’m just very excited about that stuff. But

Jen Chapin: That’s, yeah, that’s awesome.

JoAnn Crohn: As you sip your coffee, you’re like it’s really funny. I was like trying to get a word in and i’m like They can’t yeah the Kansas City brings out everything. If you had started in Maryland, Jen, it would have been like a done deal. I could have just like left out.

Brie Tucker: right? Yeah. Cause I was, I was born in Baltimore and then moved to Kansas city. Joey, I know that. Yeah. Those are my key things, man. Talk about, talk about those. And if you happen to have a little black dog named Max, I mean, that’s it. We’re done. We’re done.

JoAnn Crohn: No, but we’re, we’re all about, we’re all about like excitedness and hyperness and I love it for you. I’m not knocking you down at any, any way. I’m just like, yeah. It’s the days where like we’re on, and you know, Jen, you probably have these days too. You’re on some days and you’re just like, I’m just trying to get through this day.

Please just get it. Like, I’m, I’m just trying, I’m trying. It’s it’s a day. But I am so enthralled with like what you’re doing on YouTube. I’ve been watching your videos on YouTube and like you tackle what could be a boring subject. I mean, meal planning with like, you’re so funny and you’re so like witty and you’re just like. You make it really, really engaging and fun to watch. And so my question is, how did you first get into creating the videos that you do? Mine

Jen Chapin: Yeah. So I actually kind of saw a content gap on YouTube. kids are 15 and 11 and I’ve been a working mom their whole lives. And so when I first started watching YouTube, There weren’t really a lot of moms like me doing content. It was mostly moms who stayed home with their kids. And while I still watch lots of different channels, it wasn’t always relatable to me.

And so I thought, well, I like to cook and I can meal prep and meal plan. And I already do all those things. And so I really just kind of started out. sharing what I was doing in my kitchen back then my kids were smaller. And so I did like the cute little lunch boxes and just started posting my grocery hauls.

And there is a market for that on YouTube. And I’m really happy to represent working moms in that space. There’s not very many of us. There’s not very many of us out there on, on YouTube. doing that kind of content. And so it’s been really fun to do that. In addition to my full time job, obviously it’s very busy.

But it’s a good way to make extra income and it’s been a super fun journey. I’ve been on YouTube for. I think it’s been like six years. Yeah, it’ll be six years this year that I’ve been doing this type of content. So

JoAnn Crohn: That’s awesome. Cause I imagine like, there’s not many working moms on YouTube just because of the amount of time involved in creating those videos. Because I mean, like I’ve watched your videos. I’m like, that is some editing time that she has put in right there. there’s a lot, a lot going on. So I imagine like, it’s hard balancing video creation with your full time job and you’re a registered nurse, correct?

Jen Chapin: Yep. That’s my background is, is a nursing. Yep.

JoAnn Crohn: Are you still nursing right now?

Jen Chapin: I don’t take care of patients anymore. I’ve been out of direct patient care for a long time. I’ve been a nurse for almost 20 years, so I work more in healthcare consulting now. So we travel a lot. We do consultations at, different hospitals across the country. Get kind of called in to do consultation and, and education. So I’m using kind of my skills and my background, working in the hospital, just kind of in a different, way, that’s one thing that I really like about nursing and in healthcare in general is there’s, there’s just so many different things that you can do with your experience and your education.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, I love that. something like, I know that a lot of our no guilt moms experience is they want to do like a career. like they want to do something extra. They want to pursue their passions. You said that you saw this gap in YouTube and you’re like, Oh, I like this. Let’s do more with that. But it’s a struggle with time and with energy. So like, how did you, when you were first starting out really manage that having the energy to do the videos after like a full day of work and taking care of kids?

Jen Chapin: I’ve always had some type of like. Side gig or side. I hate the term side hustle, but you know what I mean? I feel like I’ve never just had One job. I’ve always kind of had something on the side that I like to do. And a lot of people have opinions over monetizing your hobby and how you shouldn’t monetize your hobby because then it turns into work.

But for me, if I enjoy something and I can make some money off of doing it, I don’t really see anything wrong with that. I think you do have to. You know, kind of walk that line. So it still stays fun and not work. I mean, at this point it really kind of has turned into a second job, but I still really enjoy it.

And I think in the beginning, especially on social media and anyone that’s grown an audience on social media knows this is that you really have to work for free for a long time before you start seeing any return from it. And so you have to really like what you’re doing. You know, you can’t go into it.

Wanting to do something that’s going to make money that you hate or that you don’t enjoy because that passion is kind of what’s going to carry you through and motivate you. And I think especially on YouTube, overall the community is very positive. There’s lots of, you know, other women in my comments, saying thank you for the recipes and Thanks for the inspiration.

Thanks for being relatable. And so I think, before you kind of start making money, that positive feedback really helps. I think it’s also worth noting that I am married, so I do have a partner. I think if I did not, this type of stuff wouldn’t necessarily have been possible when my kids were younger.

Now that they’re like teens and preteens, it’s a little bit different. I don’t, you know, they’re not so hands on. But yeah, I mean, it was, it was something that was really fun. And I mean, everyone has to start somewhere and I think, anything you do, if you look back at your first year that you were out of college or your first, you know, 20 videos on YouTube, you look back and you’re like, Oh my gosh, that’s so, that’s so embarrassing, but because you’re kind of learning in front of everyone, but you have to start somewhere. And it was something that I was passionate about and that I really enjoyed.

Brie Tucker: Well, we, we feel you on that. Yeah. I heard JoAnn talk about that because like, how long have you been doing the videos of the No Guilt Mom YouTube channel, JoAnn? I’ve only been with you for a

JoAnn Crohn: on the YouTube channel, it was like, that’s kind of a dying thing. That’s not being concentrated on right

Brie Tucker: But I mean like, so like there’s pictures of your youngest as a baby who just

JoAnn Crohn: there is. There is. And he just turned 11. Yeah. Because like I started in like mommy blogger world and like sponsored content. And so , you see like these old sponsored content posts where like they gave, you know, they give you a free thermometer and you’re like, Oh my

Brie Tucker: our most popular videos. I’m going to say, I think it’s no pops up quite a bit cause I’m in the YouTube channel these days, but Jen,

JoAnn Crohn: I still have and use that thermometer, by the way, but you don’t get any other pay for it and you go on it because it’s fun and you like it and it becomes like just a joy. So I, I love that you say that Jen, because I think that when we’re encouraging moms to go out and like really pursue their passion It has to be fun because you don’t see any other sort of validation.

When you first start out, it’s really just for you. It’s just for you to experiment. It’s just for you to to put creative work out there. And like you said, there’s a lot of supportive people on your YouTube channel, giving you comments. I wish I had that on no guilt mom for some of them. Cause there seems to be a lot of men. Who are just like,

Brie Tucker: you look

JoAnn Crohn: I don’t know what the algorithm’s doing.

Jen Chapin: Yeah. It’s, I,

JoAnn Crohn: No, no, I can’t.

Jen Chapin: I do think that it’s like, it’s, I, I would love to explore that further kind of the dynamic and some of the, just the, the things that women face on social media. I get called out a lot in my comments on YouTube for doing sponsored content, you know, and it’s like, do you have this same energy for men that are out here trying to make money?

I mean, you know, Maybe people do. I don’t necessarily see it. But I think in general, you know, men are kind of seen as, as providers. And so when they’re out there trying to get their sponsored bag and whatever, there’s not a whole lot of negativity around it. But for some reason, as women, you know, we’re expected to kind of do this free labor for our families and for everybody else. And so that’s something that I’ve um, I’ve noted also social media.

JoAnn Crohn: there is like this free labor expectation. even if you’re trying to like get people on your email list so you can talk with them some more, they will get so offended if you like, try to offer them anything else that they pay for and they’re like, Oh, you’re so sneaky. I see. I’m like. What do you mean? This is a business. Are you kidding me? Like what’s going on here?

Brie Tucker: And I have to defend anybody who is making back any money on their unicorn time, something that they truly enjoy and are passionate about, because Okay. Let’s peel this onion back and be like, all right. So it is, it started out as like a hobby, something that you enjoy in order to keep doing a hobby. It costs money. People, it costs money, cooking, even like, right. Supplies, new equipment, all of that. Where is there the bad side to making the money to continue to be able to enjoy doing that hobby? Yeah.

Jen Chapin: the end of the day, like, especially on YouTube, you’re providing free content and free value for people. Right. And so they’re consuming the content for free. And so, you know, obviously YouTube pays you via Google AdSense for the amount of ads that they put in your videos and things like that.

But that alone is not enough to compensate you for your time, especially if you’re producing multiple videos a week. if I did not take the Sponsor content, I would make less than minimum wage. You know, with the amount and, and I’m not okay with anyone making less than less than minimum wage.

Right. And so I think it’s, something that I think is improving over time. I think this kind of space of, you know, making money online is, I personally wouldn’t say that it’s new, but I think to a lot of people, it’s, fairly new, it’s a fairly new space. But really any type of content that you consume online, whether it’s a podcast, I mean, think about Facebook, for example, right?

Tons of people on Facebook all the time. How is Facebook free? I mean, Facebook isn’t a charitable organization. They have ads on their platform, right? And so anything online or On TV that you consume for free has to be subs, you know, the work has to be subsidized somehow. I’m really proud of the fact that I’ve gotten to work with so many cool brands over the years.

Like if when I first started my channel, if you would have told me, Oh, Hey, you’re going to get to work with Walmart. Like Walmart’s going to sponsor your video. You know, Clorox bleach is going to sponsor a video, Barilla pasta, like all of these household names. I don’t know. I think that’s so cool. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: So cool. It is so cool I want to really like dig into this more Jen and the money actually behind youtube So if you right now listening you’ve always been curious about like the behind the scenes and like you’ve maybe thought of dabbling in youtube You’re gonna want to stick around and we’re gonna get back to it right after this So Jen, I want to talk about the money really behind YouTube because as you mentioned before, there are a lot of misconceptions about how creators get paid there. I know talking with, for instance, my father in law, he thinks, Oh, all you have to do is slap a video on YouTube and you’re going to get a lot of money. And I’m like, that’s, that’s not how it works.

Brie Tucker: If only it were that easy.

JoAnn Crohn: If only it were that easy. And then my husband was talking to me yesterday and he was watching a documentary, not a documentary. It was an interview with Mr. Beast and in the interview with Mr. Beast. He said that their ad, revenue on YouTube is something like 130 million, which is the budget for all of their content for the next year. And he makes his profit through selling Feastables, the chocolate bar. And so it’s basically like, Mr. Beast is creating YouTube videos to then sell chocolate to kids. It’s basically, but like. he’s not even profitable if YouTube were just his only source of revenue. So let’s peel back the layers here, Jen. Like, what does it look like for a creator like yourself making money through YouTube?

Jen Chapin: Yeah. So first I’ll say like the Mr. Beastification of YouTube is something that people in my sort of niche have fought against for a long

JoAnn Crohn: Ooh, tell me more about because it’s, well, it’s, sort of like, if you have like a little mom and pop coffee shop downtown, trying to compare their business model to Jeff Bezos business model, it’s, it’s two totally different things.

Jen Chapin: and, you know, I’m not saying obviously Mr. Beast is wildly successful and he makes a lot of money, but as you said, he dumps most of his profit back into his videos and clearly it’s, it’s working for him. I don’t really aspire to be Mr. Beast. Sometimes I find that style of videos, like very annoying.  And I think a lot of the women that watch me would say so too. It’s like, I put 7 billion Orbeez in a pool and like, that’s not, you know,

JoAnn Crohn: Who’s gonna clean that up? That is exactly what

Jen Chapin: know. Right?

JoAnn Crohn: I see

Brie Tucker: would 100, I’d be pausing every 5 seconds and be like, That’s just not realistic. Like, do you know, like, seriously, and the skin allergies that would happen. The irritation. That’s a mom watching the video. Right.

Jen Chapin: yeah. And so the way that I operate my channel, and I think how a lot of women in my niche or, and even a lot of the cooking channels too, it turns out to be a very high profit margin. Because you don’t have inventory, right? So essentially you’re only purchasing the items that you need for your videos, which obviously is, you know, if you’re doing a cooking video, you might need to buy a cookbook.

You might need to buy some kitchen equipment. You might need to buy some food to make the video, you know, type of thing. But other than that, the way that creators make money on YouTube is by, Primarily through YouTube AdSense. And so no, you can’t just put a video on YouTube and start making money.

You actually have to build a channel. So you need to have a thousand subscribers on your channel and so many watch hours before they’ll start paying you. And even then it’s highly variable in terms of how much money you can make from your videos. So myself, I have a very I would say like tame family friendly channel.

It’s not highly controversial. I don’t talk about controversial things. And so my ad rates are fairly high in terms of how much I get paid per view. But for example, if you have like. You know, a creator who’s maybe doing like reactionary content that is covering current events and can be seen as very controversial.

They might not get paid a lot and it also depends on your demographics. So my, the demographics of the people that watched my channel are mostly women between the ages of 25 and 55. And as it turns out, that’s who has the spending power in homes also. And so advertisers want to target those people. And so when they see that my videos have Or mine or whoever else has those type of demographics.

They’re like, yeah, we want to put ads in those videos. A lot of people ask, do you have control over the ads that YouTube puts in your videos? No, you don’t. So you get paid on a monthly basis according to that. And then any, you know, brand sponsorships that you might take, those are really highly variable In terms of the money that you get paid for them.

Typically it depends on the number of views you can guarantee per video. And then you know, whatever brand, whether it’s HelloFresh or Warby Parker, or, you know, whoever’s advertising with you, they’re going to pay you a flat fee to integrate that product with your website. and that kind of advertisement into their video.

And then obviously you can also make money with affiliate marketing. So, you know, anytime I’m recommending products, it’s typically something I bought myself off of Amazon, like for my kitchen, and so there’s a, I would say that’s a very, for me, at least it’s a smaller percentage of revenue. I wrote a cookbook a couple of years ago, so that can be another stream of revenue.

And then if you want to sell digital products, like, recipe books, or I created a course last year, there’s, there’s lots of different ways you can monetize. And I think this is a great conversation, especially like you said, for women to go out there and pursue their passions, because I think so many women are not financially independent.

And I think that’s really important because that gives you agency and choice in your life. Right. And so many women are just kind of stuck in situations where they might want to do something different, but they can’t, you know, because of their financial situation. And, if I can make money on YouTube, just being a regular schmegular mom, I mean, really anyone can do it. Right. So.

JoAnn Crohn: I mean, I think your, your story is incredibly inspiring. And I mean, not to give yourself any, like, I mean, you say you’re just a regular shmegular mom and you can make money. You, there’s a lot of work behind it. Like, I, I mean, I, I see the amount of work and the amount of skill that you have acquired throughout your YouTube journey too. Which I think is something that people who wanna get into it really don’t pay attention to like they may look at you creating videos and they’re like, oh I can’t create something like Jen does right now But they don’t see like you said it took you six years,

Brie Tucker: back to the first videos, go

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah

Brie Tucker: first videos of anybody’s channel, of anybody’s channel to have a more realistic expectation of where you start. And I think that that’s a really good point, JoAnn. We’ve talked before about like the gap and the gain on the podcast plenty. And I think that’s what intimidates a lot of us. I know what intimidates the crap out of me. You have to talk me off a ledge on a regular basis on things here at No Guilt Mom, where I’m like, but I can’t do it. Like you do it. And you’re like, I’ve been doing this Brie for like, you know, 11 years. I hopped on here four years ago and I’m like, why can’t I do it as good as you? Well,

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, something else that I know that moms are concerned about is the amount of time involved. And I think that we sometimes get an unrealistic expectation of how much time something should take us. And like, we might be down on ourselves a lot if it takes us longer than we think it should. And I want to get into the time discussion right after this. So something when moms are pursuing, we call it unicorn time here based on Eve Rodsky’s fair play, how she talks about unicorn space in our balance program, we encourage moms to have unicorn time, that personal passion. But time is always an issue, especially like if you have trouble with time management in general there’s You might, see, oh, okay, I’m gonna put aside, like, an hour to do a YouTube video. And then I see moms, and you’re shaking your head at me, Jen. I see moms. Yeah, yeah,

Brie Tucker: like, that’s so, Oh wait, here you go. Oh, bless your heart.

JoAnn Crohn: your heart.

Brie Tucker: so sweet.

JoAnn Crohn: But, like, people will say, oh, it’s like an hour. And then they’ll be like, I couldn’t get it done. I’m such a poor time manager. Tell us the reality behind the time that it takes to create a video.

Jen Chapin: So, I mean, I’ll just speak for myself because a lot of people have different processes and I will say I’ve worked with an editor on and off. Over the years. I will say when I do work with someone who helps me edit my videos, I can be a lot more prolific. I’m not right now because earlier this year, I kind of took a mental health break and I’m just now kind of getting back into the swing of things.

But in terms of like, Okay. If you go to YouTube and you see a video on my channel, let’s say 20 minutes long. I would say probably at least, you know, eight to 12 hours of work probably went into that video depending on how complex it is. So like, for example, if I’m doing like a budget video, I really enjoy doing those, like, okay, how many meals can I make with 50 worth of groceries or something like that?

You know, there’s an insane amount of planning that goes into it. I have to shop for the groceries. I have to, you know, prep all the ingredients, film the content do the voiceovers, film the sponsored integration. If there’s one of those film, the intro film, the outro, get the B roll, you know, and then edit it all together.

So it’s definitely not as quote, easy as it seems. Obviously the finished. Product, hopefully looks polished and put together and like it was very easy to do. That’s what the viewer wants to see. But yeah, there’s a, there’s a lot of work that, that goes into it, which is all fine and good and fun work.

But I do think, like you said, you don’t really know how long something’s going to take until you do it. And I think as humans, we’re very. bad at estimating how long things will take. I mean, I even do that at work, you know, I think of like, Oh, I can get this project, done this week or whatever. And then like three weeks later, I’m like, I don’t know what I was, I don’t know what I was thinking, you know?

Brie Tucker: minutes to get something done on your schedule and you’re like, yeah, it’ll be no problem. And then if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, you have the time blindness so that it’s like three hours later and you’re like, okay, it’s been 30. Holy crap. Cause otherwise, otherwise you’d like, if you don’t have the time blindness, it’s 30 minutes. And you’re like, I’m not even a quarter of the way through. Oh God.

Jen Chapin: yeah, I think like anything, excellence and success takes hard work. And it’s sort of like that, you know, iceberg meme that you see. It’s like, everyone sees the success at the top of the iceberg, but they don’t see all of the blood, sweat and tears that kind of went into it.

And for me now, I’m just really motivated by not just, you know, serving other women and other moms on YouTube. I really Try to be helpful and positive and make videos that people can really take and use in their lives. But just from the financial aspects, you know, I’m able to take the extra money that I’m making on YouTube and fully fund my kids college accounts.

You know, our family can take trips every year. Like when I go on a trip with my husband, I’m flying first class, like those types. I’m not to say that I’m like bougie or anything like that, but it’s like, you I know, but yeah, like, this is the kind of stuff that like, if you really want it to work and you really want to have like extra money and financial freedom for your family is it takes work. It takes time. It’s just, it’s just like anything else.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. okay. So I love that. I have to note eight to 12 hours to do a 20 minute video. Like, I just want everyone to hear that. Like, that’s pretty realistic. But like, when you say you get to fly first class, like, I think that’s one of those pleasures that moms, we deny ourselves of because we’re like, Oh, we don’t need that.

Oh, that’s like really bougie. that’s horrible. First class is lovely. I just, I recently flew first class. Just. I’ve never done it before. My son is very into airplanes. Like he watches all the airplane YouTube videos. We watch all the travel stuff. We love like all the lounge stuff and watching all that, that first class.

Stuff we’d never done it. And so, we were going to a business mastermind thing where I could take my family in Cancun and we were watching the American airlines app and all of a sudden it was like, upgrade the first class for like 150. We’re Like, it’s so like. We took it because we’d never done it before. And the seat is like sitting in a lounge chair. You have so much

Brie Tucker: I was gonna say, can I just say being able to stretch my legs out on a plane sounds AMAZING!

JoAnn Crohn: Stretch your legs out. But here’s the thing that I like, I need a lot of water. we’re in the desert. I need a lot of water? and on airplanes. So they don’t like. You know, when you’re in coach, you get like the little bottle of water when they come down with the cart. In first class, she was by every 20 minutes. Oh, you need some more water. I walked off that plane. So hydrated. It was amazing. It was a, it’s

Brie Tucker: The little things! It’s the little things that we appreciate in life,

JoAnn Crohn: ice cold water, so good. But

Jen Chapin: my favorite is when you like board the plane early and they’re like, would you, would you like anything to drink? It’s like, oh yes, I’ll sip some champagne while the people in coach walk by.

Brie Tucker: I have mimosas the whole time? I’ll be sloshed before the plane even takes off! Hehehe

JoAnn Crohn: I have to tell you though, when you’re in first class, you totally forget about coach behind you. Like when you. No, I mean it like, and I could see why the divide happens because when you’re in coach, you’re just looking at first class. You’re like, I wonder what first class is doing. Oh, I smell that food coming from first class.

In first class, you have no idea. There’s other people behind you at all, like no idea. And you’re like, oh, I see how this divide happens. And it’s a divide on an airplane where you’re just privileged to be on an airplane in general. So I don’t know,

Brie Tucker: anybody else though, like,

JoAnn Crohn: those little things.

Brie Tucker: okay, so what you guys just said, and I know I’m going off on a little bit of a detour here, people, but does anybody ever see those either videos, pictures, whatever, where they talk about like what airline flying used to be like back in the fifties and sixties.

Now, The tickets were not cheap. I 100 percent get that when they, like, show the difference in, like, inflation. But I longed for those days. Like, those are huge seats, and they have, like, huge meals, and it’s like, oh my god. Right?

Jen Chapin: right out in the

JoAnn Crohn: thing I talked I thought about. I’m like, but you have all that cigarette smoke in the cabin. Like,

Brie Tucker: Well, but back then I feel like almost everybody was like my, I used to fly a lot when I was younger, because again, we moved from Maryland to Missouri and we’d go back and visit our family a lot. And so like, I want to say like, I, my first flight I remember was like 1984, 85. I flew on Braniff and TWA, like the

JoAnn Crohn: Oh,

Brie Tucker: that are like, Gone, gone. yeah, there was no level of that stuff back then. We were still crammed in like sardines back then. Even as a five year old, I remember being crammed in. So,

JoAnn Crohn: it’s Okay, off on the detour. We’re back to the main road. Jen, what are you excited about that’s coming up for you?

Jen Chapin: Oh, that’s always a good question. I think just continuing to grow my channel and my kids are growing up now, you know, I’m teaching my daughter to drive, which is always,

JoAnn Crohn: too!

Brie Tucker: You guys have

Jen Chapin: that’s so interesting.

Brie Tucker: guys are on the exact same path right now.

JoAnn Crohn: I have a 15 year old girl, Jen, and an 11 year old boy. Mm

Jen Chapin: Yeah. So yeah, we have that. We actually have the same exact age of kids. I mean, I honestly, I really enjoy having older kids. I did not do well. I did not thrive. I was not liking it with like the baby toddler stage. And so I, I don’t know. I love having older kids. And so, yeah, you know, we try to go on at least one family vacation every year.

So not sure where we’ll go next year. We did go to Colorado last year. We love, going there. My husband and I are actually going to go to St. Louis for a concert. We try to take one trip every year for our anniversary as well. So,

Brie Tucker: Oh, you’re going to see,

Jen Chapin: Sturgill Simpson. I don’t, that’s, it’s my husband’s thing. So I’m kind of just along for the ride, but but yeah, you know, just continuing to try and grow my channel and my, and my business online. I’m working on a, a meal planning membership which will hopefully be available soon. So I’ll be talking about that on my channel and yeah, that’s it. That’s what I’m excited for right now.

JoAnn Crohn: Well, we will have links to your channel in the show notes, go and check Jen out. She has so much information on meal planning, including like the video I was looking at where you were like calling someone their one hour meal prep was like such a fraud.

Brie Tucker: saw that. I love that because like you get, we get sucked into so much these days. And you’re like, Oh yeah, I can totally do that. Then they, they get you to like go in and do all the things. And then you’re like, okay, this was a total lie. This is like way more complicated than it seemed.

Jen Chapin: Yeah, yeah, it took four hours. The one hour meal prep took four hours, but you know,

Brie Tucker: I love it. I love it.

JoAnn Crohn: Lies, lies. Well, thank you so much, Jen, for coming on and we’ll talk to you later.

Jen Chapin: thank you for having me.

Brie Tucker: Okay, okay.

JoAnn Crohn: Oh,

Brie Tucker: I’m adding to the show notes the link to the thermometer YouTube video.

JoAnn Crohn: really?

Brie Tucker: Yes.

JoAnn Crohn: like, Oh, like my son is real young. Like he’s under one years old in that video and he just turned 11. So it’s, it’s interesting. We actually did a re refilm of that a couple of years ago, me and my son. And he was like on my lap,

Brie Tucker: Okay.

JoAnn Crohn: laughing the whole time.

Brie Tucker: Is that one on our YouTube channel too? Cause I’m going to have to

JoAnn Crohn: It’s not. It’s not, I think I, I did it as a personal, a personal video project for myself that I posted on my personal Facebook

Brie Tucker: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Hey, the fact that you’re still using the thermometer from then, I think is a big shout out to that brand. So that’s why I’m like, I’m going to add that link. Like we may not be getting anything off of it anymore, but Hey,

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. It was, I don’t know if they’re still around, but it was like this called Influenster where you signed up and they sent you free stuff that you did videos and content on. And it was just like, you know, a way that if you were just starting out that you could get like these free products And that was how, like, I started actually doing stuff like that and getting just a little bit money. And the money like was not that much, like 400 was the most I ever got for a sponsored post, which I thought was a big deal at the time of,

Brie Tucker: Was that from, like, Fries or, like, an M& M

JoAnn Crohn: Walmart, Walmart. Yeah. There’s like all these companies. There was, Oh my gosh, social, I want to say it’s called social bias or I can’t remember what it was called, but you applied and then they picked you. I was a Mars ambassador, like M and M’s

Brie Tucker: I remember the M& M the M& M uh, brownies or something you made. They were

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, they were good. I have mad respect for all the food bloggers out there because I, honestly didn’t like making those food the recipes.

It’s hard and it’s, it’s messy. I do not like stuff on my fingers. I’ve noticed even when cooking, it takes me like 10 times longer to cook because I have to go to the sink and like,

Brie Tucker: Yeah. I’m the same way. Yeah. Yeah. There’s

JoAnn Crohn: don’t like it.

Brie Tucker: there’s a video. I’ll have to show you this guy. I like it’s on tick tock and he has one where he’s like every couple of seconds, he’s washing his fingers under the water. I’m like, that’s

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, I can’t do it. And so like when you’re thinking like preparing your recipe, touching food and then handling camera equipment, Oh, it was a lot for me. I’m like,

Brie Tucker: isn’t that why Jen

JoAnn Crohn: entire time.

Brie Tucker: Jen said it takes like four hours to do like a video. How many, how

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, well eight, eight to 12 hours to do a whole video start to finish. Yeah, eight to 12, which I’m like Yep. Totally believe. Cause like for those blog posts, I think just writing the post and taking the pictures for it, it took me six. So, I mean, it takes, it takes a lot, it takes a lot of time, but we hope that this episode gave you a little bit of inspiration because when you are passionate about something, like the time flies, I would have to say, I was not passionate about food.

I am passionate about psychology and parenting and communication. And so when I’m doing. Stuff and content about that. Like the time just flies by. And it’s great to put that into something like YouTube because you get to share that with others. That’s like the definition of unicorn time that we talk about. it’s the passion that you have that you share with others.

Brie Tucker: Yeah, I okay. So like my thing that she said that really struck a chord with me is the and like what you said about like sharing with others and making it so that people can find things that they can relate to. I just remember struggling so hard trying to find that feeling where I belonged. And finding anybody that understood what I was going through when I had my first kiddo.

Like everything from The difficulty of the pregnancy, the difficulty of the birth, the fact that I thought I knew what I was getting into having a kid because my background was in early childhood. And then like, I have this baby and things aren’t going the way I thought they would. And just feeling so alone and isolated, finding what you’re looking for on, and somebody else going through it and being able to help support you through it is so important. So like Jen focuses on like the meal prep and all that kind of stuff. And I think that that’s huge. Cause so many of us like, God, nothing pisses me off more than having to figure out what we’re going to cook.

JoAnn Crohn: I know.

Brie Tucker: Right? And current Brie typically hates future Brie that meal prepped because it’s

JoAnn Crohn: Ah,

Brie Tucker: you know, and I, not meal prepped, sorry, but came up with the menu because I’m like, I don’t want salad tonight. I know it sounded good on Sunday, but now it’s Wednesday.

JoAnn Crohn: something we have to help our No Guilt Moms is we have the chat GPT prompts. So if you like hate meal planning, like I do too, you could just put those chat GPT prompts right in and you could find that at www.balanceformoms.com forward slash prompts, that’s a plural P R O M P T S prompts

Brie Tucker: And there’s a link below.

JoAnn Crohn: and there’s a link below. It’s completely free. So go get that. If you hate meal planning, I use chat GBT for my meal planning and it’s been delightful. It suggests a lot of lot more simpler recipes that I think I have to create that I make and I actually get them done. So it’s good. It’s good vibes. Yeah.

Brie Tucker: I love it. I love it. And there’s a link to Jen’s YouTube channel on here. And as soon as that meal prep membership comes up, we are going to be sharing that with you guys too. Cause I think that it’s immensely helpful. So yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: Yes. Yes. So until next time, remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you and we’ll talk to you later.

Brie Tucker: Thanks for stopping by.