Today we’d like to introduce you to David Nelson.
David, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I decided just after covid lockdowns, and my 3rd child was born, I was ready to finally get my life straight. I had two goals, quit drinking, and lose some weight. I had been drinking since college, where I started at 330lbs. By the time I hit 40, the drinking and weight had gotten out of hand. Daily wisky and a 400lb body with health problems starting to show themselves. Sleep apnia and high bloodpressure.
I made a plan – come clean to my friends and family about my struggles with alcohol, ask for their support to get better. I went to my doctor and had some honest conversations.
My plan was simple but not easy, eat in a calorie deficit, exercise a lot, and don’t touch the hooch.
I stuck to it like a man that had nothing to lose, becuase the truth is, I had everything to lose.
I became a meal prepping, macro counting machine, and stuck to the plan. 11 months saw 180 lbs in weight loss and a new lease on life.
In my professional life, I work in the kitchenware industry. I had a small hand in helping develop a really cool cooking product that the world have never seen before. I had always liked cooking, so this was a natural fit for my interests. I got to work with spices from all over the world, and taste and create with them professionaly.
Then the terrif hit. Working at an early stage startup company, it put me into a panic. 100% of my livelyhood was tied to manufacturing in China. We were in an early stage company and containers were just sitting for months. My warehouse was empty, I was defacto out of a job.
I began to think deeply and ask myself what I’m an expert at. What of my skills could I use to help people and provide them a great value, so they’re happy to pay me.
Why not fitness coaching? I knew the basics, and everyone seemed to ask me for advice, why not give it a try? So I spent $5 and made a craigslist ad offering help.
To my mild surprise, I had two local people inquire. I offered in person and phone coaching for a very reasonable price, $50/ month for weekly checkins.
My first client was a great guy, he was trying to get back into the military and was not able to pass their requirements because of his weight. Working with him quickly revealed his problem – he lacked very basic cooking skills.
A lightbulb went off. I have a nitch, I can teach people meal prepping as a way to manage their weight and meet their goals. That was my new idea.
To make that work, I called up my old obesity specialist, with whom I’d kept in touch, and to my delight she had started a private practice, and thought my idea of teaching her patience meal prepping was a fantastic idea. She would offer my meal prep classes to her patience as part of her package. They could choose training in the gym, and or training in their own kitchen.
To close the loop, I voulenteered to do her patient discovery calls, and sell them directly on my new idea for an in home service. It worked! I managed to get a few patients to sign up for 6 months of treatment, with weekly meal prepping classes from me. The feedback has been amazing, ranging from unlocking people’s ability to feed themsevles, to working with a former restaurant chef and helping refraim cooking as a tool for weightloss.
I can proudly say that I’ve now helped people lose hundreds of pounds, and build the healthy habit of cooking and meal prepping along the way. At the same time, through word of mouth, I’ve been picking up private chef clients. People for whom I cook for a few hours weekly purely as a chef, not a weighloss coach. The feedback has been amazing, and I think I might actually have some tallent for cooking.
The tarrif also had me examining myself and my feelings. I found that I was feeling insecure. Like the world was happening to me, and I didn’t have any power over my own life. I had a summary of Bowling Alone in my head, a great work that talks about the loss of community cohesion and loss of 3rd spaces to help communities interact. No matter what is happening at a global scale, I thought, I would need to rely on my community members if there was ever an emergency. So to increase my feelings of security, I went on a mission to build community, to create third spaces, and get a feeling of security around my food supply. Foraging is a wonderful skill I have and a great hobby, but it isn’t food security.
My first step was to start a community garden at my condo complex. We had a big neglected patch of ugly mud and grass behind the mail room, so I proposed the idea to the HOA Board. Being one of three board members at the time, I was given permission to make the garden. I hired a landscape permaculture designer to advise me, and we made a plan.
I ordered a chip drop in fall, spread cardboard over the area, and moved an entire truckload of mulch on top. I began a giant compost pile with leaves and veggie scraps from the dumpster behind the local grocery store, as well as copious amounts of free coffee grinds from the two coffee shops within walking distance.
Late in the fall I put in 6 dwarf fruit trees, and many berry species, as well as inoculating the entire area with wine cap mushroom spores. I’m trying to create a mini sytropic agroforestry test garden right on sight.
The first to notice the activity were the local children. My plan was working. I would show them what I was doing and explain the idea of sheet mulching to them. Light topics of soil biology and organic gardening lessons started.
This spring, the plan has progressed quite well. There are now 8 raised beds claimed by my fellow neighbors. One of them is a gentleman in his 70s. He thanked me for my work, and told me that I had given a 70 year old man something to do this summer. He was so excited that he was checking his tomato plants every day.
One family I met has come from Pakistan via Germany. The father doesn’t speak English, but his 8 year old son is dragging him to the garden to show his dad how many new strawberry blooms have popped out.
One area has pumpkins planted and I’m hoping to have a pumpkin patch for the kids. If we can get enough food to harvest, I plan to run canning or other workshops at the clubhouse of our condo. I want to teach my neighbors the skills that most people living in condos would never have. It should have a nice side effect of building strong community along the way.
The second thing I did to start to build community is creating third spaces outside of my own community. I again went back to asking myself what I’m an expert at, and I came back to spices. My product is a spice grinder, so naturally I’ve tasted it all. People look to me as a spice expert, so why not lean into that? At this point I’ve been teaching cooking lessons for over a year! The idea of a spice tasting class was born. I asked around my customer base if they thought a class was a good idea. Gather people together, taste spices like you would coffee or wine, note what you think – learn and explore, no right or wrong answers. My customers LOVED the idea. Post covid everyone was trying to get events in the stores going again.
It was perfect, all I needed was a real solid class I could package and empower others to run. I partnered with a new cooking school that opened close by and dove in. I created a spice tasting and blend building workshop. The idea is that any retailer could host this event. Get 2 or more people together in a room and guide them to discover what they like! The first class was electric. We learned about pepper and other spices, swapped recipes and the participants got to hang out and socialize like neighbors. I could have cried.
Now I’m on a mission to get anyone who will listen to consider hosting this workshop. I’m flying across the country to lead as many as I can, and inspire others to do the same. Our company created a ‘community’ web page to announce these live in person events to all of our audiences.
My lesson for myself is this – find a north star and work towards it. For me it was building community so I can feel secure. One tiny step might seem insignificant, but everything can build on itself. Ask yourself what your strengths and skills are and lean into them. You might surprise yourself.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been both. The bumpy road is what made me respond and try to build something meaningful. I heard an interview with Maria Schriver, where she said that when she hears people complain, she responds with “That’s terrible, what are you doing about it?”
The biggest struggle has been believing in myself, and fighting through the imposter syndrome.
For building my garden, it was dealing with a diverse set of neighbors with competing goals. When you live in a community, you might get people complaining that your flowers are attracting too many bees.
For building my spice class, the biggest struggle is getting everyone to see what I see in the potential. It’s not a short term business play, and that can be hard to get poeple to buy into.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I really love to forrage food in the PNW and create amazing dishes out of those ingredients.
My specialty is wild forraged mushrooms – uh-mazing. Wake up early, hike in the Tualatin Mountains, grab 10 lbs of oyster mushrooms, come home and create some fried ‘chicken’, maybe a nice mushroom risotto!
Foraging wild greens for salads is also my specailty!
I love to find something amazing in the wild, and work backwards to create an amazing dish to show it off.
How do you define success?
First is how well respected you are, second is how much you improve the lives of others, third would be are you providing enough value to others that you can earn your living?
Pricing:
- Half Day Private Chef $300
- FinaMill Spice Grinder $80
- Creating Connection – Free
Contact Info:
- Website: https://radiancemd.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weighlessway26
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davelnelson
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finamilldave/
- Other: https://www.finamill.com
