Ep. 63: The Good, The Bad, & The Beautiful Of Writing The PlantYou Cookbook & Growing An Audience Of 2 million+ With Carleigh Bodrug

Bailey sits down with Carleigh author and founder of plantyou. She has large online presence with her vegan food blog and has upcoming oil free vegan cookbook coming out this February 2022. They catch up and share insight on the world of plant based living, being food waste conscious, and navigating a platform with over a million viewers.

She shares her story of transitioning to a whole food plant based diet. How in her words, she looks like someone that would be the least likely person to be vegan. She grew up on a farm and grew up surrounded by animal and dairy products her whole life, but when her father became ill, they decided to do research into healthier eating habits. After reading plant based books and watching documentaries, they eventually started swapping out their favorite comfort foods with plant based alternatives. Slowly over time Carleigh grew more and more confident with her cooking.

By 2019 she was fully immersed into plant you and ran the business full time. Carleigh talks about her shift towards a food blogger and cookbook author, and the challenges she faced. Together Bai and Carleigh share their experiences of taking the leap in believing in yourself as an small business entrepreneur. The power and the responsibility that comes with running a full small business on your own.

They talk about going vegan and transitioning to a plant based diet and about the connections you see more in your health, the animals, and the environment when eating plant based. How using resources like watching documentaries and researching into plant based lifestyle can be the best thing you can do for yourself. They feel and see a huge shift in attitude of the general society with regards to plant based recipes. It’s accepted more than ever and there’s more options more than ever.

They touch base on the life of having a large online presence and the negatives such as people making assumptions including about her appearance. They chat about how they don’t feed into all the negativity and explain how important the positive comments are and how they really help spread more goodness. They talk about online bulling and how out of hand it has gotten, especially towards female bloggers and influencers. They talk about how entrepreneurs online should shed more light on the negative comment epidemic going on in the shadows. Talking about this can hopefully help keep people more accountable for their comments. To think before you write it. Spread the positivity.

Lastly, Carleigh gives us the deets on her upcoming new cookbook with 140 recipes! All oil free! All plant based! There’s advice, pantry lists, and nutrition facts on each dish. Go to plantyou.com for your copy. They talk about the experience of finally seeing the first copy of the book in your hands, the non stop work that comes together to write a cookbook, and more. She talks about the personal challenges she overcame to write her book, especially the cover shot. How happy she was with all the positive feedback of writing a cookbook, and the large response she got from just the preorders alone.

The cookbook Plantyou is Available on Feb. 15!

A special thanks to our podcast sponsor Elix Healing. Led by a pioneering team of doctors, herbalists, nutritionists, and acupuncturists, Elix combines the best of ancient wisdom and modern research to provide you with effective treatments and holistic health content that support your journey to your healthiest self.

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Want more info on Carleigh? Check out her IG @plantyou

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