Describe what you do in just three words.
Nourish. Possibility. Educate.
I help people connect to new possibilities and hope to inspire them to begin an accessible path on how to nourish themselves so they can live the life they desire.
Ultimately this is my dharma: I want to make being healthy cool, accountable and attainable.
After I finished rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, I was deficient of essential vitamins and minerals, I felt depleted and empty. Doctors didn’t help either. I literally had no vitality and I didn’t feel alive even though I had just survived this incredible voyage. I remember, even as I was rowing, I could feel the depletion in my body. It was then that I made the direct link from there I knew firsthand the direct effect of fuel on the body. I became passionate about health. I became a health bully. I’d say things like “I don’t want to alarm you but your liver is probably failing right now.” When I was working in NYC at Mobify with a bunch of guys. It was the usual type of tech industry environment. Beer, pizza, etc. I was the caretaker. I remember going on a coffee run and I noticed there was a green juice company next door. I picked up a few juices and I had another one of those “aha” moments. I realized that I couldn’t get my team to eat broccoli – but they would drink green juice. So I realized juice is the gateway drug to healthy living because it requires no change. It’s familiar. I literally saw the lights turn on with my coworkers as they would say to me: “… hey you know I’m starting to feel better, I’m thinking of changing my routine, maybe I’ll start to work out…” – I immediately knew that change was happening. That was the basis of me wanting to launch Nectar. I do a lot of public speaking and through there I met my co-founder. I left Mobify and we launched Nectar together. Nectar was the tool I needed to create the impact that is my dharma. My role is to make healthy living accessible. I do the thinking, they do the drinking. My job is to connect dots for people and make it easy. This is how I express love and it’s very intentional for me. I can’t help myself when people come into Nectar. At Nectar, our KPI’s are a direct reflection of this. We ask ourselves, how many people did we nourish today, did we we make enough of an impact?
I am a fairly inspired person. I am inspired by the technology industry and how fast business can move. I am inspired by the daily challenge I have in building a food based business but running it in a new world way.I am inspired by every customer that comes in the door and the opportunities I have to build a new community and nourish people. 60% my of customers are returning customers, so when they come in, I feel directly responsible and correlated to their nourishment and health. When people walk through the door I can’t help but ask them: “how can we make you feel more awesome today?” I am constantly inspired by people – no matter what, humanism is the most important thing. I am inspired by my staff. They are new nutritionists and I love creating opportunities and training them on how to build a career.
I’m inspired when I’m alchemizing. I’m like the white witch. I love making potions and creating new flavors. There is no product of mine where I haven’t met the founders and don’t know what is going on in their facilities. All those things are really important to me. There are very simple things in nature that do big things – i.e. fight viruses, helps metabolism, helps with chronic fatigue… but people would never know this. So I’m really happy when I’m creating awesome things and disguising my adaptogens in food because it’s a gateway to get people to buy into healthy living. It’s always a challenge for me – but I love asking myself: how do I get this into you and how do I make it easy?
I am inspired by my team.. One of my current employees, Caitlin, started working at our stand at Holt Renfrew last year. I saw so many opportunities in her and every day, I see her be better. She started working at the pop-up stand and now she runs back-end operations at Nectar. She’s learning every day and she is so committed to my mission. When I look at her – she inspires me to no end. I’m training her to one day build her own business so the circle keeps going around. I can only keep swimming when I have great people on my raft. It’s important to keep faith in what you do. Can you keep swimming against the tide when others can’t? When I have personal self doubt, I look at Caitlin’s success, and I relax. I know she is on this mission with me and we will keep swimming into the ocean.
What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made, and are willing to share?
Anyone who has chosen the entrepreneurial path – has chosen a life of high risk and high reward. So I don’t use the language of ‘mistake’, rather I use, ‘lessons learned’ because mistakes are things you do twice. If I didn’t have this approach to life, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do because I am constantly doing the unknown.
I’ve learned that: launching a business will take twice as long, cost twice as much and optimism is key.
I think a lesson learned in my first year of business was just to watch how hard I was on myself. Being hard on yourself doesn’t help you get to the end goal faster. It doesn’t solve problems – it’s actually time wasted. I had to constantly ask myself: how do you keep your head above the water?
It’s interesting, we coach others but not ourselves. I got a piece of good advice from a successful entrepreneur who asked me, “what’s your thing?” My business is my baby and your life reflects you. If someone really wants to know what they need to work on, open up a business. Know what your thing is. For example, if you are not good at communication, it will show up in your business really quickly. What might bother one entrepreneur, might not bother me. For me, I require pace when things don’t move fast enough. When things move slowly and there is a lack of decision making, I am not my best self and that is reflected in my business. So I feel everyone should be super honest with what their thing is. Your company will reflect who you are.
I’m pretty frank and honest because time is a challenge for me. I stand by the old school rule that you shouldn’t say anything that you wouldn’t be able to take yourself. Nobody wants to be spoken down to and nobody wants to be bullied. I always tell people who I love, that I love them. Everyday I love them. I make sure to. Time is fragile. Life is a gift. Don’t waste time about on things that don’t have outcomes. For example me sitting in the middle of Atlantic Ocean – worrying would not have helped me. It wasn’t building me and it didn’t serve a purpose. I didn’t have a single doubting day out at sea. I didn’t think to myself, oh my god, why am I doing this. It just wasn’t even a choice for me to question myself. Subconsciously, my survival mechanism did not allow me to doubt myself because it would have killed me. I only had one goal and that was to live. Period. Today, we’re overburdened with choice -but we just have to remember to live.
Three words of advice if we didn’t have the almighty Google to turn to?
1) Choose love over fear. Fear will be more present. Love will never let you down. When you are in a place of love, you can be a better version of yourself. If we were all operating from a place of love, the world would be a better place. When we operate from a place of fear – bad things happen. Humans are challenging but we need to choose to see love and compassion instead of hate. It’s a choice of who you want to be in the world. It’s not all butterflies but you are not exempt from life.
2) The difficult you do immediately the impossible takes a little longer. Believe in the impossible. Regardless of demographics and gender, if you truly put your mind to something, devotion is the way to life. I never knew someone that was great that wasn’t committed to what they were doing. There is a tendency to look at the end game, but people who are awesome and unwaveringly committed, believe in the entire process and themselves.
3) Be passionate. Don’t choose to live in limbo even if it doesn’t work out. I feel a lot of gratitude in any challenge I’ve had in my business. Because I am so deeply passionate, I am running on a currency that is beyond money. It comes from within; it gives me wings to keep going. Even when you are having self-doubt, whatever you do, just be committed and be alive!
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