Tag Archives: Issue 6

Issue 6 – Editor Letter

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The clock on the bedside table said 7 a.m. Much too early for this girl who had been up late the night before at an industry dinner.

I was three days into a conference in Washington DC and was slated to speak to a room of seasoned magazine executives after breakfast. But first things first. Wardrobe.

No-nonsense Banana Republic dress? Check. Conservative heels, not too high, not too flat? Check. A light coat of mascara and under eye concealer to play some “I feel so refreshed from a great night’s sleep” trickery from the stage? Check.

Hair…. Hair…..umm, nothing. An unfortunate wardrobe oversight, for sure, because I have quite the head of long, thick, unruly hair. Twenty minutes until the continental breakfast and I needed to think of something―pronto. My go to style in desperate times like these? The side braid. After a few failed attempts, I got it right. I reached into the depths of my makeup bag for a hair thingy. (What’s your name for it?)

I think you can see where this story might be headed. No hair thingy to be found. After a futile five-minute one-handed search through bags, pockets, zipper compartments and suitcases, a concierge request for a rubber band delivery would be next. When I opened the coat closet and voilà! A satin hanger. And not just ANY satin hanger; this satin hanger had a white satin ribbon bow wrapped around the hook.

With my one free hand (the other holding the end of my braid for dear life) I unraveled the ribbon and, with some pretty spectacular replicating ability, I might say, I tied it around the base of my braid into a perfectly dainty bow.

I looked in the mirror―and felt a tinge (understatement) mortified. Business dress, conservative shoes, ladylike makeup…and white schoolgirl, Pollyanna bow.

Awesome, Megan. Way to be legit among your new peers.

Feeling deflated, I weighed the ramifications of scrapping the entire idea. But time was not on my side and Lord knows I needed that coffee and dry muffin to keep me from a nerve-ridden dizzy spell on stage.

In that moment, instead of panicking, I paused.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

And in those few moments of pause two words came to mind: sweet and spirited.

And I smiled.

With my power suit ironed and my game face on, I had been verging on puking for two days as I prepped to speak to the decades of experience in the ballroom four floors down. But in that moment of culminated anxiety, my little white bow actually became a gift. A reminder of the sweet. The fun. The more lighthearted and less hard-on-myself ways I know I need, especially in moments of “work mode” like these.

The clock was ticking. I turned the Spotify channel to Katy Perry while adding the last swipes of makeup and final touches to my presentation and then jetted to my caffeine and bran.

An hour later, nerves subsided, I spoke to the publication pros, with my white satin bow borrowed from the hotel hanger and bright courage in my step. I was, in essence, silently preaching from the podium what this magazine…this mission…is all about: “blending the serious with the serendipity,” as one reader put it.

It’s so EASY to get wrapped up in the seriousness of business. There’s a reason the term is coined “serious business,” right? The goals, the juggling and balance, the presentations, the proper hashtag usage, a meeting’s productivity or lack thereof and the disappointments over excel spreadsheets. Even our victories can swallow up any bit of joy in a day when we use them only as strategies for reaching the next rung on the ladder.

But when satin bow moments happen, we need to grab ahold of those little gifts of whimsy and wonder. They do come along! Often! You must open your eyes and look for them. Because they have huge potential to impact the course of your day.

Had I worn a frumpy rubber band whose first life was wrapped around the morning newspaper in the lobby, I likely would have been disgruntled with my ‘bad start’ to the day and it would have showed. And I can promise you my smile wouldn’t have been nearly as big from stage, which ultimately gave others a reason to smile after that same late night party we all were dragging from.

Island Love

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Words by Lanie Anderson
Photography by Jessica Hill

Imagine a wedding with a center aisle carpeted in leaves and colorful rose petals, gift bags woven by local indigenous women and stuffed with organic body products, ocean waves that welcome the processional, and an outdoor patio made ready for dancing with Chinese parasols hanging just overhead. More like a fairy tale than a reality, this is Larissa Banting’s standard for weddings in Costa Rica and those standards have made her wedding planning business an international success.

Launching a wedding planning company for the first time would have made most sense in her own backyard of Toronto, Canada. Unless you know Larissa. During the summer of 2001, she trekked with an Alberta-based film production company to Costa Rica and fell in love with Roberto Leiva, a Costa Rican actor. A year later she moved to be with him and in 2003 they married.

What her friends and family in Canada deemed crazy—Larissa didn’t know anyone in Costa Rica besides Roberto, had no job, and couldn’t speak the language—she considered adventurous. “I loved the weather, the people, and the country,” Larissa explained. “I wasn’t flighty. Something resonated with me that this was the right place to be.”

To read the rest of the article, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Soccket To Me

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Words by Robbie Clark
Photography by Jacklyn Greenberg

Kicking an Idea Around

As a very recent graduate from Harvard Business School, where she had the daunting challenge of running an innovative socio-tech company she founded while also keeping up with her obviously challenging course work, one would assume Jessica Matthews didn’t know squat about (let alone have time for) play.

But “play”–we’ll call it the pursuit of doing an activity just for the sake of having fun–was the crux of Matthews’ studies while in school (no, we’re not talking about Beer Pong or sorority formals) and it is the core concept behind her business.

On the surface, Uncharted Play, which now has its office in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, makes play things that in turn generate energy after they’ve been played with, such as the Soccket, a soccer ball that can power an accompanying LED lamp, and Pulse, a jump rope with an accompanying adaptor that can charge small appliances like cellphones. But the philosophy and mission behind Uncharted Play has more gravitas than producing a few volts from a lithion-ion battery: Matthews wants her company to inspire children to be the next generation of social inventors to challenge the status quo.

To read more about Uncharted Play and Soccket, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Ada: Enchantress of Numbers

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Words by Dayna Brownfield
Artwork by Ann Shen

Walking down the rows of laptops, tablets and iPods at my local big-box electronics store, I am amazed at the tiny devices’ power and ingenuity. I grew up with computer-integrated classrooms and heard stories from my grandfather who, in the 60s and 70s, held meetings with his boss about “these new computer contraptions that can calculate large equations for the company.”

What you may not realize is that the creation of the computer began long before the twentieth century. In 1834, Ada Lovelace, a 19-year-old Englishwoman, took some of the first steps towards developing the fundamentals of modern computer programming.

To read more about Ada Lovelace, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

La Cuisine Paris

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Words by Linnea Zielinski
Photography by Rebecca Plotnick

“We need to be sitting together over a bottle of wine,” Jane Bertch says as she launches into what can only be described as a dizzying leap from a 10-year banking career to owning and running her own cooking school. Her friendly jocularity is a serendipitous illustration of the driving ethos of her school―for all the glitz a French cooking school implies, classes at La Cuisine Paris are less like a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant and more like a split bottle of wine at a corner café. You can be sure that’s intentional.

Tasting the Difference

French cuisine has the reputation of being elegant, refined, intimidating, and, if honest, probably a little elitist―something best left to graduates of culinary school and celebrated domestic mavens. For the gutsy home chef with enough gall to tackle classic French dishes, the food industry can seem rife with untouchable professionals feeding them wisdom from on high (or from the pages of embossed cookbooks that are doomed to gather dust).

To Jane, culture―even beyond food―is a composition of community members sharing how their families did things. French cuisine, like any other, is something composed in family kitchens, making it an art without pretense. Upon this belief, La Cuisine Paris has flourished. Where other chefs would lecture, Jane has hired teachers who engage their students, imparting accounts of their childhood kitchens, spoons licked from family recipes.

It is on this level playing field (why, yes! Food should be fun!) that classes are conducted. Chef-instructors at La Cuisine Paris engage students in two, three, even five hours of cultural exchange from which everyone emerges with a sense of camaraderie, and smelling strongly of butter. It’s this sense of the food being their food, not the instructors’ food, that Jane believes makes all the difference in students’ experience and taste.

If you doubt whether the taste of a buttery croissant can change just because of environment, think about eating it at your cubicle before starting work in comparison to the company it might keep beside a cappuccino at a café on the Champs-Élysées.

To read the rest of the article, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Flying Solar

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Interview by Robbie Clark

In early June, Solar Impulse 2 made its inaugural flight, which lasted two hours. The vehicle’s intended mission, scheduled to begin next year, will take a little more time, since the charted course is to circumnavigate the globe.

Since the Golden Age of Aviation, a number of pilots or teams of pilots have cruised around the world to their own distinction, from the first round-the-world flight in 1924 by a team of four Douglas Cruiser biplanes (a 175-day voyage) to Wiley Post’s first round-the-world solo flight in 1933 to Capt. James Gallagher’s first round-the-world nonstop flight. If successful, Solar Impulse 2 and its pilots, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, will add a new title to the venerated list: first solar-powered round-the-world flight.

Subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here for the full interview with Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg.

She’s A Mizzfit

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Interview by Lina Fletcher
Photography by Caitlin Mitchell

Ever wished you could wear your favorite pair of yoga pants to work? Bianca Jade did…and now does. Once managing a successful career in advertising, Bianca turned her favorite hour of the day, her workout, into a full-time job. Now the go-to expert on fitness and fashion, Bianca, a.k.a Mizzfit, stylizes sportswear brands, tests new fitness trends, speaks on national TV shows, and motivates women everywhere to “break a sweat and look good doing it!”

Many of us juggling home and career consider gym time a luxury. What would you say to the woman who feels too busy to work out? 

The key is to schedule your  week in advance. That’s what I do. I sit down every Sunday night and look at my calendar for the week ahead and find 1 hour in every day from Monday to the following Sunday where I can fit in a workout. Whether it’s a studio fitness class, meeting up with a friend for a jog, or something more restorative and relaxing like yoga, I find the time. It’s really the only way to do it because if you leave fitness as your last priority, it always gets pushed to the end of your to-do list that day. I use the iCal calendar on my computer and once it’s logged and scheduled, there’s no turning back. It’s happening.

To read the rest of the interview with Bianca, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Difference

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Words and Photography by Pamela Sutton

Difference: The One-Page Method for Reimagining Your Business and Reinventing Your Marketing
by Bernatte Jiwa

What if your business turned into wild success overnight all because of a story—your story?

Bernadette Jiwa is a freelance brand story strategist and author of best-selling marketing book Difference: The One-Page Method for Reimagining Your Business and Reinventing Your Marketing. The Difference Model is a new way of marketing: brand storytelling. No longer is marketing about tactics or labels; it’s about creating meaning in the lives of our customers through the art of storytelling. An engaging, true story that moves people to act, and fall in love with your idea. Jiwa sums up her short, but powerful book as one that “turns the old Marketing Mix model on its head. The businesses that have wildly succeeded in the past decade have done it by understanding their customers first, which enables them to create products and services for their customers.” By learning to see through the eyes of our another, Difference shows us how to transform our company from something that works from a distance to becoming a part of our customer’s own narrative.

Subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here to read more from Bernatte.

Dreaming My Dreams With You

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Words and Photography by Morgan Day Cecil

What was I thinking, sharing my heart with the world?

That afternoon in my daughter’s bedroom, I was ready to border up my sensitive soul, punch a motivational speaker in the nose, and forget about ever making a dime from my passion.

But quitting my dream wasn’t an option. Not because I said so (I was ready to fold), but because my husband said so. That day he knew who I was and what I really wanted better than I did. He knew, because two months earlier I had shared the dream with him.

Flashback to before the scene with the tears. The kids had just been tucked into bed and, curled up on the couch, I shared with him my desire to open an online shop featuring quote prints to start creating for the public what I had been creating for our home and for friends for years. Talking to him about my ideas energized me. I was excited. I was totally lit up. He loved seeing me so alive and told me so.

I carried a wishy-washy version of my small business dream for years, but, once I spoke it out loud and shared it with the person I love and respect most in the world, my dream became an online storefront, stocked in less than a month.

When we are dreaming alone, it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.

To read more of this article, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Artist Profile: Rebecca Plotnick

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I was bit by the travel bug in 2003 when I studied abroad in college, and I started dreaming of becoming a travel photographer. Being laid off in 2008 was the push I needed to follow my dreams. I used airline miles and some of my savings to spend 10 days in Paris, photographing from morning until night. The best way to discover Paris is to get lost in the city’s streets. I returned from the trip energized and ready to start selling my work.

To read the rest of the article, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

An Ode to Farm Life: Erin Brennaman

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Words by Kelli Loos & Linnea Zielinski
Photography by Jen Madigan

City girl. Country boy.
The age-old tale of young love between two people from different sides of the fence.
But this version has a twist.

This little girl loved horses. She dreamed of helping them. Vet school and then a practice of her own.

So after high school, Erin the city girl, left her home in the bustling Chicago suburbs for the expansive fields of Iowa to study Animal Science. The semester stretched. Lectures stalled. Erin’s mind wandered.

A mysterious country boy shone through the tedium, disappearing every weekend from campus, gone to his family’s farm 150 miles away.

Love blossomed. Eventually the city girl followed the country boy into his terrain.

The stereotypes were all true. Small town. One stoplight. Rumors swapped between friends. She thought she would hate it. But she was charmed. Washington County, Iowa.

To read the rest of the article, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.

Artist Profile: Clare Elsaesser

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Five years ago I started my Etsy shop with the goal of making a living from my paintings, a barely utilized Bachelor of Fine Arts and a smattering of art-related jobs on my resume. I began supporting myself through sales from my paintings and their print reproductions. Over time, my subjects have evolved from animals to figures to wild abstracts.

With amazement, I watched the work and time I put into my shop grow into a lucrative business. The success of my business has given me happiness and a rise in determination.

To read the rest of the article, subscribe to CAKE&WHISKEY magazine or purchase the single issue here.