Meet Hank Shaw

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hank Shaw. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hank below.

Hank, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

Two words: Hard work. Then two more: Be humble.

When I was a younger man, I followed the “fake it ’til you make it” philosophy, and it mostly worked. I was first a restaurant cook, then a newspaper reporter, and in both jobs you learn a lot each day, if you pay attention. Each of those jobs requires quick thinking and skills, but journalism is especially good for this. Even as a beat reporter (I covered mostly politics), you still will always know less about water policy than, say, the chief staffer on the Senate committee that covers water policy. So you admit your shortcomings and ask questions. Lots of questions. Over time you develop real expertise, and you can in fact be better versed in certain things than certain staffers — and almost all elected officials, who, as a rule, are 30,000 foot generalists.

In my current career, I have a lifetime’s worth of experience in fishing and foraging, but even still, I know I know less about my current environment (Minnesota) than many of my forager and angler friends — because I’ve not lived here long. So you read, ask questions, observe, and learn.

The biggest way to overcome imposter syndrome is to simply admit when you don’t know something, which can be hard for some people. Doing this may break someone’s image of you as the all-knowing expert on whatever it is you are good at, but it also lets that person know you are human.

No matter how long you study and do a thing, there will always be someone better at it than you. Remember that, work hard to perfect your craft, and stay humble. That’s the recipe.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I research and write about wild foods, first and foremost, and Mexican cuisine as a sidelight. Both of these are coming together in a book I am writing due out next spring called “Borderlands,” which is about the culture and cuisine of the Mexican-American border regions. It will feature classic recipes, but also the unique, and often wild foods, that make those regions so special.

Primarily I run the websites Hunter Angler Gardener Cook and To the Bone. The first is, to my knowledge, the largest wild foods recipe website in the world. I’ve been running it since 2007 and I was lucky enough to win the James Beard Award for my work in 2013. The site focuses on wild plants, mushrooms, fish and game, and has more than 1500 recipes. To the Bone is more of a pure writing website, hosted on Substack, where I write about the intersection of life and nature, travelogs to Mexico and elsewhere, and yes, there are even a few recipes here and there. It’s where I get to truly be me.

I’ve written five cookbooks over the years, all about various fish or game species. My most recent is a fish and seafood cookbook called “Hook, Line, and Supper.”

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I think developing research skills, the ability to work long hours when needed (and then let myself rest afterwards), and writing clearly are three of the most important things that have helped me in my journey.

One of the things college and then graduate school taught me was how to learn. Once you know how to gain expertise in a subject, any subject, you can then use those skills to learn whatever it is that interests you. How to evaluate a source (is it biased? And if so, does it still contain legit info?) How to find sources (not everything is on the internet, for example), and how to ask questions (a surprisingly difficult skill I found…) are vital to gaining expertise.

I think a top thing for anyone to remember is that reading one book does not make you an expert. This might seem obvious, but it can be easy to fall into that trap. Another thing to look for is what are the controversies surrounding your topic? Once you know what people are arguing about in your topic, you can then see where its various experts come down on those controversies, and this helps you understand the context of their work.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

Right now the internet is changing radically. For more than a decade, I made my living off online search, but AI is destroying that quickly. So the business model I built to earn my livelihood is dissolving in real time.

Social media is melting down, too. First Facebook died, and now Instagram is fading, and Tik Tok will be right behind it.

So my challenge is to find those people who support what I do in a new way, and then, if they like what they see, ask them for help — maybe through subscriptions, or by attending in-person events, or other ways to reach my audience. The challenge of pivoting from an ad-based search model to one more intimate and interactive is exciting, but scary nonetheless.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://honest-food.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/huntgathercook/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/huntgathercook
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsbZW7079vDEFvXtdh-gVHw
• Other: https://tothebone.substack.com/

Image Credits

Holly A. Heyser