Food’s a great way to get to know people. Stephen Jaye’s guest in this episode is Kayla Ferguson, founder at The Same Plate, an organization that addresses two critical human needs: connecting with others and exposure to new ideas. The organization was built as a result of Kayla’s international travels and experience bridging cultural divides over shared meals. The success of The Same Plate also demonstrates that not all ideas need to be super complicated and highly technological to have a significant impact! Tune in!
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The Same Plate: Bridging Cultural Divides Through Food With Kayla Ferguson
I’m happy to be talking to you about this.
Thank you for joining me. How are you doing?
All good. I’m convincing myself that I enjoy the seasons.
Sometimes you have to make the best of it. I was in Crested Butte where the weather was good. It was sunny and pleasant. There wasn’t enough snow there for a good skiing experience. There were a lot of bare spots. It reminded me that sometimes you need some of the good and some of the bad to make everything flow together.
They have to have the dark and the light, the good and the bad, warm and the cold, the sun and the snow. It’s what makes the world function.
Tell me about The Same Plate Denver, what experiences people have and what the purpose is.
I’ll start by saying how the whole thing got started because that provides some valuable context. I was born and raised in Denver. I love this city, for one. That’s a huge reason why this is a passion project for me. I also went out to California for school. I studied film. I worked in Hollywood for a while. After a couple of years, I decided that wasn’t going to work. I saved up as much as I could which wasn’t much on a Hollywood assistant salary. I bought a plane ticket to Japan. I decided I was going to do a 26-country trip around the world. That was in 2015 and 2016. It straddled those two years. I ended up back in Denver because I ran out of money. I had to move into my parents’ basement. I’m still here.
It was about 1.5 to 2 years after getting back that I was not particularly fulfilled by the job that I was doing and wanting to take off on another round the world trip but I didn’t have the time, money or resources. I was sitting at an Indian restaurant one night with my now fiancé, then-boyfriend. It was like a lightbulb moment of you can travel the world through food. I’m not saying that eating at an Indian restaurant in Arvada, Colorado is the same as going to India but it can open you up to that experience and create some intrigue that can push you towards that adventure.
I decided I would start putting together dinners for my friends. I pick a different culture every month and invite my friends to dinner. It would be like a gathering thing. We could all talk, eat good food, catch up with each other not over beers at a brewery because I found that it’s a little hard to connect with people in that environment. By the third month of bringing together, I had close to 30 people coming. It was amazing that many people wanted to try the food. I realized that sometimes impeded the conversation people were able to have with each other. That’s when I started thinking about doing more curated experiences with the chef, with some intentional conversation and turning it into a whole ticketed event for people. It grew from there. That’s the quick story.
“If everyone adapted that, that their life journey and their life experience makes what they want to share with the world unique, regardless of how common we think it is, I think it would just be magical.”
First of all, it sounds like an idea that you had a lightbulb moment at that time at the Indian restaurant but also an idea that came to you in a couple of different segments. Tell me about that first experience when you were at an Indian restaurant. Was there something that made you think about this experience?
The first thing was I want to go travel again. If I could have my choice in life, I would be a total nomad. I’m certainly working towards that. That’s all I wanted to do. It was an immediate, almost knee-jerk reaction to what I wanted my life to be. I was like, “I want to travel.” Immediately after, “How do I make that happen in my current reality?” I didn’t have the money to buy a plane ticket around the world. I didn’t have time off of work to go do that. It was like a ping pong ball of, “This is what I want. How can I make it happen with what’s available to me?” That’s how it sparked. It was a quick, “Why not try it? Why not see what happens?”
There are two great mindset points for the readers in that particular story. One is that people oftentimes get trapped by the gap between where your life is and where you want to be. It could be this insurmountable gap. A good thing to remember is that oftentimes, a step in the right direction is worth the effort. As part of what you were feeling that day in the Indian restaurant, you were like, “Am I in India?” That’s probably not going to happen for one circumstantial reason or another but I can get a little portion of that experience.
I have to go back to that almost every single day. It’s one step in the next direction. Even people who run a marathon do it one step at a time. No one launches from the start line to the finish line. It’s impossible until the Marvel Universe shows up here. That’s how you do life. Why not apply that to everything? I can get intimidated thinking about wanting to scale this to other cities to look at what supply chain I need for some new product I want to launch. That’s all super intimidating and it can stop me.
After that, I’m like, “The next thing that there is to do is find someone who can do X, Y, Z for my website.” I have that done. “The next day, I will do this.” Taking it back to the super incremental steps and having a vision of what could be out there to pull you forward is like a little dance to do. You have to flex that muscle and practice that muscle. That, to me, is the key to building anything. The famous saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” There’s some real wisdom behind that even though it’s a cliché saying.
How do you go about getting to that mindset where when you look at things and you see where you are, you have to be okay with being in that intermediate step like, “I’ve gotten these things done. That doesn’t mean I’ve launched. That doesn’t mean I’ve gotten to the point where my life is exactly perfect for who I want to be?” Also, still happy with the progress that you’ve made in the past week, month or year.
That’s another muscle to flex. I practice this in a greater context through meditation and gratitude practice. At the end of the day, once you get that, you’ve never gotten there even once I did an around the world trip. I had gone to 26 different countries and got back to the United States. I did this whole thing, this whole experience. That was the peak of the mountain in my life at that time. There was still the next thing to do. We’re never done until we die. I’m applying that mindset to, “My business is never done. This product is never done.”
Having a meditation practice and a gratitude practice of the fact that we’re always a work in progress and everything we’re touching is always a work in progress can make it more fun. It’s like, “This is a painting that I keep painting that I love so I’m going to keep adding these colors to it that I love.” It’s cool that it never gets to be done because I get to keep reiterating it for wherever I’m at and whatever it’s important to me in my life. That comes with practice. I haven’t always thought that way. I’ve had to train myself to live in the joy of the unknown.
I always imagine what it would be like to have everything be complete and have your life not be a work in progress anymore. Sometimes, I wonder if that’s secretly a little bit scary that, all of a sudden, there’s not that next mountain to climb.
It’s this weird thing about being human where we think that that’d be great to have our entire to-do list done. We’re like, “It would be amazing to have all these things that I want my life done.” You then talk to some people who are retired, who says they have it all, made money, had the career, their kids are off to college and whatever it is, having it all in whatever context. There’s a certain dissatisfaction and boredom to that. Our brains trick us into thinking that is what we want. There’s more joy to be found in the living, which involves never being done. I say it’s not done until we’re dead. Even then, it’s probably not done. There might be people who put the pieces of your business. Life isn’t done until we’re dead. I like to think I’m living it as fully as possible. At least, I like to tell myself that.
One of the questions I love to ask people at a random party or random bar is let’s say you win that billion-dollar Powerball jackpot. You suddenly don’t have to work anymore. You can lay around at the beach or do nothing but party. How long do you think you can do that before you’re going to need something else? Everyone needs that party time and that relaxed time to take a break. Also, no one can do it forever. Some people might say, “After a week, I’ll be bored. I’ll need to get to do something.” Some people will try to say they can do it forever.
Maybe there are some people out there who can but it’s an illusion that we tell ourselves that we could do it. I know, for me, I love taking time off, going to the mountains, being disconnected, going to the beach on vacation when we can travel again. I can’t wait to do that. I love that disconnected time. It’s essential if you’re trying to create something or be creative. You have to have that unplugged time because going all the time depletes that elusive energy source. For me, after maybe a maximum of two weeks, I’m like, “I want to get back into talking to people, networking with people, thinking about big ideas.” It’s a sweet spot. There’s a reason people say, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” You have to strike that balance of not being busy that you can’t tap into your creative energy but not being so not busy that you can’t get yourself going on anything.
I heard that saying too about ask a busy person. I’ve also heard the text about people treating busyness as currency. It’s almost like, “Look at me. I’m busy.” That means, “I’m important. I’m successful.” Another thing we’re trying to find the balance of is wanting to be the person that gets things done and wanting to be the person that people can trust to get things done but also not being that person that tells your friend, “I can meet up with you at the coffee shop from 4:15 to 4:42.”
“I then have to leave at 4:46 to get to this next thing.” I’ve thought about that a lot because I’ve identified as a busy person in my life. I do think it has become this, “I’m busy.” It’s a badge of honor almost. Especially after 2020, I don’t appreciate that anymore. I’ve started to ask myself, “What is my busyness allowing me to procrastinate on?” A lot of times, busyness is an escape from what matters to us. If I was being honest, being busy was a way to avoid doing the hard business planning or even the hard relationship stuff that I didn’t want to do. I’ve tried to reframe it like, “I’m busy. Is there something I’m avoiding?” Chances are, if I am honest about it, the answer is yes. Most people, if they were honest with themselves would find maybe the same thing. If you’re going to create something, you do have to commit to it to a certain point and cut out some of the noise as you might call busyness.
Tell me a little bit about that second moment. You had the first moment when you said, “I want to travel in my way.” The second moment where you realize you want to start opening these experiences up to people.
At the time when I had this idea, I was with one other person, my fiancé. I wanted to do this because I was sick of the routine of going and seeing friends at a brewery on a Saturday. I was always conflicted because I wanted to go see people. I love talking and connecting with people. I didn’t feel like it could happen over beers every Saturday. It was getting old to me. I was like, “Rather than make this a thing, I want to make sure I’m bringing along these people that I care about into these new experiences with me.” I didn’t want to start this whole new cultural dinner and have it take away from the time I was having with people that I cared about. I was like, “I’ll invite them. Once a month, we can do this instead.”
People were like, “That sounds great. I’ve always wanted to try Ethiopian food. I never found a reason to do so.” I was like, “Great. Come with us.” The community is incredibly important. My family, my friends, the people I’m with every day are incredibly important to me. I don’t think you can do life without a community. Creating a business that brought it along with me in some way or another was almost non-negotiable. I wouldn’t have said that at the time. That was in the background in my subconscious.
Especially as we move forward into a more technology-driven, more complicated world, few of the problems that we’re going to solve in the coming few decades are going to be solved alone. There’s going to be some collaboration.
You can travel the world through food.
I would even expand it to say none of the problems that we’re facing are going to be solved alone.
It’s weird. I feel that the ultimate manifestation of that is that image in the movie The Social Network where Mark Zuckerberg’s character, you see him sitting there at the computer with his headphones over his head for fourteen hours in a row. That’s this weird fantasy, like, “Look at me. I do this all by myself,” as opposed to what happens with more people collaborating.
We’re meant to be social beings. As a species, we’re designed to do things together as hard as it can be sometimes to work with other people. I do think we are designed to do it that way.
One of the things I always say is that even the strongest extrovert in the world needs some alone time and even the strongest introvert in the world needs companionship. It’s basic human needs. Most people need a combination of both. You wanted to stay in touch with your friends. You also want to form a deeper connection with some of the people in your life than the ones you were getting at, let’s say, you go to a brewery, get a little drunk and everyone’s sloppy.
It’s hard to connect with people over a loud brewery on a Saturday. I will still do that when we can again. I enjoy the atmosphere but it’s not the most connective experience. I have a fundamental belief in the connective power of food. It was always one of some of the first introductions I would have. If I showed up in Thailand, I put my stuff at a hostel and then go find some food. It was the way I oriented myself to my new surroundings. It’s a perfect gateway to adventure. I was a twenty-something backpacker. I was staying in hostels with tons of people. My friends were the people I met in the hostels I was staying at. It was consistent that we would find each other maybe in the afternoon when we all got there. One of the first things we would always do together is to eat.
Some people were from Italy, France, South America and all over the world. There were even some language barriers sometimes between some of us. There was something about sitting down to a meal with strangers that made us feel like we were friends. Facebook has allowed us so we can be “friends for life.” I remember those experiences of eating with strangers vividly on my travels. Imagine with people you already have a connection with. Food is a part of everything that we do at weddings, even funerals, birthdays. It is the way that we all sit down and have a shared and sometimes even unspoken experience about it. This seems like a no-brainer. It’s fundamental to our existence as humans that we gather and talk and connect over food. I’m going to put it in a place that feels a little bit adventurous and fun.
Since you started doing these monthly meals, do you feel that’s changed the nature of the relationship you have with some of your close friends?
It has mostly given us another avenue to connect over. This was a whole other way to create a new conversation. When you’re in a new place eating new food, sometimes with some new people, it gets that part of your brain that isn’t on the autopilot conversation. I’m not saying that to say my conversations are boring. Sometimes we can get in the same conversations with people. You move into an unknown space with some unknown food. It opens up new pathways of conversation.
Even people that I’ve known for a long time that I’m close with, created some new conversations by being in a new place. I encourage traveling because if you’re feeling stuck in life, go to someplace else. If you allow it, new ways to do things will open up to you. We didn’t do it intentionally. I didn’t sit down and say, “Tonight, we’re going to make sure we talk about this and have this whole new friendship.” It happened organically which is what also made it pretty more powerful.
That’s awesome to hear about that organic aspect of it because we often hear people try to make formulas for everything when you’re successful. It’s like if you wake up at 4:30 every morning, take a shower and listen to your podcast at two times speed. It’s good to know that it happens organically and naturally. One of the things I feel sometimes in life when I read about modern methods especially of parenting is I was always trying to control everything and not letting enough things happen as naturally as they normally should. One of the things I’m wondering is you’ve been to Japan. I assume you’ve been to India. I don’t know what other 26 countries. When you go to a restaurant here in Denver featuring the food of a country you’ve been to, does it ever take you back to that experience or is it too Americanized here?
As I was putting these events together, I was thinking about where am I going to take people. It’s great that we have a lot of new hip restaurants that do this Japanese-Mexican fusion. That might not even be one of them. We do a lot of fusions of cool cultural food. I love those cool, hip restaurants. They have great cocktails. I love all of it. I was striving for the most authentic experience possible. Meaning, the restaurants that we were going to were created by, run by people and immigrants from these different countries that I wanted to take people to.
The Ethiopian restaurant, my first blog was about this restaurant and the family that owned it. It was a husband and wife that came here in the ‘80s from Ethiopia. Their daughter was in the process of taking it over from them. They had spent many years running this restaurant and didn’t want to do it anymore. It was such a pure experience getting to talk to them about their lives while we were there. That’s not to say if there’s not some Ethiopian-Indian fusion that it wouldn’t be amazing food.
As much as I was focused on the type of food that was being served, I was also interested in the people behind the food that we were being served because that’s such an integral part of the culture of the city and the ways that we get to explore the culture in the city. I would always lean towards restaurants that weren’t in the westwards top-restaurant type of article that had some amazing food and amazing people to feed it to us. At least the smells and the taste took you back to at least partial memories from those places which I love.
As I recall, experiencing a little bit of culture, talking to the people who opened the restaurant, that’s part of the experience at The Same Plate.
I didn’t intend to do it that way. I was like, “Come eat and we’ll get some food.” I brought in 9 or 10 people to this Ethiopian restaurant. We took up almost the whole dining room. It was a tiny little spot. They were naturally intrigued by us and what we were doing there. It became a conversation with the owners. Come the third month, when I had 30 people showing up, the restaurant was like, “This is great. We love having this many people. It would be good to maybe know about this in advance.”
That was the third iteration of the business when I was like, “If I want to give people an experience of talking to the owners like at the Ethiopian restaurant and make it so people have not prompt.” I don’t want to make it a super prompted dinner but a group of people that they can have a committed conversation with as opposed to a table of 30 that involves creating a curated experience, talking to the owners, maybe selling tickets so I don’t have a group of 45, although it’s flattering that could happen. That was the third iteration of, “I could turn this into something intentional as opposed to a monthly dinner with friends.” It then grew from there.
What motivated you to expand this beyond you and your friends to start opening this event up to a larger group of people, ticket events? It sounds like you’re going to look into other cities as well.
Mostly because I am a gregarious, outgoing person. When I talk to people I oftentimes tell them, “I’m doing this thing. You should check it out.” Word got around Denver. I also involve myself in a number of food access initiatives and food security things around Denver because I fundamentally believe that every single person should have access to healthy food. That’s a whole other conversation. Through talking to these groups of people that I was involved with, it got to be known that I was doing this thing.
Even people who run a marathon, do it one step at a time, no one launches from the start line to the finish line.
I got invited alongside some other people who are putting together group events, exhibit at TEDxMileHigh in 2019. I got to tell people all about this whole thing. Why not come check it out? That was the opening of, “I don’t know you but I want to know you. Food’s a great way to get to know people. Come on in.” That’s when it started expanding beyond my immediate sphere by telling people and having the opportunity that I was not expecting but was grateful for it to go to TEDx which was super cool.
That’s how I found out about The Same Plate conference in November 2019. For people who want to find out more about The Same Plate, can you tell us the web address?
It’s simple, www.TheSamePlate.com. I’m getting ready to update the website with my newest offering, which I can’t say a ton about yet. It’s going to be cool. You can even go there and subscribe if you want to. You’ll get the updates and some early bird specials coming up in 2021. It’s The Same Plate Round Two. Although I’m keeping a lot of what I had and adding a lot after learning as everyone did from 2020.
For my readers, what can someone expect from an experience at The Same Plate?
I was doing monthly events. I don’t know quite the frequency I’m going to do yet. I am doing them as ticketed events so that I can know how many people are coming, I can let the restaurant know and I can create a full experience for people. Tickets are required to attend. They can expect a group anywhere, depending on the size of the restaurant, from 5 to 15 people that are going to be dining there with them. Also, depending on the restaurant. The other thing is each restaurant is pretty unique in how they like to function and what works for their kitchen staff and/or owners which are sometimes the same thing.
Either a buffet-style dinner where they get to try 5 to 7 different dishes from the countries wherever we’re eating at. Sometimes it’ll be a vegetarian or a meat plate that you’re going to get. Each ticket also includes one drink. Sometimes we have a little bit extra. That’s an extra bonus when people come by. One alcoholic beverage plus whatever other non-alcoholic beverage they would like are there. As well as, during the meal, a conversation with the chef and the owner of the restaurant to learn about where they’re from, who they are, their story, the story behind the food. One thing we’re going to try to add in 2021 is people who come also get a take-home recipe to be able to try something at home if they would like to.
On this journey, did you encounter any challenges, obstacles or sometimes people who don’t always have the most flattering things to say about everything? People go out and try to do and put themselves out there for.
For the most part, people have been complimentary. People have said, “I didn’t think of this.” It’s not rocket science. For the most part, people have been complimentary. As I’ve tried to get into various accelerator programs, there were some people I heard, “I don’t think you can turn this into a full-time business.” I’m like, “I would love to run this and not work 40 hours a week. That’s not a problem for me. Thanks for the feedback.” The “meanest” thing is like, “This isn’t that novel of an idea.” I’m like, “Okay.” They’re not wrong. It’s not that hard to bring a group of people to a restaurant. It’s not that hard to find a Thai restaurant that you want to eat at.
This brings me to a major thing I like to talk about in the world of starting a business or starting anything, writing a book, whatever you want to do. There are a lot of not-novel concepts out there. That’s probably true. Most people aren’t going to be Steve Jobs. I’m not going to invent the next major world computers. That stops way too many people, this idea that they’re not creating the next most innovative thing in the world. Not everyone can do that. The important thing that I always remind myself of is this is not rocket science. It’s not brain surgery. It’s simple, as evidenced by everyone who says, “I should have thought of this.” No one else has my unique life experience to bring to this type of gathering or business.
If everyone adopted that their life journey and life experience makes what they want to share with the world unique regardless of how common we think it is, it would be magical. That’s what I tell friends who go, “Other people are doing this. Other people have written that.” “They aren’t you. They don’t have your expression of whatever you’re trying to do.” That’s the other thing I remind myself of every day when I feel it’s not good enough, not innovative enough or not mind-blowing enough. Maybe not but the experience that led me to want to do this is unique from any other person on the planet by virtue that no one else has lived my life. That’s true for every person on the planet. Adopting that gives you a lot of freedom in whatever it is you want to create.
This is hardly the only show that encourages people to achieve it. What I like about your story is that, first of all, it involves multiple places of this mindset of, “It doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be a step in the right direction.” I wish I was traveling. I wish I was Anthony Bourdain. He’s the guy that came to my mind when you’re talking about bringing people together through food because that’s his sweet spot. Start moving. Sometimes you have to say, “You can’t wait for perfection. You have to start doing something. Otherwise, you can be stuck.”
I also like the component of it where you’re leaning into an aspect of who you naturally are as opposed to trying to pretend to be something else. A lot of people, when they pick their desired field, are trying to be like, “I need to be this person. I’m trying to be a copy of this other person.” As opposed to say, “I need to do what feels right for me.” What felt right for you seemed it was being that outgoing, on-the-move person. That naturally started to spread the word about your organization.
When you care and love something, you talk about it. It doesn’t take crazy marketing dollars to get the word out if you and yourself are excited about what you’re doing. I will still eventually put money into marketing, for sure. If you care, you talk and the word spreads. That’s the first organic step to making something happen. I always say, “If you don’t want to tell anyone about anything that you’re doing, how much do you love it?” When you care, are excited, passionate, you talk. Word-of-mouth marketing is still the most powerful way to do anything. The saying I hang so I can see it every single day is, “Do you remember who you were before the world told you who you were supposed to be?” It seems fundamentally simple.
We all have a lot of masks we put on, duties we’ve taken on and jobs that we do that don’t fulfill us but we should because of money. I’m still all about paying bills. I have to make money too. It’s not like I have a money wand, although that would be cool. Sitting and thinking about that, “Who am I? What speaks to me?” When you start doing that, you start talking about it and then people start coming. It’s organic growth. It’s like the saying, “Do what you love and money will follow.” It’s not always a super linear path for that to happen but there’s some truth to that because you’re willing to put yourself out there for something that you love. It puts you in an abundance mindset in a certain sense. A key thing is being honest with yourself about who you are, what you’re good at, what you want to give to the world.
There’s probably a lot of people out there who are disconnected from that person who they were before the world told them who they are. What is a good way to get reconnected with that? Who are you?
If I had the ultimate answer to that, I would probably be the next big self-help guru is out there. I’d make all my money doing that. For me, a lot of this realization came once it was no longer manageable for me to be as busy as I was and running from one thing to the next. I could no longer be as busy as I was. I had to stop. The busyness and the noise went away. That was the first glimmer of it. I wouldn’t say the seas parted and I was like, “I know exactly who I am in the world.” I don’t think that happens. We’re on a journey for most of our lives to find that. Once the busyness stopped, there was a glimmer of, “What do I want?” This is why cutting out the busyness is essential. Not because it makes you sleep better, although that’s great but because it can get you back to who you are. That is where we find true happiness is once we’re living who we are genuinely and authentically.
It’s easier said than done like, “Don’t be busy.” You can start like, “What do I do every day? How much of it brings me joy? I’m going to get rid of three things that I don’t like doing.” Unless it involves kids or something, you have to be responsible still. What are the three things you’re doing that are optional that you don’t like? Start cutting out the noise. For me, I had to reach a point in which it was no longer manageable. I managed it for a long time as a badge of honor. It’s like people who go to AA or rehabilitation. They get there because their life is no longer manageable. You have to reach that point in which what you’re doing can’t function any longer.
Something kicks you, “Sorry. What you’re doing is unsustainable. You’re going to have to stop and think.” For some people, it’s a motorcycle accident. There’s a story for everyone. One final thing I want to touch on is how to go about finding the right set of people. It sounds like you had a good job of mostly being around encouraging people that were generally rooting for you as opposed to the people that were rare ones that told you, “That idea is not that original.” One of my favorite things to talk about is when people hear, “The market’s too saturated,” which I tell that to the guy who started CrossFit.
Bring along people you care about into new experiences with you.
Do you believe that if you do what you love, the money will follow? That also applies to the people like once you start doing what you love and showing up at places that reflect you like my showing up at TEDxMileHigh events. All of a sudden, the people that you are meant to be around, the people that are going to help you grow into who you need to be, are going to follow. Do you think it needs a more conscious effort of going on social media sites and finding people?
It’s a little bit of both. If you’re out in the world, you’re organically going to come across people. There’s a certain value in not being able to weed out the people that aren’t a fit because that sounds bad. Like someone’s a bad person. To weed out the people that aren’t going to be in service of what you’re trying to do and they’re fine doing their own thing over there, that comes from being honest. If I showed up and said, “I am a corporate event planner.” If I said something that wasn’t accurate but was meant to try to impress somebody, that’s not going to get me far. Maybe I’ll start a relationship with that person but it’s not going to work well.
Doing what you love will bring the right people by virtue of the fact that when you’re doing what you love, it’s much easier to be authentic about it. That authenticity will attract the people that you need to find. There is actively looking for a mentor in a space that you could use help with. Also, those conversations, if they’re not rooted in what you’re about, what you care about, how you want to run a business, how you need your life to work while running this business, those conversations have to be rooted in authenticity. It comes from loving what you are doing and caring deeply about it.
It’s both and a conscious evaluation every once in a while of, “Who’s in my life? What’s working? What’s taking my energy?” Being responsible about updating relationships. Maybe letting some go in a nice way is also valuable. Like anything, our health, phones, we need updating every once in a while. That is a conscious effort to be in touch with what’s working and what’s not. That sounds like a hippie way to talk like, “Attract authentic people to you.” I’m not trying to be brazen or superficial about it. There’s an energy to authenticity that is powerful if you know how to tap into it and not in a superficial.
It sounds like there are big things that are coming up for The Same Plate in 2021. Hopefully, we get out of this pandemic. It’s rough for those of us that do like to go out there, meet people and gather people. I would like to thank you very much for joining me, sharing the story of The Same Plate and all your insights about that.
Thank you for having me. This was fun. I love talking about it as we’ve discussed on this show. Thank you for having me.
Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for future episodes where I’ll talk to more people who start community groups like this and more people who start businesses or even open up their financial freedom. Stay tuned for more inspiring stories.
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About Kayla Ferguson
After spending seven years in Hollywood working as a freelance filmmaker as well as for both a global talent agency and major television studio, I decided I wanted to take some time to experience the world rather than watch other people do it on the big (and small) screen. From May 2015 to May 2016 I traveled through Asia, Europe and South America. Traveling gave me a passion for creating “experiences” and an insatiable desire to experience new cultures and connect with people. So, I founded The Same Plate, a company that creates curated cultural food experiences for those interested in exploring their local cities, through food, and getting inspired by the vibrancy present in cultural diversity.