From Criminology to Cuisine: Tanya's Journey of Embracing Change and Following Passions

Ready for an adventure? 

Let's hop aboard and sail through the exhilarating journey of Tanya, a criminology student turned yacht chef who dared to follow her passion. In our candid and heartfelt conversation, we explore Tanya's vibrant life choices, from her initial dreams of law enforcement to her thrilling escapades as a yacht chef, and her brave decision to move back to Canada just before the pandemic. Get ready to be inspired as Tanya shares her creative process of crafting magical illustrations and her delightful experience of weaving a children's book with her father.

As we venture into the second part of our voyage, Tanya opens up about exploring entrepreneurship and the joy of creating a book series for her daughter. Showcasing her family's Persian heritage, this series is not only a fun read but also carries a profound message of overcoming obstacles and celebrating achievements. Tanya generously shares her wisdom with fellow entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of appreciating your own accomplishments and avoiding the trap of comparison. Tune in to hear about her experiences with book pre-orders, and how it helped shape her printing decisions. Join us for this inspiring episode with Tanya as we celebrate the beauty of change, passion, and creating something that is truly your own.

Stay in touch with Tanya:

ZoeTupeloBooks.com

https://www.instagram.com/zoetupelobooks

www.instagram.com/cheftanyabay

www.facebook.com/ZoeTupeloBooks

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Chapters

• 0:02 Following Passions and Embracing Change
• 13:39 Discussing Children's Book and Entrepreneurship

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the next episode of the Overcome Yourself podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with I didn't clarify Tanya. Yeah, tanya, so excited to be here with Tanya. So, tanya, take it away, tell us who you are and tell us your amazingness. I'm so excited to be here today.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Thanks, nicole, I'm so excited to be here as well. I thought about this question. I'm like I know she's going to ask me this. Should I give her the long form or the short form? So I was born in Iran.

Speaker 2: 0:36

My family immigrated to Canada a few years after I was born, between three and four, and went through school here, and then I was that person that kind of knew what they wanted to do with their life. So in high school I thought I wanted to get into law enforcement. I think I watched too many of those CSI shows and I studied criminology in university and I was an auxiliary sergeant with the Toronto Police. I was working with one of my professors that was really active in the medical marijuana movement in Canada at the time, and then one day I decided to go to Australia to visit my cousin.

Speaker 2: 1:11

I took kind of a leave of absence and that was kind of the new chapter in my life. I caught the travel bug and started traveling and everything in my life was focused around traveling. I was bartending in Toronto and working at a science museum and I would just like work as much as I could in the summer and then save up and escape in the winters so cool. Yeah, it was. It was. I was kind of a snow bird at a young age, I guess. And then I was living in Costa Rica.

Speaker 2: 1:41

At the time I was on a scuba diving boat in the Bahamas, met my husband and he said how would you like to be a yacht chef? And I was like, oh my gosh, that sounds spectacular. I can travel and I can work and do something creative. Amazing A little did I know my days were gonna be like 18 hours a day. We did see some amazing places and we did that for close to a decade. And then I became pregnant with my daughter, zoe, and we were living in St Pete, florida at the time. My husband is Floridian, born and raised, and then, just before the pandemic hit, we were on this side of the border visiting family and I was pregnant with my second and we thought, you know what, let's just stay close to family. And so now we're in Canada. Oh that's a good one, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:24

And so a few years back my dad suggested we translate some Persian stories. You know, I guess, having my daughter and the stories that my parents were telling her and stuff like that, and I can't read Persian and he's like why don't we translate and transliterate these stories? And then he's like, well, we're gonna have to get an illustrator. And I was like, wow, I don't like to delegate things, I like to do things myself.

Speaker 2: 2:49

So I'm like I'm gonna learn how to do illustrations and I love art, but I really haven't done much of it, and so that was my new project. I was learning watercolors and then I was like I'm gonna do my own watercolors and I would stay up late and put on YouTube videos and you can learn everything on YouTube.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Now, right, so I've learned so many things on YouTube, right my whole business. I learned on basically.

Speaker 2: 3:13

Exactly so. I started playing with watercolors and it was exactly what I needed, like it was. You know, I'm a new mom. I've been a mom for about six months to a year at this point, and it was just I put on the baby monitor and so we would be sleeping. I did do the hunter's role picture together and I found everything was OK. So I started doing the robot. I'd still have this relationship around myself, but both of these things were learn from my, my dad.

Speaker 2: 3:38

I worked hard on this kind of выполch and I finally understood why I wanted it. I was very humble but looking back my dad they would've he tinced a good bosom function to put on top. At that age people would think I'm like who are you? I can learn from you and getting pre-orders pretty much for authors and illustrators it's really important to know how many books to print. You know like it changes very so much, right? I mean I could have printed 10 books, or I could have printed a thousand books, and so to know, to kind of put it out there and find out who's actually interested in this project, and the feedback was amazing. I had so many wonderful, so much wonderful support and I think, if I have my numbers correctly, I got pre-orders for 165 books, I think.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Wow, yay, congratulations Thank you so much, and then an extra 20 that I'll be donating, an extra 25 that a friend has donated and we just yeah, so like just under 200 books, and I'm really excited about that.

Speaker 2: 4:37

Thanks. So, yes, my life has been pretty much like focusing on this book. Now I went from. You know, being a Yacht Chef was a pretty creative job. I think I had a lot of fun with plate presentation and I think you know I was telling someone about this the other day. I think that being a Yacht Chef I loved. One of the reasons was constantly hearing someone tell me that my food is amazing. You know, like I'm that person that needs to hear someone tell me that what I'm doing is great, and so, you know, you become a mom and then you're like huh, no one's telling me that anymore.

Speaker 1: 5:11

I have to find that within, you know so. I love that. I never thought of that before. But yeah, yeah, the chef, you get a lot of compliments If you're good, right?

Speaker 2: 5:21

Right, right exactly.

Speaker 1: 5:24

That is amazing. I love your story of following your passion. I was a CSI kid too.

Speaker 1: 5:32

I was just telling my partner the other day how Thursday night was CSI night, like you know home is done and you know, dinner would be like done and like dishes would be washed and everybody would gather up in the living room. And I wanted to be a forensic pathologist until I found out that you have to work with a live people for like a lot of years before you can actually specialize. And I was like, no, I'm not here for that, and so and there's like four people probably who do it right.

Speaker 1: 6:00

It's like such a small right. Yes, yes, yes. So no, but it's kind of cool because I tell people like the forensic side of things comes in when I'm building a website or when I'm, you know, doing something with coaching, and it's putting those clues together to find out where's this problem coming from or what happened in this situation, and so we kind of still use a lot of those skills that we learned. And I remember one of my science projects was how to, how to like find fingerprints, like you know, with the dust. And then later on there was an episode of CSI where Grissom used lead, like from the pencils, from lead pencils, and I was like I didn't think of that. Oh my god, random, random little side note that no one would think of.

Speaker 1: 6:45

But yeah, I love how you literally just followed your passions. Like you were like I want to do something in law enforcement and then you did it and then you were done and you're like I want to do something else now and then you did it. Right, talk to me about, because those are big, like those are big decisions. So talk to me about the process of making those decisions. Did you have to overcome yourself or are you just kind of like this is just your thing and you just went for it full force.

Speaker 2: 7:14

You leaned in right, you just leaned in right, right, I'd like to say that I'm this like easygoing, go with the flow kind of person. You know I'm a Pisces and if I say that to my husband he won't agree with me. Like that, I'm definitely not super easygoing. Um, I think that I believe a lot about, um, the energy and the feeling of things. You know, like it just seemed right to travel, it just seemed right to take this trip and to um, to try something new, and I don't think I've ever really feared trying new things. I do have commitment phobia, so like getting myself, you know, trying to commit with friends the other day to like a date in the future that we can do something like I don't know, I don't know what my life's going to be like in a week or a month or a year, you know?

Speaker 2: 7:56

um, so, uh, the commitment stuff is a little hard for me, but just feeling something and giving it a try, I think that's always been part of my personality. Um, you know, if I was traveling, there's a lot of times when I'm traveling with someone to be like, oh, like I think I was in, we were in Switzerland yeah, I was on interlock in Switzerland, I think and I met a group of people and I'm like, oh, we're going to Slovenia next and I was like I've never really heard of Slovenia, but that sounds cool, let's go there. And so, you know, I tagged along with them and it turned out to be a really amazing trip and met some new friends there, and so I think I've been kind of open to trying new things and and going with the flow. Um, the part that slows me down is the like overthinking in terms of like trying to make something perfect, you know. So if it's trying something you want, open for that, it's when it's like my project, and now I'm like, okay, my name's going behind this and I need to make it perfect, which I think is what slowed us down so much in this book.

Speaker 2: 8:50

Um, I was like no, but the cover's not this and we need to change this. And my dad's kind of the opposite. He's like it's great, it's wonderful, it's perfect, let's get it out there. And I was like no, no, no, no. And so I think we've come to a happy medium. The book's not perfect. It's never gonna be perfect, um, but it's really good now it's. We've made some changes that really made it good. So I think, um, being aware of my perfectionism side was definitely important. And then setting realistic goals and really following through on them. Um, I would, I would like come up with these like lists of okay, I want to do this, this and not today, and I put timelines to them and as soon as my timer would go up, I'd set an extra timer, I'd be like, oh, give me like half an hour more and that's not okay. You can't do that when you're a procrastinating perfectionist.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Yes, um, there's a lot of gold in where you said I love that balance. Um, of having your dad like be, like no, let's just put it out there. Because as women, we do tend to be more perfectionist and one of the things that I've learned to embrace is taking in perfect action. Um, and one of the examples that I like to to give some of my clients when they're nervous about putting something out and they're like I don't know if it's not perfect, I'm like do you remember when they rolled out Disney plus? I can edit this out, give me one second, okay. So I was like do you remember when they released Disney Plus?

Speaker 1: 10:12

Like the thing, it was a mess. Like the first day that they released it, nobody could log in. It was logging people out. There was like almost no videos on there and you know what? They put it out. They dealt with the problems and like people. Most of the people I interviewed are like oh, I don't even remember that. I'm like yeah, that's exactly. My point is that people don't remember those tiny mistakes. So they put it out even though it wasn't perfect. They're like all right, let's just bait a role with this and see what happens and we'll fix the mistakes as we go, and that's such a big deal, especially for us women, to hear, is taking that imperfect action. It's okay if it's not perfect. It's more important that it's out there helping people and the people will let you know, hey, there's like a typo, and then you fix it, and then those, the books with the typos, become limited edition.

Speaker 2: 11:01

Right.

Speaker 1: 11:01

You know, they become relics. You know, yeah, and it reminds me of something I read in a book, the confidence code, about how, like when they compare like a woman and a man looking like a job offer and a man will look and he's like, oh, I know about 60% of this stuff, I'll figure it out, I can figure out the other 40%. But a woman looks at it, she goes, I know about 90% of this stuff, but I don't know 10%, so I shouldn't apply, because obviously I'm not qualified and it's kind of like what you're saying is kind of like the entrepreneur version where it's like oh my God, it's 90%, perfect, but I can't put it out because it's 10%, messed up, and like your dad is like dude, we are 60% of the way, we're good, let's just put it out there and so, coming to that happy media, that's where we get things done, you know, because, like you said, things are never going to be perfect.

Speaker 1: 11:55

So that's a really important lesson.

Speaker 2: 11:57

And what disservice are we doing by not putting it out there? Like there aren't many books that are in Persian, that are written in this phonetic script, so that someone who can't read the Persian script can pick up this book and read it, you know? And so me not putting it out there is like preventing people, like a lot of my cousins who are half Persian, or maybe their spouse is not Persian to be able to introduce these really cool stories to their kids and expose them to, you know, new cultures, new experiences. No-transcript that that was helpful for me to hear someone say that.

Speaker 2: 12:30

I was like, yeah, I am doing a disservice, so let me get it together and get it out there and and that persistence like you were saying like just moving forward, you know, like just Facing it head-on, moving forward, and as long as we're going in this direction, as opposed to that, and Hopefully, when you see it that way, selling is an act of love, like by you, by someone giving you money for this book.

Speaker 1: 12:53

It's an act of love that you're showing them because, like you said, it's that's incredible, like, like, even like you wrote a book, okay, but like the fact that you, like you said, you translated it, and so more people are gonna have access to some. That's so important, like I'm, my family's Cuban, and so I understand the importance of like passing these things down, these stories, like Like Jose Marti he was a very famous Cuban writer and to be able to pass those stories down, even if maybe, you know, people don't speak Spanish. Be like here, I could still share these poems with you because somebody translated them, and so that's a beautiful thing, so I commend you for that. That's, that's amazing. Yeah, yes. So how do we stay in touch with you? How can we buy your book?

Speaker 2: 13:36

Talk to me about that, thank you. So my daughter, zoe, was my inspiration and you might notice she's got like really big blue. I, my husband's actually half Cuban, believe it or not, but he has a little bit of a Swedish side in him, so she's got these big blue eyes and so the, the bird that I illustrated, has these really big blue eyes. So Zoe, and her name is Zoe Tupelo, so the my website is Zoe Tupelo books, so it was gonna be a series. Now I got to think about my son and be like, oh my gosh, is he gonna be upset that I have a book series under Zoe's name? But anyway, so Zoe Tupelo books.

Speaker 2: 14:10

And what I've done is I've transferred a lot of the information of my Kickstarter over, because the Kickstarter I put like some fun. You know I made some like pillows with the illustration of the bird and some puzzles and random things like that, that kind of compliment the book and some activity pages, coloring pages. So I'm gonna transfer this over and so Zoe Tupelo books. Also, my Instagram is also Zoe Tupelo books, I think. Yes, so you can follow me there. Think on Facebook is probably the same, but all the links are on my website as well and I'm sure you put those on the yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:44

Yes, and the show notes, yes. Everything that she's mentioned is gonna be down below in the show notes or where you know the note. I don't know wherever you're watching this. The notes will be around here somewhere, so make sure you click on those links, um, and you follow Tanya by her book. Um, who's the book for? Like, it's like a little kids book.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Yeah, so it's a nursery rhyme.

Speaker 2: 15:06

Um, so my daughter's or, and she's learning how to read now, so she knows the phonetics and so she picks up the book now, and I had another mom commented how it was so fun to her to see her, like six-year-old, be able to read Persian.

Speaker 2: 15:17

So, even though it's more geared towards five and under, the fact that a six-year-old who can speak the Language can now like read it because of the phonetics, so yeah, I'd say five and under is probably ideal and there's, you know, the story is about Um overcoming obstacles and celebrating achievements. Right, it's about this, this bird who like hatches from the egg, and I think a lot of times these stories allow us the opportunity to talk to our kids about these messages, you know, so you can read the nursery rhyme. It's fun, it it sounds interesting and has a beautiful rhyme and even the English translation we made it into a rhyme. But I think that opportunity to discuss those things with our kids and be like hey, like what's an example of something you did that was hard at First. You know you weren't able to write. You know we talked to our daughter. Now she loves riding her bike. She wasn't able to at first right, and she was.

Speaker 2: 16:08

Yeah, and so for my, for myself, like being able to write, like create this book and get it out there, that was, that was definitely an obstacle, and I'll, uh, celebrate.

Speaker 1: 16:17

There was a point in your life where you didn't know how to write, and now you wrote a book exactly. I love it. I love it. So any last minute tips, like everything that you've told us, is just absolutely amazing. I'm blown away by you. I just want you to know, um, by the way, what part of florida is your husband from?

Speaker 2: 16:34

Uh, so he was born in gainsville but grew up in the keys. And then we lived. When we were working on boats, we were mostly in miami, fort lauderdale in bahamas, which is beautiful, um. And then we lived in saint kete, florida.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Love it. I'm in miami, so that's why I was asking Right.

Speaker 2: 16:48

Yeah, I'm gonna be there for the boat show in a few weeks.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Oh, very cool, love it, love it. So, any last minute tips for entrepreneurs out there who have a dream in their heart, who want to follow that dream, or who want to write a book, like you've done, who maybe want to like bring something from their culture over. They want to translate it. Um, what advice do you have for us?

Speaker 2: 17:12

I would say try not to compare yourself with others too much. I really struggled with that and I think as starting this book, you know, I joined all these Facebook groups with authors and illustrators and I was like, oh, they're doing this on their Kickstarter and they're doing that, and it was good because I learned a lot from them. But comparing myself really like hindered things in a way as well.

Speaker 2: 17:31

So, try to learn from others, but don't compare yourself to who you are today, to who you were, let's say, a month ago or a year ago. You know, like I don't think a couple of years ago I thought that I was gonna put this book out there, but I've come so far and you know some of those skills that I've learned, and just step by step and knock down those walls and you'll become a lot stronger in the end.

Speaker 1: 17:55

I love it. You're amazing. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, yes, absolutely no, it's absolutely my pleasure. So do you have any final words before we sign off here? No, that's it.

Speaker 2: 18:08

I'm excited to get in contact with other author, illustrators and other people who want to introduce Persian to their kids and study. I love it.

Speaker 1: 18:20

Thank you so, so much, tanya, for being here. Like she mentioned everything that we talked about, all the links, all her offers. Like you can follow her on Instagram, you can grab her book. All of those links excuse me, are gonna be down below in the show notes or wherever you're watching and so be sure to follow Tanya like this is incredible. All right, have a great rest of the day and we will see you, guys next time.