Meet Dani Kreeft | Ghostwriter, Chef & Author.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dani Kreeft and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dani, what is the most important factor behind your success?
Asking good questions! I’m pretty sure it’s at the heart of everything I do. Whether it’s over dinner with friends, on the page while I write, while alone trying to meet new people, interviewing someone for my “I ASKED A FRIEND” series or on the road traveling, it all comes down to asking good questions. An eternally curious mind, more than a lot of other things, will get you really far. It gets you invited, puts you in rooms, cracks vulnerability open and offers a view of the world you can’t get otherwise. Existentially, it also helps keep the focus off the hunt for some knowable and final answer – for a bankable outcome you just have to have. By shifting your weight to good questions instead of right answers, your life opens up.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I used to think my job and my calling was to be a writer. I was that kid who was good at English, who wrote emails people actually wanted to read and who inevitably started a greeting card company to make people cry with the sentiments I wrote. Writing was everything. My journalism education led to copywriting that wandered into advertising that eventually grew into ghostwriting – a progression born purely of the pen, and one I never really mapped out. I just did the next thing in front of me. It wasn’t until the last couple years that I realized how much I’d pigeon-holed myself. When I think about what really does it for me, it’s the combination of beauty, food, photos, writing and gathering together. That’s what I really believe in. So, right now, I’m mainly ghostwriting memoirs, writing conversational copy for clients and polishing up my first book, but I’m etching out more territory for making food, inviting people over, creating connections, taking photos and then writing about it. Writing used to be the whole, but now it’s a part of something greater, and I’m pretty pumped to branch out and do something that has more creative legs.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’ve talked to people who hate LA or don’t “get” LA, and it’s usually because they came once for a long weekend, stopped at the usual Hollywood hellholes, got stuck in traffic and then left with a dumpy yelp review. But Like any place, LA will meet you with the same energy you meet it, so I resist naming a litany of hip places because you could go to the best spot in town, but if you’re not fun, interesting or exciting, it won’t deliver. You have to be it to find it, and that likely sounds very LA, but it’s true! You could be at a billiard hall that smells like cat piss and have a blast because you brought the good time instead of demanding the reputation of the city give you one. So I’d skip the instagrammable spots you can find online and just be fun and get lost. You’ll have a good time. (Wait, I do have one reco: Now Serving – it’s a bookstore just of cookbooks. It’s great.)

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The female communities I’ve been a part of over the last few years have been absolutely key to me finding my footing and to my keepin’ on keepin’ on. “The Tide” run by Amanda Chase, “The Well” run by Rachel Molenda and “Be Seen” run by Kathryn Ducey are all eternally shout-out worthy. Being in a huddle with them shot me towards success in a way I couldn’t have ever done on my own.

Website: https://www.danikreeftwrites.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danikreeftwrites

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danikreeft/

Image Credits
They’re all my own film photos.