College Grad Shares “More than Mac & Cheese” Recipes for Students

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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When you finally learn to cook as a college student, what do you do next? Well friends, I gotta be honest with you, I couldn't answer that question myself because I never learned to cook as a college student or even later. But for the purposes of our conversation today, let's say what you do next is you start a blog showing your fellow students how to prepare more than boxed macaroni and cheese and frozen pizza. Not that there's anything wrong with boxed macaroni and cheese and frozen pizza, just to be clear. And that's what today's featured story did.

It turned into a revenue source paying out more than $1,000 a month while she travels to South Africa, starts a new job, and pursues other interests. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." Stay tuned to hear how she did it. [Music]

Chelsea Cole was a student at the University of Oregon on the fast track to becoming an elementary school teacher. But a couple years in, the realities of the public school system started to sink in and she was no longer certain that she wanted to work in traditional education. That's when she started to pay more attention to the things she enjoyed to see if there'd be any viable alternative.

The first thing that boiled to the top was her love of food and cooking. You see, Chelsea had created a food blog called "A Duck's Oven." The name comes from the University of Oregon's mascot, which happens to be a duck. The purpose of the blog was to document her adventures in cooking and also just kind of a way to unwind after a day spent cramming for tests. When she was working in her kitchen or even just writing about working in her kitchen, her worries and school concerns melted away like butter in a hot pan. But up until she realized that a life of primary education wasn't for her, cooking had just been a hobby.

Now she was looking at it with fresh eyes. Since she loved cooking so much, why not try her hand at cooking for others? Well, like many idealists before her, Chelsea's first thought was to open a restaurant. Eugene Oregon was a nice college town, but she had her sights set on Eugene's foodie-obsessed sister, Portland. Not going into this dream half-baked, her new course of action was to get a job at a restaurant until she had learned the ropes enough to open her own.

She packed her bags and set off to the land of hipsters, craft beer, and Blue Star donuts. Side note, never go to Voodoo Donuts in Portland. Go to Blue Star instead, much better, trust me. She was certain she had found her destiny. But like Moses said, when delivering the Ten Commandments, just because there's dough in the oven doesn't mean it will become a biscuit.

That's in the fine print of Deuteronomy, go check it out. Back to our story, although she enjoyed the fast-paced environment of working in a restaurant, Chelsea quickly learned that running one was far from being a piece of cake. So, back to the cutting board we go. The idea clearly needed more time in the oven. Since the majority of her blog readers were fellow classmates, she thought about ways she could cater directly to them and their needs.

Chelsea knew from experience that many of them were living off of boxed mac and cheese and frozen pizza, so she decided to set her goal on helping them branch out from the processed food section of the grocery store. Which, if you live in America, is more than just one aisle. It's probably, you know, 50% of the grocery store. But still, how exactly was she going to compete with the siren song of Hot Pockets? Well, she would create content and recipes that were simple and easy to put together.

Not only that, but they would be affordable. And not only that, they would taste good. While she was working on the blog, Chelsea had moved to South Africa for a year while her husband was finishing a graduate program there. She then returned to Portland and went back to the restaurant, this time working as a support specialist. A year later, she scored her first official marketing job and began to manage the social accounts of an antique furniture store.

In more ways than one, Chelsea's blog is a large part of how she grew to be such a strong marketer. Each blog post she published was a new opportunity to build her brand and drive more traffic to her site. Blogging can also be a good way to learn about the wants, needs, and interests of your audience. And Chelsea took all of this experience with her to her new career as a marketer. But meanwhile, at Duck7 returned to being the fun project that it was when she was in college.

Narrowing down the focus of her blog helped her grow her social media following. And these days, the blog is bringing in anywhere from $800 to $1,200 a month. Some of this cash comes from affiliate relationships and Chelsea's also been able to make money helping other bloggers develop recipes and improve their social media. The costs of the business are very low, less than $50 a month in total. Now, we always ask the people we feature what kind of advice they have for someone looking to follow in their footsteps.

Right out of the oven, she emphasizes the importance of being clear on what you want to do. After figuring that piece out, Chelsea suggests to get even more specific with focusing on a particular niche. This eliminates a lot of the blind risk-taking and instead allows you to understand the likelihood of success in that area from the beginning. As far as the content goes, Chelsea keeps in mind the different needs of people with different lifestyles. When she publishes a recipe, she always tries to include a cheater way or a shortcut for people who want to spend less time cooking.

She's working hard to cook up passive income for herself. There might even be a cookbook in her future. She admits that idea is still a little half-baked, but she's not loafing around. The blog remains a breadwinner. [Music]

Oh man, I really did live off of boxed mac and cheese and frozen pizza for a considerable time in my life.

It wasn't only the college years for me. So a couple of things I liked about this story and I also went to look at her website as well at duck7.com, which we'll link up in the show notes. The idea of focusing specifically on students and helping them upgrade their cooking skills without spending a lot of money, that's great. I think that is a pretty large, significant market. And on her site, she's done a really good job of integrating her personal story into some of these recipes and lessons and posts.

So for example, she has a whole detailed long personal story about how she lost 40 pounds in two years. And she wrote about her struggle with weight and what she did and what didn't work and just the whole personal journey. I ended up reading the whole thing. I started by skimming it and I went back in from the top and then read the whole thing all the way down just 'cause I found it inspiring and it was really detailed. So stuff like that is really great in building relationships with your readers or listeners or whoever you're trying to connect with.

And the whole concept of cheater ingredients or hacks, the shortcuts, those are great too. I think that just gives you an extra little hook. One thing I did wonder from looking at her site is that it could actually be even more focused. Like I feel like my sense as an outsider is that she's gone beyond her own initial mission just because she has learned to cook more and she's being more adventurous, which of course is natural. And since I'm now much older than the average college student I could be wrong.

But my sense is that some of the recipes at least on the site could be a little intimidating for some people. Such as one observation I had, I think for this kind of project or really any kind of project, whatever you're doing, it's always really helpful to just apply a continuous filter to your work. Okay, why am I publishing this Side Hustle School episode? What do I hope that you will take away from it? You, my listener.

If a duck's oven is my website, why am I publishing these recipes? Why am I publishing this particular post? Why these ingredients? Why this recipe? Why this outcome?

Why this story? And who do I think it'll help? The more you can apply that filter, just the tighter your work is gonna become. And the more recognizable it will be to the people you're trying to serve. And so that way you're not creating any confusion.

You're not trying to serve everyone, which of course is a mistake. So if this is a constructive criticism, it's something I try to apply to myself as well because I do a lot of different things for a lot of different people. And I could certainly be better with focus. So I'm trying to apply this filter myself. In any case, I appreciate Chelsea allowing us to share her story with you.

Be sure to check out that website. I'm gonna link it up in the show notes page, of course. Don't forget inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Those show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/545. Oh, and she also has a pretty clear recognizable style she uses for her Instagram.

So we'll link that up as well. If you're interested in Instagram or food blogging or anything related to that, you might wanna check it out. Thank you so much for joining me today. I will be back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is Side Hustle School.