Transform Your Cooking Passion into a Profitable Business

I recently met a lovely gentleman, frustrated at a social media creators forum. The workshop we just attended was of little help to most, except as a motivation that YOU CAN DO IT. But there was truly little to no help on HOW TO DO IT. It was basically a PowerPoint presentation ripping off tips from Think Media from a successful content creator that was not a great teacher yet.

He did a lot of cooking videos, and had the burns to show it. I’ve been thinking about this guy ever since. I have been thinking of expanding my QUIT YOUR DAY JOB brand into a series of books. But here is my recipe for a mini cooking dynasty.

As I blogged yesterday, you don’t need to go viral to quit your day job. You need millions of views a day to live off of ads and brand deals. But let’s take cooking videos today and talk about ways to monetize.

I am going to assume if you want to make cooking videos, you have some skill, a palate others like, maybe some recipes from grandma, or you have developed your own over the years. Maybe you cook for your specific diet needs and there is a need for that – gluten-free, nut allergies, lactose intolerance, etc. My wife’s father has a hummus business. The best hummus and other Middle Eastern treats I’ve ever had.

How could you turn your passion from a hobby into a business with little to no money at first?

1) Write a book and self-publish!

I now have nine titles on Amazon. Using their KDP platform I uploaded text files and cover art. They do the rest. My titles are available FREE via a service called Kindle Unlimited. I get a half-penny for every page read. You can buy the whole book via Kindle. You can get a paperback and a hardback copy. And now Audible audio books. It takes me about a week to create one book. Every year I have just enough dead time to sit down and get it done quickly because I’ve had the ideas in my head and sometimes in notes for months. My books are textbooks for classes I teach. My QUIT YOUR DAY JOB book is me lecturing artists for years on how to be a working artist. Most keep listening to the failed artists at their restaurant gig, so…

You can collect 50 recipes: Your favorite bites, meals, drinks, desserts, and snacks. Using MS Word you can easily format the document for Kindle. Or save as a PDF for a paperback. You can record yourself or with 1 click use KDP’s AI voices. Not great but free and quick.

I make a few dollars a day off my books, but they are marketing tools for everything else I do.

2) BLOGGING IS NOT DEAD

The number of folks that make a living JUST blogging is like those making money JUST making YouTube videos. I make pennies a day from ads on my blog. But my blogs lead to book sales and gigs.

It takes about 10 minutes to blog how you are feeling. I write my blogs in an AI app. It looks like Faulkner, lots of typos, lots of babble. The AI app helps me format and clean it up quicker and cheaper than if I did it myself, but EVERY idea is mine. It’s my voice. Once in a while I have to scold it for adding its opinion, usually takeaways making it to the morality code from Full House. BLAH!

On my days off, I will write a week’s worth of blogs. When I have a great teaching moment in a class I blog about it. This blog is from a specific conversation I had. Struggling to get ideas? You should get my books on stand-up comedy and sketch comedy. My main emphasis is on getting started with idea brainstorms.

Your blog becomes your hub. The feed is a lead generator and a give-back to your fans, students, colleagues, etc. We give away our knowledge for free. But the blog is all over the place. They will get the books to have the info in one place. It’s content marketing for everything else.

3) YOUTUBE LONG-FORM SERIES

You should commit to a stretch of weeks where you will publish 10 weeks in a row, every week at the same time, on the same day. This is your show!

Film yourself cooking. Get great shots of the dish at various stages. Film yourself talking about THE WHY. Why are you cooking? Why are you sharing? 99.999999% of YOUR WHY is to become a YouTube star you’re going to fail. If your Why is to share YOUR JOURNEY so others can learn, or share YOUR FAMILY recipes so the world can love what you love, you will do great.

To save time overall, commit a few days to filming all ten episodes. It’s a lot of work to set up tripods, cameras, lights and sound. You have to clean up the kitchen. But if you did 3 episodes from one set up, you can edit in your spare time.

4) Shorts, Reels, TikToks, and more

You need to set up a social media account on EVERY platform. Clip up your long-form vids into 15-second beats. Post pics of you cooking, your favorite meals, food porn from eating out, and maybe even personal vlogs. Having a bad day, it’s very therapeutic sharing. Comedians get paid to work through their demons on stage.

Every day post something. Honestly, this takes 5 minutes or less. I do my best work from my other office 💩 😆.

5) Products and Services

As a cook, you have so many ways to monetize yourself and your skills.

Private party chef. Rent yourself out for the night for small dinner parties. You cook and present your food one course at a time. Tell some stories. After expenses, you can make your current weekly salary in a day of planning and cooking and cleaning up (PS hire a helper for $50-100 for the hard labor).
Cook for a family. Make meals and deliver dinner 5 nights a week for a busy family.
Zoom classes. Sell tickets, tell folks to open up their favorite wine and follow along. (FILM THESE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA FEEDS)
Guest on podcasts, book signings, and interviews at libraries, etc. etc. etc. Famous folks are expensive, but we mid-range creators are a great deal for smaller venues. I give great deals to libraries, filling up my calendar in slow months. Connect with local wine shops and provide bites to pair with their tasting events. These gigs also lead to the higher-paying gigs above. Every time I run a murder mystery at a library, it leads to at least 1 more gig, sometimes 3, the following month. Whenever I’m slow, I start emailing libraries, YMCAs, JCCs, etc. These won’t pay a lot but you’re getting paid something to introduce yourself to THEIR community. ZERO-DOLLAR marketing, leads to small gigs, leads to big gigs.
Merchandising: You can use Canva to create some original designs for t-shirts, aprons, tote bags, mugs, etc. Use Printful.com and similar sites to print on demand, like the books above. Our profit per piece is low but our overhead is ZERO.

What I’ve described above, to be a full-time money maker, IS a full-time job. Almost every time I start babbling about being an entrepreneur-artist, someone says, “BUT YOU LIKE MARKETING…” Do I? Well first, do you love serving drinks, selling shoes, working for a fraction of your worth for a bad boss? Second, I’m not marketing. I’m spreading joy, laughter and with this chapter in life, wisdom and opportunity. I love making folks laugh, or cry, etc. as an actor. I LOVE using comedy to teach kids and corporate folks how to be their best selves using Improv and wisdom of the ages. I love babbling about how I quit my day job 20 years ago. I’m not bragging, I’m honestly trying to give YOU a blueprint.

The best way to future-proof your job is to create it. Your boss on a whim any day can say, “AI’S GOT THIS, WE’RE GOOD.” But if you are running the show, the same tech putting folks out of work can enable YOU to rise up. Don’t fear change. Don’t fear failure. Don’t fear the future. MAKE IT!