The Power of Writing Your Story
Kathryn Kemp Guylay is a wellness and nutrition advocate, fellow podcaster, and writer. Her first book is called Mountain Mantras: Wellness and Life Lessons from the Slopes, and her podcast also bears the same name, Mountain Mantras, which covers topics around Wellness and Life Lessons. Her most recent book is called Make Nutrition Fun.
[01:30] Kathryn’s First Writing Experience
- Kathryn firmly believes that you’re always in charge of finding new excitement in your life.
- In 2015, she took on the challenge of her first book in her goal of confronting fear and self-doubt.
[04:40] Matching Passion with a Need in the World
- Kathryn used to do management consulting for ten years until taking a couple years of that prompted her to reflect on her passion and what’s a need the world needs.
- What her dad said about American diet and its effect on the population that inspired her to solve the obstacles around nutrition – teaching people to make food quickly, easily, and on a budget.
[07:55] Chefs Move to School: Meeting the First Lady
- Kathryn got her food safety handling certificate and started doing the Chefs Move to School Program under Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Initiative.
- Kathryn’s daughter was chosen as one of the winners in the Healthy Kids Lunchtime Challenge.
- It was her daughter’s recipe called, Fiesta Casserole, which she and her daughter made together.
- From then on, she and her daughter have become ambassadors of good health. True enough, they now bring such recipe to different institutions on an ongoing basis.
[11:22] Kathryn’s Credo: Writing Her First Two Books
- Her first book, Mountain Mantras, consists of 6 mantras, which she personally considers as her least favorite.
- She says that anything you do the first time, may not be your masterpiece.
- Kathryn shares her take on leadership and dealing with “mom guilt” around work. Figure out strategies to involve your children in what you’re doing.
- Then came her second book, Give It a Go, Eat a Rainbow, which was her dream project with her son.
[17:45] Make Nutrition Fun
- Kathryn mentions she wears three hats including nutrition and wellness, publishing, and entrepreneurship.
- She talks about avoiding burnout by finding the FUN in something.
[20:58] All About Writing and Publishing
- For her, writing is all about gaining clarity. It allows us to disentangle all the things in our brain.
- Having a creative outlet is part of a well, overall holistic human being.
- Kathryn talks about how her book, Look Before You Leap was conceived, out of so many publishing pains and unhappy authors she was seeing in the publishing world.
- She surveyed different types of published authors and found that the happiest group was the self-publishing group.
- Kathryn and her son actually did a sequel of the Give It a Go, Eat a Rainbow which was launched on Amazon using print on demand.
- She found print on demand to be so much easier and faster.
[31:39] Self-Publishing is Anything but Self
- Kathryn wants to emphasize that self-publishing is anything but self. It is a team effort. You are an entrepreneur. You’re building a team so you want to get the right and fun people on the team.
- Make sure there’s a spot for you in the market. She believes that your journey in many ways begins when you publish.
[35:55] The Age of Authenticity
- Kathryn explains Make Nutrition Fun is not about making the perfect meals every night, but literally stories of her failures.
- Authenticity allows us to bridge the gap, and bring ourselves together as a tribe.
Episode Resources:
Get Kathryn’s audiobook for free www.makeeverythingfun.com/azul along with the free survey
Take Kathryn’s online course, Your Fast Track Guide to Becoming a Publishing Expert
Check out Kathryn’s podcast, Mountain Mantras
Ketchum Innovation Center
Kathryn’s Books:
- Mountain Mantras
- Give It a Go, Eat a Rainbow
- Make Nutrition Fun
- Look Before You Leap
- Where Does a Rainbow Grow? Book 2: Give It a Go, Eat a Rainbow
Kathryn’s daughter Elena’s Fiesta Casserole recipe
Chefs Move to School
Listen on:
