so who here has an Instagram okay I see
most of you probably do so if so if some
of you don’t know what Instagram is it’s
a photo sharing social media site that
allows users to post pictures to their
followers and to others and for most of
you Instagram is probably a guilty
pleasure but for me it’s actually a
business it’s actually a hobby and also
a part-time job I’m here to explain to
you just how a pre-med student with no
business experience turned her healthy
eating Instagram blog into a business
okay so my name is Caroline Grainger
like I said and I’m a pre-med student
here at UM starting medical school at
our very own Miller School of Medicine
in the fall and I started my blog
Caroline cooks clean on Instagram in
March 2015 but it started to grow
exponentially from there so I started
off as a freshman and in the beginning I
was basically just in my dorm room so my
photos were pretty amateur it was mostly
just the oatmeal that you might
recognize actually from our dining hall
and also smoothies that I made in my
little GNC blender in my dorm room so
right now my photos weren’t really that
extravagant but it was a start so after
a while the semester ended and I’d had
to go home so I went back to Cleveland
Ohio and I think that my recipes started
to grow there because now I had a full
kitchen basically unlimited supply of
food thanks to my mom and Costco and
also really great daytime lighting so
that was really cool and I got to see my
blog grow a little bit while I was there
it got to be at about a thousand
followers at that point and I think that
as my follower count grew my passion for
a creative nutrition also grew in
addition I was celebrating milestones
like this one which was when I hit 2,000
followers so I carved some watermelon to
celebrate that and as you can see I have
some comments there and some likes there
so my blog was clearly growing I’ll
never forget my first company contact
which was in August 2015 so I got a
direct message on my Instagram blog from
halo Top Creamery which is now a pretty
big ice cream company actually but they
contacted me and they asked me if I
wanted to try some of their pints in
exchange for a post about them so in
that moment a light bulb went off in my
head I realized that I could now use my
blog as more than just
but something to actually use as a tool
to gain access the things that I’d never
had before so I went ahead and did this
sponsored post with halo top and I’ve
also worked with a lot more companies
now this was a company called ABS
protein pancakes so this was a sponsored
post that I did with them in the
beginning but you can tell I have a
thousand likes on this post so my blog
was clearly growing and I actually had
the privilege of speaking on a panel
with the founder of this company which
I’ll talk about later so these are two
examples of sponsored posts that I did
the first one which is on your left
was with food networks hellofresh and
that’s a company that gives you
ingredients for dinners that if you’re a
really busy businessperson or something
and you can’t really go grocery shopping
for healthy dinners but you still want
to cook them you can so i exemplified
that by cooking their shrimp tacos and
then on the right is a sponsored post
that I did with Whole Foods and that was
a Thanksgiving collaboration so for that
it was like embrace your holiday
traditions so I posted a recipe that I
usually make with my mom and it’s a
spinach quiche with a sweet potato crust
so the business side of things hasn’t
always been so easy for me as a pre-med
student since I don’t really have any
experience and pretty much had to do
everything on the fly so these posts I
kind of had because as my blog grew they
would contact me and that’s how we work
together on these posts but yeah so
there is a profile that I use to called
Reb fluence and this is a snapshot of
that and this is like a third party
middleman type of website that connects
influencers to brands and lets you work
on specific collaborations together so
here on my profile you can see my
statistics which is something that’s
really important in a blog and something
that I really didn’t know at first was
important so I remember one time when I
was working on a collaboration with a
company during the negotiation stage
they asked me for my media kit and
naturally as a science student I had
absolutely no idea what a media kit was
so I literally had to google what is a
media kit and figure out what it was so
that I could send it to the brand later
that day and for those of you who don’t
know what a media kit is I’ll see if
you’re from that trip to Google it’s
basically like a resume for an Instagram
blog so
you describe what your profile is so for
me that’s clean eating and a healthy
lifestyle and you talk about your
engagement as well so that’s like
follower count likes for photo video
views and stuff like that and there’s
also some Instagram influenced or
oriented websites where you can use for
getting those statistics as well so this
is one of the sponsored posted I did
through red fluence and I’m using this
one because it was kind of funny it was
like a unique experience for me it was
with a mattress company actually which
you’re probably thinking why would a
clean eating blog be advertising a
mattress but it was actually a cool
collaboration it was called embrace the
food coma and it was after Thanksgiving
so it’s basically like you’re on your
mattress after Thanksgiving just like
taking a nap and so when I found out
that I was accepted for this
collaboration I called my mom on the
phone I was like mom do you need a
mattress and she’s like what are you
talking about like I don’t know if I
need a mattress and I was like yeah well
I’m getting one for a collaboration so
do you want one she was like I don’t
know and she said yes so I sent it home
to Cleveland Ohio it’s probably going to
send it there anyway and I went home
there and found my mattress and found
that my dog actually loved it too so I
posed with her for the sponsored post
and that went really well for me so now
that my blog has grown a lot I have gone
from zero followers in March 2015
all the way up to twenty three point
four thousand followers now a little
more than two years later and I’ve also
published a cookbook on Amazon called
Caroline cooks breakfast clean and it
has 30 breakfast recipes that are all
vegan friendly and I also calculated all
the nutrition facts for each one so that
people can look at those if they want to
I have also as I briefly mentioned
before spoke at the connect to
confidence conference
it’s a I was on a body confidence panel
there and it was put on by the woman
empowerment brand she’s fit to lead and
I had the pleasure like I said of
speaking on that panel with Ashlee
Drummond’s who was the founder of ABS
protein pancakes and she was also
featured on Shark Tank and I also spoke
with Tania Zuckerberg who’s the founder
of the F factor diet so I had a lot of
fun doing that
so another thing that I get to do that’s
pretty cool is I get to go to Grand
Openings of healthy restaurants around
the area and I also get to taste some of
their newest products so I’d like to
joke around sometimes that my
kindergarten dream job of being a
professional taste tester finally came
true so when I was shadowing a
neurologist last summer like I said I’m
pre-med I asked him for advice not only
for a career in medicine but also just
to live a happy life in the most general
of senses and he told me that the best
way to do that in his opinion is to
reinvent yourself every 10 years so I
like to think of Caroline cooks clean as
my 10-year reinvention I think it’s
molded into my identity I find that
people often ask me for the nutritional
value of certain foods and also for
advice on how to lose weight in a
healthy and permanent way and I think by
the way that you can achieve that by
just enjoying the healthy food that
you’re eating and fueling your body with
things that you know are nourish you and
also by choosing a fitness modality
that’s actually going to be enjoyable
for you because I think way too often
people try to exercise and force
themselves to do something that they
absolutely hate and then they quit in
like a week because you’re never gonna
be able to set goals for yourself if you
hate it so there is something out there
that everyone’s gonna love I tell people
that that’s really important so yeah as
I said that since I’m pre-med I like to
think that I defied the pre-med
stereotype of being stuck inside your
own world and constantly studying
molecular structures and organic
chemistry grignard reactions and enolate
intermediates and I think that it’s
really important for us to find our
passions and then in the midst of that
balance of our passions to create a life
out of it and it’s also really important
to to not be afraid of failure
because at least for me I found that
I’ve always gotten the best things out
of pushing past my fear of failure like
for example when I’m working with
companies and I send out proposals to
them probably out of every like 10 or 12
even proposals that I send out I’ll only
get a few yeses back but I’ll tell you a
little secret it’s only those yeses that
matter so I will leave you with this as
I start a career in medicine
I want to hope or I want to make sure
that I can infiltrate my passions for
medicine and also my passions for
creative nutrition and give some medical
insight on my blog as well and I think
this quote is really cool it’s by
Epocrates let food be thy medicine and
medicine be thy food because this is
something that I wholeheartedly believe
in and I’ve actually started
incorporating into my blog using the
hashtag food as medicine which is
something new that I’ve been trying to
do so I hope that by listening to this
talk you’re inspired to live a healthier
life in every sense of the word and if
you’d like to continue being inspired
please check out my Instagram blog
Caroline cooks clean for daily reminders
thank you
[Applause]
most of you probably do so if so if some
of you don’t know what Instagram is it’s
a photo sharing social media site that
allows users to post pictures to their
followers and to others and for most of
you Instagram is probably a guilty
pleasure but for me it’s actually a
business it’s actually a hobby and also
a part-time job I’m here to explain to
you just how a pre-med student with no
business experience turned her healthy
eating Instagram blog into a business
okay so my name is Caroline Grainger
like I said and I’m a pre-med student
here at UM starting medical school at
our very own Miller School of Medicine
in the fall and I started my blog
Caroline cooks clean on Instagram in
March 2015 but it started to grow
exponentially from there so I started
off as a freshman and in the beginning I
was basically just in my dorm room so my
photos were pretty amateur it was mostly
just the oatmeal that you might
recognize actually from our dining hall
and also smoothies that I made in my
little GNC blender in my dorm room so
right now my photos weren’t really that
extravagant but it was a start so after
a while the semester ended and I’d had
to go home so I went back to Cleveland
Ohio and I think that my recipes started
to grow there because now I had a full
kitchen basically unlimited supply of
food thanks to my mom and Costco and
also really great daytime lighting so
that was really cool and I got to see my
blog grow a little bit while I was there
it got to be at about a thousand
followers at that point and I think that
as my follower count grew my passion for
a creative nutrition also grew in
addition I was celebrating milestones
like this one which was when I hit 2,000
followers so I carved some watermelon to
celebrate that and as you can see I have
some comments there and some likes there
so my blog was clearly growing I’ll
never forget my first company contact
which was in August 2015 so I got a
direct message on my Instagram blog from
halo Top Creamery which is now a pretty
big ice cream company actually but they
contacted me and they asked me if I
wanted to try some of their pints in
exchange for a post about them so in
that moment a light bulb went off in my
head I realized that I could now use my
blog as more than just
but something to actually use as a tool
to gain access the things that I’d never
had before so I went ahead and did this
sponsored post with halo top and I’ve
also worked with a lot more companies
now this was a company called ABS
protein pancakes so this was a sponsored
post that I did with them in the
beginning but you can tell I have a
thousand likes on this post so my blog
was clearly growing and I actually had
the privilege of speaking on a panel
with the founder of this company which
I’ll talk about later so these are two
examples of sponsored posts that I did
the first one which is on your left
was with food networks hellofresh and
that’s a company that gives you
ingredients for dinners that if you’re a
really busy businessperson or something
and you can’t really go grocery shopping
for healthy dinners but you still want
to cook them you can so i exemplified
that by cooking their shrimp tacos and
then on the right is a sponsored post
that I did with Whole Foods and that was
a Thanksgiving collaboration so for that
it was like embrace your holiday
traditions so I posted a recipe that I
usually make with my mom and it’s a
spinach quiche with a sweet potato crust
so the business side of things hasn’t
always been so easy for me as a pre-med
student since I don’t really have any
experience and pretty much had to do
everything on the fly so these posts I
kind of had because as my blog grew they
would contact me and that’s how we work
together on these posts but yeah so
there is a profile that I use to called
Reb fluence and this is a snapshot of
that and this is like a third party
middleman type of website that connects
influencers to brands and lets you work
on specific collaborations together so
here on my profile you can see my
statistics which is something that’s
really important in a blog and something
that I really didn’t know at first was
important so I remember one time when I
was working on a collaboration with a
company during the negotiation stage
they asked me for my media kit and
naturally as a science student I had
absolutely no idea what a media kit was
so I literally had to google what is a
media kit and figure out what it was so
that I could send it to the brand later
that day and for those of you who don’t
know what a media kit is I’ll see if
you’re from that trip to Google it’s
basically like a resume for an Instagram
blog so
you describe what your profile is so for
me that’s clean eating and a healthy
lifestyle and you talk about your
engagement as well so that’s like
follower count likes for photo video
views and stuff like that and there’s
also some Instagram influenced or
oriented websites where you can use for
getting those statistics as well so this
is one of the sponsored posted I did
through red fluence and I’m using this
one because it was kind of funny it was
like a unique experience for me it was
with a mattress company actually which
you’re probably thinking why would a
clean eating blog be advertising a
mattress but it was actually a cool
collaboration it was called embrace the
food coma and it was after Thanksgiving
so it’s basically like you’re on your
mattress after Thanksgiving just like
taking a nap and so when I found out
that I was accepted for this
collaboration I called my mom on the
phone I was like mom do you need a
mattress and she’s like what are you
talking about like I don’t know if I
need a mattress and I was like yeah well
I’m getting one for a collaboration so
do you want one she was like I don’t
know and she said yes so I sent it home
to Cleveland Ohio it’s probably going to
send it there anyway and I went home
there and found my mattress and found
that my dog actually loved it too so I
posed with her for the sponsored post
and that went really well for me so now
that my blog has grown a lot I have gone
from zero followers in March 2015
all the way up to twenty three point
four thousand followers now a little
more than two years later and I’ve also
published a cookbook on Amazon called
Caroline cooks breakfast clean and it
has 30 breakfast recipes that are all
vegan friendly and I also calculated all
the nutrition facts for each one so that
people can look at those if they want to
I have also as I briefly mentioned
before spoke at the connect to
confidence conference
it’s a I was on a body confidence panel
there and it was put on by the woman
empowerment brand she’s fit to lead and
I had the pleasure like I said of
speaking on that panel with Ashlee
Drummond’s who was the founder of ABS
protein pancakes and she was also
featured on Shark Tank and I also spoke
with Tania Zuckerberg who’s the founder
of the F factor diet so I had a lot of
fun doing that
so another thing that I get to do that’s
pretty cool is I get to go to Grand
Openings of healthy restaurants around
the area and I also get to taste some of
their newest products so I’d like to
joke around sometimes that my
kindergarten dream job of being a
professional taste tester finally came
true so when I was shadowing a
neurologist last summer like I said I’m
pre-med I asked him for advice not only
for a career in medicine but also just
to live a happy life in the most general
of senses and he told me that the best
way to do that in his opinion is to
reinvent yourself every 10 years so I
like to think of Caroline cooks clean as
my 10-year reinvention I think it’s
molded into my identity I find that
people often ask me for the nutritional
value of certain foods and also for
advice on how to lose weight in a
healthy and permanent way and I think by
the way that you can achieve that by
just enjoying the healthy food that
you’re eating and fueling your body with
things that you know are nourish you and
also by choosing a fitness modality
that’s actually going to be enjoyable
for you because I think way too often
people try to exercise and force
themselves to do something that they
absolutely hate and then they quit in
like a week because you’re never gonna
be able to set goals for yourself if you
hate it so there is something out there
that everyone’s gonna love I tell people
that that’s really important so yeah as
I said that since I’m pre-med I like to
think that I defied the pre-med
stereotype of being stuck inside your
own world and constantly studying
molecular structures and organic
chemistry grignard reactions and enolate
intermediates and I think that it’s
really important for us to find our
passions and then in the midst of that
balance of our passions to create a life
out of it and it’s also really important
to to not be afraid of failure
because at least for me I found that
I’ve always gotten the best things out
of pushing past my fear of failure like
for example when I’m working with
companies and I send out proposals to
them probably out of every like 10 or 12
even proposals that I send out I’ll only
get a few yeses back but I’ll tell you a
little secret it’s only those yeses that
matter so I will leave you with this as
I start a career in medicine
I want to hope or I want to make sure
that I can infiltrate my passions for
medicine and also my passions for
creative nutrition and give some medical
insight on my blog as well and I think
this quote is really cool it’s by
Epocrates let food be thy medicine and
medicine be thy food because this is
something that I wholeheartedly believe
in and I’ve actually started
incorporating into my blog using the
hashtag food as medicine which is
something new that I’ve been trying to
do so I hope that by listening to this
talk you’re inspired to live a healthier
life in every sense of the word and if
you’d like to continue being inspired
please check out my Instagram blog
Caroline cooks clean for daily reminders
thank you
[Applause]
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