040: Toby Bloomberg - The Integration of Passion & Self: Food, Intentionality & Knowing Your Product

ps. Her book was published in: 2010

Toby Bloomberg: Thank you, Jonathan. I really appreciate the opportunity. And happy new year.

Jonathan DeYoe: Happy new year. Where do you call home and where are you connecting from?

Toby Bloomberg: Right now I’m in Atlanta. Although I’m a Yankee from Boston, I’m learning to eat grits and especially delicious with shrimp, of course. Yes.

Jonathan DeYoe: So you grew up in Boston?

Toby Bloomberg: Yes, I did.

Jonathan DeYoe: And when did you make that transition? When did you move to Atlanta?

Toby Bloomberg: Oh, gosh, back in the early eighty s, I came down to do graduate work at Emory and I just stayed basically because the weather was so much better and the economy at the time was better too. So here I am. Um, I’m not a native. You can’t be a native, I don’t think, unless you’re actually born here. But I’ve been here for a while, so it’s home.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. I mean, mid eighty s, that is quite a while. So I’m curious, when you were growing up, did you learn consciously, unconsciously, any lessons about money or entrepreneurship?

Toby Bloomberg: I grew up in a family where my dad owned a marketing research company. And so we literally grew up in the business. In fact, the business, it was me and my sister, my mom, my dad and everybody worked there. The business almost was like another sibling. So it was like, we talked about the business all the time. We talked about the business at dinner, we talked about the business on vacations. It was the business. And I learned that it’s okay to go out and take chances. I don’t know so much about the dollar part, but I would imagine that some of that seeped through because when you run a business and, uh, especially when you run payroll, you have to be pretty savy about that stuff. So it’s just been a part of me and uh, a part of my growing up. So when I launched into my own little company and people said, oh, this is so terrific. It’s so brave of you to do that. It was not a big deal for me. It was like, this is what you do when other things don’t work out. So here I am.

Jonathan DeYoe: That’s right. Is there like an experience you had talking about the business around the dinner table on vacation or maybe at work early on, that sort of solidified the entrepreneur in. You said, hey, this is something I might do in the future.

Toby Bloomberg: I think it was the fact that my dad had flexibility in what he did and how he did it. And one of the lessons that he taught me early on was, it’s okay to fire a client. And today when you talk about clients, it’s like, oh, in customer service, the client is always right. And my dad would say, well, that may be true to a certain extent, but if it’s not a fit with you personally, if it’s not a fit with your business model, then it’s okay to walk away. And that’s huge. And it took me a long time before I actually internalized it and said, uh, this is a very wise man. Which, uh, he was.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yes. I’ve had a coach for 15 years, and one of his primary lessons is every year you’re supposed to find that client, that’s the biggest pain in the butt, and fire them. He makes it a proactive thing, not a reactive thing. Uh, a proactive thing. I don’t follow that advice. I hate firing clients. I totally understand the reticence to do it. Do you think that the ability to do that came after years of not doing it? I mean, when you’re just starting out, you got to take everything to comes your way, and then you kind of get some stability, and then you get some security, and then you get some success, and then you start going, you know what? I don’t want to work with this person. They obviously don’t want to work with me. Or can you do that at the outset?

Toby Bloomberg: I think it depends upon your go back to financial aspects. I think it really depends on your financial stability and the responsibilities that you have. So you may be taking clients that are not exactly the right match culturally, personally, business wise, but you have to feed your family, you have to pay the bills, and so you have that dose of reality that is really over everything. And I truly believe that if people say you can’t or you shouldn’t take anything, that unless it’s an exact match, they really haven’t been in the real world, or they have a, uh, trust on someplace that’s helping them out, because that’s just not how it works, at least in the beginning.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. And I think that those of us who are sort of in the space of supporting entrepreneurs and talking to entrepreneurs, and you’ll learn every single one of them has this period of struggle where they either make it or they don’t make it. And you’re right. I think sometimes you just have to take that client and work with whatever they throw at you. Uh, I think that’s kind of a requirement just before we look at the current work at Diva foodies. Did I miss anything sort of important in the development of your getting to diva foodies? Because I know that you have lots of different things you’ve done before you.

Toby Bloomberg: Started diva foodies, except that I think that especially when you’re off on your own, your career journey is really a roller coaster ride. And so sort of a little bit of what we’re talking about. So there are ups and then there are downs, and then there’s a flat season. And I’m always so impressed with people that can ride it out and people that, uh, can even it out. I haven’t been able to do that, but we keep on hoping. But it is a roller coaster ride.

Jonathan DeYoe: I had this conversation with somebody yesterday, and we had the same talk. My business has been great. It’s been bad. It’s been great, it’s been bad. And I was like, are you meditating? I said, do you meditate? And he was like, no, I don’t meditate. I think that’s the one thing I need to develop. And I think that that’s one of the beauties of meditation. This is the Mindful Money podcast. I run mindful money. One of the core tenets of mindfulness is the practice is the meditation. And the whole point of meditation is to help you write it out. Whether it’s write out, everyone’s throwing really good stuff at you, and it’s exciting, or write out, the stuff is falling apart and it’s hard and it’s a slog. And I don’t want to go to work today, but it’s just sort of reacting to the world non judgmentally. Hey, this is what I’m going through right now. I’ve got to keep going 1ft in front of the other, right. So important. So, as a prescription, if I’m in a position to offer, I’d say try meditation. It might help write out those things.

ort of dropped off. But maybe: 2003

Jonathan DeYoe:: 2023

Toby Bloomberg: That’s it.

Jonathan DeYoe: So credit where credit is due. Who shared you mentioned on. I think it was on the website. I did a little research, and I found you mentioned that somebody used the word intentional. So who was it that gave you the word intentional? And how did you translate that into permission to follow the dream?

Toby Bloomberg: Oh, gosh, I’ve forgotten the guy’s name. How horrible of me. Can I get back to you with that? We work together. Yeah, but how I translated it, which is a great question, is, I was working in what I thought would be my forever after wonderful job, and I was let go, and I loved it, and I didn’t know what to do. Jonathan. I was betwixt in between. I loved working within a team environment. I loved working with the people I was working. Just I didn’t know what to do. So as many, many people do when they’re in that situation, you reach out to your network. Oh, Keith Dupre. That’s the guy’s name, Keith Dupre, who gave me permission to follow a dream that I didn’t know was a dream. So I reached out to people, and Keith was one of those people that I reached out to, and we had this lovely conversation, and he said to me, toby, you need to be intentional. He said, I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t know what you want to do. He said, but whatever you do, be intentional about doing it. And I thought, well, that is an absolute game changer for me, because to be quite candid, I’ve never been intentional about anything. I mean, anything. Everything sort of like flows and one thing leads to another, but at least I don’t think I’ve been intentional. So when Keith said to be intentional, I thought, what can I be intentional about? And I’d been doing marketing for my whole life, and digital marketing and social media marketing, which I absolutely love, and I really do believe in it. And I thought, okay, that’s one aspect, but I need more to hang my hat on. And so I thought, what do I really want to do? And I thought, I want to work in food. I want to work in the culinary world. I’d had some culinary clients, and I thought, I wonder. I just wonder if I can make a go at it. So he gave me permission to follow that. I didn’t know. I had a dream. Dream?

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I want to stick with this. Everything just kind of happened. One thing led to another. I was kind of in the flow. I had never been intentional before. I find that fascinating. So it sounds like you found your dream job that way, and it sounds like you started your first blog, and it had lots of success that way. You wrote the book that way. Just one thing led to another, and you had the flow, and then you lost the job, and then you started being intentional. So you had success going in the flow, and now you have success being intentional. Can you compare those two kinds of success and tell us what it feels like to have both of those in one lifetime? I meet people who are intentional, and I meet people who are in the flow. I’ve very rarely meet people that have done both.

Toby Bloomberg: I think, for me, being intentional means that I have more of a structure to work with, and I have a definite focus. So when I decided to go down this road, the first thing, I didn’t really have a network here in Atlanta and where I’m based, and I didn’t even have a network nationwide, but I did have a network of marketers and of social media friends, but not within the culinary world. And so what I began to do is I went back to where I had gained network, community, and success, and that was, believe it or not, in social media. So I knew that I could drop into a community and eventually begin to be part of that community. And strange as it may sound, the first community that I really became part of was the food community on Twitter. So back about five or six years ago, when Twitter was different than it is now, I found that there were a lot of people on Twitter that were talking about food, and the platform is so easy to engage in, and it’s so easy to share. And I thought, okay, let’s see what happens. So I began to drop into conversations. I began to engage with people, and before I knew it, I was part of the food community within that world. And one thing led to another, and it broadened my learning, and it introduced me to people who eventually became clients and are friends to this very day now. So, social media. Thank you.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So have you ever run across, maybe in your social media searches, there’s like, a three part. The Ven diagram. A three part ven diagram. That sort of diagrams success. The three circles are like a passion or an interest, and then the second circle would be like talent or expertise. And then the third circle is like, opportunity or market demand. I asked because we talk about you’re being intentional, and I think that you have followed those three things. You’re blending the passion, food expertise, social media, and the opportunity, which is sort of sharing, uh, delicious content from the food business to the world. Is that the intent?

Toby Bloomberg: I don’t know, but I’ll take it. I love that. I love the way you put it. It, uh, makes a lot of sense. It’s like that, the three legged stool. So if you take one away, you’re wobble. And if you put them all together, then hopefully you will, uh, achieve that success. It’s great. It’s a great metaphor, Jonathan.

Jonathan DeYoe: It’s not mine. I’d love to say it’s mine, but I didn’t invent it. Uh, I took it from my social media searches. It seems like your ability to tap into the flow enabled you to sort of identify these three things without really pulling them together intentionally. And I know you have a focus and you have sort of outcomes, your goal focus now, which is a little bit more intentional, but you still kind of have that flow sense, and you kind of bring the flow with you, and you just sort of fell into those three things coming together. So lay out your mission and vision for diva foodies. Tell us what diva foodies is all about.

Toby Bloomberg: Going back to my roots with my dad and working within a small business, I happen to love working with small business owners. I love their passion and I love their commitment. And within the food world, what I found is that passion and commitment and once upon a time, everybody has a once upon a time in their background. I was a theater major, and I found that in other businesses, I missed that passion. And I know, uh, people are going to blow this up and say, oh, no, there’s passion in tech, there’s passion in health, there’s passion and whatever. But the difference that I found within the culinary world is that, like an artist, you are literally putting yourself, I hate to use this metaphor, but you’re putting yourself on a plate, and you’re giving yourself to, um, your audience. And like an actor, if people don’t like you, they’re not going to buy you. And so the actor has the self and the actor has the craft. And then I think it’s all sewn together with that passion and commitment. And that’s what I found within the culinary world. I found the integration of passion and self. And I found that the chefs and the foodpreneurs were people that were willing to step out and take that chance. So they are small businesses that hopefully they’ll grow to be larger businesses. But that’s where I found my passion within that world. So I work with chefs, and I work with cookbook authors, and the driving force is that foodpreneur that might make cookies or hot sauce or whatever.

Jonathan DeYoe: You mentioned before, we got on the call that there’s like a seven step process. And I’m curious, we’re not going to go through the seven steps, but is it just marketing and messaging and that part? Or is there some business advice wrapped up in there? Because my assumption is the passionate foodpreneur, the ones I’ve met anyways, aren’t business people. They’re chefs, right? They make cookies, and they’re fantastic cookies, but they got no idea about the business side, and you sort of grew up in the business side. So I’m wondering if you bring the business side as well, or is it just, are you basically focused on the marketing and getting messages out there?

Toby Bloomberg: I’m focused on marketing, but since my background has a little bit of research, has a little bit of business, has some branding, I bring more than just a messaging. When I think of messaging, I often think, uh, of the verbiage that’s coming out of public relations. I’m not a PR person. I don’t have those media relationships which are so important to the credentials of a good PR person. But I can step back and take a look at the bigger picture, which I think helps in what I bring to the table. So I can take a look at your big picture and then I can narrow down and take a look at the details and say, oh, there’s a disconnect here. And sometimes those disconnects are very much in front of you, but because it’s yours, you don’t necessarily see it. So, for example, on Instagram. Can we talk about Instagram for a sec? On Instagram, it’s a bio. People often on their bio write about their products. And you have to have so many words and their keywords and perhaps the algorithm pick it up and where people will see it. Well, so those keywords are often the products that the company might sell. However, the main part of, uh, Instagram are the little cells, the photos, the images. And oftentimes those images don’t connect to the words. And so I may be reading your bio and say, oh, you make great cookies. Let me take a look at the cookies. There are no cookies. So something as little as that detail overlooks because you’re so entrenched with it and there’s so much to do. And oftentimes, marketing and social media for any small business is just a second 3rd, 4th thing down the road. But the little big difference.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I’ve run a small business for 20 something years, and I’ve never figured out the social media stuff. I do it. But it’s changed a lot over the last many years since you were the diva marketing blog. But if you were to rewrite your book, what would you think would change in the book? I mean, would you list different? Would you interview different experts? What kind of different questions would you ask?

Toby Bloomberg: M that little book really was a work of my heart. It was a work of love, but it was focused pretty much on blogging. And blogging today has, uh, skipped off of a lot of people’s radars, although because of what’s happening with social media, I’ve been seeing more and more people talking about, maybe we should start blogging again, because that’s, uh, our home base, so to speak. So I probably would concentrate a little bit more, well, probably a lot more on social media. I obviously take a spin on the newer apps that are coming out, like the TikToks and so forth, and then go back and dive in. By the way, TikTok’s really sort of interesting. So I’ve been playing around with it for a while. Not anything significant, but just as the tech people used to say to sandbox. So that’s another thing that I like to tell people, is if you find something that you’re interested in, especially in business or marketing, you don’t have to make a commitment right away. You can sandbox, you can play around with it and experiment, and if you like it, great. If it works for your business, even, all the better. Uh, you’ll have a base knowledge, and if not, go on to something else.

Jonathan DeYoe: So there’s a lot of noise out there about marketing and about small business and social media, and I like to ask every guest just to simplify it for us. So if you met, let’s put it in context here. You’re on a plane, right? You’re riding across country, so you got a good four or 5 hours with somebody, and a foodie sits next to you and has a business idea, and they’re thinking about, I want to get this out there. I want to start this. And you say, hey, I work in this marketing field. And they start asking you questions. Can you simplify? What is, I think, one really important thing that they should focus on that leads to better success of the food business, they’re going to launch from a marketing perspective. And then after that, what is one thing that they’re hearing about that they can just ignore?

Toby Bloomberg: The one thing that’s really critical is to know who your customers are. So if it were a foodpreneur, is it a retail client, is it a mom? Are you making cookies for children? More than not, you can’t be all things to all people. And so if you can find that niche that you can relate to and that can relate to them, meaning your customers, you’ve got a really good chance of at least succeeding. Have people try your product. So that’s the first thing that I would tell them, know, who are your clients? Why are you doing this? And then, Jonathan, that leads to everything else. So if I know who my clients are, and I do a little research. I know where they are on the Internet. I know what makes them happy. I know how to create messaging for them. I know how to create campaigns for them. But if I’m sort of fuzzy about that, then it’s going to be like throwing spaghetti at the wall. Sometimes it will stick, and sometimes you’ll make a big mess.

Jonathan DeYoe: And your other question, before we go into that, let me follow up on this one. So I’ve heard people talk about that niche before, and I think the response that I’ve heard from some business people is, well, I don’t want to niche down too tight because then I’ll lose a lot of opportunities out there. Why is that not the case in the social media world? Because, uh, I understand what you’re saying. You niche down, and then that’s how you create your messaging. So do you lose opportunity if you create your messaging to a niche, or is that how you engage that opportunity?

Toby Bloomberg: I think that’s how you engage it. And if you’re too large, I mean, if you start large and then narrow down, that might be the best way. Or I guess you could do it the other way. You could start narrow and then go larger and larger. It used to be called the long tail, where there weren’t a lot of competition in that part. And so if you could find something where there’s not a lot of competition, which is in the long tail, then even though the audience may be smaller, you’re more likely to cut through the clutter and you are more likely to get heard. Does that make sense to you?

Jonathan DeYoe: Perfect sense. That’s, uh, I think the best response is the, what is the thing that people.

Toby Bloomberg: Yeah, okay. So however, I was in Texas a couple of weeks ago visiting my nephew, and they absolutely wanted to take me to this place called Bucky’s. Do you know what Bucky’s is? I’ve never been to Bucky’s before.

Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t.

Toby Bloomberg: And my friend said, oh, this is my happy place. You have to see this before you leave. So we went to Bucky’s. Now, Bucky’s is for those that don’t know. It’s a gasoline with a convenience store. But, and so it’s for travelers. So that’s the niche. However, once you get into that store, it explodes. And it’s not food and it’s not toys and, uh, it’s not wine, it’s everything. So even though Buc ee’s has a niche, which is travelers, people from around that area will come my friend Michelle goes to Bucky’s two or three times a month, and she says, yeah, I might buy some stuff. I may not, but it’s my happy place. I love to walk around there. How much better can that get for the owner of a business? So even though the niche sort of, like, widened up, the products themselves exploded. So I think you just have to take a chance and test it out a little bit.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, it sounds like in that case, they have an audience, and that audience was specific, and they marketed to that audience, and then other people, not part of the audience, discovered it. I’m imagining your friend, before she knew about Bucky’s, that somebody was visiting the town, right? And someone went to this store on the way through and got gas and maybe purchased a bottle of wine, and they said, have you seen this place? It’s ridiculous. And then she went for the first time and was like, oh, my God, this is crazy. It’s a place I can actually shop, right, or sit and watch people or whatever. So you’re not excluding potential customers, you’re just focusing the message.

Toby Bloomberg: Yes, it’s a great way to put it. And your word is perfect. It’s ridiculous.

Jonathan DeYoe: Ridiculous. So what’s one thing that people m maybe they’re food business, maybe they’re any kind of business, and they’re thinking about marketing, and they read all this stuff. I read a lot of stuff about how to do social media, and it just leaves me pretty confused. What’s the stuff that I can just ignore, the stuff that people are talking about? That’s just, it’s garbage.

Toby Bloomberg: I shouldn’t pay attention to it doing a whole lot. So diving in and trying to create a presence on every single platform, on every single app, unless you have a staff that’s going to be dedicated to social media, it’s going to wear you out and all the noise. You won’t know what’s important and what’s not important. So start with one or two, do it well, and then go on to the next if that’s important to you.

Jonathan DeYoe: This is something that tickles the back of my mind all the time, because I know people. They’re like, yeah, I got to do LinkedIn, I got to do Facebook, I got to do insta, I got to do all the things at once. Uh, how do you know if I’m just going to do one? How do you know which is the right one? How do I pick one? If I’m a food business, is there one? If I’m a services business, is there a different one? Or is it more my niche? How do I know which is the right one to use?

Toby Bloomberg: Oh, just throw a dart at the wall and see which sticks. Go back to what we were talking about originally. Who are your customers? Where are they? Because that’s who you want to connect with. And so for a lot of food people, it’s Instagram. But for food people that are really building a business to business niche, it may not be Instagram, it may be LinkedIn, or, uh, maybe it’s Instagram and LinkedIn, and maybe you’re finding that you’re going after the Gen Z kids and they’re all on TikTok, so it could be TikTok, and you never go on to.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, it sounds like everything flows back to that know who your customer.

Toby Bloomberg: Is question, know who your customer is. And also the other thing that we really talk about a little bit, just a little, is know your product. So I used to do a lot of teaching, and one of the first exercises I would ask people to play along with me is I would start it and I would say, in 15 words or less, describe what you do, describe your product. And then I would go down and say, well, how about ten words? And then I would go down and I’d say, can you tell me what you do in five words? And that was pretty difficult for a lot of people. What do you do? It’s almost like an elevator statement that people tell you to craft.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’m thinking about applying that to myself, and there’s no way I could answer even the first one. Like, I routinely write thousand word articles about small slivers of the stuff that I think that I do. But you’re absolutely right. I need to simplify that down to a message that is absorbable. Maybe that’s my struggle with social media, is my son tells me, I think in five paragraph essays. So that’s not a social media thinking, great, it’s 140 characters or less.

Toby Bloomberg: Oh, it’s a blogging mindset. Because now the algorithm from Google, the longer the better. So I guess you have a blogging mindset, Jonathan.

Jonathan DeYoe: There we go. My social media has to be blog. Uh, and then links to the blog with those 15 word things. But I got to develop the 15.

Toby Bloomberg: You know, that 15 words or that five words or that ten words doesn’t necessarily have to be for public consumption. It’s just for internal purposes. And then you word craft it and.

Jonathan DeYoe: Make it pretty right. It sounds good. So before we wrap up, I’m going to ask you, I want to go back to the personal again. And I do this because I want people to know who you are. Get to know we do business with the people we like. We know and like. Right. So, um, first thing is, is there anything that people don’t know about you? Or maybe you’ve told them and they’ve forgotten that you really just want them to know about you?

Toby Bloomberg: I think that this sounds a little strange, but I think that I’m just a nice person who has stumbled onto a talent, and I love helping people. I’m also a pretty good writer. And so if you’ve got, uh, publication media. Love to do that. But, yeah, I think I’m just a nice lady.

Jonathan DeYoe: I think maybe if we’re all honest, deep down inside, we just want people to understand, hey, we’re doing our best, and we’re nice. Give. Cut me some slack. I’m a nice person.

Toby Bloomberg: Right? Yeah. Jonathan, you are a great interviewer. And I would have never said that in a million years if you hadn’t asked me the questions the way that you had been asking.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. Thank you. And you’re. If. Let me see if I can ask this. How do I ask this? If you could get the mean, the known truth about any question about your life or your future, I don’t need to answer. But if you could ask a question and know that you would get the real truth, what question would you ask?

Toby Bloomberg: Am I on the right path? Am I supposed to be doing something else instead of this stuff?

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. So deep. Isn’t that true?

Toby Bloomberg: Uh, I guess that’s where your meditation comes into play.

Jonathan DeYoe: I meditate every day and have for a long time, and I still ask that question. Am I on the right path? Am m I doing the right thing? Yes. Absolutely. So, tell people how to connect with you, the website, uh, m where to find you on social media. And that way they can find you when it’s time.

Toby Bloomberg: Thanks. So, the website is divafoodies.com. So that’s all about food. Bloombergmarketing.com is general, uh, website of, uh, other stuff that I’ve done on social. You can connect with me at Tobydiva, on Instagram, and on LinkedIn. And on Twitter. It’s at Toby Diva and also at divafoodies. And what else? Tobyb one at gmail dot com is probably the easiest way to get a hold of me. Connect with me on LinkedIn. And right now on LinkedIn, I’m doing something sort of fun. Jonathan, I am highlighting women that are beyond the Gen Z age because, uh, I think that the under 40s get enough attention. So they’re like Gen x boomers. And I don’t know what else I can find. But I am doing this on the weekends. So I thought, well, again, the sandboxing thing comes into play. And I thought, well, this would be sort of interesting to do. And I thought, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll post it on a Saturday or Sunday when there’s not a whole lot of traffic on the platform. Well, apparently people really love it. So they’re women who have been in the business, and, uh, they’re all friends, more or less. They’re acquaintances at the very least. And I’ve been following their career. And so I do some research and I introduce them to you, and it’s just been a blast. So, yeah, follow me on.

Jonathan DeYoe: So is it kind of a podcast format?

Toby Bloomberg: M. It could be. Somebody suggested a book. Somebody else said it would be a great podcast to get people together, these women together, to talk about it. A lot of them are from the blogosphere days. Blogosphere, yeah. So it’s been fun to see where they started and where they’re ending up right now.

Jonathan DeYoe: Remind us, where is that again?

Toby Bloomberg: Is that on LinkedIn under Toby Bloomberg?

Jonathan DeYoe: Okay, great. Thank you. That’ll all be in the notes, and hopefully you’ll find some people following you and checking in on that weekend event. That sounds cool. Thank you, Toby, very much for coming on the podcast.

Toby Bloomberg: It’s a pleasure.