AI transcript
0:00:05 500 bucks a day from work you love. What’s up? What’s up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to
0:00:09 The Side Hustle Show, where it’s all about ideas, action, and results toward building
0:00:13 extra income streams. Fun one for you today, where my guest took her passion for cooking,
0:00:20 turned it into a six-figure business. From chefjessica.com, Jessica Leibovitch. Welcome
0:00:21 to The Side Hustle Show.
0:00:23 Hello. Thank you for having me.
0:00:27 Excited for this one. Stick around in this one. Even if you don’t know a saucepan from
0:00:31 a spatula, we’re covering how to get clear on what kind of service niche you could offer,
0:00:37 creative ways to get clients, and the different revenue streams that one skill can turn into.
0:00:42 So, Jessica, my understanding is you’re working in catering, you have some culinary background,
0:00:47 and then there’s this switch that flips. Maybe I could take this skill freelance. Maybe I can go
0:00:52 solo. Maybe I could get a personal chef type of client. Can you talk me through your first time
0:00:55 getting paid for this type of work as a personal chef?
0:01:02 Yeah. My background was in catering. I was very young, working very hard, burnt out in my early
0:01:08 20s. And someone told me, oh, have you heard about being a personal chef? You might be really good at
0:01:14 this. And I looked into it and I thought, I would be really good at that. I was still working. I just
0:01:21 decided to take a client on the side and I made in one day what I was used to making pretty much for
0:01:21 the whole week. Wow.
0:01:28 So, yeah. So being young and naive, I quit my job with no exit plan. I would not recommend that to
0:01:36 anyone, but that’s what I did at 22. So, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I’ve been a personal chef
0:01:38 now for 25 years.
0:01:40 Okay. How’d you find that first client?
0:01:45 It was through word of mouth, through some recommendation in the community. Most of my
0:01:50 clients in the beginning were word of mouth. But when I initially started my business, I created a
0:01:58 press release for a local community newspaper in a sort of an upper class neighborhood. And they loved
0:02:04 it. They ran with it because I wrote the story for them. And that really got the momentum going in my
0:02:10 business. Because as a personal chef, you really only need a few clients. And once you have a few
0:02:13 clients, word of mouth starts to spread.
0:02:18 Oh, I love this example. How big of a newspaper are we talking here? Like, you know, neighborhood
0:02:20 specific, city specific?
0:02:25 Yeah. No, a small one. You know how when you go into a coffee shop and they have the free papers there?
0:02:25 Yeah.
0:02:30 Those are the papers that I would send my press release to because those are the community papers. They
0:02:37 usually feature people in the community. And people love to read them and they want feel good stories. So
0:02:43 someone suggested it. And it’s really such a great way to get clients as a personal chef because it builds
0:02:45 trust and it’s free.
0:02:50 You write your own marketing material. This is good. Do you remember what it said? Like, Chef Jessica,
0:02:52 you know, now open for business or something?
0:02:58 Well, what I always tell people is you have to tell a story and market yourself without marketing
0:03:04 yourself. So basically, you show the problems that you’re solving. At the time, I was showing a family
0:03:10 in the community where I was really helping them. One of the family members had an allergy and the other
0:03:17 family members were having a hard time kind of eating around those specifications. And this was all new
0:03:23 for them. So I helped them. So now you do have to make your angle a little bit different. You can’t
0:03:28 just be like, oh, I’m a new personal chef in the area. You want to show how are you really helping
0:03:35 your community and what challenges are you solving for your clients? Like a unique spin on it. And a lot
0:03:40 of times they will pick it up because if you think about it, these journalists have to constantly come up
0:03:46 with news and articles. And if you give them something that’s nicely done, why wouldn’t they
0:03:46 use it?
0:03:53 Sure. So like there seems to be just recently a lot of press around food dyes and the danger. So it’s
0:03:58 like you could be like how to have a dye free, you know, kitchen or something like that.
0:04:03 Yeah. I mean, clean food is such a big thing now and just take, you know, seed oils, eliminating things
0:04:10 out of your diet. Adding red meat back in is really popular as well. So helping people do
0:04:16 those changes. There’s a lot of different things. It really depends on the chef and where their
0:04:17 strengths lie.
0:04:23 Yeah. This was one of the pages out of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK playbook where we’re talking with
0:04:27 Brian Scudamore, the CEO. And early on, he just bought a thousand dollar pickup truck and started picking
0:04:32 up. John started taking on very few clients, but initially…
0:04:33 Solved a big problem.
0:04:37 Solved a big problem and then pitched it to the local paper because it was like,
0:04:41 hey, high school student or college student, you know, creates his own summer job. And,
0:04:46 you know, it was a unique feel good type of story. Hey, young entrepreneur does good. But by virtue of
0:04:50 that, and of course, the picture that he submits is like him with the side of his truck with the phone
0:04:55 number like emblazoned on the side. It’s like starts getting all of these calls after the fact. It’s
0:04:59 like trying to figure out, like to your point about the seed oils or the allergy specific,
0:05:04 like what’s the broader trend that’s going on? Like how can you, in Brian’s case, like in a slow
0:05:08 job market, you know, local teen creates his own income stream. So like what’s the…
0:05:13 Yeah. What’s the angle? What’s the, you know, what’s the hook? I actually, in my, in my academy,
0:05:19 my business in a box for chefs, I give them a sample press release and a press release guide because
0:05:24 I feel like it’s so important as a personal chef to be able to get yourself out there in the press
0:05:30 because, you know, everybody wants to pay for marketing or do ads, but we have such a short
0:05:37 attention span and people also have such a strong distrust of ads that when you see someone in a
0:05:43 newspaper, it really, you’re able to trust them and you have an attention span that’s a little bit
0:05:46 longer than an ad. So it’s just much more effective.
0:05:50 Yeah. Especially targeting, you know, there’s, there’s some level of assumption that the journalist
0:05:55 has done some level of vetting. So there’s like, you, you’ve kind of skipped the line in a lot of
0:05:55 cases.
0:06:01 And they do. Most of the times they do. They’re not just going to publish it without speaking to you.
0:06:06 And again, sometimes you need to follow up with them. I mean, I’ve sent my press releases out where
0:06:11 they have not responded. And then I followed up and they’re like, oh yeah, we do want to do that
0:06:16 article on you. We just got busy. And then they end up publishing it. So, you know, sometimes you
0:06:18 have to be a little bit forward.
0:06:24 The one advantage that I see of this type of business is it seems ripe for recurring revenue,
0:06:29 potentially long-term recurring revenue, where if a family gets used to having a personal chef,
0:06:34 like probably a luxury expense in a lot of cases of targeting a more affluent audience.
0:06:38 Sure. But like, once I get used to it, it’s like, I can’t imagine going back to cooking for myself
0:06:41 again, right? It’s like, they could keep you on the, on the payroll here for, for months and months
0:06:42 or maybe years.
0:06:46 Exactly. I’m glad you mentioned this. This is a huge pillar of what I teach. There’s
0:06:53 sort of three pillars and it’s consistent income, work-life balance, and a high level of service.
0:07:00 And you’re only able to have consistent income if you give that high level of service and it,
0:07:06 you do, you become indispensable to your clients. And I think one of the nicest things one of my
0:07:11 clients ever said to me was that I was like part of the furniture, which I took as a compliment.
0:07:14 Not that we’re going to like walk over you like a rug, but yeah.
0:07:19 Yeah, exactly. You know, when I went to renew my contract with them and raise my price, they were
0:07:24 just like, yeah, you’re not, you’re not going anywhere. But you have to be in there and solve the
0:07:29 problem and understand them and be able to give that high level of service and really care about
0:07:35 them and their goals because their success is your success. And it’s the people who have that heart
0:07:41 who are successful at being a personal chef. It’s not necessarily the people who are amazing chefs.
0:07:47 I’ve been a chef for a long time. I was trained in France and I have a culinary arts degree, so I have
0:07:53 the whole background. And the funny thing is my clients almost never asked me about it. Most of
0:07:58 them have no idea where I went to school. Yeah. And a lot of times I don’t even use these skills because
0:08:02 the food they want is so simple. Yeah. When you were starting out, did you have
0:08:10 a niche in mind of like, I’m going to focus on organic or vegan or allergy free or like trying
0:08:16 to serve like, hey, I’m the go-to person for these specific dietary needs?
0:08:22 Well, I started so long ago that special diets were not as common back then. And because my background
0:08:28 was in fine dining, that was really where I went to. And my clients were aligned with that in the
0:08:34 beginning. They wanted really yummy food. I was making things like lasagna or, you know,
0:08:41 I would make roasts and gravies and things like that. And I still occasionally will have a client like
0:08:47 that, although it’s very rare. But what happened was, I think it was my first time I got a client.
0:08:55 She was a single mom with cancer. And, you know, I just was so invested in her eating well. I think
0:09:01 I was probably more invested in it than she was. And so once you have somebody like that and you’re
0:09:06 helping somebody like that, if you really are passionate about what you do, it sort of just
0:09:13 gravitates where I just started helping more people like that with health challenges. And because I could
0:09:21 put that focus and time and attention into each client, I was able to really develop a relationship
0:09:26 with them. And that’s where you will get that indispensability is when you have that long-term
0:09:34 relationship with a client. So I did sort of go in the direction of health challenges because I just
0:09:37 felt like there was such a need and those people really needed a chef.
0:09:44 I imagine it’s becomes somewhat more competitive. But even in Googling near like your personal chef near
0:09:49 me, your personal chef, Sammamish, I see some like catering companies that pop up.
0:09:55 People are very confused. The problem is, is what I’m doing a lot of there used to be a lot of us.
0:10:02 But what’s happened now is everybody wants to be a meal prep or a caterer because they don’t
0:10:07 understand how to make a career and income out of being a personal chef, because it is very specific.
0:10:12 You do have to be able to give the high level of service to be able to give that time and attention
0:10:19 and, you know, really understand what your clients need. And so a lot of people don’t want to do that.
0:10:25 And so they will do the meal prep. But what happens is a lot of times they will burn out because
0:10:33 it’s a lot of work. It’s exhaustion. You’re working weekends. You’re working evenings. You’re working
0:10:40 holidays. Personal chef is a Monday through Friday schedule. You’re typically working 9 to 5. And if you
0:10:48 have five weekly clients, you’re maxed out. And if you have 10 biweekly clients, you’re maxed out. So it really
0:10:54 depends on how you schedule it. So that’s why it’s not as competitive, because it’s very specific niche that
0:11:00 not a lot of people do. And a lot of people decided, oh, I want to do meal prep or I want to I’m a personal
0:11:07 chef, but I actually have chefs working under me. So if somebody is a personal chef, but they have
0:11:11 chefs working under them, that’s really not a personal chef, because how can they give that
0:11:17 one on one high level of service that the client needs with somebody working under them doesn’t
0:11:23 quite work the same. So it is a one on one solopreneur type business.
0:11:27 Yeah, it’s like a personal chef agency, semi personal chef.
0:11:33 A lot of people are doing that. I’ve tried it kind of like hiring people. But I feel that the
0:11:39 quality was lost. And what happens is instead of giving that time and attention to your clients who
0:11:42 are paying you for it, you end up giving it to your team.
0:11:48 Yeah, there’s pros and cons to it. Obviously, the advantage being you’ll free up your time in theory
0:11:54 from doing the direct, you know, one to one type of client work, how to expand beyond kind of the
0:11:59 natural capacity. Like you said, if I can do this only five days a week, and especially if I’m doing
0:12:04 it as a side hustle, maybe I only want to do it one day a week. And now here’s a chance to free some of
0:12:05 that up.
0:12:09 And there are ways you can do that. I mean, my team personally is like my bookkeeper,
0:12:17 my CPA, I have somebody who supports me with VA stuff. But as far as my relationship with my clients,
0:12:18 that’s all me.
0:12:24 Yeah, what’s typical in terms of pricing here? In terms of how, how much can you charge? Or how much
0:12:25 how much are people paying for personal chefs?
0:12:33 So for me, personally, it’s about 650 plus groceries per day. And I’ve, I’ve worked my way
0:12:40 up to that. But that’s very, that’s not on the extremely high range. That’s about average for a
0:12:40 lot of chefs.
0:12:44 And that’s not one day’s worth of food. That’s like a week or two weeks.
0:12:47 Oh, no, that so that would give them about a week’s worth of meals.
0:12:52 Okay. That’s like, hold on. That’s like a really, really nice restaurant. Yeah.
0:12:58 Yeah, no, not per meal. So so that’s my revenue for the day. And and to be honest,
0:13:02 it’s more than one day, because a lot of times I’m planning the night before I’m shopping that
0:13:09 morning, I’m cooking. So so if I have a weekly client, I typically will bring in at least $2,500
0:13:17 from that client a month. So if I have four weekly clients, that gets me to 10,000. Now, the way that
0:13:25 if somebody is just starting out, I typically suggest they start at the $500 rate and because
0:13:30 they’re a lot of times they’re more comfortable with that. It’s easier for them to sell until they
0:13:37 get really comfortable with pitching their value. But at $500 plus groceries, if they have five clients
0:13:40 a day, that’s 10,000 a month or five clients a week. Excuse me.
0:13:47 Okay, you have five clients a week. Got it. And so yeah, they come in do the weekly, weekly prep
0:13:52 on a Monday or, you know, on a Saturday, if you’re doing it as a side hustle.
0:13:57 Yeah. So they basically prep like a week’s worth of meals. It’s all customized. They leave them
0:14:01 packaged for them. And then, you know, they come back the following week and and do it again. And
0:14:06 they get feedback from the clients. Usually people are doing once a week or once every two weeks.
0:14:12 Okay. And if they do once every two weeks, it’s actually very affordable for, so it’s not just
0:14:19 for, you know, the upper class or the wealthy. You’re able to really market to just professionals
0:14:20 who really need support.
0:14:26 Yeah. I’m trying to think of, you know, putting yourself in the client’s position, which was going
0:14:30 to help your marketing is, you know, what are you, what are you really buying? It’s like on the surface,
0:14:34 you’re selling food, but you’re really, okay, what am I buying as the customer? I’m buying back my time.
0:14:40 I’m buying back my mental load of having to do me, just think about what’s for dinner this week.
0:14:44 Honestly, I like to say they’re buying a transformation because some of the chefs don’t
0:14:48 understand this because they think I mean a transformation in their health, but I don’t like,
0:14:56 and you probably know this because when you up level in life and you’re able to offload or outsource
0:15:01 some of your challenges, you transform things. You transform the way you react to things.
0:15:05 You transform your relationships because you’re able to breathe and focus your attention on other
0:15:11 things. And so that’s really what you’re selling is you’re selling that whole package of a support
0:15:17 system. It’s not just I’m cooking for you. And that’s why when my client told me that I’m part of
0:15:22 the furniture, I took it as a compliment because it is like a support system. It’s like I’m always there
0:15:28 for them. They know that I’m always going to be there to help them and they need me. So that’s kind of
0:15:33 how you have to look at it more than I’m just saving you time and cooking for you, because
0:15:35 if that’s all they wanted, then they could just get DoorDash.
0:15:42 Sure, sure. More with Jessica in just a moment, including the most effective free and low cost
0:15:45 marketing tactics coming up right after this.
0:15:52 Yeah. Okay. So this is helpful on the marketing side. What are clients really buying? Hey, you’re buying
0:15:56 a transformation. You’re buying a support system. You’re buying just the mental, you know,
0:15:59 offloading. Yeah. And like you said, leveling up. Hey, what are the things I don’t have to
0:16:04 think about? I don’t have to worry about anymore. I’ve got a team in place for this. Just like having
0:16:08 a virtual assistant. Right. Like, Nick, think about it this way. Like, if you have a housekeeper,
0:16:15 I’m not just paying for a clean house. It’s that whole support, the feeling of knowing it’s going to
0:16:20 be taken care of. It’s off my shoulders. I get to come home and it feels amazing to come home to a
0:16:26 clean house. I know she’s helping. It’s all of those things. It’s not just about the act. And I
0:16:30 think that helps in your marketing because when you’re able to communicate your value and also
0:16:35 really understand where your clients are struggling and how you can help, that’s going to help you
0:16:39 kind of get that ball rolling and have them sign on.
0:16:45 Do you find yourself making the same stuff week after week? Like if the client, if that family has a few
0:16:50 favorites where they’re like, well, make sure to include that in this week’s menu or is it, does it
0:16:53 have to, do you feel the pressure to like be constantly rotating?
0:17:00 No. In fact, most people want a rotation. So most people want to eat the same things most of the time
0:17:06 with a few new things sprinkled in. And think about it. Like, do you want to eat new things every single
0:17:11 week? Probably not. You probably have your favorites that you enjoy. And so a lot of times what I’ll do is
0:17:17 I’ll do three or four of the same things that I know they love and maybe try one or two new things.
0:17:22 And then if they love the new thing, that goes on the rotation. So the longer you cook for someone,
0:17:27 the more they find things that they love. But initially I do an assessment, try to play it
0:17:32 really safe, just go with things I know they’re really going to enjoy. I don’t want to scare them
0:17:38 too much. I want them to love the service from the beginning. And then once I get to know them better,
0:17:42 then we sort of branch out and try new things. And you have it set up, it sounds like as a recurring
0:17:49 monthly service, right? It’s $2,500 a month per customer. I come in every week and I do my thing.
0:17:56 Any tools or tech that you use either on the recipe, the shopping side, the client, you know,
0:17:58 recurring billing side, anything that we should know about there?
0:18:03 Yeah, I use a lot of tech in my business. Well, first of all, there’s a there’s a lot of different
0:18:09 recipe database programs that you can use. I have one that I call it’s called MasterCook that I love
0:18:16 because it creates a shopping list for you. And it stores your recipes and you can add to your
0:18:22 shopping list based on your recipe. This is very helpful for not forgetting things. Being a personal
0:18:29 chef is a very low stress job. But the one thing that will stress you out is if you forget an
0:18:35 ingredient and you’re ready to cook. So a program like that is really helpful to make sure that
0:18:36 doesn’t happen. Okay.
0:18:41 Some of the things that I do for my clients, I go above and beyond. So I will calculate macros
0:18:47 for a client if they want. For example, if they say, Jessica, I need to make sure that this meal has 40
0:18:53 grams of protein and 20 grams of fat. I will do that for them. And so I use programs for that. I
0:19:01 have a program called macro stacks. It’s an app that I use. Okay. And I also just use spreadsheets and I
0:19:08 will put their meals in the spreadsheet and calculate their meals for the day, depending on how I’ve had
0:19:13 clients who were with me a few days a week where they’re on a very high retainer. I will do their
0:19:19 macros for the whole week to make sure they’re on board. And so I need a really good tech for that.
0:19:24 Just to clarify macros, we’re talking about grams of protein, fat, carbs.
0:19:31 Right. So I’ll input all their food for them to make sure their meals are not going over and to
0:19:36 make sure that my meals are staying within the proper macros. But yes, it’s protein, fat, and carbs.
0:19:36 Got it.
0:19:43 Is it typical to go shopping, bring all the stuff to the client’s house? Are you doing it at your
0:19:48 place and then delivering it? Are you renting out a commercial kitchen space?
0:19:53 Well, you could do all of that. So I always say don’t ever rent out a commercial kitchen space. That’s
0:19:59 a waste of money. Typically, you’re going to either cook in your client’s home or you can cook in your
0:20:04 own home and deliver. Now, if you cook in your own home and deliver, you just need to make sure that
0:20:08 your client is aware of it and they’re okay with it. So you both are in an agreement.
0:20:12 Do you need to have like a cottage kitchen license or food handlers or anything?
0:20:16 No, you don’t because you’re not selling food to the public. It’s a service-based industry. So it’s
0:20:22 not a permit-based industry. You’re not being overseen by the health department. That’s why I
0:20:27 said you have to make sure that your client is in agreement. Now, if you’re telling your client,
0:20:31 oh, I’m at a commercial kitchen and you’re really cooking at your home, that’s not okay. You have to have
0:20:36 an agreement. Now, for me personally, I don’t really like cooking at my own home because it’s
0:20:40 more work. You have to bring the groceries to your home, prepare, package up. I get distracted at my
0:20:46 house. My clients have much nicer kitchens than I do. So I prefer to cook in their home. But a lot of
0:20:51 times, like for example, my clients, if they’re sick or if they have a lot of kids at home or if they
0:20:57 just had a baby or, you know, whatever it may be, I may cook at home. Or if it’s a one-time thing,
0:21:03 like a gift certificate, you can do that. Another reason people do it is I have chefs who are in the
0:21:09 corporate world and they are making their exit plan to be a personal chef. And so they’re doing the
0:21:15 remote work at home and they picked up a client and they’re able to cook while they’re doing their
0:21:20 breaks on their remote work and over the weekend and then deliver in the morning before their job
0:21:26 starts. So this is how they’re they’re able to kind of segue out. Got it. Yeah. And you can imagine
0:21:30 you can stack it up, you know, one client, two client, three clients, like it just lowers the
0:21:34 height of the of the cliff that you need to jump off of to quit your job. That’s what I always suggest.
0:21:40 Don’t do what I did. But yeah, if that way, if you have a couple of clients, you start to save money,
0:21:45 you know, and once you gain the momentum as a personal chef, it doesn’t take as long.
0:21:51 Once you start to get your marketing strategies dialed in and you build your list. I love Google
0:21:57 ads, another way to get clients. So if you have a Google ad going, they’re going to deliver leads
0:22:03 to you on a regular basis if you have a pretty good website. If people are searching personal chef near
0:22:08 me or personal chef, you know, city name, then you want to make sure your ad shows up? Yes, because
0:22:15 there’s no competition. There’s not, you know, there’s not 100 personal chefs. So typically if you have a
0:22:19 Google ad for personal chef and someone is searching, they’re going to see your website.
0:22:24 So it just increases your visibility. Like I said, I’m not a huge person who loves to pay for ads,
0:22:28 but that’s just one that is really effective for personal chef.
0:22:31 Yeah, I like that. That seems like a low, low budget. I mean, I can’t imagine there’s a huge
0:22:34 search volume, but like you said, it doesn’t take a lot of clients. Like I only need one,
0:22:39 you know, one taker to add potentially 2000 bucks to my bottom line.
0:22:43 Yeah, $5 a day too is all the ad spend you really need.
0:22:49 Okay. What else have you got on the marketing side? I think this is, it’s not going to take
0:22:54 a ton. You probably not have to do all of these different marketing tactics to fill up your
0:22:55 schedule, but what else?
0:22:59 Strategic partnerships are really effective that are aligned with your strengths. You know,
0:23:05 a lot of times people will think, oh, I’m going to go with a personal trainer. That’s not what I would
0:23:10 consider a strategic partnership. What I would consider a strategic partnership is again,
0:23:16 someone who you’re helping solve that challenge. So like a doctor or nutritionist is a good strategic
0:23:22 partner because they will give their clients or patients a plan and just send them on their way and
0:23:30 have no idea of how they’re going to do that. So a personal chef is that bridge between the plan
0:23:36 and execution that really helps that customer have success. So they’ve been really great strategic
0:23:43 partnerships. So a lot of times when I work with chefs, my homework will just be to find 20 strategic
0:23:49 partners and reach out to them with an introductory offer. And a lot of times that is enough to just get
0:23:51 your ball, the ball rolling as a personal chef.
0:23:54 Can I pause on introductory offer? What do you, what’s an example of that?
0:23:58 So an introductory offer of obviously like people aren’t going to want to jump in and pay
0:24:04 $2,500 to somebody if they’ve never tried their service. So an introductory offer is a way, it’s a
0:24:11 taste. It’s a way for people to get to try your food, your services, get to know you, start to build
0:24:15 that trust and see if they want to take it further. It’s, you know, it’s just like any other relationship,
0:24:21 you know, people aren’t going to ask to be exclusive on the first date. So you want to just kind of
0:24:26 get to know and see, is this an alignment? Is this going to be good for both of us? And so an
0:24:34 introductory offer is that, that ability. And by doing that, you have a crowd-pleasing menu that
0:24:41 showcases your food in a way that is a little bit less work for you and maybe a little bit lower of a
0:24:41 price point.
0:24:46 Okay. And are you offering that to the doctors and nutritionists or you’re offering it as
0:24:50 something that they can then in turn pass along to their, their clients?
0:24:58 Yeah. And it could actually be offered to anyone or you could tailor them to the specific doctor or
0:25:03 nutritionist, depending like if you have a doctor or nutritionist who focuses on, you know, let’s say
0:25:08 they have a heart patient. So you want to gear it towards them, or you could have a general introductory
0:25:13 offer. That’s going to be really up to each individual chef, how kind of dialed in they want
0:25:18 to get. Okay. Yeah. So the nutritionist is going to say, Hey, you’re, we got your, we got your test
0:25:24 results back. You need to improve your omega-3, omega-6 ratio. You need to add more lean protein to
0:25:28 your, to your diet. And then they just send you on your way. So like, here’s a value add for them.
0:25:33 And by the way, if you’d like a discounted sample from a trusted personal chef contact of mine,
0:25:35 you know, give Chef Jessica a call.
0:25:42 Exactly. Or she, she has a special introductory offer just for people in our office. And here it is,
0:25:48 something like that. I mean, I love ChatGPT for helping me kind of fine tune my offers. A lot of
0:25:55 times they’re very general, but if I can’t decide how I want to position it, it might help me. Okay.
0:26:00 I have a nutritionist who specializes in this, and I really want to help her patients do this.
0:26:05 Can you help me? And then it will help me kind of pinpoint that offer. And then I can fine tune it
0:26:11 more towards my food and my messaging. But that’s just one way. Strategic partnerships are a really
0:26:18 great way. I mentioned press releases. Just being visible in your community. So instead of posting on
0:26:23 social media all the time where people have such a short attention span, getting out there and talking
0:26:29 to people, going, like, I love going to senior centers. I will go, I’ll bring a healthy baked good,
0:26:37 I’ll bring a healthy lunch salad, and I’ll talk to them for an hour or two. And it’s so fun. And it’s
0:26:41 so rewarding. A lot of times I get paid a couple hundred dollars. I mean, it’s not a ton of money,
0:26:47 but it’s enjoyable. It’s paid marketing. And you get them to sign up on your list. You always make
0:26:53 an offer at the end. That’s one thing that chefs need to always do is make an offer at the end of when
0:26:58 you’re talking or your demo. And if they don’t sign up, collect their emails, and then you can pitch
0:26:59 your offers in the future.
0:27:05 Okay. So the senior center is paying you to come in as the expert guest of the week?
0:27:11 Yeah. Actually, a lot of places do. Like, wellness, places with wellness businesses that have wellness
0:27:16 programs for their employees. Like, I used to go to the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal
0:27:21 Park. They had a wellness program for their employees. And they would pay me to come in,
0:27:24 and their employees would get points to come and watch me.
0:27:29 Oh, okay. And you’re giving a presentation on how to make healthy food at home or something like that?
0:27:33 Yeah. I think for them, it was healthy eating for the work week. And again,
0:27:37 pitch my offer. I still have those, a lot of, this was probably like 15 years ago I went there
0:27:42 for the first time. And I still have those people on my list that read my newsletter.
0:27:48 Okay. Yeah. This is one of our favorite marketing tactics. First, the strategic partnerships that
0:27:52 you mentioned on that, or like doing any sort of commission or ref share, like, oh, I’ll give you
0:27:54 10% of the first month’s service or anything like that.
0:28:00 I never have, honestly. I’m helping them really, their patients have success. So I don’t really feel
0:28:06 like there needs to be a revenue share. Because again, then it’s also like making money, more money
0:28:10 off of their patients when really we’re just trying to help them. And I think if you come from this
0:28:13 business with a service mindset, you’re going to be a lot more successful.
0:28:17 Yeah. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it both ways. So just wanted to clarify, you don’t have to have
0:28:23 like a paid affiliate relationship or partnership that way. And the other thing that you mentioned
0:28:29 here was these kind of like low-key speaking gigs at the, you know, the corporate wellness event,
0:28:34 you’re getting on their calendar, the senior center where you’re showcasing your expertise,
0:28:39 you’re getting in front of a larger group of potential customers all at once. Of course,
0:28:42 not everybody’s going to sign up. You don’t need everybody to sign up, but if they are going to
0:28:46 hire the service, all of a sudden you jump the line, right? They’re not going to go to Google
0:28:50 anymore. They’re just going to go straight to you. This is a really, really powerful, we’ve seen people
0:28:56 do this, you know, in person, like lunch and learn, Hey, come learn about copywriting from, you know,
0:29:02 the seven deadly SIDS you’re making with your website to, to doing it online partnerships,
0:29:06 whereas, you know, invite your email list to this free webinar workshop, and we’ll teach you this
0:29:12 skill and this really, really effective way to, to kind of jump the line and, and showcase some
0:29:18 expertise. Yeah. I mean, it builds trust, I think. And as a personal chef, you really, they have to
0:29:22 trust you because they’re bringing you into their home and they’re sharing a lot of personal information
0:29:28 with you. And so by doing those things, for example, having the San Diego zoo and wild animal park,
0:29:35 bringing me into their employees, it built trust. Their employees trust me and it, it sort of softens
0:29:39 that relationship. But not only that, again, I talked about earlier how, you know, we have such
0:29:45 a short attention span and to be able to really capture people’s attention span is where you’re
0:29:50 going to get them. I mean, you know that you have a podcast where people are tuning in. It’s totally
0:29:54 different than when people are scrolling, you know, and you have them for two seconds. So that’s why
0:30:00 really being visible and getting out there in your community and showcasing your offers, showcasing your
0:30:05 skills is always going to be more effective than posting on social media.
0:30:08 Yeah. Fair. I like it. Anything else on the marketing side?
0:30:14 Get comfortable with talking about what you do and telling people what you do, because a lot of people
0:30:18 I work with, they just don’t talk about it or they don’t tell people and people don’t know. Having a
0:30:24 elevator pitch or a tagline where you can describe your services very quickly is very helpful. But just
0:30:30 getting more comfortable and confident is really what’s going to get you over the edge and be good
0:30:33 marketing because nobody’s going to hire a chef that’s not confident.
0:30:39 More with Jessica in just a moment, including the additional income streams she’s been able to build
0:30:44 from this one skill beyond just cooking for clients one-on-one. That’s coming up right after this.
0:30:51 Let’s talk about a potential way to scale because it’s like, okay, I can make great money doing
0:30:56 something that I like. I could start doing it as a side hustle. It doesn’t take a lot of clients to
0:31:01 really build up a meaningful income stream. But if I ever want to take time off, all of a sudden I’m not
0:31:08 getting paid. If I want to try something else, I’m kind of potentially stuck in this trading time for
0:31:16 money business. And is there, you know, what are some ways that you’ve seen where someone with a
0:31:20 skill could branch out to some other creative revenue streams?
0:31:25 Okay. Some of the things that I have done and I’ve seen chefs do is, you know, you look at the
0:31:32 problems you’re solving for your clients right now and how can you help people who can’t afford your
0:31:39 services on the same level. So one of the things that I will do is I would create a customized menu
0:31:47 plan for people that has recipes, shopping lists. So it basically shows them how to be their own
0:31:54 personal chef. You can start to release recipes. I have personally done a lot of consulting work.
0:32:01 So I will do recipe development for companies such as like I’m making a developing a protein bar
0:32:10 developing a healthy shaved ice. I have created a cookbook for a supplement company there. You can
0:32:17 also do cooking classes, cooking classes online or in person. So there’s a lot of different ways that
0:32:22 you can creatively create different income avenues as a personal chef.
0:32:28 Okay. So these, these companies are coming to you to say, Hey, we saw you on social or we saw like,
0:32:32 can you, can you help us put this together? Yeah. And believe it or not, they either find me through
0:32:37 my website, which is primarily through looking for a personal chef. They’re not looking for a research
0:32:43 and product development chef. I can tell you that because I know my keywords and also through my
0:32:49 personal chef clients. So a business partners of my personal chef clients will say, Hey, Jessica,
0:32:54 I’m really interested in making this. Do you think you could help me? So that’s just things that have
0:32:59 come to me because I’m open to them. And I talk to people about these types of business situations,
0:33:07 but I think that people being open to helping people with eating healthy in new ways. So it’s not just
0:33:13 about, Oh, can I cook you a healthy dinner? There’s think about it’s problem solving. I mean, I can’t answer
0:33:21 how, you know, chef Dan in Idaho should, should align his business to the highest level, but I know there’s
0:33:28 a way for him to do it. Right. I like this, um, this kind of reframe or this, this, um, exercise of,
0:33:33 you know, what can I create for the people who can’t necessarily afford my one-on-one services and then
0:33:38 parsing out using those same skills. Oh, it could be the recipe development. It could be the meal planning.
0:33:45 It could be, you know, the group, uh, cooking classes or the hosted dinner party. Like there’s,
0:33:48 um, eat with, or was, you know, I came across one of these sites where I was like, you know,
0:33:54 host this dinner party. It was like a cool experience type of thing, kind of a sample almost of your work,
0:34:00 but, you know, allows you to serve lots of people all at once versus just the one, uh, one-on-one
0:34:04 client. Yeah. Ideas are popping into my head as we’re talking. Like I’m thinking, Oh, you could,
0:34:10 you could create a dinner party master plan where you teach somebody how to create a four course
0:34:14 dinner party in their home. I mean, there’s so many different things that you could do. You have to
0:34:21 take what your skill is and what do you like to do, but especially now with AI, it’s much easier to do
0:34:26 these digital things as a chef, because a lot of times in the past, they didn’t necessarily have
0:34:32 those skills, but it’s easier now. And it’s something that I’ve done for at least 10 years now,
0:34:39 been doing the digital side for my chef clients where I sell menu plans and recipes and cookbooks
0:34:45 and things like that. And it’s great because it allows me to connect with people all over the
0:34:49 country and the world that I would not normally have as clients. Yeah. What do you charge for the
0:34:54 menu, menu planning or something like that? If it’s 500 bucks a day or 600 bucks a day to have you come to
0:34:59 my house? It’s not cheap. It’s usually starts at like 150, but it’s quite a bit. It’s, it’s very
0:35:04 extensive and it’s customized and it’s something they have forever. And it always comes with my
0:35:08 support. I always want to support people with anything they purchase of mine. So I always tell
0:35:14 the chefs as well, you know, provide that support and people will keep coming back. Another thing I did,
0:35:18 which is interesting. So one of the things that I teach people is offer and visibility, create the
0:35:23 offer and be visible. That’s how you get the clients. So I created an offer during a slow time
0:35:29 called the soup trio. And basically this was for my local clients and I did, it was three
0:35:36 plant-based soups and it was sort of like a detox. But what I did was I sent it out to my whole list
0:35:41 as an option of either you could purchase the soup or you could purchase it as a digital download.
0:35:47 So you could get all the recipes for the soups that had the shopping list. So if they wanted this
0:35:52 detox or this cleanse at home, they’re able to do that. And I think I sold that for like
0:36:00 $30 or something very low. But that was a way to showcase what I did. But it was no more work for
0:36:04 me because I was already doing it for my regular clients. I already had to create all of that stuff
0:36:05 anyway.
0:36:11 Yeah. Do you do any of the group classes? I’m thinking is when we travel, I think we did one of
0:36:16 these in Thailand where I don’t know if it showed up on TripAdvisor or like some other friends had
0:36:21 gone and said, oh, you got to do this while you’re there. I mean, anything like that through Airbnb?
0:36:27 Yeah. So I didn’t mention this in the marketing. Airbnb has connections. So they reached out to me
0:36:34 and I’m sure any chef could do this. They have an elevate part of their services where you can post
0:36:39 something that you want to provide, a service that you want to provide. If you want to do a
0:36:46 fancy picnic or a cooking class, you post that in the Airbnb elevate area and then people searching
0:36:52 for services like that will see it. As a personal chef, there are a lot of apps and companies that
0:36:59 want to market with you. There is Cozy Meal, which does cooking classes. So people will sign up on their
0:37:05 app and book a cooking class through you. Airbnb, a lot of places. So you can kind of hand off the
0:37:09 marketing in some aspects if you like to do events like that.
0:37:15 Yeah, I think this is really interesting. When we were trying to shop for a place to do our annual
0:37:21 Friendsgiving and we’re looking for AirBbs or houses to rent in Mexico. And it seems like a lot of the
0:37:26 hosts, the owners of these places had relationships with local chefs. We’re like, and if you don’t want
0:37:32 to bring, you don’t want to deal with going out or you don’t, we could bring in our partner chef to
0:37:36 prep three meals a day for you. It would be an extra hundred bucks a day or something. It was like
0:37:41 different currency, cost of living, everything else. But it was a unique value add where if you have
0:37:46 some strategic partnerships, if you’re in a tourist area, you don’t necessarily want to do the full
0:37:52 weekly thing, but you’d be open to doing it every now and again when the requests come in. I could see
0:37:57 that being a thing too. Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to go out every single night when they’re going out
0:38:03 to eat. So it’s actually a really great service. I don’t do this as much anymore, but I used to spend
0:38:09 a lot of time or a lot of events doing vacations because I live in an area where a lot of people
0:38:13 come in for vacation in the summer. And so a lot of my clients would travel during the summer. So it
0:38:18 allowed me to kind of pick up extra business. Yeah. We came across, there was, I want to say it was
0:38:23 Southern California too. Maybe it was in LA, but they were doing these luxury picnic setups and there
0:38:28 was some overhead involved because like, you know, fancy little table and table linens, you know, for
0:38:34 this, they’d set up the whole charcuterie platform, but it was like. So pretty. I’ve seen them. I forget
0:38:39 the price, but it was much higher than I expected somebody to pay for a picnic setup. Yeah. It’s
0:38:45 definitely a premium service. There are so many cool ways to market yourself as a personal chef. It’s kind
0:38:51 of like, and it’s just like anything. Like I always feel like everything takes effort and work,
0:38:56 no matter what we’re going to do. Everything takes hard work, but I don’t feel like this is a hustle,
0:39:04 like hustle hard. It’s more of a hard work and alignment type of side hustle where, you know,
0:39:10 you find people who you’re really connected with and you can help instead of having to work so hard to
0:39:16 find clients because you only need five to 10 clients. Right. Yeah. And it’s a helpful exercise
0:39:19 where you’re not, you’re not trying to serve thousands of people, right? You don’t, you don’t
0:39:22 need to. And you, and you, you, you physically couldn’t. Yeah. There’s not a lot of businesses
0:39:29 that you could get to six figures with just five clients and still work Monday through Friday,
0:39:34 nine to five. I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of businesses like that. So in that way,
0:39:39 it’s very unique, but again, it’s, it is a service-based industries. Right. And have some
0:39:45 level of security in that. Well, if you, it’s a good job, if you got one client and you get fired,
0:39:49 then you lose a hundred percent of your income. Like, well, if I lost one, one client and I lost
0:39:53 10 to 20% of my income instead, then I go replace them. That’s true. Actually.
0:39:59 So you’ve been doing this a couple of decades, like any big surprises or any big mistakes that you see
0:40:05 new personal chefs making? I would say the biggest mistake is getting locked in with either the wrong
0:40:11 client or too low of a price or agreeing to something that they know they shouldn’t do.
0:40:17 Because as a personal chef, once you’re locked in with the client, it’s really hard to, you can’t go
0:40:21 back and say, you know, I think I want to raise my price or I think I don’t want to cook this much food.
0:40:27 So that would be my biggest mistake. I see people make is agreeing to stuff because they’re so,
0:40:31 they want a client. So they just go, you know, they, they drop all their boundaries.
0:40:36 Okay. Yeah. You price too low at the beginning or it’s just like, it’s not a great fit. And now,
0:40:37 and now you’re kind of stuck.
0:40:44 Or promise the world, you know, the people are asking too many things and, and the chefs don’t
0:40:50 know how to set parameters on their business. Because I think a lot of people, they come from this,
0:40:53 they come to this business because they love to cook and they want to help and they,
0:40:59 they liked doing it, but the business side, they’re a little bit clueless on and they don’t
0:41:01 know how to really communicate that part.
0:41:06 Yeah. I think a lot of people fall into that boat of, well, I have this, I have this skill
0:41:11 and I just flip, flip a switch and say, well, now I’m in business. Like, well, there’s a few
0:41:16 freelancer skills or entrepreneur skills. It’s got to learn along, uh, along the way that we,
0:41:20 we talked about the mindset and the marketing and positioning and everything else.
0:41:24 Yeah. And, and also like as a personal chef, the interesting thing is you’re dealing with people
0:41:32 who are very business savvy, right? Your, your clients and you may not be. So if you’re, if
0:41:37 you’re coming in and you, you’re going to get steamrolled, they’re going to push your boundaries,
0:41:42 you know, because they can’t, I’m not saying they want to, they just don’t know. They’re not mind
0:41:46 readers. They don’t know where your boundaries are. And that’s why it’s really important for business
0:41:51 owners, especially personal chefs to be able to communicate that. And that’s one of the things I,
0:41:58 I see them really struggle with is because, and that’s confidence mindset. That’s all of it. That’s
0:42:03 why I always say confidence mindset is the first step to pricing, to your pricing strategy.
0:42:08 Yeah. I like this call to put up some boundaries, put up some guardrails from, from, from the early
0:42:12 days of, you know, what are you willing to do? What are you not willing to do? And kind of stick to
0:42:16 your, your North star guidance on that. So I appreciate, appreciate you sharing that. You’ve
0:42:22 alluded to it a couple of times. The Prosperous Personal Chef is a program that Jessica has created.
0:42:28 You can find it at chefjessica.com. Tell us a little bit about it. Who’s it for? What do you, what’s
0:42:36 inside? It’s basically start to finish walking you through the business of starting, growing, sustaining
0:42:42 a personal chef business. That being said, there is a ton of stuff in there that’s done for
0:42:49 you. The assessment, the sample menus, all of that is in there. And then anybody who goes
0:42:54 through the academy also gets my full support because I want to make sure that they’re successful.
0:43:01 So I include three full calls to make sure they are on page with their going through the right
0:43:08 direction because even I find that as a self-study course, it’s not as successful as if you have my
0:43:14 support because people still kind of get off the rails with their marketing and their boundaries and
0:43:21 all of that. Yeah. Well, I think it’s a fun example of kind of packaging up years of knowledge and
0:43:26 expertise and sometimes like the actual resources and templates and stuff that you use. And I imagine
0:43:31 people were asking like, Hey, can I, can I pick your brain on how to get started on my own? How did
0:43:35 you get customers? You’re like, well, you know, you get, you get sick of answering the same questions
0:43:39 over and over again. You’re like, well, let me put, if there’s some demand for this. Yeah. It was also
0:43:45 like, ah, like watching, you know, watching a train wreck or like you, you, it’s like you seeing
0:43:50 almost like your child wants to go to Disneyland, but won’t put their shoes on. That’s kind of what it was
0:43:56 like watching with chefs and seeing them doing the wrong thing over and over again as personal chefs and
0:44:02 people constantly posting questions that are like, how much should I charge for this? Or things like
0:44:09 that. Just when I felt like I got to get this information out there because somebody needs to
0:44:14 document the right way to do this. There’s too much misinformation and too many people doing it the
0:44:20 wrong way. Oh, very good. We’ll link that up. Chef Jessica.com. You can find your free guide to
0:44:25 getting high paying VIP clients over there. We’ll link that up in the show notes. This has been fun.
0:44:31 Hopefully some lessons and takeaways, um, regardless of what kind of local service business that you’re
0:44:36 running. You talked about, you’d may not be, uh, cooking may not come, uh, naturally to you, but lots of,
0:44:41 uh, tools and tactics I think that you’d be able to apply and different mindset shifts that you might be
0:44:46 able to apply to different business models as well. Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip
0:44:52 for side hustle nation. Connection. I think that if you want to grow a successful business, it’s all
0:44:59 about connection and building that connection with your clients is truly the secret to success in my
0:45:07 opinion. That’s so true. It’s all about your network and building that level of trust and who knows you,
0:45:12 how they know you talked about the strategic partnership angles, talked about the, uh,
0:45:17 introductory offer angles, like the, like the free samples at Costco. The example I come back to
0:45:22 a lot of times, I go, Oh, I don’t know if I want to commit to having you here every week. Let me,
0:45:25 let me see about this first. I call it dipping your toe in the water.
0:45:32 Yes. I love that angle. I love the angle of doing kind of low, low risk, low key speaking events
0:45:38 or presentations to showcase your expertise and, uh, build, build trust. Lots of cool marketing tactics
0:45:45 here. Again, chef Jessica.com is, uh, where you can find her. You also find the full text summary of
0:45:52 this episode, links to all the resources mentioned at side hustle nation.com slash chef. While you’re
0:45:57 there, go ahead and download your free listener bonus for this episode. That’s 101 service business ideas.
0:46:03 she might be able to apply some of Jessica’s same strategy to once again, side hustle nation.com
0:46:08 slash chef, or just follow the, uh, the link in the episode description. It’ll get you right over
0:46:13 there. Big thanks to Jessica for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this
0:46:18 content free for everyone. You can hit up side hustle nation.com slash deals for all the latest
0:46:24 offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in until next
0:46:29 time let’s come out there and make something happen. And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the side
0:46:30 hustle show. Hustle on.
0:00:09 The Side Hustle Show, where it’s all about ideas, action, and results toward building
0:00:13 extra income streams. Fun one for you today, where my guest took her passion for cooking,
0:00:20 turned it into a six-figure business. From chefjessica.com, Jessica Leibovitch. Welcome
0:00:21 to The Side Hustle Show.
0:00:23 Hello. Thank you for having me.
0:00:27 Excited for this one. Stick around in this one. Even if you don’t know a saucepan from
0:00:31 a spatula, we’re covering how to get clear on what kind of service niche you could offer,
0:00:37 creative ways to get clients, and the different revenue streams that one skill can turn into.
0:00:42 So, Jessica, my understanding is you’re working in catering, you have some culinary background,
0:00:47 and then there’s this switch that flips. Maybe I could take this skill freelance. Maybe I can go
0:00:52 solo. Maybe I could get a personal chef type of client. Can you talk me through your first time
0:00:55 getting paid for this type of work as a personal chef?
0:01:02 Yeah. My background was in catering. I was very young, working very hard, burnt out in my early
0:01:08 20s. And someone told me, oh, have you heard about being a personal chef? You might be really good at
0:01:14 this. And I looked into it and I thought, I would be really good at that. I was still working. I just
0:01:21 decided to take a client on the side and I made in one day what I was used to making pretty much for
0:01:21 the whole week. Wow.
0:01:28 So, yeah. So being young and naive, I quit my job with no exit plan. I would not recommend that to
0:01:36 anyone, but that’s what I did at 22. So, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I’ve been a personal chef
0:01:38 now for 25 years.
0:01:40 Okay. How’d you find that first client?
0:01:45 It was through word of mouth, through some recommendation in the community. Most of my
0:01:50 clients in the beginning were word of mouth. But when I initially started my business, I created a
0:01:58 press release for a local community newspaper in a sort of an upper class neighborhood. And they loved
0:02:04 it. They ran with it because I wrote the story for them. And that really got the momentum going in my
0:02:10 business. Because as a personal chef, you really only need a few clients. And once you have a few
0:02:13 clients, word of mouth starts to spread.
0:02:18 Oh, I love this example. How big of a newspaper are we talking here? Like, you know, neighborhood
0:02:20 specific, city specific?
0:02:25 Yeah. No, a small one. You know how when you go into a coffee shop and they have the free papers there?
0:02:25 Yeah.
0:02:30 Those are the papers that I would send my press release to because those are the community papers. They
0:02:37 usually feature people in the community. And people love to read them and they want feel good stories. So
0:02:43 someone suggested it. And it’s really such a great way to get clients as a personal chef because it builds
0:02:45 trust and it’s free.
0:02:50 You write your own marketing material. This is good. Do you remember what it said? Like, Chef Jessica,
0:02:52 you know, now open for business or something?
0:02:58 Well, what I always tell people is you have to tell a story and market yourself without marketing
0:03:04 yourself. So basically, you show the problems that you’re solving. At the time, I was showing a family
0:03:10 in the community where I was really helping them. One of the family members had an allergy and the other
0:03:17 family members were having a hard time kind of eating around those specifications. And this was all new
0:03:23 for them. So I helped them. So now you do have to make your angle a little bit different. You can’t
0:03:28 just be like, oh, I’m a new personal chef in the area. You want to show how are you really helping
0:03:35 your community and what challenges are you solving for your clients? Like a unique spin on it. And a lot
0:03:40 of times they will pick it up because if you think about it, these journalists have to constantly come up
0:03:46 with news and articles. And if you give them something that’s nicely done, why wouldn’t they
0:03:46 use it?
0:03:53 Sure. So like there seems to be just recently a lot of press around food dyes and the danger. So it’s
0:03:58 like you could be like how to have a dye free, you know, kitchen or something like that.
0:04:03 Yeah. I mean, clean food is such a big thing now and just take, you know, seed oils, eliminating things
0:04:10 out of your diet. Adding red meat back in is really popular as well. So helping people do
0:04:16 those changes. There’s a lot of different things. It really depends on the chef and where their
0:04:17 strengths lie.
0:04:23 Yeah. This was one of the pages out of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK playbook where we’re talking with
0:04:27 Brian Scudamore, the CEO. And early on, he just bought a thousand dollar pickup truck and started picking
0:04:32 up. John started taking on very few clients, but initially…
0:04:33 Solved a big problem.
0:04:37 Solved a big problem and then pitched it to the local paper because it was like,
0:04:41 hey, high school student or college student, you know, creates his own summer job. And,
0:04:46 you know, it was a unique feel good type of story. Hey, young entrepreneur does good. But by virtue of
0:04:50 that, and of course, the picture that he submits is like him with the side of his truck with the phone
0:04:55 number like emblazoned on the side. It’s like starts getting all of these calls after the fact. It’s
0:04:59 like trying to figure out, like to your point about the seed oils or the allergy specific,
0:05:04 like what’s the broader trend that’s going on? Like how can you, in Brian’s case, like in a slow
0:05:08 job market, you know, local teen creates his own income stream. So like what’s the…
0:05:13 Yeah. What’s the angle? What’s the, you know, what’s the hook? I actually, in my, in my academy,
0:05:19 my business in a box for chefs, I give them a sample press release and a press release guide because
0:05:24 I feel like it’s so important as a personal chef to be able to get yourself out there in the press
0:05:30 because, you know, everybody wants to pay for marketing or do ads, but we have such a short
0:05:37 attention span and people also have such a strong distrust of ads that when you see someone in a
0:05:43 newspaper, it really, you’re able to trust them and you have an attention span that’s a little bit
0:05:46 longer than an ad. So it’s just much more effective.
0:05:50 Yeah. Especially targeting, you know, there’s, there’s some level of assumption that the journalist
0:05:55 has done some level of vetting. So there’s like, you, you’ve kind of skipped the line in a lot of
0:05:55 cases.
0:06:01 And they do. Most of the times they do. They’re not just going to publish it without speaking to you.
0:06:06 And again, sometimes you need to follow up with them. I mean, I’ve sent my press releases out where
0:06:11 they have not responded. And then I followed up and they’re like, oh yeah, we do want to do that
0:06:16 article on you. We just got busy. And then they end up publishing it. So, you know, sometimes you
0:06:18 have to be a little bit forward.
0:06:24 The one advantage that I see of this type of business is it seems ripe for recurring revenue,
0:06:29 potentially long-term recurring revenue, where if a family gets used to having a personal chef,
0:06:34 like probably a luxury expense in a lot of cases of targeting a more affluent audience.
0:06:38 Sure. But like, once I get used to it, it’s like, I can’t imagine going back to cooking for myself
0:06:41 again, right? It’s like, they could keep you on the, on the payroll here for, for months and months
0:06:42 or maybe years.
0:06:46 Exactly. I’m glad you mentioned this. This is a huge pillar of what I teach. There’s
0:06:53 sort of three pillars and it’s consistent income, work-life balance, and a high level of service.
0:07:00 And you’re only able to have consistent income if you give that high level of service and it,
0:07:06 you do, you become indispensable to your clients. And I think one of the nicest things one of my
0:07:11 clients ever said to me was that I was like part of the furniture, which I took as a compliment.
0:07:14 Not that we’re going to like walk over you like a rug, but yeah.
0:07:19 Yeah, exactly. You know, when I went to renew my contract with them and raise my price, they were
0:07:24 just like, yeah, you’re not, you’re not going anywhere. But you have to be in there and solve the
0:07:29 problem and understand them and be able to give that high level of service and really care about
0:07:35 them and their goals because their success is your success. And it’s the people who have that heart
0:07:41 who are successful at being a personal chef. It’s not necessarily the people who are amazing chefs.
0:07:47 I’ve been a chef for a long time. I was trained in France and I have a culinary arts degree, so I have
0:07:53 the whole background. And the funny thing is my clients almost never asked me about it. Most of
0:07:58 them have no idea where I went to school. Yeah. And a lot of times I don’t even use these skills because
0:08:02 the food they want is so simple. Yeah. When you were starting out, did you have
0:08:10 a niche in mind of like, I’m going to focus on organic or vegan or allergy free or like trying
0:08:16 to serve like, hey, I’m the go-to person for these specific dietary needs?
0:08:22 Well, I started so long ago that special diets were not as common back then. And because my background
0:08:28 was in fine dining, that was really where I went to. And my clients were aligned with that in the
0:08:34 beginning. They wanted really yummy food. I was making things like lasagna or, you know,
0:08:41 I would make roasts and gravies and things like that. And I still occasionally will have a client like
0:08:47 that, although it’s very rare. But what happened was, I think it was my first time I got a client.
0:08:55 She was a single mom with cancer. And, you know, I just was so invested in her eating well. I think
0:09:01 I was probably more invested in it than she was. And so once you have somebody like that and you’re
0:09:06 helping somebody like that, if you really are passionate about what you do, it sort of just
0:09:13 gravitates where I just started helping more people like that with health challenges. And because I could
0:09:21 put that focus and time and attention into each client, I was able to really develop a relationship
0:09:26 with them. And that’s where you will get that indispensability is when you have that long-term
0:09:34 relationship with a client. So I did sort of go in the direction of health challenges because I just
0:09:37 felt like there was such a need and those people really needed a chef.
0:09:44 I imagine it’s becomes somewhat more competitive. But even in Googling near like your personal chef near
0:09:49 me, your personal chef, Sammamish, I see some like catering companies that pop up.
0:09:55 People are very confused. The problem is, is what I’m doing a lot of there used to be a lot of us.
0:10:02 But what’s happened now is everybody wants to be a meal prep or a caterer because they don’t
0:10:07 understand how to make a career and income out of being a personal chef, because it is very specific.
0:10:12 You do have to be able to give the high level of service to be able to give that time and attention
0:10:19 and, you know, really understand what your clients need. And so a lot of people don’t want to do that.
0:10:25 And so they will do the meal prep. But what happens is a lot of times they will burn out because
0:10:33 it’s a lot of work. It’s exhaustion. You’re working weekends. You’re working evenings. You’re working
0:10:40 holidays. Personal chef is a Monday through Friday schedule. You’re typically working 9 to 5. And if you
0:10:48 have five weekly clients, you’re maxed out. And if you have 10 biweekly clients, you’re maxed out. So it really
0:10:54 depends on how you schedule it. So that’s why it’s not as competitive, because it’s very specific niche that
0:11:00 not a lot of people do. And a lot of people decided, oh, I want to do meal prep or I want to I’m a personal
0:11:07 chef, but I actually have chefs working under me. So if somebody is a personal chef, but they have
0:11:11 chefs working under them, that’s really not a personal chef, because how can they give that
0:11:17 one on one high level of service that the client needs with somebody working under them doesn’t
0:11:23 quite work the same. So it is a one on one solopreneur type business.
0:11:27 Yeah, it’s like a personal chef agency, semi personal chef.
0:11:33 A lot of people are doing that. I’ve tried it kind of like hiring people. But I feel that the
0:11:39 quality was lost. And what happens is instead of giving that time and attention to your clients who
0:11:42 are paying you for it, you end up giving it to your team.
0:11:48 Yeah, there’s pros and cons to it. Obviously, the advantage being you’ll free up your time in theory
0:11:54 from doing the direct, you know, one to one type of client work, how to expand beyond kind of the
0:11:59 natural capacity. Like you said, if I can do this only five days a week, and especially if I’m doing
0:12:04 it as a side hustle, maybe I only want to do it one day a week. And now here’s a chance to free some of
0:12:05 that up.
0:12:09 And there are ways you can do that. I mean, my team personally is like my bookkeeper,
0:12:17 my CPA, I have somebody who supports me with VA stuff. But as far as my relationship with my clients,
0:12:18 that’s all me.
0:12:24 Yeah, what’s typical in terms of pricing here? In terms of how, how much can you charge? Or how much
0:12:25 how much are people paying for personal chefs?
0:12:33 So for me, personally, it’s about 650 plus groceries per day. And I’ve, I’ve worked my way
0:12:40 up to that. But that’s very, that’s not on the extremely high range. That’s about average for a
0:12:40 lot of chefs.
0:12:44 And that’s not one day’s worth of food. That’s like a week or two weeks.
0:12:47 Oh, no, that so that would give them about a week’s worth of meals.
0:12:52 Okay. That’s like, hold on. That’s like a really, really nice restaurant. Yeah.
0:12:58 Yeah, no, not per meal. So so that’s my revenue for the day. And and to be honest,
0:13:02 it’s more than one day, because a lot of times I’m planning the night before I’m shopping that
0:13:09 morning, I’m cooking. So so if I have a weekly client, I typically will bring in at least $2,500
0:13:17 from that client a month. So if I have four weekly clients, that gets me to 10,000. Now, the way that
0:13:25 if somebody is just starting out, I typically suggest they start at the $500 rate and because
0:13:30 they’re a lot of times they’re more comfortable with that. It’s easier for them to sell until they
0:13:37 get really comfortable with pitching their value. But at $500 plus groceries, if they have five clients
0:13:40 a day, that’s 10,000 a month or five clients a week. Excuse me.
0:13:47 Okay, you have five clients a week. Got it. And so yeah, they come in do the weekly, weekly prep
0:13:52 on a Monday or, you know, on a Saturday, if you’re doing it as a side hustle.
0:13:57 Yeah. So they basically prep like a week’s worth of meals. It’s all customized. They leave them
0:14:01 packaged for them. And then, you know, they come back the following week and and do it again. And
0:14:06 they get feedback from the clients. Usually people are doing once a week or once every two weeks.
0:14:12 Okay. And if they do once every two weeks, it’s actually very affordable for, so it’s not just
0:14:19 for, you know, the upper class or the wealthy. You’re able to really market to just professionals
0:14:20 who really need support.
0:14:26 Yeah. I’m trying to think of, you know, putting yourself in the client’s position, which was going
0:14:30 to help your marketing is, you know, what are you, what are you really buying? It’s like on the surface,
0:14:34 you’re selling food, but you’re really, okay, what am I buying as the customer? I’m buying back my time.
0:14:40 I’m buying back my mental load of having to do me, just think about what’s for dinner this week.
0:14:44 Honestly, I like to say they’re buying a transformation because some of the chefs don’t
0:14:48 understand this because they think I mean a transformation in their health, but I don’t like,
0:14:56 and you probably know this because when you up level in life and you’re able to offload or outsource
0:15:01 some of your challenges, you transform things. You transform the way you react to things.
0:15:05 You transform your relationships because you’re able to breathe and focus your attention on other
0:15:11 things. And so that’s really what you’re selling is you’re selling that whole package of a support
0:15:17 system. It’s not just I’m cooking for you. And that’s why when my client told me that I’m part of
0:15:22 the furniture, I took it as a compliment because it is like a support system. It’s like I’m always there
0:15:28 for them. They know that I’m always going to be there to help them and they need me. So that’s kind of
0:15:33 how you have to look at it more than I’m just saving you time and cooking for you, because
0:15:35 if that’s all they wanted, then they could just get DoorDash.
0:15:42 Sure, sure. More with Jessica in just a moment, including the most effective free and low cost
0:15:45 marketing tactics coming up right after this.
0:15:52 Yeah. Okay. So this is helpful on the marketing side. What are clients really buying? Hey, you’re buying
0:15:56 a transformation. You’re buying a support system. You’re buying just the mental, you know,
0:15:59 offloading. Yeah. And like you said, leveling up. Hey, what are the things I don’t have to
0:16:04 think about? I don’t have to worry about anymore. I’ve got a team in place for this. Just like having
0:16:08 a virtual assistant. Right. Like, Nick, think about it this way. Like, if you have a housekeeper,
0:16:15 I’m not just paying for a clean house. It’s that whole support, the feeling of knowing it’s going to
0:16:20 be taken care of. It’s off my shoulders. I get to come home and it feels amazing to come home to a
0:16:26 clean house. I know she’s helping. It’s all of those things. It’s not just about the act. And I
0:16:30 think that helps in your marketing because when you’re able to communicate your value and also
0:16:35 really understand where your clients are struggling and how you can help, that’s going to help you
0:16:39 kind of get that ball rolling and have them sign on.
0:16:45 Do you find yourself making the same stuff week after week? Like if the client, if that family has a few
0:16:50 favorites where they’re like, well, make sure to include that in this week’s menu or is it, does it
0:16:53 have to, do you feel the pressure to like be constantly rotating?
0:17:00 No. In fact, most people want a rotation. So most people want to eat the same things most of the time
0:17:06 with a few new things sprinkled in. And think about it. Like, do you want to eat new things every single
0:17:11 week? Probably not. You probably have your favorites that you enjoy. And so a lot of times what I’ll do is
0:17:17 I’ll do three or four of the same things that I know they love and maybe try one or two new things.
0:17:22 And then if they love the new thing, that goes on the rotation. So the longer you cook for someone,
0:17:27 the more they find things that they love. But initially I do an assessment, try to play it
0:17:32 really safe, just go with things I know they’re really going to enjoy. I don’t want to scare them
0:17:38 too much. I want them to love the service from the beginning. And then once I get to know them better,
0:17:42 then we sort of branch out and try new things. And you have it set up, it sounds like as a recurring
0:17:49 monthly service, right? It’s $2,500 a month per customer. I come in every week and I do my thing.
0:17:56 Any tools or tech that you use either on the recipe, the shopping side, the client, you know,
0:17:58 recurring billing side, anything that we should know about there?
0:18:03 Yeah, I use a lot of tech in my business. Well, first of all, there’s a there’s a lot of different
0:18:09 recipe database programs that you can use. I have one that I call it’s called MasterCook that I love
0:18:16 because it creates a shopping list for you. And it stores your recipes and you can add to your
0:18:22 shopping list based on your recipe. This is very helpful for not forgetting things. Being a personal
0:18:29 chef is a very low stress job. But the one thing that will stress you out is if you forget an
0:18:35 ingredient and you’re ready to cook. So a program like that is really helpful to make sure that
0:18:36 doesn’t happen. Okay.
0:18:41 Some of the things that I do for my clients, I go above and beyond. So I will calculate macros
0:18:47 for a client if they want. For example, if they say, Jessica, I need to make sure that this meal has 40
0:18:53 grams of protein and 20 grams of fat. I will do that for them. And so I use programs for that. I
0:19:01 have a program called macro stacks. It’s an app that I use. Okay. And I also just use spreadsheets and I
0:19:08 will put their meals in the spreadsheet and calculate their meals for the day, depending on how I’ve had
0:19:13 clients who were with me a few days a week where they’re on a very high retainer. I will do their
0:19:19 macros for the whole week to make sure they’re on board. And so I need a really good tech for that.
0:19:24 Just to clarify macros, we’re talking about grams of protein, fat, carbs.
0:19:31 Right. So I’ll input all their food for them to make sure their meals are not going over and to
0:19:36 make sure that my meals are staying within the proper macros. But yes, it’s protein, fat, and carbs.
0:19:36 Got it.
0:19:43 Is it typical to go shopping, bring all the stuff to the client’s house? Are you doing it at your
0:19:48 place and then delivering it? Are you renting out a commercial kitchen space?
0:19:53 Well, you could do all of that. So I always say don’t ever rent out a commercial kitchen space. That’s
0:19:59 a waste of money. Typically, you’re going to either cook in your client’s home or you can cook in your
0:20:04 own home and deliver. Now, if you cook in your own home and deliver, you just need to make sure that
0:20:08 your client is aware of it and they’re okay with it. So you both are in an agreement.
0:20:12 Do you need to have like a cottage kitchen license or food handlers or anything?
0:20:16 No, you don’t because you’re not selling food to the public. It’s a service-based industry. So it’s
0:20:22 not a permit-based industry. You’re not being overseen by the health department. That’s why I
0:20:27 said you have to make sure that your client is in agreement. Now, if you’re telling your client,
0:20:31 oh, I’m at a commercial kitchen and you’re really cooking at your home, that’s not okay. You have to have
0:20:36 an agreement. Now, for me personally, I don’t really like cooking at my own home because it’s
0:20:40 more work. You have to bring the groceries to your home, prepare, package up. I get distracted at my
0:20:46 house. My clients have much nicer kitchens than I do. So I prefer to cook in their home. But a lot of
0:20:51 times, like for example, my clients, if they’re sick or if they have a lot of kids at home or if they
0:20:57 just had a baby or, you know, whatever it may be, I may cook at home. Or if it’s a one-time thing,
0:21:03 like a gift certificate, you can do that. Another reason people do it is I have chefs who are in the
0:21:09 corporate world and they are making their exit plan to be a personal chef. And so they’re doing the
0:21:15 remote work at home and they picked up a client and they’re able to cook while they’re doing their
0:21:20 breaks on their remote work and over the weekend and then deliver in the morning before their job
0:21:26 starts. So this is how they’re they’re able to kind of segue out. Got it. Yeah. And you can imagine
0:21:30 you can stack it up, you know, one client, two client, three clients, like it just lowers the
0:21:34 height of the of the cliff that you need to jump off of to quit your job. That’s what I always suggest.
0:21:40 Don’t do what I did. But yeah, if that way, if you have a couple of clients, you start to save money,
0:21:45 you know, and once you gain the momentum as a personal chef, it doesn’t take as long.
0:21:51 Once you start to get your marketing strategies dialed in and you build your list. I love Google
0:21:57 ads, another way to get clients. So if you have a Google ad going, they’re going to deliver leads
0:22:03 to you on a regular basis if you have a pretty good website. If people are searching personal chef near
0:22:08 me or personal chef, you know, city name, then you want to make sure your ad shows up? Yes, because
0:22:15 there’s no competition. There’s not, you know, there’s not 100 personal chefs. So typically if you have a
0:22:19 Google ad for personal chef and someone is searching, they’re going to see your website.
0:22:24 So it just increases your visibility. Like I said, I’m not a huge person who loves to pay for ads,
0:22:28 but that’s just one that is really effective for personal chef.
0:22:31 Yeah, I like that. That seems like a low, low budget. I mean, I can’t imagine there’s a huge
0:22:34 search volume, but like you said, it doesn’t take a lot of clients. Like I only need one,
0:22:39 you know, one taker to add potentially 2000 bucks to my bottom line.
0:22:43 Yeah, $5 a day too is all the ad spend you really need.
0:22:49 Okay. What else have you got on the marketing side? I think this is, it’s not going to take
0:22:54 a ton. You probably not have to do all of these different marketing tactics to fill up your
0:22:55 schedule, but what else?
0:22:59 Strategic partnerships are really effective that are aligned with your strengths. You know,
0:23:05 a lot of times people will think, oh, I’m going to go with a personal trainer. That’s not what I would
0:23:10 consider a strategic partnership. What I would consider a strategic partnership is again,
0:23:16 someone who you’re helping solve that challenge. So like a doctor or nutritionist is a good strategic
0:23:22 partner because they will give their clients or patients a plan and just send them on their way and
0:23:30 have no idea of how they’re going to do that. So a personal chef is that bridge between the plan
0:23:36 and execution that really helps that customer have success. So they’ve been really great strategic
0:23:43 partnerships. So a lot of times when I work with chefs, my homework will just be to find 20 strategic
0:23:49 partners and reach out to them with an introductory offer. And a lot of times that is enough to just get
0:23:51 your ball, the ball rolling as a personal chef.
0:23:54 Can I pause on introductory offer? What do you, what’s an example of that?
0:23:58 So an introductory offer of obviously like people aren’t going to want to jump in and pay
0:24:04 $2,500 to somebody if they’ve never tried their service. So an introductory offer is a way, it’s a
0:24:11 taste. It’s a way for people to get to try your food, your services, get to know you, start to build
0:24:15 that trust and see if they want to take it further. It’s, you know, it’s just like any other relationship,
0:24:21 you know, people aren’t going to ask to be exclusive on the first date. So you want to just kind of
0:24:26 get to know and see, is this an alignment? Is this going to be good for both of us? And so an
0:24:34 introductory offer is that, that ability. And by doing that, you have a crowd-pleasing menu that
0:24:41 showcases your food in a way that is a little bit less work for you and maybe a little bit lower of a
0:24:41 price point.
0:24:46 Okay. And are you offering that to the doctors and nutritionists or you’re offering it as
0:24:50 something that they can then in turn pass along to their, their clients?
0:24:58 Yeah. And it could actually be offered to anyone or you could tailor them to the specific doctor or
0:25:03 nutritionist, depending like if you have a doctor or nutritionist who focuses on, you know, let’s say
0:25:08 they have a heart patient. So you want to gear it towards them, or you could have a general introductory
0:25:13 offer. That’s going to be really up to each individual chef, how kind of dialed in they want
0:25:18 to get. Okay. Yeah. So the nutritionist is going to say, Hey, you’re, we got your, we got your test
0:25:24 results back. You need to improve your omega-3, omega-6 ratio. You need to add more lean protein to
0:25:28 your, to your diet. And then they just send you on your way. So like, here’s a value add for them.
0:25:33 And by the way, if you’d like a discounted sample from a trusted personal chef contact of mine,
0:25:35 you know, give Chef Jessica a call.
0:25:42 Exactly. Or she, she has a special introductory offer just for people in our office. And here it is,
0:25:48 something like that. I mean, I love ChatGPT for helping me kind of fine tune my offers. A lot of
0:25:55 times they’re very general, but if I can’t decide how I want to position it, it might help me. Okay.
0:26:00 I have a nutritionist who specializes in this, and I really want to help her patients do this.
0:26:05 Can you help me? And then it will help me kind of pinpoint that offer. And then I can fine tune it
0:26:11 more towards my food and my messaging. But that’s just one way. Strategic partnerships are a really
0:26:18 great way. I mentioned press releases. Just being visible in your community. So instead of posting on
0:26:23 social media all the time where people have such a short attention span, getting out there and talking
0:26:29 to people, going, like, I love going to senior centers. I will go, I’ll bring a healthy baked good,
0:26:37 I’ll bring a healthy lunch salad, and I’ll talk to them for an hour or two. And it’s so fun. And it’s
0:26:41 so rewarding. A lot of times I get paid a couple hundred dollars. I mean, it’s not a ton of money,
0:26:47 but it’s enjoyable. It’s paid marketing. And you get them to sign up on your list. You always make
0:26:53 an offer at the end. That’s one thing that chefs need to always do is make an offer at the end of when
0:26:58 you’re talking or your demo. And if they don’t sign up, collect their emails, and then you can pitch
0:26:59 your offers in the future.
0:27:05 Okay. So the senior center is paying you to come in as the expert guest of the week?
0:27:11 Yeah. Actually, a lot of places do. Like, wellness, places with wellness businesses that have wellness
0:27:16 programs for their employees. Like, I used to go to the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Wild Animal
0:27:21 Park. They had a wellness program for their employees. And they would pay me to come in,
0:27:24 and their employees would get points to come and watch me.
0:27:29 Oh, okay. And you’re giving a presentation on how to make healthy food at home or something like that?
0:27:33 Yeah. I think for them, it was healthy eating for the work week. And again,
0:27:37 pitch my offer. I still have those, a lot of, this was probably like 15 years ago I went there
0:27:42 for the first time. And I still have those people on my list that read my newsletter.
0:27:48 Okay. Yeah. This is one of our favorite marketing tactics. First, the strategic partnerships that
0:27:52 you mentioned on that, or like doing any sort of commission or ref share, like, oh, I’ll give you
0:27:54 10% of the first month’s service or anything like that.
0:28:00 I never have, honestly. I’m helping them really, their patients have success. So I don’t really feel
0:28:06 like there needs to be a revenue share. Because again, then it’s also like making money, more money
0:28:10 off of their patients when really we’re just trying to help them. And I think if you come from this
0:28:13 business with a service mindset, you’re going to be a lot more successful.
0:28:17 Yeah. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen it both ways. So just wanted to clarify, you don’t have to have
0:28:23 like a paid affiliate relationship or partnership that way. And the other thing that you mentioned
0:28:29 here was these kind of like low-key speaking gigs at the, you know, the corporate wellness event,
0:28:34 you’re getting on their calendar, the senior center where you’re showcasing your expertise,
0:28:39 you’re getting in front of a larger group of potential customers all at once. Of course,
0:28:42 not everybody’s going to sign up. You don’t need everybody to sign up, but if they are going to
0:28:46 hire the service, all of a sudden you jump the line, right? They’re not going to go to Google
0:28:50 anymore. They’re just going to go straight to you. This is a really, really powerful, we’ve seen people
0:28:56 do this, you know, in person, like lunch and learn, Hey, come learn about copywriting from, you know,
0:29:02 the seven deadly SIDS you’re making with your website to, to doing it online partnerships,
0:29:06 whereas, you know, invite your email list to this free webinar workshop, and we’ll teach you this
0:29:12 skill and this really, really effective way to, to kind of jump the line and, and showcase some
0:29:18 expertise. Yeah. I mean, it builds trust, I think. And as a personal chef, you really, they have to
0:29:22 trust you because they’re bringing you into their home and they’re sharing a lot of personal information
0:29:28 with you. And so by doing those things, for example, having the San Diego zoo and wild animal park,
0:29:35 bringing me into their employees, it built trust. Their employees trust me and it, it sort of softens
0:29:39 that relationship. But not only that, again, I talked about earlier how, you know, we have such
0:29:45 a short attention span and to be able to really capture people’s attention span is where you’re
0:29:50 going to get them. I mean, you know that you have a podcast where people are tuning in. It’s totally
0:29:54 different than when people are scrolling, you know, and you have them for two seconds. So that’s why
0:30:00 really being visible and getting out there in your community and showcasing your offers, showcasing your
0:30:05 skills is always going to be more effective than posting on social media.
0:30:08 Yeah. Fair. I like it. Anything else on the marketing side?
0:30:14 Get comfortable with talking about what you do and telling people what you do, because a lot of people
0:30:18 I work with, they just don’t talk about it or they don’t tell people and people don’t know. Having a
0:30:24 elevator pitch or a tagline where you can describe your services very quickly is very helpful. But just
0:30:30 getting more comfortable and confident is really what’s going to get you over the edge and be good
0:30:33 marketing because nobody’s going to hire a chef that’s not confident.
0:30:39 More with Jessica in just a moment, including the additional income streams she’s been able to build
0:30:44 from this one skill beyond just cooking for clients one-on-one. That’s coming up right after this.
0:30:51 Let’s talk about a potential way to scale because it’s like, okay, I can make great money doing
0:30:56 something that I like. I could start doing it as a side hustle. It doesn’t take a lot of clients to
0:31:01 really build up a meaningful income stream. But if I ever want to take time off, all of a sudden I’m not
0:31:08 getting paid. If I want to try something else, I’m kind of potentially stuck in this trading time for
0:31:16 money business. And is there, you know, what are some ways that you’ve seen where someone with a
0:31:20 skill could branch out to some other creative revenue streams?
0:31:25 Okay. Some of the things that I have done and I’ve seen chefs do is, you know, you look at the
0:31:32 problems you’re solving for your clients right now and how can you help people who can’t afford your
0:31:39 services on the same level. So one of the things that I will do is I would create a customized menu
0:31:47 plan for people that has recipes, shopping lists. So it basically shows them how to be their own
0:31:54 personal chef. You can start to release recipes. I have personally done a lot of consulting work.
0:32:01 So I will do recipe development for companies such as like I’m making a developing a protein bar
0:32:10 developing a healthy shaved ice. I have created a cookbook for a supplement company there. You can
0:32:17 also do cooking classes, cooking classes online or in person. So there’s a lot of different ways that
0:32:22 you can creatively create different income avenues as a personal chef.
0:32:28 Okay. So these, these companies are coming to you to say, Hey, we saw you on social or we saw like,
0:32:32 can you, can you help us put this together? Yeah. And believe it or not, they either find me through
0:32:37 my website, which is primarily through looking for a personal chef. They’re not looking for a research
0:32:43 and product development chef. I can tell you that because I know my keywords and also through my
0:32:49 personal chef clients. So a business partners of my personal chef clients will say, Hey, Jessica,
0:32:54 I’m really interested in making this. Do you think you could help me? So that’s just things that have
0:32:59 come to me because I’m open to them. And I talk to people about these types of business situations,
0:33:07 but I think that people being open to helping people with eating healthy in new ways. So it’s not just
0:33:13 about, Oh, can I cook you a healthy dinner? There’s think about it’s problem solving. I mean, I can’t answer
0:33:21 how, you know, chef Dan in Idaho should, should align his business to the highest level, but I know there’s
0:33:28 a way for him to do it. Right. I like this, um, this kind of reframe or this, this, um, exercise of,
0:33:33 you know, what can I create for the people who can’t necessarily afford my one-on-one services and then
0:33:38 parsing out using those same skills. Oh, it could be the recipe development. It could be the meal planning.
0:33:45 It could be, you know, the group, uh, cooking classes or the hosted dinner party. Like there’s,
0:33:48 um, eat with, or was, you know, I came across one of these sites where I was like, you know,
0:33:54 host this dinner party. It was like a cool experience type of thing, kind of a sample almost of your work,
0:34:00 but, you know, allows you to serve lots of people all at once versus just the one, uh, one-on-one
0:34:04 client. Yeah. Ideas are popping into my head as we’re talking. Like I’m thinking, Oh, you could,
0:34:10 you could create a dinner party master plan where you teach somebody how to create a four course
0:34:14 dinner party in their home. I mean, there’s so many different things that you could do. You have to
0:34:21 take what your skill is and what do you like to do, but especially now with AI, it’s much easier to do
0:34:26 these digital things as a chef, because a lot of times in the past, they didn’t necessarily have
0:34:32 those skills, but it’s easier now. And it’s something that I’ve done for at least 10 years now,
0:34:39 been doing the digital side for my chef clients where I sell menu plans and recipes and cookbooks
0:34:45 and things like that. And it’s great because it allows me to connect with people all over the
0:34:49 country and the world that I would not normally have as clients. Yeah. What do you charge for the
0:34:54 menu, menu planning or something like that? If it’s 500 bucks a day or 600 bucks a day to have you come to
0:34:59 my house? It’s not cheap. It’s usually starts at like 150, but it’s quite a bit. It’s, it’s very
0:35:04 extensive and it’s customized and it’s something they have forever. And it always comes with my
0:35:08 support. I always want to support people with anything they purchase of mine. So I always tell
0:35:14 the chefs as well, you know, provide that support and people will keep coming back. Another thing I did,
0:35:18 which is interesting. So one of the things that I teach people is offer and visibility, create the
0:35:23 offer and be visible. That’s how you get the clients. So I created an offer during a slow time
0:35:29 called the soup trio. And basically this was for my local clients and I did, it was three
0:35:36 plant-based soups and it was sort of like a detox. But what I did was I sent it out to my whole list
0:35:41 as an option of either you could purchase the soup or you could purchase it as a digital download.
0:35:47 So you could get all the recipes for the soups that had the shopping list. So if they wanted this
0:35:52 detox or this cleanse at home, they’re able to do that. And I think I sold that for like
0:36:00 $30 or something very low. But that was a way to showcase what I did. But it was no more work for
0:36:04 me because I was already doing it for my regular clients. I already had to create all of that stuff
0:36:05 anyway.
0:36:11 Yeah. Do you do any of the group classes? I’m thinking is when we travel, I think we did one of
0:36:16 these in Thailand where I don’t know if it showed up on TripAdvisor or like some other friends had
0:36:21 gone and said, oh, you got to do this while you’re there. I mean, anything like that through Airbnb?
0:36:27 Yeah. So I didn’t mention this in the marketing. Airbnb has connections. So they reached out to me
0:36:34 and I’m sure any chef could do this. They have an elevate part of their services where you can post
0:36:39 something that you want to provide, a service that you want to provide. If you want to do a
0:36:46 fancy picnic or a cooking class, you post that in the Airbnb elevate area and then people searching
0:36:52 for services like that will see it. As a personal chef, there are a lot of apps and companies that
0:36:59 want to market with you. There is Cozy Meal, which does cooking classes. So people will sign up on their
0:37:05 app and book a cooking class through you. Airbnb, a lot of places. So you can kind of hand off the
0:37:09 marketing in some aspects if you like to do events like that.
0:37:15 Yeah, I think this is really interesting. When we were trying to shop for a place to do our annual
0:37:21 Friendsgiving and we’re looking for AirBbs or houses to rent in Mexico. And it seems like a lot of the
0:37:26 hosts, the owners of these places had relationships with local chefs. We’re like, and if you don’t want
0:37:32 to bring, you don’t want to deal with going out or you don’t, we could bring in our partner chef to
0:37:36 prep three meals a day for you. It would be an extra hundred bucks a day or something. It was like
0:37:41 different currency, cost of living, everything else. But it was a unique value add where if you have
0:37:46 some strategic partnerships, if you’re in a tourist area, you don’t necessarily want to do the full
0:37:52 weekly thing, but you’d be open to doing it every now and again when the requests come in. I could see
0:37:57 that being a thing too. Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to go out every single night when they’re going out
0:38:03 to eat. So it’s actually a really great service. I don’t do this as much anymore, but I used to spend
0:38:09 a lot of time or a lot of events doing vacations because I live in an area where a lot of people
0:38:13 come in for vacation in the summer. And so a lot of my clients would travel during the summer. So it
0:38:18 allowed me to kind of pick up extra business. Yeah. We came across, there was, I want to say it was
0:38:23 Southern California too. Maybe it was in LA, but they were doing these luxury picnic setups and there
0:38:28 was some overhead involved because like, you know, fancy little table and table linens, you know, for
0:38:34 this, they’d set up the whole charcuterie platform, but it was like. So pretty. I’ve seen them. I forget
0:38:39 the price, but it was much higher than I expected somebody to pay for a picnic setup. Yeah. It’s
0:38:45 definitely a premium service. There are so many cool ways to market yourself as a personal chef. It’s kind
0:38:51 of like, and it’s just like anything. Like I always feel like everything takes effort and work,
0:38:56 no matter what we’re going to do. Everything takes hard work, but I don’t feel like this is a hustle,
0:39:04 like hustle hard. It’s more of a hard work and alignment type of side hustle where, you know,
0:39:10 you find people who you’re really connected with and you can help instead of having to work so hard to
0:39:16 find clients because you only need five to 10 clients. Right. Yeah. And it’s a helpful exercise
0:39:19 where you’re not, you’re not trying to serve thousands of people, right? You don’t, you don’t
0:39:22 need to. And you, and you, you, you physically couldn’t. Yeah. There’s not a lot of businesses
0:39:29 that you could get to six figures with just five clients and still work Monday through Friday,
0:39:34 nine to five. I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of businesses like that. So in that way,
0:39:39 it’s very unique, but again, it’s, it is a service-based industries. Right. And have some
0:39:45 level of security in that. Well, if you, it’s a good job, if you got one client and you get fired,
0:39:49 then you lose a hundred percent of your income. Like, well, if I lost one, one client and I lost
0:39:53 10 to 20% of my income instead, then I go replace them. That’s true. Actually.
0:39:59 So you’ve been doing this a couple of decades, like any big surprises or any big mistakes that you see
0:40:05 new personal chefs making? I would say the biggest mistake is getting locked in with either the wrong
0:40:11 client or too low of a price or agreeing to something that they know they shouldn’t do.
0:40:17 Because as a personal chef, once you’re locked in with the client, it’s really hard to, you can’t go
0:40:21 back and say, you know, I think I want to raise my price or I think I don’t want to cook this much food.
0:40:27 So that would be my biggest mistake. I see people make is agreeing to stuff because they’re so,
0:40:31 they want a client. So they just go, you know, they, they drop all their boundaries.
0:40:36 Okay. Yeah. You price too low at the beginning or it’s just like, it’s not a great fit. And now,
0:40:37 and now you’re kind of stuck.
0:40:44 Or promise the world, you know, the people are asking too many things and, and the chefs don’t
0:40:50 know how to set parameters on their business. Because I think a lot of people, they come from this,
0:40:53 they come to this business because they love to cook and they want to help and they,
0:40:59 they liked doing it, but the business side, they’re a little bit clueless on and they don’t
0:41:01 know how to really communicate that part.
0:41:06 Yeah. I think a lot of people fall into that boat of, well, I have this, I have this skill
0:41:11 and I just flip, flip a switch and say, well, now I’m in business. Like, well, there’s a few
0:41:16 freelancer skills or entrepreneur skills. It’s got to learn along, uh, along the way that we,
0:41:20 we talked about the mindset and the marketing and positioning and everything else.
0:41:24 Yeah. And, and also like as a personal chef, the interesting thing is you’re dealing with people
0:41:32 who are very business savvy, right? Your, your clients and you may not be. So if you’re, if
0:41:37 you’re coming in and you, you’re going to get steamrolled, they’re going to push your boundaries,
0:41:42 you know, because they can’t, I’m not saying they want to, they just don’t know. They’re not mind
0:41:46 readers. They don’t know where your boundaries are. And that’s why it’s really important for business
0:41:51 owners, especially personal chefs to be able to communicate that. And that’s one of the things I,
0:41:58 I see them really struggle with is because, and that’s confidence mindset. That’s all of it. That’s
0:42:03 why I always say confidence mindset is the first step to pricing, to your pricing strategy.
0:42:08 Yeah. I like this call to put up some boundaries, put up some guardrails from, from, from the early
0:42:12 days of, you know, what are you willing to do? What are you not willing to do? And kind of stick to
0:42:16 your, your North star guidance on that. So I appreciate, appreciate you sharing that. You’ve
0:42:22 alluded to it a couple of times. The Prosperous Personal Chef is a program that Jessica has created.
0:42:28 You can find it at chefjessica.com. Tell us a little bit about it. Who’s it for? What do you, what’s
0:42:36 inside? It’s basically start to finish walking you through the business of starting, growing, sustaining
0:42:42 a personal chef business. That being said, there is a ton of stuff in there that’s done for
0:42:49 you. The assessment, the sample menus, all of that is in there. And then anybody who goes
0:42:54 through the academy also gets my full support because I want to make sure that they’re successful.
0:43:01 So I include three full calls to make sure they are on page with their going through the right
0:43:08 direction because even I find that as a self-study course, it’s not as successful as if you have my
0:43:14 support because people still kind of get off the rails with their marketing and their boundaries and
0:43:21 all of that. Yeah. Well, I think it’s a fun example of kind of packaging up years of knowledge and
0:43:26 expertise and sometimes like the actual resources and templates and stuff that you use. And I imagine
0:43:31 people were asking like, Hey, can I, can I pick your brain on how to get started on my own? How did
0:43:35 you get customers? You’re like, well, you know, you get, you get sick of answering the same questions
0:43:39 over and over again. You’re like, well, let me put, if there’s some demand for this. Yeah. It was also
0:43:45 like, ah, like watching, you know, watching a train wreck or like you, you, it’s like you seeing
0:43:50 almost like your child wants to go to Disneyland, but won’t put their shoes on. That’s kind of what it was
0:43:56 like watching with chefs and seeing them doing the wrong thing over and over again as personal chefs and
0:44:02 people constantly posting questions that are like, how much should I charge for this? Or things like
0:44:09 that. Just when I felt like I got to get this information out there because somebody needs to
0:44:14 document the right way to do this. There’s too much misinformation and too many people doing it the
0:44:20 wrong way. Oh, very good. We’ll link that up. Chef Jessica.com. You can find your free guide to
0:44:25 getting high paying VIP clients over there. We’ll link that up in the show notes. This has been fun.
0:44:31 Hopefully some lessons and takeaways, um, regardless of what kind of local service business that you’re
0:44:36 running. You talked about, you’d may not be, uh, cooking may not come, uh, naturally to you, but lots of,
0:44:41 uh, tools and tactics I think that you’d be able to apply and different mindset shifts that you might be
0:44:46 able to apply to different business models as well. Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip
0:44:52 for side hustle nation. Connection. I think that if you want to grow a successful business, it’s all
0:44:59 about connection and building that connection with your clients is truly the secret to success in my
0:45:07 opinion. That’s so true. It’s all about your network and building that level of trust and who knows you,
0:45:12 how they know you talked about the strategic partnership angles, talked about the, uh,
0:45:17 introductory offer angles, like the, like the free samples at Costco. The example I come back to
0:45:22 a lot of times, I go, Oh, I don’t know if I want to commit to having you here every week. Let me,
0:45:25 let me see about this first. I call it dipping your toe in the water.
0:45:32 Yes. I love that angle. I love the angle of doing kind of low, low risk, low key speaking events
0:45:38 or presentations to showcase your expertise and, uh, build, build trust. Lots of cool marketing tactics
0:45:45 here. Again, chef Jessica.com is, uh, where you can find her. You also find the full text summary of
0:45:52 this episode, links to all the resources mentioned at side hustle nation.com slash chef. While you’re
0:45:57 there, go ahead and download your free listener bonus for this episode. That’s 101 service business ideas.
0:46:03 she might be able to apply some of Jessica’s same strategy to once again, side hustle nation.com
0:46:08 slash chef, or just follow the, uh, the link in the episode description. It’ll get you right over
0:46:13 there. Big thanks to Jessica for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this
0:46:18 content free for everyone. You can hit up side hustle nation.com slash deals for all the latest
0:46:24 offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in until next
0:46:29 time let’s come out there and make something happen. And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the side
0:46:30 hustle show. Hustle on.
$500/day doing work you love?
Let’s talk about it.
In today’s topic, we’ll look at the delicious business of being a personal chef, with someone who’s been doing it for 25 years and turned her skill into a six-figure solopreneur business.
Jessica Leibovich, from ChefJessica.com, didn’t start off aiming for this. She was working in catering, young, overworked, and — like a lot of us at some point — burnt out. But one suggestion changed her life: “Have you ever thought about being a personal chef?” she was asked.
So not only was she good at it, but her first client paid her more in a day than she used to make in a week. And she’s been doing it ever since and sharing it with her students through her Prosperous Personal Chef’s Success Suite.
Tune into Episode 674 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- how to get your first high-paying personal chef client
- what tools, pricing, and offers actually work
- ways to scale with digital products and partnerships
Full Show Notes: How to Make $500/day as a Personal Chef
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