There’s nothing like an impending little person to light a fire under you. Timelines and goals become very focused as you are working on borrowed time. Second trimester is just a beut for me and always has been. The clock strikes 14 weeks and the energy levels take a serious turn for the better.
It’s not about grabbing those nausea free hours to get ‘needs must’ done. It’s more like a feeling of ‘anything and everything is possible’. Lots of doing, planning and front loading. Finding out I was pregnant this time kicked me into gear to do something I have wanted and needed to do for years. Juspy has made its first hire. That’ means soon I will have help. I cannot tell you how that feels! I have been doing this on own for far too long.
I actually cannot believe I started this business 6 years ago. I was pregnant then too – 6 months in. It’s funny that the idea for Juspy came out of my personal experience after my first pregnancy. The business began on my second and here I am trying to raise investment and scale the business pregnant on my third. Hence the blog name ‘the bumpy road of a female founder.’
Everything with food takes so much time. So much longer than an inpatient person like me can deal with, with her sanity intact. I remember thinking (so naively) that I could create a product, packaging and killer brand in a few months. I learnt quick that that is certainly not the case.
The business of food is so tough. I’ll tell you that right from the horses mouth. Especially because my background is actually art, music, movement and branding not food. I am not an artisan food producer but I have always been into nutrition and what food does for the body’s ability to function and recover.
For those of you who know the story from the beginning, will know that Juspy in its original form was a ready-to-drink beverage. The recipe took 1.5 years of development in Teagasc and we finally launched the drink at Wellfest 2018. My god was that expensive to make. I had it out there for a year at every wellness event you could think of. Its last outing then was at Wellfest 2019. But that product was full of challenges for a one woman show with one car and 24 hours in a day. And because it was all natural it had a really short shelf life. It was so hard to get it out there in front of people not to mention that in 2018 collagen was not a trend the Irish consumer cared much about. My gorgeous drink didn’t stand a chance.
Then in mid 2019 I had to make the difficult decision of giving up on the previous 3 years work. I was completely deflated but something had to change to survive and grow. Thankfully the work I did since I started was not wasted and everything happened the way it was supposed to. That drink gave us the baseline recipe for the amazing collagen protein blend we have today. Powder is where it’s at.
This week I am celebrating 2 full years in ‘that’ business. Living the dream with a clean label product that is made in Ireland having sourced amazing ingredients from around the world. It’s actually the only thing that got me through the first trimester of this pregnancy and continues to give me a boost of energy whenever I need it in trimester 2. I know I am completely biased but this stuff is liquid gold.
Hopefully it will give us the fuel in our fire next week as we represent the Limerick Local Enterprise Office at this years Ploughing Championships. If you are there please come and say hi!
It’s not about grabbing those nausea free hours to get ‘needs must’ done. It’s more like a feeling of ‘anything and everything is possible’. Lots of doing, planning and front loading. Finding out I was pregnant this time kicked me into gear to do something I have wanted and needed to do for years. Juspy has made its first hire. That’ means soon I will have help. I cannot tell you how that feels! I have been doing this on own for far too long.
I actually cannot believe I started this business 6 years ago. I was pregnant then too – 6 months in. It’s funny that the idea for Juspy came out of my personal experience after my first pregnancy. The business began on my second and here I am trying to raise investment and scale the business pregnant on my third. Hence the blog name ‘the bumpy road of a female founder.’
Everything with food takes so much time. So much longer than an inpatient person like me can deal with, with her sanity intact. I remember thinking (so naively) that I could create a product, packaging and killer brand in a few months. I learnt quick that that is certainly not the case.
The business of food is so tough. I’ll tell you that right from the horses mouth. Especially because my background is actually art, music, movement and branding not food. I am not an artisan food producer but I have always been into nutrition and what food does for the body’s ability to function and recover.
For those of you who know the story from the beginning, will know that Juspy in its original form was a ready-to-drink beverage. The recipe took 1.5 years of development in Teagasc and we finally launched the drink at Wellfest 2018. My god was that expensive to make. I had it out there for a year at every wellness event you could think of. Its last outing then was at Wellfest 2019. But that product was full of challenges for a one woman show with one car and 24 hours in a day. And because it was all natural it had a really short shelf life. It was so hard to get it out there in front of people not to mention that in 2018 collagen was not a trend the Irish consumer cared much about. My gorgeous drink didn’t stand a chance.
Then in mid 2019 I had to make the difficult decision of giving up on the previous 3 years work. I was completely deflated but something had to change to survive and grow. Thankfully the work I did since I started was not wasted and everything happened the way it was supposed to. That drink gave us the baseline recipe for the amazing collagen protein blend we have today. Powder is where it’s at.
This week I am celebrating 2 full years in ‘that’ business. Living the dream with a clean label product that is made in Ireland having sourced amazing ingredients from around the world. It’s actually the only thing that got me through the first trimester of this pregnancy and continues to give me a boost of energy whenever I need it in trimester 2. I know I am completely biased but this stuff is liquid gold.
Hopefully it will give us the fuel in our fire next week as we represent the Limerick Local Enterprise Office at this years Ploughing Championships. If you are there please come and say hi!
