Nisha Vora is a New York Times Best Selling cookbook author, content creator, and former lawyer known for her innovative approach to vegan cooking. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2012 and working as a lawyer, she exchanged her casebooks for cookbooks to follow her dream in the food world by creating Rainbow Plant Life, the vegan cooking website. With over 2 million followers across her blog and social channels, Nisha’s dedication to creating accessible, delicious, and meticulously tested plant-based recipes has earned her a loyal following and widespread recognition.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. This is a very special edition. We’ve got with us today Nisha Vora. She’s the author of Big Vegan Flavor and the founder of Rainbow Plant Life.

Nisha Vora: Hi John, it’s great to be here.

John: It’s great to have you. I’m in beautiful Fresno, California today and you’re in beautiful San Diego where you live and work down in the beautiful San Diego land, huh?

Nisha: Can’t complain. It is genuinely beautiful and the weather is perfect.

John: Like it is most days. Nisha, before we get talking about all your wonderful new book and I think I had to lift weights this morning before I picked this up. This is a gorgeous book. It’s not only big vegan flavor, it’s beautiful vegan photos and all the work you put into this. But before we get talking about your new book, I’d like you to share a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up? What was your inspiration to get on this fascinating and important journey that you’re on?

Nisha: I grew up in a small town in the desert here in California called Barstow. You may or may not be familiar with it. Based on the Grapes of Wrath or the movie the Hangover, we always get a little shout out as that town you drive through when you are getting gas or fast food. So not a lot there in terms of opportunities and exciting stuff. But my parents emigrated from India back in the early 80s. My father was a physician. He ended up opening his medical practice in the middle of the desert. And that is where I grew up.

John: As a child, some children migrate towards more plant based, plant based eating than others, were you a picky eater growing up? Were you thinking about diet and nutrition? Or is this something that happened in your teens and later as you were growing up?

Nisha: It definitely happened later in my teens when I was growing up. But my parents have been lifelong vegetarians, so at home, my mom cooked primarily vegetarian Indian food. We were allowed to get fast food and eat meat at school, but it was never like a big thing that I loved. Like I have these special happy family memories tied with pot roast or whatever these things are. And then as I became a teenager, I started just falling in love with cooking. I would watch hours and hours of the Food Network, take notes by hand, or my dad would TiVo it. I’m aging myself now, but TiVo it when I would watch it when I’d come home from school and then continuing into college and law school as a fun hobby. I would cook for friends and bake all the time. So really just fell in love with cooking as a creative passion project, but never assumed it would be a career.

John: Speaking of which, you and I talked a little bit offline about the great Joanne Molinari. It seems like you both followed the same path. You grew up, you got highly educated, became lawyers, and then you became plant-based evangelists and ambassadors. How did that happen? Why was law school on the menu before this next evolution? What was your inspiration to go to law school and then your inspiration to get out of the law business?

Nisha: Growing up with parents from India, education was at the forefront of our upbringing and it never felt forced for me. I loved school. I excelled at it. I went to UC Berkeley and studied political science and legal studies. I went straight to Harvard Law School. I loved law school. The academic rigor and the intellectual conversations and the problem solving. I assumed I would be practicing law until I retired, but as I quickly learned, practicing law and studying law are very different things. I worked both in the corporate sector in big law, like at a huge New York City Wall street firm, as well as in the public sector representing low income tenants and ultimately became disillusioned with the law, but also realized that it was making me miserable and that life was too short to wake up every morning and do something that made you miserable.

John: It’s really true. But good for you, you’re so humble. You glance over that you went straight from Berkeley to Harvard Law School, the greatest law school in probably the world, definitely in the United States. That’s no small feat so bravo to you and good on you, but also good on you that you saw that life’s not just about following the exact path that you originally thought, staying open and flexible to other opportunities. What was your ‘Uh-huh’ moment? You know, you weren’t happy. So then choosing your next path is always both exciting and also scary. How did you choose your next path and what it should be outside of the law?

Nisha: I actually had two ‘Uh-huh’ moments in this trajectory. The first was after I left Big Law, I decided the people here who are supposed to be the role models are people whose lives I don’t envy and in fact, feel bad for. You know, I don’t want my life to look like this. So after two years of that, my partner and I quit and we backpacked around the world for six months. And that was the first time I had taken any meaningful risk. I credit that decision to quit and backpack around the world as something that fundamentally transformed my identity about someone who was initially cautious about making big life decisions and who was okay with, as you mentioned, having success on paper, to someone who cared about living a life that was worth living and thinking outside the box and doing interesting things. So that was the first ‘Uh-huh’ moment. And then I did come back to New York City and practiced public interest law, which was more aligned with a lot of the things I believed in, but still really did not bring me joy, did not bring me satisfaction. I spent a lot of time coming home from work, watching garbage TV and doing these things that didn’t really bring me any meaning, until I got honest with myself, was like, “I don’t really want to be living my life this way.” I can tolerate it, but it just doesn’t feel like it’s worth worth getting up in the morning and being excited about. I wanted to get up every day and feel excited about something. Ultimately I started thinking about food because that was something I loved so much as a younger person and had fallen in love with and thought like, “Can I turn this into a career?” So instead of watching garbage TV after work, which brought me no satisfaction, I started learning about where my food came from. I started photographing the food I was making and posting it to Instagram. I never intended at that initial juncture that it would become a career, but I knew that it brought me happiness and I knew that it made me feel excited and motivated. I had gone plant based around the same time. So the just convergence of using cooking as a creative outlet, going plant based, and having this dissatisfaction with my career eventually converged into a decision of like, “Okay, I’m ready to take that next step into a different career.”

John: Talk a little bit about where in your trajectory that you went all in on plant-based eating. Was it before you went to Cambridge? While you were UC Berkeley? Was it at Cambridge? Was it when you got to Manhattan? Where in your youth did you decide that plant-based eating made you feel better and it was just the way you wanted to live your life?

Nisha: It was around the same time I was feeling really disillusioned at my second legal job back in 2016, and I initially stopped eating meat just because I felt heavy and weighed down and less energetic and sluggish. So I cut that out, started feeling more energetic, and that led me onto a path of where does my food come from? How do we grow our food? And I watched one documentary one night when my partner went on a business trip, and that led me to watch, I think eight or nine over the course of three days. Kind of just binge watched everything that was available at the time. I was aghast at how we treat animals, how factory farming influences the environment, what it does to humans, both from a health perspective, but also the humans who live around these factory farms and have all these health conditions because of it. I was like, “Well, I don’t really want to be eating this way. I don’t really need to be eating animals in order to survive.” So after that three night bender, I don’t know what you would call it, but I decided to…

John: You want a plant based bender?

Nisha: Yeah.

John: You were in Manhattan at the time when you…

Nisha: [inaudible]

John: New York is fairly open, obviously very diverse when it comes to the food world. Were you enjoying any plant based restaurants or plant based opportunities in the New York metropolitan area at that time?

Nisha: So many options. It’s one of the easiest places to be plant based, especially now in 2024. 2016 was a little bit more difficult. The hardest part for me was pizza. In New York City, pizza is such an institution and it’s delicious, but it’s also an opportunity for you to get together with friends and like, “Let’s go grab pizza after work.” So that was probably the hardest part for me, just not having that mutual experience with friends. It’s so much easier now, you can get vegan pizzas almost anywhere. But at the time, that was the hardest part for me.

John: That’s funny. So then vegan chef and food blogger. When did that evolution happen? You know, you were in your second legal job, the public, public servant side. How did you dip your toe in? When did you leave the law and close the door on that chapter and go full chapter on vegan chef and food blogger?

Nisha: I started just again posting stuff to Instagram when I was still a lawyer with no intention that it would become a job. But I think maybe around the time I hit like 50,000 followers on Instagram, I thought, “I don’t know, maybe I can get a job out of this.” I didn’t know what the word influencer meant. I don’t think it was very common back then, but a friend told me, “You’re an influencer.” I was like, “Okay, what does that mean?” And she’s like, “Well, you can get like work out of this.” So I didn’t know anyone at the time who was a full time influencer or blogger who actually made money. I honestly didn’t know a whole lot about what I was doing besides taking photos of my food. So I figured I would actually apply to jobs out there in the real world instead of trying to do something on my own. So I landed a job at an early stage food startup in New York City. I think despite not having any professional experience because they were a young startup and they saw that I was ambitious and creative and willing to get my feet dirty, they hired me to do social media marketing, recipe development, copywriting, food photography, all these different things that you wear a bunch of different hats when you’re at an early startup and then on the side in the mornings before work and the evenings after work. On the weekends, I was building up my own business. You know, first again with just Instagram and then starting a website and then starting a YouTube channel and et cetera and et cetera.

John: Talk a little bit about now, the website is Rainbow Plant Life. How big? What about the Instagram and YouTube? How can people find you? And we’ll put this in the show notes for our listeners and viewers. You don’t have to write this down. How can they best find you? What are the best platforms to look at all the beautiful food that you’re making and so creatively.

Nisha: I am on YouTube at youtube.com/rainbowplantlife and that’s where I share longer form cooking videos. If you’re interested in actually learning how to cook, I walk you through lots of different things there. I share not just recipes, but like how to cook, why we use certain ingredients, why things work the way they do. On my website, rainbowplantlife.com, you’ll find all of my printed recipes or recipes in printable form, I should say. And then on Instagram, those are more like the fun short 30, 60 second videos to give you just a little taste of what I’m cooking or what I’m working on.

John: Prior to while you were a lawyer, when you started becoming a vegan chef and a food blogger, were you good at technology, is this a new world for you too or you learned on the job?

Nisha: Absolutely learned on the job. I’m not necessarily tech savvy. I don’t even consider myself social media savvy. It’s just something that you have to pick up on the job if to do this work. And it’s still a learning experience. Every day, every month, there’s something new to learn, to master. So constant learning.

John: That’s awesome. What advice would you give others out there that are listening to this and really aren’t digging what they’re doing? Whatever it is, we’re not here to pick on the law. [silence] They’re not really fulfilled in what they’re doing and they have a bigger dream. How do you move from that fear to action? What did you find the greatest mental and emotional trick to help you move from fear to action?

Nisha: I think I have both big picture advice and also concrete practical advice. The big picture thing is what I alluded to earlier, is just being honest with yourself about what is it that you want out of life? Because for me, I realized life was too short to spend it doing something that made me miserable. And then eventually that transition to life is too short to spend it doing something I tolerate only. So having those honest conversations with yourself, like if you can take time out of your regular schedule, whether it’s like taking PTO for a few days to just sit with yourself and have these like hard, honest conversations, like what do I want out of life? What do I want out of my career? How am I going to get there? And if I’m not getting there right now, am I at least making steps to get on the path to getting there? And if not, what do you need to do differently? So those are just like the have the big picture conversation with yourself. Because I think a lot of us get so busy in our everyday lives. I have to get up at this time and go to the gym and then I have to go to work and then I have to come home and take care of my kids. And it’s like I don’t have to time to even think about those conversations. So like carve out the time. And then the practical stuff, I think is also equally important because it’s one thing to say follow your dreams, but we all need some practical advice. And the things that really helped me were one, to really understand the field that I wanted to get into and to be sure that it was something that I loved and could see myself doing on a daily basis. Of course, you can get a little taste of that by doing online research or by asking people to have informational interviews, people who already do this stuff in the same space. But I found in my experience, neither of those really gave me a truly clear idea of whether this would be the right path for me. As an example, when I was switching to practice private or public interest law from private practice, I did several informational interviews with lawyers who had done the same transition. I still was totally unprepared for what it was like to actually walk into New York City housing court and represent tenants in front of hostile opposing counsel and hostile judges. I was not emotionally, mentally prepared for how draining and disillusioning it would be. So what I would recommend people do is to figure out if this new field is truly for you, is to actually get into that field on a part time basis. You know, that’s what I did when I started my journey. I alluded to I worked on my business in the mornings before work, in the evenings after work, on the weekends. And it really gave me clear insight into what was involved in this career and what skills I needed to build in order to be really good at. So obviously everyone has different time demands, but if you can find a way to do this as a side hustle, even for a few hours a week, to understand what it’s truly like. Because I think a lot of us, especially with the rise of social media, have this idea of like, “Oh, I want to be a social media person or I want to be Insta-famous or I want to be on TikTok or whatever it is, but most people don’t know what it actually entails. So I would encourage folks to try to start actually doing it.

John: When your friends see you’re an influencer and you have 50,000 followers share now how many followers you have now on Instagram?

Nisha: I think it’s close to a million. It was 990,000 the other day.

John: Wow, congrats. So where does that leave you in terms of… Let’s just talk about practical. You know, practical is we all should be following our dreams and what we love to do. Of course we know not everyone gets a chance to do that. Since you’re doing something so valuable and so inspirational and so important, frankly speaking, about the type of food that you’re cooking and all the care that you put into it, are there advertisers out there because of the size and scale now of your following? Is that a good business now to be an influencer when you choose something as valuable as plant based eating to go into?

Nisha: Certainly there’s money to be made from partnerships and advertisers. For me, I have been trying in the last year or two to diversify the different sources of revenue just because I’ve seen in the last few years, especially with the pandemic like advertiser money, partnership money can dry up very quickly depending on where the economy is. So I encourage folks who are either influencers or bloggers or creators to find diverse ways to make money. So for instance, at the beginning of this year, I launched a paid meal plan subscription product, which is something that I completely own. It’s not dependent on an algorithm, of course, not everyone’s going to buy it, but I only need a small percentage of my audience to participate in order for it to be worthwhile. And we’re just constantly thinking about what else can we do? Because I don’t want to be as dependent on advertisement money, on partnership money.

John: Great point. If you’re a listener or viewer who just joined us, we’ve got Nisha Vora with us. Today she’s the author of Big Vegan Flavor, which we’re going to talk about today, and the founder of Rainbow Plant Life. To find Nisha at Rainbow Plant Life, go to www.rainbowplantlife.com. she also has a YouTube channel which will be in the show notes, and also obviously an Instagram channel as well that will be in the show Notes. Nisha, talk a little bit about your first cookbook. When did you go from vegan chef and food blogger to writing your first cookbook, the Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook?

Nisha: About a year after I started working at this food startup and so fairly early into my journey as a content creator, I got an email from a very good publisher, Penguin Random House, asking if I wanted to write a vegan instant pot cookbook because she liked my vegan instant pot recipes. I initially was like, “Surely you have the wrong person on this email. What makes you think I’m qualified?” I was still in the infancy of my career, did not feel qualified whatsoever. But I also was like, “Well, I think this is like a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I’m just going to do it.” I wouldn’t say like instant pot recipes were my first passion, but I liked doing them and I know a lot of people love the instant pot. So I was like, “We’re going to write this book.” So that book came out in summer 2019, a little over five years ago. At that point I had been side hustling for two and a half years and learned a lot at my job, but ultimately was feeling just strapped for time for energy. I couldn’t focus in the way that I wanted to on my own work because I had a full time job somewhere else. So about a month after the book came out, I decided to go full time for myself.

John: Got it. Was that the most challenging part about writing the book? Just time management and prioritization?

Nisha: Yes. I had a full time job and I had to finish the recipe development and testing and photography and writing of the book in less than six months, which looking back on is just a banana’s timeline. So it was just constant work. I’m really happy with how the book came out, but if I were to be able to do it again, I would have wanted more time.

John: What was going on in your personal life during this time as well? Your professional life we’re hearing about, were you married? Were mom already during this time as well?

Nisha: I do not have children, but I have been with my partner since law School. It was definitely an interesting figuring out of how do I balance my personal life with my work life. I will say during that period of time it was mostly work life and I’m very lucky to have a partner who supports that. We’re people who can give and take in different seasons.

John: Got it. So then when did you decide with your great publisher then to do the second book, which is this book that I have in my hand right now, Big Vegan Flavor, which is a big, beautiful, talk about one of the prettiest books I’ve ever held. Chock full of information. When did you decide to do this book?

Nisha: The first book was selling quite well, so about a year later I decided to start thinking about what that next book would be and I actually signed a contract, this book two weeks before the pandemic started. I lived in New York City at the time, so you can imagine nothing happened after that. For some period of time it was hard to get groceries. I couldn’t test recipes. Then I moved cross country to California, so basically didn’t start that project for a while. But my initial goal with it was when I first went vegan, there wasn’t a comprehensive guide out there that could explain here’s how to cook delicious meals without using meat or dairy. So just took a lot of trial and error and experimentation on my part on how to make plant based meals that satisfied me and that were not just edible, but actually exciting. So I wanted to like write this big book that would share the techniques and the tips and the tricks that I had learned along the way in one resource that people could rely on for years to come, but still make it feel accessible and fun and approachable. So that was like my big picture goal with the book. And then I think the other part was like, I think vegan food can be incredibly exciting and my diet is so much more varied and interesting and exciting than it was pre vegan, where I would make like a chicken breast and some broccoli and some pasta and do some variation of that every night. But in the mainstream, the vegan food just has a branding problem. It’s almost always associated with deprivation. It’s all the things you can’t have. You can’t have cheese, you can’t have butter, you can’t have fried chicken, you can’t have ice cream. I think even though more and more folks are recognizing that a plant based diet is better for the environment or for human health or for animals, it’s still often viewed as like, less than, like this thing that requires sacrifice. So I wanted to write a book that helped to shift the conversation that vegan food can be not just good for vegan food or not just good for your health, but it can be exceptional in its own right and it can be elevated in a way that any cuisine can be elevated.

John: When you would go out, you lived in the New York metropolitan area. Were you inspired when you went out and tried plant based cooking at some of their better plant based restaurants around the New York metropolitan area?

Nisha: All the time, I try not to have my phone out at dinner. The one exception is if I’m eating something and I’m like, “I got to take notes on, I want to make something similar or I want to use this flavor profile with certain ingredients.” So I’m always constantly inspired when I got tea.

John: Besides, no pun intended, cooking up your inspirational recipes, did you try them with your YouTube, Instagram crowd first? And then did the greatest hits make it into big vegan flavor? Or how did you make data decisions, database decisions, and what to include in this amazing book?

Nisha: You’ll notice in the first 140-ish pages, it’s not even recipes. It’s just a collection of techniques and tips and like how we can use flavors to balance each other and to enhance each other and how we can create interesting textures using plant based ingredients and how we can get the most out of our food. And the reason I did this is because I think one of the reasons, based on what I’ve been told by my audience, that they enjoy my YouTube videos and trust my recipes, is that I’m not just saying, “Okay, to a bowl you’re going to add two cups of flour, one cup of whatever.” I’m teaching you. The reason I’m using tomato paste from a tube versus a can, or the reason I’m soaking my beans, because I’m giving you that information. I think that creates a system of trust. So I wanted to make sure to include all of that in the book. As for the recipes themselves, a cookbook is a really nice opportunity to just be super creative. So whereas when I make a recipe for my blog, I’m often thinking about, does this have search traffic? Because that’s just the way recipes are surfaced on the Internet. I have returning viewers who come to my website and make my recipe specifically. But a lot of stuff, it’s just someone googling red lentil curry and they find my recipe. So I’m often thinking about is there search traffic for this? But with a cookbook it doesn’t matter. I can just be as creative as I want and I can come up with recipes even if people aren’t searching for them. If I know people are going to still love this recipe because it’s got interesting flavor or it’s got cool textures. So really the hardest part was the narrowing down the list. I think I originally had 250 recipes and my editor was like this is just far too much.

John: Right. It’s like that famous, I think it’s Hemingway quote. But I might have it wrong where you know where he said something to the effect that I would have written you a much shorter letter if I had more time?

Nisha: Yes.

John: So the Sophie’s choice of choosing the recipes must be an unbelievably difficult process. You know, you with your publishers.

Nisha: For sure.

John: Talk about, you mentioned this in a different context but I want to bring up the back the word, you talk a lot about on your platforms and in your book about the importance of seasonality and using seasonal ingredients in your recipes, including using the leveraging fresh local produce. Talk about the importance of seasonality, seasonal ingredients and the locality.

Nisha: I think unfortunately in this country so much of what we eat is grown out of season, shipped from far away. And what that means in practice is our food just tastes less good and it’s also less nutritious. You know, the longer food sits on a truck in transit from one state to the next, the less flavorful and fresh it will be and often less nutritious if the food quality just and the nutrients degrade over time. So to the extent that it’s possible for people, I really encourage them to shop locally and in what’s in season. I know it’s not possible for everything. Like you probably can’t buy beans locally unless you live in a handful of places. But for a lot of produce, which makes up a big part of a plant based diet and hopefully everyone’s diet because it’s so good for you, you’re gonna get the best produce if you go to your farmer’s market, if you have one. Even if you don’t have a farmer’s market, knowing which vegetables are in season when and buying those at the grocery store usually saves you money and always tastes Better. It’s November now, don’t buy zucchini. Wait until June, July, August, when zucchini is sweet and nutty and doesn’t taste like watery cardboard. You know, tomatoes this time of year, unless you’re in California like me, probably aren’t going to be very good, but they are exquisite next summer. So I think people will just have a better experience with vegetables and fruits, but certainly vegetables, if they buy things locally and in season, it tastes better, it’s better for you, and it just makes it more exciting to cook.

John: Talk about the just on the exterior. So you move from the New York metropolitan area to San Diego. San Diego, because I’ve lived there myself and still maintain a home there, is again part of the beautiful Southern California halo of health, wellness, sunshine. Are there a lot of plant based opportunities in terms of restaurants and food in the greater San Diego area? Or should there be?

Nisha: There are a fair number of places, but there could always be more. I tend to go to restaurants that are either vegan, vegetarian, or where I know they have like a full set of options. It’s not just a salad and fries because there are still many restaurants here where your option is pretty limited. So we could always use more. When I visit LA, I’m like, “Okay, there’s more here.” There’s more variety, there’s more diversity. We’re obviously not the size of Los Angeles or New York City. It’s definitely one of the easier places in the United States to be vegan, but we could always do better.

John: Talk a little bit about level of difficulty. You know, like I always comes up is when you’re in the Olympics and you’re a high diver and they hold up those cards and they rate you on how well you did. When I open up a cookbook and I look at a specific recipe, as a layman who doesn’t have much cooking experience at all, sometimes it can be a daunting experience. I could say, I want to make this, I want to eat this for sure, but the level of difficulty is too high. How do you balance creating delicious recipes and publishing them for both laymen, but also sophisticated cooks so there’s a, there’s a good enough balance of recipes that anyone can you sort of democratize the process for them?

Nisha: That’s a great question. So the book is specifically split up into different sections to sort of address this. The first section I mentioned is just education. The second section is what I call building blocks. So these aren’t full meals themselves, but they’re categories of types of foods condiments, grains, proteins and vegetables that can be prepared fairly easily and then mixed and matched in different ways for meals that are less complicated but still really flavorful. And that’s how I typically cook on weeknights, is I make a couple of things on Sunday, keep them in the fridge, and then when it comes time to cook, I can just cook a fresh vegetable or put on a pot of rice and then like mix and match things together. So the first four chapters of recipes, which would be chapters 5 through 9, because chapters 1 through 4, the education, have a lot of that stuff that’s designed to be a bit easier and more geared towards your weeknights. And then the second category of recipes, the remaining chapters, chapters 9 through 13, are the more big, exciting things that you’re going to make when you have more time. When it’s a weekend, when you have friends coming over, when you have a date night, when it’s a holiday, or if you’re someone who just loves cooking, has all the time, then feel free to explore there. So I specifically wanted to include both types of recipes in the book because I wanted to give you a full comprehensive collection of recipes for all times in your life.

John: Nisha, the show, purposefully, we’ve been doing the show with intention over the last 17 plus years with thousands of wonderful guests like you. I leave typically ideology and politics out of it, but this is your passion. . Let’s talk a little bit about the politics and ideology behind what’s going on in the food industry. I was recently, this summer with one of the top kidney cancer doctors in America. I wasn’t there under good circumstances. I had a loved one who was 45 years old, unbelievably healthy young man who’s part of my extended family who had stage one kidney cancer, which we resolved. But I was with this doctor who’s also very young and very well known and he said very clearly to me, “Don’t listen to what’s going on in the media and what they’re saying.” He goes, “Unequivocally, among young people, colon cancer, kidney cancer, pancreas, cancer, all on the rise. We are not winning the war on cancer.” I asked him specifically, “Doc, you’re a very evolved person. He was into not only traditional medicine, but he was very open to a lot of the great trends going out there in terms of infrared sauna therapy, cold plunging therapies and all sorts of other stuff, including eating very clean diets.” I said to him, “Why has this rise been happening and what are you seeing in your practice?” And he was very specific with me. He said, “There’s three reasons, John, and no one’s really clear on what.” He held up his cell phone, he goes, “he rise of the use of these things. Number one, the environmental burden we’ve put in ourselves now because of all the pollution that exists in the world. And third, the rise and the absolute rise of the consumption of processed foods.” Where do you fall in terms of ideology? And even though you do this and you love what you’re doing, and it’s very obvious to see this is you’re doing what you love now, when you’re an evangelist and ambassador for the plant based way of eating, how much does that come through in your messaging and also just in your general thinking?

Nisha: A lot to unpack there.

John: Sorry for the long question, but you’re in the middle of it. So I wanted to put it all out to you and let you go.

Nisha: When I first went vegan, I was shocked by everything I was learning both in terms of how animal agriculture and the food that we produce and subsidize in this country impacts our health, impacts the environment, impacts the animals. I really just couldn’t stop talking about it. I was that vegan who was just like, I want to talk about it to everyone. The problem is, unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to think of it, people don’t like being talked to or talked at about things that feel near and dear to them. Like when I tell you that you’re contributing to climate change by eating meat and dairy and fish, or you’re responsible for all these things. Nobody wants to hear that. So what I have learned over the last many years is that showing and not telling is what really resonates with most people. You know, there’s a small handful of people who are open to hearing we spend billions of dollars on subsidies for livestock producers. Like that’s a problem. But most people are going to be convinced in more organic ways. So my focus is to show you how delicious and satisfying plant based eating can be that doesn’t require sacrifice. It doesn’t require feeling like you’re missing out or that you’re missing out on your family or culture. And showing you how you can do this sustainably and easily and with excitement at home. And in my experience that has been the most successful way for me to reach people to get them to change their eating habits. Not everyone’s going to go vegan overnight or ever. But I get hundreds of messages, comments, emails saying that my recipes have shown them that, “Oh, I don’t need to eat meat every day.” Like I’ve scaled back it dramatically and it’s showed my husband or my kids that they can do that too. I think for me that’s been my way of reaching people to hear a message that maybe they’re not ready to hear in explicit terms but are willing to work on in a more organic way.

John: Yeah, like you said, there’s so many false preconceived notions about plant based eating. One being I always find a little bit humorous at this point that it’s an all nothing proposition. And that’s absolutely not the way to look at this. Like you said, if people just incorporate 50% of their food intake and they take it out of inspiration from this great book, Big Vegan flavor, how much better will they feel just migrating part of their diet and intake towards plant based eating? I just think that all or nothing is just not a good way to think about this stuff. So here’s the deal, this wonderful book is another success. You have two books behind, you have a million followers online plus and, and you’re very young still. What’s the future hold? What’s your next step? What’s the right evolution of your career from here to keep expanding on your already successful platform and to continue to share all the good information and great recipes that you have, Nisha?

Nisha: That’s a good question. You know, if you had asked 25 year old Nisha, who had her life neatly mapped out in front of her, I probably would have had a great answer like here’s my five year plan, here’s my ten year plan. But current day Nisha, I wouldn’t say takes things day by day, but takes things like quarter by quarter. So it’s hard to say exactly what’s in store. The things that I think that I’d like to work on are continuing to provide ways to make plant based eating more accessible to people. So the reason we launched a meal plan subscription earlier this year was I wanted to meet people where they were. Like people have various difficulties around weeknight meals, whether it’s making grocery lists or figuring out what to cook in the first place, figuring out how much to buy, how much to cook. So we launched this meal plan subscription to meet people there and to provide solutions to their problems. We’re hoping to continue to expand upon that in the new year and years to come so that we can continue providing people with tools that enable them to eat delicious plant based food all the time or as much as they want, but still take off some of that stress. So maybe we will hopefully expand into physical products like sauces and spices and things that people can add to their culinary repertoire and make things a little bit easier, but still delicious and made with good ingredients. So there’s possibly that hopefully in the future more cookbooks. I love the creative flexibility of writing books and think there’s just something really special about having something in a physical product as opposed to online.

John: Has mom and dad still with us?

Nisha: Yes.

John: So what does mom and dad say about this? Your dad’s a doctor. What kind of a doctor was dad?

Nisha: Internal medicine.

John: So your dad was a classically trained internal medicine doctor. What are their thoughts about your their wonderful daughter, Harvard trained daughter, lawyer daughter becoming a big plant-based superstar influencer?

Nisha: They are the biggest fans, so that’s lovely. But I will say in the beginning, when I first decided to leave law, it was not an easy transition for me, but also for them as I mentioned, they are immigrants from India. They came here to create a better life for us through education and through hard work. So I think it took them some time to understand what I was doing and what I was working towards. But once they saw that not only was I happier, but I could also make a living, I think they were like, “Oh, well, you can pay your rent and you’re happy.” Now I can pay my rent and much more. But they were like, “Oh, as long as you’re doing well, that’s all we care about.” So now they’re the biggest supporters. They appear on my YouTube channel and they’re just such a great set of parents I’m lucky to have.

John: Let’s switch topics, but stay again on what your journey is. Talk a little bit about modern times, being a woman entrepreneur. And then let’s also then migrate that conversation to being a woman of color entrepreneur. Are things as democratized as they should be? Are the doors as open as they should be? Is there support for your efforts as there should be, or do we still have a way to go in terms of support of women entrepreneurs and support of women of color entrepreneurs?

Nisha: Yes, we still have a ways to go. I think I’m a little immune from some of it in the sense that I’m not an entrepreneur who requires invested investing from investors at this point. Maybe in the future I will. I know that women entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs of color particularly, have trouble accessing as much funding. So that’s not something that’s in my particular wheelhouse, but I know that it exists. I do think that the rise of social media has helped to democratize a little bit. You know, like in the past, I think we’ve all associated famous chefs as men, and we still do, even though women do the majority of cooking. I think with the rise of social media, we’ve been able to change our conceptions of what it means to be a chef, and we’re inviting more people to the table. So that’s exciting. But, yeah, I think being a woman online is always a struggle. I try to immunize myself from that by not reading that much about what people say, aside from trying to absorb the positive comments. But you do have to develop a bit of a thick skin and a bit of a distance from some of the stuff that you see online as a woman and as a woman of color.

John: But like you said, some of your future dreams in terms of bringing products to market and all those, you go from the digital world to analog world with real products, might take capital, might take stuff. So I’m sure that’s part of your thinking about what’s to come. How have you knowing your background a little bit and being a Berkeley, Harvard graduate? Obviously you’ve given some thought. Who do you look to for inspiration in terms of “They did it. I could do it as well.” In terms of what the future might hold in terms of having to raise capital and create a corporation with outside capital in it to help grow your already huge platform?

Nisha: That’s a good question. I don’t know if I’m ready to embark on that adventure of taking outside capital. There is one beauty brand that I admire a lot is started by a fellow South Asian woman called Live Tinted. And she started as an influencer. Her claim to fame in the beginning was she had this viral hack for covering your under eye circles. And from there she was like, “I want to be a businesswoman.” And she now runs a successful beauty brand and she has to sit in meetings with investors and raise capital and she has a thriving business. So yeah, I look to people like that who have done it as like it’s not only possible, but it’s almost necessary in this world. I don’t know if I’m quite there yet in terms of like being ready to take the plunge, but plenty of inspiration out there.

John: Talk a little bit about other trends that are out there. The rise of so Dan Buettner and Blue Zones. Does that help fuel also the openness to Big Vegan flavor and plant based eating and Rainbow Plant Life?

Nisha: I don’t know if I totally follow the question, sorry.

John: Van Buetner is the guy from National Geographic who wrote about Blue zones. And the Blue Zones meaning is for the most part plant based eating with a little bit of fish depending on locale and region. Does those trends get confused? Does the convergence of trends of plant based eating and people trying to get away from process eating, but also Blue Zones and others that have gotten their fair amount of publicity and visibility, do they help fuel each other and become wind at the back at some of the trends that you’re part of?

Nisha: Yeah, I think you mentioned earlier, it’s not an all or nothing proposition, like you have to be 100% vegan or you’re not doing it right. I think what’s nice is that there are different lifestyles like the Blue Zones movement that are predominantly plant based and give people an opportunity to eat much, much better, to eat much healthier and also in a way that’s better for the environment. I think there can be a little bit of a stigma behind the word vegan. I know I wrote a book that has the word of the title, but there can be a little bit of stigma behind that because of the judgment that sometimes come comes with it or the all or nothing that comes with it or just the perception that the food is like bland and boring. So it is nice to have these other movements to piggyback onto that people are more interested and open to eating plant based food even if it’s not specifically 100% vegan all the time. So I do think that is something that we’re moving more towards of the general public is willing and open to eating more plant based food, even if they’re not like, I’m going to go vegan tomorrow. So I do think it’s helpful to have different movements coalesce in the same general direction.

John: It’s so funny. I love the name of your book and of course I love the artwork on the cover, Big vegan flavor. But there was a time given that I’m much older than you and I’ve been a vegetarian since I’m 17 or so and a vegan, mostly plant based eating since 14 or so years, 13 or so years. But there was a movement back in the teens, 2014, 15, where people started dropping the word vegan and using plant based more. But you’ve now migrated back to vegan. Talk a little bit about when you and the publishers were getting together and how you name the book and wanted to put that right up there on the front of the cover.

Nisha: There’s a couple of reasons. So one is like I mentioned earlier, I want people to know that vegan food can be phenomenally exciting and that it’s not this less than thing. I don’t want hide from it. Even if you don’t identify as vegan, I think there is just a really exciting, delicious way to eat. When you remove meat from the equation, the creativity becomes endless. You’re not dictated by, “Okay, I have this piece of meat on my plate. How can I build everything around it?” It’s like, “Oh, I can start from any number of vantage points.” I just think it’s a more creative way of cooking. So I want to celebrate that and not like shy away from it. I think also there is a divide in the vegan plant based world. Plant based is usually used to refer to plant based for health reasons. Whereas vegan is just oftentimes more used for ‘We don’t want to eat animal products.’ I did go vegan for primarily ethical reasons. And the food I make is generally whole food based. But I do know some people who are more strict on their diet who would not consider it it plant based. All the like whole food plant based. So like I use olive oil in my cooking. I use sugar from time to time if necessary, I use regular flour. I know that some folks who are very strict on the whole foods plant based wouldn’t consider everything in there completely whole food plant based.

John: Now you said you went with your partner, when you took your break, you went with your partner on a six month journey around the world. Was there a country that stands out that had the best or at least the most options that were the most delicious plant based food opportunities that you traveled through during that six month period?

Nisha: I wasn’t vegan back then, I was an omnivore. But I will say Thailand was so easy. I didn’t like eat a ton of meat back then anyways and it was so easy. The food there is just so naturally flavorful and they have so many options. I think a lot of Southeast Asian countries are plant based friendly because they use a lot of tofu and the flavors in the condiments like in the curry paste in the sauces can easily be made vegan if they’re not already vegan. So yeah, Southeast Asia was my favorite part, specifically Thailand.

John: That’s so wonderful, Nisha. Thank you so much for the generosity of your time today for our listeners. Again, to find big vegan flavor please go online to Amazon.com or your local bookstore, barnesandnoble.com or any other great bookstore where you can find good books. Buy this book, try some of the recipes, you’ll feel better. You don’t have to go 100 vegan to be to enjoy this book. You can just incorporate in your life. This is wonderful. Also to find Nisha and her website please go to www.rainbowplantlife.com. of course we’re going to have in the show notes her Instagram page, her YouTube channel as well so you can watch her videos and learn how to cook plant based vegan. Great cooking. Nisha, thank you for your time today. But more importantly, thank you for all you do to make the world a healthier and better place all around.

Nisha: Thank you so much for having me, John. This was wonderful.

John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry with thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs and business leaders. Engage is the go to spot for booking talent for speeches, custom experiences, live streams and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit LetsEngage.com this edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.