00:02:06.880I want to start out just, I want you to introduce yourself the way you would to a perfect stranger
00:02:13.880that you don't care what they think about you.
00:02:17.000You just want to tell them like everything awesome about yourself.
00:02:21.080Wow. That is one way to put it. I've never been asked this before. Okay. My name is Julia Jafik. I have an amazing life. I married an incredible man who is funny. He makes my whole family laugh every day. He's the best father on earth.
00:02:39.640I have two beautiful kids, Amalia, who's about to be seven, and my son, Luca, who's three.
00:02:45.440They are gorgeous babies and also have such different personalities, and they just make my heart sing.
00:02:52.120We live in Westport, Connecticut on a nice chunk of land with chickens and a huge garden and a dog,
00:02:58.940and those are all the really wonderful things about my personal life.
00:03:02.820Business-wise, I've been running a blog and Instagram account called Lemon Stripes for the last 15 years.
00:03:08.78015 years, 15 years, my friend. It makes you such an intense OG that has watched this world change
00:03:18.080in innumerable ways. Yes. And that has led me to write my first book and only book because I'll
00:03:25.980never do this again. I don't know how you do this for a living, but I just wrote my first book. It's
00:03:29.660called Garden Grown. It's a cookbook with gardening tips for my husband. And it's been a wild ride,
00:03:35.220let me tell you yes well garden grown um i love this book by the way and we are going to be giving
00:03:42.060away one of these books next week yeah publishing a book is a wild ride i don't know every time that
00:03:48.680i do it nick astor my sweet husband is like i well every time every time i do it i'm like i'm
00:03:54.660not doing this again and nick astor my sweet husband has been like you've said that 12 times
00:09:14.400Well, and so, yeah, that is one of the things that I want to talk to you about.
00:09:19.320I think my audience is very interested in how collaborations work for influencers, because I love digging into the business side of influencing. And I want to know, you've been doing this for 15 years. It's changed a lot, right?
00:09:35.960Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's changing every day. And for us elder millennials, it's getting a lot harder because, you know, the Gen Z is coming in and doing their little dances and whatnot. And I mean, that's a joke. They're obviously doing an amazing job and they've created an even bigger billion dollar industry for the influencer world.
00:09:55.180But for the elder millennials, I think, although it's harder in that way, we've found our niche, like people who are our age want to follow us.
00:10:03.640They don't want to follow the young kids.
00:10:05.000So it's nice to still have a following and be able to kind of keep up with the trends in a way.0.64
00:10:11.420But also, it's almost as if we don't have to keep up with the trends as much as Gen Z does, because millennials don't care as much if you're doing all the real trends or if you're doing the TikTok, whatever.
00:10:22.020you know i i mean girl i cannot figure out tiktok i have tried okay like if i could
00:10:28.980yeah if i could figure out tiktok i would be on the new york times bestseller list every0.89
00:10:34.140fucking week but alas i cannot do it uh so do you feel like you found your sweet spot with0.86
00:10:40.960your audience um and did you always feel that way you know it's hard it's a challenge any0.98
00:10:47.000influencer will say this like some days are great and i feel really good about it and some days i
00:10:51.000get really down on myself. You know, the algorithm pushes things down. My content doesn't get as many
00:10:55.720likes as it used to. I don't get into many views as I used to. And that'll go up again in a few
00:11:00.040months. And it's frustrating because there's nothing that we can control about it. But yeah,
00:11:04.920I mean, I am in a place where I'm not really growing rapidly anymore. I'm kind of like
00:11:09.420staying pretty stagnant in terms of followers and engagement. But I'm in a place where I'm able to
00:11:15.540make enough money to support my family. It's a really positive following. Like my followers are
00:11:20.100very engaged, very excited about things that I'm doing and very supportive and loving. And at the
00:11:25.880end of the day, yes, I could probably double my income if I grew, but I'd rather be happier and
00:11:31.000less stressed. And that's a great place to be, right? And to talk about that, to talk about
00:11:37.140can we be content in a place where we're not growing, but we're very comfortable, right?
00:11:45.500Don't get me wrong. I see other people who are started around the same time as me and they
00:11:49.840are just growing and growing and growing and getting these deals and making all this money
00:11:52.820and seemingly traveling every week. And that's hard. And that's what social media does to you,
00:11:57.400right? It makes it seem like everyone else is doing better than you are. But at the end of the
00:12:01.580day, I have this great life. I have this great family. And I just try to remember that like at
00:12:07.140the end, you know, I said the end of the day twice, but when I go to my phone, those little
00:12:11.820squares on Instagram aren't my life. This is my life. And I have to live that. And I've worked
00:12:17.160really hard to try to separate the two. And it's not easy. It's just not. It's not easy. No. And
00:12:22.980I think it's, and even if you're not an influencer, to be able to separate your identity from what you
00:12:30.900do for work versus how you live your life is something that I think that we all struggle with,
00:12:37.720that we all struggle how to figure out for so long. And even still, but, you know, I was a
00:12:43.620journalist that worked for magazines and tech companies. And my identity was the company that
00:12:50.360I worked for, not who I was. And I like to ask people to introduce themselves, you know, as if
00:12:57.020they would to a stranger they'll never see again, because I like that you mentioned that you're
00:13:01.220married to this great dude and that you have these kids that you love. And I think it's so much more
00:13:07.120helpful to introduce ourselves in in that way about things that bring us joy because as Americans
00:13:15.200I think we're trained to immediately say what we do to make money I've never once introduced myself
00:13:23.340in that way and it felt really good yeah I'm like I'm an I'm a content creator I've been doing this
00:13:27.920book book author that's not at the end of the day who I am as a human you're so right yeah yeah no
00:13:34.220Oh, exactly. Exactly. And I I like to think about that because I went for so long. I was like when someone would be like, you know, well, also it depends what city you're in, because, you know, in New York and San Francisco, it was always what do you do? Whereas in Philadelphia, it's like, where'd you go to high school?
00:13:47.820Well, you're in Philly. I didn't even realize that. My sister lives there. She lives in Maniunk.
00:13:51.740Amazing. Yeah, we're right in Center City. And yeah, so I'm trying to figure out different ways of introducing myself because I think that it just changes the whole tenor of a conversation.
00:14:02.640You know, in Italy, a lot of times people will be like, what'd you have for lunch?
00:15:46.540So I, my husband and I, we were dating at the time and we were both working in health and wellness. I was a health coach and worked at a wellness program. So I would have clients that I would see, I would help them, you know, learn how to make better choices with their food, make better choices with their bodies and kind of learn how to meditate and do things like that.
00:16:06.500And I started a blog, which at the time was called Lemons and Loafers, for them.
00:16:25.000And then there was no Instagram at the time.
00:16:27.480So I would share it on my personal Facebook and just be like, friends and family, if you
00:16:30.740want to learn how to cook chickpeas, here you go.
00:16:34.560and I would share it and it just kept growing and growing kind of organically, which I think
00:16:38.200is very hard to do today. But back then there wasn't so much saturation in the market. So it
00:16:42.780was easier. Kept doing that. Then I kept getting invited to events and I would go to, you know,
00:16:49.120I was 22 years old, not 22. I was like 24 years old and I would go to every single thing I got
00:16:55.300invited to. I didn't have a home. I didn't have kids. I didn't have all these responsibilities
00:16:59.380so I could just be everywhere and I could met the right people and kept doing the right things and
00:17:03.900just kept growing. And then when I started trying to get pregnant after I got married,
00:17:09.800I went through infertility and miscarriages and started posting about that. And that went viral.
00:17:14.180And that's when I really, you know, started to realize that I could do this more full time.
00:17:20.060And why do you think that that went viral?
00:17:23.700So this was eight years ago or maybe even nine years ago at this point. And people weren't really
00:17:28.380talking about that a lot publicly. I wrote about my miscarriage for like my personal journal. I
00:17:34.540showed it to my husband and he said, you have a following, like you need to share this to help
00:17:37.940other women. And I was like, no way, that's so scary. But I did it. Nobody, I mean, people had,
00:17:42.620but really not a lot of people had shared this before. And when I posted that, the amount to
00:17:47.220this day, by the way, almost 10 years later to this day, I get emails at least twice a week
00:17:52.520saying I read this blog post or I went through this years ago and I just wanted to let you know
00:17:56.420that your words have stayed with me and i think people just want to hear something that they can
00:18:00.420relate to and at that time they they didn't have that um i also what was fascinating just as a
00:18:06.580woman was after i posted that people in my family and friends came out being like my like one of my
00:18:12.000aunts was like i had a miscarriage too and i had friends who told me i didn't know any of this
00:18:16.080people were not talking about it yeah people were not talking about it right and i i do think that
00:18:22.700There's so much power in that because, again, we just we don't often share women's stories nearly as much as we should.
00:18:30.820And, yeah, I mean, when I write about things like that, I've written about, you know, my anxiety when I started weaning off breastfeeding and things that people don't normally say out loud.
00:18:43.140I get I still get emails from that about once a week.
00:18:49.600I mean, and those those words don't change that history doesn't change. People are still going through that now, even though you went through it six years ago. Right. So it's nice to know that those experiences that were hard for us are able to help women every single day.
00:19:04.480now. That makes me like when I have a hard day at work, I don't know about you. It makes me keep
00:19:08.200going. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Or well, and lately I've been getting emails from people about the
00:19:13.720Sicilian inheritance. They're like, oh, my gosh, I just cried my eyes out at the ending. And I'm
00:19:16.920like, I'm so exhausted from promoting this book. But thank you. I like I mean, I don't really want
00:19:22.800to make you cry, but I kind of do. So because a good cry feels good for all of us. But yeah,
00:19:28.160no, I mean, it is. And I think that's a nice reminder to people like when you love something
00:19:32.560or when something makes you feel something
00:19:34.780to reach out to the writer and tell them.
00:22:57.460And, you know, it was just 90 seconds of four year olds jumping around. Right. But like she's in this like big flouncy purple tutu and she's so fucking cute. And I took all these pictures where she's beautiful and she's so cute. And I'm just I'm so proud of her. Right.
00:23:18.280And the social media is something that in theory, we should be able to share the beautiful parts of our life that we're proud of because it was created as a, quote, social network. Right. But I look at her in this tutu and because of the way the world is and because Instagram is not very good at putting up guardrails to protect anyone.
00:23:39.640I'm like, I don't want someone to look at a picture of my little girl in a tutu and, and, you know, sexualize her or anything. And so I didn't, I don't post it. And I hate that. I hate that we live in that world. I do. And so, yeah, my boundaries are constantly changing. My thing about the boundaries is I just want all of us to talk about them. I want all of us to talk about, oh, okay, I'm constantly evolving and I'm making decisions on a day by day basis because all of this is hard and strange and none of it comes with a playbook.
00:24:09.640Right. Yeah, I'm glad we're talking about it, too. And it's helpful to hear your insights.
00:24:14.140It's also helpful to see I have a girl that I follow on Instagram who I love, Danielle Moss.
00:24:18.640She was one of the founders of the Every Girl and the Every Mom.
00:24:21.020She has two daughters and a son, and she recently took them all completely offline and talks about her reasoning behind it.
00:24:27.780And I think it's really beautiful and powerful.
00:24:30.640It's almost like I don't know why it's hard to do that, but people have been with with these kids through the journeys of their lives.
00:24:37.220and but it's not mine to give you know it's theirs to give it's theirs to give but then also
00:24:44.260here's here's the flip side of it right do we want to live in a world where we don't see
00:24:49.740mothers mothering or children in media because i do i mean i do want to see how other mothers live0.91
00:24:58.580their lives so it's very very i think it's a confusing gray area and it does it does suck
00:25:04.760that you know we we have to limit things because there are nefarious forces out there that we have0.85
00:25:09.700to worry about our kids images being stolen by ai or pedophiles like that part sucks because i would
00:25:16.180love to see all of my friends kids all the time i would love to see just beautiful children all the
00:25:21.340time like i love i love looking at kids yeah yeah i mean i agree i agree with everything you're
00:25:27.280saying it's it's tough it's tough it's tough and i think you know we're all gonna learn as we go
00:25:33.000as you said everything is always changing right so it's always changing who knows well it's you
00:25:39.980know i was also i was talking to my agent yesterday because i've been writing this
00:25:43.620trad wife murder mystery uh my sub stack yeah like just for fun just you know in my spare time
00:25:49.320i'm just imagining you know and it's not it's not a woman that gets murdered don't you worry
00:25:53.960it's her crappy husband uh and we love that we all love that we love that uh and she was like
00:26:00.560well, what do you want to do with it? I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, I'm figuring it out. I0.96
00:26:03.300wrote, I started writing it just for me and my audience. And, you know, I definitely don't want
00:26:08.140to do a traditional kind of book because in two years, the world of social media is going to be
00:26:12.000completely different. Like it'll feel so old and so passe. I'm like, we don't even know if TikTok's
00:26:18.600going to exist six months from now. Oh my gosh. I know. I mean, I don't do it. But like, on that
00:26:26.560note, I always think about this. And when I work with clients, because I work with like small
00:26:31.980businesses on their social media, I always make sure to tell them the only thing you own is your
00:26:37.300newsletter list and your blog or your website. You know, you do not own Instagram. It could go away
00:26:43.480at any point. So keep that in mind. You know, always have other options. Always have other
00:26:51.120options exactly well and you know i think about that in terms of pivoting to career wise i have
00:26:57.280changed the kind of media that i create once a year for the past 12 years at this point like
00:27:03.580nothing is certain i'm constantly evolving i'm constantly pivoting and part of that is exhausting
00:27:09.020and part of that is just survival these days yeah yeah agreed it's tough it is tough
00:27:15.320don't recommend don't recommend you know what i think the world is so is just like generally
00:27:20.180precarious um you know and we're we're all we're all just trying to do our best we're all trying
00:27:26.020to figure it out and then and also find joy where there's joy i mean in this in this book uh launch
00:27:33.060journey which i love this book so much and but i do have a lot of stress around it and i was talking
00:27:40.280to my friend glennis this morning whose book mostly here to enjoy myself launched this week
00:27:45.040and i've been with her up in new york to launch it into the world both monday and tuesday i call
00:27:50.460myself a book doula now i'm like i am birthing i'm with you as your companion i wish i'd had you
00:27:57.000because i could have used a book doula last month i know i should rent myself out but it also means
00:28:02.220that i'm super tired because we've we've just like been celebrating and doing all of the things
00:28:06.260i took her i took her to marie's crisis for some singing right after you're a great i'm a really
00:28:12.820good book doula guys really good and but i was talking to her this morning and you know she's
00:28:17.960happy but also like anxiety ridden because she's like am i doing all the things and stuff and i'm
00:28:22.280like you know we just need to enjoy this uh and i think it relates to like motherhood too like
00:28:27.920let's just find the joy it's not always easy i hate it when people are like it's gonna go so0.89
00:28:32.580fast i'm like you shut the fuck up but like at the same time let's try to have fun with with the0.95
00:28:38.480things instead of them giving us angst. So Glynis and I planned three book events together. I was0.96
00:28:43.580like, all right, I have to do book events. You have to do book events. Let's do it together
00:28:46.780so that it's more fun. And it's just the two of us putting on like some great calf pans
00:28:51.140and shooting the shit with each other and having a good time because we deserve to have fun.0.99
00:28:57.660That sounds really fun. Come with us. Yeah. Well, you're going to join the Athena event0.99
00:29:02.120now. I'll bring Glynis up and we'll just do all the things together.
00:29:05.180for sure you know writing a book and promoting your book is i shouldn't say yours mine it's been
00:29:11.780one of the hardest things i've ever done ever in my in my career and i am just so impressed
00:29:17.820by people like you by authors in general it's like it's impossible it's it's exhausting you're
00:29:23.860always out there you're at events every night you're at on panels every day you're on podcasts
00:29:27.960every day although podcasts are fun i gotta say it's exhausting so i'm i'm impressed and i'm
00:29:32.680am impressed that you do it over and over. I mean, I think you're insane, but I love it.
00:29:36.140I'm insane. No, there's something wrong with me. There's actually something wrong with me.0.98
00:29:39.820Okay. We are going to, we are going to take one last quick break. And when we get back,
00:30:37.360We have chickens and it's like this beautiful, like self-sustaining property.
00:30:41.640He grew up in Bosnia during the war and the garden that his family had quite literally saved his life.
00:30:49.280They had food when other people didn't.
00:30:51.060They were able to sell products like the milk that their cows had, the eggs that their chickens laid to get other foods that they didn't have.
00:30:57.760food waste and gardening in general is like our big topics in his life so i'm talking about it a
00:31:03.960lot you know he would come in with these giant harvests of tomatoes and basil and lettuce and
00:31:08.840cucumbers and peppers and i would show what i was making with them and then people would come to me
00:31:13.880on my instagram and say you have so many tomatoes what are you going to do with all those like what
00:31:17.240am i supposed to do with all mine and i was like okay this feels like a good book idea so the book
00:31:22.480is divided into chapters by vegetable. So for example, there's an eggplant chapter. In that
00:31:28.080chapter, my husband goes through how to plant, how to harvest, how to deal with pests, random
00:31:32.280gardening tips for eggplants. Then I go into how to store them off season, dry them out, bread them,
00:31:37.800freeze them. Then you can use them for eggplant parm whenever you want throughout the year.
00:31:41.000Then I go through the recipes and have like 10 to 12 recipes for each chapter and so on and so
00:31:46.080forth between that and cucumbers and carrots and berries and onions and garlic. And it just keeps
00:31:50.680going and going and going. So that is the spiel. I love that because so often I will go to the
00:31:59.980farmer's market and buy an eggplant. And then I'm like, what do I do with an eggplant? Correct.
00:32:05.180Yeah. Or you buy a whole bunch of carrots and you don't know what to do with the rest of it.
00:32:09.320And that's been like a really big part of it for us because it's, you know, we don't want to waste
00:32:14.640the food. So we're part of the idea of the book is trying to help people who overbuy or overproduce
00:32:19.800use everything up instead of getting rid of it i love this i love this did you you guys wrote this
00:32:26.820together what was that like for your marriage she won't recommend not dnf dnr dnr dnr yeah well you
00:32:35.440know i wrote most of it so i would i mean i gotta be honest i actually hired a friend of mine who's
00:32:41.340a project manager to come in and like give me homework every week because i'm just not organized
00:32:45.960enough for this they were like here you need to put a hundred and rest 108 recipes head notes for
00:32:50.120each one intro chapters you know it was just so much work it was so overwhelming i was like i
00:32:54.840don't even know where to start so my friend came in she gave me uh homework every week and part of
00:32:59.860that homework would be like having l write his stuff so he you know when he would have to do
00:33:04.480something i would sit with him he would basically do voice recordings and remember english is not
00:33:09.260his first language voice recordings that were you know then somehow he transmitted into words
00:33:16.120and i would have to basically rewrite all of them because uh english is not this strong
00:33:20.980right it was the whole thing it was the whole thing and it was the whole thing but was was
00:33:26.040any part of it fun for you guys to get to do together absolutely i mean be well actually i
00:33:32.100will say the best part was recipe testing so going into this i had about 40 recipes that i knew i
00:33:36.940wanted to put in the book and i was like i am set and then they were like you need over 100 and i0.95
00:33:40.260was like i am fucked and you're fucked yeah yeah yeah yeah i had to test out about 60 recipes so0.94
00:33:45.540that was fun i cooked a lot and he tested a lot and he was very honest with his responses so we0.99
00:33:50.960had fun with that um shooting photos for it with a cookbook is different than your kind of books
00:33:55.160because you have to shoot every single recipe so our photo shoots were really fun there were a lot
00:33:59.560of fun parts about it also promoting it with him has been fun you know we've been doing book talks
00:34:03.760together where like we're doing one at the Greenwich Garden Club on Saturday and we talk
00:34:08.620about gardening and the book and it's fun to do that together because he's really funny. So he
00:34:12.820brings in like the humor. See, I think that's nice. I think it's nice to like get to birth something
00:34:18.300into the world together that's not a child. Yes, it is. It's really fun and it's also really hard
00:34:25.080and I'm torn on if I would ever do that again. Well, you know, I will say with books, this is
00:34:31.560this is my advice you know how like right after you have a baby you don't want another baby
00:34:35.800you're like i'm never doing this again and my my my friend for tessa actually texted me she's like
00:34:43.160when is my brain gonna come back online it's been four weeks and i'm like four weeks honey
00:34:48.660got a time to go you got some time but it's like you can't even think about having another baby
00:34:54.020until the the baby that you currently have is not on you all the time so i'm like wait till it can0.65
00:35:00.420sit on the floor wait till you can leave it alone and go take a poop and it's the same way with a
00:35:04.220book you're like wait until you're not running around talking about it all the time although0.62
00:35:09.280i'm a psychopath and i think i'm writing like three more books right now um but that's just
00:35:14.260me like like i said there's something wrong with me i fully agree i don't know you but now i know
00:35:18.780there's something you're like now i know there's something there's definitively something wrong
00:35:22.400with me i will tell you i've also because i can't help myself looked up many more lemon dresses
00:35:27.460and i don't what i love about the anthropology one is the sleeves i don't i don't love well
00:35:34.540there was just that recently that thing where some uh jerk bag on thread said woman over the age or0.96
00:35:41.120women over the weight of 130 shouldn't wear sundresses did you see that we're all screwed0.99
00:35:45.800and we're all fucked right yeah um so that's not it it's just like i'm more comfortable in sleeves0.98
00:35:51.880and so all the j crew ones are like strappy spaghetti sleeves and i'm just like those aren't0.88
00:35:55.460my jam okay i'm gonna send you some more options after this podcast me some more options because i
00:35:59.660want i just want some more i need some lemon dresses for for the continuing summer sicilian
00:36:04.660events i really do i understand it's a real struggle and we are going to help you that's
00:36:09.800why you are you are that's why you're here that is why you're here well i mean and i i love your
00:36:13.800content because you well all of your recommendations are great i never feel like you're overselling me
00:36:19.980anything and you're also very honest you're like this is a collaboration i'm collaborating with
00:36:24.620someone and this this is the business part and um i do feel like that is often not the case you're
00:36:32.060like but you're very upfront about you're like this is a brand this is a brand i'm doing a job
00:36:36.640i mean you have to kind of right otherwise you can go to you not go i can't go to jail but you
00:36:43.420can definitely get in trouble for it so everyone should get that and they don't always and they
00:36:47.980don't manager i say on top of it so shout out to carly here good yeah you know exactly exactly well
00:36:53.900Well, and that's one of the things we talk about in this podcast all the time, right?
00:36:57.940You're running a business, and you're very good at running a business, and you're a businesswoman.
00:37:02.460I do find it interesting because I've been reading a lot of profiles of very successful influencers lately where the profiles in places like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are like, well, this homemaker also.0.99
00:37:14.060And I'm like, no, she's the CEO of our fucking brand, man.0.98