Yeah.

But I think there are elements of things that would've helped me, um, had somebody have told me, c- especially coming from North America where we do business different.

North America is a commercial market economy.

France is the opposite.

For what?

Oh, God, there's so much to say about this.

Um, so my, my first business does rely on volumes of people visiting the city, and we have to be visible.

And, you know, there is this careful balance of making sure you find the people that are looking for you, and they understand what you deliver.

Mm-hmm.

An American gal who knows nothing about food, barely speaks French, now deciding I'm going to open a cooking school in the gastronomic world.

country, even though we know Paris is not the gastronomic capital, it's Lyon, but the gastronomic country of the world.

Did I get a few raised eyebrows and they, what are you doing here? Absolutely.

And I myself thought, what the heck am I doing? But in those early days, I can't even really credit myself.

Maybe I was stubborn or I didn't know anything else, but to just keep moving forward.

And sometimes that's all you need, right? You know, we don't, there's no such thing as answers.

I would imagine so, because that's kind of the backbone of what you're doing, right?

Yes,

yes.

So as the like talc that I put all over my face so I wouldn't look too shiny, as that starts to just drip away, don't just look away, leave me my dignity.

Yeah.

What does the immediate future look like? I need to put a little context to share that.

Because the immediate future for me and La Cuisine are two different things.

And that's finally become so healthy.

And so what exactly does that memory elicit for you? And how do you tie that to where you are on your path today?

And I'm

like, there's been women for quite a while too, by the way.

It was just a funny reflection.

Same reflection I had from somebody when I started La Cuisine and they were like, there was no Instagram then.

How did you get clients? And I'm like, well, we know how to hustle.

We're a different generation.

Yeah.

Now, the last question for you, beautiful Jane, is can you describe for me what would be your favourite French day?

Where did that idea come from?

So just to give a little context of prior to that, Nikki, I had, you know, a number of family situations that were just lined up, uh, in a short period of time that were really difficult.

You know, deaths and illnesses and, you know, there was the straw that broke the camel's back that made me say to myself, "What am I doing here?" Which I almost felt schizophrenic.

I'd spent my whole life loving and clawing my way up to where I was, and then all of a sudden I wake up one day and I think, "This is not where I'm meant to be." So what does one do when they're feeling discomfort? When you don't have the answers, I think the only thing you can do is but imagine and allow yourself to think of what are other possibilities for you, and that's just what I did.

And, um, and 100%, uh, you know, on a whim with friends visiting from London on New Year's Eve of 2008 going into '09, we're having dinner talking about all the different things we could be when we grow up, and this crazy idea of starting a cooking school came up.

And from then, I just let it harass me.

You know, we, we all get these beautiful delusional ideas all the time, but quite often we talk ourselves out of them really quickly.

Yeah.