ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Episode Summary:
Friendships are my number one hobby. I'm always on the phone with someone — a friend who called, or a friend I've phoned between errands just to stay in touch. My friend Jenna and I met the first day of college nineteen years ago, and we don't really do phone calls. We go the distance instead. She had a baby two days after I left Nebraska last time I was home, so this fall I'm flying back a whole week before my brother's wedding, just to meet baby girl and get real time with them.
You show up for the people you decide matter.
Shawna and Ella Clark do that with an email list.
The mother-daughter duo behind Healthy Foodie Girl came on the show after we bumped into each other between sessions at Kit's Craft + Commerce in Boise this summer. And they showed up with a number that should get your attention: they lost 60% of their Google traffic to AI Overviews. Not slowly. Not gradually.
Their email list is what's keeping them afloat.
Shawna reads and replies to every single reader email — including one from a man who needed a very specific muffin for his wife's 30th anniversary... the next day. (She made it. Just not that fast. You'll hear how that turned out.)
And if your traffic hasn't dropped yet, Shawna has a warning for you:
"Maybe you haven't lost your traffic, but at some point you're going to. I'm sorry. It's just what's happening. It's like SOS. If you've got it, grab it."
In this episode, you'll learn about:
- What it actually feels like to lose 60% of your Google traffic to AI Overviews (!!)
- Why half of their email signups now come from YouTube — and the guide + landing page setup behind it
- How they use the Kit MCP with Claude to spot what their audience is most interested in — then build the lead magnets to match
- The muffin request from a subscriber that turned into a whole new recipe, blog post, then email
- Not every email needs to feature a recipe — you have all sorts of options to choose from
Check out this episode's blog post Connect with Shawna and Ella:
Episode Resources:
