 You have a chicken named Nancy Kerrigan? Well, they're fancy chickens. So they're named after figure skaters. What a OK. I'm drawing all day. This is heaven, like, amazing. But my personal life was a freaking train wreck. I had a roommate pull a knife on it. What? Everybody, welcome to the show, as always. This is a show about screwing up, making mistakes, hitting the bottom, coming back out again, and shining. And so your mom knows that you're tenacious. I think, in general, this is a show about being human, because that's what we all do. Even though we like to tell people the great things that we've done in the world, and we've made it there, and it's all been perfect, that's never, ever, ever the case. So that's what we try to uncover in having the guests on the show and figuring out exactly what they did to be successful. Tonight, we will be talking to Joanna Holly, who runs Jojo Tastic. She's a fashion blogger, designer, small space. She's an influencer. I'm really, really excited to meet her. Everybody, welcome to the show. I am here with Joanna from Jojo, Jojo Tastic. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Oh, this is going to. I can already tell this is going to be a lot of fun. So before we get into all the fun mess up kind of stuff and everything we like to talk about, tell me a little bit about yourself, what you're doing now, and actually just start there. Yeah, what are you doing now? So now I am a blogger, influencer, social media person, and I do some prop styling on the side. Way back when I was a textile designer for companies like Nordstrom, Anthropology, and a few others. And I went to school for industrial design. So I spent a lot of time in the wood shop building things, yeah, just feeding things through the table saw at 3 o'clock in the morning, all of that. And then went into textiles after school and just kind of loved it and spent all of my day in an office drawing and photoshopping stuff. Yeah, I have so many questions now. This is so good. So first, I'm not even going to remember all of them now. So textile design, I have no idea what that is. If you've ever bought a shirt with a pattern on it, chances are a textile designer touched that. So either they picked the fabric that the print is printed on or they designed the weave, like if you have a plaid shirt and it's a woven plaid shirt, they designed that. Or it's like, I did a lot of what's called fabric manipulation, you walk into Anthropology and there's quilts with a bunch of texture and stuff on them. I did a lot of that. So I would have fabric and I would tuck it and pin it all of that and then I'd send it to a factory and be like, copy this. Make this. Yeah. So that's textile design. Wait, textile designer, is that what you call it? Textile designer and then I did the print design as well. So that is like the tiny little flowers on like a t-shirt. And I did that for like ladies underwear and pajamas. Yeah. Where would you, I can't even, how did you get into that? Like did you just see an open position or was it like? I saw an open position and the HR person had accidentally put her email address in it. So I emailed her. Oh wow. Yeah. Why not? Like what do you, what's on your resume to say, hey, I can put little tiny flowers on women's underwear. I had been creating artwork for bedding at a catalog company. And so I had like a portfolio of printed duvetes and then candle packaging. Printed. I seriously, it's so random. Everything that you're saying makes it sound like you should be much more pretentious than you are. You're like printed duvets or like I'm- Euroshams. Next styling. A met-la-say. Euroshams. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, obviously you're not like that at all. I mean, it's underwear. So you did that and then you said prop, prop- Prop styling. Prop styling. That's like kind of a newer thing. Okay, what's- That's a byproduct of blogging where it's like, basically with my blogging it's like, I'm a one-woman marketing machine. So it's like a company or a brand reaches out to me and they want to do a photo shoot. And so I'll shoot the photos. I do the whole concepting, write the copy, edit the photos, everything. And so that has turned into, oh, well we like the way your photos look. Can you make our photos look like that? Okay, I got you, I got you. Which is fun. Basically it's making stuff look pretty and then just walking away and not having to promote it on social media. What, before that? What drew you to this? Like this type of work? I mean, did you start off by- I did ballet as a kid. Like I was really into ballet and really into like being creative. I was really lucky because my mom, I don't know how she met this guy. She met a guy whose son had gone to my college, Carnegie Mellon. And he like mentioned this program of industrial design to her. And like communication design. And she's like, oh, that can be interesting for me. And they do this pre-college program. So between your junior and senior year, you go for a summer. Know all about it. And I came back from it and I was like, nobody can tell me anything now. I am important. Like I've been to college, I've lived on my own. No, was it industrial design that you studied there for that? Kind of both. Like they, cause at CMU, it's a four year program. And the first year you do both industrial design and communication design and then you decide sophomore year. And so it was like a little bit of both. And I just was like, this is amazing. And it clicked. Now we're at the drinking part of the show. This is sober Joe. This is gonna be the best. Jack, what are we drinking? Yes, tonight I've got the candle and pitch for ya. So we're gonna start out with our ghost whiskey, two ounces. We keep this one very spirit forward in life. 0.5 of our cedar cordial, house made. One dropper of our all-spice tincture. Quarter ounce of our cherry and kefir lime shrub. And one dash of our Regan's orange bitters. And we'll fine strain that into our glass here. Now for the next part, the espuma. And then we're gonna add a few all-spice berries and a little cedar frond. You have a cherry kefir lime shrub as a part of your base here. Served in a lantern, so to speak. That's the candle part. Can you candle it? Those are beautiful. I know. Cheers. For sure. Thank you. All right. Oh, it has a straw. You ready? Now I am. Did you just pick this up? Yeah. Okay. That's amazing. All right. Favorite way to say cheers, you got one? Opa. Opa. Oh, you're a great. All right, so. Opa. All right. Here we go. Okay. Oh, wow. That's really good. So if you were to write a blog post about this drink, like, how would you do it? Like, where would you start? It would probably be a recipe post. There's always the glamor shot, right? The recipe post. Yes. And recipes perform very well on Pinterest. First you tell me what's the construct of a recipe post? Like, how would you do it? Like, how it's actually like the flow of it? Yeah, like what are the parts and how they go together? Because. There's the glamor shot. Okay. Which encourages you to click. Okay. There's an introductory paragraph and that's usually where we pack the SEO keywords, you know, you know. And then usually I like to do like four to five images. They're all, they're actually all glamor shots, but one, you know. And sometimes I'll do the ingredient shot. Like if the ingredients are especially pretty, I'll just like do like a really messy shot on like a piece of marble. You know? Where does the recipe show up? Halfway down the post. We need to make sure that they spend the time on the site. Yeah. You know, maybe there'll be a few other like links to other things. As a consumer. Maybe they'll subscribe to my email newsletter while they're there. Does it pop up on the screen? It does. And then go back down. But only like every like fifth visit or something like that. Well that's very kind of you. We're subtle. Yeah. I should have brought you eggs for my chickens. Oh, I would love this. Wait, you have chickens? Oh, yeah. Please. How many chickens do you have? I have five. You have five chickens. I have five. We've had a few. You had more than five. Casualties lately. We should pour one out, but you know. You have lots and lots and lots of eggs. Well, it depends on the time of year. Okay. Yeah. So well, and some of the chickens don't lay because they're duds. Like Nancy Kerrigan is just like, nope. We're not gonna do it. You have a chicken named Nancy Kerrigan? Well, they're fancy chickens. So they're named after figure skaters. Okay, what are the other ones? Okay, so the tiniest one that just died was Tonya Harding. Nancy Kerrigan, I call her my emotional support chicken because she lets me hold her like a baby. And she follows me around. She's like a big fluffy white chicken. And then there's Dorothy Hamel. She rules the roost. It's her world. We're just living in it. Michelle Kwan. She has this weird raspy voice where she sounds like she's had a pack of day of habit for years. It's really weird. She lays blue eggs. And she's like a beard. Like the Kathleen Turner of your, I gotcha, okay. Chrissy Yamaguchi. She's, am I allowed to curse on them? Yeah, you're- She's a bitch. She really is. She hisses at me. She's like, she hates me. Yeah. And she eats everything. Like she won't let any of the others eat. And then there's Katarina Vitt who is like kind of the lowest on the totem pole. And she gets picked on a lot. But she's like, she lays eggs the most consistently. No, the big question for me here is did you name them after you saw their personalities? Yes. Oh, that's even better. Yeah. Great. Let's hope that figure skaters see. Totally. No, I like to tag Nancy Kerrigan. And I'm like, Nancy, can we be friends? Yeah. But no, it didn't work out. Yeah. Because you named a chicken. Yeah. After probably. But the prettiest chicken. Yeah. Yeah. I love that we're no longer talking about like the Jojo Tastic and all. I mean, this is part of my world. Well, I mean, you have to put that together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And putting, yeah. Because I do like hashtag chicken TV on Instagram stories and people like just send me their own chicken TVs. This is so great. You have chickens and you made underwear. So getting to where you're at now with Jojo Tastic influencer lifestyle blogger. Tell me a little bit more. So what I'm curious about obviously because of the show is on the way to that. Like did you have like, what were the missteps? What were the mistakes? What were the things you had to learn where you were like, oh my God, I totally screwed that up. Why like, what could I have done differently? I learned that I'm not great at like working for other people. I'm really good at working for myself. You know, so it's this constant thing of like, I have this vision and I like desperately want to share it. And like be part of these teams to help with this vision, your vision. Any vision, right? And just not really being able like within myself to like communicate it or to feel like I'm part of the team, like any of those reasons, you know? And so I left Nordstrom and went to Anthropology because they put me in this like super technical role. Where it was just like emails, emails, emails. At Nordstroms. Yeah. It felt like I was hitting my head against the wall. And so when I went to Anthro, it was again like I'm drawing all day. This is heaven, like amazing. But my personal life was a freaking train wreck. I had moved to Philadelphia. I'd never been to Philly, except for like the job interview. I get off the plane and it's like 90 degrees, 100% humidity. There's like a drunk man yelling in the airport. I have my cat in a carrier and like two of those like really big like expedition like body bags of my personal belongings. And I'm like, what have I done? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have made a terrible mistake. It just, it was not my place. It didn't work for me. Like I just, I had like really fucking living situation. Like I had a roommate pull a knife on me. What? Like I was connected with some friends of a friend. And she just was like, crazy. Like why? Why? Because I forgot to take out the recycling. I took out the trash and I forgot to take out the recycling because I got distracted. Though seriously? So she like woke me up at three o'clock in the morning when she came home from the bar and was like hella aggressive. And so I was like, I'm done. And there was like a week span where the cat and I, always with the cat. Always with the cat. We slept in my Volkswagen Golf. Yeah. Outside of my office. Not many people know this. That's just. Actually. That you're going into Anthro, anthropology after sleeping in a golf with a cat in a litter box. And nobody knew. Nobody knew. Oh yeah. Nobody knew. Yeah. And I just was like so supremely unhappy. It was like, it was just really bad. And it felt, it honestly felt like it was like the deep dark period of my life. Like I still think of it as like, this is the deep dark space. We will never go back here. Yeah. Around that time I actually got a huge contract for the blog. And it was a contract that was more than my yearly salary. So you were blogging. I was blogging before. While you were there. Yeah. So what did you start blogging about? Was it about design? So blogging was really this weird thing that I fell into when I was the climbing bum, like living off unemployment. I emailed Joy Cho of ojoy.com. Who's like the OG blogger. And I was like, I love what you're doing and I'd love to be a part of it. And she was like, okay. And so I wrote for her for three years, something like that on her site. And just learned everything about blogging from her. And she invited me to Pinterest early. So she somehow got on Pinterest really early. I think as like a consultant, something like that. And she invited me. So I have this like corny joke. It's like, I'm not the first person on Pinterest. I'm the second person. Like the Pinterest thing was growing, growing, growing. And suddenly I have 3.8 million followers. Suddenly. And I was just like, Ooh. Like what's the, what was the drive? Like what's the most things that people were following? Was it design? Fashion. Fashion. Yes. Because for my day job, I watched runway a lot. And so I would pin runway looks that I could then like get inspired and translate into a pillow. Oh. Yeah. So it was like, I was always pinning fashion. And so then I became a fashion influencer. It's a lot of pressure for me. So you start, you end up with your own blog all the way through and eventually. So was it easy at the beginning to monetize your, I mean, you're making money blogging, right? Yes. So, and this is super rare. I had my first sponsored post within three months of launching. Oh wow. Which is unheard of. Which is unheard of. It was just like a gift guide for a company that does like a bunch of super gifty things, like really weird gift ideas. And I think it was like for $300. And I was like, we're rich. That's amazing. We're rich. Yeah. And so from there, it just kind of grew. And then I'm in this period, like the past couple of years of diversifying. Yeah. So that, you know, it's like in summer, blogging's slower, there's fewer sponsorships. Yeah. Let's have something else. Yeah, yeah. You know, so I like to have a lot of things. Can't sit still. What do you want to try to take? I actually am thinking of taking like a sabbatical type situation. And I don't know what that looks like as. Hashtag Van Life. Right. As like a social media like personality. Like what does that look like? Because it can be depleting to be like posting every day and feel this need to like constantly be sharing. And there is definitely like there's Jojo Tastic Joanna and then there's Joanna Joanna. And it's like not everybody knows that I'm like sleeping in my truck in Montana, you know? But that's what fuels me. And so some of what I've been doing is pulling those things together a little bit more. Yeah. So that if I take a sabbatical in the van or the sailboat or whatever. Or whatever. It feels more natural. Yeah. I'm also just thinking of ways that like, like I miss making things. Yeah. You know, like I used to draw paint. Like with your hands. Not just writing. Yeah, and I don't know if you know, but I use my hands a lot when I talk. So I really miss using my hands. So it's like, I want to, like is it ceramics? Am I painting again? Like something like that. Even it's just personal. I miss that. Yeah. I don't know. I think that there's a, when it comes to social media, personalities, influence, or things like that. We were, the idea of authenticity is, yeah. That is such a buzzword. I know. Where's the like urr, urr. I know it totally is. Like if you want to see authentic, right? Yeah. Like here's me in the loo, right? But nobody, I think in general that there's a, not only a tolerance, but people want to see people recharge. They want to see them be human. They want to see them. But like through all of my trips to like the hospital and everything, like my followers have always been there. Like essentially it's like a cheering section. And it's incredible. You know, because it's like I can have a day and they're just like, you're amazing. These people have really become a part of my life. Where it's like I really, if I could, I would just like thank them every day. Because I couldn't do this without them. Like I'm freaking lucky, you know? Well, opa. Opa. Let's do it one more time. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. This is wonderful. All right. Opa. Well, that's a wrap. Thanks, Joanna, for being on the show. If you like what you saw and you dig what we're doing here, then subscribe or hit a like button. Or I think there's a bell somewhere that you can ring on the page. Do that. And if you have a mistake, whatever it is, then go to epops.com. We'd love to hear from you.