How Thug Kitchen's Creators Set Big Mother F*&$!#% Goals

Note: This episode contains explicit language   Prior to having Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway, creators of New York Times Best Selling cook books, Thug Kitchen, on our podcast, I wanted to know, "Do they curse as much in real life as they do as a brand?" The answer was - not surprisingly (and yet still delightfully) - of course. This episode of #WeGotGoals is marked E for explicit, and in it we dove into the "why" behind the profane language. As lighthearted and fun Davis and Holloway are to chat it up with, they mean serious business when talking about eating healthy and taking care of yourself. "Take that shit f*&$!#% seriously," Holloway said. "We want to grab the audience and shake the s*#$ out of them and say, 'Eat a f*&$!#% salad, I'm worried about you!'" Davis interjected, "The swearing levels the playing field." She emphasized that you don't have to change who you are or completely change your life if you pick up healthier and smarter eating habits. In creating The Official Cookbook, Party Grub and 101 Fast as Fuck (I know we have a strict one-swear-word-per-post policy on aSweatLife.com, but these two make it impossible when the title of their Best Sellers also happen to be curse words) Holloway and Davis became leaders in the world of eating for your health on social media and IRL. But that's not what they initially set out to do. In fact, before the Thug Kitchen brand, the two were posting to a Tumblr page for fun, with no idea who, if anyone, was reading. "A big reason our blog went viral was because Gwyneth Paltrow talked about it on The Rachael Ray Show," Holloway said. "We don't have any connections with either of them, but that was like a boom in traffic for us." But the reason Paltrow probably took notice, Davis notes, is because they were already doing the "unsexy work" and were committed to it. Her advice to goal setters looking to achieve big things? "Work as hard as you can and perform at the highest level you can regardless of who's looking because when they crack that door open for you just a little bit, you can be ready to shove your f*&$!#% foot in and make the most of it." Based on the nature of their content and lack of censoring on the regular, I wasn't surprised but I still appreciated how refreshingly truthful, open and honest these founders were about the ups, downs and lessons learned over the past few years during their Thug Kitchen journey. From the outside, when we see people achieve amazing things, we see what they have. Davis pointed out, though, that she learned going after what she wants means other things in life have to give. She begged the question, "What are you willing to give up in your life that you also love to get what you want?" She added, "You have to be willing to not be caught up on Game of Thrones and to not be able to go on dates and to not see people as much as you want to because you are pursuing this dream. It's not always adding stuff to your life, sometimes it's taking away." But for these two, the give and take has been worth it. From the recipes in the best selling cook books to the Forked Up podcast, to the direct messages you'll receive on Instagram, all things Thug Kitchen come directly from the dynamic duo. Davis creates the plant-based recipes, Holloway photographs them, and the two together are in charge of the bluntly witty brand voice that stands out among any other plant-based cook books and blogs, making this company so unique. And based on their goals for the future, I don't think they'll be going anywhere anytime soon. This episode is presented by Chicago Sport and Social Club, reminding you that summer is just around the corner. Get into a summer volleyball league now and use code “GOALS” to get 5 percent off until March 15. If you like what you hear, subscribe where ever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. --- Transcript: JAC: Hi there, it's Jeana Anderson Cohen from aSweatLife.com. We're going to get to the high achievers in just a minute, but first we want to tell you about something we're doing over at aSweatLife.com, Until April 9th, we’re running a kickstarter, so if you or anyone you know has ever been impacted by any of the work we do at aSweatLife.com, whether it's the podcast that you're about to listen to here, the ambassadorship, or the content we create on a daily basis, or even the events that we host here in Chicago and across the country. We’d love for you to help us fund the growth of our ambassador program, helping women set and achieve big, hairy audacious goals. So if you'd like to contribute, check the show notes for this episode or aSweatLife.com and you'll find a link to fund our campaign. Thanks so much. Here's the episode. JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatlife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristen Geil and Maggie Umberger. MU: Morning, Jeana. KG: Hi, Jeana. JAC: Good morning. This week, Maggie, you talked to Michelle and Matt from Thug Kitchen—and for our listeners at home, be sure you take your kids out of earshot. There will be swearing in this episode. MU: Yes, I did speak to the founders of Thug Kitchen, Matt Holloway and Michelle Davis. I was fortunate enough to get to hear a little bit about the behind the scenes of Thug Kitchen, how it came to be and how these two have created an incredible brand, multiple best seller cookbooks and now a podcast called Forked Up. JAC: So what's interesting and has always been sort of a part of the brand is that they sort of use swear words to punctuate their language in different and interesting ways. It’s their way of sort of staying authentic. We have a policy on how we use swear words at aSweatLife, it’s one swear per post, but they clearly adhere to a different policy. Maggie, do you care to elaborate? MU: Yeah, so I even asked them, you know, why swear what's the, the need to do it and for them it, it isn't necessarily a distinct desire to swear. It's just the response to being a little bit more frank about what their business is. It's a cookbook, it started out as a tumblr page and then became this best selling cookbook, Thug Kitchen, but they use swearing to cut through the clutter of beautiful photography that is just fluffy language and they saw good food on the pages, but they didn't relate to the words behind how it was portrayed and so being very candid with their audience about how they view the importance of cooking good food to be healthy and to take it very seriously, but it is just that. It's just the importance that it is and and because they developed this brand that is so honest and open, they're running with it and people are loving it to the point where all of their growth through social media has been organic because they can't promote their posts on Facebook because they're explicit, but they've chosen to go that route, to be authentic to who they are and to trust that their audience is going to respond the way they're going to respond and follow them or not follow them and they're cool with it. KG: You mentioned their Tumblr page just now and they had a stroke of luck when celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Rachel Ray noticed their hard work and promoted it themselves because they thought it was something authentically cool. How does this tie in to how they view goal setting? MU: The more we talked about goals, the more I could tell they were lighting up about talking about them and about their experience with going through the journey of starting a page for fun, not really thinking anything would come of it and then they were putting in a lot of hard work and that's when they got noticed by Gwyneth Paltrow and that was part of their. their points that they made to me as advice to other go-getters and people who were setting goals for themselves, is to know that you're going to work hard and to put in that hard work when no one's looking because you never know when someone is going to be looking and then you have to be ready when they are looking so that you can take flight and run with it and that's really what they've done from cookbook to cookbook and now to podcast. They are very much in the weeds, working day in and day out to produce everything that you see through the Thug kitchen brand. JAC: And here's Maggie with Michelle and Matt. MU: Awesome. So I'm here today with Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway, the authors and creators of Thug Kitchen. Thank you guys so much for joining me. MH: It's great to be here; thanks for having us. MD:  Yeah, we’re stoked, thank you. MU: And it's really fun too, because this conversation is about setting goals and I get to talk to both of you as individuals and as the co-creators of a brand that some people don't even know who created, but we get to, I get to hear the backstory and a little bit of the behind the scenes from Thug Kitchen, which I'm really excited about. So before all of the Thug Kitchen craziness, before the official cookbook and Party Grub and 101, Fast as Fuck, which there we go, now we're explicit. Um, I would love to hear sort of a day in the life of how did you spend your days before thug kitchen? MD: I worked full ...