We lived next door to Juli and her family for four years. Her blog, PUREmamas, where she shares easy to follow raw and vegan recipes and gorgeous photos of her sons and her life in San Diego, was one of the first I read.
Her youngest son and Lucas are less than month apart.
Todd and I were seeking her advice on signs of labor in her bedroom as she and her family were all snuggled in bed together the night I went into labor.
Juli is going through a transition right now and has written a departing letter to her company, Kookie Karma, a company she founded 10 years ago. A company she built from the ground up, made thrive and is now bidding farewell.
Please welcome my friend, Juli.
Dear Kookie Karma,
On a beautiful Saturday at the Santa Monica farmer’s market, where the fruit and veggies were bountiful, people were friendly, hippies were frolicking, the air was salty and fog was blowing in, I picked up a cookbook.
A book, for a self-proclaimed “chef”, looked extremely enticing. Every recipe was full of bright plant foods, beautiful salads, and pizza topped with flowers(?!), gorgeous meals with the simplest yet most gourmet ingredients. As I read the book I realized that every recipe was made with ONLY raw fruits and vegetables. No dairy. No animal meat. No sugar. No butter. No eggs. Only stuff grown in the ground. Not only did I buy the book, but I also decided to try this raw food ONLY lifestyle for one week.
I headed straight for my kitchen and I followed recipe after recipe. Day after day. I can’t even begin to explain the way I felt. I didn’t cheat one time {note: I even brought my own salad dressings to happy hour with my girlfriends and they were definitely annoyed with me at this point}. Meals were in Tupperware containers and were ready to grab out of the fridge. Nothing went in my mouth that came from a package, not even chewing gum. I ate REAL, non-cooked, energy filled, sprouted, fresh, organic food for seven whole days.
The results: Endless energy. Smooth skin. 5 lbs dropped {not a goal, just a side-effect}. My Eczema cleared {all gone and doctors had told me it would never go away and just gave me steroid creams}. I felt light and airy. Slept like a baby. I was happy and energetic. No brain fog. No headaches. NO PMS!!
I had been working in an attorney’s office and had a bad case of the office blues and those seven days of eating a 100% raw diet motivated me to leave my job and return to school to study nutrition.
A year later Kookie Karma was born.
Using my cooking experience and nutrition knowledge, I created my own “packaged snacks” to sell to stores. My “kookies” contained no dairy, no sugar, no gluten and no soy.
I didn’t see another product like this on the market and I figured if I felt this good eating this way, so would everybody else.
I lived and breathed my business. Sweat. Tears. Hours of baking. Deliveries. Education. Web design. Package design. Sales. Marketing. Email after email. Research. You name it.
I landed Whole Foods Market as one of my first customers, which then led to me building my own commercial kitchen. It was a dream come true. Despite the long hours, I could still make my own hours which allowed me to have a lot of fun on the side. A 24 year old’s dream!
Sales went up, Kookie Karma was named a “hot item” by In Style magazine in 2006 and I was named one of the Top 20 Entrepreneurs in their 20s by the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Then… I fell in love. I was not only distracted by a man but suddenly I wanted different things in my life. In fact, it wasn’t long before we were starting a family. Thinking everything would be fine and I could make it work, my employees could handle it, I could bring my son to work. You know, all those thoughts you have before your big wake-up call {the day the baby arrives}.
I remember being on the phone with the bank, computer on my lap and my newborn baby at my side, and they informed me that due to the declining economy, my line of credit was being revoked.
A year later, I was in the same boat but with a 1 year old running around and another newborn on my lap. I was checking email just hours after the birth of my second son and back in the office a week later.
My passion for health food wasn’t fading but my drive to be an entrepreneur was. I didn’t want to wear all the hats; juggle cash flow, stay on top of the bookkeeping or answer the never ending phone calls. My interest, my head and my HEART were someplace else. Kookie Karma had became nothing but stress for me.
Over the next few years, Kookie Karma grew a little but I had stopped taking a salary and I needed investors. I didn’t have the time or energy to search for them, my focus was elsewhere. I tried to sell, but the business needed funding to keep going another month.
Eventually, it died.
A slow painful death at that.
Kookie Karma has been a huge part of me. It’s the only real career I’ve known; almost 10 years! It has defined and shaped me into the person I am today. I’ve learned more from running my own business than any business school could teach me, I’ve met the coolest people and had the same, wonderful staff for over seven years. I have received the BEST thank you letters from people who have enjoyed my products. In fact, it was often those messages that kept me in the business longer than I should have been. That’s essentially why I started Kookie Karma in the first place, to share with people a piece of what I had experienced.
But I realized that my past had to die before my new life could really start. I couldn’t handle being a CEO and a mom. That realization was HUGE. My kids are my passion now. Forget trying to expose the WORLD to health food, it’s a challenge just trying to expose my sons to it!
I am still working; blogging at PUREmamas and consulting. Someday I’ll start another business, but for now I’m just wearing the mommy hat and it is by far the hardest yet most fulfilling one yet.
I’ve definitely gone through feelings of guilt and failure and disbelief. I never thought I’d be saying goodbye to Kookie Karma.
I wouldn’t change a thing about my past. Everything was the way it should have been. And it is how it should be. I made a choice. A big huge choice and grew from it. Pain, stress and hardship make our souls richer.
Goodbye 20’s.
Goodbye Kookie Karma.
And THANK YOU!
Juli
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