What cooking taught me about business
I told my grandma years ago that she had to teach me how to cook before she passed away. Her response was simple, “watch me.” So I did.
I watched the care and love she put into every step, yet also the efficient swiftness she used to create a meal. I watched her move through the kitchen with instinct and experience, knowing how much of one ingredient to add over another without measuring or hesitation. I watched her take ingredients from scratch and turn them into restaurant-worthy meals, not through complexity, but through understanding.
That experience stuck with me because it revealed something I did not fully understand at the time. Cooking is not just repetition, it is judgment built through time. It is knowing when to slow down and when to move quickly, when to measure precisely and when to rely on instinct.
Business works in a very similar way. Care and intention have to go into every step, whether that is customer-facing marketing strategy, supply chain and operations planning, budgeting, or risk management. These are not separate functions, they are interconnected pieces of the same system, and each one has to work properly for the company to function as a whole.
At the same time, efficiency matters just as much as care. Knowing when to work hard and when something can be optimized or outsourced is what allows a business to scale without losing structure. Not every task deserves the same level of attention, but every task still needs to be understood in the context of the system it supports.
Instinct also plays a role, but not as something separate from logic. Real-world experience creates a kind of decision-making clarity that cannot be fully replaced by theory. Over time, patterns start to emerge, and those patterns guide better judgment in uncertain situations.
When all of that comes together, data, systems, experience, and intention, the result is something that functions like a well-built recipe. Not perfect in the abstract sense, but consistent, reliable, and capable of producing strong outcomes over time.
That is what I learned watching my grandma cook.
