Following my gut also helped me to determine if the path I was on was the right one for me. For example, after I took a job in retail working in san francisco, I found myself climbing the corporate ladder, and I ended up as the project manager from the corporate side. I learned a ton from that experience. And then I realized the projection of my job was taking me further away from my passion for cooking as I moved up the ranks.
I decided I wanted to go to cooking school, so I walked away after seven years and went to cooking school for six months. And then just by happenstance, I was asked to just test some recipes for a cookbook to the owner of the cooking school. And it was 200 recipes in six weeks. That was just completely insane. But that led to her calling someone called Marion Cunningham, who was a really well-known food writer and cook.
And this woman gave me a job on her last cookbook. Then it was just word of mouth, then I started testing recipes for books, and then that led to working with a chef and writing his book. And then the publishers gave me so much credit and said I’d done all the work.
I got my first cookbook contract, and it’s so funny. Everything just kept going. And then after ten years of this freelancing, Williams-Sonoma reached out again, hiring me for a freelance position to do cooking videos for them, or work on their cookbooks.
Then I went back there to become their full time culinary director. And we built a new test kitchen. It was amazing.
When I walked back in that building ten years after I’d left, I was like, “my gosh, every choice I’ve made has led me back to this incredible job.”
I’ve gone on now to start my own business. Because writing cookbooks and having a family and commuting and doing everything as the culinary director was really too much to manage.
But that opportunity gave me the opportunity now to work with brands on my own that I’ve worked with through Williams-Sonoma or discover other ones, or people who saw my videos will call me and say, “Hey, do you want to work together?”
It’s amazing to me that it never felt calculated, right? I just kept saying yes to the things that felt right to me, truly on a gut level that
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