Welcome to Delicious Istanbul!
I am Olga from Delicious Istanbul. Most of the time I eat, cook and shop for food in Istanbul and show others how to do that with gusto.
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Coming to Istanbul? Check out my Istanbul food walking tours and cooking classes.
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Category Archives: Lifestyle business
Perfectionism and Social Media
I have been an examplary of perfectionism: I take ages to share photos and publish posts because I believe they are not good enough. Yet. I am a baker who kneads her dough for a bit and then sets it aside to rest and grow. But I get to the actual baking much more seldom than I wish to. Because the dough has not risen well, I reckon. That’s been my social media strategy in a nutshell too and social media doesn’t have much in the store for the long-taking bakers.
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Procrastination and Lifestyle Business Development
Once in a while this day comes. I turn off the alarm-clock and choose seeing dreams featuring unlikely plots and unlikely people engaging in the unlikely actions rather than getting up and embracing a very likely set of events and very real people. Once I am back from dreaming I would stay in bed for another good hour finding all good reasons to ditch the plan I had for the day. I embrace procrastination: I open the door and invite her to get in, we sit down for a cup of tea and talk for the whole day.
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Why I Started a Lifestyle Business
For a while I had difficulties defining the business of my Istanbul food tours and cooking classes. I am coming from a strategy consulting background: things undefined are beyond comprehension to me. My business draws on my big passion rather than a calculated business plan, it’s a one woman show with little outsourcing potential, I decide when to run it and when to take a break, I make enough money to finance my lifestyle and have no ambitious expansion plans. Lifestyle business is the word which I have recently picked from a recent blog post by Penelope Trunk.
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Setting Personal Boundaries, Keeping Love and Sharing
One week has passed since I have arrived to Sapanca and it seems like ages : you will not believe how busy life can be on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere. Major renovation of the hotel was finalized followed by a massive cleaning and preparing the rooms for the guests. Then receiving the guests over the weekend. Somewhat settling ourselves (if putting a bed in the middle of an empty room can be called settling). Cleaning the rooms after the guests and helping parents to settle down. Finding out a million of small things to be taken care (like we ran out of water last light and Özgür joked that he would write in his blog how I washed my foot in the toilet - he thought I would not mention it in mine, ha!). And the new week starts like that.
On Personal Freedom: Why IPhone is No Better Than Blackberry
I entered the atelier of half-a-teaspoon: millions of sunbeams gathered in the room with white bricks, a bunch of young ladies in summer dresses seated at the large table, lemonade and freshly baked quiche invitingly placed in the middle of the action. The atelier was hosting a meeting of the Moscow Startup Women club and by pure coincidence I joined.
Earlier that day I was sitting at home and grieving over my miseries with the painstakingly long UK visa application which kept me stuck in Moscow away from my Istanbul kitchen, its bustling markets, the blue Bosphorus and the lush green hilltop not far away from it. In a wonderfully serendipitous way a long-time-no-hear friend showed up in my inbox with a rescue plan. I was going through the newsletter from Masha Kicheeva, inspiring entrepreneur who elegantly turned the idea of baking boxed cookies into the out of the box corporate presents. Among the other upcoming events at her atelier she mentioned the meeting of Moscow Startup Women Club. That very night. “I am coming” - I shot. “You are in Moscow? Hurra!” - Masha replied.
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3 Things to Do Immediately After Quiting Your Job
I have officially quit. My travels have been fruitful and I have found what I was looking for. Three months ago when I took a sabbatical and headed out traveling a colleague asked me, ‘Is it an “eat, pray, love” thing?’. ‘I am doing the eating part only’, I replied then. But she was right in the sense that overworked and lost I found strength to sit down and think of the things which really matter and to re-learn to accept myself and the fact that my love for food is a legitimate way to happiness, relating to the people, looking at the world and making a living. So I have quit as I am relocating to Istanbul and start running food walking tours for the visitors interested in experiencing rich food and eating culture of Istanbul.
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