Nourish’s Cherylanne Skolnicki

Cherylanne Skolnicki, founder of Nourish

Every story has a beginning, middle and an end. It also has chapters that help define major moments throughout your life. For Cherylanne Skolnicki, founder of Nourish, she thinks of where she is today as the latest chapter in her body of work.

“Getting to this particular place came first from a lifelong love of learning,” she explains. “I’m so curious about things that interest me and once I get excited about an idea, I have to pursue it.”

After spending 15 years of her career at Proctor & Gamble – where she learned nearly everything she knows about leadership and systems – she gained the confidence to go out on her own. Thankfully, she’s found her place in the world thanks to the support of a network of friends and family who have listened to her dreams and helped give those dreams life.

“Holding it all together has been my faith, which has allowed me to take courageous steps when everything else in me said to choose the safer path,” says Skolnicki.

Today, after taking that chance, she is the founder of Nourish, a home-cooking service for busy households. The team at Nourish then comes to your home and prepares several meals at once to help you stay healthy and relaxed at the end of a long day.

Skolnicki says that her inspiration is inspired by excellence in any form. She finds that when she sees someone using their gifts with an amazing outcome, she wants to put her own gifts to even greater use.

“It might be an encounter with a musician, an athlete, a writer or a chef that lights me up,” she adds. “But the common thread is always excellence. I look for it everywhere and often find it in unexpected places.”

Now that she’s putting her own passions and gifts to use at Nourish, she’s doing what she loves. She enjoys the opportunity to work with people who are trying to design lives of significance and are committed to doing so on their own terms.

The team behind Nourish is primarily comprised of mothers who now have the opportunity to monetize their passion for cooking during their children’s school day. “In my coaching practice, it describes my clients, who are so committed to making the changes that will produce the life they know is meant for them,” Skolnicki says.

Although she’s now doing what she loves doesn’t mean she hasn’t faced setbacks in the past, most of which she says were self-inflicted. “I’m a bit of a recovering perfectionist,” she explains, “and I’ve spent a number of years working on cultivating resilience so that when something goes off the rails, it doesn’t make me so crazy.”

When she says crazy, she really means that she’ll go straight for a stack of books to consult the experts when something isn’t working in her life. Instead she now focuses on the art of failing forward (as taught by John Maxwell), viewing failure as a process rather than an event and as something to be expected and embraced rather than avoided.

“My business path has taken lots of twists and turns in the last five years, but each setback has led me to set us on an even better course, so some of this must be sinking in,” she laughs.

Skolnicki describes herself as someone who is always looking forward to the future. She likes to wake up everyday certain that something amazing is going to happen – something that motivates her to keep choosing to move forward instead of going back into her comfort zone of safety and certainty. “Optimism is a powerful force, and I just try to harness it,” she says.

That’s why, in 2015, a lot of her creative energy will go toward writing her first book – something you’ll want to keep an eye out for in the future, with the same enthusiasm Skolnicki has each day she wakes up.

To learn more about Nourish and Skolnicki, visit www.nourishyourself.com and www.cherylanneskolnicki.com.