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| Meghan Telpner |
Interview with Meghan Telpner, Nutritionista
I
first heard of Meghan Telpner as the former nutrition columnist for The
National Post. As a bubbly twenty-something with a clear voice and strong
opinions, she was just out of nutrition school and already making a name for
herself with the Making Love in the Kitchen workshops. Her life was far from
perfect, though – she’d turned to holistic nutrition after spending several agonizing
years trying to figure out her own debilitating health issues which were
eventually diagnosed as Crohn’s disease. After deciding that conventional
medicine wasn’t the solution for her, Meghan went to nutrition school, revamped
her lifestyle and got healthy. She decided to share her knowledge with others
through cooking workshops, which quickly spread into media appearances, retail
products and a soon-to-be published book. I caught up with Meghan to ask her
about her amazing transformation.
You spent years in the midst of a really
tough health crisis – going from doctor to doctor, being unable to work or even
function some days. How did you take such a traumatic negative life experience
and turned it around for yourself? Did you have a vision of yourself as a
success story in the nutrition world?
I
didn’t really have a vision – it was borne more out of necessity. There was a
moment where I was in a health food store with my mom in the spring of 2006 and
I was really sick at the time. The associate was telling my mom the health
benefits of this protein powder and it was like this light went off – “This is
what I need to know!” I’d been through so many doctors at this point and no one
was able to help me; I knew I had to help myself.
I
enrolled in nutrition school because it was the only way I could think of to
make myself well. I was so sick that I couldn’t imagine being well enough to go
to work, so I certainly didn’t think I was going to be a nutritionist. Unfortunately
by August of that year I was diagnosed with Crohn’s and became too sick to go
to school, so I went to California and spent three months healing myself
through meditation, yoga and acupuncture.
I
realized then that there was something massive missing in the system because I wasn’t
able to find the answers in three years; in fact, I’d been told that there was
nothing wrong with me. I thought, these doctors are blatantly wrong – I need to
make noise about empowering yourself and making educated decisions about the
right treatment choices for your health, whether they involve conventional or
alternative treatments. I thought that the best way to do that would be to
create a community of what I called ‘cooking parties.’
My
focus was on building a community, knowing that anyone who’s gone through a
health struggle often feels alone and excluded and it’s scary. Through these
cooking parties, we could all cook together and eat together to create a
community where people who were trying to change their lifestyles would have a
space to come and play and meet people.
When did you get the vision to make it
bigger?
Again,
there wasn’t really a vision – it just evolved. We’re constantly coming up with new things to try here. My
life would be easier if I could just be happy by focusing on the cooking
classes, but I get bored easily. So we started stocking products in our space,
then we created an online store, and eventually we started branding our own
products. Also, I love to write and almost right away I got the opportunity to
write for the National Post. That led to some television opportunities, which
led to a book deal (for UnDiet, Eat Your
Way to Vibrant Health coming out in April 2013)…it happened very
holistically.
Our
newest adventure is the online courses we’re offering. We realized that we just
didn’t have the space in our little school for all the people that wanted to
sign up for our courses, so we decided to offer them online, available any
time, anywhere. So far it’s going really well!
What’s the biggest thing you did to ensure
you success?
I didn’t
quit. Things would inevitably happen where I would think, “Maybe I should just
get a job that gives me a paycheck every two weeks and not have to worry about
this 24/7,” but I think that that my success comes from the fact that I truly
love what I’m doing most of the time. I only take on jobs and work with people
that I like. I love the creativity of cooking and I love writing - my dream job
would be to just cook and photograph and write, and that’s what I’m working
towards.
Also,
I was adaptable. Nutrition has changed in the last four years. Social media has
changed, technology has changed and what people are looking for is growing. I
think part of my success was that I started the business in 2008 right before
the economic crash, when DIY was becoming cool again – canning and fermenting
and traditional cooking methods were becoming popular out of necessity. The
awareness around whole foods and farmers markets and CSAs has dramatically
grown in the past five years as well. So a little of it was being in the right
place at the right time.
What has been your biggest challenge?
My
biggest challenge has been finding the right people to work with me, to be part
of my company and help grow it. At first I didn’t have the finances to pay what
I really needed from someone, so I relied a lot on interns. Then it was finding
the right people to fill the right roles where everyone was doing what they
were awesome at – that’s been one of the biggest challenges in growing the
business. It was a huge risk to take people on and pay them on time and manage
the cash flow. I’ve been learning business management as I go and that’s been
pretty tough because I’m not an administratively minded person; I’m creative
and I find spreadsheets tricky, mainly because they are painfully boring!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of my interview with Meghan Telpner later this week.
Have you had your grocery list pimped yet? Read here for the details on how you can get me to give your grocery list a free makeover!
