We recently connected with Niki Connor and have shared our conversation below.
Niki, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
I’m determined to make healthy plant-based food attainable and affordable through creating products and sharing recipes.
Niki, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Niki Connor is a certified Health & Nutrition Counselor and Professional Chef at Holistic Chef Niki using her platform to help educate others on living a healthy lifestyle. With her formal health, nutrition and culinary education, background as a professional athlete, International upbringing, extensive travels and passion for improving the lives of others, her work ranges from cooking to prevent and fight diseases to working with Oscar-winning actors, musicians, models, professional athletes, Fortune 500 executives, tech CEO’s, royalty, etc. She started ‘Laurel Canyon Kitchen’, the first podcast/cooking show available on her Holistic Chef Niki YouTube channel as well as all podcast streaming platforms. Connor has turned Laurel Canyon Kitchen into a product in order to make healthy and affordable products readily available to all.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I’ve also had plenty of opportunities in life where I could have surrendered to my fear and given up, but I’m glad I didn’t take the easy way out and instead used each challenge as opportunities to educate myself and grow as a woman and an entrepreneur. I did a brand collaboration with a very well-known company and was approached by another company that saw an opportunity to create products with me. After several meetings, it was brought to my attention that working with the company was out of my budget, and I was devastated. I had created over 10 products and narrowed it down to begin with 2, but instead of throwing in the towel, I decided to do it on my own.
It’s been quite a learning experience, but I took a cut from my own paycheck to self-fund a new company and since I’ve figured out how to do so on a budget, I’ll be able to find the right team to work with moving forward. Why am I creating products in the first place? While I love cooking for clients as a chef and am grateful for the opportunities I’ve received through sharing my work from working with dream clients to cooking on The Food Network, it was never my dream to be a full-time private chef, so I’ve been working on building my business outside of the kitchen as well. I desire more for myself and have a vision for the future that will keep me creative and intellectually stimulated for years to come, that is my greatest motivation now.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far is to be open to change and flexible with my approach. If you are too set in your ways regarding how something should be done and it can be accomplished in another way, be open to feedback, don’t be afraid to ask for help and remind yourself that you wouldn’t be presented with obstacles if you weren’t able to overcome them.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://linktr.ee/nikiconnor
- Instagram: @holisticchefniki
- Facebook: Holistic Chef Niki LLC
- Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/nikiconnor
- Youtube: http://youtube.com/c/HolisticChefNiki