I Wrote This Book Across Four Countries

Lace Flowers wrote Nourished to Lead across Mexico, Guatamala, Domician Republic and Colombia. Here’s why location independence and nourishment are the same argument.

By Lace Flowers · Founder, Empire Kitchen

I left the UK in early 2022 with my children and the full intention of never going back to the life I had before.

Mexico first. Then Guatamala and Dominican Repulic. And Colombia. Four countries, multiple kitchens, one book.

The kitchens have ranged from functional to genuinely challenging. A cabaña in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, with no oven and a hob that required negotiation. A flat in Bogotá’s Kennedy neighbourhood — a local barrio where the neighbours were quietly puzzled by the presence of a British Jamaican woman who cooked constantly and ran a business from a room the size of a generous wardrobe. My kitchen there measured two metres by one and a half. No cupboards. Just an under-counter shelf, some Ikea shelving I painted mocha, teal tile stickers on the wall and a hanging plant. A bluetooth speaker.

Somehow it became the happiest room in the building.

I ran workshops from that kitchen. Set up a tripod, opened Zoom, cooked Flashy Fish Bags for ten participants while my youngest stood on her little stool in her pink apron, lime green knife in hand, peeling garlic beside me. She was three.

Why the kicthen matters

None of this is incidental to the book. It is the book.

Nourished to Lead is about what happens when you take the knowledge of how to feed yourself and carry it across borders. Into kitchens that are smaller than you’re used to, stocked with ingredients you don’t recognise, in cities where the cuts of meat you grew up with simply don’t exist. I didn’t eat curry goat for four years. Not because I stopped wanting it. Because there was no goat in San Cristóbal or Bogotá beyond the occasional street find that wasn’t going anywhere near a pot.

You adapt. You find what’s there. You build a pantry in whatever space you have and you cook from it. And the knowledge — the actual knowledge of how to feed yourself well — stays with you, because it’s not stored in a particular kitchen. It’s stored in your hands.

The location independance connection

I became location independent because I needed to lead myself somewhere new. In 2020 I was serious about making the move — about becoming free from the life I was living and building something that was genuinely mine. That process involved training as a Freedom from Self Sabotage coach and, more honestly, looking clearly at what I was doing to myself. At the time I was eating takeaways most nights and drinking too much. My forward motion was slow. My decision-making was sluggish. My body felt it before my mind admitted it.

When I stopped drinking and started eating well again, I launched my course and booked my flight to Mexico. One did not cause the other in a simple linear way. But they are connected. They are always connected.

Location independence is not just about where you work. It’s about building a life that is genuinely portable — where your capacity to function, to lead, to show up doesn’t depend on having the right circumstances around you. Nourishment works the same way. When you have the practical knowledge and system to feed yourself well anywhere, in any kitchen, with whatever is available — you are free in a way that no productivity app or morning routine can replicate.

That’s what this book is about. And yes, it was written in Colombia.

Nourished to Lead is Coming

Before you go. Nourished to Lead is coming. And the first chapter is yours — free.

It starts with a tin of baked beans and a decision that changed everything. Read it before anyone else.

Lace Flowers is the founder of Empire Kitchen, Co-Founder of The Flavor Room and co-author of Redefining Equity, Leadership and Influence in Online Business. She works with small business teams to build nourishment into their culture as a business strategy — not an afterthought.

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