Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the Creators Adventure, where we interview creators from around the world hearing their stories about growing a business. Today we talk about how while solopreneurship is great, it's also great to join a community of like minded creators. We also talk about how when you look at a niche, from the outside, it might seem pretty specific, but when you really dig in, there are all these other segments and opportunities of different potential customers. Hey, everyone. I'm Brian McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it. Hey, everyone. We're here today with Crystal Bonnet. She is a raw food chef, instructor, and cookbook author. Crystal knows the importance of culinary aspect and nutritional elements of living foods, and she shares this information with her students at Crystal Dawn Culinary through her online courses, training, and her book. Her work within the plant based culinary industry led her on many adventures, including the development of plant based menus for new restaurants. Through her comprehensive classes, she shares the knowledge and skills home cooks need to incorporate healthy food alternatives into their lifestyles. Crystal, welcome to the show.

Crystal Bonnet [00:01:17]:

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:21]:

Sure. So my first question for you today is, what would you say is the biggest thing that either you did or you are doing that's helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Crystal Bonnet [00:01:32]:

Yeah, this is a really good question, because when you have a business and you're a solopreneur, you don't really have freedom, but at least you are doing something that you enjoy. And most people who start a business start a business based on their passion. So to me, that's freedom. Freedom, to me, is being able to practice something that I love and I enjoy, and I'm giving that back to the world rather than just going to work as an employee and collecting a paycheck. So, yeah, that's definitely the biggest thing that I could have done, was start my own business and work for myself. I feel like that definitely gives me the most freedom.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:12]:

Yeah, 100%. I agree with that as well. Cool. So what inspired you to focus your career in business, specifically on raw vegan cuisine? What would you say it offers, maybe for those who are unfamiliar in terms of both health benefits, culinary experiences, and everything else compared to other styles of cooking?

Crystal Bonnet [00:02:38]:

Yeah. So the reason why I do raw food as a business, because it's something I'm so passionate about. And I discovered raw food ten years ago when I was I was actually pescatarian at the time, and I was getting sick all the time, but I was eating a lot of processed food, so I knew that I had to make a change in my body. Just something was not right. And I came across a 21 day raw food meal plan and followed it to the tea, and I was like, this is how food is supposed to taste, the flavors, the textures, everything was just I'd never experienced like that before. So I just fell in love with the creation as well of raw food. So I started taking as many courses as I could take and learning everything I could learn about raw food. And so that really was the gateway into doing this as a business, because I just loved it so much. And for those who don't know what raw food is, raw food is all plant based foods. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. You can have oils. There's lots of it. Cacao, coconut, foods that haven't been heated over and above 118 degrees Fahrenheit. So things that haven't been heated at a really high temperature, so you can still have warming foods and things that have been heated in the dehydrator, but not above 48 degrees Celsius or 115 Fahrenheit, because they found and done studies that once food is subjected to these temperatures, then they start losing their enzymes and their nutrition value. So just incorporating more living raw foods into your diet, you're going to get way more micronutrients, you're going to get more digestive enzymes and all of the things that your body needs in order to heal the hydration as well. Yeah. So even if people who've never had raw food before, it's so easy to incorporate into your diet, even, like, one green smoothie a day, just start there, and you're going to be getting way more nutrients than most of the people eating a standard American diet.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:53]:

Cool. Yeah. So I'm a pescatarian myself, and I've been like that, I guess, since 2010. I've enjoyed a couple raw vegan places and things that I've been to. There's one restaurant in La. In particular I really liked. It's interesting to me, all, like, how creative you can be with it, and I guess you have to be in preparing things. And for me, my wife and I had tried. We've made kale chips and stuff in dehydrator, but it was always something that I never personally took the step to go beyond being a pescatarian, partially just because I'm choosing that for health reasons, I guess. But it's something that it just seems difficult and to be preparing all these different things. But I'm interested to hear some more about it from you. So I guess my question next is if somebody would want to try this out and is interested in this. Any tips for individuals who want to incorporate more raw vegan food into their diet but don't have so much experience?

Crystal Bonnet [00:06:06]:

So, number one is getting rid of the mindset that raw food takes too long to prepare or that it's too complicated. If you look at what people are eating most of the time, if they are eating fruits and vegetables, which I hope most people are, then they're already eating raw vegan food. Right? So I think that people need to take away the label and then look at it. Okay, I'm eating fruits and vegetables already in my diet that aren't cooked if they're eating a salad or if they're eating an apple so then they can think, okay, wow, this isn't so bad. Number one is the prep. The prep is a huge thing. Like, you need to prep. But to me, I was just talking about this earlier today, I think cooking is way more work and time consuming than raw food. I mean, if I have to stand over a stove and wait for something to cook and watch it, especially with baking, you got to watch it in the oven and make sure it's okay. And then there's risk of burning it. With raw food, it's really hard to screw up raw food. I mean, you definitely have less food waste doing raw food because it's really hard to mess it up. If you're blending a dressing or prepping vegetables when you're buying your produce, what I do is you come home and wash your herbs and your lettuce right away so that you have it ready to grab and go. You can prep components for a few days. Like, for instance, if I make wraps, I like to prep all of my components and I'll just have including the sauce or the dressing, and then I just have everything ready to go when I make my lunch. I can just put it all together. Like what I was saying earlier, even incorporating a smoothie into your diet, you're going to be getting a lot of nutrients into that smoothie. A lot of the raw vegetables and fruits if you're adding greens. And you can add herbs and fruit superfood powders to give you more nutrition. And if you add that into your daily diet, you're going to be getting a lot more than most people. So, yeah, just taking away the stigma that it's too time consuming, making sure you make the time for prep and blending something up is really quick. So even if you can just get in a smoothie is great.

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:29]:

Yeah, that makes sense. It's a different process, but not necessarily one that takes longer. It could actually take less time.

Crystal Bonnet [00:08:36]:

Exactly.

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:38]:

So you started your online business as a solopreneur with no prior experience. What would you say are like, some of the biggest challenges that you faced when starting out and how did you overcome them?

Crystal Bonnet [00:08:50]:

Yeah, so, I mean, I feel like I have more challenges now than I did when I first started out. When I had first started out, I already knew a lot about the online space because I was working for an online school. I was working for a raw food culinary school in the US. And I was doing some online work with them with their online school. So I knew a lot already, and I had read a lot of books and listened to a lot of podcasts on how to create an email list and lead magnet and all of that stuff. So when I was first starting out, I felt like because I was starting from scratch and I had a blank canvas, it was so much easier and it seemed a lot simpler, where now, as you are a few years, you get into your business and things are changing. Like, you know, the online industry is changing constantly every day. And how people sell courses now does not work the same way that we sold them three, four years ago. So this is a huge challenge I'm dealing with in my business right now is just pivoting and making changes to keep up with what's happening in the online industry. I'm doing a lot of things. I'm in this weird transition phase where I'm transitioning over to some new things and changing some things in my business that work better. So, yeah, it's definitely I find now it'll be actually four years this August, so four years. I feel like this has been the most challenging year yet.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:24]:

So for those, especially those who are like, just starting out, what would you say is an example of something that worked well a couple of years ago that's not really working well now?

Crystal Bonnet [00:10:36]:

Well, funnels definitely. I felt like worked way better. Worked better back then also too, because of the saturation now in the market. I mean, when I first launched my business, I had only the second raw dessert course online.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:56]:

Wow.

Crystal Bonnet [00:10:56]:

And now you could imagine how many there are now, right? Especially over COVID. Like COVID was just the huge online boom. Thank goodness I had started before then. But yeah, the saturation of the market definitely makes it a lot more difficult now. There's just so much online and I feel like people are really overwhelmed because when people have too many options, then of course that causes overwhelm. It's harder to sell. Everything is so much more expensive now. Facebook ad space is way more expensive. Just everything, just the cost of running an online business. And yeah, I mean, it's funny because I just ran a webinar, I just did a webinar last weekend for one of my courses and I used to run a very similar one a couple of years ago. And I would sell about 130 courses and I did basically the exact same framework, but with an updated recipe. I had updated my course, updated everything, and ran the same kind of funnel. And I sold I think it was like 28 courses. So, I mean, it's just very different now. It makes you stop and think, okay, this is not working. I have to figure out something else. Yeah, I think it's just the saturation and overwhelm definitely is a huge thing.

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:21]:

Yeah, it's interesting. And it is crazy how fast some things change because I think, like last week I talked with Ron Douglas. He is the founder of webinarcon. He was really big early on in webinars and built multiple multimillion dollar businesses with webinars and different things marketing online. And back then it was like, wow, somebody's holding a webinar, an online thing, I'm going to go to this. And now it's so saturated that the novelty of that has worn off. But I think there's so many other things that can be done now. It's just different and changing and you have to continuously adapt to that. Exactly.

Crystal Bonnet [00:13:08]:

I could go on and on about this. Sorry, but you probably want to answer.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:13]:

That'S. Fine. Is there anything else? What else do you want to say specifically about it?

Crystal Bonnet [00:13:18]:

Yeah, so I think that there's a couple of other frameworks that work better. For one, when you're doing these free webinars and these free classes, you're getting a lot of leads that are not good quality leads because people will just be scrolling, oh yeah, I want to sign up for this, but really, then they're not actually going to watch it or they just don't even end up. Because I'll look in my email system and I could not believe the amount of people that didn't even open the very first email for the class. For instance, I think now low cost offer lead magnets are so much better. And actually I have one that's performing really well because once you have someone that is paying for a product of yours or a service, then that's a way higher quality lead than someone who is not who hasn't paid you anything. You see this a lot, people doing these lead magnets that are $27, $20, these super low cost offers to get them in their funnel. And I think that is working a lot better now than these free webinars. Just well, in my space, obviously, all of the industries obviously are very different, but I think in my space, in the culinary niche, that's working better. And then memberships, of course, memberships is the big new thing, the community and the membership. So I think those are other options to look at as well.

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:42]:

Yeah. Well, I completely agree. I would have said the same thing, but I'm glad that you're saying it that way instead of just me telling my audience, oh, you just got to trust me on this. They get to hear it from more people that yeah, when you have somebody who is a lead who purchases from you, they're so much more likely to actually buy later on.

Crystal Bonnet [00:15:03]:

Exactly.

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:04]:

I remember times we've run Facebook ads and we're like, oh cool, we found a great way to get people to this lead magnet. It's like, I don't know, a dollar per lead or something and we're like, great, we just got 1000 leads really quickly and it turns out none of them ever buy anything. And compare to like it's not saying that it's bad to have a free lead magnet because you can have those and some people will become buyers eventually, but it's hard to make sense out of spending money to promote the free lead magnets because it's easy to get sign ups. But those sign ups don't mean those people are going to buy.

Crystal Bonnet [00:15:41]:

No.

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:43]:

And one of the great things also, about having the low cost lead magnet. So you have the benefit that you mentioned where somebody who pays you money is much more likely to spend more money in the future. But it's also helping to cover some ad costs or other tech costs or whatever in your business so that you don't have to look at it as, like, making money from them. Right There. But you're acquiring that lead for either free or reduced cost, and then you have a chance to sell them your bigger flagship product later on.

Crystal Bonnet [00:16:13]:

Yeah, exactly. And that's obviously the big bonus right there, is it just covers the ad spend, so you don't even have to worry about it. I think for people who don't have any authority in their niche and who are just starting out, I think then it's good to do a free lead magnet. But if you've already established a community and you are already an authority in your niche, then I think the low cost that's when the low cost offer works well.

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:40]:

Yeah, that sounds good. So, yeah, you have your Crystal Don Culinary, which offers these online courses and training on raw cuisine. So how did you decide to kind of structure these courses? And who is it primarily designed for? Is it designed for the average person who just wants to be healthier, or what's the specific individual that you're targeting?

Crystal Bonnet [00:17:06]:

Yeah, so really, anybody who's looking to incorporate more plant based food into their diet? It's funny. I'm working with a new Facebook ads manager, and we recently did a huge case study on my audience market research. And we had found out, and I didn't even know this, that over 50% of my students are not even vegan, which is huge, because for one, I'm like, wow, I'm introducing them more to plant based foods. So they're eating more plant based foods. That's where I feel like I'm making a difference in the world. But also, two, it's made me realize that I'm speaking to people who really just want to get creative in the kitchen and figure out how to make something new. So, I mean, my students are all it's all over the place for me. I have people who want to do raw desserts as a business, who just want to make raw food at home or who have a bakery and don't even eat vegan, but they want to offer more vegan options or more dietary options. So, yeah, for me, it's really anybody who's really open to it and just wanting to incorporate more into that into their life or their business.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:19]:

Cool. Yeah, I really like that. And I think that it's such a good example because somebody hearing about your business for the first time could say, like, oh, well, this is like a super niche thing already because it's not even like being vegan, it's raw vegan. And so they might say like, okay, well, that's super, super specific. But you just described this huge range of reasons that people would come to you and these different you could have different marketing angles for each of them. So, like, the person who is already a vegan or raw vegan and wants to learn more and kind of be creative with it, the person who just wants to be healthy but is not even a vegan at all, and then the person who they're doing it and they want to do this as a business. And so there's three really big ones right there in what already seems like this hyper niche thing. And so I kind of would encourage anyone else to say, like, oh, well, is my thing too niche? There's probably these segments of your audience that you're not even thinking of that would be really interested in what you have to offer.

Crystal Bonnet [00:19:23]:

Yeah, exactly.

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:26]:

Great. So you wrote a raw dessert cookbook called The Art of Raw Desserts. Can you share some of the inspiration behind the book? And I guess how did it start for you? Was it like you had this focus of saying, I'm going to go into the online courses, or was it like the book first? What was the timeline for that?

Crystal Bonnet [00:19:49]:

So it was the courses first also too, because I was teaching in person for a couple of years before I took it online. So I had already had my curriculum. So I took everything online first. And then a couple of years into my online course journey, that's when I was approached by a publisher to do a cookbook on raw desserts. Because at that time, the only course that I had available was my raw dessert Chef certification course. So I was kind of known as like the raw dessert guru. It was my thing. That's what I did. So when I was approached by the publisher, it's funny because I never wanted to do a cookbook before. I never thought I was going to do a cookbook because I know how much work they are and they take up your whole life for a long time. And this publisher, I had been approached by other publishers before, and I just didn't like the timelines that they gave me. And I just didn't connect with them really well. But this publisher I really connected with and I really liked. So I signed on with them. And of course, the inspiration was my experience that I had of raw dessert. So they came to me with the proposal of doing a raw dessert cookbook. And it was such an amazing experience because I'm so happy that I did it because it made me a better recipe developer. It made me a better recipe writer. Because when doing a cookbook, when you don't have the videos available, it's a totally different ballgame. People have to really rely on the written recipes in order to create the recipe successfully. So you have to look at it at a completely different angle. So it really made me a better recipe writer, even a better curriculum writer on how I deliver my curriculum and what I include in my curriculum. So overall it was just a wonderful experience because it just made me improve on all aspects of what I do in my business. So, yeah, if anybody gets the opportunity to do a cookbook, I say please go for it because you will learn a lot and you're going to improve no matter what. 100%.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:00]:

That's great. So you mentioned earlier a little bit about memberships as well. I'm curious, what is either your favorite way to get new customers nowadays, as you said, that things are changing or what is it that you're working towards or what's either your primary business model or anything that you're shifting in it. Do you have a membership component now?

Crystal Bonnet [00:22:27]:

No, but that's what I'm working on. It's funny because I've been working on this on and off since last year and I almost launched a membership last year and things just started coming up in my life and every time I would get to that point of wanting to launch it, something would happen. So I'm like, okay, clearly the universe is telling me that this is not the right time. So I waited and now this is exactly what I'm working on again because I shut down. So my model right now is I just have lifetime access courses. People can purchase whenever they want. They have lifetime access to the programs. But what I'm really seeing now, and I think a lot of people would agree that when you deliver content that way, I mean, the average graduation rate is 10%, which is so low. So if you really want people to really participate in the programs, it definitely has to be delivered some way else. Actually, you know what model that I love and I signed up for a course that was delivered this way, was a boot camp style where you had just a certain amount of weeks and you have different tasks every week. I really like that model, so I was toying with that as well. But obviously that's going to be a lot more work on my end, which is fine. But yeah, so it's something that I'm also thinking about as well. But so right now I just have the lifetime access can sign up whenever you want. And we all know in the online course industry that when you have this model, people need urgency to buy, right? People aren't just going to very rarely do people go to your website and just be like, oh yeah, I want to do this course, I'm going to sign up right now. You need some kind of promotion or some kind of urgency for people to get in, right at that time. So yeah, I'm really working on the membership model and hoping to launch because I shut down my Raw dessert course last year just because of the way that it was delivered. It was really unsustainable. It was basically a lifetime membership and this was the first course that I launched. This is my flagship program. It's called the raw dessert chef certification course. So people actually do get a certification, they do assignments. There's a lot of work on the students end. It's a very big course. It takes them about six months to a year to complete. And I shut down enrollment just December 31 last year because people would pay once and then they get access to all the updated content plus monthly live classes. So for me on a business standpoint and because I mean, I didn't know I had just started, I just wanted to give everything that I had. Right. I'm like, I'm just going to teach them everything I know. I just want to give everything. And then you realize a couple of years later why you're not making any money. It's like, oh yeah, because I'm still delivering all this content, but everyone's already in my program so I'm not charging them anymore for any of the new stuff. So this was why I shut that down and why I'm moving it over to a membership program. So my Raw desserts course basically is going to move into that and I'm working on how I'm going to be delivering that. I'm working on the framework. I actually have a business coach. I've never had a business coach before. This is the first time I ever hired one. So I'm working with him. He specializes in membership, so I'm working with him on getting this set up. So hopefully I'll have that launched in September.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:56]:

Cool. Yeah, I think you bring up some excellent points there that when you start out, it's easy to just want to give everything and I don't think that's a bad thing to do because it does help you get customers. But what you found now is that what you're actually delivering is kind of like a membership model, but you're not charging the membership for it. And I think it's also interesting because depending on the creator, depending on what you're offering, I don't believe that this is always the better option of membership or fixed price or however it is, but depending on what you're offering, something might be better specifically for you and your business. And so it sounds like for you the membership model is that and has the potential to be that, especially if six months to a year, that is a long time you're right. Of how long the course takes. So that sounds good. I mean, I've seen so many cooking related courses where they have the membership model because there's constantly new recipes and new additions to the content where that just makes sense. What I would say if it's helpful to you because you mentioned the boot camp style and the low price lead magnets. So we typically refer to the boot camp style as, like, challenges where it's like, live that you're going through at the same time with everyone. And what we found works really well is to have the challenge be like, the low cost lead magnet, and then that leads to either the fixed price one time payment course or the membership. And what's really nice about that is you've proven that they're a buyer, but then the challenge itself, because it's happening in real time, like, okay, it's this week or this two weeks, this five days, whatever, everyone has to go through it. So there's the urgency to say, like, I have to do it now or I'm going to miss out on it and lose it. But what's great about that is that starts to build the habit of them engaging in your content. So then they start to get used to it. And now when they take either the flagship course or the membership, now they start off from a better place of engagement that you're more likely to get a higher percentage to actually complete it or go through more of your content in that way.

Crystal Bonnet [00:28:18]:

Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much. That's a really good idea. Yeah. Having the challenges, the low cost then gets them in the habit of actually doing the work. I love that.

Bryan McAnulty [00:28:32]:

Yeah. So what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs who are considering to launch their own online courses in this niche of either healthy food or just cooking in general?

Crystal Bonnet [00:28:48]:

Yeah, well, that's a very big question.

Bryan McAnulty [00:28:51]:

I know.

Crystal Bonnet [00:28:52]:

I realize it could be a very long answer. If an entrepreneur wants to launch a business in the online course space, I would definitely do your market research and see what other people are doing in the field because you definitely don't want to just do what everyone else is doing because otherwise it's going to be really hard to get new leads. You don't want competition, right? Yeah, we should all be working together anyways. But yeah, just doing the market research in your niche on what's already being offered and just, I guess to doing the research on what we're speaking about right now, on how to strategize and plan on how you're going. To get customers and how you're going to market your course or however you're delivering it, and really just getting the confidence to take that risk. I think a lot of people still have I mean, geez, sometimes I still get imposter syndrome. Not so much anymore, like I did for a few years there. Just having the confidence to be like, yes, I can do this, and I'm going to take the risk. And it's going to be challenging, but it's going to be worth it. Finding some mentors and people to look up to that can help you, actually. That's. A really big piece of advice. Get help. Get help wherever you can, because I really struggled because I'm the kind of person where I'm like, I have to learn how to do it on my own. I'm going to do it all on my own. I'm not going to ask for help. And this is the first year where I have been branching out and asking for help. And it makes a huge difference just having even someone as your Cheerleader helping and supporting you on and who knows what you're doing. So, yeah, have that community around you. Join a community of people who are a business mastermind or something like this, of other entrepreneurs who are doing the same thing as you so that you can all help each other and just have that support.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:02]:

Yeah, I really like that. I think it's awesome to be like a solopreneur, but at the same time, that doesn't have to be like this badge of honor excuse to suffer. You can get help from others and join the community. Things like that make it easier and more enjoyable for yourself along the way.

Crystal Bonnet [00:31:23]:

Exactly. It is good, though, to know all the aspects of your business. I'm a big believer in that everyone should know how to do everything in their business just in case something happened, just so your business would still be running. But it's good to have help as well.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:42]:

Yeah, I agree. All right, so one thing we like to do on the show is to have each of our guests ask a question to the audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether it's something that you're curious about, something that you kind of want them to be thinking about, what would that be?

Crystal Bonnet [00:32:01]:

Yeah, I would love to know, with your audience, who is in the online culinary space and who or who is thinking about joining the online culinary space if there's other chefs out there who are wanting to deliver recipes and educational content in the culinary niche yeah, I would love to know and connect with you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:32:24]:

Oh, yeah, that sounds good. All right. So then with that said, Crystal, where else can people find you online?

Crystal Bonnet [00:32:31]:

So my website, all my social media handles is Crystal Dawn Culinary, D-A-W-N. So they can just Google that and they will find me. My website pretty much has every way of contacting me. So that's Crystaldoncolonary.com, and that's where all my courses are. You can get my cookbook there, all my social media handles there as well. I have lots of free recipes on my website, so if people are looking for if they're like, wow, I'm really interested in this raw food thing, they can find some free recipes on my website, and I have some recipes on my YouTube channel as well.

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:10]:

Great. All right, Crystal. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Crystal Bonnet [00:33:14]:

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. For your time, I'd like to take.

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:19]:

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