'Top Chef' star Padma Lakshmi told us how she manages her time to avoid getting overwhelmed. Here's her advice for finding your career focus.
- Padma Lakshmi, host of Bravo's "Top Chef," has held many roles throughout her career, including model, actress, executive producer, author, food expert, and business owner.
- Making the "gut-wrenching" decision to shut down her jewelry line helped her realize she needed to focus her career.
- Lakshmi told Business Insider how she learned food was the core of her career and how entrepreneurs can be more focused in their goals.
- Click here for more BI Prime content.
Padma Lakshmi is perhaps most well known as the host of Bravo's "Top Chef," but she's also an outspoken feminist and activist. She often uses her platform to make political statements, like a Fourth of July pie reading "close the camps" that went viral. She also encourages women to advocate and mentor one another.
Lakshmi, 49, has held many roles throughout her career: model, actress, executive producer, author, chef, and business owner.
Pursuing multiple jobs and passions, whether full-time or as side-gigs, is known as a "multi-hyphenate" or "portfolio" career, and the trend is gaining popularity in the US and worldwide. For many people, holding multiple jobs is the bare-minimum to afford the cost of living. For others, side-hustles and entrepreneurship are more appealing and accessible in a gig-economy.
Not until later in Lakshmi's career, when she made the "gut-wrenching" decision to shut down her jewelry label, did she rein in her career to focus solely on food. "It's a scalability issue. There's only so many hours in the day," Lakshmi said.
Lakshmi talked with Business Insider at an event for Stacy's Rise Project about the sacrifices she made to further her career and how entrepreneurs can narrow their career focus.
The 'gut-wrenching' decision to shut down her business
Lakshmi had a lot going on in her late twenties to early thirties. She was still making money as a model, auditioning for acting roles, writing for the New York Times and Harper's Bazaar, publishing her first book, and picking up roles on TV series.
"All of those things together made a living, and that's because as a young woman, I didn't know which was going to take off," she said.
She took the gig as host of "Top Chef" in 2006 to promote her second book, "Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet," but didn't think it would be a major launching point in her career. Eventually, she learned the harsh reality that she couldn't keep stretching herself thin.
By 2009, Lakshmi had been hosting "Top Chef" for a few years, published two cookbooks, became pregnant, and was trying to pivot away from modeling. She used the funds from a Pantene ad campaign to start her jewelry collection, "Padma."
The jewelry line was getting plenty of orders from Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue, among other retailers, but Lakshmi said she couldn't fill them all and eventually shut down the business. "I just decided that something had to give and I had to make a very gut-wrenching decision," Lakshmi said.
She said she still thinks about it every day, but she had to make food her core business. Now, everything she pursues in her career works synergistically.
Gaining focus: Separate your job from your interests
According to Lakshmi, finding your career focus is about achieving high-level success with one endeavor rather than mid-level success with multiple endeavors. The first step is to evaluate how everything you do benefits your greater goal.
This focus pours over from career into the rest of your life. If your social life isn't benefiting your career, fit it around your career goals. Lakshmi said that she probably didn't need to spend so much time in dance clubs in the 1990s. "You do have to compartmentalize and you have to say, I'm doing this so that later I'll have that," she said.
If your time or money can be better spent elsewhere, don't worry about missing out. "That party will always be there. That dress that's on sale, there'll be another one next year. You know, it really doesn't matter," she said.
It's easier to be self-disciplined when you surround yourself with people whose goals align with yours. "Think of fun ways to forward your goals with like-minded people who are supportive of you," Lakshmi said.
Push against the open door
Once you find your focus, it's still important to be open to a variety of opportunities that will get you there. "Life doesn't give you exactly the perfect opportunity that you think you need. Somebody once said to me, 'push against the open door,'" Lakshmi said. Think of a dishwasher at a restaurant, she said. He may hate his job, but when he works at it with diligence and a positive attitude, the head chef will remember him and may recommend him later on for a higher position as a sous chef.
In other words, no job is too small. "It doesn't matter if it's your dream come true or just something that you need to put food on your table and pay your rent. Do it like your life depends on it," she said.