198. How to Create Authentic Content and Live Your Values with Cara Celeste West

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I bet you want to live your best life, and that’s exactly what Cara Celeste West wants to help you (and all women of color) do. Today on the podcast, Cara and I have a conversation about motherhood, content creation, veganism, and creating the life of your dreams!

Cara Celeste West is a mother, creator, and coach focused on intentional living through a vegan lifestyle & travel. She has built up an online community on multiple social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube. After building a successful business as a content creator she is now helping others take the leap into becoming a full time content creator too!

To Cara, there’s no better way to feel alive than creating a dream life that is in line with your own values–a concept she first started to understand after going vegan. For her, going vegan was initially a choice about health, but after watching Okja and Earthlings on Netflix, she began to see it as so much more than a diet. Instead, she saw it as a way to live her most authentic life. 

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing after she decided to go vegan. About a week after going vegan for health reasons, Cara quickly became overwhelmed with the massive lifestyle change, not knowing what to eat, what meals to cook, how to navigate social events, and or how to manage all the big concerns of a new vegan. She shares what got her on track, and how eventually slowly transitioning to veganism allowed her to do it sustainably.

(If you’re struggling with these same challenges as a new vegan, my Vegan 101 course addresses ALL of these concerns and will provide you the support to go vegan for good.)

Learning to cook and create vegan recipes led Cara to become a content creator, sharing her work and recipes on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Cara shares so many helpful tips, tricks, strategies, and insights for new or aspiring creators on the podcast, including how to get started working with brands as a beginner. Not to mention, how she creates the beautiful imagery on her platforms as a one-woman-show. If you’ve been wanting to begin your own brand or channel, you’ll find so many good tips here you won’t want to miss.

On this episode we cover:

  • How to make veganism a lifestyle, not just a diet

  • The diversification of the vegan community and why representation matters

  • The benefits of going vegan slowly vs going vegan overnight

  • Behind the scenes of self-shooting content and tips to make your content look beautiful and professional

  • The importance of sharing authentically on social media and how to do it without confusing your audience

  • Avoiding burnout as a content creator by finding what works for YOU

  • How to start working with brands as a beginner creator

  • Learning to ask for help in motherhood AND business

Resources Mentioned

Sony SV-1 Camera

Okja movie

Earthlings documentary

What the Health documentary

Connect with Cara

Instagram

Tik Tok

YouTube

Creator Consultations

197. Overcoming Challenges in Health & Business with Brittanie Jones of Fineapple Vegan

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Y’all know that sometimes we like to get vulnerable around here, whether that’s talking about some of the struggles of going vegan, lessons learned in business, or learning to be honest with ourselves about finances. If you’re here for the vulnerable content, you’ll definitely want to tune into this podcast episode with Brittanie of Fineapple Vegan. 

Brittanie Jones, is the owner and founder of Fineapple Vegan, LLC. She is a vegan/plant based YouTuber and teaches people how to make vegan versions of their most favorite meals, snacks and desserts! Brittanie also created a vegan cheese sauce, formerly known as both "Liquid Gold" and "Liquid Dior,'' and previously ran a ghost kitchen through the pandemic. She is a self taught gardener and is currently creating ways to help others not only cook plant based meals, but grow their own food! Self sufficiency is the goal! Last but not least, one of her most important titles...wife and Momma! 

Brittanie is no stranger to overcoming obstacles–a theme that runs through our entire conversation. She doesn’t shy away from transparency from the start, when we discuss our health, catch up on how we are doing since we last spoke, and get into some traumatic but life changing experiences that have shaped how Brittanie lives her life. She shares the lessons learned from a near death experience in the hospital and how those hard times made her more grateful for her own life. 

We also talk about how Brittanie started selling her coconut-based vegan cheese, formerly called Liquid Gold and her experience of taking her products to the local community through farmers markets. After a successful start and after seeing tons of growth, Liquid Gold’s progress was stopped suddenly after dealing with two legal threats from large corporations over the name of her product. Brittanie shares how feeling threatened by big business as a small business owner changed the course of her product, and talks vulnerably with me about how after all the challenges, she had to rethink her own vision and go through a period of feeling uninspired and low. 

Brittanie also shares some of her dreams for the future, and how during a time when everyone had digital products, creating a real physical cookbook for her community was a special goal she achieved. We talk about her work, her cooking, where she learned to get comfortable in the kitchen, and some of her favorite meals from her cookbook.

Tune into this conversation where we chat about:

  • How Brittanie created a coconut-based vegan cheese that doesn’t taste like coconut

  • The process of creating a vegan product business and selling at farmers markets

  • How big corporations threaten small business with lawsuits as a strategic tactic

  • The emotional side of facing huge setbacks in business

  • Why it’s easier to show up for others than show up for ourselves

  • How gardening was a healing tool after so much loss + lessons we can learn from gardening

  • Brittanie’s future plans to build a community homestead and offer families fresh produce

Connect with Fineapple Vegan:

Website

Cookbook (use code ‘brownvegan’ to get 10% off)

Instagram

196. Breaking the Stigma of Antidepressants & Anti-Diet Culture as a Vegan Medical Student with Beats By Brooke

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I’m so excited to share this special episode with you all, because it covers so many important topics I’ve been really wanting to share for a LONG time.

Today I have Brooklyne Palmer of Beets By Brooke on the podcast for an important conversation about true health and wellness, nutrition, anti-diet culture, and mental health in the black community.

Brooklynne Palmer is a vegan medical student and social media content creator who uses her platform to explore the intersectionality of all things health and wellness while sharing insights into her life as a future plant based doctor.

In middle school, Brooklynne learned about vegetarianism and slowly began to leave meat off her plate after connecting her love of animals to what she was eating. When she hit high school and began to struggle with body image and restrictive eating, she found that becoming vegan helped her see food differently–seeing it as an act of compassion and more nourishing than she had ever thought of it before. It became a way to live in alignment with her morals, and opened her up to the realization that as a society we are taught so little about true nutrition and wellness. It was really going vegan and wanting to share life-saving nutritional information with others that led Brooklynne to becoming a medical student later on.

Now as a full time medical student, Brooklynne also juggles being a content creator under the name BeetsByBrooke on Instagram. She uses her platform to educate on plant-based nutrition, to share her experience as a vegan medical student and future doctor, and to shed light on the destructive nature of diet culture. Brooklynne hopes to create a more size inclusive space in medicine that focuses on preventative nutrition–a huge contrast to our country’s ‘treat the symptoms, not the cause’ perspective.


In this conversation, she dives deep into why diet culture is set up to fail people (did you know the biggest risk factor of weight gain is DIETING??) and how dieting puts blame on individuals instead of the systems that make true health and wellness feel impossible.

This episode is energetic, lively, and still full of life-changing information and perspectives for y’all. I’m most excited to share the conversation we have about anti-depressants and the stigma around them, while responsibly sharing both of our experiences on the benefits of taking medication for anxiety/depression.

In this podcast episode you’ll hear about:

  • Life as a plant based medical student

  • Food security, size inclusivity, anti-diet culture and intuitive eating

  • Breaking stereotypes of what a vegan looks like

  • Mental health in the black community and breaking the stigma of antidepressants

  • Weighing the benefits vs risks of antidepressant and sharing our own experiences with taking medication

  • Why we need to bring nutrition and preventive medicine into the medical system

Follow Brooklynne:

Beets By Brooke Instagram

Resources:

Brene Brown “The Man In The Arena Speech”

195.All Things Vegan Cheese and Lessons Learned as a Vegan Entrepreneur with Nay Jones of Rooted Delights

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On this episode of the Brown Vegan Podcast, I’m talking with Janay Jones in a great conversation about her vegan cheese business turned digital product business.

Nay Jones is a vegan entrepreneur, business owner, and mother. After spending years as a vegan in the culinary world, she currently spends her time as a blogger and digital creator. Nay is the owner of Rooted Delights, which started as the first oat milk vegan cheese company but has now pivoted into helping people transition into the world of plant-based & healthy lifestyle choices. She recently completed an ebook where she offers lifestyle tips, recipes, and advice. Her mission is to change the world one delicious vegan cheese at a time.

In this conversation, Nay shares what her own vegan journey looked like and how completing a 30-day no meat challenge transformed her idea of what health looked like. She shares her perspective of why challenges can be so helpful for people, how accountability partners make you more successful, and the physical changes she noticed during the challenge that convinced her to go vegan. We also float the idea of hosting a vegan challenge for you all to join in on, so please let me know your thoughts after you listen to this conversation!

While I always ask my guests what getting comfortable in the kitchen looked like when they went vegan, Nay shares how making her own vegan cheeses at home transformed into a full blown vegan cheese business. We talk about the dairy industry and why dairy is not essential in our diets as well as why it was so important to Nay to create a cheese that was allergen free and accessible to everyone. 

And if you’ve been thinking about creating your own business (vegan or not), this conversation is full of great insight into what it takes to be an entrepreneur including the behind the scenes of how Rooted Delights had to pivot and the lessons learned from running a full time product business during the pandemic. 

In this episode we cover:

  • Self care and finding balance as a business owner and new mom

  • The power of vegan/vegetarian challenges to kickstart a new lifestyle

  • How going vegan transformed Nay’s health, helped with acne, and resulted in weight loss

  • The exciting feeling of finding a vegan ingredient that becomes a game changer in the kitchen (hello, liquid smoke)

  • The dairy industry and how their marketing is pervasive and brainwashes us from a young age

  • All things vegan cheese and what having so many options means for new vegans

  • Behind the scenes of running a vegan perishable product business + tips for starting a new food business

  • Lessons learned as an entrepreneur, the importance of delegation, networking, and forming partnerships

  • How Rooted Delights went from a vegan cheese company to offering a wide variety of helpful digital products to their customer base

Follow Janay Jones & Rooted Delights:

Website

Instagram

E-book

194. It’s Never Too Late To Go Vegan and The Business of Blogging with Amy Katz of Veggies Save The Day

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Today on the podcast, we’re back with another great conversation with Amy Katz of Veggies Save The Day.

Amy Katz is a certified vegan nutrition health coach. At Veggies Save The Day she shares easy vegan recipes inspired by a healthy Mediterranean diet. Her recipes have been featured on NBC News, Parade, VegNews, BuzzFeed, MSN, Insider, Brit+Co, Well+Good, and more.

She lives in Orange County, California with the love of her life, Brad, and their adorable black cat, Ozzy.

Amy came on the podcast to talk about her own vegan journey and how transitioning to vegan slowly was the best route for her, as well as her experience of leaving a corporate job to become a full-time recipe blogger.

This 47 minute episode is packed full of great tips for new or aspiring vegans, inspiration for getting out of your comfort zone in the kitchen, and amazing insight into the world of blogging, how to get started, and how to be strategic as a content creator.

That all being said, the main theme that kept coming up within this conversation is: it’s never too late to do something new. 

While Amy’s interest in giving up animal products started in high school when she gave up eating red meat, it wasn’t until she was 40 years old that she made the final decision to go vegan. Amy says herself “it was a long journey”, but as you listen to her story, you’ll see that the practical approach she took to go vegetarian and then fully vegan resulted in less stress and more ease. By the time she was ready to become vegan, she thought “I have nothing to lose, only everything to gain”, which is such an incredible perspective to have (you may know I’ve talked before about thinking ‘what can I add’ instead of focusing on what you’re losing as a vegan).

Amy offers some great tips and strategies for transitioning to veganism, how to get more comfortable cooking vegan food, and ways to experiment with new foods you haven’t tried before. If you’re a new vegan or vegan-curious person, you won’t want to miss this part of the conversation.

Adding to the theme of ‘it’s never too late’, Amy has an incredible story of how she almost accidentally slipped into becoming a food blogger–something she initially started just as a hobby alongside her corporate career. After a few years of sharing her recipes on Instagram with the vegan community, Amy moved her content to blog-format and started to learn how to monetize what she was creating. She shares with me in this conversation how she did this while working a full-time corporate career, and the steps she took to ensure her security once she decided to leave her job to become a full-time content creator and blogger. The tips she gives are strategic, practical, and realistic, and really help to see that blogging for a living is a possibility, but that it takes a great plan to make it happen. 

We’re also diving into the behind the scenes of what it takes to keep your blog up to date, tools Amy uses for SEO and keyword research, the importance of creating multiple streams of income online, and what she has learned strategy-wise after years of watching how blogging has changed. 

In this podcast episode we talk about:

  • The slow and steady approach to going vegan

  • How to use ethnic grocery stores and CSA boxes to diversify your diet

  • How eating new things changes your palette 

  • Why blogging is still relevant

  • How Amy created a life she loves out of a side hustle

  • How to transition from a corporate career into a content creator

  • Helpful tools to get strategic in your blogging

  • How to create content around popular keywords and the best way to format your blog posts

  • The myth of competition and oversaturation in the world of blogging

  • Why it’s never too late to start doing what you love

Follow Amy:

Website: https://www.veggiessavetheday.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/veggiessavetheday/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/veggiessavetheday

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/VeggiesSave/

Resources Mentioned:

Google Search Console

Keysearch

AdThrive