Today we’d like to introduce you to Elaine Benoit.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Elaine. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I have always been a creative person. I have a theater degree and have been in many theater productions, from opera, musicals, plays and film. When my husband and I moved from Maine back to Massachusetts, I decided to give up theater because as I was aging, I knew I wouldn’t get the roles I wanted to play. But without that creative outlet, I soon got bored.
One of the jobs I got when I moved back was as a medical secretary. I worked for a new optical shop and the owner had an unrealistic view on how busy she anticipated we would be, so me and the other employee had a lot of free time on our hands. With her blessing, we were allowed to search the web. Now, I know that sounds like fun but when you ‘have’ to do it every day, it gets tedious and boring real quick. I found a few great food blogs that I loved perusing daily and since I love to cook, I decided I wanted to start a food blog to help fill that creative void.
That is how Dishes Delish was born. I taught myself how to use a DSLR camera and joined some food blogging communities to help me not only set up the blog, but to learn as much as I could about the blogging world in a short period of time.
I used my time at the optical shop, not only to work on my blog but to further research how to become a better blogger. The shop owner laid off myself and the other employee, and after a month of being at home working on the blog, I decided I wanted to get serious about Dishes Delish and treat it like a business and start making money! I decided to make that my full time job.
The blog has grown nicely in the three years I’ve been blogging and I have gotten a lot of recognition and am making more money every month.
A year after I started the blog, I decided to branch out further and use more of my creative skills by trying my hand at podcasting. I launched a podcast called MaturePreneurial. In this podcast, I interviewed older entrepreneurs that had started at least one venture past the age of 40. It has had a good run but have recently decided to take a hiatus from that podcast, as I wasn’t seeing any real growth in the (almost) 2 years I’ve been doing it. It is still on iTunes and have enjoyed each and every guest I interviewed!
Before I made that decision to take the hiatus from MaturePreneurial, I had launched another podcast more in my niche which, of course, is about food blogging. It is called Dishing with Delishes and in this podcast, I interview other successful bloggers to find out their tips and tricks and what they learned from their mistakes as they grew their blogs into the successful businesses they now have. This podcast has grown nicely and it is growing in popularity every single week.
I look forward to building both the blog and podcast and can’t wait to see what the future has in store for me.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
As we all know, life is not easy but it can bring us much joy! Starting a business brings joyful moments as well as challenging ones. One of the things I’ve learned in my life is that you embrace your ‘learning’ experiences and know that if you didn’t have these mishaps, you wouldn’t learn. And without these hard times or experiences, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy our happy times as much because we wouldn’t see the contrast!
So, I’ve learned to celebrate both the good and bad experiences and be thankful that I got to learn the lesson that was intended! And just know that you will always be learning, but you can choose to have fun while doing so.
Please tell us about Dishes Delish.
Most of the food that I’ve made on Dishes Delish is something that I’ve made regularly or made a few times before. Very rarely do I have to look beyond my own recipes for inspiration.
One of the surprising things I’ve discovered is the category that has really done extremely well on the blog is my cocktails. I was a bartender for many years and always enjoy making cocktails for others (and myself). And my cocktail recipes are my most successful posts. One cocktail that I’m extremely proud of is my Cadillac margarita! I get a lot of traffic daily from that delicious drink!
One of the things I’m most proud of with the podcasts is the guests I’ve been able to interview.
On MaturePreneurial, my most popular guest is Lyn Slater from Accidental Icon. Lyn is a 64 year old college professor who was mistaken as a ‘somebody’ just whilst going about her day. Since that fateful day, she has gotten a modeling contract and has grown from 90k followers on Instagram, to 520k followers! She’s wonderful!
On Dishing with Delishes, I was able to secure and interview the famous food blogger Kathryne Taylor from Cookie + Kate! I believe that has been one of the reasons of the growth of this podcast – my ability to get wonderful and giving guests!
Often it feels as if the media, by and large, is only focused on the obstacles faced by women, but we feel it’s important to also look for the opportunities. In your view, are there opportunities that you see that women are particularly well positioned for?
Today, more than ever, I think there are more opportunities for women in the blogging world! You just have to find something different and unique about yourself and capitalize on it! I think people as a whole are starving for a more ‘organic’ way to live their life.
People get tired of seeing the way media depicts women and they want to see real people, not heavily made up fake people who could never look like that naturally!
I would love to see more women, young and old show that they can march to a different drummer and still be beautiful, vibrant and alive!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dishesdelish.com
- Email: elaine@dishesdelish.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dishesdelish/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DishesDelish/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dishesdelish
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/dishesdelish/
Image Credit:
Elaine Benoit
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