I have never tried to do anything for a year long before, so I decided that since I really love taking food shots on my iPhone I am going to take at least one photo everyday this year and post it on Instagram. I'm tagging each photo with each day number (#day7) and the hashtag #yif12.
If you're on Instagram, you can follow me at: stephaniequilao.
If you're not on Instagram, here are options for you to follow along:
Normally, I just enjoy reading the trends and predictions lists that come out for the new year. For 2012, I decided to share what I think will be big this year related to Food, Fitness, Health, Publishing and Mobile, the topics I am most passionate about. Here we go in random order:
Food: Quinoa will go even more mainstream. You will see this grain as an ingredient in more pre-packaged foods, frozen foods, snacks, and in bulk outside of natural food stores like Whole Foods and Sprouts. Quinoa will be offered in more school lunches and a nation-wide restaurant chain will offer it as a side dish.
Food: Move over cupcakes, paletas, frozen ice pops made with fresh fruits and creams or water will be the popular sweet treat as people become more health-conscious and want a sweet but healthier treat. Paletas have more of a diversity in flavor and texture than your traditional fruit popsicle.
Publishing: The rise of the 3rd publisher between self-publishing and traditional book-publishing: micro-book publishing. Think books around +/- 30,000 words, selected authors, price points under $4.99 and all digital (no print.) The Atavist, Byliner, and Kindle Singles are current business models.
Food publishing: As more people buy iPads and smartphones, sales of traditional printed cookbooks will diminsh mainly because consumers will not want to pay the higher prices. Digital is cheaper and access is faster, easier, and more interactive. More food magazines and (smart) book publishers will focus on digital books, web and apps versus print.
Fitness: Mobile fitness rises. More people will be using their smartphones and iPads for personalized workouts that will allow them to customize exercise programs and give them the flexibility to exercise anytime, anywhere.
Media: The most influential media mogul of 2012 will be 15 year-old Tavi Gevinson. I'm telling you this girl may be young in her years but she is wise beyond her age.
Apps: Mobile apps that allow people to curate and connect around specific topics will become most popular. Think Pinterest.
Health: Food allergy testing will be on the rise. Food allergies will get more press and will be a bigger concern for consumers as more Americans are being diagnosed with multiple food allergies. Currently, according to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, around 15 million Americans including 6 million children have food allergies.
Family cooking and eating: Mom is vegetarian. Dad is meat and potatoes. Kid is Celiac. Cooking and eating out for families with mixed-eating styles is becoming a bigger challenge. Recipes, restaurants, apps, books or magazines that offer easy and fast solutions will highly benefit.
Today, there are more mobile devices in the world than computers especially in developing countries. Taking a peek into worldwide mobile sales, in this USA Today story, Gartner, a leading tech research company predicts, "an astounding 1 billion smartphones will be sold in 2014, about double that of PCs in the same year."
Yes, one billion, *pointing pinky at grin like Dr. Evil*
My life purpose is to help make the world a healthier place, and in 2011, the year of "Manifest," I got clear that my specific mission in this phase of my life is to help make the world a healthier place with mobile devices.
Like I had to re-imagine how I’d manifest my family and how my first book would get published, I re-imagined how to make a living from my social media efforts. I have blogs full of content: Back in Skinny Jeans, Noshtopia, and One Mile One Meal.
I have created a respected and influential healthy living brand online particularly on Twitter with an audience of almost 54,000 now. Over the summer, I did some social media experiments on my iPhone which got me excited about new possibilities. I’ll share more detail about those results later. If you follow me on Twitter @skinnyjeans and Instagram, you know I'm obsessed with taking iPhone food shots. Here's an example of one of the best iPhone photos I've ever taken.
In fact, businesses are now paying me to take food shots with my iPhone. Yeah very cool, and no one could have ever planned that. So, how do I monetize my content because I'm sitting on a pile of influence and talent?
Numbers Dr. Evil would boast
Earlier this year, I read that the number of mobile health apps would triple from 200 million by 2012. Just on iOS devices, in July, the week of iPhone’s 4th birthday, 15 billion apps had been downloaded. The new iPhone 4S has been out only 4 days, and sales topped 4 million.
In books, last year Amazon announced that for the first time it was now selling more eBooks than printed books. The torch has been officially passed. Again, *pointing pinky at grin like Dr. Evil*
A BIG question every blogger needs to ask themselves
With all this staggering data about mobile, from a business perspective, how can you not think about mobile? I asked myself a very important question:
How will you monetize your content on mobile?
I now ask that question to every blogger I meet. In fact, I'll start asking every business owner I meet that question because you need to have an answer. I did not have an answer, and suddenly, I could not stop thinking about mobile. I consider my iPhone a third arm, and I'm not alone. More importantly, mobile is one of the most significant ways to spread healthiness around the globe!
*getting goosebumps*
In January, I was already feeling burnt out with blogging, but in a last ditch effort to revitalize my blogging fervor, I created One Mile One Meal in March as a way to help people get back in their skinny jeans through tiny actions. The blog was an instant hit. Traffic literally poured in, but after my 112-day exercise streak ended at the end of June I was blogging toast, and like I said in Part I, I Forest Gumped on the blogging.
I finally have the guts to call myself Founder
Back in Silicon Valley, I’ve worked at several startups, in fact did really well at one that went IPO. Because I'm a Swiss Army knife of skills and talents, and delight in adventure, I thrive in a startup environment. I'm also a Geek and am fascinated with technology coupled with the fact that I am DaVinci-like in that I have sketchbooks filled with ideas for businesses, products, and services that re-imagine industries I think are broken or need revitalizing. With all this brilliance however, I’ve never had the guts to bring those ideas to life and be a Founder. Well, like the Lion in the Wizard of Oz, I got some courage, and I did it! I changed my title from Blogger to Founder.
Over the summer, I came up with an idea to turn One Mile One Meal into a mobile health iPhone app because I think most health apps in the weight loss category are the same old thing. Because I am I was a healthy living blogger, I've sifted through dozens and dozens of healthy living apps, and instead of complaining about the apps, I should just be quiet and build my own. So, I did. I designed the One Mile One Meal app conceptually. The screen-shot is one of the concepts. I pitched brands for sponsorships. I looked for a CTO and developers. I started building a team. Even though very early, I also started talking to money people about funding.
I applied to some startup incubators. I took a startup class at Gangplank here in Arizona. I also did plenty of failing and flopping. I’m a really good creative, inventor-type, a big picture thinker, but not so good with operations, sales, and focus. I'm a good WHY person, but I need a good HOW person. This is where I’m like a Paul Allen who needs a Bill Gates.
Our startup dream takes a slight detour
On my way to manifesting my mobile health startup, I found myself in this chicken/egg situation. Getting creative with funding, I thought if Morgan Spurlock could get brands to fund his movie, “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” maybe I could get my startup funded using the same approach only it would be, “The Greatest App Ever Sold.” Because I’m already established as an online influential, big brands are happy to talk to me, and I got some brands intrigued with the proposition I posed to them with sponsoring the development of my app. The only thing was that they wanted to see a working demo - fair enough.
On the development side, I have experience working with developers from my NVIDIA and Microsoft days, but all that experience is in Silicon Valley where I know lots of people because I lived there for 30 years. I've only been in Phoenix two years come October 17, and because I'd been an independent blogger, I haven't worked or partnered with any developers here, so I either need some funding, find a technical person who believes in the vision and will join for equity, or move back to the Bay Area. So far, I haven't been able to do any of those things. In the meantime, I also need to eat.
Not to be deterred, it was time to come up with Plan S - supplement income...which actually grows the vision for Thriving Media.
In book publishing, I see a future in mini-books or eSingles 10,000-30,000 words because mini-books are better suited to read on mobile devices. In fact, there was an article in the New York Times about, "Shorter eBooks for smaller devices." Have you tried reading a regular 80,000+ word book on a smartphone, it’s a pain in the eyes, at least to me. Also, the attention span on a mobile device and tablet is shorter.
Digital mini-books are sprouting up already. Amazon launched Kindle Singles in January. There are mini-book publishers like The Atavist and Byliner. In universities, Princeton University Press is the first university press to publish eSingles. My vision is for Thriving Media to be a publisher of non-fiction mini-books in the area of healthy living. And coupled with the books, I see the development of apps because apps are a complement to a book and an author's brand.
To wrap up, here's the vision with the development of Thriving Media which will happen as it happens. I'm learning to be totally open with planning because you never what the Universe will throw my way.
On my personal blog here, as I mentioned before, I will share what's going on in my personal life, cool things I find and love, and my thoughts about various topics. It's all open.
Noshtopia will be turned into an iPad magazine published under Thriving Media along with my other brands, and will focus on "eating wellness" which is creating vibrant health through the fork which I hope one day just becomes normal mainstream eating. There will be an emphasis on topics like food allergies, plant-based diets, organic, humanely raised meat and seafood, and non-GMO because those are the foods and ways of eating I believe create optimal health.
One Mile One Meal will become an iPhone app helping people get back into their skinny jeans through tiny actions and social support.
Back in Skinny Jeans will be a digital mini-book coming out in January about how I personally dropped 35 pounds and kept it off for four years now. It’s not a how-to book, but a how-I book.
Thriving Media will publish apps and mini-books between 10-30K words focused on healthy living topics from personal brands starting with my stuff obviously. My first mini-book, “Be #awesome on Twitter” will be available on Kindle, Nook, and iBooks in the next two weeks. Yay! I’m a published author. And coming out by December my 2nd mini-book will be available which is about the death of my corporate life and finding my life purpose work. I'll keep the title a secret for now :)
I have in the pipeline to publish mini-books from new authors on the topics of vegan cupcakes, overcoming agoraphobia with social media, and an insider scoop on mommy blogging. The topics of our books will lean towards "unconventional" ways of healing, and voices of talented bloggers I've seen online who have amazing stories but don't quite have the marketing umph to get that book deal with a traditional publisher, yet. I only emphasize the word "unconventional" because the healing stories that intrigue me are ones where traditional Western healing like pills and needles failed, and something considered alternative worked. For example, going plant-based eating to heal Diabetes like in the movie, "Forks Over Knives ."
Obviously, this is a huge vision because well that’s how my brain works, and I need to build a team. If you have loved my work and believe in this vision, I’d love to talk more with you. In particular, editors, developers, executives, funders, or just plain, this is cool, here’s what I can add.
For now, here's where "Live Purposeully" stands for me. Of course, I've got my running shoes on because you never know where life will take you.
Back in July, I did a Forest Gump and just stopped blogging. I know plenty of you were wondering what the heck happened to my blogging because I didn’t really say anything about it. I was still active on Facebook and Twitter, and started up on Instagram and Foodspotting. There was neither a plan nor a declaration. I just didn’t want to blog any more after 5 years, 8months, and 15 days so I stopped.
It was exactly like when Forest took up running from coast to coast for 3 years, 2 months, and 14 days. One day in the middle of the Arizona desert (ironically) without fanfare Forest just stopped because he was tired and wanted to go home. He shared, “…and just like that, my running days was over.”
Well, today after some soul searching and trying new things during this year, I’m here to share that my professional blogging days are over. I’m retiring from blogging everyday for a living. I am re-imagining what my future on the web will look like. To use a startup term, I’m pivoting.
The personal pivot
Now, before any of you start getting sad, I’m not leaving the interwebs. You’re not getting rid of me that easily! In fact, my adventures on the web are evolving, and I’m looking forward to new experiences. To give you a peek, remember in the movie The Graduate when Mr. McGuire said, "There's a great future in plastics." Well, when I see what's happening in the marketplace and in our society today, I see a great future in mobile.
In terms of blogging, I will maintain this personal blog where I will have the space to just be me and pontificate with no pressure to monetize. Yes, you will some monetization things here and I'm not completely ruling out sponosrship ads, but this personal blog is not intended to be a monetizing machine, but a central hub for what I’m doing all over the web, and in my life. In this post and the next, I’ll share what I’ve been doing this past year, and my vision for what’s ahead.
The 2012 theme
Every year, I do a New Year’s theme because I think themes are more fun and adventurous than doing resolutions. I’ve already decided that my theme for 2012 will be, “Live Purposefully” because it encompasses everything about what’s in my heart right now and my next phase in life. Living purposefully to me is about intent, a resolve to do something, and taking deliberate action which is why the new subline of my personal blog is, “deliberate enthusiasm dressed up as my life.” I am committed to spreading deliberate enthusiasm in the world. I even changed my Twitter background to reflect this intent. See, we’re being purposeful already!
In 2006, my New Year’s theme was “Live Authentically” and I adopted that theme not just for the year but for that whole phase of my life up til today. Five years is a good run, and we’ll see how long “Live Purposefully” goes. It’s like Picasso and his periods, Blue, Rose, African, and Analytic Cubism, which reflected where he was in his art at the time.
Before I share my vision for the future, let me recap my theme for 2011 which was “Manifest.” The theme was open, but I did have three main areas I wanted to manifest: Marriage, Money, and Manuscript. What has transpired over this year in these three areas inspired my pivot.
Marriage
For the first time in my life, I worked on getting clear, energetically, about marriage. Previously, my relationship energy was all over the place. I’d go on plenty of first-dates. I’d have hookups. I’d get involved with emotionally unavailable men. I’d see some guy and think, “Oh there’s my future husband,” but then be too afraid to talk to him. It’s hard for the universe to help you when you’re not clear.
In the Spring, I met this guy who was going through a bad divorce, and he asked me, “If you know you don’t want to have kids, why get married at all?” On the subject of kids, I like how Melanie Notkin Founder of SavvyAuntie.com put it, “I am circumstantially infertile." I’ve entered my 40’s and am at the peaceful acceptance that having a kid biologically is probably not in the cards for me. I say “peaceful” because over the last few years I did go through that shit storm of panicked and saddened freaking out about the kid thing.
If God wants me to birth a baby, then so be it, but if not, I’m at peace that I can still have a family. That family will just happen in another way than the way I imagined. And family to me does not mean kids have to be in the picture. My husband and I together are a family. If kiddos are in the picture, he could have kids from a previous relationship, we could adopt, get a surrogate and donor eggs, our nieces and nephews could be our “kids”, or we could have pets. That’s the beauty of modern family, plenty of options.
I waited because I didn’t want to make the mistake of getting married to Mr. Right Now versus “the one,” so I could be married with kids in the expected age range. I’m glad I waited, and I’m very lucky to have Asian parents who are more concerned that I’m happy than hitched for hitched’s sake. I’ve grown up so much in the last ten years that I’d make a far better wife and mother today. I only need one guy, not three or a dozen, just one. I love that Rumi saying, “Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”
I want to be married because I want to experience the next phase of my life with a husband. I’ve spent most of my life solo, and I’ve done the living together thing twice and it doesn’t work for me. I’m complete on my own, and it’s been fantastic being single because I’ve been able to do everything I’ve wanted to do, and grow in ways that were best done single. But now, when I look at the future and what I want to experience and where I want to go in my life, I see a husband with me. I believe marriage is a healthy and wonderful thing. I have excellent role models. My parents are celebrating 46 years of marriage in November, and they have four grand kids now, one recently born three weeks ago, and like them, I want to grow old with my husband: my best friend, my lover, my teammate. Marriage will give me the opportunity to grow and experience life in new ways, and I look forward to that.
Money
The primary reason I am retiring from professional blogging is that monetizing blogging in the Lifestyle categories like food, fashion, healthy living, home and garden, and DIY has frankly been a frustrating pain in the ass (for me.) I want to be financially stable, and blogging for money in my category has been unstable, requires plenty of hustling, and to be honest, I refuse to be at the mercy of the ad and sponsorship networks for my living. As supplements, the networks are fine, but as a primary source of income, oh no, not for me! Later on, I’ll share more about my experiences with trying to monetize my blogs because it is a very long story.
I don’t want to discourage anyone in the lifestyle categories from going into professional blogging because you may be able to figure out the monetizing game better than I could, and I wish you do! For me, for now, like Forest Gump, I’m done with this path because I’ve discovered new paths I want to venture.
Manuscript
It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to be a published author, and walk into a bookstore and see my book on the shelf. I got a book deal with a top 10 publisher last year to publish the book version of my now retired blog, “Back in Skinny Jeans,” the blog that catapulted my social media career and helped me discover my life purpose work. Indeed getting a book deal with a top publisher was a thrill of a lifetime for which I was so grateful. However, I turned down the deal because without going into details because we did part on good terms, and they were really nice to me, my gut didn’t feel good about the terms including the digital terms.
Now, I mention the digital terms only because soon after turning down the deal, I learned Amazon announced just months earlier that they were now offering authors 70% on Kindle books which made self-publishing a whole new ballgame, and literally days after I passed on the book deal, the iPad hit the shelves and the whole publishing landscape changed. I’m glad I listened to my gut even though other people told me it was crazy and unheard of for a first time author to turn down a book deal from a top publisher. One of the benefits of being older and wiser is that you learn to listen to that voice inside.
My goal in 2011 was to manifest a manuscript for Back in Skinny Jeans or any book for that matter, and either find an agent and get a better fitting book deal or self-publish. With the book deal offer, the publisher came directly to me, I had no agent. I now fully understand why one must have an agent and a lawyer with publishing specialty. For years, I’ve been talking about my book dream, and in classic scattered creative form, I have started many manuscripts but have completed none thus far, so manifest a complete manuscript was one of our goals this year.
One way or another, one of my books will find its way into the market, and I’m happy to say, that I didn’t just finish a manuscript this year, I have actually published my first book, a digital mini-book titled, “Be #awesome on Twitter” which will hit the Kindle, Nook, and iBooks stores in a couple weeks. Woo-hoo! When the book is live on those stores, I will share more details on how to buy the book.
In the queue, I have 2-3 other digital mini-books that will debut by January 2012. I am also working with several other bloggers to publish their first digital mini-books. From a view from the clouds, my company Thriving Media will be a mobile publisher of healthy living apps and mini-books for smartphones, tablets, and eReaders.
Oh yes, besides digital books, I have apps coming out. Mobile is the future. It's exciting times friends! I already have the iPhone app, "Back in Skinny Jeans: 25 Inspiring Weight Loss Nudges,"and I have more iPhone apps in the works. More details about what I'm going to be doing with my brand and business will follow in post II.
Note: All photos were taken on an iPhone using Instagram
Oh yes, Chipotle has brown rice and it's really good. Here is my usual steak burrito bowl order except with brown rice instead of white. Chipotle looks to be using the same type of rice used in the Cilantro-Lime Rice except it's the brown version instead of white.
My friend @ElizabethHannan ate a chicken burrito with the brown rice. See yum!
The brown rice is not listed on Chipotle's website yet, and they haven't made an official announcement as to nationwide availability, but the company did announce in July that they were going to roll out the brown rice in an effort to expand their healthful offerings.
Check your local Chipotle to see if they have the brown rice. If not, ask when it's coming because this is some good stuff :) Over at Livestrong, here are nutritional benefits of brown rice.
Sugar by far is my most challenging food to manage because I LOVE the sweet stuff. I could give up coffee and alcohol easier than I could give up added sugar. I'm not counting fruit just the added sugars like cane sugar, honey, and agave nectar used in drinks, baked goods, condiments and dressings, ice cream, and oh just about anything Willy Wonka would make.
For the month of August, I've been doing an experiment where I'm trying to stick to eating less than 25g of sugar per day, and yes in this case I'm including fruit. I figured this would be one way for me to eat more fruit as I don't eat that much fruit in general. In terms of produce, I'm more of a vegetable person. In fact, I eat an argula salad for breakfast most days.
There are plenty of people like me who want to cut down their daily sugar consumption, so here are 5 things I do that have worked for me.
Collect data
For 2 days, journal your sugar consumption without judgement and do it on a Friday and Saturday or Sunday and Monday. A week day and weekend day are good because you may see that you consume more sugar on the weekend because well fun days lead to more eating of fun food. I believe knowledge is Queen because you cannot change what you do not face. You may learn that you are eating way more sugar than you think. I emphasize doing this simple exercise without judging yourself because well it's easy to fall into that trap of waving the judgemental figure at yourself. This is about data gathering, nothing else.
Look at your drinks
The place where I overdo sugar the most is not in baked goods like my beloved cookies, but in my drinks even "healthy" drinks like bottled tea, and don't get me started on the energy drinks. Many to-go bottled and canned drinks are two servings not one, so be conscious to look at the serving count and then multiple the sugar grams accordingly. After journaling, at one point last year, I saw that I was consuming almost 80g of sugar per day JUST in my drinks...eye opening indeed!
Cut back on the packets
Those little packets of sugar you rip open to sweeten your coffee or tea have about 5g of sugar per packet. I've seen people put 7 packets of sugar in a tall Starbucks coffee. Every packet you cut back on is eliminating 5g per day which may not seem much but think about it this way, if you cut back just one packet a day, that's 35g of sugar or 140 calories per week. (1g of sugar is about 4 calories) In one year, that is 7,280 calories or 2.08 pounds. See even the little changes add up.
Wean versus cold turkey
Using my previous 80g of sugar per day example, if I went cold turkey and went from 80g/day to say 25g/day just in my drinks over night, all hell would break loose physically, mentally, and emotionally. The body just doesn't like that kind of dramatic change all at once. Unless a doctor is telling you that you have to go cold turkey on sugar because of a life threatening situation, why put yourself through that kind of torture? Take it slow. Behavior modification takes time especially to something as addictive as sugar.
Start by cutting out 1-2 packets of sugar in your coffee. Drink one less soda per day. Eat one less cookie per day. Do that for a week or two, and then start another new phase and make some more small cut backs. In that time, your palate will adjust, and your sugar habits will change slowly without igniting your Inner Resistance Monster into full on mutiny. It's not pretty when that happens. Weaning is far more pleasant and effective.
Are your emotions driving your sweet tooth?
Through journaling and introspection, I found that sugar consumption for me is worst at night because it's the times when I feel most susceptible to loneliness. Yes, there is also a physical thing where blood sugar levels can run low at night which I've learned to manage as well, but I'm conscious to also know there is an emotional reason I go to sugar more often at night.
I'm an emotional eater, and I eat when my emotions run high. I started seeing how I was symbolically using sugar as a way to make up for the lack of sweetness in my life like a happy relationship. Consequently, when I'm happily involved with someone, I don't over eat as much namely the sweet stuff. It's a good question to ask yourself, "Are you using sugar as a way to emotionally compensate for a lack of sweetness in your life?" When you get emotional, try reaching out to a friend instead of a cheesecake.
Those are 5 tips that help me cut down on my daily sugar consumption. What is one thing that has helped you?
are current business models.
